Category Archives: history

family, friends, history, roadtrip, travel, USA

Family Stories

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Another unseasonably rainy day here in Montana, a good opportunity to do some laundry & get a haircut while the car is being checked out – got to love those Check Engine lights. Apparently a Check “Check Engine Light” Light would have been redundant, as for some reason the engine is misfiring a little. No big deal, at least I hope so, & I suppose if the car had to be in the shop for a day it’s good that it happened here in Billings where we can get chores done.

I was surprised to see a oil refinery in the middle of fields beside I-90 last night, apparently Montana is one of the bigger oil producing states in the country. Also, we saw three big fuselages (I assume of 737s en route to/from Seattle) on railcars last night as we pulled in to town. That’s something I’ve never seen before.

So with the gloomy weather & uncertainty while waiting for the car verdict, I was pleased to see a very sweet post from Megan this morning. She even managed to get a nice picture of Finn & me the morning we left.

I think I’d be hassled if I didn’t also mention the amusing photo of me & her early one morning twenty-five odd years ago. But if you want to see that you’ll have to go to Megan’s page & read the entry – she takes better photos than me & writes a whole lot less wordily.

Update – after occupying ourselves in Billings all day, we got the car back.  It was just a timing issue – so with new plugs & leads the engine is firing as it should.  Also took the opportunity to patch a small hole in the exhaust & replace a CV boot – car is now much quieter.  Nice to get all this out of the way on another very rainy day.  JR’s was a great workshop, a self-proclaimed Subaru guru (that rhymes nicely) & JR did everything possible to get us back on the road that day & gave us tips as to where to stay next along the I-90.

The persistent rain continued as we travelled south-east towards Wyoming.  Pleasingly, the battle site of Little Bighorn (somewhere I never thought I’d ever go) was a short hop from the interstate.  We managed to get there just before the Visitor Center closed & had a look around before braving the wind & rain to look over the area of Custer’s Last Stand.  I think that battle sites are best viewed when the weather is so bleak – it doesn’t come close to the horrors that must have happened there, but it does turn it in to something less than a walk in the park.

I was surprised to learn that the battle was in June 1876, for some reason I expected it to be earlier than that.  The Lakota & Cheyenne managed to comprehensively win this famous battle, but lost the war.  As we continued towards our overnight stop of Sheridan, the miles & miles of beautiful rolling countryside continued – we began to understand why the local tribes fought so hard to keep their nomadic way of life, it really is a spectacular area – even if it was raining a lot.

Already, this short distance in to Wyoming everything is much more western – the main street looks fantastic, we shall have to explore it in the morning before heading to South Dakota.

Canada, history, national park, roadtrip, snow, travel, USA, vehicles

They let us in!

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It didn’t dawn much brighter in Waterton Lakes on Friday, unfortunately.  That place must look stunning in the summer.

Heading out looking for a small hike, we met Dan driving the other way on the Red Rock Parkway.  Valerie was not amused by his warnings to watch for bears – “we’ve got a grizzly in a trap up in the campground, but the campground is closed; watch for others – they’re waking up & they’re hungry”.


In the end, we didn’t get much of a hike in as everything was still covered in snow, & quite deeply too.

Consequently, we started our run to the border.  In the town of Carsford we got distracted by a large carriage museum.  We were told that it’s the second largest collection of carriages in the world – the biggest is in Lisbon.  It sure seemed big – I’ve never seen so many bleeding aerials, I mean carriages; there were all sorts: working wagons, cabooses, sleighs, society, fire engines, dump wagons, chuck wagons, stage coaches, sulkies & more I can’t remember the name of.

The history was fascinating – especially as a lot of it related to the settlement & pioneering of the West.  I resisted the chance for a photo in the carriage Jackie Chan used in Shanghai Noon (it was comparatively boring).  There was a restoration workshop attached & one of the old guys who worked there (reminds me of the Kauri Museum north of Auckland) delighted in showing me how they make those big wagon wheels.

A contrast showing restoration work improvement (of the carriage, I haven’t had any restoration work done).

Lunch done with, it was a short hop to the 49th Parallel & the border crossing.  We did rather a lot better than the couple before who were turned around & with no hassles we filled our forms out & paid our six dollars & we were in Montana.  I had hoped to have a look around Glacier National Park, but it was just more frozen lakes & I’ve been seeing them all winter so we continued south.  The Road to the Sun, when it opens for summer, sounds amazing.  Highway 89 continued south through stunted & sparse forest climbing & winding up & through some of the largest snow banks I’ve seen all winter.  There was a noticeable change in prosperity from Alberta – it seemed that to live in NW Montana you had to have a hodgepodge of trailers littered with at least half a dozen old cars & pickups in various states of disrepair.

