Al's Diary
This is the second part of the diary. Read the first part here
Got up at midday. Editied this thing and caught up with a couple days worth. Pretty standard stuff. Feel a bit behind over here, like eeryone else got the New Years before I did.
Thursday 3rd Jan
An early start today. Woke up at 5.30 to get on the road by about 7am, if
we were lucky. We wern't. The various female members of this family took a
little longer than expected. So we finally got going at about 8.30 for our
trip. The scenery is beautiful and the road was bloody brilliant. Nice and
wide, with only a little bit of snow on it.
Stopped at various towns on the way, got a stamp in my passport from
Canada customs and got to Whitehorse about 10.30pm. We had seen about 3
moose and 2 lynxs (think large cat, like twice as large and rather
cute) Apparently, these arn't seen all that often.
Got to Whitehorse, stayed with Kath's Aunt and Uncle in a cabin out back.
So, there was 6 of us in the cabin, making it a bit of a tight squeeze,
and rather aromatic once everyone got farting. Pewwwie!!!
Woke up lateish, had good breafast and went to see another Aunt and her partner. Went for a walk to the Whitehorse rapids and the gorge (Miles Canyon) above it. Wandered around Whitehorse and Tim Hortons (Some hockey fella, quiet famous apparently, apparently it is a requirment of visiting Canada). Also went to some hotsprings later that night, and made a snow angel only wearing my togs. Brrrr!
Went cross country skiing this morning. A bit like
normal skiing, except that the boots are like shoes, and only attached at
the toe, by a hinge device. The ski itself is thinner and longer and has a
spring in it. Basically, you walk and glide and move along in two trails
that a machine makes. Quite a nice way of getting around the place. I fell
over a couple of times while learning, but soon got the hang of it.
Unfortunatly, o one uphill section, there is nothing to stop a person
going backwards. So, I slide backwards, the ski's suddenyl shoot back
really fast, and being anchored by only the toes, I fall fowards with the
effect of having my bollocks being the first part to hit the snow.
OUCH!!!! So a 10 minute stop while rubbing snow onto effected parts was
needed.
Finished that, went tot he airport to say goodbye to a
cousin of Kath's. Later on went bowling Canada style - 5 pins, 3 shots
with smaller balls - and had a good time.
The
long trip home. It is about 959km one way, or about 11 hours driving. I
got to drive for about 700km of it, so it was a good earning experiance
with ice and snow and cold conditions. The roads are great out here, with
about 30m of cleared bush on each side of the road. There are no majr
corners at all - the slowest was posted 35 miles an hour - and in summer
without the ice you could make realy good time. these people also
know
how to make staights and big river valleys. Really impressive
scenery!
Another nothing day. Tom was meant to leave at about 7am but due to unforeseen events - like a woman in his bed - he didn't leave until much later. That night we got a phone call from him saying that while he was dodging a semi, he had driven into a snow bank, and had to be towed out of it. SFA else round here. Wrong. I got to snow blow the driveway. Great little device that runs on tank tracks and scoops the snow up and blows it sideways. Anyhow, I sheared one pin and made a ell of a noise when I hit a rock. Did a nice job I thought, until it snowed that night
Went to Fort Wainright army base today with Rose. its not the first time
ive been there, and they never used to check the id of people but since
sep 11 etc etc etc they now check vehicle ID and driver ID and also search
the random car. They have this special tent for this, with big lights and
heaters and 2 fellas with guns etc. I'd never seen anyone checked here
until today, when lo and behold, we get pulled over. Sphincter tightens,
gut heaves but all they do is look at us, go "id please", check Rose's id
and let us through. So much for that security.
Came back home, went to dinner at Sara's place (Kath's best mate) and came
home to play a game of "hunt the source of that dog crap smell" - meaning
walk around until the little brown lump is found. Luckily, for some reason
the dogs havea habit of leaving them in John's office, so this is a good
starting place. Prehaps thay love him in some special way or something, I
don't know.
Went to Chena Hot Springs and lazed about. Also lost my right big toe nail, after deciding that it didn't want to stay attached after my tramping trip in early July. Todays entry is dedicated to the valient efforts of that nail, in surviving 6 months of life on my foot before finally taking the big leap.
Drove down to Denali national park to meet with Tom Walker (the photographer fella) He has this really cool log house that he built himself and also a great view of the surrounding mountains. I;ve also discovered a stick shift that will not start unles the clutch is pushed in. so no leaning in window and starting car, you must actually get in the seat, push clutch in and start car. Bloody annoying.
