August 7th

8pm: Liberty Lake, WA Well a long drive down from Canmore to Liberty Lake, a little community just outside Spokane. It was of course much, much warmer down here than up there. The drive itself took us through the Kootenay region of British Columbia, and over the border into Idaho. The Idaho section was interesting, real redneck, hillbilly country in parts - the area we drove through is home to the remnants of the Aryan Nation. Not hard to imagine them holed up in the tumbledown shacks that you see from the highway. Anyway we reached Liberty Lake, had a really nice dinner & then took the kids to the lake itself, where they had a blast playing in the sand on a staggeringly beautiful evening!

May 7th

9am: On my way from Kelowna up to meet some customers in Armstrong, the weather forecast was calling for thunderstorms & this impressive stack was brewing in the north west beyond the little town of Oyama in the foreground. the storms didn't transpire though & by the time I got back to Kelowna in the evening we had time for a nice dinner at the sushi place on the main drag through town. The kids ended up playing in the little park on the lakefront downtown, but they were exhausted - a result of sharing the sofa bed & the chaos that this entailed.

April 9th

3pm: All the snow from Thursday translated into a good days snowboarding at Lake Louise - in terms of snow, the best of the year - with soccer & cycling taking over, this was probably the last day I'll spend there this season - spent more days on teh slopes this year than any of the previous 4 we have been out here.....

February 12th

3pm: On the short hike to the Skoko Bowl on Eagle Ridge way above the base lodge - I spent a great day at Lake Louise with Brent from the CBC, a friend of Pete in Toronto & an all round nice chap! This is probably the only time I have ridden without a helmet in the past 10 years, a slightly strange feeling of vulnerability especially as the hill was extremely icy in parts. We ended up at the Iron Goat in Canmore, where we learned of the tragic death of the Georgian Luge competitor on the opening day of The Olympics. Yet again the weather was extremely mild, can't remember the last snowy day......

January 10th

A fantastic day of snowboarding at Lake Louise, Jenne (pictured), Shane, Lisa & Brent joined us & we proceeded to shred every square inch of the hill in super-fast slick snow. Warm conditions, great company & apres ski at the Juniper - what more can you ask for!!