More on USA and Canada

Colorado Springs was an interesting middle ground between country and city. Lots of music seems to be country, and boots are quite acceptable footware. But lots of Starbucks and American-style "restaurants". Restaurant = burgers, fajitas, pizzas, pasta, and anything else that can be fried or covered in melted cheese. That was a bit of a shock to the system after Asian's focus on rice, vegetables, and little or no fat/oil.

We climbed (drove) up Pike's Peak, where it was so high that Craig complained of being faint. This was of particular concern because he was driving... We also went to Garden of the Gods, which was impressive and would have been more so if there were not so many signs saying "stay off the grass", "stay off the rocks", "do not climb", etc. And Daryl managed to avoid following his own driving instructions and got lost trying to find the Visitor's Center. Might post some photos of these areas later on.

The flight from Colorado Springs to Denver was incredibly bumpy. Reminded me of flying into Wellington on a very windy day. We are talking about a plane that has two seats on either side of the aisle and no storage space. The flight was scheduled for 15 minutes, and I think the pilot took great pleasure in putting the plane at just the right altitude to maximise the bumps. The flight from Denver to Edmonton was much better, probably because we flew higher. Still the same size plane, but I guess the flight was longer.

Interesting aside: it was cheaper to buy a ticket from Colorado Springs to Edmonton (which involved the two flights via Denver) than to buy a ticket from Denver to Edmonton on the same plane! Idiots.

Canada was cold. We arrived into Edmonton (to be greeted by Evan's smiling face) and immediately had to go to Tim Horton's to warm up. Actually it wasn't that cold (not snowing, and the sun was shining) but we had to go to Tim's anyway.

The first day in Edmonton/Sherwood Park was cold but not too cold. It must have been hovering around zero if my memory serves. But the next day it turned cold - down to -15 and snowing. This is nice when you're used to HK/Thailand temperatures. I went to "help" with the delivery to Evan's store the next morning, which required getting up at around 5:30 in order to leave by 6am. It was snowing as we left the house. Arriving at John's store (Evan help'shelps John with his delivery, then they both go to Evan's store to do his), we settled into Tim Horton's for a quick coffee/bagel while waiting for the truck to turn up (normally shortly afterwards). After about 10 minutes Evan gets a call from the driver, who has been sitting stuck on highway waiting for the road to reopen. He's been there since 3am... Anyway, the short version is that the truck arrived a couple of hours late...

While in Edmonton we went to West Edmonton mall (as you do). The place hasn't changed much, although now that the girls are bigger they can go on more rides. Watching the people around the mall, I was struck by two things. First, there were a lot of people at the mall on a work day - why? Second, the mixture of people is different than I remember. More teenagers who looked like they were trying to immitate the goths around Harajuku in Tokyo...

Anyway, we had a great time catching up with E&K, and please refer to the Eggs Benedict review earlier on.