Depart Adelaide 0600, after being suprised at the airport by Andrew, Belinda, Vanessa, Colvin and Kerry. Jess, Kerry and Mum were teary eyed, but most others held up ok.

Arrived Sydney, (cold!) and made our way through customs and onto JAL772 to Tokyo (Narita airport). Interestingly, you cannot buy chewing gum in the airport.

9 hour flight to Narita, stumble through customs and onto a bus to get to hotel.

Tried to see if we could get into the Main Town of Narita, but the buses would only have allowed us 1hour in town. When I tried to find out if the taxi's would take diners, they couldn't understand me. Now At this point, Narita felt alot like Sydney, so I just assumed that he was like a sydney cab driver. So I kept trying to get this guy to say whether or not he accepted diners card, when he fialy said "no Eng-el-ish", and "be-hell-bo-hoy", by which he meant I dont speak english, ask the bell boy to help you. This my first experience of being in a foreign country and people looking at me funny saying "You must be a tourist". If only I had my cooper's hat on.....

We met up with this girl, Sally that had been on the same flights from sydney, and ended up having dinner with her. So we went up to the sushi resteraunt on the top floor, and tried to get the waitress to help us with our order.

Well, this was the biggest excercise in futility, we didn;t know what we ordered, but we knew that some of it was tuna, and that was good enough. The beer ordered was replacced by an unknown Japanese brand (which wasn't too bad aparantly), and  Sally was given a green tea that we didn;t order. But we didnt't complain and had a great dinner, even if Sally didn;t know how to use chopsticks, and had never tried sushi.

Turned out that Sally was only 19 (20 in 19 days) and was very green and a total travelling novice. Her parents has done everything for her at the Melbourne domestic terminal she got on - so when she arrived to the sydeny customs desk, and handed then her ticket, they said "Where's you boarding pass" and Sally said "My What?".
She is on her way to New York, where she will meet up with someone, and they will go one to do a summer camp in pensilvania.

Well, set the alarms, off to bed and Tokya city tomorrow.

Wednesday 31st May 2000

Woke at 5:30 without trying (the sun comes up eary in this part of te world) and had breakfast. They serve both a western breakfast and a Japanese breakfast. The western one is you average continental thing, but the Japanese one is like a Japanese dinner - rice, fish, soup. I didn't have that.

Took the N'Ex (Narita Express) into Tokyo. Wow. The country changes from rice fields and medium-heavy industry to ultr-high-density housing in less than 4 miles. It took us half an hour to find our way out of the railway stattion, and when we did, we walked around the streets a bit.... but they were dead! No-one was around. We started looking at shops and businesses and noticed that everybody seemed to open at 9:30 onwards. My kind of city.

We walked on and found a busy area. Like realy busy area. We saw shops and stuff. For 40,000¥ I could have bought a Panasonic recording minidisk with optical in and a panasonic diskman with optical out. With an exchange rate or 60¥ to the A$, that works out to be about $670.

Everything was pretty pricy. One adult ticket on the N'Ex cost 2,9400¥ (A$49) (a ticket on the normal train - non express - service is 1,280¥ (A$21). Pasta at one of the hotel resteraunts would have cost 1,500¥ (A$25).

The weather was 25°C and humid. Lets just say that silk boxers, hairy legs, walking and humidity doesn't work too well.

Chewing Gum 120¥(A$2), large coke (post-mix) 120¥(A$5).

So, next stop, Vancouver then onto the cabin. I have a head cold so the flight will be interesting.

Wednesday 31st May 2000 (again! love that date line)

Well, the head cold was fun - let me tell you I thought I was going to burst something during landing. But  about 10 minutes on the ground, the pressure dissapated and I was fine.

"Welcome home" is what the customs guy said when he was finished inspecting my passport and customs That was kinda cool.

"Did you drop a jumper back there" said some friendly stranger. Bugger, what a way to start the trip in Canada.

John picked us up from the airport, we picked up his paddles for the canoe that's trapped to the roof of the Dodge Campervan thats got about 300,000 kms on the clock.

