Stampede Showgrounds

Saturday was Stampede day proper for us. Shane had lined up grand stand tickets for the Chuck Wagons so we figured we would have a good look at the showgrounds proper before the races at 8pm. It's a lot like the royal shows back home but quite a bit smaller. The primary difference is that instead of the dog trials, & equestrian, they have Rodeo events & Chuck Wagon races.

The picture above could just as easily be sideshow alley at the Ekka in Brisbane or any of the royal shows around Oz. The food is just as bad, just as expensive and the cost for the rides are as bad as back home.

One thing they do have at Stampede is mini doughnuts! Just like the normal sized ones, but so much better for some reason. Maybe because there's more sugar and cinnamon.

There's the Horn, AND THEY'RRRE OFFFF!
This shot is from the start of the race. Notice how many horses & riders are involved & they all squeeze into a standard horse track by the first corner.

Below is a great example of how close these guys get to each other. At the start, the Wagons do a figure 8 around the barrels & get very sideways until the first corner.
Unfortunately last night, not two races after this one, there was a big "accident" on the first corner where one of the drivers got too close to the one on the inside, tripped up the other team's horse & bought the whole wagon down. I won't go into too much detail, but a horse died on the scene & two were destroyed afterward. All three were from the same team.
The driver of a following wagon was thrown out of his wagon & ended up in hospital. I was quite upset by the whole thing & I don't think I was alone.
Because of one man (known as "The Chief" because he was a genuine Indian Chief once) of 30 years experience who should know better, two horses lost their lives. I'm not amused. I may be a little harsh on the Chief. He was apparently boxed in by Kelly Sutherland, another guy who should know better. I called it as I saw it.
Unfortunately it soured an exciting evening.

Stage Coach

Oddly enough, this was my highlight of the night. This stage coach wasn't that spectacular, but the 8 Clydesdale's were. I've not a big fan of horses since one bit me when I was a kid, but these were very impressive animals & the coach just topped it off.

Calgary Stampede!

This week, the City of Calgary went completely wacky. The world renowned Calgary Stampede has been on since last Thursday night (5th). Everyone in town & from out of town dons the cowboy get up including boots (see previous entry with Kerri's new boots), a cowboy hat, & denim jeans. The funny thing is that most of that gear, now self respecting man on the land would wear any of it. It's very much all for show, but it's quite effective when everyone does it, including the local ex-pats.</p> <p>All the bars in town gear up as country as possible & they are packed to the rafters for most of the week. The long daylight hours add to the mayhem as nobody realizes how late it is (even on a school night).

Thursday night we went to the Stampede grounds for a bit of a nosey & then to see the band Live, play live. For a $15 entry, it was a bargain for anyone who wanted to go see them. And it seemed like everyone in Calgary did!
I'm not a big fan of crowds & got a bit snakey when a group of guys started trying to bust through to the front. Eventually we found a spot a bit less congested & I quite enjoyed it after that. Kerri had a great time.
We also had a bit of a sticky beak at the Chuck Wagon races while we were there. More on that later.

Johnny Knoxville

Some of you may know this guy as Shane (amongst other things). He has recently adopted a new wardrobe style due to the Stampede fever that hit Calgary 2 weeks ago. He's unwittingly turned himself into a bit of a ringer for Johnny Knoxville of Jackass & Duke's of Hazard fame. I think he even likes the new tag.

Calgary Zoo

Kerri, Shane & I decided a trip to the zoo would be a good idea considering that the rest of the locals were either at the Stampede or had skipped town to avoid it.

The Calgary Zoo isn't nearly as impressive as Taronga Zoo in Sydney, but it was OK. They are gradually upgrading the enclosures to a more modern standard so some are really good & others are straight out average.
The two bison pictured didn't seem to upset about their paddock. It would have been a holiday camp for them getting fed well & not having to walk too far to find it. The Canadians actually farm these guys commercially & THEY TASTE DELICIOUS! The meat is very lean & tasty. I swore I wouldn't eat bison before I came to Canada, but since I found out they were farmed, I changed my mind.

The Calgary Zoo seems to have Owls everywhere. Not only do they have aviaries specifically for them, but they seem to appear in all sorts of strange exhibits. One (same as pictured) was perched high above the entrance to the nocturnal house & dropped a white surprise on the lady standing next to Shane!

I shouldn't laugh. I'm just glad it wasn't me.
The one pictured was a particularly big one I reckon he was close to half a metre tall & kinda creepy looking. We nick named him John English.

The Grizzlies didn't seem to concerned about the whole captivity thing either. They seemed to be just lying there contemplating their own reflections in the pool. They were taking hibernating a little too seriously.

