In Yatta We Trust

After the squirrel, i got another visit from a hungry guy living in the mountain: the Whiskey Jack. Two of them came to see me while i was working on the very top of the Cypress mountain. They live in conifers forest all over Canada, and are also known as Gray Jay. Their name come from a first nations god called Wisakedjak.

I gave them a bit of blueberry biscuit which they seem to really like! Like the squirrel they don't seem to be afraid of people, you can just hold your hand in the air and they will come on it ! I guess the next time i will be feeding a grizzly bear with my hands

Here is a little video i took that day:

They were nice enough to stay with me for a while, so time got faster. It's a pity they can't talk

Today we nearly got savagely killed by a tough Canadian squirrel called Nut. He is living in one of the lift shacks and is armed and dangerous. We gave him a cereal bar with nuts today, but he got angry after and started to jump on us. I got scratched on my hand, i probably have rabies by now.

He helped us a lot today, taking care of the lift controls, shoveling tons of snow and smoking cigars.

More photos of Nut the squirrel on my gallery here!
More Tic&Tac videos here and here and also here!

We got up this morning at 5h30 to go to work, but something was strange. A big chunk of our area (near the Broadway & Commercial cross) was plunged into darkness. A big storm hit the city last night, trees are down, power too. We were lucky to have power in our street! We called the ski phone on the way to realize that the mountain was close due to the storm! Damn, we had to turn back and go back home, we had to jump over a big tree in the dark, there was no traffic lights either, so crossing the 6 lane roads on major intersection was a real survival challenge! It all felt like we were in North Korea or at war

In Vancouver Island, they recorded winds at 154km/h near Victoria!
My French flag is still attached to the balcony, so nothing dramatic on our side...

Who said greyhounds weren't cute??

Theres some more pictures of the cute little puppies in Leitrim if you click on that one.

It's the weekend for us (monday-tuesday), yeah! I have uploaded some new photos from the mountain where we are working. This week we will be working day and night shift. The weather is not very good these days, very windy and rainy, even on the mountain, so the snow is melting super fast. They are praying for snow up there, they are soon going to call some Indian shaman to bring the snow back

I just realized that we will be working night for new year's eve, which is totally crappy, unless they close the mountain early that day like for Christmas.

About the snowboard, we tried it a second time without teacher, i could manage to curve and go down on the easy rider run, but when i tried to turn i just crashed my head into the snow. And we got stuck at the bottom of a tower for a while with Jen, very funny:) Jen is doing better too, even if she doesn't have my master skills yet! She will get a snowboard from someone at work. I still don't know if i want to buy skis or snowboard. Maybe i will go for the gay mini skis...

More photos from Cypress

Hi All,
So i had my first snowboard lesson today. Yes I fell and I fell a lot!
The instructor was extremely patient and said I made good progress (I think he was just being nice )

Here is a picture of me pre lesson. As you can see it was really foggy today and you couldn't see very far in front of you.
This was good as there were not many people there for me to harm!
Do I look fat in these padded over sized clothes? Answer: Most definitely!

Today i worked at the highest mountain in Cypress (1440m). The view up there is wonderful, you can see 360 degrees. I forgot my camera, but next time i ll bring back some shots for you. I could see Vancouver island and the states from here. As well as Vancouver city.

It is the weekend for us, we worked 6 days in a row... crazy! So we got 3 days off now, for sleeping! Its hard to wake up at 5h30 in the morning everyday!
On Monday we will probably go back to the mountain but this time for riding! We ll get a snowboard lesson. yeahhh dude, awesome as they say here!