Fri 11 Jan
Went to museam and saw follisilised old thingos and such. An interesting display about the old times (funny that, being a museam and all). Went to Kath's old high school and had all the movie perceptions that I had of a high school confirmed. Sluts and studs, the Harlem corner and the popular section Snow outside and below freezign, yet sumer dresses in apearance and some parts of that place had a distinct feeling of not a good place for a white boy. did some last chores, went home and baked 2 bacon and egg pies. Unfortunatly, you can't seem to find fluffy pastry anywhere, so Kath had to make 2 pies worth by hand. She wasn't very happy with me and has now discovered why I let her make it without much of a fight. Tasted alright though. Went to bed about 12.30 am.
Great start to the day. Got up at 3.30am ish, after only 2.5 hours sleep.
Found that there had been about an inch of snow overnight. The cold snap
is about to hit this weekend, and I'm leaving for it. Shite.
Got to the airport nice and early at 4.30 for our 6am flight. Waited in
the queue for about 1/2 hour and had the misfortune to be "randomly
selected" by the computer to have our *check in* lugage searched. This is
the stuff that we wont be able to get to at all during the flight. Anyhow,
we look at the queue for that and there is a table, where some poor lady
is having everything turfed out of her bag in sight of everyone else. No
privacy here. So we lug our bags to the queue and wait a while longer.
About 4 of the 6 people in front of us at check in got selected. However,
after us there was only about 2 people picked out of 30 or so. I'd really
like to see the "random selection" algorithm for this thing.
So we wait, expecting our goods to be turfed out all over the show.
However, we are saved by a xray type device being turned on. It is an
explosive detector. A little piece of paper, much like a filter paper, is
checked by the machine, then rubbed around the opening's of our luggage
and places where the air escapes. Put back into the reader, it can sniff
the smell of explosives. We finished with that 1 hour after we
started.
Next upstairs to the security check number two. Off with all your shoes
please and jackets as well and put them through the xray machine. Put
boots back on and then go to the gate. Oh, youve been selected before,
please go through it again. This time its the carry on stuff they go
through, plus metal detector sweep and boots off again. Shit!!!! Finally
we get on the plane a couple of minuts before it is due to fly.
However, the thing that seemed to interest me the most, considering the
anal retentiveness of airport security, is that I was never asked for my
ID. At any of the 3 security stops. Oh well.
Down to Anchorage and move to a different terminal. Another security
check, where I get the walk through detector, a hand metal detector sweep
and finally a pat down search. Fun fun fun. At boarding, the fella
couldn't find my passport picture, looking at visa's and old boarding
passes. Finally had to show him where to find the passport picture in the
front. A good flight down to Salt Lake City, where we have to wait for 2
hours. The landing was the worst I have ever had (exception of Wellington
of course) with the pilot skidding on the ice on the runway and bouncing
along.
I read that on the 18th of Jan, EVERY piece of luggage must be checked for
explosives, either by hand or by sniffer machines. I favour the machines
of course, but it is really going to slow the place down. I think the US
hs gotten a little paranoid about it all, as did some people in the 'to be
searched' queue.
Arrived at Denver, Kath was complaining about not feeling so good. As we
walked down the terminal she put her head in a trash bin and puked.
Dribble down the side and made a puddle. Lovely. She isn't feeling so good
right now. Got Shannon to give us a ride home which was bloody good. Got
to Fort Collins to find that the other two flat mates were already home
and that the male flatmate (Brian) has his girlfriend here as well. This
was expected, but they were making noise in his room like he didn't know
that anyone else was home. Most funny. Anyhow, Kath has spent most of her
time here talkin on the big white phone and is now asleep I hope.
Got up to dicsover that there wasn't a hell of alot of food in this place.
Burgled a piece of bread and found that there wasn;t any prespread either.
So, off shopping. Ate out at Red Robin - a place that makes gourmet
burgers and really good chips - and got my meat satisfaction for the day.
The bill came to about $40, or $110 NZ. Shit. For four of us. For lunch.
Double shit! Went and got some slippers as well, as the ones that I got
from Hewitt olds wern't wute the right size. I now have an old grandad
look.
Kath is much better. She got better after she finally got to sleep, and
was much displased when I still wouldn;t kiss her for awhile.
