Since winning this bursary we have often been accused of being lucky (sometimes not so politely!), and we have generally stuck to our guns and replied that you make your own luck.  I’m beginning to think we’re lucky.

We made it to Vancouver without being decapitated (these things happen on the Greyhound apparently) and met up with Andrew Westlund. This then cued our second TV appearance (remember our first one?  That’s right, Kazakhstan, glad you’re keeping up), however this one Spike did alone.  Pete and I were so tired and looked so bad it was decided we should not appear. Spike managed an amazing job, even fielding questions of a spiritual nature.

Us with Laura-Lynn of channel 10′s ‘The Daily’

Since then we have been living at the Westlunds house and having an amazing time – thank you so much guys, you have made us feel really at home.  We’ve even had a go at stripping…bark off a tree, which is incredibly satisfying!

Pete + power tools = trouble

Vancouver is a fantastic city, full of great people and in an amazing setting.  It has a beautiful waterfront setting with rocky, snowy peaks floating on the horizon.  We negotiated Roxy’s customs clearance and had a lovely chat with the friendly officials, who were a little bit jealous of us!  We then picked her up from a warehouse and dropped her at the local Land Rover dealership for some much-needed TLC.

Welease Woxy!

Roxy in rehab

We’ve fitted in a couple of case studies here; the first was east of the city in a beautiful valley below the mountains.

The second was out on Vancouver Island which we visited for a couple of days.  Once again we enjoyed fantastic hospitality, staying with family friends of Spike in Victoria, which is another lovely (and slightly British!) city.  This was where we spent Pete’s birthday, and had a great night down on the waterfront.  The next day we hired a car and took a drive along the stunning coast line – the Pacific seems to have a lot of that – and did our case study at a lovely honey farm which also happened to have mead tasting…

Beautiful British Columbia

Pete, meet the bees

A few days later we celebrated my birthday with a fantastic day in Vancouver, even managing to gatecrash a party at the rowing club – they seemed to think we were ‘the rugby players’, so we didn’t ruin the illusion and enjoyed the waterfront view from their deck.

Our time here is still a little open-ended as we wait for the service on Roxy to be completed, but when we do come to leave it’ll hard to drag ourselves away!

- David

Playing on the iPod: ‘Don’t stop believing’ by Journey