Bienvenidos a Madrid

We're in Spain!  After 18 hours of flying and waiting for connecting flights, we landed in Madrid in the late afternoon right on schedule, and our friend Janet was waiting for us as planned.

Cleverly, we'd booked the Airport Hilton with Airmiles (practically free to us) to avoid having to drive in busy traffic straight off the plane.

Then, in the typical post-long, exhausting flight fashion we've gotten used to, we drove past the Airport Hilton multiple times trying to find the exit ramp, despite having a gps, eventually having to return to the airport info centre for the correct directions, after which it took us 5 minutes to get to the hotel without even getting on the motorway.

This Hilton is pretty fancy by our standards, with a large bathroom encased in smoked glass complete with a preposterously impractical clear glass sink, and a separate shower and soaker tub.  With its discreet blue (inadequate) lighting, it glows in the darkened room.

After only a few jet-lagged hours of sleep, I've hauled myself down to the lobby in the early hours of the morning to update this blog while the others sleep.

View from Airport Hilton

Today after some time to organize and decompress, we head south to Toledo.

Signs of Spring

Last week we went walking out on the Mission Road for the first time this spring.  The weather was glorious, the meadowlarks were singing and I saw my first bluebird.

Yesterday morning it was snowing but it cleared in the afternoon and we went for an evening walk at Scout Island.  The waterfowl are passing through on their way north, including this swan,

 And the obligatory picture from the viewpoint:

Today we walked the Mission Road again.  No sun this morning, but another sure sign of Spring in the Cariboo, newborn calves:

And to think in another week, we're abandoning all this splendor for a month in Spain.

Cabaret Opens to Rave Reviews

"Even the orchestra is beautiful"

Full review here.

After 2 months of rehearsing, the musical Cabaret I'm playing in has opened to sold out audiences.  It's got a great trombone part, so it's fun and challenging to play.  We have 6 more performances over the next 2 weeks.

Night of Remembrance Video

Here's a video from our Night of Remembrance Concert back in November, featuring our guest trumpeter, Donnie Clark.

What I am up to lately is practicing hard for the local theatre club's performance of the  musical "Cabaret," which will play for 3 weeks at the end of March.  

Viva Las Vegas

Spot Leo in the crowd

Leo's New Years resolution this year was to run a 100 Mile race, which has been on his bucket list for a while.

So this week he flew to Vegas and yesterday he ran around a Las Vegas park 50 times.  It took him 21 hours and 6 seconds and he came in 7th out of 31 finishers and first in the over 50 age group.

Last Ski?

Here we are last week on Bull Mountain with our regular Thursday Morning ski buddies.  A fabulous morning, warm and sunny, with the snow still in good condition.  Unfortunately, over the next days it warmed so much that we haven't been sking since.  Almost all the snow in town is melted.  But we did get more skiing in this year than for many years.  We almost paid off our annual ski passes.

And colder weather is forecast for next week, with even a day of snow predicted, so who knows, there may be more skiing yet.

Another Day

Another walk in the Dairy fields.