The P's do Canada!

Well the western bit anyway!

M&D came out in the summer for a spot of dog sitting with Nina, so they stayed in the house of Rik and Janneke, our friends who we rented the bungalow off when we first came to Canada. They stayed there for 2 weeks and then moved to our house when Mr R started the cherry harvest in July.

Now one of the major concerns was not being eaten by bears, bitten by rattlesnakes or black widows but way more serious.....would there be coverage of the 2010 World Cup from South Africa!!!?
If that was not tramua enough, Canada being the land of hockey and football of the American kind - M&D were flying into Calgary on the day of the opening match - England vs USA!!!!

Special channels were purchased cable which showed every match 3 , yes 3 times a day!! Shaun was super pleased about this ! :)

However we needed have worried about things - plane landed from the UK at 12:05pm, match kicked off at 12:30pm- parents in bar with luggage, beer and the match on the big screen by 12:25pm!!!

They stayed in Calgary one night - just to give M her fix of cowboys as the Calgary Stampede was starting in a week or so - and then headed on the Greyhound to Banff and Jasper. Amazing scenery, great hikes, hot springs - would have been slightly better had it not been raining cats and dogs in the 'worst rain for 10 years' accordingly to a local.

But they made it safely to the Okanagan and we had a great 6 weeks (yes, 6 weeks, bros!) - now there were many things I could recap but I will give you a few of the highlights....

Evening speedboat ride down the Lake for dinner at lakeside restaurant! Thanks to our friends Brian and Bonnie, Shaun arranged for us to be picked up off the dock near the house and then they whisked us down the lake for a great meal....with some donut riding in between!

Terrified..me?

Da Man!

Yours truly, embolded by the fact than Brian's 9 year daughter was managing this, jumped on the donut and proceeded to scream myself hoarse, the fingernail marks in the palms took a couple of days to fade! But things were getting better and the screams were more 'fun', less 'terror'....that was until Shaun took over the driving....what part of 'NO CORNERS!' is difficult to understand?????

They say revenge is a dish best served cold....my thoughts....why wait!? IF your husband who has just scared the bejezzus out of you (how much of hand Dad had in this is still under investigation, Mum is believed to be innocent), does decide to get on the donut immediately afterwards...then the words 'gift horse' and 'mouth' do come to mind....and what do you know, those decks are so slippy, it was just oops and overboard.... I blame the karma monkey... :)

Thomas & James get a little too serious

Watching England Vs Germany in Canada with some Germans! World Cup...Dad....2 Friends of German extraction....time for a party!  Confident of England's impending victory we decided to have a World Cup party and in the interest of making things, well, more interesting we invited Bianca (parents are German and emigrated to Canada, speaks german, off to germany in a couple of weeks), James, their children and Thomas (German, emigrated to Canada, works with me in TCM) and his lovely wife Gill.

Mum! Help!  I being eaten by a giant football cake!

Naturally when they arrived Mr R welcomed them with a medley of rousing party music i.e. Jerusalem, ride of the valkyires, Dambusters, Land of Hope and Glory....etc etc.  Bianca up the anti by arriving fully facepainted up, children brainwashed into supporters of Germany, complete with themed chants (hat's off to Mrs S) AND a giant football cake.....

...so lets gloss over the match....oh hum....!

 Surprise Flight in a Helicopter
Shaun pulled the rabbit out of the hat on this one!  M&D and me were up at Grey Monk Winery having lunch with Karen and her husband George. Karen works at Grey Monk so we were able to get a great deal on the wine (which was gorgeous  - Ehrenfeltser 2008, Kerner 2009 if you can get it!) and the restaurant is on a patio overlooking the lake so all fab!

Chocks Away!

Shaun phones and asks us to get back to the farm as M&D are needed for a photoshoot as they need somebody to pretend to be a cherry buyer....yes, writing it down it does seem somewhat bizarre but guillable is my middle name....although I prefer 'trusting'!  We got to the farm and drove up through the orchard to the helipad, got out, Shaun introduced us to Ryland and explained he had got us a flight round the valley!  V.excited....would have been slightly less nervous if Ryland hadn't looked about 18 but quick interrogation revealed that a) he had been flying helicopters for 10 years, and b) no, they don't let you start flying at 8 years old in Canada.  Yay!  So in we got! 

Honestly Dad  - Shaun does like you as a father-in-law

You do ...don't you....!

Lake Kalmalka

Lake Kalmalka - yep its that blue...well bluey/green

Heading home towards Carrs Landing/Lake Okanagan

Ahh..you do!

Touchdown!

Fireman Shaun!

Canadian Courtship Ritual

Mr R is now a fully qualified firefighter for our local area of Carr's Landing and just passed his exam to drive 2 of the fire trucks! Luckily there are not many call outs but so far this year there have a been a couple of health emergencies call outs, a chimney fire (where Mr R was first on the scene and it was his first call out - the homeowner was fine until the rest of the crew turned up and started ribbing him as the newbie...given Mr R was balanced on top of the guy's roof with a high pressure hose, this was perhaps more information than the guy needed as his chimney blazed away!).

