Tag: ‘drive’
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
Well I have no idea where I lost got to with you. I guess I gave up a little when I lost my iPhone and started work.
Right now I’m on I5 driving south upwards San Francisco. But for now I’ll let youknow what has been happening;
- well I think we were in Hollywood partying with a rock band at a photographers house, up on mullholland drive, overlooking the city.
We then drove to San Fran to see friends where I net mike and the seed for this trip was sown. We pastries there, and then left for a less hectic drive back to Canada.
- upon arrival in Canada we had to get Kiko, Bex’s camper out of the impound and collect her kiwi friend Leigh.
- then we arrived at the Stirling orchard to begin thinning apple trees. We made money, worked long hours and made good friends.
- we had a nice trip down to Penticton to float down the river. After this the key got snapped off in one car. So with aid of a tow from CAA we got the cars and everybody to Canadian Tire where we slept after partying.
Gnosis where I lost my iPhone. I never cared about that, but it meant losing touch with the net.
- with apple thinning done a few of us took a trip to Nelson to see what the hype was about. Needless today we really enjoyed it.
- back to Kelowna and we started cherry picking. Which started off slow, earning not too much, with horrendous early starts. But we made more good friends, never had time to spend money, so saved. We got better, made better money and our fingers fell apart, with the last week our fingers mummified in duct tape.
- some of us got back in touch with chilling, spirit, cooking, sleeping and had a great time.
- I drift apart in my friendship from
Malcolm. I guess it was both of us.
- I have found myself in a good relationship with Bex.
- we took to cycling around town, and getting back to exercise.
So now Bex, Leigh, Erica and I are in the camper en route to arrive Sunday midnight at burning man.
We had a nice slow drive down this time, not having the time constraint of last time, so we sleep at night. We cook in the van when were hungry. And we stop to shop and swim here and there.
The other day we were in Portland, a place I have heard good things about, and it was a great visit. We got Kiko’s brakes changed. We stocked up for burning man. We met some nice musicians in Washington park. We net a great Texan in a brewery and we left very happy.
This morning we woke in a highway rest area near mount Shasta, to drive 2 miles to lake Shasta to have our first wash which was lush.
So three years since I last went to burning man I’m returning this time as a burner with some grey ladies.
But first we are headed to Napa for a little wine tasting!
Tags: ameria, apple, bike, burning man, canada, cherry, cycle, drive, farm, friends, fruit, iphone, lake, money, napa, okanagon, pick, picking, road trip, san francisco, swim, update, usa, valley, wine, work
Posted in Canada summer '10, la vie | No Comments »
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
So what has happened?
Well, England has been doing crap in the world cup.
We have a new member in our crew, Bex. Malcolm knows her from when he was young and she turned up in her pumped out camper van. Awesome girl it’s great to have her with us.
It was her birthday the day she arrived, so we had a bit of a party.
Alan called to say that there was no way he could register or sell the car without me going to the DMV myself. And as we start work next week for the summer, it meant I had to go to LA right away. So with flights at over $400 it made more sense to think about driving. So I proposed this to the guys, and malcolm’s smile literally went ear to ear and I know it was road trip time.
What with alan leaving for Mexico I asked him to wait til tuesday so we could go to the DMV together. We rose early Sunday morning, packed a bit of stuff into the car and made for the border.
It turns out that you can’t bring peppers, oranges, mangos, jalapeños or onions into the states, but they let us eat them, the nicest border guards ever, and we were on our way.
Fast forward 25 hours later, 3 Taco Bells, 2 Subways and 1200 miles and we arrived into LA Monday morning and went to the beach.
Twice now I’ve said goodbye to alan and the guys, only to randomly find them again, so we hooked up.
I have to say that the American DMV and the whole buracratic system is bullshit. Waiting for and hour and a half to get a ticket to wait another 45 minutes, to be told very rudely that we couldn’t pay with a foreign card, to then get cash and wait some more is crap. In Britain most stuff can be done online and saves so much time and governmental money, it makes the US system so stupid.
