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