Sunday 25th June, 2006
One of the Canadians I work with led a group of 4 of us on a scramble up the side of Mt Tyrwhitt. Scrambling requires the use of your arms and legs to scale steep mountain slopes without any ropes or harnesses.
Above: Mt Tyrwhitt (2874m). The blue sky is visible through a rock arch that we would climb up to. It is a very small feature on this photo, above and slightly to the right of my outstretched hand. This photo was taken after we descended.
Below: Scrambling up the side of Mt Tyrwhitt.
Above: Near the top of Mt Tyrwhitt, at the rock arch.
Below: Panorama from the top of Mt Tyrwhitt.
Above: Over the July long weekend, some of us from the cricket team who weren't all cricketed-out drove 8 hours across the praries for a weekend of cricket in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan. I'm sure it would have taken much longer if we weren't doing 150km/hr down the highway most the way. There were two mini-vans - one blaring the Indian love songs from their latest Bollywood star, and one blaring The 12th Man. You can guess the composition of each van...
Below: One of the things that is really different about the cricket club I belong to in Calgary is how serious they are about team lunches. And given the number of Indian and Pakistani players on the team there's never a shortage of great curries going round. Unfortunately on this tour we were playing the Pakistani Cricket Club of Regina, so we had as much curry as you could eat, 2 meals a day for 4 days! On the menu today was rice, dahl, curried veges, naan and rice pudding for dessert.
Above: After the last game we ran the annual running race to determine the 2nd slowest person in the team (it having been acknowledged that John Farley was the slowest). This event has a tradition of incurring some sort of accident or spill, and this one was no exception. A few muscles were badly strained, but not a drop of beer was spilt by the runner in the middle.
Below: The legislative building for the provence of Saskatchewan in Regina. Our team was walking around here after a game (still in our whites and grass stains) and I can't remember a time where we've received stranger looks. Most Canadians still haven't heard about cricket.
Above: STAMPEDE!! July marks the time for the annual Calgary Stampede - The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth, or so they proudly proclaim. The Stampede is the city's biggest annual event and during this time the city more than doubles in population, attracting some 1.2 million people over the week of festivities. It kicks off with the Stampede parade through town, which takes 3 hours to complete and involves over 750 horses and thousands of people. YEE-HAW!!
The whole city transforms itself during the week with businesses putting on pancake breakfasts everywhere and makeshift bars and saloons popping up all over the place. Every shopfront window is decorated in cowboy themes and hay barrels line every corner. Calgarians will dress in western gear and most people will wear a white or black cowboy hat, depending on whether they are "good guy" or not. The white cowboy hat is now a symbol for Calgary, and these hats are presented to visiting dignitaries as gifts.
