The Chronicles of Travelling Steve

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

The baking steps up a notch

As a first engagement present it was pretty extravagant, and considering that we don't really want any presents from people just for getting engaged it's even more so, but sometimes you just have to suck up your idealistic stance and say "Thanks! We really really appreciate this." When Col's mum found a Kitchenaid Professional at Costco she couldn't walk past it without thinking of us (and I'm sure it's my newfound baking interests that did it) and so it was that I wandered in to the house after work one day and found this beauty sitting there innocently on the counter. I love it. And it's already been put to good use making the dough for a ciabatta experiment.


The Kitchenaid Professional in all its glory...

Saturday, July 24, 2004

A quick jaunt to Stony Plain

We went out for a Saturday drive with Col's Granny today to visit a friend of hers out near Devon. She lived in a beautiful new house nestled in the woods with some pretty fantastic timber rafters and a real feeling of a homestead farmhouse. She also had two gorgeous Weimaraners although we only got to see the one that wasn't ferocious protective around his owner... On the way home we decided to go for a cruise through the countryside to get a feel for the Prairies and because it was just a great day for a drive really.


The prairies...

This shot really doesn't do it justice and hopefully one day I'll get the perfect combination of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) train vanishing in the distance, the ultra clear blue sky and the bright bold yellow of the canola fields just popping out at you. These trains are immensely long. And I'm talking about sitting at the level crossing for up to 10 minutes waiting for these puppies to finally disappear. I thought some of the coal trains back in Oz were long, but these suckers just go on and on and on and on.

Speaking of trains, Stony Plain is reasonably famous on the tourist route for its murals, which are painted on a lot of the buildings depicting early homesteading life in Alberta. This one was particularly cool and shows what sort of an ornery cuss you had to be back then to run an Alberta township.


The mural...

What it was all about...

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Summer skies

Another bonus of living in Edmonton during summer is the stunning skylines. Not the city, but the line of clouds that only a prairie sky can generate and which we see approaching us out of our balcony from the west.

One morning I woke up, looked outside and there were balloons! Felt just like I was back in Canberra, but in the winter time. Of course if you tried to launch a hot air balloon here in the winter when it was -25 degrees it would probably fly directly up to about 30,000m and you'd die of oxygen starvation if you hadn't already frozen to death so summer seems to be the balloon season here.


Balloons...

And then in the afternoons, if it's been particularly warm as it has been for the last week or so, the thunderclouds roll in and we get some spectacular displays of nature at its finest. Bearing in mind here that when I say particularly warm I'm talking about temperatures between 25 and 32 but with a huge humidity of something like 75%. And considering that it's normally around 20% humidity here in summer and less than that in the winter, that's saying something. I know, I know, I'm going soft but I tell you, when the flat is so insulated from cold it's ridiculous and you can't get the heat out, 32 can be pretty brutal...


Summer skies...

Berries

Summer in Canada. Think sunshine all day long. All day and all night. It never gets truly dark. Not really. So you come home at what feels like 6pm and it's actually 10pm and all of a sudden it's bedtime and then you wake up when the sun comes up and it's only 4am. Despite these extremely lengthened days and a weird sense of having all the time in the world to do anything you want there's another huge bonus to being in Canada during summer and it can be summed up in one word. Berries. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, saskatoons, pretty much any berry you can think of is going nuts at the moment and they're big and yummy and delicious. And the bears love them as well so they're often seen on the side of the road in the wild blackberry patches having an absolute gorge fest. Here is an example of the quality and size of the blueberries that we get (keeping in mind that blueberries are my absolute favourite berry of all time at the moment)


Punnet of blueberries...

And here's the kicker. This enormous punnet, weighing in at 1.25kg, of the largest lushest tastiest blueberries I've ever had the fortune to taste cost us $7. Canadian dollars. Which is about $7.05 AUD. Colour me the happiest little berry eating munchkin this side of the Rockies right now! So this is what I've been having a lot for breakfast in the mornings...


