Adventures on the Canadian...

{Again, pictures to follow - just had some uploading issues...}

So, I don't know what kind of a person you have to be to think that getting on a train for 4 days straight is a good idea, but i guess, suffice to say, I'm one of them. I think i'm an old romantic at heart and think that there is something rather nice about actually seeing some of the country that you're traveling through, even if you don't stop much - at least you know what you're missing!

Soooo, I had this grand plan, which involved me doing real-time blogging of my journey - i mean, it's not like i had much else to do. But like all the best laid plans, I some how didn't get around to much of it... Sooo, from the train:

"Grand Adventure: Day 1
9.30pm
Ok, so i'm on the train and we're headed out of Vancouver, into the great Canadian wilderness (the bit that I drove through yesterday, mostly, but I can't see it anyway so that doesn't detract from the grand adventure-ness of it.

So, for once, thought i'd attempt some real time blogging. Obvs, since I don't have the internet on the train, you can't read it real time, but rest assured that I have precisely nothing else to do other than to type it real-time.

My thoughts so far are “Well, isn't this exciting”. I've never set out to travel quite so far by land before. Even my travels last summer cut the corner a little by heading south to the skinnier bit of North America. This truly is grand. This feeling is compounded by little bits of history I have heard here and there. For example, Neil's Dad and Grandparents emigrated from England some 40 something years ago out to Penticton, and took this very route, only in reverse. Only it turns out that it's not only this very route that they took, but this very same train! The same trains, according to our friendly cabin attendant, have serviced this route for the last 60 years, with only minor technical upgrades, like a diesel engine and in-car electricity... I feel rather like some kind of pioneer all of a sudden :D (Only, I suppose i'm going in the wrong direction for that. Still, Ottawa seems like a wild enough place. Outlaws and buffalo abound, I imagine...)

Right, time for some bed time reading, ready to wake up in time for a 6.30am breakfast in Kamloops – a place I have so far managed to avoid...

1 hour down, 89, or so, to go..."

And that was as far as on-train blogging actually got. I take this to be a good thing however, it means i was pleasantly otherwise occupied and taking in the scenery.

In the end, I still didn't see much of Kamloops. I guess i find it pretty hard to be enthusiastic about anything much at 6.30am, and besides i didn't want to be tired for the long hard day of watching fantastic mountains that i had ahead of me. The next stop after Kamloops is Jasper at around 4pm. You spend the day winding up the other side of the Rockies from when we drove up last summer. It's filled with trees and waterfalls and mountains, and all-in-all is rather spectacular. (again, pics are to follow).

Really, i did this whole journey backwards, in so far as you get your most spectacular day first, but i knew that, and the rest of the journey held a certain sort of intrigue for me too, so i wasn't concerned. It was really good (and very surreal) to get off the train in Jasper, having been there the previous year on the other side of the summer. The whole place is a bit prettier when there's still snow on the mountains, but it was cool to see it in the summer time too. I would say that Jasper is a bit more in its element in the summer than in late spring when we came before, except that on both occasions it just rained cold, wet rain on me and so didn't really seem much different! I took the chance to sent a postcard to Ottawa (see if it beat me there - it's not really a holiday if you don't send a postcard!) and eat some dinner. I also wandered around the hundred million tourist shops that Jasper is home to (almost exclusively, in fact - you can buy cheap tourist tat, or, expensive tourist tat - that's about your choice really...) It had even more shops that I remember. Perhaps some were closed for the off season last time... Meh.  Anyways, back to the train for dinner time, and onwards we went, south through the Rockies (almost more impressive on this side than they were coming up) on towards Edmonton. 

On these trains - particularly from economy class, the dome cars they have are invaluable to your enjoyment of the trip. They let you see everything and take proper pictures as well. That's where I spent almost all my time, and also is a good place to meet and hang out with other travelers. I met a really fun, but diverse, group of peeps on the train. We all chatted, chilled out in the evening and spent out time trying to work out what the random crap we could see was, as well as swapping notes on the best ways to get a good nights sleep. It was fun. 

On that note, fortunately for us all, the train was waaaay less than half full, which meant that for those of use who had chosen steerage, we could use two seats, not one, for our bed, which i can only imagine was waaaaaaaay more comfortable than it might have been.

Anyways, like i say, next stop was Edmonton, but that one was sometime around midnight, and the station is a looong way from the city, so mostly i just saw a bunch of bright lights on a plain. My highlight of the evening was when a couple who had got off to smoke saw the train start to chug away (only to shunt some carriages around - it wasn't going anywhere), the look on their faces was priceless... hehehe... 

I actually got a really good night's sleep that night and woke up in the morning when we stopped briefly in Saskatoon. Now everyone I've ever met from Saskatoon has been fantastically lovely, so i was a little curious, but in all honesty, it doesn't look that exciting, try as hard as i did to imagine. Perhaps it's because it's such an otherwise unexciting place that people feel the need to make one another's days brighter. Or maybe that's fantastically unfair, but in any case, on we went. 

