Jul 2008

The Pemberton Festival has come to town!! Or at least to Pemberton anyways. PemFest, as it has affectionately become known, is to Canada what Splendor in the Grass is to Australia and what Glastonbury is to the UK. Basically, it's a huge music festival spanning three days and several hundred acres of potato fields just outside a tiny village called Pemberton, 40 minutes north of Whistler.

And, of course, Bec wanted in. So as a means of reliving her Big Day Out days while simultaneously hoping to generate feelings of renewed youth in view of her looming milestone birthday, Bec set about getting herself involved. Eventually she landed her dream job: making and selling popcorn!!! Mmmmmm popcorn. Considerable excitement ensued, given especially that popcorn constitutes a large part of Bec's diet. And so Bec spent two days selling popcorn and lemonade to the sounds of some of the world's best rock bands at the foot of spectacular Mount Currie. She slept at the campsite with 40 000 other people, drank beer and ate poutine and loved every minute of it apart from getting home. Logistical transport teething problems made sleeping outside the Greyhound Station look like the most viable option for Bec and her two new and equally frustrated friends from Calgary until (cue Hallehujah chorus) the arrival of Dan the Taxi Driver from Heaven who transported the tired threesome home and scored a 100% tip for his efforts. Total time taken to get home: 5 hours and 20 minutes for what is usually a 40 minute drive.

The view from the popcorn stand

Popcorn queen!!

Tent city and a familiar tent

Wolfmother on stage-cam

We can hardly believe how fast time is flying here!! We're almost half way through our time in Canada.

Canada Day was July 1st and lots of people were out and about watching the parade and having a Kokanee afterwards. Whistler's parade was fairly controversial this year because the organising committee decided to make it a 'green' parade, meaning non-motorised floats only which apparently halved the size of the parade and made the locals unhappy. Still, plenty of fun was had by all, Canadian or otherwise.

Canada Day Kids

Every Wednesday here the mountain runs a social bike race called the Phat Wednesday bike race, which usually involves about 200 riders riding down the mountain and drinking free beer afterwards. Glenn crashed his bike before the start of the last race, so instead of the 'I'm finished, meet you at the Longhorn for drinks in ten minutes' phone call, Bec received the 'I've crashed my bike and am at the hospital' phone call. Accumulating more good-wife points, Bec dutifully put down her wine, abondoned her icecream and turned off the real estate channel and went to the hospital where she found Glenn having nine stitches put in his knee in the Paediatric Trauma Room (hehehe about the paediatric part). Five hours, nine stitches and a considerable amount of money later we left the hospital. The follwing day Bec went down to the second hand store and bought a pair of crutches (from a selection of no less than 9 pairs, there's clearly a huge market for crutches in this town) to replace the modified vacuum cleaner pole we found in the house.

Casualty in Canada

The knee isn't healing as well as we'd hoped in terms of regaining movement so Glenn hasn't been on the bike in about three weeks, which is fairy gutting given it's rather the point of being here. So we've taken to wandering around town with the camera and walking the valley trails. There's a few more bikers on the hill now in preparation for Crankworx so the action is more hardcore and lends itself to great photography.

Hardcore bikeboy

We've received our schedules for Crankworx which will see us both on the mountain showing the pro's where to go. Bec volunteered the other day for the BC Bike Race and found herself at the bottom of three flights of stairs, wearing a high-vis vest and screaming 'Get off your bike, take it up the stairs and cross the bridge at the top!' at more than 400 cyclists and three guys on dirtbikes who chose to take the lift instead of the stairs. We're immersing ourselves into Whistler life and took ourselves out clubbing the other night which prompted us to think of the last time we'd had nightclub stamps on our wrists and decided we must have been about 21 years old which, incidently, was about the average age of the people we went clubbing with!! Riding home through the woods in the dark proved challenging but fun. On Wednesday night we took our warm clothes and went to Lost Lake and watched a movie under the stars.

Bec is in her element avoiding all things related to her upcoming birthday and planning the upcoming travel to Iowa. Glenn became slightly less enthused in the planning when he learnt it the trip would still take three days to get there even if we fly!!