Gassed up (somehow managed to have someone else pay for a few gallons) we decided to push on to Helena for the night.  As we left it, we realized we’d been in a reservation & once out of it, the farmland started to look more intensive.  I was surprised to see a lot of irrigators, particularly large centre pivots.  We definitely were in the Big Sky State as we chewed up the miles (yes, I’ve had to start reading the inside dial on the speedometer).

Just before the Interstate (I-15) we went through a neat canyon, with the sun shining on the foreground & an ominous black clouding the horizon it was spectacular.

I think I’m on to my tenth state now & I’m pretty sure Helena is the first state capital I’ve been to.  We haven’t seen much so far except the inside of a motel room & a diner.  Hopefully we can have a little look around this morning before pushing on towards Yellowstone.  The diner last night was very much a Ma & Pa operation – it was packed & the food was simple with large portions.  To borrow a unit from Megan, flaginess was at a very high level – you couldn’t find a square metre of wall without some representation of red, white & blue (& those colours weren’t arranged in the way of the rather boring New Zealand flag).

On a side note, Montana has some great county names:  Fergus, Petroleum, Musselshell, Carbon, Treasure, Lewis & Clark, Rosebud (my ol’ son), Sweet Grass, & Beaverhead are noteworthy.

Distance Traveled: 492 km
Gas Price: 377.9
Best Meal: Finger Steaks (turned out to be wiener schnitzel)

Canada, friends, history, snow

Dinosaurs & Badlands

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Over many homemade pizzas & another hilarious instalment of the name-game Friday night, the plan for five of us to drive a few hours east on Saturday to visit Drumheller & the Royal Tyrrell Museum was finalised.  I was a little sceptical of spending six hours of my weekend sitting in a car while I could be skiing, but with some rave reviews I decided it was worth it – plus this would be the furtherest east in Canada I was likely to go in the foreseeable future.  Past Calgary on Saturday morning & into the prairies, things got very flat – as one would expect.  It was just as white as I have gotten used to over the last five months (it’s been a long winter).

First stop was Drumheller itself, which definitely playing up to all the dinosaur hype – which is fair enough, I couldn’t really ascertain what else was going for it.  We got a few pictures on the feet of the “World’s Largest Dinosaur”, but it is so big that you can’t really see us – so here’s another one.

It’s definitely more intimidating than a large kiwifruit (& the assortment of other large fruit around New Zealand).  There were brightly coloured, albeit smaller, dinosaurs all around town – we wandered around a little for the hell of it.

We spent a good couple of hours wandering the museum (+ lunch).  I’ve never been much into dinosaurs, but it was pretty interesting – the first exhibit detailing the biggest finds palaeontological finds around Alberta was the best presented.  There were numerous stories of how people had just stumbled upon what would be come great discoveries – the best was the two high school kids who were out fishing & found a T-Rex.  By the end there was definite overload of big words, different periods in prehistory & too many dinosaurs with horns – like this guy.

Leaving the museum (worth the trip, if that wasn’t apparent) we went for a little exploration around part of the Canadian Badlands.  It was really quite strange being in a landscape so different to the Rockies – the softer sedimentary rock has been worn away to leave it looking like this.

With the decidedly overcast day & the snow cover it was eerie.   In amongst napping in the car (which was a whole lot quieter on the return trip) we arrived in Calgary to stop at Peter’s Drive-In – a Calgary institution I’ve been hearing about for quite some time now.  The burger was good & the milkshake even better.  I had blackberry-butterscotch, probably one of the more conservative of combinations of thirty flavours.  Apparently, thirty flavours gives over 4500 possible combinations (a maximum of three flavours in one shake) – so geeks that we are (at least some of us) had to go back to high school maths & a basic iPhone calculator & work out if that was true.  4525 – but how many of those combinations you would actually like to try, I am unsure.

around home, family, friends, history, London, UK

Farewells again

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I’m back in one of my most common blog updating places – an airport lounge. My nine month stay in the UK is coming to an end as I sit in Terminal 3 waiting to see from which gate AC851 to Calgary leaves – I’m well excited (slept in a bit more that I should have this morning – awoke with a start at 0800 remembering with pleasure a dream about Canadian singletrack). This week has been one of mostly packing & saying goodbyes to various friends & family & unfortunately not too many photos to break up my prose. Tuesday in London started off with a jab in the arm – a booster Hep. A shot that should mean I need never have another one. Finally got to finish off the RAF Museum after that, the Battle of Britain hall was reasonably small but packed with great WWII era aircraft. As well as the Hurricane, Spitfire, Me110 I was most pleased to finally see a Stuka – that fearsome bent wing dive bomber that did so well in the early advances of the Wehrmacht across Europe.

