Like a Virgin, hey! - blogs for the very first time!

I suppose in the early part of the 21st Century, such a tech guru like me should have had a Blog since when Maxwell was a boy. Well I didn't, Maxwell is a very old and blind ginger tomcat now, and this is my first time, so be gentle with me. Putting ideas and thoughts down on the web seems all too public, but if I'm going to be famous, I guess it's time to start. My week has been a mixture of highs and lows, prototyping an electronic application that no one's ever done before has got to be a high. (I'm sorry I'd have to kill you if I told you what it was, but it did involve wireless, like most of my life does.) The low consisted zapping a piece of expensive electronics and adding to my list of test equipment repairs that I've not got round to.

As a sample of what's to come, and creative in a totally non-wireless related way, here's a little taster of my creative ramblings from my time in Canada.

"Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there"
I don't know if Jon Anderson of the '70s rock band "Yes" had visited BC when he wrote the above words 30 years ago for the song "Roundabout". But they seemed particularly appropriate on a sunny Sunday in April 2000. I nearly drove off the road, the "sea to sky highway" when Blackcomb mountain loomed out of the mid morning sky. It hovered above the clouds with no visible means of support like one of Roger Dean's fantasy floating islands in the sky from the 1970's Yes album covers. I'd just revisited Porteau cove on Howe sound on the Pacific North West Coast of British Columbia, and was heading North for the ski resort of Whistler.
Nothing really prepared me for the grandeur of the mountain; me used to the wide open skies of East Anglia, or the rolling hills and dales of my native Yorkshire. In fact the mountain was my second buzz of the day having just watched an eagle soaring over Porteau cove, again not a sight I was accustomed to.
Squamish is a small town along the "sea to sky". It's dominated by a huge rock, The Squamish Chief, the size of a respectable Cumbrian Fell, and the distant Blackcomb Mountain. This Sunday it was quiet, and late- season skiers, looking cool and fit frequented the Starbucks, if slightly grubby as they discussed snowmobiles, ski techniques and climbing. This peculiarly 80s/90s phenomenon of well-educated 30-somethings with disposable incomes and no kids, seem attracted to the ski life. Not the European, wealthy ski life of the 50's and 60's, these guys (and girls) are more hard- edged thrill- seekers than poseurs wanting to be seen with royalty and wearing the right gear for the ski season. They're sporty, adrenaline junkies looking to find thrills to replace the spiritual and make their secular lives worth living. By day, they work in the high - tech salt mines of Vancouver and Seattle. Web -aware Software Engineers and Marketing Executives, the engine-room of the Internet Economy. Hunched over their computers and lattes mid week, at the weekend they hit the slopes to party all day.
Whistler Resort is ski, ski and ski. Modern Hotels jostle for real estate with huge "housing estates" of ski chalets. No peace or quiet or time for reflection upon the beauty of nature here, only on the runs do you find the solace. There you can escape from rock music, bars and coffee shops. True, at 7000ft, you can buy Pizza, pasta, fish and chips and designer coffees, but then you can appreciate why Isaac Newton got so excited as you as you hurtle down powered only by the Great Man's gravity and braked only by the strength in your thighs.
All shapes, sizes and ages seem to ski, from tiny tots barely able to toddle on dry land through to large Americans, soon to be retired baby- boomers and long since retired 60-somethings. Only one thing is common, an unusual urge to wear baggy Michelin man clothes in colours they wouldn't be seen dead in at home, and to hobble about in tight rigid boots that make them walk like Robby the Robot... "Warning... Aliens approaching!"
This cynicism is undoubtedly rooted in jealousy, because as a non- skier I can't join in. My only experience of skiing was 12 months earlier at Cypress Bowl, a 20 minute drive from Downtown Vancouver, where, dressed like Captain Birdseye in borrowed waterproofs in bright yellow, and too big for me, I spent an adrenalin-pumping, nerve jangling afternoon hanging on to the rope tow with the kiddies and dithering down the nursery slopes in the few blissful moments I wasn't sitting on my ass in the snow.
Who needs skis anyway? This time I went up to the top of Whistler without them. I plucked up the courage to beat a probably-imagined phobia of ski lifts, eat the Fish and Chips at 7000ft, smiled at the Michelin men, got sunburned, and just marvelled at the views over the mountains and the Whistler Glacier.
These weekends in "Beautiful BC" make the nine and a half-hour flight from Heathrow worthwhile. I can work a "normal" week from our Canadian office, in demand and unable to escape, and then for two days, be a tourist and see some of the West Pacific coast for free. Of course when I return I talk about the busy stressful time had, working long hours at the office, business lunches and evenings with colleagues, but the time I spend at the weekends is mine, my fragmented "holiday" spent with my mind a million miles away from work.

It can be tough travelling. Long hours sitting staring at the back of an economy class seat, next to a retired Hairdresser from Portsmouth, struggling to hear the soundtrack of a movie with a soundtrack that sounds like it's been strained through a sock and passed through a Jimi Hendrix fuzz box. When you manage to attune your ears, you find that "to protect the children", Gene Hackman the tough New York cop is using words like "Jings" and phrases like "Go Fool Yourself", and Bruce Willis regularly says " Shut the Funk Up".
The Hairdresser usually ends up starting to tell you her life story, just when the distortion on the sound abates enough for you to pick up the plot again, so you give in, stow the headphones and listen. Feigning interest in the advances in colouring technology, the advantages of “fraudulin” and pro-vitamin henna implants at 35,000 feet with your Sinuses screaming surrender and your body telling you its 3am is not easy. The technique is a combination of the "Management Stare" so favoured by Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, and the nodding of a Hasidic Jew at the Wailing Wall. The nodding must be vigorous, as it keeps the blood moving in your head, and stops the somnolent nodding that always precedes sleep.
….. and they say travel broadens the mind!