Constable Seanan Sharp, is a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (yeah – a real Mountie!), who as part of his job goes to local schools and teaches the kids about Drug Prevention. D.A.R.E stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or as one of the kids in Max’s class said, Drugs Are Really Evil! This is a community based program that is assisted by the police and runs from Grade 5 all the way up to Grade 12. The goal is to teach kids how to say No to drugs and how to deal with peer pressure.
Molly, who has never showed much of an interest in any type of after-school sport activity, has insisted in joining the Revelstoke “AquaDucks” swim club. It might have something to do with her new best friend Eula attending but I’m just happy that she finally wants to do something else than just watch YouTube clips of “My little Pony”.
The only snag is that Molly can’t swim. While the others are warming up with four lengths of freestyle, Molly does ten meters of doggy style. But what the heck – she shows great commitment and determination! Surprisingly, the swim coaches let her stay in the group: “Aww, she has her friends here so let her stay…”. Here in Revelstoke sport is all about fun – and the kids are having lots of it!
Speedo body-hugging performance suits are so last year – this year we’re going for pink ruffled skirts with sequins…
I hate the Austrian ski resort self service restaurants with a vengeance…. Nasty food, nasty staff and very nasty prices indeed. If I wasn’t so hungry at lunchtime I wouldn’t touch them. Lucky for me (unlucky for my New Year’s Resolution to lose weight) the Revelstoke Mountain Lodge has excellent food! You can choose between Fresh Pesto Salad with Sundried Tomatoes, Spicy Thai Chicken Soup, Pulled Pork Sandwich, Lemongrass Chicken Noodle Salad or – Poutine!
“I’ll have the Vegetarian Blacken Burger with caramelized onions and jalapeños, please….”
Poutine – Canada’s answer to Currywurst or, where I’m from; “en tjock grillad med mos” – is a dish of french fries soaked in gravy with cheese curds on top. According to Jamie Oliver, in 2007 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a national poll asking viewers what they thought was the greatest Canadian invention of all time. Poutine scored higher than the electric oven, coming just behind the pacemaker and the Wonderbra. Is it a culinary highlight or just plain disgusting? Well, Daniel’s Butter Chicken Poutine was like an indian curry with fries and surprisingly good. But I’ll stick with my Lemongrass Chicken Noodle Salad. I can have that any day and twice on a Sunday….!
Meticulously groomed 3-day beards, goatees, full chinstraps or rock-and-roll Frank Zappa beards – you name it, we’ve got it! This is not the place where a respectable pow addict would show himself without a good helping of facial hair. Unless, of course, your dreadlocks go way beyond the edge of your helmet…
Some stop shaving when they retire, some stop shaving when the arrive in Canada…
Upon retiring, the business suit, as well as the razor, was dumped forever
Oh yeah! Trendy beanie, long hair and a 3-day stubble – this guy is spot on!
Nicely groomed but wild enough to make a “dude” out of Pretty Boy
If you can’t grow it, you still have to show it – painted on your face mask!
Will not make a sailor jealous but there’s enough to capture icicles
A bit of treeskiing to warm up, down North Bowl for a fast run in the semi-powder, walk up a bit for some better powder, down, up, down. And to round it all up before lunch a “baby-walk” (a climb 100m straight up) to Sub Peak! Only my pride and the infamous Dahlman stubbornness prevented me from turning around… These local guys are so incredibly fit….I’m so done…I’m off to bed…Goodnight….
Local women Shendra and Alex took me out into North Bowl and Boulder Mountain, a free rider’s dream, to try to find the powder that one of them had been showed by a Ski Patrol a couple of days earlier.
Revelstoke has the highest vertical drop in North America; 1713 meters
Beautiful day with the mountain peaks (Mt McPherson and Mt Begbie, I believe) just about sticking out, we took the “skiers most right” run, Greely Bowl along the outer boundary but we somehow managed to get lost. Not quite sure where we were and very much aware of dangerous cliffs, we took a joint decision to walk back up to the trail rather than ski down through the trees. Good decision, as it turned out, when we came down and glanced up we realised we had been standing just above some killer cliffs! I really admired Shendra’s and Alex’s responsible attitude; just 6 years ago two skiers died sliding down a chute and going over a cliff in the out of bounds area on Boulder Mountain.
Scouting for powder while enjoying the beautiful mountain panorama
I love arriving at new places and experience the exciting difference in smells and sounds! Although Almaty at 4 o’clock in the morning didn’t greet me with all of those new sensations, I knew I wasn’t in England when I was faced with Kazakhstan queueing technique at the airport; the locals were all trying to cram themselves into the “queue” for Residents and if your mind and elbows weren’t sharp as razors, you quickly found a whole family of locals miraculously appearing in front of you. At that godawful time of the morning I should have known better and chosen the “German queue”, a nice and orderly formed line with lots of personal space – and as it turned out, just as fast (or slow).
After a few hours of sleep I was ready for Almaty. First stop Green Market (Zelyony Bazar) where I stepped into an explosion of smells! Meat, vegetables, fruit, Hello Kitty backpacks, metal spare parts who knows what they were for, bras the size of babyhats – you name it they had it!
Green Market: Local flair at meat counter
Remembering the absolutely wonderful pickled cucumbers from my Moscow days in the 80’s, I decided to buy my lunch here and bring it out into the warm sunshine. Three words of Russian and the use of fingers was enough to complete the transaction.
Yummy!
Travelling is fantastic, if you allow yourself the time to enjoy the day as it comes, just around the corner there is another unexpected highlight! Crossing the park back to the hotel in the last warm rays of sunshine, I came across some kids practicing martial arts on the grass. Kids and mothers are the same all over the world – the kids were larking about and the mothers were proudly taking pictures of them with their mobile phones!
Kids having fun in the park next to the Presidential Residence
The next day I decided to warm up my hiking legs before our Three-Day-Trek and took a driver to Aksay Valley. At a remote spot, monks built a small monastery in 1917 to avoid repercussions for their faith. The monastery was closed in 1921 but in 1993 some monks returned to live a secured life in the mountains. It’s a lovely walk up through fruit orchards where the monks have painstakingly laid stones to form stairs up to the monastery. A little further up the hill, passed the church, you get a wonderful view of the mountains, valleys – and the spreading city of Almaty. I ate my lunch in the shade of a tree overlooking Almaty on one side and the towering Tian Shan mountains on the other – remembering how wonderful life can be!
Women should show respect for the orthodox monks and cover themselves when visiting the monastery
Who's been here? 