...Missouri!! part deux

I´m apologising in advance for spelling mistakes and a lack of photos. Deal with it.

Right.. so after my close call with a shoot up in Columbia, Laura (Jana's mom) and I went and shot some guns. She's a pretty avid fan of guns and the like. She has a small arsenal of guns, grenades, RPG's, landmines and armoured vehicles. Well.. not really, but she does have a few guns. So we went to her local firing range after the comprehensive safety talk (don't point a loaded gun at people, animals or hippies etc...). We were shooting the a semi-automatic .22 and a Smith and Wesson .38. The .22 took me by surprise at first. I guess just because it's loud etc.. Perhaps startled is a better word to use than surprised. So, after getting my grounding with the .22 and getting to know the gun and firing a few clips we moved onto the much smaller short-barreled .38. Fuck! I wasn't prepared for that! I actually yelped! And the recoil! there's some kick off a gun like that..

So it turns out that I'm not too bad at the old gun shooting thing! I managed to hit the big paper target and all! No paper's gonna get the better of me if I'm armed.. It was great fun and also a first for me. We ate in an interesting mongolian place called Hu-Hot where you put a load of ingredients in a bowel, make a sauce from oils etc that they recommend and give it to one of four guys standing around a massive bbq type setup who cook it for you. It's a pretty sweet idea as you can really make your food to your own tastes except that there's really no-one to complain to if you don't like it. Thanks guys, great restaurant!

The next day was action packed with all sorts of activities. It took an early start because Laura Crouch and I were to drive to Lake of the Ozarks which is shaped like a Chinese dragon. We met Nick there as he works out that way (as a barman who cleverly extrapolates tips from business men, tourists, older ladies and most other species of consumer endemic to the area). We rented a pontoon from two very helpful and tanned girls in bikinis and spent the day trying various dives off the boat. One which saw me looking as though I had been dropped from a helicopter and another which had nick looking as though he was swimming through thin air.

So we dropped back the pontoon after exploring the lake, islands and diving techniques which resulted in red and tender backs and headed into town to get some lunch in another time-warped bar. Time warps seem to be a common theme on this trip so far. I must do a little entry on that alone. The day got better. We drove back to Columbia and met Jana and Jake in a car-park (all sounds a bit Watergate..) for the next big activity of the day. A BALLOON RIDE!! It was supposed to be a surprise. I was told I was allowed to guess as much as I liked as to what Wednesday´s surprise was but I guess I didn´t come close. Someone had let the bag out of the cat (whatever, I´m tired.. you´re lucky to be getting any blog at all..) the previous night at dinner. It was still a suprise then so the desired effect was still there. After driving around industrial estates looking for a space to launch the balloon we found just the right place. perhaps a little odd though..

Getting the balloon started was kinda funny.. after they inflated it on the ground and it looked all ready to go, they let it down again. It seemed a little pointless and we were all a little perplexed. It turns out they had run out of gas and it looked as though we may not have been going anywhere that day. They pointed out that it´s often better to find out on the ground that you have very little gas, rather than when in the air. So they borrowed another basket and away we went. I hadn´t realised just how green Columbia was. The balloon was such a cool way to see and area. Looking out the windows of planes is fun and all that, but they have to climb eventually so that nothing is distinguishable. In the balloon, children cycle after you, families wave and dogs don´t know what to do so they bark. It´s a really peaceful ride.

Landing was fun. Apparently, they only way you can control direction in a balloon is by going up and down so steering toward an open space to land on is a no no.. It ended up that we kept on floating by fields ad our gas was running low. We ended up clipping tree-tops as we had lowered her for a landing between trees! It´s tradition to land with Champagne in case you land in someone´s garden and find yourself needing to placate them. So, a Champagne toast was had and a specially made t-shirt was presented with my name on it and all! photos to follow, this computer doesn´t seem to want to co-operate. The back of the t-shirt says ¨getting high in Columbia¨.