The day ahead was the Prairies. It was very very flat for a very very long way. But I actually quite enjoyed it - I've never seen anywhere quite so flat before - not even Cambridge. There was lots to look at though - little tiny agricultural towns and grain silos and other essentially boring things that i took small delights in. I also saw people burning their crops, which I've never seen before... looks really weird. Tractors chasing us, creepy derelict stations, and a whooooole lot of sky. I love how huuuuge the sky is when there's nothing else around to be in it. I spent a long time that day cloud-gazing, and a whole lot more time seeing what the furthest in to the distance i could see was. I know, you wish you had such an exciting life!  ;p

Our day on the prairies came rolling to an end with an evening change-over in Winnipeg. Since all the crew were switching, we got to have a bit of a longer wander around here. Having carefully researched what there was to do with 2 hours in Winnipeg, I made sure to visit the historic site 'The Forks'. This is the confluence of two important rivers. I don't know if I just missed the sign that explained to me why these rivers, or their confluence, was important - it clearly was, but I never found that sign, so i can't tell you. It is clearly, however, of some importance to the Manitoba government and there are statues and gardens and things. I'd have taken some nondescript pictures, but it was dark, so I really didn't think you'd get much out of them. It's enough to imagine any big two rivers.  That said, the whole area seems to be being renovated at the moment, and there's a fantastic looking bridge and (at a guess) concert hall, or something, which were very pretty, and, conveniently, lit-up. After wandering some more around the little market hall thing by the station, I went to venture further into the city, however, lacking a map, I walked up what looked like a main street, only to come to the conclusion 4 blocks in, that this was perhaps beyond sense given the inane (yet creepy)  mumblings (and presence in general) of the locals. So, with that, I headed back to bed down for the night.  

The next day was somewhat less interesting that the first two. Ontario, outside of its cities, is essentially one big swamp with some trees. Having not slept especially well the previous night, I spent much of the morning dozing. The unfortunate thing about trees (though, they are more exciting than swamp) is that if they are on either side of the train tracks, you really can't see any of the landscape anyways. When you could, my over-riding feeling was just how very glad i was that I tree plant in BC and not Ontario. I can't imagine spending 3 months in a cold swamp would be any fun at all...

Rolling on into the evening, I have to say, I was pretty glad that this would be my last night in the nest i had created on my two whole chairs. The next morning, as a nice end to the trip (well, nearly), I brunched in style in the dining cart (surprisingly reasonably priced and a very nice brunch!) and looked at the world go by as we started to see signs of civilization again. And then stopped.  Having been ahead of schedule for 3 days running, we'd lost two hours to stopping for freight over night, and were now stopped again 30 minutes outside of Toronto due to freak flooding. Every transfer passenger on the train except for me (and whoever had my connection), watched their connection time come and go, and then we finally got started up again. I was mistaken however, for thinking i might have gotten away with it, watching my connecting train leave the station just as we rolled in to the platform... sigh. On the plus side, I now had an extra 3 hours in Toronto to do all the touristy things that I didn't do last time i was there :) Win! So I visited Kensington market, which is a fantastic food market in downtown, and did some impromptu shopping. It was nice to hang around in downtown a bit more during the day time, since i had mainly visited there in the evening last time, and it looks quite different. So while everyone else was pretty annoyed, i had a jolly little afternoon jaunt and rather enjoyed myself. I wasn't quite so keen to get back on a train when my connection time rolled around, but what's another 5 hours?! Plus, this new train had wi-fi. After looking out for sometime on Lake Ontario, which looks strangely similar to Lake Michigan, it got dark and reverted to catching up with emails/blogs/facebook etc.

5 hours later and I arrived in Ottawa, my new home for the winter. Neil came and picked me up and we headed home. I promise I will blog about Ottawa soon. I guess I've just been busy getting on with life and doing slightly unspectacular things like not-working, and, working... Still, definitely things to tell, and so I will, soon. :)

In Pentincton for the summer...

(Pictures to follow)

So, planting was done for another year and we all road-tripped back down to Vancouver in the trucks, stopping at Williams Lake along the way.

What next? Well, everyone was hanging around Vancouver for a bit, and dinner was on Apex that night, so me and Neil decided that we were going to treat ourselves to a weekend of eating and being tourists in Vancouver. As a hungry tree planter it is no wonder that you spend half your time out in the bush fantasizing about all the food that you're gonna eat when you get back to the city, so we decided to act on this before we lost our appetites...

In amongst lots of sleeping and chilling with friends, we fitted in sushi, and cheese cake, and Italian, as well as two meals at a fantastic veggie restaurant that I'd never got around to last time, and a trip to science world to be geeky... And then felt kind of fat, but satisfied.

After a couple of days pigging out, we grabbed our stuff and got on the greyhound to Penticton, where we already had jobs for the month at The Bike Barn.

True to the 'working-holiday' description of my visa, while we worked a full time rota, this was more of a holiday than anything. Neil's family were wonderfully kind to me yet again. We ate fantastic meals and drank nice local wine, and finished a day of work with a mountain bike ride down (well, up first... justify all that nice food later!) the trails into the back yard. A couple of weeks in we also began an even more exciting trend of starting the day by learning to water ski! Which is mostly not as terrifying as it looks once you've got the idea, and positively joyful once you've got up. Lisa (Neil's step mum) has been doing it all her life and regularly starts the day with either a ski or a bike ride of some sort, so she asked if we might like to try; it's just fabulously convenient that she has a friend with a boat to borrow... !!! (pictures to follow!)

