In Australia now. There are many more gum trees than I remember, and birds! So many birds constantly singing and talking and arguing.
The houses are also much colder, the confectionery sections in supermarkets much larger, and there are less bears.
Category: general
“I’VE HAD IT WITH YOUR ATTEMPTS TO GET THESE MOTHER F**KING BIKES ON THIS MOTHER F**CKING PLANE (without paying the relevant fees which we are levying even though you thought that because you’d bought your tickets from Air New Zealand you would only have to follow their baggage rules)” the Calgary Air Canada employee yelled at us, hurling a stapler at Alex’s head.
He went on to threaten us with overweight fees of $100 per bag for our two bags which were underweight by 500grams, and overweight by 800grams respectively. This was right after we’d killed his puppy, and stolen his favourite lampshade.
Thankfully we managed to make it into the departure lounge section of the airport, after running a gauntlet past other Air Canada employees, who all hurled either abuse, excrement, or particularly vicious glares of disdain at us.
It was almost enough to make us wish we’d gone to Vancouver with Greyhound – even with the evident risks of beheading and spontaneous bus combustion.
As if I haven’t done enough gadding about already this year, I have decided to travel across the Pacific Ocean and go to Australia. And then come back again 3 weeks later. Although I’m tempted by Anonymous Lefty’s noble and environmentally conscious scheme of going by ship, I shall probably just stick with an aeroplane. This is the route I shall direct the pilot to take:
So in two days time I’ll probably be hanging out at an airfield of some sort, trying to hitch a ride on a plane. Or a zeppelin.
Where we have the Larch Pilgrimage from Moraine Lake (in the Valley of the Ten Peaks), up to the Larch Valley and Sentinel Pass. I found out afterwards that this is some sort of Rocky Mountains tourist mecca – well, more accurately I found out as we were walking, and there were all these other people walking next to us.
“What are you all doing here?” I asked.
“This is a nice hike,” I said, “but I’ve done many others that were also nice, and no-one else was doing them.”
“It’s written up!” they said “in the guide books and on the internet”.
“Aah,” I replied.
I did see a larch. Several in fact.
While the snow continued its attempts to sneak down into town, the sun won out today. The cloud was burnt off by mid-morning, and most of the overnight sprinkling of snow on the surrounding mountains had disappeared by afternoon. Perfect climbing weather. In this case, being lazy and going to the nearest crag to town – surely no-one else will have had the same idea.
The top section of the Grassi Lakes climbing area has been opened again for a couple of weeks now, so there are a lot of people coming out to climb on the climbs that have been off limits for the last year or two.