However we finally got the plates and we will hopefully never have to do it again.
That meant mission successful, and time to enjoy California 
That night we four partied in Venice beach and slept in the car.
The next day we did a little shopping and headed to a side of the city i’ve never seen to meet malcolm’s mate who just got back from a year in OZ. He’s a photographer, graphic designer and musician and showed us some cool sites up in the hills, and we did the touristy thing walking up and down sunset strip and a cheapo Mexican eat.
We ended up at the band rooms and killed the car battery so had a car park party with all the musicians, and this guy who is the producer for Queen, Smashing Pumpkins and a whole load more bands I’ve forgotten, oh yeh the Darkness too.
So after two hours trying to jump start the car, a call to AAA we got off and headed back down towards the beach, via the Internet cafe, sport shop to exchange bex’s skateboard and done shopping we finally made it to Venice beach again.
It’s getting cool, Im super exhausted but I’ll go and have dinner with gunnar and then we have some party in Hollywood to go to.
Life is beautiful. Time to throw the frisbee about.
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Tags: america, beach, border, california, camera, canada, car, dmv, drive, frisbee, fruit, hollywood, l.a., la, long, los angeles, mulholland drive, ocean, party, photo, photograph, roadtrip, usa, veg, venice, wave
Posted in Canada summer '10 | No Comments »
Friday, June 4th, 2010
So time for new beginnings.
But I’ll start with a recap of the last few weeks;
So after I finisked working at Nakiska I had plenty of time to ride for myself. I purchased a new snowboard in the sales for just over $200 to replace my years old board. All of this lead to huge improvements in my riding, and me performing new tricks and gaining lots more confidence.
I started working as a line cook in the Elk and Oarsman pub, the busiest pub in town. I worked on the salad/pizza/desert section so could munch on yummy fresh food all the time. Being able to take food home meNtion saving spending on groceries too! It was fun working there, met a few good people and made some good contacts.
I started socialising more with my new found time, and not having to wake up for six am. So this gave me time with my friends and party a bit more.
At the end of the season, the last day we went to Slush Cup. I started off by tobogganning from the highest lift on the mountain, which was crazy. Nobody on a board could keep up with me down the longest black run, only alan could manage, and that was with the brakes on. I hit moguls went flying and throw myself off to stop, heart pounding I saw the ski patrol waiting for me to tell me off. Needless to say he was nice, and just called all of the lifts to stop us from taking the sled up again.
So maybe I’d pushed fate and come off fine, for later while making my last run I caught an edge and fell down hard. Had it not been raining over the weekend, then snowing, turning the mountain to ice, I would had been fine. But hitting the ground face first onto ice left me checking for all of my teeth and questioning where all of the blood was coming from. Well I should have been wearing goggles because my sunglasses cut the bridge of my nose. I smashed my nose in causing a big nose bleed, and I grazed the skin from my face from chin to forehead.
The lively lady in ski patrol cleaned me up, gave me a little plaster so I could wear my glasses to protect my eyes from the sun and off I went to enjoy the festivities. My first slush cup was fun all in all.
Why is it I manage to smash my face up each year?
So I looked haggered and scary for a good week, I can only breathe a little through my nose, and I have a mousache because I can’t shave my upper lip.
I got a hold of a ticket to Sasquatch, a music festival in Washington state that Alan and co. were going to and I had come to think I had no chance of getting to. I rode down in convoy with some guys I’d never met, a great road trip with much junk food along the way, 13 hours in all. The venue ‘The Gorge’ is possibly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. It’s a canyon like the Grand Canyon, but smaller and greener with a natural amphitheatre and beautiful sunsets.
The music was great especially LCD Soundsystem, Vampire Weekend, Z Trip, Booka Shade, Simian Mobile Disco and Deadmaus, and I had a good dance.
So I met some great people and had an awesome last weekend with Alan, Chris, Sarah and Sarah, so farewell to them I’ll miss them.
On the way back to Banff, I didn’t want to go back, we had trouble at the border, misunderstanding a question, getting searched and fined for not declaring alcahol. But on the upside we some a family of black bears, momma and three cubs, my first sighting of bears!
