We decided to have a trip out. The snow decided to join us!

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Dan is doing a Tam and sleeping already.

He had a late night so he's tired.
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Were going boarding!

Were just on our way out to the rockies on a very windy Highway 1.
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There's only a bloody English store in downtown Calgary!

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in the excitement of the snow I treated myself to a "sick" new toque

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Such a long time and no talkie talkie!

So...
Well it has been a while! Many wonderful strange and awfully exciting things have been afoot, why else wouldn't I have written? But soon I will regail you of stories which will turn your little fish and chip eating fingers blue, and scare your chubby Nintendo playing layabout hinds into their cosy beds!
Summer rocked, but like my wise girlfriend just said "that's calgary for you, they don't even give you a fall, summer just ends up being Winter", and Canada my friends knows how to do Winter.

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Me and Nathalia are in Banff. At the Fox, we woke up just now and its snowing hard!

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Hello, I'm 40 miles from the US border and Montana. Going to hike up a glacier, just have to make the ferry at 9am. Its in waterton. There are lots of Mormons out here. And natives hitchhiking.

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Yes those are antlers on the roof!

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Yes those are antlers on the roof!

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Today I'm seeing an artist for a project. He lives on a ranch in the foothills near Longview. We've had beans and coffee for breakfast. This truly is the middle of nowhere!

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I'm off to sketch downtown with Dan, Nat meanwhile is off to the Ballet!

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Wakeboarding at Little Bow Lake

We went to Litle Bow Lake to go wake boarding with George and Horatio Nathalias cousins or family friends.

They have a great speedboat with tanks in the front to adjust the amount of wake given off (in fact you can surf a surfboard off the bow wave if you want, they have ordered one but it didnt come in time) There were 8 of us aboard, 9 including Billi, Nat went before me and was a pro (like any sport she tries she makes it look easy), and I went last and dominated the field from the word go!!!!

I even did a switch (180 degree board turn) without knowing that it was difficult and not to be tried early on and went one handed.

(Dad before you get upset I've been asking around and there are no Windsurfers or Sailers out here because the wind is soo unpredicatble, you can go for a week or so with no wind....theres no sea here to mix things up!)

And Mum, "HI SUE", Nat and I both managed to hurt ourselves, but Nat is still sore and I'm better.

Nathalia stood up first time!

I got to undo the zipper!!
































Time for Gilesey to tear the wake

Been wakeboarding, the town of Vulcan is on the way back to Calgary. Live long and prosper!

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Today: Golf

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We saw a black bear and her two cubs on the train tracks outside Banff look to the right of Nathalias head!

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So we dropped Golden we went over to Revelstoke! This is Nathalia and Cristina at our campsite.

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Dan enjoying the effects of his Airborne Toxic Event

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Nathalia at the helm near Sunshine ski resort

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Okay this is a poor quality pic. Me Nat and Dan are on route to Golden in BC to camp. The picture shows a huge waterfall just outside Banff Alberta. Lovely

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My lovely girlfriends early preparations for the weekend birthday party camping trip. Excuse my spelling these are Piniata'

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And so to pictures...

So...

here goes
Introducing a new star of the show, Miss Nathalia Stephania Christina Horvath
I know what you're thinking but you haven't seen me dance!!!






















Next...
Santa Banta


















Next...
Snowboarding preparations in Casa DanJo...
Observe Dan's pose with his sweetheart Lucille, who sadly passed away plus a set of frozen denture ice cubes, all set off nicely with our RAD bright boarding underpants

















Next...
The POWder fun...Jo & Nat and Sarah in the lift at Revvy











Who's the daddy? Trying out our new boarding gear...at Nats apartment block















My New Jester Outfit....


















Sunshine at Sunshine, with Mr Danny C...
















Now for a bit of a relax before the next bit of boarding...
Still a bit excited after a day at Sunshine.













Jo & Dan en route to Revelstoke, whats Revvy like?, regarde:
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=50993706601&h=IhOZl&u=bYcg1&ref=mf


















Jo & Nat at Aurora, image courtesy of Christina (aka Tuna), Nats cousin (more of her and BIG Dan C to come)



















Introducing Danielle, Nathalias big sister...


















And now for some more extreme weather...


To my knowledge the best photo of me that exists, top of a mountain Fernie BC, from Dans Mobile (Thanks Dan!)



























