Adventures at High Altitude

Hello once again friends, family and fellow travelers. I got home on August 26th, a little bit ahead of Jess (who has another week of work on her contract..boo). It's nice to be home where it's not cold and to see everyone. But this summer has been an eye-opening experience full of new things and great memories, adventures and contentment. This is one last blog to fill in on the final week or so, and to say 'that's all folks.'

There are a couple final pictures from our party. We had a fun time with a full house of workmates, friends, visiting friends, and a van (the wham-bam-thankyou-ma'ambulance) full of musicians (Seething!). Carson tended bar with whatever he was able to scrounge from our cupboards ("Cars, is nutmeg supposed to go in a Whiskey Sour?"), and we were serenaded by far too many people playing guitar and cop neighbours yelling at us. Good times. The party was taken to the streets, and some busking for gas money went on in downtown Canmore. Until the cops came along, the boys were doing swimmingly - but no worries were to be had as we shuffled into the bar and finished off our night.

Thanks to Carson and Peter and the band for coming to visit. It was wicked to meet with old friends in new places. Next, I went to Kelowna to visit my very good friend Colby and to meet up with the band for a show there. We were drowned in hospitality and generosity by Colby's parents, and couldn't have had a nicer place to spend time in BC. The guys show was good, and ended in true rock n' roll style with fights, parties, and strippers. Seriously. And some animals: Tony Danza (a kitten in the middle of the party), and Meadow (Colby's dog).

Fun stuff..the band now has their debut full-length out and it's jaw-droppingly good. Check it: www.seethingband.com. (uuuhh...plug).

Back in Canmore, Jess' good friend Ange had come to stay for a few days and visit her plethora of friends in Canmore. We hung out, played disc golf, and met up with friends while I tried to tie up any loose ends at work and around town.

At the end, it had gotten cold enough for there to be snow on some of the mountains again, lending some symmetry to the summer. I couldn't believe I was in a sweater and jeans in mid-August, just like back in May. Here are pictures of Townie, as promised a looong time ago (tear! I had to leave him in Alberta), our house, and Jess making muffins. I'll miss the comforts of Canmore, but I think I'll be there again at some point in the journey.

Thanks to everyone for listening. It's been swell. Thanks also to everyone in Canmore for helping make our summer so awesome. Amy and Ais, Melissa, Katya, Ross and Michelle, Lindsay T, the Bury's, Alec, Statia and Kayleigh, Lisa and Justin, Hugh, Ultimate people, Ryan and Lindsay, and everyone else. Drop us a line if you're ever in Ontario (except for those of the above that live in Ontario...we don't want to hear from you). That's it!

Cheers! Johnny and Jesse

Ahoy hoy,

Seeing as this will be one of the last blogs of the summer, I felt it should be a big, beautiful, bodacious blog. We've been doing a lot.

Firstly, Ross (friend and partner in crime) and I went climbing in Kananaskis (south of Canmore), and climbed Wasootch tower (that spikey rock in the first picture)! It was my first outdoor rock climbing experience, and Ross was awesome to go with because he's training to be a climbing guide. That cliff above is the one we climbed. Anyway, he showed me how to put gear into the rocks, how to hide from falling gravel and rocks, and how to rappel, among many other things. It was super cool, and in the gorgeous sunshine we summitted the tower and had a brewski and some sandwiches.

It was a stellar day and a wicked experience. On the way home we listened to Led Zeppelin and made plans for a starlight hike of Chinaman's Peak the next morning. However, later that day when Ross was climbing again with another friend he took a big rock off the helmet and decided to go easy on his neck and have some extra sleep instead of extra mountain. SO, a few other friends and I climbed it instead. I tell you, 4:30am isn't any prettier in Alberta than it is in Ontario (you know when you'd give your left kidney for another hour of sleep?), but seeing the sunrise on top of an 11,000 foot peak is quite a sight.

There would be a lot more pictures of this particular adventure, but the camera ran out of batteries! Aah! So that will have to do.

Moving on, my very good friends Carson and Peter came out to visit while staying with Pete's dad in Calgary, and we've been having a very cool time with them. Yesterday we drove up to Lake Louise and had lunch there with them and dropped them to stay with Amy and Ais while we carried on toward Jasper. A long time ago, our friends Lindsay and Ryan won free tickets for the Columbia Icefields, which is one of the only safely accessible glaciers in the world. So, we decided to finally go and check it out.

You get in this giant 'Snocoach' with 5 foot tall tires and go a couple kilometers out onto the glacier and mosey around. It was really neat: drinking FREEZING cold glacier water and then putting our hands in it, watching Japanese tourists fall down, and brilliantly commenting on how it's cold. Surprisingly enough, it IS cold on the surface of a glacier, even though the sun was blazing down. Incredible.

I don't know when I'll next be on a glacier. Or in Jasper, or even in ALBERTA for that matter...so I'm glad and lucky to have had the chance to do a lot of these things.

I'm now done my job in Canmore, and on the road to Kelowna to visit Colby Z and hook up with Seething (for those that that means anything to), but I'll leave all of those stories until next time. As they say in Kuala Lumpur, toodles, JR.

Hi

Just thought I would hop on quickly to update on our world. Jesse's parents came by on their way back east, and among other things took us out to the best restaurant I've been to in memory, and took us to the caves in Banff. It was neat, and apparently this cave with it's hot springs is the original founding place of Banff National Park and the Parks system in Canada. It smelled very bad (sulphur), but was pretty cool. The other neat thing about it was that the warmth of the water, which flows year round, allows a ton of plants and water animals to live in this area that can't grow anywhere else in the park and many of them not even in any other part of Canada. Crazy...so amidst pines and mountains, we saw warm-water plants and aquarium fishies. Take that, global warming.

As I think I mentioned last time, we've moved into a new place for the final month, and to celebrate we had a wee housewarming party last weekend, which was awesome. We had a civilized discussion on the paper vs. plastic debate, nibbled cucumber sandwiches, and sipped Dom Perignon. And then the phone rang, and I said to the President...

We had a grand old time, shared a goodly amount of liquor, and I think warmed the house. It's a big house and our lack of furniture makes it bigger. So some extra friends fit nicely. We continued our streak of fraternizing with Amy, Aisling, and Meredith when we all got together in Banff at the Banff Springs Hotel (ya, that one) for cheap because Amy and Ais work for Fairmont! Sweet...so we camped out and caught up and went out in Banff for the evening. And to top it off, the one and only Eli came down to visit and kept us entertained for several days. Thanks dude! Can't wait til September and another year of shenanigans.

Speaking of which, I've booked my flight home for the 26th, so if anyone in St. Marys is having a party around then, let me know! It will be stellar to see everyone and anyone. Then school starts the 9th....it's all going so fast. But before any of that, I'm going mountain climbing with my good friend Ross (in the pic above) - he's an aspiring mountain guide and 'knows the ropes,' so to speak. So that's exciting. And also we intend to do a starlight hike of Chinaman's and watch the sunrise. Canyonero...

TTFN, JR.

ps. jesse is a fox..if she were french, she would be called la ren. i would be corvax.