So after a ski, a working day with nice people in a great shop, a mountain bike ride and some nice food or wine, you can't help but think, “well, isn't this the life :D”. It sounds a bit like i'm making it up, but Penticton seems to have this effect on people's lives – it's just one of those special spots with lots of nice people in it and fabulous opportunities to do stuff out doors. I'm hoping that sometime this winter – either at Christmas (work permitting) or in the new year, that I'll get a chance to go back out there, not in the least because Neil really wants to take me skiing on Apex – their local ski hill, generally recognised as a hidden gem (a gem that his family happen to have a condo on... and a ski shop, for that matter, which has it's uses... ). So we'll see.

Oh, and I forgot to say, but I learned to golf as well :D I figure this is an important life skill if I ever go anywhere in life – all important decisions are made over a game of golf, so i'm told. I actually quite enjoyed it too... I literally bounded across the course the first time I went (I think I was being rather overly exuberant for a sombre game, but I had fun). It turns out i'm not too bad at it either. Having had some practice at a driving range before, we headed out to a mini 3 par golf course round the corner, one weekend. The first time I par-ed a hole and was pretty close with my other holes, and the second time we went I birdied a hole. :D I was rather pleased with myself.(I only lost 1 or 2 balls over the month...)

Anyways, I guess the month drew on in much the same way it started. The shop started getting really busy for the Ironman Canada triathlon (same that I helped with last year). At the end of the week, after making a meal for all the people who'd been out doing tech support for the cycling, I headed into town to chill out at the finish and watch people complete their marathon, which was really good fun. It's such a nice supportive atmosphere at the end. I really shouldn't hang around their too long though, cos it starts to look like a good idea... which, rationally thinking, it's not, really... but still, maybe one day I'll take part in Ironman UK or something (although the swim for that is not in a warm desert lake, but in the Atlantic off the hilly coast of Wales, so, um... maybe I'll find somewhere warmer instead.

On my last full day in Penticton, I tried one more new thing (– can never try too many new things!),; while Neil was out golfing with his brother and grandfather, Chris (his Dad) and Lisa lent me a very very shiny brand new and exciting road bike to try (something like this http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/race_performance/madone_5_series/madone_5_2_wsd_h2_compact/# It was definitely the wsd Madone, but i don't remember which series - 5, 6 or 7 anyways). I realise that for all the years I've cycled, i've never actually been on a proper road bike. And actually, I really quite liked it! I think the bigger wheels and different gearing make a huuuuge difference for cycling on the road, and make it altogether more enjoyable (although, perhaps any bike worth thousands of dollars would have much the same effect!). Still not gone on the saddle though! Anyways, we went up green mountain road, which you could google if you're curious. Dad, you'd reeally like the riding around Penticton – it has interesting hills that are almost mountains, lakes and pretty trees and wildlife. You should check it out one day.

And with that, my time in Penticton drew to a close, and the real world was looming. But not before I'd got the train across Canada on a final adventure for this summer. Sooo, I grabbed a lift back to Vancouver so that I could get the train straight out of there the next day for a 4 day trip across the wilderness :)

Back to Chetwynd

So after our well earned break, it was back to Chetwynd for the remainder of the season.

The last few weeks were good - we actually had a couple of blocks that *didn't* involve a walk-in, which was a novelty this year. Overall though, the blocks in the last contract were all just a little bit silly. Weird pricing and half of them were closer to our bush camp than they were to Chetwynd, and involved some very early starts.

Speaking of which, I suppose that was the main defining feature of this contract - the early starts. By the time we got back to Chetwynd it was properly summer - 30*c+, and soooooo hot. Eventually this becomes somewhat detrimental to your ability to plant trees, so we took a vote, and decided to get it all out of the way earlier in the day. Sooo, thus started a couple of weeks of trucks at 4am (!!??!?!); that means setting your alarm clock for 3.30am or before., which in my opinion is very much the middle of the night. Sigh. It had it's advantages - it was waaay better, until you started to fall asleep at 11am...  meh.

Easily the most exciting thing that happened the whole season was on our last full day of planting. After weeks of having trees helicopter'd in to us, we finally got our chance to actually ride in one! :D (And get paid extra for the trouble!)

It was super-fun, and the land on our block was pretty creamy for the most part too. We did get fantastically wet at the end of the day as a storm moved in, but, all in all, very good fun.

Some pic-a-tures:

A nice day to fly around the mountains

Loading the slings

Mountains in the backdrop and our block starting in the bottom-right corner

Prettiful block from the ground!

Prettiful secret waterfall from the air...

...and me stood next to secret waterfall on the ground!

My poor boots finally disintegrating after 2 seasons... expertly patched holes at the front...

Sending the rubbish off at the end of the day

Ok, enough of the helicopter photos...