Everything is bigger in Canada, even Ski Poles!! Fernie Hill BC




















Spot the yeti (me in 4ft + of POW) from Dans Mobile







































Me at the bottom of the tree run from Dans Mobile





























































Biggest POW day in Jo & Dan history and we were too excited to wait for the parking lot entrance so we parked in the river nearby!!!

Great its working!

So I've missed out a huge chunk and you'll have to wait and buy my memoirs for all that's happened over xmas. The main points are that I've met an amazing girl called Nathalia who is half Romanian half Hungarian and all Canadian! We met my first night in Calgary and I've more or less decided to stay in Canada now! She's very cool is a master Snowboarder and puts Ramsey to shame in the kitchen (stay tuned for some fantastic soups!) oh and she's bloody gorgeous! Which means visa stress (HI SUE) getting a job as a Landscape Architect for the most laid back boss ever (may I introduce Deron Miller) and other general paperworks. Highlights that you'll have to wait for include: with the Romanians, learning to snowboard, Dan MIA, lost on highways in blizzards, kayaking in Nanaimo, camping like real Canuks, rafting in Calgary and much more! But I promise you won't be missing out on anymore shenanigans! This weekend is my birthday camp and the weather is meant to be a little odd...
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Test

Its been too long Jo Luke fans. I'm setting up a mobile device update so you can see what Me Nat and El Diablo Dan Gunn are up to!
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Finally we're there

So….


COLD? JESUS YES
You know its cold when:
Your snot freezes in your nose, you have a pair of Cat boots on and thick socks and standing on the ground makes your feet numb. When ice forms on the edge of your jacket from your breath. When its so cold walking down the street actually hurts your legs-with Jeans on. When, get this, when your standing on a heated LRT-train but your leaning against the glass window and your jacket freezes solid against it.
Today gang, its -30 degree centigrade. I’m in the flat preparing to go and see a nice Landscape Architect for some job hunting advice, and I have all my clothes on, and thank god Dan is a big fella because I have a few of his clothes on the outside of mine.
When you’re outside, if you take a big deep breath you cough because it tears into your lungs.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Lets finish getting to Calgary.

SO TO THE PRAIRIE…
Winnipeg was behind us. So were the lakes. We’d been travelling for 3 days straight now and it was beginning to affect my mind somewhat. At nights its really difficult to sleep, the seats are designed to sit on, so if you go to sleep its inevitable that you wake up with a crick in your neck, similar to if you’d just been in a car accident with a hefty water mammal in the seat behind you. Added to this I’m a bit of a dribbler, nah I’m not, I’m a huge dribbler. I was nodding off for 20 mins and waking up with a puddle of slime in my lap and a stream running down my right arm. Out with my wet wipes, quick smudge of slime and it was back off to sleep to create some more slime, but using the other arm to transport it into my lap.

EERIE OUT HERE.
I’m telling you this because the next stretch was eerie. And being 4 nights sans sleep does very little to set me up for eeriness.
The prairie is flat as hell. On my map where I was keeping notes I’ve written in some very sleepy looking writing “Tell them its like going from one sea to another”, what I mean is if you watch the video of us motoring in the ocean in a flat calm you have very much the same feeling as I did driving over this vast wedge of grass, there’s just nothing there. I was getting excited when a farmhouse was off on the horizon, some of these places were 20 odd miles from the nearest paved road. I had to chuckle when I started to imagine someone as forgetful as me getting in from the weekly shop and realising I was 3 days drive from the nearest bottle of milk, having just bought 5 boxes of cereal, or bog roll (there’s a funny bog roll story on its way).

