Time flies

Wow - the last post was in June 2015! How time flies when you are changing jobs, hosting lovely guests and planning to move back home.

As much as we have loved living in Canmore, Alberta, we realised that Scotland is certainly our home and in October we made the return trip back home. To put it simply - it was CRAZY!

Foolishly we thought that when we got back things would be relatively straight forward and simple - oh how silly we are! It has been wonderful spending so much time with family particularly for Christmas and New Years however house hunting, job searching and general hoopla has been somewhat testing.

We have now moved into a house in a little Stirlingshire village and while Lewis is taking on his family business, I am establishing Pilates classes in the Stirlingshire area for pregnant and postnatal women which I am very excited about!

Watch this space!!

A photo to prove the sun does shine in Scotland!

An excuse not to exercise

Another bear story for you!

With my new job they expect all employees to take a full one hour lunch break. Having never had to take a one hour lunch break ever in my working life, I struggle to find things to do for this significant amount of time. Having pondered this dilemma for over a month (and having realised my winter plumage appears in Spring) I have decided I shall fill it with a delightful lunchtime jog.

This was the fifth lunchtime run I ventured out on and to be perfectly honest I was thoroughly enjoying them until I decided to try a new route - note to self, never try a new route, simply do laps of old faithful ones.

While running along  my known faithful route I decided to take a trail that led off to the right, a decision I regretted within five minutes after realising the trail quickly turned into a wildlife path by the number of hooves and paw prints on it. Not a shoe print in sight.

Starting to panic and seeing shadows everywhere (it was very much like the Snow White scene where she is running through the woods. Except it wasn't dark, an there were no angry trees, no cob webs and no man threatening to cut my heart out... or at least he hasn't appeared yet) I was officially lost in the woods. The Canadian Rocky Mountain woods.

Ten minutes, which felt like 30 minutes, of frantic bush-whacking running I noticed a larger path in a direction I had no intention of going but needs must and off I go. Another five minutes of 'Pheobe' running and whooping to make sure the bears and cougars know I am coming I finally reappear at the backside of Larch Island - note the 'island' part. I somehow managed to cross a riverbed and ended up on a random little island. This island incidentally actually does have a crazy man on it that will attack you but I was fortunate enough not to be greeted by him on this occasion.


It was just along from this epic adventure that I was came across the pictures scene - hilarious. Mrs Black Bear was having a picnic in the area and I was running along paths next to her.

I will certainly be sticking to the pram-trails from now on.

Entering into summer

With posts becoming few and far between you do wonder what we get up to all day.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my lovely parents came over for a week at the end of February - celebrating our 'Canniversary'. This celebration brought with it a number of enlightening moments, many of which will reveal themselves over the coming months and year.

March was a whirlwind personally as I moved to a new job. I am very fortunate to work for such a great organisation and the work they do is phenomenal - or phenomenally Canadian according to L. I work with Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative dealing with all things donation related. It is wonderful fun and I am continually learning every day about the projects that we lead or support on, from the tip of Yukon all the way down into America to Yellowstone National Park. For obvious reasons all things bear interest me the most though hearing about the destruction and damage of Dam's (Site C being the most current and horrific) on the environment is overwhelmingly sad. Yet the government see $$$$$ rather than nature. Plonkers.

April was by far my most cherished month here. The arrival of a beautiful baby boy and most beloved sister!! I haven't seen my nephew since he was three moths old and now he is a full year, they changes in him were astounding. He looks like a little man, or more specifically my dad. He is the cutest and most charming baby ever, and a super-duper flirt with the ladies! Waving and grinning
at every girl he saw! We had a wonderful time together and couldn't believe how quickly time flew by.

And here we are at the end of May. Yikes. This month we had L's mum visit us for a week and to take full advantage of the Holiday Monday we decided, at the last possible minute, that we would drive to Victoria. That is correct, a 14 hour drive EACH WAY for a 3 day break. On Friday night we strated our ambitious drive and stopped in Sicamous, then at 5am Saturday morning we continued the journey to reach Cordova Bay on Vancouver Island. It was the best decision ever as I have missed the ocean so much, I am truly a water person and lakes just do not have the same influence on me.

Sunday we explored downtown Victoria, enjoying Fisherman's Wharf and a marching band competition in front of the Legislative Building then on Monday morning 4am (after watching an amazing sunrise) we drove back to Canmore. Worth every minute.

Catching up almost to present - which would include the tale of L cutting his foot on a rock while climbing Saturday and 24 hours later being taken to hospital by moi with blood poisoning. He had to have 4 days of IV antibiotics, we are now friends with all A&E Dr's at Canmore Hospital, and now he has a further ten days of heavy duty oral antibiotics to make sue it doesn't come back.

