Mark: Hi everyone, welcome back to EnglishLingQ. Mark here with Jill for another installment. I guess it's not sunny today. Jill: Darn.
Mark: Darn.
Jill: It was a beautiful weekend I heard though.
Mark: It was a beautiful weekend, yeah. Was it not nice where you were?
Jill: It wasn't bad. I'm just trying to think, it's all such a blur. Yeah, Friday was nice and sunny.
Mark: Maybe you can explain a little bit about what you did.
Jill: Yeah, I actually went up to a town called Golden in sort of eastern B.C. close to the Alberta border, close to the Rocky Mountains. That's where my dad lives and that side of my family is from there. It was my granddad's 80th birthday on Friday, so we had a big party on Saturday. Mark: That's a pretty big milestone. Jill: Yeah, well, and considering a year and a half ago he had a major, major, stroke and he wasn't expected to live. It was just a miracle that he even survived and he is actually even able to talk now, which was even more of a miracle. You know, he's in a wheelchair and in a home now, which is very different than how he lived before his stroke. But, you know, it still was cause for celebration, his birthday. They rented out the senior center that they have in the town there and had sandwiches and desserts and everything and lots of people. I think there were about 60 people that came.
Mark: Most people from Golden?
Jill: Yeah, yeah, a few people from out of town who have known my grandparents for years and years, but most people live in the town or surrounding areas.
Mark: Right.
Jill: So yeah, it was nice. Up there it can get really cold in the winter and so it wasn't bad. I think it got up to actually one or two degrees on Friday there, which, you know, isn't cold because the week before it had been minus 20, so it really warmed up for when we went up and it was nice. Mark: Yeah, that sounds really warm. Do they get the same sort of Chinook winds that they get in Calgary there?
Jill: No, they don't, they don't; I don't know. Usually it's cold in the winter and then some days or weeks are just a little bit warmer for whatever reason. Mark: Yeah.
Jill: So, no, it was quite nice. There was a little bit of snow, but even the day it snowed there was sun at the same time.
Mark: Oh nice.
Jill: Yeah, it was quite pretty.
Mark: How long did it take you to drive there, by the way?
Jill: Going up took us quite a while because we left after work in the afternoon.
Mark: Right.
Jill: Typically, on a regular day it will take about seven and a half hours, depending if you stop a lot it will take more, right? But we don't, we pretty much go straight through. But the last stretch it had started snowing heavily, the last hour and a half to two hour stretch of highway. Going up we were going really slow that last… Mark: Well that's a particularly bad stretch of highway too. Jill: Revelstoke to Golden going through the Rogers Pass they get so much precipitation there, which in the winter is in the form of snow. They just get dumps of snow, so the visibility was really bad.
Mark: I think that might be the worst stretch of highway in Canada, if I'm not mistaken, just because of the weather conditions and the mountain roads. I think they've been fixing it up quite a bit or are in the process of fixing it up to make it safer. Jill: The road itself, I mean, actually, was quite good. It was clear it was just that the wind was blowing and it was snowing, so you just couldn't see very far ahead of you. Plus, by the time we started there it was already midnight. We'd been up since 5:15 in the morning, working all day and then driving. Mark: It doesn't sound too safe. Jill: No, probably not. I stayed awake too to make sure Chris was awake and everything was alright. But the drive home yesterday was beautiful and sunny the whole way. The roads were bare and it was great. I think it took us…well, we stopped for an hour for lunch, actually, yesterday, so probably total it took eight hours or something; eight and a half hours maybe, so it wasn't too bad. Mark: On a nice day in the wintertime it's a beautiful drive. Jill: It is.
Mark: Everything is covered in snow and through the different mountain ranges.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: The Rogers Pass is a very famous pass, mountain pass.
Jill: It's closed a lot in the winter. Mark: Yeah, I'm sure it is. But if I'm not mistaken and my history could be wrong, but when they were putting in the railway they couldn't get through the Rockies until they finally…I think Rogers was the guy, the lead surveyor or whatever he was, who found the pass to get the railway through the mountains and that's the Rogers Pass. Jill: I think you're right. The railroad tracks definitely do go through there and they've got some avalanche sheds on the tracks and also on the highway. It can be a fairly treacherous stretch of road in the wintertime. But, yeah, we're fine. We made it.
Mark: That's good, that's good. Jill: Yeah.
What about you? How was your weekend?
Mark: We didn't get up to a whole lot. Actually, everybody at home is sick, pretty much. I've even got still a bit of it, but my wife was quite sick like with a fever and, I don't know, cough for three or four days, really, it's been. Jill: Oh wow.
Mark: She's just not feeling very well even today. Jill: And that's what Olivia had, right, your youngest daughter? Mark: Yeah, Olivia. Annie had it too and Kyle's got it now, so everybody is kind of sick. That kind of takes the stuffing out of the weekend pretty much. Actually, soccer was cancelled because all the fields have snow and are frozen or wet and snowy. They are just a mess, so there was no soccer, which was nice.
Jill: Would you have gone though had there been?
Mark: Well, the girls are okay, like they could have gone.
Jill: They're better now? Mark: Yeah.
