Why you should always have travel insurance

Monday morning dawned cold, cold and snowy.  Despite it now being theoretically spring it was around -25C and snowing, so neither Mum nor I were keen to go skiing.  Dad and Jason waited until it had warmed up a bit (-18C) and went up together for the afternoon.  Then at 4:30pm or so Dad called to let Mum know that he had had a 'bit of an accident' and was on the way to the hospital with Jason driving and could she call the insurance company and the hospital.  Now for those of you who know how much Jason loves driving, particularly in a huge tank of a 4WD on snow and ice covered roads on the wrong side of the road, you would understand that this fact alone let us know how much Dad must be hurt.  

It turns out he was skiing down a black mogul run and got the turn wrong going over and landing on his shoulder.  He dislocated his shoulder and broke the arm in the process into multiple pieces.  He also tore the ligament in his thumb (on the other hand) completely off the bone.  From Banff he was transferred the 200km to Calgary for surgery to repair his arm and shoulder.   He now has a plate in his shoulder and 7 screws keeping it together.  When I left the hospital he had moved from being miserable and in pain the day before to being bored at having nothing to do.

There are a few raves that came out of this.  The first was for Avis.  The car was supposed to be returned to Calgary but none of the three of us wanted to drive it.  So someone from Banff Avis drove up to our house to pick up the car (he was the only one on duty so had to leave his car here) and said there would be no charge for it.  My parents were insured through the flight centre insurance "Covermore" and I can not recommend them highly enough.  Everytime we called they had all the details of the case on hand, purely based on our surname.  They were incredibly proactive calling the hospital, the surgeon, organising new flights with a business class upgrade for both Mum and Dad.  Our rough calculation is that they have paid out around $50,000 and almost all of this they have paid directly.  They weren't able to pay the Banff hospital directly as Banff refuses to deal with insurance companies but everything else they have taken care of.  

Ice, snow and mountains

One of the highlights of our trip to Canada so far has been a drive up the icefields parkway from Banff to Jasper.  We had planned the day carefully picking the day with good weather forecasted and a night with a good chance of seeing the northern lights forecast.  (How do you get a northern lights forecast, you ask - go to www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast)   When we woke up in the morning, however, we couldn't see the mountains surrounding Banff at all and the snow was coming down.  Our expectations for stunning views thus lowered we set off anyway.   Luckily by the time we got to Lake Louise we had left the snow behind us and the views were looking good.  It ended up being great weather for the trip.  There were occasional snow showers but at all the major lookout points we had great views.   One place on the drive is called the weeping wall which in winter is one massive sheet of icicles.  We were happily gawking at this wall and taking photos when suddenly I realised there were 4 ice climbers on the wall.  The fact that we didn't notice them gives you an idea of how big this wall is.  Sure enough a quick look back at the photos showed that they had been there the whole time.    

The hotel in Jasper was absolutely lovely and we went out for a nice dinner to celebrate Jason's birthday whilst we were there.  Then at 11 pm we wondered out onto the street to see the northern lights... which weren't there.  Hmpf.  We have looked out most nights in Banff as well, but it seems that the combination of not being far enough north, being in the mountains and it frequently being cloudy mean we aren't going to get to see them on this trip.  

The invasion

Our house has been invaded. There are tell tale signs everywhere. The fridge is overflowing with food, the house is warmer, there is snow piling up outside (although I'm not sure how closely this is related to the invasion) and most telling my parents are sleeping in the spare room. It's lovely to see them and we are taking the opportunity to be proper tourists, plus they've hired a car so we can explore the area in a way that is impossible without one. The day they arrived so did the snow, which is great for skiing but I'm not sure my mother was that impressed with two days of driving snow and -20C temperatures. The snow stopped and we were treated to a couple of beautiful sunny days with fresh snow perfect for skiing. During the blizzard we explored some of the local indoor sites as well. The very interesting Whyte Museum, which gave some history of the area, as well as a photography exhibition which we loved! We also visited the Cave and Basin which was very hot and very smelly... mmmm, sulphur.