You too can look like a giant fly!

The 'best' one so far has been a car fire up on the hill when a guy's engine suddenly exploded into flames! He managed to get out okay and called 911 so 'da boys' sprung into action, car extinguished, and a very pumped Mr R returned all smoky....in uniform....ladies, I shall leave it there......

Hiking up a mountain...in ski boots...is fun. Apparently!

....whirly time machine effects end....and we are back in March (ski season 2011 is nearly here so it topical again!)

Given that Valentine's Day was spent with Shaun dog legging it back from the UK via Amsterdam, $250 extra flight fees, and our wedding anniversary was the Fish & Game Club Supper with 250 other people (yep the bobcat curry was back), we 'decided' (read what you may into those quote marks!) to take a long weekend in March up at Big White.

So we rented a townhouse with a hot tub, dropped the dog off at the gulag (aka Spotted Spa) and headed up the mountain - into the middle of the biggest snowstorm we have been in yet! There was zero visibility with the driving snow and if you turned the hi beam on the view out the windscreen turned solid white. Luckily we were the only ones heading UP the mountain, but there seemed to be a fair number of people heading down. Any temptation to speed was quickly stamped on by the unfeasibly large number of cars in the ditches!

We were crawling along at 30km and heading up a incline when the car coming towards us on the other side of the road stopped...not sure why...so Shaun inched forwarded and a good job too as the 2 cars behind the stopped one...umm..couldn't!..and came skidding down the hill on our side of the road...narrowly avoiding a collison by virtue of heading into the previously mentioned ditches!

Offers of help were made but apparently there is a tow truck which goes up and down in a big circle for most of the night pulling random cars out as needed. Yet another incentive (if one was needed after that) not to be too eager to get anywhere!

Needless to say VERY large G&Ts on arrival and possibly there was more than one!

Anyway, the Saturday morning dawning with crystal clear blue skies and 30+cm of fresh powder - life was good!!!!

In the morning we were skiing with Shaun's boss, Dave, his dad Gerald and son Alex - all top skiers so it was a morning of intense, super fast, no coffee breaks - by lunchtime we were knackered!

Dave had to leave at 1pm otherwise we would have been in bits! So time for a bit of R&R and back to the hot tub...but oh no - we meet my boss, James, on the mountain, again top skier, so not being one to turn down a challenge we spent the afternoon hurtling round the mountain at top speed - again!!!

Then straight into the apres ski with James and his wife Bianca, Thomas and Gill ...till gone midnight......oh well, Sunday will be recovery time....

...No!...Dave calls at 8am and offers to take Mr R and me back country skiing...too much of an opportunity to turn down as Dave is super experienced and we couldn't get a better guide for our first venture into the back country.

So tried limbs are ordered into position and we head up the hill. Backcountry skiing involves getting to the top of the lifts, or whereever you can get to via truck, snowmobile etc and then getting out/off and walking even further...uphill! Normally this is done in special boots which can switch between hiking and skiing (to a degree) and super light skis - we had neither so it was standard ski boots and regular skis for us!

I never realised quite how heavy those blasted things are until you are halfway up a vertical slope in a howling wind!

We got to the top of the lifts at Big White and then headed higher along this ridge (yes, ridge, correctly implying drops on either side!) and what was a mild breeze at the village had some how developed into something a bit on the stiff side!

But the views were great, honest!

I was about to give up when the slope turned from extreme incline to vertical but Dave was running up it like a mountain goat and amazing came back to get my skis and run them up to the top!

Your'e not my husband...but I love you!

Before the Hike of Pain...see the smile!

The reward for the Hike of Pain as I lovingly like to think of it was some of the best skiing we have ever done! Short but very sweet - deep powder, utter silence (except for my whooping!), and no one but us...and we managed to get some nice tracks! The ski back to the village was my favourite as we headed into the woods on these narrow trails which dodged trees, over logs, etc - there was a vague direction of 'always take the right hand fork' but soon we were coasting through the woods in perfect silence (too beautiful for the whooping) and it was quite a shock to suddenly emerge on the piste and see the crowds (crowds being a relative term at Big White, uisally implies more than 3 people in sight and an 30 sec wait for a lift!).

A very very very cool long weekend!!!

Yes we are still alive and haven't been eaten by bears!

Well not yet anyway although this year has been heavy on the bear spotting and not just me mistaking cows for bears but proper ones with teeth, claws and picnic baskets!

Big HI to Lurve Machine, Miss T - you are our ambassadors of quwan ! and yes the blog is back!

Spud - hi little fella, you are obviously having a great time with Lesley and Derek - eep eep!

Okay, so we have no camera at the moment due to me dropping it but will do my best to bring the blog up to date with the pictures we have and lots of words! Its been fun, we have sauna's, canoes, overboards, keels falling of boats when they are not supposed to, 152 wineries....but ahhh I get ahead of myself.....whirly, psychedelic time machine effects.....