Opening Day at Sunshine Village!

This Wednesday was a public holiday in Canada for Remembrance Day, so we had the day off work. The very clever marketing people at Sunshine Village (a ski hill about an hour and a half from Calgary) decided that they should open for the season on this very day....

I made a call out to my ThoughtWorking friends to see who would take up this mid week escape to the mountains, and the four of us embarked on our first ski trip of the year.

Since the first blast of snow in September we've had pretty much no snow in Calgary, yet in the Rockies, an hour up the road it has been a very different story. Tonnes of the stuff. More than I have ever seen for so early in the season. So we were all VERY excited. I've never been a normal visitor on opening day of a ski hill, wasn't sure what to expect but we figured that we weren't going to be the only ones who thought that heading up there yesterday was a good idea. One good run was all going to make it worthwhile we decided.

With our expectations set (thank goodness), we left Calgary at 7.30am ish. As we got further into the mountains it started to snow lightly, and by the time we were 5kms from the turn off to Sunshine they were big fat flakes. And then we hit our first of many line ups of the day. Sunshine has had a very respectable 40 cms in the last 3 days alone. They had to re-sand the road so we all queued up to get up the access road, then crawled on up the access road. One good run and it'll all be worthwhile....

Good job that I had the company I did in the car. Never a dull (or quiet) moment with that lot. As we were nudging up the road a whole herd of mountain goats decided that they wanted to hang out on the road, causing at least some entertainment for us all. About half way along the road, we noticed that people were starting to come back down in the opposite direction, and grinning a lot. Odd. After another 20 mins we reached some parking attendants who told to go back down and park on the road, all the car parks were already full. Honestly have never seen it as busy.

By the time we had kitted up and walked all the way up to road, driven by our need for that one good run, it was 11am. All was forgotten as we headed up the gondola and got some runs in. Such good conditions for so early, gorgeous powder, and a great atmosphere with everyone just ecstatic about being back on the snow.

Our two last runs mad the whole day. The most fun I have had skiing in a long time. Not a care in the world. Now who do I h ave to talk to to get every Wednesday off to go skiing?!

JJ's Last Week in Canada

My good friend JJ headed back to the UK last week. So lot's of what I got up to in October were leaving events!

We headed out to the mountains with another couple of ThoughtWorkers and went out past Lake Lousie to the Bow Valley Lookout. Another of those 'awesome views for no effort' places. Quick walk up from the car park and you get to a ledge that looks out over this gorgeous view:

Even though it was a rainy miserable day it somehow made the mountains all mystical and awesome.

We then went a bit further on up the road towards Jasper to Mistaya Canyon. A really cool little place, where the river has cut down deep into the rock and left a sliver of a canyon. We hung out there for quite a while, just nice watch the water roaring through the rocks.

Another brilliant thing we did was go skiing at Canada Olympic Park after work one day. The season hasn't quite started yet but COP is open. It's a outdoor little slope on the outskirts of Calgary. They have mostly man made snow but its still snow, and they do night skiing too. It was brilliant to get back on skis for the first time this year. JJ had packed his ski stuff already so was skiing in jeans. HA.

It's pretty surreal skiing on the only peice of snow that you can see and practically in a housing estate.But it's brilliant having somewhere to ski so close. Might keep trying to head up there before the slopes open this weekend.

Last up was the Last Night of the Poms. JJ had a house cooling party for us all, a brilliant night and this is us at the end.

ThoughtWorks Canada Away Day 2009

So bear with me while I post lots of things that I got up to in October...

A lot of October revolved around giving my friend JJ a good send off as he heads back to the UK with ThoughtWorks. Sorely missed.

First up...... ThoughtWorks Canada Away Day 2009

My first Away Day. Was brilliant fun!

The idea of an away day is that, as a company we are all pretty disparate. All on different client sites its often hard to "regroup", catch up with everyone and share ideas. So there is a day when we all go off site, give presentations to each other, get company updates, and generally catch up :-)

We went out to a ranch in Kananaskis Country out towards Banff. As predicted when we started planning the away day back in July, the first snow of the winter arrived just in time for the away day. It was actually really good fun to be surrounded in the snow, for a lot of people traveling this was the first time they had really seen that much snow, and it's always fun to watch their reactions. It wouldn't be the Canada away day if there wasn't ten tonne of snow!

We all had a great day, with all sorts of interesting topics for the presentations from sales skills, to cucumber testing to social responsibility and of course not without a hour long Roy Rant from our fearless leader Roy.

We also got some great TW swagger, in the shape of nice hoodies seen below.

On the move again...

I have a whole heap of blogging to do but firstly I thought I would officially announce...

....That I'm moving to Chicago in December!

32,000 miles of long distance relationship later, it's about time that Tim and I are in the same country at least, so I'm leaving the lovely Canada and heading to join Tim in Chicago.

I'm staying with ThoughtWorks (yay!), which is great, will hopefully make this leap of faith a bit easier. I've met a bunch of people from the Chicago office in different parts of the world, so that will be good. Work wise I'm looking forward to some new challenges, no idea where the next project will take me, I've been told that I should be prepared for traveling so who knows! I've been on my current (and first ever) gig since February, it's been a crazy journey since I started there and I can only thank everyone for their positive encouragement and patience! I can honestly say that I'm petrified about starting on a new project, but must be brave!

I've loved loved my time in Canada, yay for the skiing, yay for the hiking, yay for the lovely people. I didn't think that my ThoughtWorks career would start in Canada but I'm glad that it did, and I'm forever grateful for the opportunity that I had to come over here. The Canada TW office is an awesome place, friendly and cosy, everytime I walk in, I am greeted with hugs, that's my kind of office! I'm sure the experience will be different in the big bad world of the TW headquarters in Chicago...

And finally.... can't believe that I'm all growd up and going to be living with a boyyyy! I'm really looking forward to it, there's now two people to worry about in all my country hoping, but I reckon Chicago for a year or so will be wicked fun. Everyone's welcome to come and visit us!

The plan so far is to roll off my current project in mid December, fly from Calgary to Chicago to move all my things and then had straight off back to the UK for Christmas and a catch up with the faaaaamimly. Tim's coming too god help him ;-) Then back to Chicago on Jan 1st.

The Photo was taken by the Lovely Suzi Edwards at the TW Canada Away Day 2009