Soooooo, then there were just a few more trees to finish up. The next day we had a lie-in - trucks at 6am! Woop! And then the whole camp headed off to the few remaining blocks to 'cattle plant' them out - that is a fre for all, put 24 planters (as oppesed to 3-6 planters...) on a piece and hope they don't screw it up tooo badly...

All closing in on the centre - i'd given up trying to find a spot on the line at this point

So after a couple of hours of ridiculous 60 person planting lines, we were done. So we made a party field with our remaining flagging tape...

And I planted my very last tree of the season...

And I admired a season's worth of hand tan... (nb: some of that is actually mud...)

And then we all went home. Or, rather, we tried...

We got massively stuck headed home on our last day because there was crazy accident on the highway not too long before we got there, and so the highway into Chetwynd was closed for nearly 9 hours... It's at this point that you appreciate how little there is in Northern BC, because there was absolutely no way of getting around this block (including on old logging roads - we tried) without driving for hundreds of kms. You are just completely screwed. Weird. Eventually most people abandoned the trucks down a side street and everyone just walked the 10 or so kms into town in the blazing heat. Having been in the group who decided to try and drive around on logging roads, we didn't - we did eventually find a way around up a quad track that was totally not meant to be driven on my anything except a quad, but hurrah to our super trucks that did indeed get up it, eventually getting us back into town at around 7pm... weird day. But, that was that for another season. After doing some admin, we all got some pizza and beer and had a party. Excellent.

Grand Prairie

At the close of the Tumbler Ridge contract we had a mini mid-season break before our next contract started, back in Chetwynd.

Since we have to find our own accommodation while we are not working we were keen to make the most of it and go some where. There aren't tooo many places to go in the middle of nowhere BC, so we opted for the obvious solution - to hop the border into Alberta and head for big-city Grand Prairie (We may also have been somewhat influenced by the availability of cheap alcohol available with less than half the taxes of BC... Just stocking up for the rest of the season...)

So, having packed up camp, we made the grand road trip - a few hours away. And booooy do you know you've gone over the border...

Grand Prairie in the distance

No mountains in sight here!

The next few days I really have nothing to report. Some people partied, and the rest of us mainly just recovered from the first half of the season. Got ourselves a really nice hotel room for a couple of nights, watched films, exploited the free buffet breakfast, swam in the swimming pool, very briefly tried out the gym and generally enjoyed the metropolis that is Grand Prairie.

It's probably not a place I would feel any need to go back to ever again (barring planting), but it was nice for a change!

Just can't see the trees for the forest...

It was about a 3 hour drive from Chetwynd, even further up North, to a bush camp 40 clicks outside of Tumbler Ridge - a pretty, eerily-well-kept town that is paid for entirely by gas and oil companies. 

Heading for bush camp, you're always a little trepidatious about what you might find when you get there. We'd heard good things about this one, but you you can never be quite sure that this isn't just someone's over optimistic day dreaming- you might just be in a gravel pit just off a logging road, after all...

This one was pretty spectacular though. The drive takes you on a winding road up into the mountains, where all you can see around you is the North end of the Albertan Rockies. Another thing that was a little bit unique about this camp was it's proximity to our block. Usually there's still a fair abit of a drive out to work, but here we were practically camped on it - fantastic in terms of the commute, but more than slightly daunting on the drive in...

A contract is usually made up of a number of different blocks from abnout 30 - 150000 trees, or so. This block was 1.5 million trees, up an actual mountain, and already covered in a forest. The forest inquestion was completely burnt by a massive wildfire that had spread 5 or 6 years ago, so all that remains is a ghost forest of burnt tree trunks. It actually looks kind of cool, though obviously is pretty devastating for the area.

Our block - the bit that was on the road for several kms

Approximately 1/3 of the tree boxes used that contract (with me on the top)

 Anywayz, more about that later. As we continued to roll down the logging road through, what it turned out, was all our block, we couldn't quite believe our bush camp luck. Eventually the road starts winding downward into a miniature valley, with a younger, living forest, some flat grassy bits and a beautiful river - all set in a large bowl that lead right up to the Rockies in the distance.

I have never seen such a fantastically positioned campsite in all my entire life. It was stunning. In fact i could go on about it for a very long time, but i'll save you from myself with a stack of pictures instead...

(And a video - below - if the link works)
https://picasaweb.google.com/108372931592747999271/ItalyAndPlanting2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGgqfnx3ePcIA#5773331816635861154
(NB: Caravans etc belonged to grizzly hunters! Not permanent fixtures - apparently they got 2, then left at the end of grizzly season. All the fantastic dayglow jackets you see us wearing are there so we don't get mistaken for grizzlies and shot! Dangerous times!)

By the river...

Doza with kitchen and shower tent-buildings.

Home (the expertly tarped one, in front!)

The block itself posed some challenges, it has to be said...

Spot the planter...

