To summarise my jobs list at the moment…
The MR2 isn’t getting done because I need to decorate the hall, stairs and landing.
The hall, stairs and landing aren’t getting done because I have to work on the drive and front garden.
The drive and front garden aren’t getting done because Mrs Sweetpea fancied a couple of weeks somewhere warm and toasty. Somewhere she could go snorkelling. Somewhere she could lie on a beach in her swim suite looking cute and eyeing up passing studs wearing budgie smugglers. The Caribbean perhaps? Grand Cayman? Turks and Caicos? Or what about those places in the Indian Ocean where they have little villas on stilts in the sea? Maldives maybe?
Anyway you get the idea. So we wound up here…
Ah crap! That didn’t go according to plan then. Due to various problems booking flights to somewhere hot we wound up in the Canadian Rockies in the snow. The polar opposite you might say.
Flying into Calgary the pilot is warning us that we may be delayed because the Canadians are worried about snow fall. To quote him, “When the Canadians are worried about snow, it's serious”. In the event it wasn’t too bad and we flew straight in but I was getting a bit concerned about driving the car. When I was a kid in Yorkshire I drove in the snow plenty and wasn’t phased by it but that was a long time ago. Last time I tried to get the Lexus out in the snow I couldn’t even get it off the drive. We had a Nissan Rogue with winter tyres (thank God ‘cos we’d have been stuck without them) and it was fine. Actually it was great fun. I miss the snow we used to have in this country.
We drove to Kananaskis the following morning (had to brush the snow off the car first.) They’d had 30cm over night so the back roads were entertaining but perfectly passable.
We’d taken ice cleats with us but after borrowing some snow shoes decided that this was fun and pootled off to Canmore to buy our own. I’m not sure how much use they’ll get in Southeast England but hay, you can’t say I’m not prepared. Now we could get properly away from people and forge our own tracks through the wilderness.
I took the snow shoes off high on this trail and jumped off the side of the path. Straight in up to my ar$e. Well you just have to don’t you? Frost bite on your testicals is no laughing matter though I can tell you.
Didn’t do too badly from an injury point of view. I took a lump of skin off my hand in a fall in Lake Louise. We were on a trail high in the mountains tracking a Lynx when an avalanche….. No, not really. I fell on my bum on the ice in the hotel car park. But that’s not very dynamic and exciting so we’ll stick with the “lynx story” if you don’t mind.
We’ve never been skiing so we thought we’d try nordic (AKA cross country) skiing at the Nordic Centre in Canmore. Hmmm. Mrs Sweetpea fell on her butt pretty quickly and cracked her head. She was a bit nervous after that. I did ok until we came to a slight downhill slope. Mrs Sweetpea declined to ski down it and walked but I was getting my confidence and stuck my skis in the tracks and went for it.
About a third of the way down, with speed increasing dangerously to almost walking pace, and balance becoming shaky I realised that there are no brakes on skis. You can’t do that “snow plough” thing because your skis are in tracks, and frankly, I couldn’t have done it anyway. So I did the next best thing and crashed hopelessly. Wound up laying on my back, skis in the air, laughing manically. Three crashes to get to the bottom of that hill. Three I tell you. Sticking with snow shoes from here on.
The Nissan (or Knee-san as they pronounce it) did really well. There was one day up the Icefields Parkway where it began to struggle. Not for grip but for power. The suspension went really crashy and we had massive wheel unbalance at the back. Getting out soon revealed the problem.
The arches were full of packed snow. The wheel centres were packed apart from the bit the brake callipers cleared it and the lower wishbones were made of ice.
The poor car must have been carrying a huge weight of snow. There was about 3/4 of an inch of suspension travel before the tyres hit the snow in the arches. And when I say snow, I really mean ice. Contrary to the photo above which shows some small success, you couldn’t get the stuff out. You just had to wait for it to wear away or melt, which it didn’t because it was below freezing a lot of the time.
Mrs Sweetpea wanted to go dog sledding. Who am I to argue?
The dogs are nuts. Perfectly calm until you put them on the tow line and then they go potty wanting to be off and running. Most of them are ex-racing dogs. So “Mary” our lead dog used to run the Iditarod when she was younger. She now lives in semi-retirement towing rich tourists like me around Canada.
Apparently the modern sled dog is a cross between a Siberian and a Greyhound. Who’d have thought it? And they have an unnerving habit of taking a dump while on the move. Nice. The company we went with has a chap on a Skidoo following at a discrete distance with a pooper scooper. It’s a Canadian Provincial Park with pristine white snow, you aren’t allowed leave dog crap all over the place.
Anyway, have a picture of some proper snow. Not the couple of inches that brings the South East of England to a slithering halt. Proper, beautiful, magical snow…
Gorgeous isn't it. I just love the way massive clumps of it overhang and cling to the sides. Why does it not fall off?
And just in case you thought we spent all our time doing physical outdoor pursuits. Pushing our bodies to the edge of exhaustion. Well we did relax a little. Canadian winter style where you don’t even need a foot stool to put your feet up.
Next it’s back to the busted sewer under the drive. Happy days!
James
it didn't seem appropriate. And it hardly trips off the tongue.
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