So that was a big day

I met Jana´s grandmother the next day. This woman is 91 and quicker off the mark than I am! To boot, she has an interesting story. Not having learned english until about the age of 14 she grew up in a German settlement near the Florida-Alabama boarder prior to World War II. She can also do 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles blind-folded.. I hope I´m that capable in body and mind when (if) I hit 91! Home then and got dressed for a night on the town. The night was spent in a comedy club watching two very different comics. One of Jana´s friends, Crystal, had one a comedy office party in this night club so took a big gang of us along. The first comic was a self-proclaimed hick from Indiana and the main act was a large, sex-obsessed middle-aged black lady who used to be a crack-head and a prostitute. She was a rapid-fire torrent of foul language and hard-hitting jokes. Great way to start a night. Then down to the night-club. I was sitting at a bar where a sign warned that ¨no more than 10 people at a time could dance on the bar¨(!!). Imagine that kinda stuff back in Ireland!! Yeah.. I know.. I can´t imagine it either. After all, the church does say that women who dance on bars are whores and going to a special hell just for them..

Crystal, Xaviar and I ended up in a diner which had been established as early as 1949. I ended up arguing with the waitress that the ¨biscuit¨she was showing my was not a biscuit but in fact either a scone or a malformed english muffing. I don´t think the english really eat those muffins.
My stance on the biscuit issue back-fired when my french toast was served with thin little bread and not the big think stuff. Ah well.. Just goes to show what standing by your beliefs gets you into!?

The next day was spent napping and recovering. When I eventually roused we went to Laura and Johns for a good-bye dinner where we oo´d and aaah´d over pictures of Jana when she was growing up. She was such an adorable kid! And the image of mom. In some of the photos you could have convinced someone that the pictures of Jana were. This was a great night. It was good t get to say good-bye to Laura and John.. She really is my American mom. I get looked after so much! Spoiled one might say!

Off to the Airport. Jana drove out and James was there for support. Thanks James!! He was also great to have in the airport as he managed to dissuade the tears. Saying goodbye to people who I care about is getting tiresome. Guess Ill just have to grin and bare it!

It was so cool being in Missouri and meeting the Crouch gang and their various associates on their own turf. I admit that initially i thought I as going to be a Little bored and that Missouri was going to be a desolate wasteland. How wrong I was. Missouri is full of good culture, great scenery and fantastic people to match. I had such a great time! Thanks everyone associated. Thanks for making Missouri so memorable! I´ll return!

Go, when I flew from Kansas City to Denver I was due to wait four hours for my flight to San Francisco but I noticed that there was one boarding just I got off mine. I spoke to some guy behind a check-desk who thought that it was a good thing that I had an irish passport. He managed to put me on the flight that was leaving right away but I wouldn´t have my luggage at the other end. It was due to this whim I met the prototype that is Richard.

More to follow. I have to go use the little ladies room and get on a bus that will meander through Brazilian roads towards Florianopolis for 12 hours.

Adeus!

...Missouri!

So, after being awake for about 30 hours and listening to over-zealous American fishermen talking about pick-ups and houses on the plane I met Jana and Jake at Kansas City airport. I was feeling full of beans and raring for a change of scenery but with an empty tummy. So we stopped off in the "International House of Pancakes" which is often abbreviated to IHOP. It is a fantastic establishment that prides itself on full-colour glossy menus and just about every combination and permutation of pancake available. I ordered from the "I'm keeping the inches off my hips" section of the menu (8,000 calories instead of the usual 3 million per dish) which still managed to knock me into a solid two-hour food coma in the back of the car.

Back at Jana's I was introduced to her two cats, Fearless and Van Gogh. They are pretty dominant characters in the house and seem to have a few schemes and tricks worked out. Van Gogh is pretty lazy and tends to try outsmart you rather than par-take in your silly games whereas Fearless is pretty off the wall. I've yet to witness him hanging from the threshold of the door frame when he works himself into a tizzy. But apparently it happens..

