A Tea But No E

moving blogs

2008-02-26T10:01:00.002-07:00

I'm fed up with blogger. So I'm moving my blog to http://ateabutnoe.wordpress.com/. I'll leave this post up for a week or two and then permanently redirect www.ateabutnoe.com to my new home. If you use a newsreader then please subscribe to my new rss feed http://ateabutnoe.wordpress.com/feed/

heard the one about the two ephesians?

2008-02-13T21:08:00.001-07:00

No? You probably don't own this then..

motto

2008-02-12T23:43:00.003-07:00

I was just listening to Monday's PM via the magic of the interweb. One of the definite upsides of living in a different timezone is that I get to listen to Eddie Mair way more than I ever did back home. It's impossible for me to heart Eddie any more than I do, what a radio god!

Anyway, there was a piece on some insane new initiative to find a motto or mission statement or something for Britain. Who thinks of these things? And then who sits there in a meeting and says "Yeah - great idea!" But since it's on the agenda here's my suggestion:

Britain: A bit rubbish but we love it

the eagle has landed

2008-02-12T23:38:00.002-07:00

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Calgary Olympics and of course the event wouldn't be the same without Eddie the Eagle. He arrived in town yesterday to quite the media fanfare, although one local source did refer to him as Britain's "ski jump chump". A little churlish, I thought: he put this town on the map!

parkas for goalposts

2008-02-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Things have come full circle. I came to Canada excited about the thought of getting out to the mountains at every opportunity but all week I've been looking forward to this weekend because I WASN'T going skiing! My plan was to do nothing at all and it's been bliss. Yesterday I didn't leave the house, I didn't change out of my PJs, I drank tea and I watched a lot of ice hockey on the telly.

I'd chosen a good day for sloth. Yesterday was CBC's Hockey Day in Canada where the entire network stops to celebrate the game. As an outsider it was a really good way to look at Canada and understand some of the positive differences with home.

The event has been running for 8 years now and each year they choose a community somewhere to be the base. This year it was the turn of Winkler, Manitoba. The national evening news even came from Winkler on Friday night but all day yesterday there were outside broadcasts from across the country. There were also filmed segments with stories about the game at grass roots level around the country. The story of 93 year old "Mush" Morehouse who drives the Zamboni in Lennoxville, Quebec, the story of the oldest rink in Montreal where players put pepper in their skates to try and keep their feet warm and pictures and stories of outdoor rinks across the country. There was little talk of the professional side, it was more a celebration of the game at grass roots level and the part that it plays in community life. The more I watched the more I found it hard to imagine a football version back home. I think that similar stories exist but I'm not sure there's a mindset to tell them. It struck me that during hockey commentaries many references are made to the home towns of the the players. When Sidney Crosby plays, his home town of Cole Harbour Nova Scotia always gets a namecheck. I know that Jonathan Cheechoo is from Moose Factory, Ontario (who could forget!) but I don't know where Joe Cole came from beyond some rough idea that it was London. Player X will be from Hardisty, Alberta or Riviere-du-loup Quebec. The only participants in a premiership match who ever get localised in the same way are the referees! Is there a more famous resident of Tring than Graham Poll? Maybe it's because Canada is so huge and these communities so small but I also think it's part of an unconscious mythologising and an expression of the Canadian dream. You people from thousands of miles apart, divided by so much land and in some cases so much history, you all want the same thing. Chip made it to the top all the way from Buttfuck, Saskatchewan. So can you!

One really inspiring tale was of a former NHL player, Joe Juneau, who had moved to the village of Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec where he had practically single handedly started a formal junior hockey program. They had great footage of Inuit women in traditional parkas with their babies on their backs leaning on the boards of an outdoor rink whilst tiny kids skated around chasing the puck. Parkas for goalposts. Marvellous!