The ground was essentially rather nice - no slash, like we're used to, becasue at some point it had all burnt. That said, it was on a very considerable slope... i mean, it was a mountain side... On the otherhand, the whole thing was eerily beautiful, and the view from the top was nothing short of spectacular. Besides the difficultly that the slope causes while you are planting (what with you discovering that no matter how fit you are, you aren't fit enough to plant a tree every couple of seconds while hauling 30lb bags along with you up a 30-40 degree slope...), this also causes a couple of logistical headaches.

Me and Neil somewhere up a mountain...

Firstly, that there is no other way to get to the upper parts of the block than just hiking 30 or 40 minutes up a mountain at 6am... mmmm, my favourite. The second problem that we encountered was with getting our trees. All our trees were being helicoptered  in on a long line. The helicopter itself can't land, because of all the trees that are still standing (also the reason that the people can't be heli'd in), so when it tries to drop slings, it does so at some considerable distance - places them down and then leaves. All the trees are in a big sling, but with enough space in the top that they can fall out once they're set down. so when he picked the wrong spot (and sometimes there were no right spots) the entire set of boxes would just tumble down a whole strip of the mountain, only to have to be hauled all of the way back up again when you wanted to bag up.

The view that greets you hiking up the mountain.

Me; having climbed up the mountain...

On a moderately steep bit - lots of people for perspective...

The second main problem that we enountered was that our pilot was not the best with directions (or just didn't care, not sure which) and so he'd drop the sling of trees of in the vicinty of where we needed them to be, but say, 100 meters up the hill. Now, this doesn't seem like a problem from a helicopter, clearly, but on foot, 100 meters up or down the slope, is not only a long way to hike with your planting bags, but also means that instead of working the sensible way across the hill, which is what you had planned, you now have to plant directly up and down, in order to not leave a gap. Thanks helicopter guy, thanks.

Anyways, that's enough moaning for now. By and large the block was good - easy to plant in (once you got there!) and good money (most importantly). And we didn't get eaten by grizzlies, which is always nice, being, as we were, camped in the middle of grizzly country.

The only really eventful days of this contract came doing the one other very much smaller block that was included in it. This one was at least an hour and a half drive away. And nearly a 7km walk. With a 4am start to heli the trees in. And the walk in was through a swamp. Mmmm... my favourite. Infact, the reall fun began when you had already walked for and hour and a half down and up the moutain, through the swamp (and, as it happened, got soaked by the torrential rain), and that was finding your piece on the block, which basically involved finding a gps marker on a tree, walking in a direction, hoping you don't accidently turn a corner in this landmark-less landscape, and then being overly optimistic that you might also find another gps marker to mark the start of the block. Yay. And the block sucked. Just to rub it in a little bit more...

On the otherhand, the smae block had another piece that was infinitely better. It was still nearly a 7km walk in, but not through a swamp this time (just up and down a couple of veritable cliffs instead). The land was faaar faar creamier though, which is fantastic at 19 cents per tree. Once you got ther it was a wicked piece. The best/worst thing about it though, was the day that we were nearly eaten by wolves! :D Soooo exciting!
There was us, in the middle of absolutely nowehere - 7km through a forest from the nearest road, and all of a sudden all you can hear all around you is howling from an entire pack of wolves. Everyone stops. We all look at each other, and wonder what on earth it is - there's an outside chance that the one other truck who are over in the other direction might be trying to freak us out (or just having some fun for themselves - we are planters after all; that is the kind of thing we might do!). But if it is them, they're doing a staggering good impression of a whole pack of wolves by the 5 of them... Then the radio comes through from Paul, who is a few hundred metres away at the cache - "Is that you guys?"... "Nope, not us..." "Oh... Um... I might just come over there on the quad now... ". I have never heard such an unearthly sound in all my entire life. They were clearly somewhere between us and the cache. Creepy as anything. We all slowly back together, wondering what eactly we should do with ourselves if they come in our direction (we're certainly not going to go in theirs!). And then, it stops. Silence.

One of the most eerie moments in my life...

And, all in all, that about sums up this contract. While we were certainly pleased to be headed back to civilization, after it rained on us pretty much every night we were in camp (though fortunately stopped on most days), the camp was a stunning place to spend a few weeks, and is not a place i'll forget in a hurry.

Mmmmm... deadly sour-egg-fart smelll... mmm...; or, Chetwynd, mark 1

Chetwynd is a small-ish town about 350km North-east of PG - not too far from the Alberta border. This was to be our home for just under three weeks now, then another month or so at the end of the season. And a suitably lovely home it was too. Ou rmotel was a nice set-up. The "town centre" (so obviously that there's actually a sign telling you that you're there) had a grocery store and dollar store and was in walking distance, and there was a 7/11, dominoes and subway just down the street - life doesn't get any better, obviously... Incidently, these are not my usual haunts in 'normal' life, but pretty much indispensible as a hungry planter.

And now an interlude. Chetwynd has a chainsaw carving competition every year, and so there are soe fantastic carvings around every where - a selection follows (although is lacking my favourite - a preying mantis, because i can't find the picture):

Planting-wise, this contract was good; decent prices for good land and short commutes. Excellent. I guess the theme of the next few weeks was our daily paranoia that we could drop dead from poisonous gas.  Mmmm. A number of our blocks were in close range of a large local gas plant.

