Australia Day!

Every year at school we used to get asked what Australia Day meant to us, this year I couldn't be much further from Australia, there's none of the things that make a typical Australia Day celebration out here, no sunshine, beach, no taking the day off or BBQ but this year I really can say I'm proud to be an Aussie! And also how great it feels to have the support of the country behind me!

I've still got a lot of the world to see (a lot of Australia too actually!) but the things that are special about Oz to me (other than all the cool scenery!) is our relaxed positive attitude and 'can do' approach! I'd like to think that we're a county that's capable of coming together to tackle challenges, one that's capable of showing the world that we can achieve the things that we believe in.

So how am I celebrating? Well last night I was pretty thrilled to get a call on the sat phone from Kevin Rudd who offered to pass on a Happy Australia Day message to everyone from me! That's about all I needed to make my day!

In other news, I'm pleased to report that the dunny is all back together (thank goodness!) and that the stove fired up again (yessss!!!) after drying out a little. Can I just say that, after enduring a few days without a stove my respect for James and Justin (the guys who kayaked the Tasman) and any other sailor or adventurer who's main food source was self-heating freeze dried meals has just gone up about a million notches!

So getting Ella's Pink Lady back into shape after our little battering has been going well, not helped by another front that passed yesterday but luckily it didn't give us any more than 40 knots of wind. I'm currently waiting for the wind to ease a little more so that I can finish patching the main sail and pull it right up again. Ella's Pink Lady looks a little worse for a few battle scars but more importantly is still as strong as ever.I shouldn't really be surprised as this is what we set her up to take and why we picked the S&S 34. Still it's nice to know.

I certainty can't complain about the miles we've been covering lately, we're flying across the Atlantic, I'm starting to worry that it's all going to be over and we're going to be home before I'm ready!

Well I'm going to sign off and have a go at making meat patties with tinned mince for a hamburger. Then maybe even some cake or muffins just because I'm so thrilled about the stove working!

Happy Australia Day!

Jesse

P.S. Congratulations times a million to Abby Sunderland for departing on her voyage last Saturday, I know what a challenge it is, just to get to the start line. Despite the fact that there seems to be a lot of adults determined to see Abby and I pitted against each other as rivals, I only wish her the best of luck and am totally thrilled that there's another girl going for the record!

The ManVan

The story of the ManVan goes something like this...

Wes desperately wanted a car in Fernie so that we could maximise our time here, do roadtrips and generally live like kings. Claire absolutely did not want a car in Fernie because Fernie is a small town where most regular people rely on walking or hitching. The size of this town really doesn't warrant a car.

After a few days of lengthy discussion Claire gave in, and within 2 hours of giving in, we became the (semi) proud owners of a Green Dodge caravan sport!

Claire found out that during the discussion process Wes was doing a fair amount of car research on the side so that when the agreement was reached there would be no time wasted in making the purchase.

Wes is absolutely thrilled and everytime we jump in our ManVan he sings the little tune "On the road again..."

I'm gradually getting used to it, and despite telling Wes that we cannot possibly use the Van as an excuse to be lazy, have been caught driving to the gym (of all places), which is a total of 450m from our house - whoops!

The good news is that in the first week the Van has only broken down once with a flat battery. But we aren't being put off, because on 10 Feb we are doing a 2 day road trip to Vegas, so hopefully it lives long enough to see us safely to Vegas and back.

In other news, Claire is now a qualified ski instructor after passing the 4 day CSIA level 1 instructor's course. I don't really have any intention of teaching but it did wonders for my skiing.

Wes jumped on skis for the first time in 10 years and proved to be quite the maestro. On run number 2 he made his way nicely down a black run, weaving in and out of trees, carving up the crusty powder, and later on he even hiked up in his size 13 ski boots to the very top of the Lizard Bowl to try out the powder. Very very impressive Wes!!

A trip to "Cran-hole"

A lot has been happing since my last post, so here is a day in the life from early on in our stay.

A trip to "Cran=hole"

Canada is a very friendly place. I think part of the reason for this is that Canada is designed to function in person. You get lots of chances to practice you friendliness when you do everything in person, like going to the bank to setup an appointment to open a bank account in person, and collecting your physical pay check in person from work, and then banking your pay check in person at the bank ("direct deposit? sounds like a good idea, but how would you know when you have been paid?"), and then paying your rent in person at the real estate agency and so on. However, things do run very smoothly here in person. I can now understand why my Canadian friends in Sydney couldn't get over there first trip to the RTA. Unfortunatly things dont run as smooth if you are trying to accomplish something by phone or internet (or should I say fax).