The other feature of Hockey Day in Canada is that all 6 Canadian NHL teams play that day. Ideally they'll play each other but the schedule meant that Toronto played Detroit and Vancouver played Colorado. We were treated to the Battle of Alberta (Edmonton vs Calgary) and Ottawa vs Montreal but we'll gloss over that as my beloved Canadiens got stuffed :( In a bid to extend the reach of hockey to "new Canadians" CBC were offering online coverage in other languages. So the Toronto game was available in Mandarin, the Montreal game in Hindi and the Vancouver game in Cantonese! Alas I got more buffering messages than actual commentary when I tried to listen in online but the showed a bit on the TV in the other languages. Ice hockey in Hindi - that's weird!

best. run. ever

2008-02-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend was ThoughtBoarder, the TW Canada ski trip. I was delighted to hear it was going to be in Fernie this year but I feel a lot of hometown pride for that place so I wanted Fernie to put on a good show. The old girl did me proud!

The stats this winter are just crazy: year to date they have had 741cms of snow, of which 156 fell in the week before we arrived! That, my friends, all adds up to a perfect storm of winter sports awesomeness.

Powdah! Say it Frenchie, say powdah!

I thought we had missed most of the deep fresh snow and Saturday was the busiest I've ever seen Fernie but the conditions were so good and the snow so deep that it was still tremendous fun. We went from first lift till last and I haven't had a better ski day for ages.

Today however was even better and I had one of those Fernie moments I'd only ever listened to enviously in other people's stories. Fernie gets a lot of snow and the ski patrol works really hard trying to keep the place safe. All over the mountain there are signposts and rope lines that say whether an area is open or not. After a big dump lots of areas are closed while the patrol try and make it safe from avalanches. But when they reckon an area is safe they'll flip the signs to open and drop the rope and you can have at her. Obviously if you can be there when they drop the rope then the juiciest pickings are yours but I'd never been so lucky, until today. We came off the top of the White Pass chairlift and as we looked across Currie Bowl I could see folks traversing towards the Saddles, pretty much only the only closed terrain left on the mountain. I thought if they had opened the Saddles, three steep chutes into Lizard Bowl, we could get ourself some fresh, fresh tracks at last. Some of that BC tea, the cold smoke, the white gold - you get the picture....

In fact it was better than I hoped. We got to Corner Pocket just as the ski patrol dropped the rope and I was the fifth guy in. The run down was simply the most fantastic skiing experience I've ever had. Beautiful light untracked snow up to my waist in places. Now that's what I call awesome!

the boiling bow

2008-01-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

A correspondent asked for pictures and I'm happy to oblige

peter parka

2008-01-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

This is how I roll.

Just Chilling

2008-01-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

It was a fresh -32 this morning. With the wind chill in effect the weatherman said it would feel more like -49 which is chilly in any body's books. I have a half hour walk to work so my solution to this problem was to wear all my clothes at the same time. In fact I think I wore more layers today than I did to go skiing yesterday. It seemed to do the trick and with my scarf up over my nose and my hat and hood pulled down low I was quite warm. Not only that but under sharia law I could have passed for "modestly dressed". That's a versatile look.

I went out at lunchtime with the same layers but without the scarf across my face. The wind chill was still in the -40s and breathing in the air was an amazing feeling, like your insides have just run down the beach and jumped into the North Sea for a dare. Plus there's the familiar sensation of all your bogies freezing inside your nose and I could feel my face setting into a rictus-like grin as my cheeks seemed to freeze.

It was a beautiful bright day which definitely makes things better and looking out from our office window we can see a bend in the Bow river below. The river is frozen over in places but under the Centre Street bridge there's a narrow channel still open. It looks like the river is boiling as 'steam' rises up in twisting wraiths from the running water. It's quite a sight.

Magnum D.D.L

2008-01-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

I am always amazed by the way Daniel Day Lewis can seem to physically transform himself for different roles. From the effete Cecil Vyse in Room with a View one minute to the bearded Christy Brown in My Left Foot the next, he truly is a wonder. So I am glad to see the Oscar people recognising his latest transformation - into Tom Selleck:

Higgins!