DANCES WITH WOLVES
The weather changed over the next day. It got really dry. My nose got itchy and sore. I realised I was the furthest from the sea I’d ever been, which I thought was a good little twist in the adventure. Going from being in the middle of the sea to being absolutely nowhere near it. But with the dry came the sun and this place took on a new light. Hands up who’s seen ‘Dances with Wolves’? if you grew up in the Giles household you’ll have seen it a few times. My Mum loves that film (HI SUE), well if you have seen it then you don’t have a lot of imagining to do—it was identical out there. So you’ll forgive me for making the rest of my entries for the next day in Kevin Costner’s accent.
“Day 3, ah still am out here on the prairie, when will we get to the next town”
There are fewer entries in my map to go back to so this section is thinner but just seeing this massive expanse of sky was worth the boredom. There are these huge grain silos; they must be the equivalent of an 18-storey building. And they’re just sitting all alone out beside the railway/ highway. And you can see them about an hour before you get beside them.
We were making our usual stops, in places like Regina, Moose Jaw and Swift Current, with very little to show for it, a Gas Station a Tim Horton’s Donut Shop and a few outdoor equipment and feed shops. What was interesting was what I came to call ‘the scary prairie people’, they are in all the diners. They are very quiet, but if you know where to look for them you can find them. There are young ones as well as old, women and men, but they all wear clothes that were at least made in the 1970’s if not purchased then. They look like they’ve had one too many scrapes with Rattlesnakes and they also don’t seem to like the look of lads from England, especially lads from England who sit too close and read books in coffee shops and keep getting caught staring. The nearest film reference I can think of is the odd looking people in Paris, Texas. Don’t get me wrong; these people never said or did anything scary to me, they just looked like something was deeply wrong. But remember, they live their lives out here on the prairie, they must get lonely, and maybe turning scary is a good loneliness defence. I didn’t try to talk to any of them. But in Maple Creek I made the mistake of asking one lady in one of those Wolf Printed Sweaters if she could keep an eye on my charging iPod while I went to the loo (The BLOODY WASHROOM JO!!) she looked at me like I had asked to put my finger in her nose and walked out and stood in the cold until her bus came.
After this I was so tired I stopped making notes and this was over a month ago so you’ll forgive for not remembering everything.

So…
LONDON BWOY
I used to go to Liverpool University, when I was there I lived with a bunch of lads from London. Good old boys they were, one of my favourites was Black Ben, from Tooting in Sarf London (innit), so it was with little surprise when a black bloke boarded the bus in Medicine Hat as the driver to drive us into Calgary, and introduced himself as Ben from Tooting in London. He was a good driver but he never once used the PA system to tell anyone what was going on. So we’d stop in one place and he’d jump off the bus and disappear for 25 mins, we would watch him sit down for a nice long lunch through the café window then other times he’d only stop for a few seconds whilst he dropped off a package, I’m pretty sure we left people behind, and also that the more timid element had bladder problems for a while after.

MIND YOUR NOSE
I was joined in my seat for the first time on the trip, the guy was called Mike, he was a middle aged White guy from Calgary who worked on the oil rigs in Australia and he was coming home to bury one of his sons, he said he’d read my blog so I didn’t think it was wise to crack any jokes here. We chatted about Calgary and how the oil had brought lots of people and money, about how it got cold but also about the Chinook, more of this later.
Actually why should Mike get out of getting the Mickey taken out of him, he was such a nice bloke, he answered all my questions he had a few nice facts and he set me up ready for the Rocky Mountains to crawl up out of the plain in the distance just as the sun went down. Then just as he was getting into his flow Calgary began to jut out of the mountains, there are some serious skyscrapers here and just as the dark was closing in they were all lit up and it looked great. The only problems was, since we left Medicine Hat, many long miles and hours ago there were only a few minutes when Mike wasn’t picking his nose. He couldn’t stop, I even mentioned it and he laughed it of and proceeded to get up to his elbow, whilst pointing out an interesting junction or something.
So we got to Calgary, this place is big, everything is big, big. It’s so big I am going to write big a few more times, Big, Big Big Big Big Big Big.

JO AND DAN, EMOTIONAL REUNION
I got off the greyhound walked out into the foyer, and there he was, Big Dan Gunn. He took my bag, we found ourselves a taxi and it was off to home sweet home.
Our apartment is (was we’ve moved this weekend-more later) in Crescent Heights a nice neighbourhood just north and uphill of downtown. Walking into downtown is a lesson in awe, there’s this view where you look down into the Bow River Valley, with the skyscrapers of downtown in the background all set off with the Rocky Mountains off in the distance.
And so Dan and I needed to acquaint ourselves with this city, and what better way than jumping off into the deep end?

My next instalment is just a draft at the moment but here’s a little taster (but dont worry there's photo's this time around---oh its going to be good) :
• That’s not cold, wait till it gets really cold
• The Funk is in the food
• Falling in love with Vampires
• How to loose everything and get it all back
• The +15 song
• Taxi? No
• My girlfriend is too strong
• How to get lost
• Don’t hate the mountain hate your arm
• Christmas with the Hungarian Romainian posse
• The new job