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Our first overnight stop was at the ski-resort town of Kamloops.


 

Kamloops has a couple of pubs, one of which seemed a possible solution for an inexpensive meal.  It was a Canadian version of an Australian outback pub, complete with local workers and 'characters'.

The restaurant at the hotel was closed, so we walked around town and checked-out the restaurants.  The Pub looked better and better.  Maybe the ciders were beaconing?  In the end it was a good night.

Our next overnight stop would be Revelstoke.

Again, we walked, past the RCMP (Mounties) station, to the river and the more intimate vistas to be see there.  There is an unmistakable similarity to the scenery in the Netflix soapy Virgin River.  This is not surprising, as the series, that is supposed to take place in a remote 'Northern California' town, is actually shot, not far away from here, in Canada.

The following morning there was a local market set-up in the street, next to our hotel, that elicited a quick look. 

After breakfast we set off again, to collect our friends Brian and Kat, an hour late as we had not realised that it's a new time zone, and then on to Banff where we needed to call in to Hertz to get Brian registered as a co-driver for the car.

Brian's less likely to forget which side of the road to drive on, as they live in California. Actually, I've more often forgotten in Australia, after returning from driving oversees. Less attention paid at home.

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Travel

Denmark

 

 

  

 

 

In the seventies I spent some time travelling around Denmark visiting geographically diverse relatives but in a couple of days there was no time to repeat that, so this was to be a quick trip to two places that I remembered as standing out in 1970's: Copenhagen and Roskilde.

An increasing number of Danes are my progressively distant cousins by virtue of my great aunt marrying a Dane, thus contributing my mother's grandparent's DNA to the extended family in Denmark.  As a result, these Danes are my children's cousins too.

Denmark is a relatively small but wealthy country in which people share a common language and thus similar values, like an enthusiasm for subsidising wind power and shunning nuclear energy, except as an import from Germany, Sweden and France. 

They also like all things cultural and historical and to judge by the museums and cultural activities many take pride in the Danish Vikings who were amongst those who contributed to my aforementioned DNA, way back.  My Danish great uncle liked to listen to Geordies on the buses in Newcastle speaking Tyneside, as he discovered many words in common with Danish thanks to those Danes who had settled in the Tyne valley.

Nevertheless, compared to Australia or the US or even many other European countries, Denmark is remarkably monocultural. A social scientist I listened to last year made the point that the sense of community, that a single language and culture confers, creates a sense of extended family.  This allows the Scandinavian countries to maintain very generous social welfare, supported by some of the highest tax rates in the world, yet to be sufficiently productive and hence consumptive per capita, to maintain among the highest material standards of living in the world. 

Read more: Denmark

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Greatest Aviation Mystery of All Time

 

 

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was finally called off in the first week of June 2018.

The flight's disappearance on the morning of 8 March 2014 has been described as the greatest aviation mystery of all time, surpassing the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937.  Whether or no it now holds that record, the fruitless four year search for the missing plane is certainly the most costly in aviation history and MH370 has already spawned more conspiracy theories than the assassination of JFK; the disappearance of Australian PM Harold Holt; and the death of the former Princess Diana of Wales; combined.

Read more: The Greatest Aviation Mystery of All Time

Opinions and Philosophy

More nuclear medicine

 

 

 

As a follow-up to my radiation treatment for prostate cancer, that I reported here as: Medical fun and games, I recently underwent a PET scan, to check that all is well. 

When I first heard of them I imagined that a PET scan was a more generic all-encompassing version of a CAT scan - perhaps one involving dogs and rabbits; or even goldfish?

Read more: More nuclear medicine

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