Uphill both ways

2008-01-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm currently trying to recover from yesterday's backcountry ski trip to Burstall Pass. Our guide joked that it was uphill both ways, only that turned out not be a joke. I should have known as I did the same route as a hike back in September. It all made for a fun, if exhausting, day out.

There's been quite a fuss in the media here about the number of avalanche deaths in the Rockies this year, so far 24 in Western North America. I felt pretty safe though as we had two of the best guides around. Alf Skranstins is the founder and director of the UofC Outdoor Centre and with him was Albi Sole who runs the avalanche safety training programme there. Albi explained at the start of the trip that he thinks the media have the wrong angle. In his opinion the snowpack in the Rockies is typical this year. The problem is that in recent years there have been untypically stable snowpacks and people are used to taking more aggressive lines. With the right knowledge and an understanding that the conditions call for more conservative route selections he felt (quite passionately!) that the risk was minimal. Which was nice.

We certainly lived to tell the tell. They took us up towards the pass and found a nice safe slope with some beautiful deep powder snow for some turns. Only trouble was I couldn't ski it! I was on telemark skis as that's something I've been trying out this year but it was very different from on the groomed runs at Nakiska. I never wiped out too badly but I can't say I made the most of the turns I hard earned by all that climbing (700m vertical on skis!). Alf's theory was that to learn to telemark you need to fall 1000 times. I'm not sure I want to fall 1000 times as I think I've done that already learning to alpine ski. Teles have the advantage of being good on the flat and having pretty comfortable boots but I think for my next backcountry trip I'll go for an alpine touring setup.

The most fascinating aspect of the trip however was the delicious nugget of trivia that Alf rolled out at lunchtime. I was amazed to learn that many of the mountains and passes in Kananaskis Country are named after British ships and Admirals from the Battle of Jutland! Black Prince, Warspite, Indefatigable, Hood, Galatea, Chester, Opal, Sparrowhawk, Invincible - these names appear all over the place. There are Mounts Beatty and Jellicoe and even Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh Evan-Thomas has a day use car park named after him. France gets in on the act too with Mounts Foch, Petain and Joffre. Wasootch ridge however seems to be a local name. Anyway for a history nerd who likes the outdoors it doesn't get any better than this. Unless there's a range somewhere named Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt*.

*a stop on the Toronto subway does not count.

Stretch Goals

2008-01-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

This is for Liz and for Smarty: a definition of stretch goal.

Clearly I'm all about the business speak. Apologies.

Victorious Breathing

2008-01-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

I'm cracking on with my new year's resolutions. Yesterday I went to my first ever yoga class. Initial impressions: it was dark! Obviously they were spending their money on heating and couldn't afford to turn the lights on.

My goal is to be able to touch my toes by the end of the year. That may not sound like much to you but right now the best I can do is wave at them from mid-calf. In my wildest dreams I think about putting my palms on the floor. That's what they call a stretch goal. Stretch goal... Geddit!! Boom Boom! ithangyew....

a name to conjure with

2008-01-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

A wonderful arts festival is in progress in Calgary. It's called the High Performance Rodeo and comprises theatre, comedy, film and dance to name but a few. Yesterday I went to see a play called Syliva Plath Must Not Die. I know what you're thinking: sounds like a knock-about rom-com song and dance show on rollerskates. Actually it wasn't really that but it did make me want to know more about Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Kudos must go to the two leads in those roles who really were dynamite.

Today Ashley asked me along to see Bravo!FACT, a selection of 13 Canadian short films. I don't think I've seen many short films in my time and wasn't really expecting much but this was absolutely fantastic. The quality was incredibly high and the styles wonderfully diverse. My favourite, and it was a close run thing, was an animated short called I Met The Walrus which took a schoolboy interview with John Lennon in 1969 and set it to pictures. You can get a flavour of it here at their website.

