The penultimate TW Hike Club of the season was yesterday. Our plan had been to walk the length of Pocaterra Ridge in Kananaskis country. However being agile practitioners we are comfortable with embracing change which is just as well as it had dumped snow on K country the night before!


Seeing as we were starting from the highest public road in Canada the snow only got deeper as we drove on. Luckily we had an alternative, a short 6K loop into Ptarmigan Cirque that started from the same place. Having never been hiking in the snow before it turned out to be a perfect introduction. This was just as well as for once I managed to get a good number of colleagues to turn up for Hike Club


More pics here.

The round trip took about 2 hours which left plenty of time to drive on through K Country, leave the snow behind and head back into the golden fall. Our next destination was Marv's Classic Soda Shop in the town of Black Diamond. Do check the link because Marv's is a fantastic retro-joint serving great burgers, milkshakes and floats. There's a strong Elvis theme so if you want somewhere to go for a burger with peanut butter and banana then Marv's is your place. Mikey managed the one with peanut butter and no banana which he thought was a hit. When he gets the time Marv himself pops out from behind the counter, picks up his guitar and treats the customers to some of the King's greatest. We got "That's all right" which I've decided is my favourite Elvis track. Which was nice.

With my recently cemented fondness for India I'm delighted to see them win the Twenty20 trophy. If it couldn't be us I'd much rather it be them than anyone else.

The tournament seems to have been a great success and I'm looking forward to the T20 world cup in England in 2009. Quote of the day goes to David Hopps in the Guardian:

Whatever Javed Miandad might have suggested the other day, Twenty20 is not baseball. The past fortnight has proved that it is far better than that.

Too right!

I'm just back from my first game with my new hockey team - the Calgary Crunch! It wasn't an auspicious debut, we lost 3-1 and I was on the ice for the first two goals against but it was really good fun. I had to play defence which I took as a vote of confidence from the captain after our practice games that he didn't think I was totally useless, with luck I'll play on the wing in the future. The game was close and the other team were very well organised and playing at a pace I hadn't been near since I was 18. I was generally pleased with my performance and as a team we rallied magnificently in the final period, pulling a goal back and putting the opposition under all manner of pressure at the end. We even pulled the goalie with 45 seconds to go and threw on another forward - just like on the telly!

The great thing is that I think I've found the perfect team to play on. My team-mates are really friendly and they play with just the right attitude: they play hard but want to have fun so moaning about the refs/team-mates/the oppo seems to be at a minimum. We've got games pretty much every week so that should keep me in some kind of shape over the winter.

A new team means a new number however. My lucky number 10 has been bagged by an existing player. I've chosen #31 as that is the sum of my parents' birthdays: 13 May + 3 October. Let's hope that brings me some luck in future.

London chums - did any of you go along to the London Freewheel today?

For weeks now I've been experiencing a moment of intense joy in bed before going to sleep. But it's not what you think.

It all comes from judging a book by it's cover when I was on holiday in Ottawa. I was in a bookshop looking for some reading matter when my eye landed upon a brightly coloured drawing on the cover of The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde. I thought it looked like fun and I got it down off the shelf. The blurb on the back began "Easter in Reading. A bad time for eggs." Right then I knew it was going to be fantastic. Two days later when I finished it I knew I was right. I was also hooked and since then I've been in a Fforde ffrenzy.

Next up I read the first book in his original series of Thursday Next detective novels, The Eyre Affair. That was fantastic too! I hopped series back to the next Nursery Crime novel The Fourth Bear which I polished off in no time (not too short, not too long, just right!). Since then I've been tearing through the Thursday Next series: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and I've just started Something Rotten.

The books are just so funny in a Douglas Adams kind of way. The plots are becoming increasingly complicated as our heroine Thursday, a literary detective from Swindon, starts by entering Jane Eyre and changing the plot and then gets further and further into the book world until she takes up residence inside a novel itself! It's full of puns and crazy gags and literary allusion. Talking about the latter with my friend Andy (to whom I'd recommended the Eyre Affair) I had to agree that that kind of humour always appears as slightly smug. But then I think that's a peculiarly British taken on anything vaguely intellectual or high-brow AND funny. I resolved to stop worrying about it and just love it. What I really love is the way Fforde will take the narrative in all sorts of complex directions just to set up some pun or great gag. Believe me that the following passage from The Well of Lost Plots makes perfect sense when read in context:

'Okay', said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange. 'let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?'

Joy!

It snowed today. Twice.

A few weeks back my excellent friend James Crawford made me an excellent CD. On it were many excellent tunes including a splendid bit of Max Bygraves (words I never thought to utter). Another track I loved was Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow by Felt. As a hardcore Belle and Sebastian fan I've been worried for a long time by the absence of Felt from my music collection. I was concerned that when the indie Day of Judgement came I might be weighed in the indie balance and found indie-wanting. James has fixed that now - thanks mate - and a great song it is too. Does anyone else have any Felt recommendations?

Anyway, why am I telling you this? Well Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow would be a good description of this September in Calgary. We've had two weeks of wonderful autumn weather: blue skies, warm temperatures, leaves turning yellow and gold. It's been dreamy but according to the weather forecast that all that ends today. It was great while it lasted.

chuffed adj, Brit colloq very pleased.

Chuffed, along with bollocks, is one of the true joys of British English usage. It expresses a sense of satisfaction from a result or event turning out in a way that you probably didn't expect. There is a certain finality to chuffed: Britons tend to be "chuffed to bits" or "dead chuffed".

I bought two books today


Ladies, form an orderly queue.