So after a post-coma nap we headed on over to Laura and John's house (Jana's adoptee parents). It's well pimp. High ceilings, plush interior, a racquet-ball court, pool table, a mini gym and some very big tellys are but a few features of this monstrosity. I'm supposed to be spending a few days there during my trip. Laura even feeds a raccoon, so I'll see if i can get some shots. Dinner was gorgeous and the conversation flowed. Laura and John are quite the hosts! Dessert was even home-made chocolate brownies that broke down defences and rebelled against my healthy eating thing so vehemently. Have you any idea how difficult it is to buy a sugar-free breakfast cereal over here?

The next day we checked out downtown Columbia. It seems to have a fairly decent mix of about anything you could want. It's a well-equipped town with a strong history that I've yet to come to terms with. Makes a pleasant difference to be somewhere with history as opposed to places like Grande Prairie which first gets a mention in the history books in 1824 and just as a trading post or Anchorage (est. 1912). The heat something fierce though. It was 90 Fahrenheit yesterday - or about 32 degrees Celsius to those that are using real units - and it's going to hit 100 Fahrenheit (or 38 real degrees) this week, apparently.

The afternoon was spent doing a small tour of Jana's background in Columbia, where she lived, where she schooled etc.. and then a little trip through some of the trashier parts of Columbia. Then on to learning to play "washers" in a red-neck bar frequented by motorcyclists and pythons. I'm not sure why the kid who owns the snake brought him to a bar, nor do I understand why he called the female snake "Johnny". aaaaanyway.. Someone even saw fit to give me a t-shirt that said "feck you, you feckin fecker" and the DJ approached me asking me what I wanted to hear for a change! I'm not sure what the bar was doing with the t-shirt and I think the meaning was a little lost on them. I thought it was fantastic though! How splendidly random!

We started our night in Pepper's night club where both Jana and Jake once worked. The bar lady was insisting that he was giving me some sort of discount on the beer she was serving me, but im not so sure, think she was just fishing for tips. There was a karaoke setup and I actually got up and sang! But it was more a damage limitation measure as there was a guy who kept on getting up and doing heavy metal numbers. I managed to belt out some overly baritone renditions of "House of the rising Sun" by the Animals (the first song my mom showed me on guitar) and "Deeply Dippy" by Right Said Fred - so fantastically gay. I also got to meet a few of Jana's pretty cool mates which was nice after hearing about them and picking up snippets of their existences from internet social networking sites etc.. Quite a nice, well-rounded bunch of people!

We only stayed in Peppers till about half past twelve before we moved onto the next bar. Then we heard about this little story the next day. It was only about an hour after we left.. Good auld America!

..mm..

...Alaska!

Well, we made it to Alaska.

I forgot to mention the hot springs at Liard we stopped off in on our way to Watson Lake. Aside from the vast open plains, this was the highlight of the Fort St. John to Watson Lake. I also took advantage of the situation and got dirty. There are two pools here, the alpha and the beta pool. Basically the alpha pool (the one closer to the car park) is only about waist deep and crystal clear as all the mud has been dug out and stones laid down. This one is geared towards the hoards of geriatric tourists getting off coaches and having a quick 5-minute soak before they descend on the next town like a swarm of technology-fearing locusts. After over-hearing some trash declare that the boiling temperature of water is about 58 degrees Celsius we decided to move to the beta pool. It about three meters deep, you can't see the bottom because of the mineral-rich mud and there's far fewer tourists. I'd recommend the beta pool.

After visiting the sign forest in Watson lake, we made a bee-line for Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, with a grand total population of about 23,500 people. The Yukon territories has a total population of 31,530 people and an area of about 482,500 km squared. That means quite a low population density. To give you an idea of the significance of these figures, the Republic of Ireland has a population density of about 59 people her square km whereas the Yukon has about 16 square km per person. Vast untouched landscapes dominate this wild and nature-run part of the world. Most settlements that aren't the two main cities have populations of no more than 500 people. Beaver Creek (ha!), just before the boarder had only 110 and that wasn't the smallest we passed through but a long shot, but the only one i can find info for. Pink Mountain had a population of only 100 and the general store, gas station, post office, liquor store, campsite, information centre and RV park were all in the same building (the one we're sitting outside in that pic).