This left me with 2 days to sort my life out, pack up and clean the house.
So lots of farewells and help from Malcolm and so we left Banff, Malcolm, Natalie and I in her VW Golf laden down, roof rack piled high off on the next adventure.
We drove west, stopping got lunch in Revelstoke, an awesome mountain town.
We then hit BC and the Oakanagon valley where we’ll live for the next few months. We’ve come to pick fruit and live a leaisurely summer on the farm. I called around a few weeks ago, with little positive response but one guy Al we met up with us has given us a place to set tent, and given us lots of advice, no promise of work but things are looking positive.
So this is our new life and we are super excited for this will be a wonderful summer!
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Tags: alberta, america, band, banff, bc, blood, british colombia, cook, cut, dance, dj, drive, end, farm, festival, food, free, friendly, fun, golf, graze, happy, help, hurt, ice, la vie, music, new, nice, orchard, pain, party, people, pub, rain, roadtrip, rock, snow, snowboard, summer, sun, trick, usa, vw, washington, winter, work
Posted in Canada summer '10 | No Comments »
Monday, November 9th, 2009
So we’re in calgary and our odometer shows a figure of 175,000 which means we’ve driven ten thousand miles around north America!
ok so i just tried to make the route in google maps, and google maps couldn’t manage it, it found it too big and the page crashed, wicked google!
i have had enough driving for now, and we’re only 1,700 miles from where we started in Los Angeles, but we did take the scenic route, which has been great fun. i don’t think i need to recap here, as everything we have done is down below in this blog. i just have to show some photos!
i’m sat in some dingy econolodge, the radiator wouldn’t turn off, so we have the air conditioning on, don’t tell the environment, but somebody has removed all radiator controls, and the only other option was to sleep with the door open, but maybe the -4 outside would make it too chilly in here.
alan’s just woken now, so i guess time to do stuff.
regina was cool, we had no number or address for the guy who we were staying with, but we did know where he worked, and it all worked out as we arrived when he did, and he even got the night off. so we went and had dinner and saw some bars, alan picked up this pretty but really stupid girl and well it was fun.
yesterday we headed off out on the road for what was the hardest, most boring drive of the trip. we had 500 miles on prairie lands to cross. we had to do all we could to keep from passing out while driving. this involved absolutely horrible music, throwing grapes out of the window to have them crash on the front of the car and general being annoying to each other, but we made it here to calgary to drive past a bar showing the kiwi’s playing wales on tv.
so rugby, pie mac and cheese and a pint made for a nice finish to the day.
there seem to be a noticable number of english, ozzy and kiwi people around here, and i guess it’s the close proximity to the snowy mountains.
so alan has to goto customs and beg for his ski bag to be released and then off we go to banff, can’t wait, mountains, snow, and the lifts open wednesday!!!
photos: alan trying to play patience in the car, our greek breakfast yesterday and the nothingness expanse we drove across yesterday. i notice the iphone photos aren’t great quality, buggar!
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Tags: alberta, beer, boring, calgary, canada, car, cards, couchsurfing, dinner, drink, drive, english, food, fun, game, gay, girl, greek, kiwi, party, photo, prairie, pretty, regina, rugby, saskatchewan, stupid, tired, wales
Posted in US road trip autumn 09, la vie | No Comments »
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
Alan and I have just been to the mall in Winnipeg, narrowly escaping the busyness. I bought a cover for my iPhone because I have seen so many iPhones with smashed screens. I went for the recycled plastic option. We also got some thermals, it’s going to be a cold winter.
So winnipeg was interesting. Out couchhost was a fun girl, plenty of time having recently been made redundant, along with most of her crazy friends but we spent most of the time partying, there isn’t much else to do in that town. It is the grain trading capital of north America.
And the people there are crazy, many of whom walk around making wierd sounds, screaming or talking to themselves. There’s too much winter, no excitement or hope, not even any population growth, the gun crime capital of Canada so we are told.
