The blog I write (this weird internet page you are currently
looking at) has undergone a number of changes over the years. It started out as
a kind of journal of my trip to Australia and its continuation around Asia and
finally onto USA and Canada. I called it the ‘Extra Long Summer’, because it
sounded cool and because it was the journal of an extra-long holiday. I never
envisaged that during my travels I would meet a woman of all people, move to Canada
to live with her and then go back to bloody work when I finally got settled.
That just wasn’t supposed to happen.
If I had thought that would be a
possibility I would have called it something like ‘Moving On’, or ‘Growing up’.
Two things I don’t think I will ever do properly. Anyway, in the last few
months it has been harder and harder to sit down and write ‘The extra-long
summer’, because it feels like that was something that happened years ago, and
now being back in work, married and doing the normal things that young (Buffy
at least) married couples do, there isn’t much travel or going out related
stuff to write about.
But, then I realised that most of the people who spend their
toilet time reading rubbish like this online, don’t live in Winnipeg or even
North America, so maybe just maybe, they will be interested in the normal
everyday lives of someone who does, but sees things through weird shaped,
Northern English manc eyes. So, I will endeavour to carry on and write a little
more often. It won’t be like in the early days where sometimes I posted every
day. There may be days and weeks where nothing special happens. But I will try to
give you an insight into our everyday lives, plus some of the fun shit we get
up to when in and out of work. The extra-long summer lives on.
House, walking places and Bombers.
Work holidays over here are a bit shit. The normal time
allowed off work a year is 2 weeks. That’s abysmal, isn’t it? If you work for
the same company for several years it can increase to 3 weeks or more, but
that’s still pretty dire. Buffy is lucky and gets 3 weeks off compared to my 2,
so she decided to take an extra week off alone and travel to BC where she spent
a week walking the West Coast Trail – a 75 km, 5-day trail with multiple
ladders, river crossings and beaches to sleep on. She loved it and if you want
to know more about it, ask her or take a look at her Facebook or Instagram
feeds for photos. I stayed in Winnipeg and worked for the week – day and night.
Days doing the normal phone thing, but at night I changed into DIY man and
spent my hours doing stuff in our little house.
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| The front after painting |
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| Ugly before |
The front and back garden fences all got painted. New house
numbers were positioned to replace the old plastic yellow ones I hated.
Curtains and a new light were put up in our front porch which now resembles a
lovely clean relaxing oasis to sit in and watch the world go by instead of a
dingy yellow cave. Another new light was hung inside at the bottom of the
stairs and the back porch was stripped bare through the yellow and green paint
that was probably there for the last 50 years. It took me hours, half-dressed
under the hottest light bulb known to man to scrub and sand the walls and
ceiling, before patch painting and then real painting the entire room. It’s now
a clean and painted in a light grey colour matching the front porch. In the
next few weeks we will fit a sort of shelving and hanger system and finally we
will have a back porch to be proud of!
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| New curtains |
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| A mess |
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| Nearly done |
After Buffy, had been away we decided we needed to do some
‘local’ stuff, so last Thursday we got tickets for The Winnipeg Blue Bombers
game at Investors Group Field.
The Bombers are the local CFL team – CFL is the Canadian
Football League – Basically a very similar team game to American Football. The
CFL is the national Championship which plays out between June and November each
year. It’s quite a competitive league and the Bombers are definitely on the
rise. The game we watched was against the Edmonton Eskimos, who had won all 7
of their games so far this season. Until the Bombers smashed them!!
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| Pink Lemonade on the way |
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| Outside |
It started with a walk from Buffy’s mum and dads house where
we were staying the night. It was really similar in distance to when we used to
walk to Old Trafford when we lived in Manchester, but instead of stopping on
the way to grab pie and chips from the chippy, we stopped by a small kids’
lemonade stall and had a couple of glasses of pink lemonade at 25cents a glass.
A lovely way to start a great night,
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| What not to do in the toilets part 1 |
Touchdown
After the
45-minute walk, we had a wander around the outside of the stadium taking in the
atmosphere before going inside and finding our seats. I have been to many
United games over the
years and wanted to get in amongst the real fans, so we
chose seats in the Fanatic Fan zone. (Their
version of the Stretford End) and
it was awesome. Loads of people turned up in costume – People
wearing dog head
masks, a bloke dressed as Ted, skeletor with gold face mask and even a golden
boy (one of Winnipeg’s symbols) were there amongst many others.
Feed the snake
Loudest fans in the league
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| What not to do in the toilets part 2 |
The fly by!
We were
welcomed with open arms by all the locals and became a part of the craziness of
building
beer snakes and hurling abuse at the poor Edmonton players every time
they came near. There was
even some points when the bombers scored and the
entire offensive team came over and jumped into
the crowd right where we were –
just proving that we were in the fanatic area! There is also a crazy
bloke in a
plane (yes, a plane) who drives it onto the field to celebrate whenever the
Bombers score -
he tipped it over at one point and bits of it were left lying
on the field and had to be cleaned up by
security. We thought it might get
boring with all the advert breaks, but the whole night flew by and
we loved
every minute. There was a great atmosphere, we had a few beers, good food and loved
being part of the fanatic fans (The official loudest fans in the CFL) made it a
great night out - at
some points it was
a lot louder and more crazy than some days I have spent watching United at Old
Trafford., so we will definitely be going back sometime soon to see another
game.
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| We may have had a drink |
After the
excitement of the Bombers we had a lovely weekend trip to the cabin. A couple
of beers,
we sat round and looked through Buffy’s photos of her recent trip to
walk the West Coast Trail and
on the Sunday afternoon me, Buffy Jon and Susan
went out on a boat trip with the two dogs Cuddy
and Loa, to take in some of the
sights of Lake of the Woods and eat a picnic on a beautiful little spot
overlooking the entrance to Cul de Sac lake.
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| Dogs excited for a picnic! |
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| Giraffe |
The final bit
of excitement after the weekend occurred on Monday lunchtime. It was a cloudy,
rainy
morning and as the rest of North America seemed to be loving watching the
eclipse in a clear blue
sky, we were told not to bother looking up as there was
no chance to see anything. But I did look up
and it turned out I could see the
sun and the moon and the clouds gave it a weird shadowy
mysterious look. It was
well worth the effort looking up!
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| There it is |
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| Not bad! |
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