So, onto Whitehorse. Not a huge amount to report here. the SS Klondike no longer sits in the river. The drive to Whitehorse was littered with animals everywhere. Normally when I see an animal when I'm driving I think to myself about how they seem oddly out of place but when you see them in the Yukon, you get the feeling that you're on their territory. The moose population is twice that of the human population. Dave also managed to pick up a new animal to fear, the buffalo. Come on Dave! They're more afraid of you!

My memory cards started to run out of space and I haven't had a chance to develop any films so photos for the restof this post wil be a little sparse. I'll try put them in where I can to hold your interest.

After a night drinking in Whitehorse (with people! imagine that! we had been on the road a few days and covered about 2,000km so the opportunity to have some contact with other humans was pounced upon) we set off for Alaska. It was a long drive, about 650km on roads that are falling apart through virgin landscape and past ghost towns. Dave and I reckon we clocked up a good few km on the wrong side of the road avoiding crevasses! Of course, as we weren't American citizens we got a full grilling about what we were doing, how long, which terrorist organisations we belong to etc.. our van was even searched! Alice is currently undergoing the laborious task of combing out her dreadlocks. The first step on each dread is to cut about 6-8inches off the end first. She's been keeping these in a bag. Might seems a Little unusual, but whatever.. Upon returning to the van we realised that the boarder control guy opened this bag to find a load of dreads which at first look a little like big hairy worms. He must have thought we were weirdos.. This filled us with giggles for a while.

After crossing the boarder we drove to the first big town, Tok (pronounced toke) and ate in Fast Eddy's on the recommendation of one of the friendly boarder patrol guys. Apparently the best restaurant around. Everything was fried. It's going to be so hard t eat healthily in this country!

The stark contrast between the Canadians and Alaskans is striking! Overly-happy waitresses tittering nervously and haranguing you was what we were first greeted by. I thought Canadian food portions were big. They've been dwarfed! The accent moved from the dopey "I'm going aboot the huuse" (I'm going about the house) to strong American very quickly. Almost as though to make sure that you knew that you were no longer in Canadstan.

They're also more money orientated over the boarder. In Canada we stayed in a load of Canada Parks campsites which assume you will leave money under a rock or tied to a tree if you arrive after registration hours. So naturally we interpreted this as free camping.. not in the States though.. oh no.. they made sure we paid.. and there's no unsecured wifi connections anywhere..

On from Tok we went to get to Anchorage, the capital of Alaska! We had made the mistake of hyping it up loads. It was going to be the cosmopolitan city at the end of a long line of non-descript towns and settlements. As Alaska isn't connected to the mainland I was expecting that Alaskans might have some sort of identity-crisis-fueled superiority-complex and regard themselves as Alaskans, not Americans and maybe (like the French, say) be overly-enthusiastic about their culture and attempt to be more savvy. Nope. Anchorage was quite underwhelming. As well as a town that has very little to offer other than being a base for the amazing areas surrounding Anchorage it looks odd. Anchorage has no planning legislation or real zoning programmes so there is no real central business district or financial centre. Large 20-storey office buildings tower above adjacent dingy motels and greasy-spoon diners.

What's more there was about 10,000 little bastard scouts staying in our Hostel on the first night that wouldn't stop jumping on beds and screaming at each other. And the hostel had the creakiest bunk beds ever. No joke! They creaked as you breathed! So annoying..

We made the most of our stay and drove back outside the city to go white water rafting. We choose to only do class 3 to 4 rapids as we had no experience. In hindsight we definitely could have done the class 4 and 5 stuff but since we were in calmer waters we were able to jump in the river and do some "white water swimming" which was pretty cool. The water runs straight off the Mat-su glacier so is FREEZING! We had dry suits on to keep the old hypothermia at bay..