As you can see we are keeping busy and continuing to explore Western Canada. With one more significant visitor booking to arrive in August for three weeks of climbing, hiking, kayaking and surfing who knows what stories we will come back with!

Time flies when life happens

As you can imagine, there has been lots going on at this end.

The remainder of November went by in a whirr, while December brought a little visitor from Scotland for a quick visit, then Christmas and New Year had been and gone before we knew it.

Now we are in February. What on earth happened? Where did the time go?

It was the first Christmas I have spent away from my family so it was interesting for L to watch and occasionally assist in the non-traditional dinner preparations. After the Thanks Giving turkey fiasco I refuse to deal with poultry... I have just had a giblets flash back and it still horrifies me.

New Year brought with it fireworks from the hill overlooking Canmore which was a giggle. Lots of crazy truckers were around us and they sang us the countdown which really puts a twist on the standard tick-tock countdown.

And now for February which marks our first year living in Canada. On the 24th February we will be having, dare I say it, our 'Canniversary'. I would like to thank L's colleague for this term and take no responsibility for it.

My parents are also coming over for a week at the end of this month, which will be filled with lots of snowy activities, or so we hope. The '9 month winter' we were warned about has been somewhat unexpectedly not true. Thank you Scotland for making me a grateful weather girl.

The '9 month winter' apparently means the 9 months when the temperature is below 20 degrees and you are unable to wear flip-flops - though I have actually seen several individuals in flip flops recently thanks to the sudden increase in temperature. We are above the Scottish spring temperatures and therefore I no longer listen to Canadians who say the winter is dragging on.

Many other visitors are either booked or planning to come across this year so Lewgi's Adventure Tours will begin again!

A Little Something

As always things come up and blogs get somewhat forgotten. Oooops.

You will be delighted to know that it has not been through laziness and lack of exploring.

In the past few months we have had an array of Craighead family here for weeks at a time. It was absolutely amazing and when my dear other-half gives me photographs I shall upload them (my phone unfortunately broke so I have no photos to share).
Their visits allowed Lew and I to be tourists once again and explore new areas near and far. We even drove to my birth town of Lethbridge in a single day - epic trip of 10 hours driving!

The latest, and for me the proudest, news is that I recently launched my very own Pilates website. Last year I embarked on a mini adventure to become a Pilates instructor and after several trips to London I became a fully qualified Body Control Pilates Instructor.

Gi Pilates has been in the works since my lovely sister took me screen printing to Rhubarb & Ginger Textiles and I created my little business logo. This lovely swirly logo has inspired me to keep going and see where this new road takes me and I could not be happier.

It may not be a lot to many people but on the first day of the website's launch I had over 250 unique visitors and it keeps on going! Happy days!!

Lew, as always, knew all along that this is what I loved doing and keeps offering new ideas to make it bigger and better... watch out as some of his suggestions have stuck!

Please feel free to look around my (mine, all mine!) website.

The original Gi Pilates logo            The new 'computerised' version

     

Scooby is legally Albertan!

The past week has been another learning curve where we discovered the difference between a BC car and a Albertan car – apparently a lot.

Within 90 days of arriving in Alberta a person must change their drivers license to an Alberta license by sacrificing their original one in a not-so-romantic ceremony, apply for a form to arrange a car inspection. Yes, you apply for the form to permit you to get your car checked. Then you get your car checked and if it passes you have 14 days to pay for an Alberta registration and ta-da!! You are now legally driving in Alberta.

Scooby of course passed with flying colours and survived this process while I made friends with the girls working in the Canmore Registry Office with my extensive visits!

You didn’t think I was out playing amongst the mountains the whole time did you?

Out and Aboot

I honestly don’t think Canadians say ‘aboot’. They have a lovely soft way of saying it and to me it sounds more like ‘abowt’. Anyway I digress!

We have been managing to explore a little more of the area on our weekends, whether it is from the comfort of our front door or jumping in Scooby and driving to Lake Louise.

On a random Sunday night we decided to jump in the car and drive to Lake Louise for sunset as we thought the light would be perfect over the water. The light was perfect however the water wasn’t water, it was still ice. We hadn’t realised that the lake would still be frozen in June. It was beautiful nonetheless. 

Slushy Lake Louise

The best part of this impromptu trip was the massive, spectacular, rambling, grizzly bear that we saw at the side of the road a mere 100m away. It was amazing!! They are huge and I honestly think I could sit on it and it wouldn’t notice. They are also ridiculously camouflage amongst the trees and bushes as Lewis could not see it until it wobbled a branch on a tree. Phenomenal Sunday evening!

