Good times in and around Calgary

Another weekend, another day of boarding and this valentines day weekend had some amazing powder at Louise that Suzy and I took full advantage of and had one of the best days on the mountain yet. Below is a video from one of the weekend riding at Louise with my new Go Pro. The video is pretty slow to start and provides some good views of the slopes and the unreal views of the mountains. The second half is a little more of the snowboarding and a little better than the second half, this is also one of my first attempts at cutting a video. I have some great footage from this weekend but won't have much time to cut it so will be in one of the future posts. Enjoy the video, just click on the picture below and it should open.

Video of some snowboarding at Lake Louise

Afterwards we continued the day on by going to the actual Lake Louise to skate on the pond. It was completely surreal and felt like something out of a movie to skate on a lake in between the mountains in front of the grand Fairmont Hotel right on the lake with ice sculptures, kids playing hockey and families skating around. The video and photos attached are an attempt to show the views and experience but as usual I don't believe they do it any justice.

Suzy enjoying the views and hockey on the Lake

Hockey and skating on the frozen Lake Louise rinks

Ice sculpture of 2 Elk fighting

Video skating at Lake Louise

The last month here in Calgary has held some great occasions in Canadian lifestyle some of which only come around every couple of years... Yes people I am talking about the Winter Olympics.

Its quite funny coming from Australia to here where if we get anything less than a bronze in an event we are usually pretty disappointed, but when it comes to the Winter Olympics we are usually just happy to see that someone from the country showed up. I mean it's not like we don't cheer for them but based on our climate it has never really been our cup of tea. Well, when it comes to Canada, the roles are reversed. As their Winter Olympic motto stand "We are winter". So for them this is a big deal and it has been great to get involved and have 2 countries to be cheering for in these games as I now classify myself as a psuedo-Canadian.

As most know the biggest event for Canadians is the ice hockey. For them this is the be all and end all of the Olympics, and from what I have it sometimes felt that they cared more about beating the Americans in the games than actually getting gold in the event. Anyhow the games went on with Canada undefeated up to the quarter finals which they made it through and had a tough game against the US in semi-finals, which was on 10am-12:30pm on a Friday and to say the least my whole office of about 150 people ended up in the lunch room to watch the game. Upon winning this game they advanced to the gold medal match which was on a Sunday at 5:30am due to the time difference. This was funny as the Premier of Alberta on that Friday afternoon (almost immediately after the announcement of Canada making the gold medal game) dropped restrictions on the liquor laws of the province so that bars could open at 5am.

So we went to a local bar at 4.30am on a Sunday and saw the biggest line we have seen at the place ever at this particular bar (larger than any Saturday night for sure) and we somehow managed to get a table. We stayed an watched the game and drank beer at 5am, when in your life have you ever said you WENT (no left), yes WENT to the bar at 5am....

It was cold but I managed to pull off some sweet Canadian supporter gear as you can see in the photo.

My Canadian Supporter gear for the game

The game was unreal and the atmosphere in a bar at 5am was absolutely unreal, such a great experience. When the goals were scored everyone was high fiving and hugging each other around the bar sharing in the countries triumph. Below is a video to show the bar at the end siren when it was official that Canada had won gold in the Men's Hockey.

Video of Canada wining the men's hockey

After the game we drank with friends and managed to crawl out at 1.30pm after a day of great sherades and gold medal cheer. I have added some photos of the celebrations throughout the day.

So anyway I am heading back up north to work.in the oil sands again for the next 2 weeks so.I daresay I will be very quiet up there... In the meantime I have some great footage from snowboarding on the weekend just need to edit it so that will likely be up in the next post. So for now, catch ya later