So we are now in the real prairies, you can see for miles and miles, forward the road dissappears on straight to the horizon and to the sides are endless yellow field where crops grew in the summer.
It’s so straight and boring that they have giant signs to keep you mind active like odometer checks. But no worries if you fall off the road asleep, there’s nothing to hit.
It’s barely above zero degrees and they’re still harvesting.
So wawa was no too interesting, lots of goose statues.
Thunder bay, out host wasn’t too talkative until we got him a bit drunk, and he hit on us.
So the most important thing we did was go to an employment centre to canadianise our resumes. We’ve applied for several jobs now. Not much response yet.
The car is super dirty because I decided to do some off roading just to wake me up from the boring drive.
Oh and I got myself a lovely yellow hat, mmm warm
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Tags: beer, boring, busy, buy, canada, canadian, car, cold, crazy, dirt, drive, fun, goose, hat, inuit, mall, party, photo, red, river, road, shop, snow, talk, tired, tower, trip, walk, wierd, wine, yellow
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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Alan and I just swapped over driving, he has to get us the last 100km to Wawa on the north east corner of lake superior. We’ll have driven around 850km, which doesn’t sound much, just over 500 miles, but these long straightish, boring road are tiring.
I can’t wait to get to a motel and lay on a bed, a bed I’ll have all to myself 
So yesterday and Niagara falls, I found to be a bit of a dissappointment. Maybe because they are so hyped up, maybe because we couldn’t ride the boat under the falls due to it being winter, but they are real impressive and powerful, but just can’t compare with some of the things that we’ve seen on our tour. At least that’s another thing I can tick off having achieved in my lifetime.
We also crossed into USA, and the town on the otherwise is a dump, dirty, crumbling, boarded up and generally unhappy. We had two errands to do, one sucessful, one not. We did have lunch there, probably cheaper than Canada, but I’m not sad to see the end of USA for this year, ‘oh canada’ 
After a tedious trafficky drive back to Toronto in rush hour for me, we sat down and got productive. I think that we’re sorted for places to rest on this long drive, and we made a start on applying for work in the Rockies, so go us.
The night ended with pitchers and gravy fries in town.
Oh today we went into one of these drive in lube places for a service. I find it pretty novel that you can just drive up and have your car serviced. It puts my mind to rest that out car is healthy and should be problem free for our drive in the almost wilderness.
So goodbye Toronto, courtney, laura, Cara and all else like city culture and off into the endless prairies we motor.
The photos are; niagara falls, the car in mr lube, niagara falls town and the view I can see out of the windscreen right now.
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Tags: bar, beer, camera, canada, drive, falls, friends, girls, great, lake, magnificent, new york, niagara, old, ontario, photo, photograph, prairie, road, roadtrip, run down, service, town, usa, water, wawa
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Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Was the best personalised plate I’ve seen in a while, on an Audi S4, nice.
So now we’re in Toronto headed out in the car to go and see courtney’s dad, the dentist, because has cavities which need sorting now.
So back to the other day and our journey away from America. With ian in the car we had a gorgeous drive up through Vermont to the border, the car clean and tidy we expected the worst. I guess it was a bother that we had to cross the border on the highway, putting us an extra hour out of our preferred route to the cottage.
But upon talking to the border guard, she seemed so overwhelmed by these English guys asking for their work visa that she didn’t even care about our lack of car registration, let alone check our vehicle contents, score 1.
Then inside the building we had to await for a grand 8 minutes and were issued with a Canadian work permit, score 1. It couldn’t have gone more smoothly
So we spent a couple of nights at ian’s dads cottage on lake mamphemagog, peaceful, beautiful totally chilled.
We had a hike up the ski hill, showing us how unfit we are, but the views were awesome.
Then we all had a campfire in the Cold and a BBQ, damn my garlic aubergine steaks were killer.
Wednesday we went up to Montreal. Ian spent all day stressing having left his phone charger in the states, we not having a place to crash, so we stayed in a hostel, so great to meet some random people. And later we met ian’s uni mates for a few drinks, finished off with a tour of mont real to see the city from above at night, stunning.