We visited (insert name here) tunnels which formed part of an old railway built to service the silver mines in Canada. The tunnels were amazing, considering the technology of the time.

After getting back to the van, John handed me the keys, saying, "If you're going to borrow the van, I have to know if you can drive it or not." So, drive it I did. Onto the freeway and onto the next town for lunch. I remember Doug telling Dad and Dad telling me the secret of driving in Canada (versus Australia) is "Wide left, and tight right", which I chanted to myself whenever I was in traffic. On the freeway was a piece of cake. 4 lane divided highway - no problem, carparks and turning off the freeway into the pub for lunch at Merlin was a bit harder though. Not to mention the van being a column shift 3 speed '78 dodge.

Arrived at Sicamoose (John drve here from just outside Camloops) and loaded the boat. From here, it was an hour boat ride to the cabin. Halfway, we changed tanksm and drivers. I learned how to avoid floating obsticales, and how to start and idle and stuff. I also hit my head alot on the canopy roof.
Arrived at the cabin and the first thing I recognised (apart from the cabin itself) was the smell of the wet sand.

Learned where the keys are, how to turn on the propane system, how to light (and clean) the propane fridges, how to light the stove and oven pilot lights and how to drink beer and enjoy the fantastic view of the mountains on the other side of the lake.

What a day.

Thursday 1st June 2000

Long ago when Grandpa Doug (I just call him Doug) was in the real estate business, he had an opportunity to lease some land from the government. The land was located on Shuswap lake, on the Seymore Arm. (See map) The cabin was built and my dad and his brothers have been going their for as long as they can remember. The cabin is totally built from wood, and up untill just 4 years ago, had no water toilet or shower. Now it has solar panels, a septic system and a shower. The water is piped in from a higher lake, and is gravity fed. For pictures, go here.

The learning curve continues. Fell a tree with John, and thats where he injured himself, not seriously but was freaky. We were out of harms way when a rotten branch disturbed by our actions in the canapy of the forest landed on his leg and the chainsaw. Broke a guard off the chainsaw, but thankfully didn't break John's leg. Badly swollen and bruised, but not bleeding or getting worse.

I then had the job of cutting the trees (we ended up taking 2 down) into 8 inch chunks. Worked up a great sweat. 2 tanks of fuel and I'm still not done.

My first cabin sauna came next. Man did they have it hot. I stayed in as long as I could, and it felt great afterwards. Very relaxing.

Well, here I am typing this up on my laptop by spirit lamp light. Very cool.

Friday 2nd June 2000

Completed the tree. This involved finishing "blocking" (cutting the trunk into short lengths) "branching" (cutting off the branches) and "splitting" (splitting the blocks into 1/4 and smaller pieces). The first two activities (blocking and braching) are done with a chain saw. The last is done with an axe.

My arms were aching for days after the splitting. But after 3 days work, 3 trees were down and processed, ready for other cousins to collect in the little 2-stroke ride-on tractor.

Saturday 3rd June 2000

Left the cabin for Calgary today, and got away by 11am. Shut the cabin up which included shutting off the fridges (after emptying of course) and secured the outside. Cleaned up the tools and generally prepared the cabin for the 3 weeks of no-one being in it.

I drove the boat back to Sicamoose, and learnt how to handle the boat around the bridge and ferry's. From here, we drove to Calgary via Revelstoke, Roger's Pass, Yoho National Park and Banff National Park. I drove from just outside Golden to the outskirts of Calgary. Again, all divided highway and easy to do.

Sunday 4th June 2000

Family gathering at Grams and Dougs place. Fantastic to see everybody, and how they have grown. It was here that I was recruited for Kori's churchball team on Saturday. Should be fun. Also, Heather offerred to help me with my resume, which is something that she does.

Monday 5th June 2000

Took Granny Gish up to Sulphur Mountain in the Cable car. She is 98 years old, and has only riden the cable car up to Sulphur Mountain once before. We toured around Banff all day and had lunch at the most exclusive, Banff Springs Hotel (built as part of the Canadian Pacific Railway ages ago) and surveyed some ski slopes that may kill me later in the winter.

