Shadow of the Beast

3 March - After the two busiest days i've had since starting I was praying for something quieter but it just wasn’t to be. There was a quiet lull in the afternoon but apart from that it was non stop again. I know that me and Jason are favoured by the dispatcher, which is great because it means more money and it also makes the day go faster when you’re constantly ruashed off your feet. I t does mean that it isn’t so good for the others but the juice is available to all if they work for it. Noone is going to give you an urgent trip if you’re not going to get it there on time. And I still do my fair shar of crap jobs that mean goingfrom one side of Vancouver to the other for a pittance. Owen, the new guy didn’t turn up on Friday, possibly he’s quit and I got a buzzed by BJ, the manager, asking me of the wherabouts of Rick, the 19 year veteran whose managed to get himself blacklisted from just about every courier company in downtown, because Rick had apparently gotten angry with a customer and torn up the envelope he was supposed to deliver in front of them. On the way home I stopped by Mark's shop to pick up the skis his boss had given me, had a bit of a chat about the current house situation which is really not very good at all at the moment, and then I balanced the skis between my bag and the handlebars, edging them underneath the bar ends to get them home. I’d just arrived at home when I got a call from Shadow, the dodgy French BMX courier saying we had to meet in half an hour at the Terminal to get bus to Whistler. Had a mad rush to throw my gear into my rucksack before bolting to the Skytrain. I was only 10m latt, Shadow got thee a quarter of an hour later with a pizza and an 8-pack in tow and we had to run to get the bus., by the time we got the tickets and made it to the bus the doors were closed and the only reason we didn’t miss it was because the driver was having a cigarette beofre he left. Arather dull bus ride but it wasn’t too long before we arrived at Whistler Village where we found out that our host who was to meet us in the village had gotten himself a little intoxicated but che cheerfullyA informed us that it was a very short walk. It may have been a short walk in terms of an afternoon stroll but it was at least half an hour in pitch black, on an icy path and carrying a rucksack containing ski boots and lugging a very awkward pair of skis. I still hadn’t recovered from the particularly brutal week and my shoulders and back were killing me by the time wa actually got there. Shadow's friendm Alex, is certainly a character. He's a hulking bouncer type who loves his fishing, his hunting, ddirt bike and quad bike and other survival type activities. He’s a biig guy but I was still surprised by the amount of booze he managed to put away over the course of the next few hours. We later headed to a keg party run by some locals that wsa packed full of snowboarding bumpkins (hey bra, how you doin man) wich was reasonably entertaining if it wasn’t for Crazy Wally, one of the hosts (or apparently he was just a friend of the hosts) who was an absolute nutcase. Upon arriving at the house there were some people smoking cigarettes on the front porch and he came out and screamed at them, 'Stop f**king smoking on my f**king porch. If you want to smoke you will smoke in the f**king garage, you f**ks', 'Everybody take your f**king shoes off in my f**king house! I will break your f**king neck if you don’t take off your shoes.' Apparently this rant was fuelled by a previous cocaine binge but he was not a happy camper. It seemed that every twenty minutes his voice waould carry over the already very loud music screaming obscenity laden threats and challenges to one group or another who were cuaising him some grief. I seem to be getting a lot of craziness around me at the moment which whike not being pleassant is at least not very boring.