the past week

bit of a catch up post this one, as I sit in my leather swivel chair with a cat on my lap - very 70's slash James B! more on the cat later....

So we have had an eventful week as can be surmised by the lack of posts...so here goes a quick round up....

Tuesday 16th - went to Silver Star with the freshly arrived skis....no photos as brought the camera (yay!) but the battery was dead (boo!). I put this down to the fact that it was fricken' freezing to quote Mr Reed....-20C and that was in the sunshine....went over the other side of the mountain and you could take another 10 degrees of that...I thought my nose was going to fall off.. so the skiing wnet pretty much, run, freeze on chair lift, run, freeze on chair lift, run, coffee, freeze on chair lift...run, coffee, coffee, lunch, run, home! ....on the heated leather seats...mmmm..toasty!

Tuesday night was spent by yours truly in a state of mild peril as Wednesday was driving test day...need to pass otherwise trouble with the law (apparently if you are a permenant resident you can only drive for 3 months on a UK licence, however if you are a tourist you get 6 months...go figure!)

Wednesday 17th- did it dawn bright and sunny with dry roads and a happy smile on the drivng examiner s face - did it heck! well all except the last one, but I think that was just malicous glee. So in a snowstorm which would have sent Ranulph Fiennes scuttling back to his tent and a good layer of ice on the roads we set off extra early as Mr Reed had a first aid course and exam to attend in his quest to become a sheriff (nice uniform btw, but that obviously has nothing to do with the career choice, but has influenced my 110% support for said career path). So dropped Mr R off at 8:30 at the St John's Ambulance...which left me 4 hours to fret and worry until my test at 12:30. So what's a fretting and worrying gal to do....oooo lookee here...a shopping centre....and a credit card.....oh well...if I am left unattended.....so 3 Starbucks, a cardigan and a really cute little black shrug later I debunk to the test centre....am a bit early so get to know all the driving test examiners as they keep coming in and saying 'Are you Nicole?' 'Are you Claire?' ...apparently my facial expression is just screaming 'panic!' so I'm obviously in the line somewhere.

Anyhoo, I get a lovely lady as my test examiner, who spent 8 years in Basingstoke, so we have a lovely chat on the way round, I can only do 30km due to the snowstorm (which has gotten worse by now) and 45 mins later I hear the words 'You've passed' at which point I nearly burst the wonderful lady's eardrums with whooping and hollering (as you know I have always had trouble showing my emotions!) and positively bounce into the test centre grinning for ear to ear...80 bucks later I get a BC licence which I have to renew in 2 years (no test, but more money) and then every 5 years. Oh, best thing about the test, no reverse parking!!!!

Pick up Mr Reed who has been the star of the class and passed the exam with 100%! I think the teacher had to ask him to stop answering all the questions correctly and give some of the other students a go....aaahh I love my hubby!

We had a pre-Vancouver meal with Rik and Janneke (super Indonesian food!) and met their daughter Patricia who is working in Holland for PWC and is one of their stars and is really lovely.

Thursday 18th - Going to Vancouver across the Coquihalla highway which from Kelowna crosses 2 mountain passes. Normal travel time is 4.5 hours, we expect a bit longer due to the ice and snow. ...
It is not an auspicious start with another blizzard in Kelowna, Mr Reed leaving his slippers in the St Johns Ambulance from yesterday (nb slippers are very important in Canadian life....stricly no shoes in the house so if your hosts don't have underfloor heating and you don't want your feet to freeze...bring slippers!..plus a bottle of wine and chocolate...if anyone is coming over to visit...A&G!). It takes over an hour to do a 30 minute journey and we get the feeling that this is going to be a long day....

But, hello, just out of Kelowna the clouds clear and we have bright blue skies...obviously still have the ice and snow on the highway and a steady stream of abandoned cars along the road to make us think that we should have checked the oil/water/coolant/other liquidy stuff before we left...but the snow tyres and Mr Reed's expert driving are doing the trick.

About 1 pm we pull into Merritt for a spot of lunch before we tackle the 'Coq' (please note the use of native lingo, eh) as before this we have just been messing around on the Connector (150kms west from Kelowna to Merritt).
A note about Merritt...don't...it has no Timmy H's (Canadian readers will draw a shocked intake of breath at this news...UK readers, imagine life without beer, Italian based readers life without coffee (or biscuits to kill, L&M)....actually not sure Italians would class Timmy H's coffee as coffee but thats a whole other blog...hot chocolate's good and they have donuts...lots of donuts....).

So retreat from Merritt and head on the Coquihalla towards Hope...no really, there is a town called Hope, honest at the end of the Coq there is a town called Hope...not sure which way its meant to go...ie. from Vancouver abandon Hope past here, or towards Vancouver, let's Hope you make it...
Obviously in the interests of keeping drivers focused on the road, the local council has decided to install a number of art installations by the side of the road, no titles were visible (hidden by the snow I expect) but as with all good art you can get the meaning of a piece without any direction from the artist. Therefore we surmised that object d'art No 1 was conveying ' ohhh look what happens when you go above 50kph', No.2 was 'I was looking at my sat nav...not the road', No.3 'I late...perhaps an ambulance would be faster' and so on and so on. What was most instructive was the jack knifed trucks....these guys do this stuff all the time so if they have problem.... so we stuck to the low speeds and 7 hours later ended up in Vancouver....to be continued....