Trip Report

A pretty smooth trip up. From Vancouver to Jasper, my dome car was reserved for the use of tour group comprised of wealthy Americans. This tour company has a special arrangement with my employers to do this, and no doubt it helps to pay my salary, but it's not a very cool thing for the other paying passengers who are excluded from the dome and forced to crowd into the other two. The director of this tour has a rep for being a nuisance, but I've found that nuisances are easily disarmed, if you know what you're doing and don't insist on butting heads with them.

After Jasper, it was pretty quiet. I had a few Australians in my car, two of whom took to calling me "Curly" and have christened Kaleb "Curly Jr." We got along very well.

After some anti-social time, a shower and a nap, I went out to see The Dark Knight with some co-workers. On many levels an impressive action film, but not the Second Coming a lot of the critics are making it out to be. Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is very worth seeing, however.

Tomorrow, I have to report an hour early for a "Hazard Prevention Briefing." This promising to be extremely dull, but I should get paid 6 hours for it, since it's "over and above" my regular assignment, hence time-and-a-half, and the minimum number of hours for a callout is four. The extent of my employers' penny wisdom and pound foolishness never ceases to amaze me.

Can't wait to get home. I got a report from Rachel that Kaleb is now looking at things in a focussed way.