In they go...


Breakfast smoothie to go...

Life is good.



Sunday, July 11, 2004

Stampede!

We're a busy lot in the summertime up here, never let a weekend go to waste is the motto as far as we're concerned so after a relaxing trip to the cabin it was time for something a bit more exciting and upbeat. The Calgary Stampede! It was my first visit to Calgary and I'm not too sure I got a real impression of what it's like because Stampede is, well how do I put it?, a little "cowboy" to most other times.

The first drive into the city from Col's aunt and uncle's place (where we were being generously housed with full Canadian Stampede breakfasts) was the real shock to the system. We're driving along the main road, strip mall after strip mall passing us by and all of a sudden there's a huge crowd of people jammed into an outdoor area for a pub that is sandwiched between two car dealerships. And every single person is wearing a cowboy hat. Every one. And most of the hats are a white as pure as the driven snow. This freaks me out the first three or four random little pubs and by the time we get into the downtown area I'm almost used to seeing tons of blue denim, acres of midriffs on display and multitudes of cowboy hats and cowboy boots. It really has to be seen to be believed. Now I'm not saying that they're not all cowboys, just that most of them have as much connection with the land and herding cows as I do, which is none. Although to be fair I have been on a farm this year, so probably less than me then...

We had an awesome night at a pub called the Ship And Anchor with Dave Haasdyk and his lovely femme fatale the Swiss Miss Annabelle. We were also joined with pretty much everyone else from Edmonton who had ever lived in the house that Col and Dave shared and a good night was had by all. There's a little cabal of Edmontonians in every city if you know where to find it I think. Dan was one of those there and he was the inheritor of Ruth & Rhett's firesticks when they were over in this part of the world. He said that he really should get around to practicing more when we told him of the new heights that R&R have reached with synchronised couple twirling so I'm sure we've started a new phase of fire twirling in Calgary.

Anyways, it's a very happening vibe during Stampede in Calgary (Cowtown as the Edmontonians like to sneer) and we had a good time. Included in that good time were tickets to see the rodeo on Sunday which was much much more interesting and enjoyable than I was expecting and I was happy to cheer on my compatriots riding the bulls and broncos, and I think my mere presence there may have been a contributing factor to the Aussie taking home one of the bronco riding trophies that day.


The rodeo stadium...


Ride 'em cowboy!!

Notice all the white cowboy hats in the stadium. Any head not wearing a white hat is probably wearing a black one. I swear to God there are more cowboy hats in Calgary during The Stampede than there are in the entire country.

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

A Weekend Away

It's hard to describe how invigorating it can be to get away from it all to a beautiful isolated cabin on a lake, even if you spend most of your time there happily plugging away at one of the many tasks that need to be done around the place. Needless to say we had a great trip away and came back feeling very refreshed.

Stuff that we ended up doing included fixing the smashed end of the ramp down to the dock (a victim of some big waves a while ago when the ramp hadn't been raised), pressure washing the Maxwell's deck to within an inch of its life, gardening, attaching a new cable to hold the dock out from shore (the previous cable also a victim of big wave action). And last but not least the digging of the new biffy hole [Can-Aus translation: dunny hole]. Not the easiest of work, but very rewarding when you finally get it finished. Although it's a fine line to tread because the deeper you dig the harder it gets but also the longer the new biffy will last.


The new site...


Ken halfway there...


In over his head...


The way it was when I left...

Of course all of these photos show not me working on the hole, because of course I was taking the photos. No other accusations of slacking or working for the council will be entered into and the judge's decision is final.

When not working, we got a chance to take in the surroundings, have a few quiet beers and just relax, which is pretty hard to take when the afternoons all pretty much look like this:

The boat in the afternoon...

And when the weekend is finally over and you're on your way home you have to drive through Jasper National Park which is of a fairly unbeautiful and non-majestic nature (well not really):

Roadside pool...