I'm just back from my first time playing hockey since I got here. I thought I had to play if I came to Canada but I was worried that I might not be able to find a team where I wouldn't be embarrassed every time I got on the ice. Luckily my friend Felix (the Phoenix) at work plays rec hockey and asked me along as his team are looking for a few more players. It was so fun to be playing and I just about held my own; I'm sure it'll be good for my game when I get home to play at a slightly higher level here.

I thought I'd had a dream start by making a neat play on only my second shift on the ice. I was playing for the dark team against the white shirts and I got the puck at centre ice, looked up and saw a bloke in a yellow shirt in acres of space. I zipped a pass across the ice right onto his stick, then watched as he skated towards our goal and shot: apparently it was darks against whites and one guy in yellow. Gah.

I went for a hike today in Kananaskis Country aka Alberta's Playground. It's a cracking part of the Rockies full of wonderful hikes and views but lower on people because it's not in the National Park where all the emmets go.

We had great if slightly baffling weather. Mostly it was sunny and very pleasant, but for much of the way we walked through a few centimetres of snow. Wherever the sun had been shining looked like summer, in the shade it looked like winter. Which meant that part of the time I got the feeling we were on the edge of Narnia!


We made it to the top of Burstall Pass and finished our lunch just as it started to snow. Which means the only months it hasn't snowed on me since I got here were June and July! Anyway that was the just the excuse I needed to wear my new jacket..


The snow didn't last long and as Blowers would doubtless have said, if he hadn't been at Lord's (get in England!!), it was shirt sleeve order when we got back to the carpark. First home was Ed who is a bit of legend within the Calgary Outdoor Club. Every outing I've done with the club someone talks about him but this was the first time I had met him. This was his 103rd trip with the club and he's a tireless hiker. Not too shabby for 85 years old!! At the top of the pass he continued on to find the geocache whose co-ordinates he had downloaded off the internet. He returned a little while later with proof that he was the first person to find it! Not only that but he was just back from completing the gruelling 75km West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. He said it was good fun but he wouldn't do it again. "Maybe if I was 20 years younger" he added. Dude - if I can do the West Coast Trail when I'm 65 I will be chuffed to bits. Nuff, and indeed, respect.

It's only a flippin' Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud!


It's not a perfect one, but as the Cloud Appreciation Society website says "This most beautiful and transient of formations may appear over most regions of the world but it only ever does so on the rarest of occasions."

I was there!

For me the highlight of Alice's visit was going camping at Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park. All the guidebooks explain that Yoho is a Stoney word expressing awe, basically it's aboriginal for "wow". Going to Lake O'Hara made you see why it's not spin.


Although the weather was wet at the start, it meant snow on the mountains (and occasionally on us) which gave things even more of a Himalayan look I thought. And with our waterproof trousers of course we had nothing to fear from the elements. Truly there's no such thing as bad weather: just the wrong clothes.


On our first full day we did a beautiful hike to Lake (Dame Ellen) Macarthur. All the trails are beautifully constructed and constantly interesting whether going through the trees or up in the alpine zone. There we were joined by a number of animals particularly pika, marmots and a heard of mountain goats. Lake Macarthur is another turquoise glacier-fed lake and even on an overcast day the colour was stunning.


The campsite we stayed at was lovely. 30 sites set amidst the trees, with loos and benches and warming huts (thank god!). There were wood burning stoves in the huts and it was a nice social hub as people gathered in there to warm up, cook or dry clothes. Stories were told and advice dispensed on how to stay warm. Good advice as it turned out because temperatures dropped to -3 that night but we survived.


The temperature had dropped because of a clear night which turned into a clear day affording us a perfect opportunity to tackle the Lake O'Hara Alpine Circuit. This is a sequence of expertly constructed highlevel trails connecting the hanging valleys above the main lake. Getting up that high looked like quite an effort however. I'd changed my mind about 10 times on the previous day but folks in the hut the night before said we should go for it. So we took the direct route up to Wiwaxy gap - 1500 feet up in just over a mile! It was hard work but the payoff was fantastic. For the rest of the day we were on a fairly even trail along rock ledges, beside more fantastic mountain lakes and hemmed in by majestic snow-capped peaks

We did about 3/4 of the alpine circuit, ending on the Opabin plateau which had perhaps the most stunning view of all: Mounts Hungabee and Biddle and the green of the valley below.


If you ever think about a trip to the Rockies please think about some days at Lake O'Hara. There's the campsite, a bunkhouse and a posh lodge to choose from so there's something for everyone.

The first outing I had planed for Alice's visit was a trip to Drumheller and the Alberta badlands which is about an hour and half north east of Calgary. It's a nice drive through open prairie grassland and the occasional anabaptist colony when suddenly, and utterly unexpectedly, the road dives down into the deep Red Deer valley.

People come to Drumheller for two reasons. First is the mysterious badland geography, with sudden canyons with romantic names like Horseshoe and Horsethief, and also the famous Hoodoos (which Alice insisted on calling Hoo Hoo Dillys)

The other reason is dinosaurs. The canyons and valleys of the area have proved to be fertile bonebeds and there are brightly painted concrete dinosaurs on practically every street corner. The main draw in town however is The World's Largest Dinosaur! Alice and I drove around trying to locate it when suddenly we spotted its fearsome head looming over the neighbouring houses. The terror.. the terror


The local advertising promises that you climb stairs into "the actual mouth". How could we resist...


There is more serious palaeontology on offer at the nearby Royal Tyrrell Museum which is really fantastic. I'd love to have gone there as a 7 year old in the midst of my dinosaur fixation but even 30 years later it was brilliant. They had a number of dinosaurs I'd never heard of including the Albertasaurus: a local version of the T. Rex that everyone's very proud of!