Days off spent chilling at a lake

Of course, all precautions are taken, and our foreman, Paul, carried a h2s (hydrogen sulphide) detector at all times, but it's hard not to be paranoid at this particular gas. The main issue is that sour gas REALLY stinks - basically like sulphur (obvs...), so a lot of the time you can smell its residue in the air. However, if you are being poisoned by it, the first thing that it does to you is kill your sense of smell (then you faint, then you die). So if you get a nice waft of it, and then the wind changes direction, obviously the next sensible step is to fear immediate death...  And while i like planting trees and think it's a worthy cause, it's not worth death. Not that this was ever likely... but you can see how one might get paranoid...

Our local friendly fox (NB Canadians get inexplicable excited about foxes, but this one was particularly cute)

Anywayz, as you can see tell, this is clearly not a ghost-writtten blog (in the more literal sense) ; neither i, nor anyone else perished in our noble endevour. Excellent. Another day's work well done. As if we weren't paranoid enough, however, they also insisted upon testing their, "DOOOOOM! Poisonous gas! You're all going to die!"-siren every week, and it makes the *creepiest*, wibbliest rising doom noise I have ever heard. It echos across the whole valley, spreading doom to every corner.  I'll be quite happy never to hear that noise ever again...

'Friday' outfits - amusing clothing combinations to be worn at the end of every shift - a visit to the thrift store is a must

Chetwynd came to a close with a second tree sacrifice of the season (to the tree gods who give us good land and good prices), which is a risky business, because last year we messed up our second sacrifice and that wasn't good for anyone involved. However, this one seemed to go well, and we moved out of Chetwynd to a place called Tumbler Ridge, where lo, the land was good, if not extremely mountainous, and the bush camp was beautiful...

A taste of things to come...

Prince George

The remainder of our contract in PG was spent on decent enough land, and i got back into the swing of things waaay better than i had feared i might. Second year is well worth it - you start off a better planter than you ever were before, right from the get go. (And you're paid a better rate, which doesn't harm either!) I definitely came to realise to just what an extent the first year is an investment more than anything.

Incidently, it turns out that tree planting is a fantastic cure for jet lag (or, perhaps kill or cure... but i won). Having got in at about 9pm, i decided that i woould plant the next day. Everyone seemed to think i was nuts, but, i mean, what else do you do while stuck in PG on a sunday while really jet lagged? May as well make accomodation costs, at least. In the end, i managed 1200 trees of fantastic quality and density, but was practically dead by 3pm (11pm in my head!) and went to fall asleep in the truck.  However, the next day was a day off and it only got easier from there on.

End of my first day, trying not to fall sleep at the truck

The first couple of shifts weren't fantastically noteworthy, nonetheless, there were a couple of notable moments that i particularly enjoyed.

Firstly, about a week in it snowed! In mid-May! Weird... So ' pick your spot at random and hope for the best' planting ensued, which was novel, if not a tad frustrating. On the other hand, it was also sufficiently hot that by midday every last ounce of snow had melted and we were all rather too hot. Turns out it was a nice block afterall, when you could see it.

[picture of snow to-come]

My next highlight came along with one of the first blocks. This was a fantastic day any way since a truck full of vet(ren) planters all snuck off to do it devoid of rookies. It was a little unusual since we were only planting burn piles  (the burnt circles left when the big slash piles are burnt on planted blocks). It's really bizarre that this even exists at all if you ask me. If i were a forestry company i would burn and *then* replant, but as a planter, it's awesome - you get a whole day of easy planting that you get paid more for...
However, the real reason that it was so awesome was that it was a block we planted the previous year - my very first block ever! This meant we got to see all our fledgling trees thriving - trees i had, i think fairly, assumed would simply die... Soooo satisfying :D

It is a little disappointing that said trees are very nearly as tiny as they were the previous year, but i guess they must be taking root alright if they're still there. And, hey, they'll grow up alll too quick in the end...

So, i don't have picture, but this is a true-to-life diagram of last year and this year trees :D

The final momentous event of that contract was not one i will ever remember fondly, and was certainly a reminder of the dangers that can be involved in planting. On afternoon very near the end of the contract, we had finished a good days work and were all headed home. In a split second something went terrifyingly wrong and the truck ahead of us made a call on the radio those ahead of them had gone off the road. We couldn't immediately see it for all the dust, and the distance between us. However, after we pulled over we could see the truck sideways and upside down in the ditch, and  skewered between the cab and the box was a very sizable tree. That was a pretty heart-stopping moment, knowing that it was you friends and co-workers upside dwon in there.

By some miracle the whole lot of then actually walked out of there with so much as a scratch. I guess it's something of a testement to the trucks that we use - all of the side airbags had gone off and, indeed, the music was still playing. Weird and surreal... As i understand it, the driver was not directly at fault, or, in any case it was an accident that could have happened to anyone. Regardless, or perhaps even more so, this gave everyone considerably pause for thought and thankfulness.

Our motley crew 2012, just finished up in PG

So i guess PG came to a close on a slightly somber note, but planting moves quickly, and planters along with it, and so, to Chetwynd...

