Final weeks in Canada

Kelowna, BC - After an awesome road trip, I decided to head east again. I ended up in Kelowna for a couple of days with not much to do so I went to the local RCMP (Police) Station and asked if I could do a ride-along. They said it was no problems and I went for a ride from 7pm 'til 5am on the Friday night. I was in a car with a young cop, Richie LI, who had been in the RCMP for a couple of years and we drove around all night. It was a fairly quiet night with only fairly minor jobs coming in so we spent time moving crackheads on. We even went to the pubs at closing and everyone behaved. Richie said there were fights every weekend but we had none at all. We had a couple of breaks during the night at Tim Horton’s (fast food restaurant) and had donuts and coffee. How cliché. Kelowna is about the size of Whangarei (my hometown in NZ) and has about the same crime rate and crimes.

It was cool to see the differences between our police and theirs. We are so backward in some ways, like they have computers in the cars, fast prisoner processing so they can get on the street faster and sealed off back seats in their patrol cars but they are also caught up with a lot of red tape due to the culture of being sued. They cannot be involved in vehicle pursuits and their drink-drive procedure takes 4 to 6 hrs.

It was a good night out and it was cool to be back on the road again, going to jobs. As I finished the night up we drove passed the scene of a sudden death of a taxi driver in the middle of the street 50 metres from my hostel, which was about the most exciting job of the night.

Big White ski resort, BC - The next day I was picked up by some guys from camp and I went to stay with them for a week in Big White. There was Tim and Jess, Ryan Mander, Paul Beakmeyer, and Richard and Brendan Kropp. They are all doing the ski season there but I was there about 3 weeks before it started. However, it did snow all day on the 3rd day I was there which was cool.



I just chilled all week and went for a couple of walks up the mountain in the snow. It was good to catch up with the guys and Jess. Hope you dudes are having an awesome season. I also watched the St. Louis Cardinals (the team I support) win the World Series which was awesome.

Nelson, BC - After spending a week relaxing I hired a rent-a-wreck from Kelowna and headed to Nelson in the south-east of BC for 3 days. Nelson is well known for its mountain bike tracks so I decided to give it a go. I hired a bike and took on one of the moderate to hard tracks in the hills around town. After 2 hours of uphill riding/pushing I made it to the trailhead which was covered in snow then rode down the tracks for a couple of hours, caning myself a couple of times. The other days I went for some walks around town and into the surrounding hills.