And, actually, both days were nice because it was sunny. It would have been two of the nicer soccer days of the year, except the fields are unplayable. But, anyway, it was just as well because the parents have to stand out there in the freezing cold. They don't get to move around, so that would have been me. But, otherwise, I mean I still managed to get up. I went for a snowshoe with the dog and that was beautiful. I mean lots of snow because it's been snowing a lot and bright sunshine. I mean it was just awesome up there.
Jill: You can't ask for a better day than that. Mark: You really can't. I mean it was phenomenal. I mean I guess it was fairly busy. Plus, apparently, there was someone looking for dogs off leash. There was a park ranger or something, so Gordie and I went off into the trees and got off the trail because it's no fun putting him on a leash. The whole point is that he can run around in the snow.
Jill: And they just pull you the whole time. If you have them on a leash it's not even fun for you either. Mark: It's not fun for anybody. I don't know why dogs can't run around on the mountain in the snow; like it makes no sense to me. Jill: I don't know if they're worried that dogs are going to run out onto the run, the ski runs? Mark: Well there's no real…I mean there is the cross country area nearby. I think it's more that because more and more people are using that trail. It's a hiking trail, a snowshoeing trail; some people complain. Oh, these dogs off the leash and they're worried. A lot of people don't like dogs. Jill: Well, it's true. I mean even lots of places where you can walk on the seawall here around the ocean there are specific areas that dogs are allowed and aren't allowed or areas where they have to be on leash. Mark: That's right. Jill: I mean to be fair, some people are very afraid of dogs.
Mark: For sure and there are some dogs that aren't well behaved, so you can understand, I guess, somewhat. But in that case, yeah, there's a trail but, I mean, we're not on the trail. We're hardly on the trail and the dogs not, certainly, on the trail. Jill: No.
Mark: The dog is charging around. But, I guess, I mean if the dog's loose and decides and it's not a well-behaved dog then… Jill: Well and you can run into the problem because I've had this when I've been on hiking trails and I'm running or hiking. Actually, there are trails where dogs are allowed to be off leash, but it does drive me nuts when people have no control over their pets. Their dogs are right in your way, charging right after you, coming towards you. They don't move and you don't know where they are going. I'm not really afraid of dogs either, so I'm okay, but if I was afraid of dogs, if I were afraid of dogs, you know, that would be horrible for me. I wouldn't go running in those places. Mark: Yeah, it's true. Jill: So, I don't know, it's a tough call. Mark: I don't know either. I just hide in the woods.
Jill: Yeah.
Well, I think if you're off trails then it really shouldn't matter. Mark: I think so. I'm not sure even what the rules would be. Like if I'm not on the trail and I see the ranger, presumably, I'm fine. Jill: Yeah, I think so.
Mark: My dog is not on the trail and neither am I. Jill: I think the rangers only really monitor the trails. That's the only time I've ever seen them is on the trails. Mark: For sure. Once I'm off the trail I know I'm not going to run into the ranger. Jill: No, no.
Mark: And, really, that's the best place to be in the untracked snow and nobody is around. It's just a little harder work for me and especially for the dog. Jill: Yeah, no kidding.
Mark: Yeah, he was pretty tired when we got home, which is good. So, I mean that was pretty much our weekend. We didn't get up to much. As I think we were talking about earlier, I was thinking about this dinosaur show. What did you say it was called again?
Jill: Walking with the Dinosaurs.
Mark: Yeah, that's right. Jill: I think that's what it's called. Mark: I think that's what it is Walking with the Dinosaurs. Stephen here in our office, Stephen Coyle, was going to go or did go, in fact. I haven't spoken to him, but I think he did go. It sounds like it would be a really neat show. It's only here for five days or something, but it's this show that I guess is from Australia. Jill: I think so. I read something and I can't be sure of the facts now, but I think it started in Australia. Mark: It's in a big stadium like it's in the big hockey stadium. Jill: GM Place, yeah.
Mark: Because they need the really high ceiling. I don't know how many people can see it, but at least half the stadium is whatever, 10,000 people. There are these actual size dinosaur…I don't know what you'd call them…robots. Jill: Yeah, I'm not…like it's not an exhibit. It's not just dinosaurs standing there. Mark: No, I think it's a show. Jill: It's a show like showing them how they lived and moved together, so I guess they're robotic. Mark: I would assume. I haven't seen it. I'm going by this picture that I've somehow created by looking, I don't know, on the Web or I've read somewhere. It's some kind of real, not real life, but some kind of replica dinosaurs that move around. Jill: Basically re-enacting what it was like in the time of the dinosaurs.
Mark: I mean it sounds pretty neat.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: I guess it's probably over now. Jill: I think it went from Thursday night, last Thursday night, to I believe Sunday night or tonight. I think four nights was all it was, which is too bad because we wanted to take my nephew and it happened to be the weekend that we were away. In fact, my nephew, my brother and his kids were up in Golden for the birthday as well, so they weren't in town for it either. Mark: Oh yeah.
Jill: But if it ever comes again I think it would be a neat thing.
Mark: That sounded really neat, but we didn't see it. Jill: We'll live vicariously through Stephen. Mark: That's right. We'll go find out how it was. Jill: Yeah.
Mark: It was probably bad.
Jill: Well and I think the tickets were pretty expensive too.
Mark: They were.
Jill: It should have been a good show.
Mark: Anyway, with that I think we'll probably stop there. Jill: Alright.
Mark: We'll talk to you all next time. Jill: Bye-bye.
