….. It’s been a good night. On Friday night there was a large Edinburgh contingency and a number of other UBC students heading downtown in a limo in celebration of a 21st birthday. I was one of them. The limo ride was; an experience, I can’t say I managed the getting in and out of it with particular elegance but it was totally worth it! We were also treated to VIP seating, queue jump, free club entry and free Cosmopolitans. Once inside “Plaza” and having returned to mere-mortal status extortionate drink prices lead to the accidental failure to return the tequila shot glasses and salt. I’m not quite sure where the logic was in that one – a desperate attempt to get better value for money maybe?? Lots of dancing and a few more beverages later I found myself running for the last bus in order to get a brief two hour kip before my alarm clock went off.
4.30Am. Needless to say it wasn’t my finest hour. Once my backpack and I were safely installed in the car I promptly went back to sleep and awoke 3 hours later to find myself well and truly out of the city high in the mountains. Honestly, I can’t tell you exactly where I was other than north and east of Vancouver. I’m having issues differentiating mountain ranges: last week I think I claimed to be heading to the Rocky Mountains but I don’t think that was entirely true. The Pacific Coast Mountains may be a more accurate description. Either way; there were mountains and they had snow on!
The objective of the weekend was to carry out essential maintenance on the Brian Waddington Memorial Hut and the trail leading to it. The hut is one of four run by the Varsity Outdoors Club of UBC. Saturday’s job was to clear the paths of Alder trees so I pretended to be a lumberjack all day with secateurs and a saw. Towards the end of the day we hiked up to the hut to find snow on the ground and a partially frozen lake which provided much entertainment for the rest of the daylight hours. Once it was dark food became the priority and meals were cooked; tortellini was on the menu and one VOC-ers created a Cheesecake (I have no idea how!) Fed and watered we settled down round the songbook to perform a few of the classics courtesy of The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel.
After a much needed early night, Sunday was another day on manual labour, this time I was mining. Or rather; widening and flattening paths and trails to make the hut more accessible with the help of a beasty mattock. Once we got back to the cars in the late afternoon I was shattered and slept most of the journey back. There was a brief stop in Whistler for dinner followed by more sleeping ‘til we got back to campus at about 10.30pm….
…..At which point I sat down to finish writing the essay that was due in on Monday. Staying awake and typing words in a coherent order didn’t seem to be working well for me so I caught up on more sleep and spent much of my Monday morning typing away.
My realisation over the last few days: the work is never ending. From what I can see I don’t have a break from deadlines and exams until Christmas which is rather a bleak outlook. Thankfully Christmas just got way more exciting than trees and tinsel. Two of my best friends from Edinburgh will be heading to my side of the world so it’ll be more a case of snow and snowboarding as well as the usual festivities. Definitely something to look forward to!
I’m sure the time between now and then will fly by; my weeks are kept continually busy by choir, rugby and that university malarkey. Plus keeping up with the lives and loves of people on both sides of the Atlantic prevents me from twiddling my thumbs, which I think, while living in Vancouver, would be impossible.
