Victoria leg of

The Search For...Tour

Canada 07

Day 4 Out of bed late doors and headed for the ferry to go to Victoria, poor planning on our part left us waiting for the bus to the ferry for over an hour. Not often does this happen, we seem to get real lucky with these sort of things. Stu produced one of the finest bits of skill/fluke i has seen by knocking down the shuttlecock thing gibbo had kicked up onto a ledge with a tennis ball. It was about 4m up and Rocket told him to hit the back wall and then the c*** on the way back on the bounce, first go he got it and recieved solid high fives and applause from the dude in the window. Had to be there to believe it. Nice ferry cruise down through all the little islands and channel to Victoria. Played some poker on the ferry an saw a bald eagle, once very rare in these parts. The bus ride into Victoria too another 30 mins and we arrived at a highly quality base for dusty boys. Victoria is the capital of BC and we took photos of the parliment building, the waterfront, the empress hotel and other landmarks (not many). Said hello to Captain Cookie monster who arrived there before finding Australia. We had a meal at the sticky wicket, a cricket themed pub which was cool and odd in this part of the world. Some pretty hot canucks served us a feed. Stu hit the sack, 2nd day Jet lags a killer while Gibbo and Rocket waited for the band to start and had a beer in the hostel. It took ages and Rocket turned in while to his surprise stu resurfaced and headed for the bar. Gibbo and stu talked to some very random people including a bloke from Bristol who was bankrupt back home and did a runner. Also a fat canadian was trying to pick up this young bloke and couldnt cop the aussies ribbing the boys were giving her. And then she was kicking stu under the table and giving him the sexy eyes. The boys also purchased a cd of the band that were going off and sounded pretty good, more on that later.

Day 5 Plenty of grime on gibbo and stu the next morning. We headed for the museum and saw some pretty cool stuff of the first nations people, the indians who lived in the area and how they lived and stuff. Some really cool artifacts, totem poles, masks, hunting gear and that sort of thing. That was the best part of it. Also saw a mammoth, not moving too well, must have still been cold or something from the ice age. Also some moose, deer, mountain lions and some birds, all looked pretty stuffed, must be tiring standing that still all day. Back to the bus and to the ferry. We were trying to get back to Vancouver so that we could get up Grouse Mountain for a night skiing expedition. The bus driver wasnt from the same family as the taxi driver, he took forever. Atop the mountian we hired some gear, Stu and Rocket took boards while Gibbo the foot sleds (skis). We taught ourselves, neither Rocket of stu had done it before while gibbo had some experience on the sleds. We got to the top on the bigginers run and couldnt believe that it was infact the begginers run, it looked pretty steep. We crashed about 30 times on the first go but after 4 or 5 we were getting some pretty good speed and beggining to get a little too over confident. The visability was low but the snow was awesome. It wasnt long before we had a couple of serious stangs. Rocket face planted a couple of time and stu ran through a barrier and hurt his ribs, was the last go for the dog that night. It was so much fun and was easier to pick up that i thought. Brilliant night on the mountain.

Took forever to get back down the mountain. Subway proved the best offering, Stu ordered ‘Meatball Maria’ but he didnt have any so he gave him ‘meatball mariana’ instead. We hit the sack, takes it out of you a big night on the slopes for the first time.

More to come