Decided last night that I sould be doing some time at Uni, so I'm
attending 22 points of lectures, from Op sys to Java to other interesting
things. Went to 2 lectures today, Operating Systems and Immuniology (thats
Kath's one, not mine. All rather confusing stuff, RNA, Gulogs,
epi-hepi-therm-adridy thingos. I'll leave that to her). Went to a couple
of computer stores and bought myself a set of speakers for Kath's laptop.
They work pretty good. Kath's taken her car to get fixed, the rear diff
has a nasty whine to it the faster you go.
Went to Ben and Jerry's Ice cream place - very nice ice cream stuff. Yum
yum yum.
My first lecture of the day begins at 8am. Just a tad too early for Al,
who decided to skip it. A paper in Parrallel programming. Decided to not
be lazy and go to some later lectures. Somehting about Java and one in a
room that I couldn;t find. This place is large, and hardly any buildings
are marked. So, find a map and hope for the best. Then get into building
and try to find the correct room. Good luck.
Went shopping as well, off to Safeways. Good store, lots of food. Much
like a kiwi supermarket, except there is no marmite or proper bacon. Not a
hell of alot for Tuesday.
A 1 lecture day today. Walked with Kath to lectures again. Its about 25
minutes fast walk (how else does Al walk?) to lectures, or about 15
minutes from one side of campus to the other. It even has a railway line
running through the middle of it, with at least one train that I
heard.
Lectures today involve an fella talking about computer architechure. Oh
how he makes it boring, but I find some of it interesting, so will keep
going.
About dinner time went out to et some bread bowls to put soup into. We
left
Brian (the girls male flatmate) and his girlfriend behind. We get food nd
came back and there were these weird sounds coming from the room. Like
someone having a 'nudge nudge wink wink' time. The girls going eeeeeEEwwww
and turning up the music. Goodie. Some competition for Kath and myself
*8>)
Another lecture fulled day. First one at 8am, next at 11 or so, and then spread out until 5pm. SFA else.
Missed my first lecture. Sleep had more priority. The Denver Post that I
had signed the flat up for hadn't arrived yet, so rang up and was told
that due to a backlog don't expect it any time soon. Shit! Watched Oh
Brother, Where art thou? What a load of bollocks.
Girls went excersising and did some swimming etc. Went and saw Shallow Hal
at the $2 movie place. Then rented American Pie 2 - it just came out on
video here.
Decided that snow boarding is for Sunday, not today, due to the
2am bed
time.
Woke up at 6.30am to the sound of country music. Good-oh! Finally got the
girls into the car and off we went. A 1.5 hour south to Denver and then
west into the mountains. We went to Keystone - a member of the Vail bunch
of resorts. Got myself a snowboard and boots for the day at a cost of
US$35. That was all good, got a ticket for $41 and off we went. There are
about 14 or so lifts on the field, with we think a couple thousand people
on the slopes.
Got to the top of the lift and fell on my face. One of the many times I
was to be intimate with the snow. Snowboarding wasn't to bad, except that
I couldn;t quite figure out how to use the front of the board to turn
corners. Tried it once and fell over. Tried it a second time and did a
huge cartwheel and a couple of rolls and split my lip. Ouch. Probably the
owrst part of the day is the bloody sore shins and archs. Christ did they
hurt!
Whats the main difference between here and NZ? Well, there's these tree
things. They seems to provide a really good incentive not to go too fast
or get out of control. At least in NZ, if you lose it, you can aim for a
nice spot and fall over. Over here, there is a coridor with either a drop
and trees or a bank and trees. Luckily, I only met one tree and managed
to stop myself (nerves saying "Oh crap! This is going to hurt. Fall
over NOW!!!) before I hit it. A couple of ice spots made the board slip
out from under me and I arsed up.
We did the main run 2 times and a smaller run 3 times, making a total run
length I think of about 30km. I was quite knackered by the end of the day.
Our last run was about 4.30 pm, just as it was getting dark. They have
night skiing, so the terain looks alot different and the ice is harder to
see. We finished up at about 6pm, making for a 7 hour day on the
slopes.
Donna drove home, made quite good time really. The interstate's over here
are great roads, with our average speed about 140km/h, up to 160km/h in
the good spots. All good fun. Went to Big City Burito for dinner. The
girls have been raving about this for ages but I wasn't overly
impressed. All went to bed fairly early, casue we are buggered.
Today is a holiday. Very nice of these Americans. Some fella called Martin
Luther King decided to be a good guy (Junior Kath says), so
for not alot that I can see, we have a 3 day weekend. I won't complain.