Special mention must go to the actor with the greatest name. Step forward Oscar Ocelotl (part Ocelot, part Axolotl) and claim your prize.

the good stuff

2008-01-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this before, but I live near the best Greek yoghurt in the world. The Kalamata Grocery on the corner of my block sells it and as far as I can see it's only them. It doesn't look like much...

...but it's the bollocks!

There it is in this plain tub without any branding or anything. It just says Traditional Greek-Style Pressed Yogurt. Maybe that's where the magic happens - in the pressing. In texture it's somewhere between Cornish Clotted Cream and Creme Fraiche. It's a quivering tart yoghurt delight, best appreciated with a light drizzling of maple syrup. And when I say it's the best Greek yoghurt in the world it's not hyperbole, it's the truth. I have a 100% record of convincing unbelievers. When I say that I have the best Greek yoghurt right here in my fridge I get a lot of looks, disbelieving looks, the kind of looks that say "I'm a hard-to-please urban hipster adrift in a post-modern ironic world where nothing means anything, so, like, whatevs!"
Then they try some and in the spirit of Brian Clough we talk it through and decide I was right.

Resolve

2008-01-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

After the spectacular failure of my previous new year's resolution I'm back for more.

This year I want to:

Spend more time in, on or beside the sea
Do more for others
Try yoga

Happy new year folks.

Mother Nature's Fuel

2007-12-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

What is Mother Nature's Fuel? Is it love... or glycogen... or even sunlight?

In fact it's none of these. It turns out that Mother Nature's Fuel is high-octane gasoline from Husky!

Who knew?

Since filling up with Mother Nature's Fuel I feel a lot less bad about driving Big Trak around BC for the last week.

And while we are talking about the excesses of capitalism just look at what I saw when I tried to buy some Ritz crackers last night:

I don't know why this bothers me so much but it just seems wrong that there are 40 different kinds of Ritz crackers. And which one were they sold out of? The normal, original Ritz crackers.

Totally Stoked

2007-12-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

I'm now in Revelstoke, BC staying in the youth hostel, a bit of a comedown from the Vagabond Lodge! The hostel is fine and like most others I've been to (i.e. full of Aussies) but it made me realise that actually the posh lodge I was staying at in Kicking Horse had a much more friendly and communal atmosphere. Everyone ate together and talked about their day and the hosts Ken and Lori really made you feel at home. Think I'd better head over to tripadvisor.com and big them up some more.

But anyway, what I'm really here for is to try out the new ski hill. Having been up there today I can safely say it's pretty awesome. Revelstoke is blessed by mother nature with massive amounts of snow annually and there is plenty to play with up on the hill right now. Viz:

Like at Kicking Horse there is really only a single gondola and chair lift you need to concern yourself with but the combination works better here. You can do laps on the chairlift, called "The Stoke", without having to go back down to the bottom. The lift is really fast and there were no line-ups so I really got a chance to explore. The top of the mountain is fantastic tree skiing, not too steep but steep enough to slide through the mountains of snow. The resort was advertising only 3cms over night (and last night Fernie got 44cm!!) but it seemed that was conservative. There were plenty of boot-deep, knee-deep powder turns and shots of snow in the face on the steep sections. It's been snowing all evening so far so I'm very excited about tomorrow. One more morning and then I think I'll point Big Trak (as I've christened my truck) back home and call an end to this roadtrip.

Phillip Pullman fans

2007-12-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

If you've ever thought of a bit of overseas study why not consider the local branch of College of the Rockies? Just follow the signs for the Golden Campus.

Kicking Horse

2007-12-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've had a very happy couple of days exploring the ski hill at Kicking Horse. Christmas and Boxing Day were wonderfully deserted on the slopes and although most of the Christmas Eve dump of snow had been tracked out what was left was still soft and fun to ski. It's pretty steep though and I don't mean the prices.

