From Canada with love

From Canada with love,

I recently had the pleasure of being stopped at the Canadian Customs inspection depot in the Edmonton airport flying in from San Jose. The lady behind the counter was, for the lack of a better term, a bitch. I have been to Canada for my job several times and never had I recieved such a hard time getting into this country. I have done work in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and now Edmonton but this was different I guess since the new immigration and border laws went into effect.

I found out that if you are going to Canada for work, you should always say that you are having a meeting or observing something in your field. They don't feel so threatened by this and will let you pass without needing a work permit, invoice or god forbid a visa. The lady behind the counter was in some kind of powertrip according to my project manager Jay. I just let him handle the situation and get her the paperwork that she was requesting for our work up there.

We left the nice sunny and warm weather of San Jose for Edmonton which froze the second night that we were there (in September). I don't even want to imagine how frickin cold that it gets up there if it is freezing there in early September. I am from Indiana so I know somewhat about cold weather and its effects on people. We went to do our work in the Edmonton Arena (Hail Gretzky) via Gretzky Blvd and Gretzky Lane. I think that they may have named a road for Messier but it wasn't near the arena. Jay said that it wasn't that cold and that I am just being a wimp about the weather but I pointed out that if the Canadian's that live here are wearing coats I should be as well. Did I mention that I did not bring ANY winter clothes on this trip? Anyway, I thought that since it is September 2nd it would be somewhat comfortable, brisk weather up there. I guess that I was correct in that assumption but I underestimated the degree of briskness. Jay was nice enough to stop by the Goodwill there so that I could pick through the Canadian junk there and find something to keep myself warm. I love going to the Goodwill stores but this was entirely different than the ones in Jacksonville or Indiana. There were so many hockey sweaters that they had their own section! I thought that was pretty cool but who really wants a "Rays Autoparts" hockey sweater? If I hadn't already purchased a Charlestown Chiefs sweater this year I might have picked one up. I bought a zip up hoodie and we were off to a very fine Thai restuarant named "Haong Long". This was probably the finest Thai food that I have ever had and I must recommend the coconut rice especially.

After this we were off to Calgary (3 hours away) after working until 4 in the afternoon the next day. We finished our work there but it was kind of scary to say the least.

As you can see from the pictures to the right I was working up in the rafters of the arena. That big thing on the right is a center hung scoreboard. This paticular one shoots fire out of itself since they are the Flames. I am not afraid of heights but for some reason I was getting dizzy when I was walking on this catwalk. I needed to have a seat somewhere else for a moment. On the long drive home I realized that I was just suspended about 150 feet above the ice and for some reason that bothered me. Imagine that. I got through the task just fine though, in fact I am kind of proud of myself for not wimping out of this situation. I don't know how many other people would have been doing what I was doing up there (testing equipment) and been fine with it. After this we got back into the car and drove back to edmonton (3 hours) at 9:15. This put us back into our warm beds at 12:15 am but I failed to mention that our departing flights were at 7:05. This meant that we would need to get out of bed at 4 to make our gates. All in all it was a good trip and even more so a learning experience in dealing with the Canadian border patrol upon entering. Take my advice to heart and happy travels.

Denver to Phoenix is a long drive...

During the end of August I was lucky enough to spend some time out in Denver, CO. It lived up to the hype that I had heard about it but something was very surprising to me. Denver is VERY VERY dry, the place has no humidity. That was surprising to me since this place gets a ton of snow and freezing rain. Apparently, after someone explained it to me that made sense. The humidity is in the form of snow or sleet or freezing rain and it doesn't hang around for the rest of us to enjoy. Since I live in Florida I have become use to the fact that if it is hot outside it is going to probably (99% of the time) be VERY humid. I walked out of the airport to meet my coworker and noticed that it was extremely dry. Anyway, from a Yankee such as myself living in the south can be expected I had to ask why. The people waiting for a porter to take their bags looked like they were stranded on a mountainside for a week without food or water standing next to me. I asked them if they had fallen into a crevice or had gotten lost during an excursion up the mountainside. They laughed with their dry cracked lips and said "No, no. It is just very dry up in the mountains out here and they have wind burn." I am pretty adventurous and like to get outdoors but these people looked like the dehydrated walking dead. After finding this out my partner showed up and we did what we were supposed to do for the Avalanche.

The next day I thought that we were going to fly to our next destination (Phoenix). It is only a 55 minute flight that costs around $80. It turns out that we are driving from Denver to Phoenix which is going to take about 12 hours. YEAH! After about 6 hours we were eventually in the desert which was surprisingly nice. I took a few photos of the drive from DEN to PHO.














I couldn't let the DRY BEAVER CREEK sign go, the guys that I was traveling with took the same picture as well. We drove past NORAD, if you don't know what that is you should watch the movie War games. That is the place the Matthew Broderick hacks into and were you can find the WOPR. If you have to ask, don't worry about it. We eventually get into Phoenix and it is very much as I expected, HOT. We stayed at the Camel back Inn, it was very cool and had a very nice pool and hot tub. One night my coworker and I encountered a very bizarre set of girls from Omaha Nebraska near the pool. They started talking to us which was fine except for the fact that they were 17 and vacationing with their family at this hotel. I can't recall either if the girls names but when they said the next line it caught my attention. "Omaha has a huge gang problem and my friends think that I'm ghetto." Jay and I looked at each other and started to smile after this comment. He looked at her and wanted to know more about this growing scourge in Omaha. She proceeded to tell us of the constant fighting and shootings that are happening at her old school. That is why she goes to a Christian school now but her classmates call her ghetto. So I asked her if she thought that she was ghetto and why they might think this. She wasn't sure why they thought this besides the fact that her school is very ghetto and stuff. After asking around when I got back into Jax I found that there actually is a problem with this type of stuff out there in the middle of nowhere. Who would have thought. Nonetheless it was entertaining to hear this and added some much needed comedy to this trip.

We got into the arena where the Phoenix Coyotes play and this was across the street. The University of Phoenix Stadium, it looked more like an inflatable temporary stadium to us. If I didn't already know what this thing was I would have been really shocked. This stadium is actually one of the most technologically advanced in the country. They dumped something like 10 million on just IT and networking for this place but I would not be lucky enough to get to go inside this one. I was stuck in the jobing.com arena for the day which isn't too shabby either. We were diligent in our efforts and finally got our work done after a very long couple of days. This was my first time in both of these cities and I was pleasantly surprised by both. I recommend that if you have the means you should give them a visit as well.