Banff National Park is only one of many National Parks around Canada. Banff is known for its mountain activities. In summer this is usually mountian climbing and day hikes, but people also go on multi-day activities. In winter its skiing skiing skiing. Downhill, crosscountry, snowboarding you name it. But people still do the mountain climing thing, but now they use showshoes.

Tuesday 6th June 2000

Continued work on my resume today, and basically fiddled around

Wednesday 7th June 2000

My first big adventure in Calgary town. I took the LRT (light rail transport - basically a tram) into the city. It was very early still (7:30) so I just wandered around, trying to get lost. Didn't find anything but coffee and muffin places. They are everywhere. I eventually went to Town Hall (actually called the Municipailty Building) and talked to the lovely people behind the information counter. The girl there directed me to all the well known shopping districts.

Well, from town hall I walked to 17th Ave down McLoude trail. From here, I walked up 17th Ave till 15th St. From here, I turned right up 15th St., up walked to 14th Ave, turned right again and walked down to 4th St. (see map) .

Here is where the Sony shop is, and I bought replacement headphones for my diskman (I think I left at home, but thats ok they were getting "buzzy"). From here I walked up 4th St to Stephen Street Mall, and bought a CD from HMV.

HMV is a real music store. Much better than anything I'd seen before. So I bough a CD (Rob Zombie), and you should have seen the look on the girls face when I handed over my CPS credit union Visa card (its covered in a brilliant picture of the Sturt Desert Pea). The conversation went like this:

Her:    "That's a colorfull card"
Me:    "It's Australian".
Her:    "Are all your credit cards like that?"
(glances from other shop assistants)
Me:    "No, just this one, its a flower"
Her:    "Like some underwater thing?"
Me:    "No, it only grows in the desert, its called a Sturt Desert Pea"
Her:    "Ohh".
(shows it to little crowd of shop assistants)
(I smile and do my best "nice guy" smile, and leave)

That night, we (Dad and I) went to Laura's house. Laura is my Aunt from a previous marriage to one of my dad's brothers. She and her daughter Maegan (I'm sure that's not spelt right) put on a fantastic dinner. We had BBQ'd prawns and steak, served with baked potatoe and green beans, with a ceaser salad. Yum. Maegan is going to play baseball with us on Saturday. Looking forward to that.

Thursday 8th June 2000 (My Birthday!)

Peter, Heather, Gerry, Rueben, Anne-Reneé, Dad, Grams, Doug and I sat up to a beautifull sit down dinner. I hauled in some cool gifts too. Dad gave me a compass and a bear bell (to either scare them away, or to attract them, not sure), Peter and Heather gave a novel and a Kananasskis Trail guide, Grams and Doug gave me some cash, a Calgary street map and a key to their place. Rueben and Anne-Reneé gave me a CD voucher. So much gear to use! I wonder if I can convince anyone to give me a lead-rack for Christmas.....

Friday 9th June 2000

Old time family friends, the deVillenfagne family, over for dinner and a laugh. And we sure did both. Lets see how my name memory is:
The deVillenfagnes are (in birth order I think): Karen, Kevin, Paul and Moira.

Karen married Mike Bud, an absolutley huge man. We last saw him in Edmonton in '94, where we cooked beef steaks on the back porch in sub-zero weather, after brushing the snow off the BBQ. Their children Clark and Heather are all grown up now, and left early for other commitments. Clark is getting into computers now, and I think I blew his conception of what hardware you need for a DVD player. Also, he is into computer games, but has never played multi-player network games. Mmmm.

Kevin married Lynn, and is a sergeant in the Calgary Police force. He is gearing up for the Petroleum Congress starting Monday. There are all sorts of protests and violence planned by various groups, some (I'm sure) just there as an excuse for a spot of looting. Their children Erin and Daniel weren't their that night.

Paul works for Shell (and I grilled him over some Shell FUD|^?|). His wife Jenifer and children Michelle and Edward, were not there.