I think it been a long time again. I’m sat in the restaurant at lake louise having some lunch. I’m on a pre course level the snowboard instructor level 2. I think I’m becoming accustomed to the cold a little, yesterday it was -10 and felt almost warm! Monday they couldn’t even open the lifts because it’s was over thirty below. People say this is freak cold for this early in winter, but so good for getting used to it. I tend to lose feeling in my toes after twenty minutes outside, and frostbite comes in around ten.
So it hasn’t snowed in a while, just nice and sunny, the sun not feeling warm. But everybody is waiting for the next snow, after all snow is what we came for.
After being here around 5 weeks, alan and I finally have a place to move into, so that’ll end my almost 8 months of homelessness. It’s unfurnished so were trying to find our furniture online at no cost. It’s been done, so doable. I can’t wait to have a home.
So we decide to stay here for the winter, and have season passes for the local hills, so we are totally committed to Banff, expensive as it is.
I have a definately job lined up for January onwards, but only part time, so I’m still looking. But instructing is what I’ve been working towards, so excited!
Most of the time here is spent cold, on the snow, drinking, eating, and having lots of fun meeting new people.
Oh and one bad thing, I failed my level 1 for ski instructing. I passed the teaching but failed the technical skiing. It was pretty ambitious taking the course having barely skied In ten years. So there is a another course next week so I have to get practicing, and make sure I pass this time.
I guess last thing is ???

Photos; cheese, dice and drinks, bingo, robs new car, elk in town, more bingo, me riding, circular rainbow and my leg bruise after landing on a tree

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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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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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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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Up to you.
It’s late and I’m trying to wait as late as possible before going to sleep. I have a Super thin sleeping bag, no pillow and no roll-mat/matress so it could be as uncomfortable as when we slept in yosemite. A few beers and thirty odd rounds of rummy and I don’t quite feel ready for this.
Today has been cool, so cool that it didn’t sink in until it was over.
So to start off we sent sone post and bought breakfast, uneventful, buuut then we went to drive and again the car wouldn’t turn over. Luckily enough the only garage in town was 2 doors down so we mosied on over to get a jump, and change of battery, lovely mechanic, red neck but friendly. He was even doing up an English taxi from 1960, pretty cool. So now we shouldn’t, hopefully, have and more car worries.
After that drama was over we drove up to Grand Canyon national park, and did the touristy stuff, photographs, rock hopping n yeh, got sick of it, and we drove south.
We enjoyed the sunset over Sedona, magical.
So now to camping and getting to sleep.

So it’s been ages and I’m laying by a pool in las Vegas.
Since last I posted we said our farewells to Connie and Gunnar and drove off into the desert. We made a stop by a beach near Santa cruz deep in the fog, where there was a semi sunken ship, home to thousands of birds. Then to San Francisco to meet mike. I met mike at the burning man festival two years back and stayed in contact over facebook.
Mike lives in a lovely place near height street,. So almost central, and has two spare beds, so ace! We had some drinks and went off to party, eventful it certainly was. We couldn’t have hoped to have met some many interesting people, or gone such places had we been tourists. Crazy colombians to ex google start outs and lots of partying fun.
We woke up late the next evening and did relatively little, took a bus tour on an old english bus, but the gear box died on a hill and we spent the evening walking around admiring the architecture of SF.
The next day, Monday I think, alan and I went to the apple store to hand over my MacBook for them to send off for repair, the second time in as many years, but all to apple’s cost.
So after we wandered the water front to pier 39, to catch our ferry. As per usual off into the pacific fog we drifted to the infamous island known as The Rock. It’s pretty cool, über touristy as to be expected and much of the island is inaccesable. The audio tour is cool, being guided by ex-inmates and prison guards. We finished off the day doing some shopping, and had some nice food before passing out.
In the end the San Francisco experience killed off the jet lag, and brought on something else.
Tuesday we set off again, east towards Yosemite. There’s been a huge fire recently which has levelled a large area, and it’s still smouldering, but it’s still breath-takinly beautiful. While driving I decided, ‘alan turn right!’ so we found this waterfall, maybe 250m tall. After a long clamber over the boulder stream we found the pool at the bottom of the rainbow, er waterfall. It was a cold swim and dive, but oh lots of fun. This is where a waterproof camera would come in handy, but the one I’m interested in is so popular that nobody has it.
So off we drove taking photos along the way and found some hitch-hikers from the east coast living in the Rockies. So a lots of chatting about snow and hiking and we had the tip off to a free night in a campsite.
We didn’t lack in alcahol, managed to play two person flip-cup and drink until we saw shooting stars. It was bloody cold and at 2am I woke and went and slept in the car.
Finally cold and tired I woke alan at 7am and we dove out to the park exit. Then we proceeded to climb mount Dana. As we walked the sun rose, and as we rose we ran out of air. It’s was beautiful, but I can’t remember ever climbing a mountain and seriously doubting the liklihood of reaching the summit. But we made it to almost 14000ft headachey, exhausted but to some stunning views. It’s took us 2.5 hours to get up and less than an hour down.
So yesterday we had a scorcher of a drive down through death valley, enjoyed the sunset from below sea level.
We arrived into Vegas last night so to the neon capital of madness, and rather than going crazy we collapsed into a cheap little hotel to sleep.
It’s getting hot, and time to check out. Time to check the town out.
Good luck.