After the rafting we went for a walk on the Mat-su glacier. More money-making schemes. 15dollars per person to access the glacier through the private property. Alaskans are quite territorial as it's a new country and pioneer property disputed were only a few decades ago. I've discovered something new about myself. Whenever I'm near or on a glacier I get the urge to get naked. This happens around rivers, lakes and well.. any water and hence my many skinny dipping episodes. I'm not sure what it's about. It also happens when I get to the summit of mountains.

My last day in Anchorage was to be last day with Dave, Alice and Charlene (the van) so we had a goodbye sushi dinner and did the Planetary walk which was brought to an abrupt stop by Dave's volatile ass. Something didn't agree with him and he scurried from establishment to establishment with "Closed" signs in the windows whilst whimpering and talking in short panicked bursts. Much to Alice and myself's amusement.

To the airport! Which was full of odd Amish sects. After a huggy goodbye to Alice and Dave I had my toothpaste confiscated. I'm not sure when I'll see either Dave or Alice again as they're moving to Oxford in September when Alice starts her Ph.D in particle physics (??). It's very cute when she's asked about it. For example, when we went white water rafting the guides were asking us about ourselves and Alice seemed perfectly content with leaving the conversation at "I'm going back to college" and just try to tip-toe around the fact that it's a Ph.D in physics in Oxford. This is so as to avoid the "oh. right. well then.." reaction which is generally followed by a long silence and leaves the other party in the conversation wondering if Alice is using her magical powers to warp their physical composition. They pushed further with the questions and made all the "ooo" and "aaaahh" noises associated with the venerating audience of a magic show. And she didn't even mention where she was doing the Ph.D, that would surely have prompted some other catagory of noises.

When boarded my first plane to Missouri a very American gent had taken the window seat I had booked. I let him take it anyway and buried mt head in y book but he insisted on showing pictures of his new 6.7 litre pick-up, his hot fiance ad pictures of his fishing trips with him and his buddies. He was an interesting specimen to observe.

I was greeted in Kansas City Airport by my smiley half-sister Jana and her boyfriend Jake. Stage two of my round-the-world has begun!

ONWARD!

...Whistler to Watson Lake.

Im going to keep this short as the last one only had information in it that was interesting to me (well, it's a month condensed into a few paragraphs, I'll be short-ish..)

Just as an aside, I had considered calling my blog "It's not that I need to see the world, but the world needs to see more me". However, for fear of it being misconstrued as over-zealous self-indulgence, I've gone for the less egomanic title. Then again, surely a blog is just over-zealous self-indulgence. As if the world cares..

Ok, so. Whistler is a small resort town north of Vancouver. It's an odd little place with a young and transient population who think that exteme sports is something you do before breakfast, lunch, dinner and between drugs. It's a pretty place with looooads to do if you're into skiing in winter and mountain biking in the summer.

So, mountain biking was done. Spent two days doing cross-country and a day doing downhill. as can be seen here. In fact refer to daves flickr feed for a regular pictoral update. He can upoad pics from his phone if there's GSM coverage or wifi.
Also attended my first illegal rave in Whisltler up a the side of a mountain in a forest. It was quite splendid.

Whilst in Whistler, we sprayed Dave and Alice's car in the colours of the A-team van. This seems to have aided aerodynamics, toughness and sex appeal. This is what she looks like. She's a 1988 Chevy Astro with a 4.2 lite engine that still struggles up hills and is only 6,000km away from a quarter of a million. No joke. We passed the 240,000 km mark a few weeks back.

We got on the road after Alice and Dave's emotional departure from their apartment in Whistler. It was their home. And a damn fine home. Out first port of call was Gibson's Landing where "the Beachcombers" was filmed. The town is stuck in a time-warp. People seem to be avoiding the last three or four decades, writing them off as myth. I've never seen so many flower-clad boat-houses and velouria shell-suits in my life. Also, Charlene (the van) developed a sickness there that cost 140 dollars to repair so we couldn't get to the "moon-something hostel" that boasted drumming circles and nightly bon-fires.