Cameras, snowflakes and water

Well, we haven't written anything new on our blog for a very long time.  Partly because being in one place nothing much changes.  Skiing has not been our main focus and instead we started becoming more interested in photography.  To the point that we decided to buy ourselves a new camera (as a combined birthdays and christmas present).  We try and take at least one interesting photo a day.  One aim has been to get a good photo of a snowflake - the main problem with this is how rarely it snows.  The second problem is that when it does, being REALLY cold the snowflakes are generally 1mm across... quite hard to get a decent photo of that.  Occasionally you get lucky and one will be 2mm across, so those are the ones we have attempted to photograph.  The third problem with this is that after 10min your fingers start to go numb and develop frostbite.  So as an alternative indoor activity we tried to photograph a single water droplet.  Lots more fun and without the problems mentioned above.    To further waste money on photography as a hobby we set up a website with some photos at www.80weeks.smugmug.com 

Feel free to post photographic missions for us, and we will have fun attempting them!  

Happy Holidays

Christmas was nicely quiet.  The day was filled with phone calls to family (mostly free thanks to the joy of internet based calls) and playing in the snow.  We did attempt to make a snowman for the holidays but the snow is so dry here that it just doesn't stick together very well.  You need that good Australian wet snow for really good snowmen, or snowball fights for that matter.  It was Jason's first white Christmas and even he agreed that it just feels more like Christmas when all that Christmas imagery is all around you.  We also kept to the Christmas tradition of eating too much. Mmmm fudge.  New Years Eve we headed into town to join the rest of the locals on the bridge for the best view of the fireworks.   Unlike Sydney you only need to arrive 1 minute early to get the best position, not 12 hours early.  The fireworks were amazingly good and it was fun standing in the snow cuddling up against the cold.  On the way down we had spotted two deer (with antlers) digging up snow to get to some yummy grass... we assumed they would be gone by the time we walked back scared away by the fireworks, but surprisingly they were in exactly the same position and didn't seem at all concerned.   Very different to normal but lots of fun!

The fall

It was the fifth day of skiing, we were just getting into it and excited about improving.  We only had a short day of skiing as Kristina and Vicky needed to get into town in time to buy their greyhound tickets to Lake Louise.  There was a jump just to the right of one of the easiest runs that we'd seen both skiers and boarders getting some nice air.  We'd already attempted this jump a few times, but approaching from the green run and thinking about it too late so not so much as 1cm of air had been achieved.  We had time for one more run and decided to give this jump a proper go... so we prepared ourselves at the top of the blue run that approaches the jump.  Jason went first and appeared to have a fair bit of speed so I was really surprised when his skis still didn't leave the ground.  I was determined to get at least 10cm of air so I went from a little higher and a little faster than Jason had gone... over the jump and what the hell!!  I had 2 meters of air!!!!  (I later found out Jason had chickened and slowed down at the last moment)  I nearly landed the jump getting both skis under me, but was leaning too far forward and did a spectacular roll.  In the middle I felt my ski dig into the snow and my knee twist and force it out, the bindings didn't give.  OW!  A visit to the doctor later revealed torn ligaments (to both the MCL and ACL)... so no skiing for awhile, or walking, or twisting, or sleeping.   All I'm really hoping is that this is not going to be a lifetime injury.... only time will tell.

4 countries in 18 hours

Admittedly it was a long 18 hours, but we took off from Sydney just before 7pm Sunday and landed in Vancouver just after 11am Monday.  We had booked the cheapest ticket we could find that didn’t involves going through America (due to their annoying visa requirements), so we flew to Singapore (8 hours) where we spent the night (10 hours), then flew to South Korea (7 hours) where after queuing in line to get a transit card, get our bags scanned and get back on the plane (40 minutes) we flew to Vancouver (10 hours).  As I said it was a long 18 hours.  Strangely enough it wasn’t that bad.  We discovered the oasis lounge in Singapore (free!) where they have $8000 massage chairs for you to use (free!).   After three massages and a few hours of sleep we felt quite refreshed, we also explored the butterfly garden which was lots of fun.  The second good part of the flight was that the Korea-Canada leg was basically empty and nearly everyone had an entire row to themselves!! So we were able to lie down and sleep nearly the whole flight, blissful.