While some resorts seem to try and inflate their difficulty to be more appealing to experts I reckon Kicking Horse tries to talk it down to appeal to more families and people looking for gentle cruising. Certainly some of their "Blue" runs here run to a darker shade than that. In fact the steep skiing down the sides of the ridges is a lot more manageable than it looks from below (or indeed at the lip waiting to drop in!). Excellent snow conditions helped but once I got going I really enjoyed it, and the Germans were lapping it up.

I've been staying in the very lap of luxury itself at the Vagabond Lodge. It's a great log cabin style building and Ken and Lori the owners are wonderful hosts. Delicious breakfasts and hot lunches are laid on and the beds are the most amazing things ever. Mine has a big feather thingamajig on top of the mattress that you sleep on. It's incredibly comfortable and I've been reminding myself that the word holiday is 50% of "ski holiday" (more if you go by letters alone!) so I shouldn't feel guilty if I just want to lay there and read Jasper Fforde all day. They don't do evening meals but there are restaurants in the neighbouring lodges. My particular favourite is the Highland Lodge and its Scottish themed pub "The Local Hero". The manager is a very friendly chap from Grantown-on-Spey and the bar is patrolled by a gorgeous bushy-tailed marmalade cat. Not only that but they have Irn-Bru! It was my first taste of the orange nectar for years. This being Canadian Irn-Bru it's not exactly the same. Some of the more rococo ingredients (Ammonium Ferric Citrate anyone?) not being that welcome in Canada the bottle carries a message "not a good source of iron". Thanks for that.

Good Karma

2007-12-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

When I saw the monstrous proportions of my truck I resolved to try and assuage some of the guilt I felt by offering rides to anyone who needed one. I was able to walk that walk this this morning when I gave a ride to 7 lifties and resort workers who were stranded because their bus had broken down. Hooray for monster trucks - they were all in the cab I didn't even need to stick any in the open bit at the back (what do they call those bits?). And I was thankful for the 4x4 goodness as well. I wouldn't have fancied getting up the hill or in and out of the parking lot in anything else

I still made it to the liftline in time to get the 4th chair up. Conditions this morning were fantastic: 12cm of snow overnight and blue skies come day break. With the clouds gone the scenery was spectacular:

And despite it being a powder day it wasn't busy. I was the only skier down my first run of the morning and on a number of times I could go straight back up on the chairlift without waiting. This made for a thigh-burning, lung-busting morning and before too long I was seeking shelter and rest in the coffee shop. It's a great regret that at 37 I am a way better skier than I was at 27 but in much much worse shape. The days of first lift to last lift are long gone. Nowadays I'm all about the hot chocolate breaks. And lunch.

Knowing that I had an hour and a bit's drive to Kicking Horse that evening I called it a day a little earlier. I was also able to rack up more karma points by giving another lift to some of the resort staff. Dropping one of them off in the nearest town, Invermere, I was struck by home many deer there were, just roaming the streets and feeding in people's gardens. My passenger was quite blase!

Passing beside the lake (Lake Windermere no less) I saw a marvellous Canadian sight. I mean it doesn't get much more Canadian than this does it?

What you can't see on the photo is all the cars and trucks parked on the lake. Trucks bigger than mine were parked by the rink and then one could be seen on the distance basically joy riding: doing skids and slides across the ice! I didn't try it out myself, even the evidence of my own eyes wouldn't get me to drive my beast onto the lake.

The drive up the Columbia valley to Kicking Horse was very scenic while the daylight lasted. The last 45 minutes were in the dark so I really have no idea what my current surroundings are like. The outside at least, because the inside of the Vagabond Lodge is lovely. It's a giant log cabin, covered in snow with a lovely tree in the open sitting room. And right now I'm off to see if the beds are a soft and comfy as they look.