They have 3 elephants at Calgary Zoo including this bull. Notice the steel sleeves on the end of his tusks. I assume it has something to do with stopping him damaging them on the enclosure. This was Kerri's favourite, a big bull.

Kerri's new work.

All things going to plan, this will be where Kerri will work starting in a couple of weeks. It's the Alberta Children's Hospital. Brand Spankin' new & very flashy. It's perched up on top of a hill in the North West overlooking the Bow River & the Calgary Winter Olympic venue. The all things going to plan relies on the red tape the heath department go through to let you work for them. No wonder they are short of personnel in Alberta.

Calgary Tower

This is a better shot of the Calgary Tower. No particular significance, just a better shot.

Calgary Stampede Parade

The first major event is the Stampede parade, where they close of two of the main streets in the downtown area & have a series of floats, marching bands, horses etc. All very impressive I'm sure except it's held on a Friday when some of us have to work. Lucky for Kerri, she was able to walk a few blocks from the apartment & check it out. She took a bunch of photos & I've just picked out a few of them.

Canadian Mounties

More from the Parade. Kerri has a thing for the Mounties. She keeps threatening to run off with a cute one. How Rude!

Big Chief Riding-horse

These guys are apparently actual "First Nation people" (as they're called here). They are doing pretty well these days with the oil field royalties coming out of Alberta at the moment.

Mega Poopa Scoopa

With all the horses & other livestock in the parade, they had a street cleaner go past every now & then to clean up after the animals. It's rather cleaver disguising them as floats.

New Wheels

How many kids with Attention Deficit Disorder does it take to change a light bulb? Let's go ride bikes!
It doesn't really come off the same when you type it, but most of you will know the joke anyway. I have to give Dave Hughes (comedian) the credit for that one.
More importantly, Kerri & I bought ourselves some new push bikes this afternoon. Expensive habit when you throw in extras like helmets & bike locks to name a couple. It was roughly a $1000 afternoon between the two of us. We had to hunt around a bit, but managed to get a couple of reasonable bikes for crappy mass produced bike prices. Below is my new set of wheels.

We are very excited about the bikes. Not having a car & having to rely on public transport to get around, has narrowed our range of territory in Calgary. Now that we have bikes, we can get almost anywhere. Calgary is quite flat so it doesn't take too much effort to go anywhere of interest. There are some great bike paths along the river & around the reservoir. Kerri's bike below.

Hot air Ballons

So I wondered back into work today after a week away from the office at an Intergraph SmartPlant 3D course (those in the piping game will know what I'm talking about) & settled in to check some e-mails & gaze out at the mountains. Sure enough, the mountains were still there but with much less snow on, but check out the other scenery floating past! Pretty cool hey?
I'm in strife if work ever gets busy. How am I going to watch the world go by when I have my head down & bum up working hard???

Kerri's new boots

These aren't really my thing, but Kerri had to have them, particularly with the Stampede looming next weekend. They're not cheap let me tell you. Kerri likes them so that's the main thing. They're made by the Alberta Boot Company & the shop in downtown Calgary is huge! The number of boots in that one shop is quite overwhelming. They have hundreds of different styles & they're made from either Cow Hide, Kangaroo Hide (very soft leather) or Snake Skin (very tacky if you ask me). Kerri's are a burgundy colour made from Cow hide. I saw a number of pairs in there for well over $800 CAD!
1 Canadian dollar (CAD) is about 0.9 Aussie Dollars at the moment.

I'm on the lookout for some hiking boots myself. The ones I'm after are about $170! Ouch! They will get a bashing over the next two years with the road trips into the mountains & they'll come in handy in the colder months around Calgary.

New Barby.

Finally after a solid week of assembling stuff (Ikea mainly) we finally finished everything.
The last item on the list was the barbecue. Yes barbecues are used places other than Australia & South Africa! They are very popular here in fact. Every apartment in the city seems to have a Barbecue, outdoor setting & a push bike on the balcony. Summer time is looked forward to & they certainly make the most of the warm weather around these parts.

Caddy Shack

Anyone who has seen the movie Caddie Shack would have an idea of what these little guys are. They have a bunch of different names here, Gophers, yellow gophers, picketpins, flickertails, and tawny American marmots.

The correct name here is Richardson's Ground Squirrels.
Whatever they're called, they are prolific around here to the point of plague proportions. They're prolific diggers & you have to be careful not to roll your ankle on the entrance to their burrows. They are either very bold or very stupid because you can get very close to them before they take off.

Our New Home.

It's been a hectic week trying to move out of our temporary accommodation at James' place (no doubt he'll appear in later blog entries) & trying to get set up in the new apartment. We're on the 4th floor of 9.