this evening i never went to see inglorious basterds with ian in london. he never called, bon voyage.

so i’ve been sat here. i’m sick of being sat here trying and failing to do stuff online. i’m not even being sociable.

so the biggest peeve today was trying to sort out this necessary flight out of america for the end of our visa, which we need proof of in order to obtain the visa. it is impossible to get a flight over 11 months in advance, and the flight must be to somewhere outside of canada, the US, mexico and the caribbean, meaning no way to book a cheap flight. so we are left trying to decide on going somewhere a year from novemeber, purely to make the canadians happy, and will be a huge waste of money. another annoyance is that most website can’t quote and have trouble booking flights that far in advance. so i spent 2 hours online trying to do this, but with no results. chances are i will spend a fortnight or two in brazil.

so i found a comment on my flickr stream i have a fan(flickr user dallasisnotmyname) who said “You are my favourite model Masshuu ! ” which is nice, and has even made a sketch:

sketch of me by flickr user dallasisnotmyname

which is on her website. cute

so time to get away from the tv, maybe book and film time…

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i’ve just finished watching donnie darko. it’s not the first time by far, but it still has the same emotional effectivness that it has done every time that i have watched it.

today agota and i saw many of the interesting sites in dublin city; dame street, dublin castle, st. stephen’s green, christ church cathedral, the guiness storehouse and st. james’ gate factory, smithfield, the chimney, old jameson distillery, four courts, national photo archive, national photography gallery and some more. there is more to see in town like the cemetery, phoenix park and the gaol, all in good time.

it’s true this city may contain a quarter of ireland’s population, but it does feel like a smallll town. the weather changes, and we’ve had warm, cold, sun, rain and wind. the shopping seems a bit dull, but i did spend hours wondering around the west end of london, so i shouldn’t judge this.

oh and this city seems super expensive. the euro is expensive, though i noticed it has lost some value against the dollar, and the cost of everything is just expensive, like €5.20 for a pint!!!!!! food is no better, nor is anything else. this puts dublin up there with paris for being one of the most expensive places to visit as a tourist.

agota is at work, and i guess we’ll go out for a drink later, but for now i’m chilling and making a start at looking at my photos from my recent travels.

adobe lightroom seems to have done something that is annoying. while importing my library it has neglected many photos, due to the reason that some have the same name. i have over 20000 photos, and have used just canon camers, so it’s hugely likely that i’ll have photos with the same filename as the cameras rotate through the numbers. i will have to work this out, and i know it will cost a great deal of time and frustration.

The trip of awesomeness is or about to end. It has left me with stories to tell for a long time, and memories that will last a life time.
We’ve learned that Dutch people are everywhere, a sign of quality when travelling.
I’m amazed at how cheap it is to travel, spending €20-30 per day.
That said alex managed to run out of money over a week ago, so ran up a debt. He’s young I think, and bought too many gifts and things.
We’ve managed to spend six weeks playing the same card game, asshole. Renamed shitface by me. We tried playing new games last night, with little success.
Ian and harry fart like nobody I know, it can be hell in a van for 8 hours after eating!
The van was. Good to us, surviving in the end, but was a nightmare also, a vw rollercoaster.
I lived the whole trip missing a tooth, I can barely imagine life after I get a new one, note to self, must book flight.
My iPod has been the most useful item all trip, translator, calculator, music player, Internet, dictionary, note taker, games, weather, blog writing, facebook, it goes everwhere with me. I’m surprised I haven’t lost it.
Mosquitos have been the bain of cortney’s legs.
Driving is the most comfortable position in the van. It’s been fun. It’s been sucky. It’s been beutiful. It’s been scary. It’s been cheap. But damn I’m happy to have my car again, to have a normal gearstick
We’ve taken photos, lots, even under water. It’ll take me weeks to go through my 1000’s, but it’ll bring back great memories.
So by the end the van stunk so bad I had to keep the window open even when it was pissing it down.
The broken radio of the van was nice, but not.
We barely had rain, the weather was great. We missed the summer season on our trip, missed the parties, but t least we know a hundred new places to go back and party.
This is the most fatty I’ve been since I was fifteen. I’ve looked forward to the end of re trip, end of drinking beer every day, exercising and losing weight.
We did a total of 12129km in the van, she survived, she’s now at over 320000km, and good luck to the rest of her life.

So I’m writing this still drunk from last night, so I expect it to read like crap on papyrus. We’re in lacanau, east of Bordeaux, right on the coast, a surfing Mecca. It’s beautiful here, but like everywhere we’ve been, we’re a week before the season begins. Even though, we had a great party, harry having to be carried home, christening my car, missing alex, cheap wine.
I can’t wait for 10 for the pool and slides to open.

This has been one of the best times of my life so far!!!

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We have harry. He’s cool. We’re in Budapest, we love this place. We’ve parties, it’s great here. We’ve met new people, they’re fun. Now we’re getting ready to go out, see some soviet momentos.