Today has been devoted to the recovery of my body, which has many sore
spots, and two knackered legs. Lifting them involves not just leg muscles,
but also arm muscles :)
A lovely day here in Fort Collins, so Kath dragged me out for a walk
around City Park Lake. This lake (a pond more like, but you know how they
like to exaggerate things) is mostly ice, except for 2 patches where the
ice has melted and ducks/geese/crows/swans/etc had gathered to shit and
swim. Hundreds of the little buggers, all rather tame and wanting to be
fed.
Anyhow, tried to catch one o them, but it ran/waddled away. Kath wasn't
too
helpful in the pincer movement that I had planned, dragging me off towards
the playground. We went down a slide, played on a swing and climbed over a
WW2 howitzer. All good fun. went back to the house and was doing dishes
when two men walk around the back of the property and start gesturing to
the roof. Huh??? Aparently they are fixing the guttering - something that
the landlord had forgotten to tell us. Oh well, it looks good now.
Said goodbye to Efrain after lunch and took Kath for a walk to see Lauren
- a lovely lass that I had met in NZ when she was on exchange. Then went
to the supermarket (King Soopers) and bought food. Off ohome and now
watching a video called Summer Catch. Looks to be a chick flick.
A wonderful nothing day. The body hurts significantly less than yesterday so thats a good thing. A cold day with lots of wind, finished off with it snowing in the evening. The movie from last night was a chick flick. Looks to keep snoing for a while.
Yeah!!!! Snow!!! About 3 inches over night. It was even snoing stil this
morning, although there are clear skys so it wont last for long. Last
night was really bright around here, with the snow and cloud reflecting
all the light. Bright enough toread a newspaper I reckon. I got to shovel
the path this morning and play on the snow. Good fun. May go snow shoeing
this weekend if we get some more.
Went for a walk today to the main part of town. Its about a mile each way.
The weird thing is, that on one of the streets running the length of town,
a train runs each day along it. So all the stop lights as far as you can
see up this street are flashing, and there is a bloody great big train
moving along the street. Probably quite disconcerning if you happened to
pull into the street at the wrong time.
The snow stopped about 10am, and now the popular street have becomea mushy
slushy shit stuff. Walking along side them becomes a new challenge when
you have to sidestep when vehicles go past or get covered in slush.
Yuck!
Went to the Career fair today. Got quite interested in working for the US
Ballistic Missile Defence agency, but since I'm not a US citizen, no
goods. Makes our career fair seem like a miserable piece of shite. Jeez,
Lincoln didn't have anything as fun as that! The short and the long of it
is everything computer related around here is defence related or so it
seems (Colorado Springs is NORAD HQ or something like that) so not so
good. I did get a pair of sunglasses. :)
Went to a coule fo lectures, one of which is CS470 - a 4th year paper. So,
I expect manny high level things, only to findthat we are doing stuff I
learnt in 2nd year. Single precision and double precision digits and how
they are stored accoriding to an IEEE standard. Kinda simple, yet people
were scratching their heads.
Got chinese sweet and sour pork for dinner. Quite god, pricey though.
Pretty much exactly the same asthe stuff back home, excpt the pork I have
feelings may not have been pork. Not quite right, but all in all it was a
good feed.
What a lovely day. It is the last day of the week, so the plan was to go
and see a movie and eat out at the Texas Steakhouse. Well, the movie we
wanted to see was Ocean's Eleven. We got to the steakhouse at 9pm, and
found there would be a 45 min wait, no good if we wanted to watch the
movie at 9.50pm. So, deciding "bugger this" we went over to a Noodle place
to at dinner.
Got to the movie place 20 mins early, so waited around for the seating to
begin. Over here, there is no assigned seating at all, just a mad rush and
trying to get here as early as possible, to get the best seats, even if it
is opening night. Anyhow, we were waiting and there was this commotion. 2
paramedics racing into a theatre. Either a great way to get in for free
and get a good seat, or some poor sod had karked it. We just waited.
While we were waiting, Kath saw her ex box, a fat little lady with a
really large roman conk and wearing Spandex tights. YUCK!!!! ERG!!!
PUKE!!!! How bloody disgusting. That type of thing should be
banned!!.
The movie was good, lots of plot and thinking and cunning and stuff like
that. The girls liked the George Clooney / Brad Pitt aspect, while I just
appreciated all the nice gadgets that they had. So, leaving the movie, I
went to get into the front seat and the door I thought was half open.
