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Oh, the sweet justice. I am writing this on Monday, after having worked like I have never worked before all day Saturday and Sunday. I am relishing this day off, even more so because it is a day where most of those people that I was running around for are now working. Ahhhh…
Jono is away for work, scoping out a new area that the company has never been to before, and will be back on Wednesday.
We both had a day off together on Friday and went snow shoeing, which was awesome. Factors that made it awesome include:
· The cost of the day was $1.75. I bought a pair of second-hand snowshoes for Jono ($1.75) and hired a pair for myself for free, courtesy of my job (one of the perks).
· The entrance to the park is practically in our backyard. A short bike ride or bus trip and you are there
· The sun was out ALL day
We were aiming to get to the peak of Coliseum mountain. It involved a pleasant 8 - 10 km walk on a trail through pretty temperate rainforest and then heading backcountry with a topographic map,
a compass and some snoeshoes. It is amazing that there is still so much snow on the ground this far into spring. We made the mistake of being lured up an easy looking path (a river covered in snow) and we stopped checking back on the map. Like two kids being led away by the lolly pop man. Soon enough the easy way became a series of steep gullies and waterfalls. While seeing the water fall into a creek running under us, realising that we were standing on top of a freezing creek running down a very steep mountain and watching rocks and balls of snow rolling down steep banks towards us, I wondered whimsically why mountains are often given such grim names coliseum mountain, mount despair, mount devastation to name just a few. It was about 3pm when we realised that if we kept going the way we were going it would take a while to get to the ridge (which was so close but so far away!) If we had more daylight we could have gone back down our easy path and followed the map a little better, but, we were out of time. If there were not
so many other mountains to explore around here, I would say, next time, but I am not going to say that. Just onwards! It was good fun and we were both absolutely trashed when we got back home! If you measure fun in terms of how saw you are afterwards, then it was a stellar day. And, I guess there is a moral to the story somewhere in there - involving taking the easy path.
Before I go, I have an admission to make: perhaps I was wearing rose coloured glasses when I said that Canadians are polite and that cars give way to pedestrians and cyclists. Since I wrote that I have been nearly run over while crossing the road, almost knocked off my bike and I got a retail job that made me realise even Canadians are not always polite. My rose coloured lenses have shattered, stabbing me with a shard of realisation that generalizations are never accurate. They are merely part of the picture. Something happens to people when they enter cars and stores. They become their own entity detached from the web of live, hanging on their own silk thread in their own bubble. They
need to get from a to b or from footwear to the packs as quickly as possible, and anyone that is not there to help them do this is in their way. And anyone that is there to help has to be 100 percent at their service IMMEDIATELY. I won’t go into details (as tempting as it is to offload) but I just wanted to correct the bias a little, and present a whole picture! That all said, I continue to notice the polite aspects of Canadian culture as a whole as well. One recent example I have noted is that people say “Ay?” and “Right?” at the end of most sentences or paragraphs. I had heard that Canadians use “aye” a lot, and it is true, they do! I think it is sweet. It shows a lack of arrogance and a willingness to communicate. It is like the speaker wants the person they are talking to agree or disagree, or at least express whether they are interested. And, on the whole, people are generally more considerate to pedestrians and cyclists than I have witnessed in Australia, but I just can’t trust that to be the case all the time.
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What a journey!
Hi Dahns - we have a new computer now and I have been able to journey through your last 6 journals! What great entertainment they are! Some fab pictures and good joles, too. I laughed at the trees/ no trees comparison - goes to the heart of humanity really there are only 2 types of people, tree people and no-tree people. Seems to me too that there must be a lot of sunshine coaches in Vancouver and they are doing a good job because the sun is finally learning how to shine again! Muma sends her love but I definately will NOT tell her about you climbing the Banana Peel. Oh, and I loved the pic of yellow flower, with snow. Thanks for all the stories I am lapping them up!!!