5th April, Perth, Western Australia

We have been really lucky as Rebekah, one of our friends in an excellent organiser and she has helped so much in our abscence overseas in getting everything ready. She has been awesome! Needless to say, my involvement from Canada has been minimal, just more so in confirming if I like what has been picked. I'm pretty casual.

This week was a rush of getting stuff done. Tan and I visited the wedding planner and venue (twice), went to the table setting place (below), bought cake bags and cards, went to the Bluewater Grill for tasting of the wedding menu (yum - check out the dukkah crust lamb below), discussed the song list with the DJ, and had an engagement photo shoot and meeting with the photographer.

So it was a pretty hectic week but once it was done all we had to do was prepare for the bucks/hen's night, write our vows and meet the celebrant.

We got the chance to go out for dinner with Tan's mum and partner, Richard, and her Aunty Bren from England. En Rico was the place to be.

I got to go skateboarding with my brother a few times and busted some great moves. We had a lot of fun.

We also did a spot of fishing in the sun catching some toadfish. Mel loves her toadies!

2nd - 4th April, Vancouver - LA - Sydney (delayed)-Perth, Australia

Well, my Canada trip had to come to an end. The work I was doing turned out well and now I can focus coming back to Australia to finalise our wedding. Vancouver again was unusually sun drenched and flying out with the mountains loaded with snow was again a great sight.

I passed over one of the US volcanoes, don't know which one though.

LAX was the usual shit hole and I am trying my best to avoid it future. Needless to say, our flight was delayed in taking off from there even though they boarded us nearly an hour earlier.

I did see an Air India jumbo with the wierdest window frame design.

On arrival in Sydney, I had views of the harbour bridge and CBD. Sydney is on the cards for one of Tan and my future trips.

I had to hang out in Sydney for an extra four hours but did bump into an old work mate from Kalgoorlie there. The world is very small.

Tan was waiting for me at the airport and amazingly so were my bags! It was great to be back with her again!!

29-30th March, Vancouver, BC

Back in Vancouver, snow was falling, ironic as it is supposed to be spring conditions. Sitting in the office on Saturday watching the snow fall and fall as large clumps sliding off the building was quite nice.

By the following the day the snow had all melted. Here is a shot from my apartment window.

After a big half day at work on Sunday, Leo called up and asked if I would like to come fly his kite at Jericho Beach. Why not? It was a beautiful spring day in Vancouver, a balmy 8 degrees Celsius. We caught a taxi and the driver spoke loudly to his mate on his mobile phone in pahsskwami or some language like that for the whole trip which we thought was quite rude. The wind was gusty and awesome to fly a kite with. The sun poked it’s head from the clouds for most of the afternoon while Hornado and I got the kite in the air. Leo was getting in some practice before heading to Mexico for some kite surfing. Leo dominated and I went better than the last time. Towards the end I swooped some kids walking along the beach unintentionally and landed the kite numerous times like a John Denver plane ride. Ooops! It was a great way to spend an afternoon. Vancouverites love seeing the sun and if it isn’t raining they embrace the fine(-ish) weather.

A few beers at the local sailing club and then back into town. Leo and I caught up with Belly, the guy that pushed me around the slopes of Whistler months previous, We were lucky as the Loose Moose did $6.95 surf and turf. We washed that down with a few tins with another bloke and his missus, who we have snowboarded with, Jason.

28th March, Points North - Shea Creek SK - Vancouver, BC

The highlight of the trip was that a group of us were visiting Shea Creek, half owned by the company I work for. This is a huge uranium deposit, though quite deep.

The sunrise over Raven Lake on this cool morning wasn't too bad.

It was still a bit fresh on the way to the airport, only -25C.
The airstrip at Points North was it's wintery white self. To the left of the snow banks is where Wes used to park his A-star helicopter in summer.
We had a charter plane which flew us across to the western side of the Athabasca Basin.
Leo and I - footy photo at the Cluff Lake international airport.
On arrival at the Cluff Lake offices, we saw that they had it well decked out with two story permanent accomodation and large core farm of historical core.

We had a presentation to set the scene of where the project was at and we were amazed at how much uranium was in the ground on the deposit. Cluff Lake is now closed but they had a long history of mining. We saw this photo of a team of hockey players from the 80's. Check out the second from the left. This guy had the grooviest moustache. Maybe I could get one like that?

Afterwards, we visited the core shack and saw some quite high grade core. The 60% uranium by weight is probably the heaviest and highest value core sample Leo and I have ever laid our hands on. At $100/lb, this rock at this grade is worth $132,000 a tonne!!!

After a great visit we all boarded the plane and took off to Saskatoon. As we left it started snowing. The snow is awesome!

25-27th March, Raven Camp, SK

Over the next few days in between work, I got to walk on the lake Tan and I watched freeze over from nothing to 5cm of ice in three days. I got to write Tan in the snow on the lake. Now the snow was thigh to groin high in areas and it was so dry you couldn’t make a snow ball out of it. It is really hard to walk in deep snow, tiring in fact. It was a sunny -21 when I took this photo.
The core racks were covered in fluffy snow, like muffins.
Brendo cruising along in the snow.

The northern lights of a night time were absolutely glorious. One night they were shimmering away. I was outside in -20C (as cold as a conventional freezer) with a gusty wind. This meant it was pretty cold in my books. Fantastic to experience this again! A rule in Canada is “Don’t eat yellow snow!”. Around the tents there was a lot of yellow snow. I did some calligraphy!!

Cooktits had a spare snowboard and boots which fitted so got to hit the slopes for two nights. I did some pretty spectacular crashes but overall learnt a bit more on the board.

Going off the slope into the powder was a silly idea. Here is me stuck in snow with a snowboard attached to my feet.
On the last day, I visited one of the rigs at Raven. A glorious cloud free day and some ptarmigans were walking around in the snow.
After visiting the rig, we went to Lake Wollaston, where I caught a large pike and walleye in the summer. Now the lake is frozen over and it has an ice road. The minimum thickness of ice was 76cm!! Semi trailers work they way across the lake and one company was actually drilling on it. I got to drive on the lake, a first and then we played on the thick blue ice. Along the Umpherville River under all that snow and ice is where we put the boat in for the first time in the summer season.
The coldest it got during these nights was -29.2C, colder than Australia’s coldest reported temperature at Charlotte’s Pass. This cold weather isn’t that bad!

The last night, the northern lights were the second most spectacular I have seen. They are an absolutely amazing phenomena.