Nope, it had started to swing shut, and I bashed my head (more accuratly,
my right ear) on the door and it hurt like a bastard. OUCH! So that
started to swell and throd and be annoying. A lovely end to the day.
What a lazy day. We basically got up and watched movies. Firstly, it was Miss Congeniality then lunch then Sonics for dinner. this is a weird place. You sit in a room at a table, and order using a phone. There is no bench, no person to look at, no nothing. Just a door where the waitress comes with the finished product. An interesting concept. The burger was alright, the meat lacked zing though. Went home and watched Moulon Rouge. What a cocked up movie!!! Baz must have been on speed for that thing, and I really do feel sorry for thepeople on the film splicing desk. The poor bastards. Kath also made 2 cinnamon bread loaves, so they are very nice when toasted.
An early start in order to leave here at 8am. I went snow shoeing with
Lauren - a lass I met in NZ. We went up to Cameron Pass and did the
Zimmerman Lake trail. Nothing special there apart from it is about 2 miles
high there and the lack of oxygen was quite noticable. At the highest
point, I think it is about 10500 feet high, or about 3.2km up (I think).
Thats fairly high and even on the downhills my breathing was short and
fast. Just not enough air up there.
Snow shoing is fun. Get boot, add to it a big flat thing and off you go.
Most have crampons underneath, so it grips rather well to the ice and
hopefully does not sink through the crust. Unfortunatly, as I had borrowed
Brians (140 pound) snowshoes, hey wern't quite large enough for my extra
25 pounds. So, as I raced ahead suddenly I would leave the trail and end
up in 3 foot of snow, something guarenteed to stop you quickly. We also
found a large snowcave, about 4m x 2m with a 2 m tunnel to enter it. I was
rather impressed with it, and the silence inside it was amazing. The wind
outside just died away and then I started to think about the 2m of snow
above the tunnel and decided it was time to exit.
So, spent about 3 hours trapsing around the country side, enoying every
minute of it and wishing for a lower altitude. At that height, there is no
noticable difference in the foliage or bush, and the trees look exactly
the same as they do in Fort Collins (about 1 mile lower). Definatly not
like NZ.
Got home, checked my email and discovered that I had 960 emails. All junk
from the same person - something about a revolutionary new weight loss
pill. Good stuff you womble, do I need to lose weight? Prehaps a "improve
spelling" pill or something like that. So, I delete them and check later.
Another 650 from him. Delete again, block sender, back to sleep. Went to
bed noce and early to keep Kath happy. *8>)
A not-a-lot day. Nothing really exciting today. Went to uni and did some reading and met Kath for lunch. A really nice day.
A decidely colder day. Got up, went to a lecture or two and got cold. Came home and went for a walk with Kath. We had noticed that there were snow clouds in the hills, and went into a supermarket. When we came out, it had gotten really dark (it was about 6pm though) and we wandered home. As we turned onto her street, suddenly a wall of soft fuzzy snow flakes came down. From nothing to something. Weird. Anyway, it just kept on going for another 5 hours and we have about 2/3 foot of snow outside. The best part of it was going out last night at 11pm and shovelling a path around the place. The sidewalk, car park, postie paths, bike path and having fun in general. I love shovelling snow, something the girls find most amusing. I'm sure that after a couple of years of it, the amusement will disappear.
Well, woke up and forgot that yesterday was the 20th month aniversary of
me and Kath. Yay!
Still lots of snow, so I went out and shovelled some more. Walked into
town and discovered a cash machine that dosen't charge me fees for using
its services (most machines will charge about US$2 for another banks card.
This one asked if I was using a foreign card and waived the charges.
Sweet!) Posted a card, bought some stamps, so I might get all enthused and
write to people. Erg.
The girls (Jenny and Donna) decided that they wanted to eat NOW so we went
out to find food. Well, unmpteen places and suitable spots later we finally find a place, approximatly 30 minutes
after the food that Kath was preparing would have been ready.
Poor old Kath had class all day until 8pm, leaving me with complicated instructions on how to make macaroni cheese the old fashioned way. Boil the pasta, make the croutons, butter and season the croutons, make a roux out of butter and flour, add milk, put pasta in casserole dish, add sauce, mix, top with the croutons. Bake until crisp. That was the highlight of my day today, well not really, but I can't remember much else.
The end of the month, so this way to more of the diary. "Lay on, MacDuff!"