The apartment isn't huge, but with 2 bedrooms & a stack of storage space, it has plenty of elbow room. It has a nice little balcony where we have a small outdoor setting & a barbecue (when I assemble it).
From the balcony we have a nice view down the tree lined street & of some of the high rise buildings out to about 6 blocks away. We can also see the Calgary Tower (below).

The Calgary Tower is so similar to many others around the world including the Centre Point in Sydney. I have seen one in Auckland & Vancouver on the way here.

Not really my choice of things to bring from home, but the pink bedding followed us from Oz. Kerri likes the idea of a reminder of home. The main bedroom is quite spacious & has a big walk-in robe attached. The window has the same aspect as the balcony.

Below is the lounge & dining area. We already have a comfy couch & a dining table. The delivery guys had to skull drag the couch up the stairwell because it didn't fit in the lift. They also had to remove our front door to get it into the apartment! Nice couch though.

This is my way of feeling at home. A guy has to have his home entertainment gear. The TV is only a 32" LCD. I didn't see the point of spending more than double the $$ for a 40". After all we only have a smallish living room after all. The DVD player is pretty good. Its basically a surround sound 1200w amp with a 5 DVD carousel. It also has an iPod docking station, 5 surround speakers & a sub woofer fully sick mate! Well I like it anyway & it was reasonably cheap. The only downfall is that it doesn't play region 4 DVD's (Australia is region 4) so the selection of DVD's we bought over will have to be played through the computer.

New Digs

Today I started my new job in Calgary. I have a new city, a new job, all new workmates, and a new view! Check out what I see from my desk.

Notice the Canadian Rocky Mountains on the horizon. I look roughly in the direction of Banff. Anyone want a snow report? Just ask me anytime I'm at work!

First expedition to Banff National Park.

Our first exploration into the mountains took us to Bannf. Kerri, Shane, Canne and I rented a Jeep Cherokee for the weekend and headed up to Banff National Park on the Sunday. It was bucketing rain when we set off, but we still managed to get some OK weather and saw some nice scenery.
We made a stop in Canmore for some awesome muffins. This could be a manditoty stop for future trips.

We skipped Banff on the way out trip and took a divert off the Trans-Canada along the Bow Valley Parkway. The shot below was taken along the way.

What would a trip to a national park be without some wildlife spotting?
These White Tailed Deer were just grazing on a roadside grassy patch. This photo is a Doe and its' fawn. Another tick for the "Been there seen that" box!

This was a prize scalp. This Elk was grazing on the bushes beside the Bow Valley Parkway. He's a big boy! He wasn't the slightest bit concerned about us.

Surprise bend is almost at the end (Lake Louise end) of the Bow Valley Parkway. I'm not sure why they called it Surprise Bend. Whatever the reason, I just couldn't help it! A picturesque setting and a Canadian Pacific freight train. I just had to take a photo!
OK. No more train pics.

I did wait for the train to pass & took a few shots. This one was taken up river (opposite to the previous shot). I remember this stretch from the Rocky Mountaineer.

Lake Louise

Beautiful isn't it? The picture tells the story.
Pity it's one of the few tourist traps around these parts. I imagine it's a bit more peaceful during winter when it's only the diehard local skiers in the area.

Apart from Lake Louise being a tourist trap, I somehow managed to bring along a couple of them with me. Shane is more shutter happy than I am and the girls (Canne pictured and Kerri) were getting very pissed off at us. Shane has a similar picture of me taking this shot. Idiots!
This won't be the last road trip into the mountains.

Everywhere we go, Kerri seems to find an opportunity to take the hiding behind the tree in the forest shot. Here's yet another.

The Trans-Canada Highway

It isn't a bad patch of scenery heading along the main Trans-Canada highway. This is fairly typical of the road between Lake Louise & Banff.

We just pulled over on the way from Lake Louise to Banff. These two shots were taken from the same point but two different aspects. Castle Mountain is in the second shot.

Vermillion Lakes Lookout

Here's another great spot. It overlooks Vermillion Lakes, the same place where I took a series of awesome shots from the train just outside of Banff. Mount Rundle is in the first photo.

Banff Merchandising stores.

Similar to the shop in Vancouver, Kerri found another stuffed bear to have a photo taken with. Once again they wouldn't let us send it home the her mum.
HOW RUDE!!!

Princess Island Park

The Bow River runs from the B.C./Alberta border in the Rocky Mountains, across the prairie to Calgary. The river runs right along the north of the Downtown area. Right at this point the river forks & forms an island that has been developed as a public park called Princess Island Park.

There's heaps of wildlife including loads of geese, birds & some very bold squirrels. More on squirrels later when one sits still for long enough for me to take a photo if it.
This photo is taken from the park back toward the downtown.