Becoming a Local

Banff is the smallest, big town in the world, where you absolutely should not drive, like ever. No where to park, and crazy lost tourist litter the road making it more dangerous then the Auotban durining a drunk driving convention.

But I do know that I already love it. My friend Craig is taking me for a walking tour and drinks tonight. I am looking forward to it. Craig is a frat brother of Mark's who works here as a paramedic. I always marvel at how many people we have in our lives that we met through the fraternity system at University. He has a ton of interesting work stories. It seems that when you get injured in Banff, it is never a small injury treated quickly and easily. Usually it involves helicopters, or three hour ambulance drives to remote areas. Before coming to Banff he worked in Nunavut. For those who don't know where that is, it is about as far north as you can get. He told me one story about a guy they had to rescue on a break away ice flow. He also says you can go polar bear hunting there was the bargin price of twenty grand.

Yesterday, I meet a crazy derelict at Starbucks that seem to be the town pet. Everyone knows him, says hi when they pass buy. Guess he has been attacked by a bear twice in the last 2 years. One of the guys who stopped by today told him to come by for some work tomorrow, and one of the ladies dropped him off a container of fruit.

Then I had these other 2 guys sitting beside me yap, yap, yapping about how they can’t find anyone to work, how they want to key their bathrooms, blah, blah, blah. Retail business of some sort. Anyhoodle, takes you about 5 minutes to walk anywhere and it is almost always beautiful out, or at least beautiful looking. There is too much to do around here, becoming a couch potato is not an option.