To work in Canada, you need a SIN (like a tax file number) and to get a SIN you need to apply at Service Canada. Now Claire did this 6 weeks before we arrived by mail, and all I needed to do was re-activate mine from when I last worked in Canada, despite this, our SINs were not forthcomming. We were told our options were to resend applications (with our passports) and wait 6-18 weeks, or drop in to Service Canada and have them issued on the spot. The problem was Service Canada was in Cranbrook (aka Cran-hole) which is 1.5 hours away and this was before we had our new wheels. So we caught the twice a week medical bus for $2.50 that takes Fernie patients to Cranbrook hospital.

The medical bus was lots of fun, and we were lucky to get a seat. The highlight for me was when the middle aged female driver pulled off the road and explained she wont be a minute, and we watched her duck into the toilets at a truckstop. Sure enough a few minutes later we were back on the road, and 10 minutes after that we were in Cran-hole.

Personally I think the name Cran-hole is a bit harsh, as it was a pretty cool town. It even has a Wal Mart. Sure enough we were in and out of Service Canada in 15minutes with SIN in hand, and then filled the next 4 hours looking at ski gear and sampling some of North America's finest fast food. I also had a business meeting with Interior Health about setting up a street vending cart (sausage sizzle) before getting the medical bus back to town.

Here's a pic of some of our mates at the bar...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!

Wes and I have been so busy enjoying ourselves in Fernie that we neglected to let you all know how we're going. So apologies for the massive gap in updates.

(Photo: Fernie above the clouds)

Life has been bumbling along nicely since our last update. We have been alternating between working, skiing/snowboarding and going out with all our mates. The last 2 weeks has been busy as all the holiday makers have arrived in Fernie and so we're both pretty busy at work. I have renamed my job from "Guest Services" to "Customer Complaints" - there are lots of grumpy people on holidays. The weather went from -1 degree with rain back down to -24 degrees, and now we're at a respectable -10 degrees. Apparently the guests thought it was my fault that it was raining last week - at least they complained to me like it was my fault. I don't really know what they wanted me to do about it.

Fortunately it has been dumping snow for the last few days so the whole house is currently up on the mountain making fresh tracks in the powder snow.

(Photo: that's wes if you can't tell).

Wes and I have worked out that if we make it up the hill in time for the opening of the first chair lift at 9am we can have 2 or 3 fantastic hours of "First Tracks", which is much better than skiing for 4 hours in the afternoon.

(Photo: The Orphans at our house for Christmas dinner)

We had a fantastic Christmas day which revolved around food. Lunch was spent with our friends Claudia, Steve, Em, Jez, Molly and Liam (Claudia and Steve's most adorable and incredibly polite little kids) at their house. They put on the whole christmas spread of turkey, ham, vegies and 4 sumptuous desserts!!! Claudia and Steve have a hot tub which we tried out the other night, but we were too stuffed to give it another go on Christmas day. There is nothing quite like running outside in -15 degrees in your swimmers and jumping in the hot tub. It's very hard to get out.

Following our delicious lunch, we then went home to our place and together with our housemates, we put on a dinner for all the Orphans we have met in town. 13 of us got stuck into our 9kilogram turkey and 2 kilo ham. We gave it a good go, but we did manage to salvage some leftovers which lasted this week. I'm a bit over ham now.

(Photo: Our 9 kilo turkey)

Tonight is New Years Eve, but unfortunately Wes and I are working at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and so we will either head to a bonfire down the road, or have a very low key evening at home. Its no big deal as we've collectively come to the conclusion that we've both been to some amazing New Year's Eve parties over the years, so we're happy to sit this one out.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years and are gearing up for a fantastic year ahead.

Chilli Con Carne

Each day is getting colder and colder!!

We've been assured by the locals that Fernie is currently in a cold snap and it will get warmer, but this morning we woke up to a chilly -27 degrees and its only December. Unfortunately Wes had to face the frost head on and go to work at 6am this morning, for a 7am start. We continue to hitchhike, meaning Wes had to wait in the freezing cold for that nice person to stop and pick him up this morning. There's nothing better than getting into a warm car or coming back to our warm house with the fire raging after a stint outside!

Last weekend was the official opening ski weekend for Fernie. On Saturday Wes went snowboarding with our new housemate Kelly (who conveniently is a snowboard instructor). He managed to keep up with her all day and the report from both of them was that the snow up the top of the mountain was fantastic. Lots of powder (which Fernie is famous for) and overall great conditions.