Not all was lost in Gibson's though. Our waiter directed us to "Secret Beach" which was a shallow stone beach a small trek from the road. This is where we camped and sat up looking at the stars by camp-fire.

Next stop was Powell River. We thought it was the biggest hick town we had seen. Perhaps it was. But it was nothing in comparison to what we would go on to see. The only thing worth
mentioning in this town is drinking on the peir, that i found out my Lomo was leaking light and any photos I had taken with it were gone and we did find the most beautiful cafe. It was called Local Loco's. If you are ever in that part of the world, it's unmissable.

Then Onto Okeover Arm. Sea Kayaking. We were out for about 5 or six hours kayaking on a fjord. We went out to a tiny island and rested for a while. Saw loads of seals and even chased a shoal of herring and watched as they jumped from the water. After a freaky night in a BC parks campsite (there was alot of wild-life around us in an extremely remote area. big wild-life. I heard a few twigs and branches snapping around me in the dark as I was cooking. There was definitly some large animal about) we trekked aorund Savary Island. Pop. 90. Saw Bald Eagles, deer and garter snakes. I was amazed at how fast teh snakes can move!

from Savary we went to Vancouver Island and stayed in an odd hostel in Courtenay. So we moved on quicky to Tofino, the surfing capital of Canada. Quite a beautiful place. On the first night I ended up making new and intoxicated friends around a camp-fire on the beach which also involved trekking into the woods with a waning torch and draggin fallen trees out for the fire. It was my first time seeing the Pacific, I felt a celebration with strangers was in order. When that all got a littel macho it was about 4am so I decided to wander bakc to the van for some sleep (odd concept, I know). As I neared the end of the beach that we were camping near someone let off a cheapish looking firework which reminded me of the crappy little fireworks that remove fingers annually at home. I was reminded of home. It was a pathetic but oddly charming firework, charming because it reminded me of a mischief that was simply a rite-of-passage for any irish youth. And sure enough when I got to where the firework was let off it was a load or Irish, Scots and English up to their eye-balls on MDMA. What a co-incidence! So I partied with them for a bit. I seem to remember being attacked by some hyper-active girl on the beach (I woke with sand in my month) who's husband was from Tallagh and attending secret "raves" which involved Paul, a Glaswegian setting up an iPod and speakers in an empty lot and having us dance to Barry White.

Then we surfed. It was great. Off to Ucluelet then. Lots of lovely walking. And a deer.

Then to Victoria, the main city of Vancouver Island. It would be a great city if it weren't for the amount of homeless. They're ok, they don't pester you like them bastards back home but it's just that there is such an abundance of them. Victoria is the closest we've come to a vibrant European feel to a city. Recommended. Then a night in Vancouver. Unfortunatly Dave's laptop was stolen this night from the van. Dave's works from his laptop and all his work and records are all on that laptop. Any back-up of the records he made were shipped home the cheapest, and therefore, slowest way possible. So no getting them either. He managed to buy a new one second-hand the next day and make-up for some lost time. So the internet is safely in his hands again, where it belongs.

On from Vancouver to Kelowna, the wine-region. The Okanagan valley surrounds a lake and has quite an arid, hot climet in the summer. The vineyard we did a tour of (Summerhill) fed us some shite about putting the wine in a specially-poured concrete pyramid to clarify it. Apparently the sacred geometry allows this miracle to happen. ARSE. We tried the wine, drove to the nearest liqoure store, bought cheaper wine and got drunk on the lake beach. Not Dave though, the was driving. If you end up in the Okanagan valley, buy some fruit. It's amazing.

From there we drove to Revelstoke, where we Drove up Mt. Revelstoke and hiked the last snowy bit, visited a Rail Museum (bitchin'..) and went to a logging competition where we saw people throwing full-handled axes at targets and an actual pie-eating contest for kids aged 10-14. I couldn't believe my eyes. This shit actually happens. There were other catagories but I think the hysteria of our laughter was making the contestants uneasy. And those axe-throwers were acurate. There was also "lil miss Revelstoke" walking around. Bizarre!

