April 13, 1993
Banff, Alberta, Canada
View of Banff Township from Sulphur Mountain
Oops, amazing how time slips by. I’m still living at the youth hostel, and working at a restaurant called “The Keg”. Its part of an international chain. Apparently there’s even one in Australia. I’m doing prep cook, which involves chopping and portioning everything from escargot to potatoes. Its not a bad job, the people aren’t bad – but then time will test these first impressions. Been there two weeks now, without chopping my fingers off. Meanwhile I’m just hanging for that first paycheck. I burned through the money left over from Big White pretty quickly, and alas had to draw on the old Visa card again (which expires soon – July so I might need someone to forward the new one on for me – Warning). Apparently its a good idea to avoid using mastercard because they convert to US currency then Oz dollars and take the commision twice!
Anyway life in Banff is looking like life in the life in the fast lane. I’ve been out nearly every night since I got here – though am start to tone things down. It seems everyone here is out for a good time. Nearly everyone is under 30, most people under 25, so the atmosphere’s pretty fun. Three hours sleep is pretty much the norm, but I can’t hack the pace and am wimping out increasingly often, trying to get on the original plan, involved more skiing (season ends in June!), walking, camping etc. There’s people arriving “for the summer” everyday. So hopefully I can get set up with somewhere to stay soon. It looks like I’ll sign a six month lease with some others in a unit or something.
I’ve fallen into a little crowd of Aussie’s I work with, two english brothers and most importantly a canadian girl. There’s countless other familiar faces taht are “here for summer”, so it looks like it’ll be a good summer. Interesting to read this in 6 months and see how things turned out.
Hmmm. I’ve just sat back and taken an eyeful of snow-capped rugged mountains. Fir-trees and the odd squirrel hopping about, there’s elk wandering around everywhere, spring is on the way – there’s no snow on the ground – although it still snows every 2-3 days – it melts pretty quickly. The night life is great, its easy to make friends. I can confidently say that I’m enjoying myself. There’s a million things I could write about. I was thinking about how the subject about what I’m writing can change so quickly. Today the focus is on getting accommodation, and getting into an outdoors fitness routine. A few days ago the focus might’ve been women (Jasmine is the current heartthrob). What’s going on at work, the night life, other people, the hostel itself is curious, the scenery, the skiing, etc, etc. I worry about how much of it I’ll remember.
Jasmine in Banff
A 3 point elk just walked by the window!!
What else can I say. I think I’ll send everyone a personal letter.