It’s a nice city, an the girls are gorgeous, but it was time to move on.
So on the boring drive down the 401 to Toronto we got the blue and red flashing lights of trouble. So we got pulled by an unmarked police, very amiable man. But still he issued us with a $170 fine for driving with a radar detector, fair enough, but if we’d known then we wouldn’t have driven with it. So now he has it and we can only guess that in general it’s saved us money on speeding fines on our 7000 mile drive around the states.
So toronto. It’s obviously pretty wealthy compared to most places that we’ve been to on our trip, I’m judging by the abundance of nice European cars and expensive fashion around here.
So the city skyline is nice especially at night with the CN tower pulsing with different colours.
Hangind with courtney and laura and their friends we are getting to see the cooler side to the town, bars and music and it’s great to hang around with some lovely ladies.
So far we’ve been having a great time, though it’s been a while since I’ve not felt tired, maybe linger since we’ve had a night off from partying, but good times.
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Tags: band, bar, bbq, border, canada, city, drive, easy, fine, fitness, girls, highway, hike, hostel, lovely, montreal, mountain, music, night, party, police, quebec, radar, roadtrip, shoes, shop, steak, ticket, tired, toronto, trouble, usa
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Monday, October 26th, 2009
Feeling pretty rough in Amherst.
Last night we saw jay-z and it’s was one of the best gigs that I’ve been to in my life. I’m not a huge fan of hip-hop, but jay-z is one of the biggest acts there is. The stage setup was awesome and the live acts awesome. The arena was packed out, 10000 people, all loving it, knowing the lyrics, the energy was unbelievable. The security was totally anal, but it’s cool because the whole experience was such a surprise and gotta say it, sic!
Before that we drank round another student house and it was so stereotypical of an American party, like in the films. Kegs, beer pong, music, girls who love the english accent, general madness.
After the gig we partied some more and now feel pretty tired.
So now we’re chilling, waiting for Christian so that we can find a printer to print off our Canadian work visa because we’re going to cross the border. Ian’s taking us up to his dads cottage for some time out.
America has been unbelievable, we’ve driven over 7000 miles through 20 states. We’ve met some great people, had many once in a lifetime experiences, lots of first times, a trip of a lifetime that words will never quite describe.
I’ve taken some nice photos and will upload some when I find time.
So fingers crossed that we don’t have too much trouble getting into Canada.
Tags: act, american, awesome, beer, college, conneticut, crazy, drive, drunk, fun, girls, hiphop, jay-z, live, massachussets, mushroom, music, party, rap, roadtrip, sing, stereotype, trip, usa
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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
I hear sirens, so off goes the music. Maybe it’s the firemen can’t be arses to talk room to room so use loud speakers.
We’re 100m from fort myers beach playing a cardgame: shithead and we’re almost out of wine, all of the cider having been drunk down on the beach.
Fill in; today was a boring 400mile drive down Florida.
We arrived here in time to have a swim in the sea while the sun was setting.
Alan is afraid of the sea, even if it is 2ft deep! Creepy crawlies nibble away your extremities?
It is wonderfully warm here, in the sea and out.
We tried having a pic nic dinner on the beach, but due to the serious amount of mosquitos attacking us, we retreated from the water to drink and play cards.
Alan picked the game, won initially, but that didn’t last long.
So i’m sat here with wine, cards, bread and humous while he’s off buying liquor.
I could cheat and change his cards, but is it worth it?
We’re going to sleep in the tent tonight. There are no camp sites, we’re not allowed to sleep on the beach, so upon the recommendation of a local, we will stay in an RV park, and see what happens in the morning, maybe the owner will wake us us and give us trouble, if not, then Bingo! Free night
Oh and it’s beautiful here by the sea, damn these demon insects.
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Tags: bite, camp, cards, cider, drive, florida, fort, game, gulf, humous, insect, liquor, mexico, mosquito, night, palm, road trip, rv, sea, sun, sunset, swim, tent, tree, usa, warm, wine
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