The Sunderland flying boat was impressive due to its sheer size.

Vittoria was quite excited by the arrival of someone to play with; in amongst all the games & trips to the “hospital” & having my apparently broken leg treated by the smallest doctor I’ve ever seen, I somehow ended feeding a often-dribbling Amelie – once again, teething looks like no fun at all. After a rather quick goodbye to Vittoria, she was off to bed – trying to explain that it would be some years before she saw me again was a bit difficult as the outer limit of a long time to a two year old is probably the week or so that is often between my visit, if not shorter. Shelley had done wonderfully well whipping up a pavlova topped with kiwifruit & it was not without some sadness that I took my last walk to Rayners Lane & sat on the Metropolitan Line down to Baker St.

Wednesday’s outing was up to Great Notley (near Braintree & Stansted) for lunch with first-cousins-once-removed Keith & Carol & Keith’s father Alan (my great-uncle). The oldest of his siblings & approaching ninety (but don’t tell him that) Alan is doing remarkably well living in his own flat & pretty much looking after himself – there is some hope I might not go doolally (a much used word that day – one I hadn’t heard for quite a while). Thursday was mostly more cleaning of my bike in the morning & then I headed off to meet Matt (the primary school friend from twenty years ago that I met a few weeks ago) at the Imperial War Museum. This was, at least, my third visit to the IWM & on entry & I thought I would only be having a quick look around. But upstairs I discovered a new exhibit – this one on that most harrowing of subjects, the Holocaust. We got lost in there for quite some time as there is always a lot to absorb & try to comprehend. It was quite well done, & while sobering not nearly as depressing as the Holocaust Museum in DC. All of a sudden it was 1730 & time to head off to meet Chris after work. This time I had a genuine reason for taking that shortest of tube lines – I actually wanted to go to from Waterloo to Bank. I sat waiting for Chris reading my free Evening Standard on the steps of the Royal Exchange for the last time, taking in the wonderful architecture that is the Bank of England & watching thousands of suits scurry around. Avoiding heading in to the melee that is getting on to the Central Line in the evening rush at Bank, we walked for quite some time west & I was pleased to be able to share some of my knowledge of small London museums that are worth seeing with Chris. We headed out a little west to Chris’s neighbourhood, had a pint at his local before I got the tour of his flat (which was pretty short at two rooms) before we walked & tubed to Paddington to meet Annie – a good friend of Chris’s that I had met at his sister’s wedding in Tuscany almost two years ago. Annie is now living in Melbourne & over in Europe for four weeks. Now that it’s the northern summer there are plenty of people coming this way – it is somewhat unfortunate in that respect that I am skiving off to Canada now – there are at least six people coming over that I would have like to have seen. But that’s a small price to for what promises to be a great year of riding & skiing. After my last pints of lager for what I imagine a while & a great time catching up with what we’ve all be up to, I said goodbye to Chris & Annie before heading off to catch the last train back to Sidcup. I was sure it wasn’t just the lager messing with me, I couldn’t find that train anywhere (it’s not like they’re a set of car keys – nice Snatch reference) & sure enough it had been cancelled & I had a slightly longer & more circuitous trip home.

Somehow yesterday I managed to squeeze a lot in to my Macpac & bike bag – somehow the pack has ended up heavier than the bike bag, which is a first. A quick visit to get shorn & then it was off to say goodbye to Nora. That was one of the most difficult visits yet as, it would be fair to say, after seven weeks she is a little tired of the mundane hospital & she was really quite angry & it took quite a while to calm her down with many more rounds of Gin Rummy. The powers that be have finally decided that Social Service will pay for her residential care, so hopefully Trish & Jan can find a place they like this weekend & Nora can move to a much nicer environment next week. The final farewells were last night over dinner at a great Asian buffet in Orpington. Jan & I managed to squeeze my four bags in to her Swift her this morning, a much easier trip to Heathrow than my last one (the four hour trek across London in the snow on buses, DLR, tube) on the M25 & I was shortly saying goodbye to Trish & Jan – I’ll miss my English family, they’ve been very good to me. Well Gate 29 is open now, so this is a good spot to stop & make sure I get on the waiting Airbus.