from Java Express in Regina

Well, we're in Regina. We stayed a couple of nights in a hotel that had an awesome breakfast for free! We met up with my parents on sunday - got to show them pictures of our previous adventures and new people to tell stories to. On an unfortunate note, my horse didn't make the finals for our competition, so I'm done showing. It also means that we have 5 days in Regina to wander around and find things to do. Thus far it has been going to the art gallery (Matt decided he wants to be an architect), seeing some movies, going to the farmers market, and going out to eat. At the art gallery, there was an exhibit about a green buildings, and one of the displays talked about the ILC! what a small world!

The weather has been really bad since we got to Regina too - normally it's bright and hot and sunny all day and cold and clear at night. So far this year its been cloudy and cold every day. I'm starting to lose my tan! The paper does say however that its supposed to get nice tomorrow - i hope they are telling the truth lol.

Matt and I have gone through our gear again in a quest to carry less weight. At the Calgary airport we weighed all our packs... the results were:

Matt's Large Pack: 61 pounds
Matt's Carry-on: 19 pounds
My Large Pack: 59 pounds
My Carry-on: 20 pounds

Just for reference - checked baggage can weigh up to 60 pounds and carry-ons can weigh up to 20 pounds. Spreey!

We also had a duffle bag with us that weighed 28 pounds - containing a bit of gear mike left behind as well as some food etc. Since going through everything, that duffle bag is now almost full of things to send home. We are going to reweigh our packs when we leave Regina - hopefully we'll be doing better because I'm not sure there is much we can cut out at this point lol.

Neways, thats it for now - time to go make dinner and see some of the horse show.

from Schomberg's house in Kamloops

So we're back in Kamloops after picking and sorting cherries for 2 weeks. Such good times. Right. We picked for 5 days and made a grand total of $500 dollars between the two of us. That's less than minimum wage, and we worked 8 hours a day starting at 5 in the morning. Not bad for time off in the afternoon but I'll tell you that the beach does wear thin when you have absolutely no where else to go.

We got $2.25 for a bucket like this.

Matt up a ladder. Unfortunately you can't tell he's actually 8 feet in the air.

After picking we moved to Kelowna to go and sort for Dendy Orchards. We figued that we would give something new a try since picking was the worst paying job on the face of the earth. The camp was about 90% francophone, so I didn't feel that at home for the first few days, and it was really busy because there were a lot of people staying in a very small camp. We had to fight down the weeds and sleep on a pretty big slope to even find a place for our tent. Sorting itself is the most boring, mind numbing, finger numbing job. You stand at this little sorting station and pour a bucket of cherries down the centre sloped part.

The packing house.

You then sort the cherries - perfect ones with no flaws go to the export side on your right, ones with flaws go to the left as domestics, and damaged ones are culls and get thrown into the garbage below at your left. And you do this for ever cherry in every bucket - around 100 buckets a day each containing about 375 cherries. Yes, you sort 40,000 cherries in a day. Oh and did I mention that they refrigerate the cherries and the packing house so I'm standing there for 8 hours wearing a winter hat and three shirts and work boots and my feet are numb and I can't pick up the cherries my hands are so cold. Anyways, it turned out to be a profitable adventure, and as much as I'm complaining, I actually did enjoy it and we made $700 in 4 days. Much, much better than picking.

We were supposed to stay longer sorting, but we decided that we wanted to come back to Kamloops and see Anne and take a little holiday in Banff. Then on to Regina on Friday for the Canadian National horse show. I'm really excited to go back to my other life for a bit!

from a hotel lobby at 1230 in whitesnort

so....second season planting done.

totals -
trees: 85737
days: 50
crazy italian mobster motel owners: 1
grizzly bears: 0.5

crappy alberta internet won't allow pictures....they're coming soon. promise.

from a sketchy hotel lobby in fightcourt

(with apologies to eric and dan as i stole their email for this post)

I'm in whitecourt alberta right now with matt... waiting for a bus to canmore to meet up with matt's mom and his brother... our bus leaves at 3:20 am. very exciting. note the sarcasm. other than that... i've been planting for the last shift. planted for 5 days, put in about 4500 trees and cleared about 450 bucks after camp costs. it was pretty awesome. i was only hoping to break even. it was a lot of fun! pat, the foreman told me to come back next year so i'm thinking about how to fit it in... would be really awesome. and i'd have a car and get to drive across the country which would be amazing. its a really cool lifestyle out here. the people are really awesome. huge partiers though! i don't know where they get the energy to party after a hard shift planting. the last night of the contract we finished planting at about 2 and went back and showered then went to boston pizza for dinner. drank a bunch there --- (2 team pitchers for 30 bucks) --- and then went to a bar (all 80 people in the camp). we stayed there until about 2:30 and then went back to camp on school buses. i went straight to bed, i was soooooooooo tired i couldn't keep my eyes open but most of the camp stayed up around a camp fire until it was light out... and then stayed up the whole next day without sleep to tear down camp!!!!! seriously.

oh ya, i got to ride in a helicopter too!!! i was soooo excited. i've always wanted to ride in a helicopter and now i've gotten to do it too. i wasn't supposed to be allowed to go to heli blocks (that was the plan coming in) but then one morning they were doing one and pat (foreman) was liike... well y our not really supposed to come but you can. and then he gave me this run down of training. it was aweesome. and we flew out in this really bad storm with all sorts of air pockets and such. good times and a great pilot.

Cutblock... I don't have any pictures of me planting ;(

after canmore matt and i are heading to the okanogan to hopefully go fruit picking. we had a couple other options (spraying herbicides and yard work for the treeplanting company) but we figured this was the best. we're going to go see anne and schomberg too! (well hopefully we haven't really cleared it with them yet lol). after that its off to regina for a week and then we fly into victoria on the 27th to start the WCT on the 28th. then off to AUS on the 6th.

hope all is well

And I Wait

So not much has happened on my front in the last month... although I'm a lot richer than I was before. I'm pretty much waiting to leave for BC. I've pretty much made the date official: July 17. Although there are things that could change it (and I don't have a ticket booked yet), I'm pretty sure. And I can't wait. I was planting some trees the other day for my dad and it really made me want to get out there. Travel plans are going well... getting down to the wire. I got my flu shot today and I'll get my Yellow Fever shot in a few weeks. Yay...
Ta ta for now.