World Summit, Snow and Cancelled Races

Hi! All. Having spent Sunday to Wednesday up at Lake Louise, the working week hasn't been all too bad this week. School was hosting the 'World Summit on Learning Disabilities' a rather pompous sounding grandeoise title for a conference, but it was actually very good. Lots of very clever people came from all around the globe. They even had a prof from Sheffield University's psychology department - so it must have been good in order to entice the Yorkshire folk over. The result of the conference is that a governmental paper is being written up to convince the politicians that learning disabilities are the real deal (although I think that they'll put it to them a little more elegantly than that!).
Things all became a bit pressurized though when I had to get up on stage and give a bit of a speel to a chuffin' big audience with two bloody huge t.v screens casting my ugly mug across the audotorium. (The piccies wont go any bigger, but you can make up a miniscule speaker in the middle of the stage - which incidently isn't me, but you get the picture!!! literally).

And

there were even more sweaty palms when the three big t.v cameras were staring you in the face (as this thing is being part of some t.v documentary and is being broadcast across the English speaking world....) I think the one of the editors (below) dumbed down my northern tones to make me sound less abrasive and more understandable for the dvd version (I introduced myself as Simon Williams from Foothills Academy - and one lady later on came up to me who had heard me speak to ask me what I did for Foothills Energy - an electricity company by all accounts - so there you have it, Academy sounds like Energy when I say it! - God help those kids with learning disabilities who I speak to on a daily basis - there's no hope!!!).

It was a bitter pill to swallow to be up at Lake Louise and be confined to the chateau for most of the time and not being allowed out to play.

Although I did get to ride out to Lake Louise on the Sunday - and got nowhere near to getting to Lake Louise - a 10.30am start plus one of the years strongest westerly winds hindered my progress, and if I wanted to get to the conference before it ended on the Wednesday I had to concede defeat to mother nature and piss poor planning and jump into the car when Brina passed me on the Trans Canada! I did get out for a few hill reps up and down the Lake Louise hill to the village on the Monday night - but the snow made for a killer wind chill on each decent!!!
The weather was shaping up nicely last weekend for a good first race of the season this Sunday, However...... It has been snowing like buggery today (10cm fell in Calgaray today), another 10cm are due to fall on Saturday, continue into Sunday and Monday and Tuesday... With a high on Sunday of minus 8 with 35mph winds.... Needless to say, the race in Lethbridge is cancelled and will hopefully run next weekend instead - if not, then we're into May and thwarted once more by this weather that I can't fail to be dumbstruck by!
I lost a couple of piccies on this post, so am still struggling to get things running smoothly on the blog - but it's slowly coming back together. Also, the course I whined and bitched about finishes this weekend!!! Yahoo!!! And then I start another on Tuesday (not so much Yahoo!).
Hoping that all of your palms aren't clammy,
Looking forward to blizzards into July,
S&S.