World Tour 2002

 Introduction 
 Boston 
 Williamstown 
 Grove City 
 Louisville 
 Calgary / Banff 
 Prince George 
 Vancouver 
 San Francisco 
 Las Vegas 
 Los Angeles 
 New Zealand 
 Thailand 
 Rome 
 Venice 
 Vienna 
 Berlin 
 Oslo 

Calgary and Banff

14th October - 22nd October

Customs officials in Canada were just as suspicious of me as the Americans. Lots of inane questions and rummaging through my luggage. They ask me several times how long I'm going to be in Canada. I reply "I'm not exactly sure. Two weeks. Three at the outside." Finally, they seemed to believe me, and asked if I'd be happy with a three-week visa. I agreed, and they gave me the standard six-month visa. All through this, Monkeyman is waiting in the arrivals hall, wondering what's happened to me. Finally I'm allowed through and we meet up.

We get back to Monkey's house, and I'm introduced to his flatmates and pets. I can't remember what we got up to that evening. I think it was mostly playing computer games. The next evening, though, we got together with some of Monkey's other friends (including Frum) to play card games that I'd never heard of before. One was Dutch Blitz, but I don't remember the names of the others.

During the days, I tended to go into town to explore. I went up the Calgary Tower, which had great views of the city, and to Prince George's Park, where I got to see black squirrels to go with the white ones in Louisville. I also went to the Chinese Cultural Centre, which had a fairly extensive museum inside it.

A couple of times Mocha (Monkey's cat) woke me up early in the morning, complaining that no-one else was paying her any attention.

At the weekend, me and Monkey went into Banff. The original plan was to hike around Lake Louise, but we ended up climbing Mount Sulfur instead. We started the hike at about 2:15pm, and a sign at the bottom saying that the cable car would stop running at 4pm. We later found out that was a lie, and it would run until 6:30. This cable car is, if I recall correctly, the steepest in the world, or in North America, or something. It costs $20 to go up, but going down is free.

The views from the path were amazing, and the endorphin rush from such unaccustomed exercise felt pretty good too. It took us about 2 hours 15 to reach the top, which was pretty good, seeing as it was listed as 2 - 5 hours. There was a big plaque with useful information like the mountain's height and weight, the length of the trail, the partial pressure of oxygen as compared to sea level, and so forth. The only one I remember, though, is that Mount Sulfur weighs 29 billion tonnes. Actually, we didn't quite reach the summit - the final part of the trail was cordoned off because it was too late in the season. But we were only a few yards below that, anyway. We got the cable car back down to the car park, and I discovered that Monkey has a slight problem with heights. Which makes it a shame that he got the seat facing out from the mountain.

After that, we went into the town of Banff to get some pizza. Banff is a wonderfully beautiful town, so long as you stick to the main roads. The backs of buildings seem to have had far less effort put into making them look like they came off a chocolate box, though.

As Monkey promised, Aardvark's Pizza makes the second-best pizza I have ever had in my life. We went out to a lake (I forget which one) to eat, and then headed back to Calgary. The conversation we had in the car meandered between Hugh Grant films, car registration plates and imperial/metric conversions.

On Monday, as it was my last day in Calgary, I tried to go to the Science Museum, but apparently it's not open on Mondays, so that didn't happen. On Tuesday morning, Monkey dropped me off at the Greyhound station on his way to work, and I headed off to Prince George.