four days off............

well it' s the end of a much needed 4 day break, and back to work tomorrow with a couple of busy weeks involving trips to Vancouver, Edmonton & Manitoba

friday was a corker of a day, despite temperatures close to -30C which caused excruciating pain in my ungloved fingers while i secured my snowboard to the car's roofrack - a day up on the mountain at Lake Louise was better than expected - it was quiet, not a cloud in the sky & with about 16 layers of clothing on i didn't feel the cold at all

i also saw the stupidest thing i have ever seen in years of doing winter sports type stuff - on the men's world cup downhill piste, two dickhead snowboarders were sunbathing in the middle of the slope! Hidden by a dip they were invisible to anyone coming down the slope & as this was a double black diamond piste it was pretty much vertical - they were extremely lucky not to have their heads split in two by skiers/boarders hurtling down that slope - luckily i took a line slightly to the left of them or i would (a) have killed them & probably (b) killed myself - unbelievable

that night we had plans to go & see a couple of bands at the Canmore Hotel, but instead stayed on at our friends house party which was really rather nice - as usual everyone gathered in the kitchen & as we left it was just starting to get raucous

saturday i managed to beat my record for cross country skiing, doing two laps of the Banff trail in record time - i love this sport, it burns 600 calories per hour & is officially the most cardiovascular challenging sport there is - knackering but you can feel the flab burning off - i'm still rubbish though & haven't mastered skiing out of the tracks (i do the classic version where you stay in pre-cut tracks)

sunday involved a walk round town & then friends round for dinner - all very civilised & good to see our 15 month old daughter really interacting & playing with other kids - something i don't see much

and yet more walks today & lunch with more friends in the Drake Inn, which again was a civilised & child dominated affair - as it was a holiday, Alberta Family Day, it was pretty busy in town a foretaste of the summer, when Canmore heaves we are told

to top all this off, Charlton are in the FA Cup Quarter finals with a decent home draw against Middlesborough - ironic in that my dad was a life long Boro fan & my cousin still has a season ticket up there - shame i won't be at The Valley for the game, hopefully it will be a better affair than the capitulation to Bolton in our last Quarter Final a few years back

i will definitely come across for the Cup Final in May should we make it & should i get my hands on a ticket! let's wait & see...........

major obsession over here at present is the winter olympics & we are extremely proud of Canmore girl Sara Renner who won a silver, (thanks in large part to a kindly Norwegian coach who gave her a replacement ski-pole when hers snapped midway through the race), at the aforementioned Cross Country Skiing. We watch the, it has to be said, mind bogglingly extensive coverage in the evenings every now & again, but i find some sports pretty dull - especially bloody ice skating - if this "sport" is in the winter olympics, why the hell isn't ballroom dancing in the summer version - it's not a sport, in fact most sports which rely on judges awarding marks out of 10 for things like "artistic merit" are questionable in my book

no music today, i am gonna start getting into the habit of writing this blog more often - i have bought a shed load of new stuff & some of these tracks will be ending up on here