We have also been taken by the perfect light and long days that we have been lucky to experience in ‘Monsoon June’.

Happy June all!

What you do for a good photograph

Bloomin’ Banking

Upon arriving in Canada we have quickly realised why there was no massive economic crash within the Canadian economy – the banks charge for everything. Simply to hold money for you costs anything upwards of $3 a month.

Furthermore, should you want to use your debit card (the piece of plastic that is created to make spending easier) to buy something as simple as food you can either pay an additional $1 per transaction or change your account to include a set number of transactions, but guess what? This rockets your monthly fees up too. I am paying the bank to keep, spend and receive my own money. Well played Canadian Banks, well played.

Coming from the UK this baffles me. The we-don’t-charge-you-UK, where the majority of bank accounts are free and you can go to any ATM with any bank and take your money out for free. How good you guys have it and you don’t realise.

Here, I feel like the little boy in Mary Poppins who just wants to keep his tuppence. Should it be so hard?

Image from brookschamber.ab.ca

Funnily enough this is not actually the main reason for this ramble. The cause in actual fact is related to cheques or ‘checks’ as they spell it here. Lewis receives his pay in the form of good old-fashioned cheques, which takes an astounding 4-5 business days to clear, causing significant grief in trying to survive particularly before I started working.

This past week has been exceptionally tough as we have been surviving on $35 and as of this moment I believe we have $3 between us, no milk and minimal food to eat today.

The delightful and very-friendly (the people are actually lovely at the branch)  Scotiabank has decided to hold his pay cheque for another day, just because they can. We put it in to the bank on Tuesday morning, a whole week ago, 7 days ago, and it will be EIGHT days by the time the money is released. That is if they choose to release it tomorrow.

(Please fill in at least a minutes worth of blasphemy here should you understand our plight)

I am in a rather bad mood and as of this afternoon, I am firing Scotiabank and their services and moving to a much more forward thinking bank. Sorry friendly bank workers, but your banking approach is a joke.

Who will it be? Toronto Dominion, CIBC, ATB, RBC, BMO?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5Peaks

I am unbelievably fortunate to work where I do. They are an amazing group of people and it is such a relaxed environment around the office.

As part of what we sell we get to work with so many great events and one of them is the 5Peaks challenge. These challenges take place all over Canada from BC to Quebec.

A couple of weekends ago I was setting up the BUFF® tent at Canmore Nordic Centre where I got to meet some crazily fit and enthusiastic people. It is definitely true what they say, people who exercise are unquestionably happier than most.

Anyway, I took some pretty pictures of the event and had a wonderful morning. Maybe next time I will join in with the race (avec bear spray!)

The Mobile Phone Hunt

The on-going saga of Lewis’ relationship with mobile phones has finally been put to rest… for now at least.

Long story short, he has been unable to get a phone contract due to his Social Insurance Number still not being activated. This has meant he has had to buy a pay-as-you-go phone that has since broken a pathetic 6 weeks after purchase. Virgin Mobile are refusing to do anything about it as it is more than a month since we purchased it from them which I think we can all agree is ridiculous. Why would we buy a phone for it only to work for four weeks? Answer: no-one would.

We have since decided to get a new phone for him with anyone but Virgin Mobile – plonkers that they are.

So off we trot to Calgary in search of the 41 megapixel camera phone – the Nokia Lumia 1020. If you are going to get a smart phone you might as well get the one with the best camera.

In Alberta, and I think Canada, it doesn’t matter what phone you get the tariff is the same across specific phone groups; Doro Phones ($25); Basic Phones ($55+); and Smartphones ($80+). So if you are going to get a Smartphone get the most expensive as it costs the same as the cheapest within the same category.

Two hours and a pizza later, we returned to the store to collect Lewis' beautiful bright yellow phone which had been all set up and ready for him to use. We expecting great things from you Rogers.

Jiminy Cricket

To the delight of Lewis the activity options in Canmore are endless. This is no word of an exaggeration and should you ever be bored in Canmore, well, there is no excuse really.

With seasonal hobbies to suit everyone from Nordic skiing, downhill skiing, snowshoeing and winter climbing to mountain biking, hiking, trail running and rock climbing to mention a mere few, your days, weeks and months are pretty jam packed with fresh air.

To this end Lewis decided to invest in a mountain bike for me, as going out whooping in the forest and trails alone is not ideal. The purchase was made on a Saturday morning and by noon I find myself in the middle of a single-track trail near the Canmore Nordic Ski Centre wondering how my body is going to take the beating.

