Brass Monkeys

Rather than Brass Monkeys, the title for this post should perhaps be the Bad Ass Brass Monkeys, because it is bloody freezing in cryogenic utopia that is Canada. I recall harping on last year about the really, really, really cold weather - well, it's back again but this time with its big ugly mother - the wind chill! Wind chill warnings have been issued for the past few days as in Calgary the wind chill has been minus 49!!! That aint cycling weather! That's just watching t.v. weather and not daring to venture too far from the couch in case there's a draft somewhere in the house! The actual ambient air temperature was a rather bracing minus 36 on the way to work from Cochrane these past couple of days, which burns your skin if you are senseless enough to expose any flesh outside for more than a millisecond. My love of winters and all things cold and white has been tarnished a litte bit by such climatic absurdity, it's as though the weather is really just taking the piss! The cold weather has slowed everything down somewhat, and the weekend was rather unproductive (although I did get up before dawn again on Saturday before the Arctic came south and skied out around Bragg Creek - no Cougars this time, the snow had been blown off certain aspects to expose rocks which my knees felt the need to connect with sharply, as I tumbled (again and again). My skiing became more of a hobble.
I've no piccies to post as we've had scant time outside - the longest I've been outside this week is trying to plug my damn car in on the school car park (which aint so easy with mits on that render you about as digitally dexterous as an arthritic lobster).
Our new couch has led us to spurge out on a new t.v and in all of our excitement we plumped for a 42 inch flat screen HD jobbie (I could tell you all about 1080P if I'd have been listening to the anal salesgeek who found it rather peculiar that I didn't play video games and that this would probably be our only electronic purchase in the four years!). The little 42 inch screen really is little when it's sat on the shelf in the shop amongst hoards of mega 60inch home theatre systems with all the bells and whistles "that'll do just fine" we convinced each other. Struggling to wheel the enormous box out of the shop (which incidentally could house at least three Taiwanese people) my spidey senses kicked in "mmmm, maybe a bit big, but it'll be reet".
On unpacking said t.v, the first response was "Holy shit, what have we bought?". The remote control itself is bigger than a laptop, and has more buttons than the cockpit of an Airbus A380 (we never even had a remote for our last telly). The instructions were encyclopedic and all the multitude of holes for wires on the back of the t.v. make it look like it's been hit by heavy artillery fire. We did manage to power up the t.v. - resulting in a blackout in the rest of Cochrane - and it's like being in the ruddy cinema. There was a show on about the ocean that gave me motion sickness, and the final of the tennis was shown but you literally have to move your head to watch the ball cross the screen. Clearly, any t.v that's going to make me vomit all over my new couch and that requires you to move to watch both sides of the screen, is going back. So it's going to take us the next few nights to figure out how to repack such a monstrous item back into the Taiwanese house - but hopefully the weather will have warmed up (to minus 20 at least) by the time we venture out into the elements to swap it for a dainty 32 inch t.v. (at least we'll still be able to see the wall with a smaller set).
Other than that, work remains what it is and Brina's still teaching Injuns before the daycare is up and running.
May all your programs be enormous and coming right at you from across the room,
S&S.

Tumbling Virtual Cougar Hunter

A big meow to you all.

A fine dose of winter weather has been battering this neck of the woods for the past week. Not making for more comfortable avalanche conditions in the big steep hills (once more a feller died mid-week in an avalanche) things have got so absurd that the Canadian Avalanche Council has put out extra advisories saying something along the lines of "People, do you not get it? C'est tres dangeroux. Stay at home and watch the football!" or something to that effect anyway.

We got about 10cm of snow in Cochrane yesterday - I had to shovel the drive at midday as Brina was expecting people to come and see the Dayhome - but once I'd finished, the drive was under another cm that had fallen during the time I was out there - bit like painting the Firth of Forth bridge (only colder).

I had a wee jolly out to Bragg Creek yesterday afternoon, but left it too late in the day and only got an hour in as the snow fell, leaving me to retreat at sundown fearing that my car was burried in the car park - but the good ol' Focus made it out! To avoid such a fisasco today I was up at 6 and in Bragg Creek before sunrise. Hitting the deep trails whilst it was still dark. T'was a wonderful way to wake up, breaking trail in minus 18 degrees or so, waiting for the sun, not a soul around. Managed to ski out for 3 and a half hours without seeing anybody else around. The piccie at the top doesn't quite do the depth of snow justice, but it gives a sense of the dawn light trail breaking Sunday morning fun!

Midway around the trail - once the light was up - the trail had been flattened a bit by a snowmobile (the easy way to groom the trail). I'd passed the snowmobile grooming crew leaving the parking lot as I arrived (they work nights). So when I saw fresh animal prints atop the trail it was clear there was a critter around. I ended up following Cougar prints for about 2km along the trail towards Bill Allen Pond area - I'm no Ben Gadd, but am 99% sure it was a Cougar - easily as big as the palm of my hand, pads, not a Wolf as the prints weren't too far apart (Wolves stride out a bit), way too big for coyote, fox or badger and not the same shape as wolverine. Bear prints are way way way different (and they're all asleep) - this was definitely big cat and I checked up the print in my geeks' guide to animal tracks when I got in and this made me super sure.... Anyhow, you may've noticed my excitment at Canadian animal spotting from previous posts - and the thought of being so close to the Cougar just tipped me over the edge - well, tipped me off my skis anyway. I was 2 and a half hours into the ski, hadn't seen sight or sound of another living soul, and so got out the video camera in the over zealous expectation of seeing the Cougar around the next bend. Below are two video clips - the first of which is of a bloody lanky English twit falling arse over tit, makes me piss my sides and I'm sure you'll find it almost as hilarious (anything with me face planting into the snow has got to bring some humour!!!). The second clip is more of the same but I feel it slightly redeems my ski-ing ability - although I'm a far cry from David Attenborough on snow!