Vancouver, eh?

Landing in Vancouver for the second time was awesssome. Just like 18 months before, we flew in to clear blue skies and an unseasonably warm summery sunshine. In contrast, rather than a slightly excited/resigned, “well I guess this is home for the next little while”, it was an altogether fuzzier feeling; more like returning home (At least to one of my many adopted homes).

Just like my efforts to get out to Canada to start with, arrival day was going to be something of a rush. My flight up to Prince George (which, fyi, only cost £20 less than my flight from London to Vancouver?!) left at around 6pm and in between times I really wanted to sort out a mobile phone and a bank account. Obviously, this was a whole lot easier than last year because I already knew how such things worked, but it still took me a good amount of the afternoon. Mainly this was because, being a weekend, some but not all of the banks are open, and I ended up going on a ridiculously long hike around Vancouver to every branch that wasnt open before ending up that the one I had first planned to go to anyway (but dismissed...). That, and also because the guy in the phone shop didn't understand the words, “I just want to re-activate this phone and get the simplest pre-paid option you have”. You'd think it wouldn't be that difficult... sigh. * is not going to go on a rant about Canadian mobiles...*

All set up and ready to work, I headed back to the airport, where I managed to not pay excess baggage for the second time in 24 hours (win!). In my remaining non-time at the airport, I found my self getting overly excited by Canadian fast food that I really didn't need to eat. Tim Hortons is too good to pass up after 6 months away though, so I stuffed my self with doughnuts and spent the next hour and half feeling a sickly kind of satisfied. I was only sad that it was too late in the day to get a Breakfast Bagel Belt. Mmm...

The flight up to PG is absolutely stunning. We flew out over the North of Vancouver, and over Horseshoe Bay (which you may remember I blogged about last year – turns out the reason its called Horseshoe Bay is because from the air, it looks exactly like a horseshoe. Funny that). The path then flies you up over the coastal mountains and over a number of the coastal islands. Veeeery pretty. Then, before you know it – poof! Prince George, in all its square, blocky glory turns up, and we're landing into the tiniest airport ever (It's even smaller than Inverness airport!) 

I was soooo excited to land, and a little nervous too, but mostly excited. Neil came to meet me at the airport and we headed in to the grand metropolis of Prince George to grab some dinner, then onwards to the UNBC dorms – once again, my home for a couple of shifts. It was fantastic to see Paul and Amy and Miguel and other familiar faces that night, but meeting the rookies was gonna have to wait til the morning - it was 9.30pm after all, and that is waaaay past the rookie planters (or the old tired planters) bed time.

Next time: Planting, one year on.

Return to the planet of the mooses...

(Written quite a while before i posted! See, Dad, I *was* writing all that time i said i was, just not posting - Canada Day was July 1st - month and a bit ago!)

Hello swarthy followers of all things maple-y!

We're living in exciting times. Not only does the internet appear to have started working again, but I also saw 5 whole, real-life, properly-uniformed mounties today! :D Happy Canada Day! 145^th Anniversary of confederation.

Soooo, what have I been up to lately?

Well, I'm back in Canada, obviously, following my most hasty exit from the country to date. Having waited and waited and waited for my visa it eventually turned up, somewhat overdue, at 1am on the 10th May. I was sooooooooooooooo relieved, not in the least because my ready-made summer job – tree planting in BC, started on the 1^st May...

Having received that all-important email, I set about attempting to sleep, but mostly spent all night on the net getting exciting. By 11am all my flights, insurance, buses etc were booked and I was flying out at 9am the next morning! Weird...

No rest for the wicked, I got up at 7am to tell dad the excellent news and say goodbye for the year, and then pack. By 3 I was on the bus to london (longest drive to london ever as we sat on a car park known as the M4. However, Tom and Lucy and Ben were kind enough to wait for me and we all caught up with a cheeky pint or two before chatting into the small hours of the morning about nothing in particular. I miss doing that. :)

Bright and early (well, dark and early, actually) I headed out to a surprisingly busy bus stop and made my way to london gatwick, which, I quickly discovered, is not in london at all. Obviously...

Having checked my (definitely overweight) bags I did the waiting thing and then got on the plane, ready for 10 hours of pure discomfort (my flight was £189, all in ?!!?), only to find that the plane did not fall out the sky and the dinner tasted much like any other airline dinner. Good deal if you ask me.

And so much for the build up. Next post: Vancouver, eh?

Bella Italia

Ciao!

Come va?

Sooooo, Italy. I realise I've been a little remiss in the whole writing any blog about Italy so far. As you may have guessed, I've been somewhat busy since I got here. Definitely work hard, play hard. Now I just need to work on that balance so it's a little more of the play and a little less of the work, preferably with a smidgen of sleep thrown in too. This first month has flown by so quick it's unbelievable. The season's gonna be over in a blink if it continues like this.

I'm not sure where to start really. So, I guess, the beginning it is. So having all piled onto a coach in Mansfield, approximately 20 hours later we rolled through the Mont Blanc tunnel (all 11.6km of it!) and in to the Aosta Valley where the snow was, well... it wasn't. No snow. Anywhere. In all of the Alps. An excellent start to the season.