Happy Christmas everyone. xxx

Chubby Chaser

2007-12-23T18:18:00.001-07:00

I ought to mention that I am spending Christmas with two red-hot Germans. Twins actually, about the same height as me but really fat. I mean a 94mm waist is way bigger than I am used to handling. Here they are:

These skis are the first things I've ever bought on eBay. It was a bit of a saga getting them delivered and for a while I was sure it was all a gigantic fraud. But they came in the end and today was my first real chance to try them out. I'd say it was money well spent. I wanted fatter skis for ripping up the off-piste but I'm amazed by how good they are on the groomed runs too. Really stable and solid but responsive too. I'm delighted!

I'm pleased with the skiing at Panorama too. I'd heard mixed reports, the naysayers complaining that it didn't get as much snow as other places. I seem to have lucked out because the snow is good for the early season. Even so there are few bare patches where things have been scraped by skiers and boarders. By and large though the conditions are fine and it started snowing this afternoon and *goes to the window to check* it's still snowing now so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

The skiing is all through the trees and they seem to have a great mix of broad runs , gladed bowls and off-piste routes.

Although it was cloudy most of the day the sun did come out for a few hours and the scenery around and abouts was great. There was a cloud inversion in the Columbia valley and in the distance I could see Mt Assiniboine (about which more later, well in March...). Best of all the trees and houses are all robed in deep snow so it looks very wintery and Christmassy to boot.

The one thing that didn't work out today was my musical selection. I wondered what skiing to an accompaniment of Icelandic soundscapers Sigur Ros would be like. I'd hoped their affinity for ice and snow might heighten my own. My favourite songs (Hoppipola and Staralfur) were still great but my main take away is that there is a time and a place for Sigur Ros and skiing isn't it. Tomorrow I will be kicking it old school.

Run of the day: Fritz's (and that's not the Germans talking)

Heavy Metal Thunder

2007-12-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

I got my rental truck today. It's frikkin' gigantic! And I can kiss my eco-credentials goodbye too. 5.7 litres - oh God! Still I think it'll be an interesting experience and it's got me as far as Invermere, BC without calamity

I drove out here through the part of the Rockies I know the least well: Kootenay National Park. I've been this way once before, with Lucy, when we went to Radium Hot Springs. It was a beautiful drive and really snowy but it was cloudy and I still haven't really seen it properly. I must come back in the summer and see what it's like. But I did see a wolf! He was struggling through a snowdrift as I came round a corner and I watched him cross the road in my rear view mirror. What he was doing in my rear view mirror I'll never know.

Right now it's -11 and snowing gently. Sweet!

Christmas Roadtrip

2007-12-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Aaaaah. Only us office-bound wage slaves know the full joy of walking home from work on a Friday and thinking "I'm not going to work on Monday - or the Monday after that!". Happy holidays indeed.

Tomorrow I'm taking off for the wilds of British Columbia. I'm renting a pick-up truck so I get some 4x4 goodness in case it gets snowy and I'm planning to sample some ski hills that are a little bit further away from Calgary. First stop is Panorama (I'll ski anywhere named after news*) then I'll be at Kicking Horse for Christmas itself. After that I'm planning to try out the new ski hill at Revelstoke: it's so new it doesn't open till tomorrow! I'm so excited and the conditions look great at the moment.

My only concern is my motor. I'm convinced this truck is going to be the biggest thing I've ever driven and I'm terrified of winging every parked car on the street or overcompensating and crashing into the oncoming traffic. If you are in the Calgary area I advise you to stay off the streets between 9am and noon tomorrow.

* I'm looking for a good Jon Snow joke here - let me know if you can help.

Crafty at Christmas

2007-12-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

I think I've witnessed the birth of a Johnston Christmas tradition today. This evening I invited some friends over and told them we were going to make some decorations. I laid on food, mince pies, mulled wine and lots of crafting raw materials. It was great!

Props go to Ashley for the paperchains, Victoria's bows (and the Santa hat for Ganesh), Turner's popcorn/cranberry decoration and Meike's chain of stars. Hopefully I can get some better photos in daylight. And lets not forget Sloaner for keeping up the vibe and making sure everything got an even coating of glitter. The floor, the table, the chairs....