Working Man

I guess the peaceful hanging out in one's pad in the mountains can only last so long. Up to this point I have had two shifts, one closing and one opening, both at the 3rd store (Evelyn's Again). Day one I have to say did not go great. It was fine at first but for some reason I started having really bad pains in my stomach that, by the last two hours became pretty debilitating. I managed to get to know some aspects of the job beforehand though, but my memory from the day is not very clear. I worked at first with Jimmy, who is the eldest son of the owners- nice guy, and he's a ski instructor in Lake Louise in the winter, so I might be able to get a free lesson from him if I'm still around then. He says he's been reading specialty coffee books lately and wants to try and bring up the standards of those drinks at Evelyn's, and it seems my experience at Matter of Taste can help with that. Afterwards I closed with their daughter Sarah, but by the time she got there I was not as talkative as I like to be. She's younger though, I think she said 17? In high school still at any rate, but she's been working there since she was 11 so she knew what she was doing. After work finished at 8 I pretty much went right home, had a light meal and went to bed- partially because of not feeling well, but in any case I had to be back at 6:30 the next day, so sleep was a good idea anyways.

Other than the fact that I had to get up at 5:20, opening was pretty okay! It's a very odd procedure though. For stores 2 and 3, you have to go to the primary store first, which has the kitchen and bakery in the basement, and load up a pushcart with all the things you need for the day (the list of those things is filled out during the previous close). You then push that cart over to the other store and unload it, with runs to the kitchen for things that are low throughout the day. It's not overly efficient, but I suppose if you have 3 stores within a short walk of each other you save a lot more money by only have one kitchen and not really adding much in the way of transport costs.

There is a lot of work to be done at these stores, that's for sure. It gets very busy around lunch already, and summer is only going to get busier according to those who have worked here previously. The general skills are pretty much all things I've done before, but the trick is adjusting to the particular practices of the store, various procedures and unique things to do. Somehow I've managed to work with the only other native Canadians at the store, as everyone else is from all over, Australia, the Phillipenes, England, Germany, Austria, Holland... a very multicultural crew, that's for sure. I think there will be a few more added for the summer, and I know that one of the Canadian girls is leaving in June, so we'll see how it works out in the end.

Anyways turns out getting up that early makes you want to go to bed early too. More updates to come!

Trevor

On the Road

When I finished working at Lake Louise, I definitely felt like I was done there, ready to come home. So why come to Banff for, to at least the plan being, a year? I suppose I think that there's a lot more to do here, which is true. And it seems like things are off to a good start, but I will get to that.

So Dad and I managed to get up at the planned time and were gone by 6:30 Friday morning. At the time, our plan was to go through the states, down to Chicago and then angle up to North Dakota. This was the route that was suggested by pretty much all the mapping software/sites, so we figured it was obviously the best way. But we realized the previous night that the Triptik that Dad got from CAA didn't use this route- it instead had us going up through Michigan, then along the top of Lake Superior. As we got into Michigan and were heading towards Flint we had planned to just ignore the triptik, but as we got closer we started to reconsider. The reasoning was that they might have actually put a bit of thought into this one, as opposed to just plugging it into software- especially of worry was the traffic around Chicago and Minneapolis, which the route they planned avoided.

The scenery on this trip was certainly varied. The first day was a lot of forest and lake-filled country, with mostly one-laned highway so the speed limit was lower. We still made pretty good time, and finished up the day in Duluth, Minn. Definitely an industrial town, so not the most visually spectacular, but it was fine. Unfortunately, at the hotel we stayed in our neighbours showed up at 2 AM or so and were quite the rowdy bunch. So that interrupted our sleep a bit, but we still managed to be on our way by 6 the next morning. At this point the terrain took a turn for the flat, which allowed the highways to expand and speed up. We covered a lot of groud (very flat ground) and made it all the way to Swift Current Saskatchewan. And from there it was only a few hours to Banff- we got in by 1:30 in the afternoon or so.

We parked near Evelyn's and I went in- it was really busy though, so it took some time for me to be able to talk to the girls behind the counter. One of them had been told about me coming, and she called Marini to tell her. We were earlier than expected, of course, so we went and grabbed lunch and then waited for her to show up. She eventually did, I got my uniform and she and Wout met us at the parking lot and then showed us to the apartment, which was just down Banff Ave, nice and close to all the stores.

I was definitely impressed by the apartment- it's huge! Nice big common area, kitchen with pretty much everything one needs, a nice TV, balcony with BBQ, even a fireplace! After she showed us around, Marini said that the other apartment she has still has a couple spots open so for now, I will be alone in this apartment. We were a little concerned about this though- because it looks like Szonja isn't going to be coming down until September, I wasn't sure I would be able to pay the rent for the whole place 4 months- it would eat up a large part of my wages each month. Dad asked if it would be okay if, for example, I found someone else to live here to help pay part of the rent, and much to our surprise, she said that I would only be paying for half the rent! So I get the whole place to myself for the foreseeable future (though she said that there is still hiring to be done, so it's not guarunteed) for 450 a month! Pretty sweet.

So after unpacking, Dad and I did some shopping and had our celebratory arrival dinner. We went to the Elk and Oarsman, which I had gone to last time I was here and really liked, but it took some Googling to find out what the name was. There's lots of interesting food to be had here, for sure! Can't wait to try some of it out. I had a chicken and peach korma curry dish while Dad had an elk burger.

Tomorrow will be some administrative things, mostly to do with the car, and my training will begin 12-8 on Tuesday. I will edit this post later with pictures that we've taken, but right now I'm tired and I need to get to bed! It will be nice getting up after 7am again. Expect more updates soon.

Trevor