After Revelstoke, Field. Tiny town. Check out Yoho National Park on google earth if you are bored some day. there'e no internet or mobile phone coverage in this area but it's beautiful. We walked up Paget Peak (2560m) the first day and walked 11km to lake O'Hara (2034m) the second day and trekked around it. What an amazing part of the world. It was the first of a few UNESCO protected areas we passed through, the next being Banff. Banff was fun. I left the other two to thier own devices and went to discover what the night-life of Banff had to offer. I got talking to a mid-thirties couple who insisted that they buy my drink and after I got talking to two girls who suggested that we continue drinking at their hotel where we ended up sneaking into a hot-tub and drinking warm vodka until the wee hours.

Stick with me here, I'm getting close to the present.

We drove through Banff National Park, also UNESCO protected and the most amazing scenery I have ever come across. I stared for 300 miles open-mouthed out my window. I even got to see the Athabasca glacier which is part of the vast Columbia Icefields. Onward to Jasper. Where we were supposed to go mountain biking but were let down by the weather. I know it looks ok, but it was pissing rain and we had to cook under a tarp. We did manage to see a "naturally formed bridge", the Maligne Canyon, and an interesting tree.

On from Jasper to Grande Prairie where we went abruptly from the snowy Rockies to thousands of square miles of flat. just trees and flatlands. We drove through loads of shit little towns that are devoid of culture and history as they were only built in the last 90 years or so to facilitate oil eploitation etc.. these were

Grande Prairie
Dawson Creek - home of "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway
Fort St. John - the last place of GSM moblie phone network until Alaska.
Fort Nelson
Watson Lake - Where I am now.


So. To conclude this post. Canada is amazing. The People are great, they're friendly, REALLY helpful and genuinly interested in you. They Also take a great amount of pride in their country and rightly so, it's beautiful, vast, breath-taking and has one of the warmest welcomes you'll encounter. Truly worth a visit in your lift-time.

Just watch out for bears. moose. elk. cougars. coyotes. etc...

.. the first installation. A big update.

Right. It's all been a bit go go go. and when it hasn't, there's been no internet. Currently, im sitting in the laundry room of an RV park on a friend's laptop in a town called Watson Lake which is on the Yukon territory in Canada. It's on the Alaska highway and that's about all it has going for it. that and a collection of over 65,000 signposts. I'll try explain in the most interesting way how i got here.

On the 8th of June Laura and I went to see Radiohead in Malahide castle. I all kinda starts from there. After the concert we drove to hers and she packed her bag for morocco and i dropped her and her family to the airport. I had already said goodbye to my folks, grandparents, most of my family and a good few friends. Saying goodbye to Laura was tough. I drove home to my folks and slept for a few hours, moved out of my house in stillorgan, packed everything into long-term storage. The next few days are a panic-riddled haze. Q kept an eye on me through phone calls and a nice dinner in Ballsbridge. Cheers Q, always when you're needed! Somewhere in the hazey few days I managed to though what I thought I would need to live for at least 6 months away into a bag. I forgot my hiking socks. And any sort of jacket. Idiot.

Anyway, Q invited me for some music and beers in the studio on my last night. these are the results, although the bass can't really be heard. Probably better off!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hmTYfZ_v2Sw&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6thDqFB4x6Q

Q dropped me to the bus to Belfast. I decided that I would take as many opportunities during my travels as was reasonably possible. The first presented itself in the form of two Poles on the bus from Belfast to the airport who insisted I drink whiskey and coke with them. they had convinced themselves by the end of the journey that I was a drug dealer and that I would sell them grass upon my return. Must have been some break-down in communication. So, I boarded tipsy and watched the north slide out of view resenting that the last Irish land I saw wasn't the republic.

Plane journey ensued. The weather was the same in Vancouver as when I left Ireland, overcast, too cold for a t-shirt and too hot for a hoodie. And it was roughly the same time. First impressions of Vancouver was that it smelled like a river.

Dave and Alice met me in the airport and took me back to Whistler.