Another week or so in Banff

I forgot to say last time that Laura and I went to bathe in the "therapeutic" hot springs last Saturday. Since they're open air and hot (about 40 degrees), and it was during the heat wave, we decided to go late, around 10pm. It was dark and cool by then, but we could just about make out the shadow of Mt Rundle opposite us. The pool is quite small and jam packed with people so we just kind of stood around in it. Laura had rented an historical (style) bathing suit, which had little shorts and a frilly skirty bit. It wasn't so bad...I didn't rent one though. I just brought my own.

I'm looking at my diary to try and tell you what I did on Tuesday. All it tells me is that I spent $3 and I went to a BBQ for bear safety, which was basically a wee bear talk surrounded by food. I don't know what the $3 was spent on.

I was working the rest of this week - on Wednesday I was at Emerald Lake with John shooting a great bunch of Latino New Yorkers in the rain and the sunshine. There was a great rainbow which came out right over the lake, and the mountains in the background were draped in a few low clouds, so it made a pretty neat background for some of the portraits. We also got one of them under an umbrella when it was absolutely bucketing down, but the sun was out and backlighting them so it made the rain all golden and shiny.

The plan for Thursday was to climb Cascade Mountain, but that fell though when we woke up in the morning to see that Cascade was gone. All the mountains were gone, in fact. There were plenty of clouds, though, and quite a lot of rain. I worked a bit in the studio learning how to make proofs, because Lindsay is on holiday this week and they're a bit behind. I spend most of the day there, seeing as it was so wet. Laura had invited me to come up the gondola with her and see all the cool clouds but I didn't. We (and Paul, too) went for dinner at Phil's instead.

I was also in the studio yesterday, still going through those proofs. It was still raining, too. John just bought Gabriela a new computer, which was causing havoc. Blame it on Bill Gates. The rest of the computers in the studio are Macs, but this one resolutely isn't. John, Gabriela and I went out for lunch at Melissa's steak house, which is apparently an institution. They did do pretty good food there. In the evening, I met Laura, Paul and Laura's bus driver to learn how to play Yuker, which is a card game sort of like whist, but with some pretty random rules. Tonya says it's a big thing out east. We played pool, quite badly, too.

The wedding today went pretty smoothly, apart from the moment that I found myself kneeling on Andrew's front car seat with my head and shoulders out of the sunroof, facing backwards, trying to balance this massive lens and compose a shot without scratching the paintwork, while Andrew was driving down the bumpiest road in Banff.

This was in order to get a shot of the couple's dog with it's head sticking out their window as they followed behind us. I love my job, and I'm not being sarcastic. I think I even got the shot. We will see.