Our training week was set near Aosta where we all stayed in a very nice hotel, and got fed pasta and pizza at least twice a day. You know, just in case we were gonna miss it while we were in Italy... Goodness, I've never had so much pasta in my whole life. They serve a bowl

of pasta (larger than I would usually eat for a main meal) for a starter at more or less every meal we've had here. Although, bizarrely, I'm pretty sure I've lost weight since I got here, which is a beautiful mystery to me, but then again, the Italians are a pretty slim bunch, so perhaps they're doing something right...

Amongst the other, more job related, things I learnt that week was that the Italians understand the concept of vegetarianism even less than the French do. They tried hard, bless them, but 3 huge blocks of cheese and a couple of artichoke hearts is never going to be a meal however hard it tries... Having decided that with a bowl of pasta as a starter at every meal, I wasn't going to starve, I decided not to tell the hotel I'm currently in that I'm vegetarian, and just eat whatever is given to me (or not), but in any case, I couldn't abide 5 months of blocks of cheese for dinner... So that's over 10 years of being vegetarian well and truly ended this year, esp when all my tree planting breakfast bacon is taken into account. I even tried veal the other night... that was different.

I'm clearly quite easily distracted by food... Back to training week. Everyday we had various meetings and talks about how various things worked, but we also went out each day to do something related. On the first day we were given a tour of the valley in our minibuses. Basically Interski's operation stretched from Aosta in the middle of the valley, up to Courmayeur (my current home) at the top of the valley on the French border, and includes various of the little villages and communes in between, as well as La Thuile – a thirty minute jaunt up a mountain in a slightly different direction. The next day we go to go out again and drive it all in small groups so learn where everything was properly. While everyone else was a little disconcerted by driving on the right-hand side, I wasn't that bothered, having got used to it last year. What did take some getting used to was remembering that the clutch exists... Stop, park, shutter, stall. Did that a few times... However, I seem to have regained the used of my left foot when it comes to changing gears now, so that's alright. I guess that's what driving to Geneva one day and Turin, the next, will do to you... (nothing exciting unfortunately, just need to visit the airports in case we had to pick people up there occasionally).

Besides meetings and orientations/driving, we also had to set up ski hire in Aosta and Courmayeur. A difficult task in Courmayeur since the mountain didn't open until the day before our first guests arrived and the only way up there is the gondola. However, a timely fall of snow saw us through the first week, and was then joined by a ridiculous meter and a half dump at the

end of that week. The whole task was made more complicated because Pila (the resort in Aosta) didn't open the first week, and so we had to bring enough skis and boots over to cover the whole valley. This is ridiculously hard work when you can't just drive up and have to bring it all up by hand in the gondola. Hohum. Good pre-season work out.

Towards the end of the week, we were all given our final placements for hotels and positions and I was rather pleased to have ended up in Courmayeur. It's such a pretty village. If you think of an Italian alpine village this is probably more or less what you think of. We're actually staying in Dolonne, which is a commune if Courmayeur just across the river and has the quaintest little windy streets that are so thin that you can't really drive cars down them (not that it stops people). My commute to walk is a 10 minute walk down the hill followd by a gondola ride back up again. Not half bad really. I eat lunch up the mountain to a backdrop of the Alps, and most of the time with blue skies above. Molto bene!

It's not all blue skies and windy streets. There is some work involved too. In my first week I had a school group, who it turns out were all very nice reasonable people, which is always good. Thoroughly time consuming, but on the other hand, my evenings were mainly consumed with eating crepes, tubing and bum-boarding, so I don't have too much to complain about really. I also now appreciate in retrospect that there is very little organisation involved for the schools co-ordinators; basically you turn up... In week two I moved in to my proper job in Classics and gained some adults. I have some what more of a free reign here. I am classics for Courmayeur, so to a certain extent, I can arrange it however I like as long as it gets done. I also have my evenings a bit more free, in principle. On the other hand, adults and families have this n

iggly habit of turning around and saying something like “oh by the way we were wondering if we can 'blah'”, and usually this results in several hours worth of organising something or other, and with lots of different groups all doing the same thing, you quickly find all that time that was freed up now tied up in organisational knots... That said, i'm learning. Soon i'll have answered all those common questions for the first time and have figured out how stuff generally works, which will certainly make life easier in the long run. However, when everything is going well, I can turn up up the mountain at 9am and go out for a few hours most days, skiing or snow boarding – still being indecisive about that... And i'm set to do more of that next week having cut the number of classics I have this week by over 90% compared to last week! (Also seemed like more last

week because I was the only person in Courmayeur with clients, so everyone else was getting in rather more skiing time than I was!). I will gain a school again this week, but there's inly just over 20 kids, so hopefully it won't be too much like hard work *touch wood* !?

Annnwayz, I should probably stop right now, cos this is getting long, but I might blog again sometime soon. Bit more difficult to say stuff now though, since i'm not really doing much different each day. (I do still need to write up new York though, so perhaps I should do that!)