I think it was beginners luck and going into the unknown that made it such a wonderful day. We were whizzing through the trees all the while whooping to alert any wildlife – there are three black bears and a grizzly that regularly visit the area and the thought of rolling into the back of them was not a valid alternative to using my breaks.

Bumping over tree roots, rolling along fallen trees and holding on for dear life while leaning as far back as possible when going down dusty sleep hills was only just the start of it. All the while Lewis is exclaiming “I cannot believe how good you are at this, you are doing so well!”

In actual fact what was going through my head went something like “I am going to die… TREE STUMP!… all I need now is a bear or a cougar to pounce on me and I am finished… TREE STUMP!!... why oh why are mountain bike seats harder than cement?... TREE STUMP!”

I also discovered that such thoughts mixed with serious concentration on the twists and turns of the trails reduces my vocabulary to a simple and surprising name: Jiminy Cricket.

Lewis: Look at you Watson! How are you feeling?

Me: Jiminy Cricket!

Lewis: What? What are you saying?

Me: Jiminy Cricket!

Lewis: Are you seeing crickets?! Amazing! Where?!

Me: Jiminy Cricket - Cricket!

To that end – I cannot wait to get back out and ride more trails.

Random Act of Surprise

My beautiful sister and her charming husband are expecting their, and our families, first baby. This baby has been affectionately known either as Juju or Thor for the past nine months. I have no idea where Juju came from but Thor was certainly Mark’s influence.

Anyway, the due date had approached a lot faster than we were expecting and I decided, along with my mother, there wasn’t a chance in nelly-puff I was going to miss the arrival of the most beautiful baby ever born. Me bias? Never.

So without telling my sister, which is very difficult as we are in touch almost every day, I jumped on a WestJet flight to Glasgow and arrived the evening after he was born. Somewhat jetlagged, I followed my parents into the hospital room where my sister, brother-in-law and the golden child were resting.

According to my sister, I walked in so casually that she didn’t think there was anything strange about me being there and it wasn’t until a couple of minutes later she realised I was several thousand miles from where I had been talking to her the day before.

For a wonderful week I managed to hog the most cuddles from the fuzzy headed baby with the excuse I was returning to Canada. No-one else stood a chance really. He is beautiful and I think his yawns are the best thing I have ever seen. Also, thanks to me being jetlagged I was the perfect night watchman, which meant even more cuddles for the tiny tot.

I am absolutely thrilled for my sister and cannot wait to see how much more he can look like her, as right now he is a mini-Tar.

The Job Hunt

Lewis was working and I was setting up our apartment. Kind of. I arranged for the cable and internet to be installed as well as setting up our electricity payments. What more does one need to do?! Ah yes, get a job.

There were quite a lot of jobs available, however without meaning to sound obnoxious, I really didn’t want to work in a shop. I knew I wanted something with diminished responsibility even for a little while but I think on some level I also knew that was never going to happen. I am a planner and I like to have control of organising anything and everything. Shocking I know.

And so the search continued until the day I had arranged for one of my apartment planning tasks to be set up. Then serendipity played a part in my life.

My delightful Telus installer, Jim, saw my C.V lying on the kitchen counter and explained that the company his wife works for is looking for someone with my skill set. Two interviews later I have been offered the job.

Find a job: Tick!

From the Coast to Canmore

With a week until his job started, we decided to drive back to Victoria in a single day to tell our very nice landlord that we were very sorry but we were not going to be staying like originally thought.

Nine hours later we arrived back at our little apartment in Oak Bay, exhausted and drained from the trip. We informed our landlord of the sudden change and Lewis’ job offer and she wished us well.

The very next day, we packed up what little belongings we had accumulated in our time in Oak Bay - a green whistle kettle that Lewis will never part with and a vintage bike for me – and after a delicious dinner with our North Saanich friends we began our journey back to Canmore.

In a matter of days we had completely flipped our semi-planned life and landed feet first amongst the mountains of Canmore.  Thankfully, upon our return we loved it even more than we remembered and knew we had made the right decision.

Within a week of arriving back and staying in two rather shmeh hotels, we had found an apartment in the Three Sisters area, a lovely little area based at the base of, you guessed it, the Three Sisters! They are three prominent mountain peaks that can be seen from anywhere in Canmore.

On our first night in the unfurnished apartment we camped on yoga mats in front of the fireplace and thought it would be a novelty. That was until Lewis wouldn’t hush about his back and ‘how it was so much more uncomfortable than camping’. This admittance was worth it actually as it means I may be able to postpone camping a little while longer!

And so here we are. In a top floor, west-facing, two-bedroom apartment with an amenities building that includes an indoor and outdoor hot tub, steam room, pool tables, bar and very well equipped gym.  Find an apartment: Tick!