I have the week off work and have been wanting to ski, but it hasn't snowed for a week or so and the fear of frostbite is scaring me away. I've promised to go up tomorrow with Wes. Excited about testing out my brand new White Nordica Ski Boots which have built in battery powered heaters!

The Ghostriders won on Saturday night so we used that as an excuse to go out and celebrate. Needless to say we didn't end up skiing on Sunday.

...We got jobs (continued)

Following on from Wes' post, I'll just give a quick update on my job status...

So I was also offered the Lizard Creek Lodge job at the front desk along with Wes and I was absolutely thrilled. I accepted that job in the morning. However, that afternoon I got a call from the Fernie Alpine Resort (which I had been pestering since October and is the company that runs the ski mountain) and they offered me the role of Guest Services Representative. Again, I was thrilled. So after a large amount og deliberation with Wes, I turned down Lizard Creek, and accepted the Guest Services Role at the Mountain.

The best thing about this job is I get a free season lift pass!!!! And also a fantastic chance to meet more people on the mountain. The pay is only $8.50 (!!), but the lift pass is a huge bonus, so I'm happy.

I started on Wednesday, and it turns out they were really desperate for me to start ASAP because the mountain is opening this weekend, a week before schedule. I did a 8.5 hour shift on my first day, which involved selling season passes, providing the staff with their passes, and generally answering people's queries (which is rather challenging considering I've been in Fernie only a week - learning on the job again!).

I did a mammoth shift today as everyone came in to get their ski passes before the opening on Saturday. I'm working all weekend, and then hopefully once the mountain opens up properly on 5 December I will drop back to part-time so that I can ski ski ski. Tomorrow's challenge is to buy those heated boots so that the skiing will be completely enjoyable.

The snow has unfortunately turned to rain down here in town, and also up on the mountain, so its not quite as chilly as last week. Despite being a bit warmer, we have hit up Canadian Tyre a few times to try on the industrial clothes that they make here for serious cold weather. I can see myself investing in more sturdy clothing generally, so its fun to try everything on (as you can tell from the photos).

Later,
Claire

We got jobs!

After 3 weeks of blissful unemployment, we are back in the workforce.

It was good while it lasted!

(Photo: main street, Fernie)

Day 7 (Tuesday)

Today we landed a flatmate for our empty room, I landed a job, Claire landed 2 jobs and we both had an exciting surprise.

After a rigorous selection process, during which we considered 3 potential flat mates for our spare room in the basement, we selected Kelly, who is an Aussie who has been on a working holiday for the last 7 years. We haven't met her yet, but had some good chats over the phone and she sounds lovely. Kelly will be arriving on the midnight bus a week from now.

Unfortunately we had to reject Damian (Tassie) and Nick (Canada) who were both very nice, but we thought that 2 guys and 2 girls in the house would give a good dynamic.

(Photo: our new home)

Our landlord is actually leaving for Panama with his family a few days early which is great news, allowing us to move in this Saturday instead of next Tuesday. This is one move I am looking forward to (don't think we'll need the removalists this time) given we each only have 2 bags.

(Photos: Our bedroom at the Royal, Common Kitchen at the Royal)

The Royal Hotel, has now become our home, and we are quite fond of it. It is actually quite clean, (albeit a bit "tired") and the fellow residents are all really nice. Contrary to my expectations of pub residents, there are no seedy middle aged men living here, in fact we are probably the oldest. Most people are living here for the season, preferring the all inclusive rent to the effort and gamble of finding a house and flatmates that they might not get along with.

The Royal has a free weekly poker game which Claire and I played in. There we 27 players all up, and Claire and I both did surprisingly well. I made the final table and finished seventh, missing out on the major prize of some new Oakley goggles. However I did win a free board tune. It was lots of fun and I think we'll be both back next week. I may have even done better if I took up the option of buying back in. All you need to do is buy a shot from the bar (2 shot limit).

The poker night is much better than Drum and Bass Night, which is VERY loud, even the sound-check prevented us from being able to watch TV in the common room.

My job is the one I mentioned previously that we were both interviewed for, Front Desk at Lizard Creek Lodge which was my first preference. I have my first shift very soon, so I will wrap up the blog for now and start getting dressed. I will leave Claire to tell all about her job (which she is currently at) in the next blog.

Before I go though, the exciting surprise is that due to great early season snowfall, the ski hill is opening this weekend for a preview weekend (a week ahead of schedule). Everyone in town is pumped, including myself!

Cheerio

Wes