Ha ha ha ha ha etc..... I'd like to say that was the only time I fell over, but towards the very end of the ski I was getting a bit wobbly and the photo at the very end of this blog is a testament to my ineptitude.

All in all the day has been great fun (disregarding the piles of marking I've had to do this afternoon). Brina is getting the Dayhome up and running and the basement is looking like a veritable kindergarten. Brina's also doing a bit of sub teaching and has been out at Morley on the reservation, it's not been too bad for her but still, teaching on a reservation is more crowd control than academia. No-doubt we'll get out for a swish through the snow next weekend once we've battled through another arduous week of employment. That's about it from Cochrane for now, time to go and take the cat nip out of my ski-ing backpack.

Keep your eyes open,

You don't know what's following you,
S&S.

Slippin' and Slidin'

Hi all,

another week whizzes by in a typically Williams procrastinated blur. We're nearing the middle of Jan and I'm still not quite orientated with this 2008 number just yet. The weather isn't helping me keep tabs on where I am in the year either. With the expected temps of mid January to be down in the minus double digits, it's somewhat of a surprise to be out on the road on the bike in plus 4 or 5 degrees!!!! Monday is meant to be plus 8 !!! That's going to be as warm as Manchester! This hasn't been helping with the snow stability in the mountains as the avalanche danger still remains immense (especially after a wicked storm passed over them last week). Two more guys triggered a slide in K Country today - burrying one feller a metre deep, but his mate clung to a tree so was able to dig him out. Each post mentions some avalanche kind of activity and imminent death - so the resorts are just the ticket at the moment until the snow starts behaving sensibly. My poor new split board is just itching to get out and has threatened to disown me if I don't take it out soon - Brina has suggested we just frame it and hang it above the fire place.

As for Mrs. Willi. She's been out cross country ski-ing midweek with someone from Starbucks... here she is...Damn!!!! The photos were sent as an e-mail attachment so weren't downloaded directly from our camera - and it seems that this is about as big as they get!!!!! Well Brina's the white speck in the middle of the shot zooming down the slope!The size of these piccies is a real bugger, as Brina was keen to post the following shots of the Moose she nearly careered into and the onlooking deer who seemed to find the whole scene rather amusing...

Clearly dainty Mrs. Wife is stealthy enough to get close to such critters - I normally get to within about 500 metres and then clumisly trip over some roots before they go scittering off through the undergrowth.
Our new settee (couch or sofa in this land I believe) is making for very pleasant afternoon, and after work snoozing potential. The Americans have sucked me into this game that is NFL - I offically dismiss my long held prejudice that it's just soft rugby with helmets and shoulder pads - the superbowl final is nearing and I'm hooked! And finally, Brina is downstairs baking up a batch of 'Cosmic Power Cookies', and seeing as though the smell is drifting through the house there's no better excuse to log off now than 'I've got to go and do some quality control tasting - of the entire batch'.

Hope all of your slopes are stable and that your cookies are warm,

S&S.

So this is 2008 then?!

Happy New Year to you all.

So a week of 2008 has slipped by and the world doesn't seem to have altered dramatically in any way, shape or form whatsoever. With all the fan fare surrounding New Years Eve you'd be forgiven for expecting to find streets paved with gold as the dawn breaks on the 1st of Jan, or the twelve horsemen of the apocalypse riding into view, or the end of famine and poverty. Maybe next year!

School resumed today much to my chagrin. All the kids were grumbling about being back at school - but I was grumbling a lot louder than them and sought an irritable free day taking out my misery and anger of being back at work on any student who wanted to enthusiastically inform me of all the expensive gifts they were spoiled with over Christmas (only three detentions given out though - 2008 isn't a great start for some of the little whiners).

We've been battling off the flu for the past week. Had a little ski-ing cross country and a whiteout day at Sunshine. The weather's warming up - highs of minus 4 ish are making for a very pleasant week (pity I can't get off to the ski resorts this week - perhaps I feel a sick day coming on!). Not hit the back country due to ridiculously high avalanche risk conditions persisting throughout the Rockies - 2 guys were in a slide at Lake Louise on Saturday and 3 people in a slide at Big White in BC. Both of these places are resorts where you shouldn't be getting avalanches as it is all well patrolled / bombed etc... So you can only just imagine what the back country is like at the moment!!!!

Had good fun playing on a Wii at Brad and Julie's last week. For the none computer game literate, a Wii is a computer game thingy with no wires, just a 'stick' you wave around and the character on the screen mimics your movement - tennis, baseball etc... were a hoot (but never before has my arm ached so much from playing on a computer game - couldn't brush my teeth properly for days afterwards!!).

Big Red Dan from work came over at the end of the hols and treated us to his culinary skills, although he was well fuelled with a bottle of Macallan...

He also brought along Scout - you can tell she's a Canadian dog because she wears stuff made by roots! Even the hounds have to dress up in chilly Canada to go for a walk....And on that note I'm off, still waiting to be highly inspired by 2008 (hopefully it's just a slow starting anum that'll kick into gear before too long).

Hoping that 08 is already full of boundless cheer for you all,

S&S.