Settle in kids, it’s an epic to rival Harry Potter…….

Wow Saskatoon seems like a million miles away from Edmonton Airport Gate 56 and in some ways it is.

I have only one fringe left on my epic Canadian World Domination Tour and I cannot believe how quickly it has flown by.

The Edmonton Fringe was the best one yet for me. I virtually sold out my entire run, got some lovely reviews and consolidated some great friendships along the way. I stayed with a lovely family who distracted me far too often from work with home-made red wine, (which surprisingly did not taste like beaver pee) and went to the infamous West Ed Mall.

For those in the don’t know, WEM is the biggest shopping centre in the world. It has a water park, an amusement park, an ice-skating rink, a sea lion enclosure (the dolphins kept dying) and oh yeah….shops.

As the Edmonton “summer” was more reminiscent of Scott’s expedition, I decided that rather then eat some dogs I should buy some winter woollies.

What a shame.

I also rode the Mind Bender Roller Coaster or as I prefer to call it the Neck Cracker, or as the weird man behind us said - the Death Car.

As my mate Nile and I were settling in waiting for the coaster to chug off into a stomach churning whirly-gig, this slightly greasy, frankly creepy dude behind us told us the story of how the very car we were sitting in once flew off to tracks in mid corkscrew and turned it’s inhabitants into Prime Canadian Mince Meat.

Wicked.

We survived but only just and were both in need of some serious neck readjustment afterwards.

After Edmonton’s madness was all over I had a week off before the Vancouver Fringe so I decided to cheat death once more, by hiring a car and driving on the wrong side of the road through the Canadian Rockies. Just call me Evil Penevil……..or something like that.

I decided to tootle through Alberta as opposed to driving to Vancouver, as to afford a one way hire in Canada is to sell all non-vital organs. SO I made it to Jasper, Banff and Calgary in one piece with only heading off on the wrong side of the road once. I did better than when I hired a bike in Belgium when I was 23 and made it a fair few hundred metres on the left wondering why everyone was looking at me funny. I was lucky I didn’t end up a Belgian Biscuit. (see what I did there….yes well.)

The Rockies really are very stunning, but at first I found it hard to get too excited as really it’s just the South Island but everyone says… “eh” a little more. A few of us hired a house in Jasper and I was perfectly happy to curl up inside with Cable TV, pasta, wine AND wireless internet. BUT you will be pleased to know I did manage to get owt and abowt in the wilderness and even climbed a mountain.

On my way to Banff I made a stop in Lake Louise which is truly stunning though horrendously touristy, scrambled about on a glacier and then settled into a night at the YWCA. Oh the glamour. Banff would be picturesque too if didn’t look like Baghdad. They’re digging up the main street and redoing the sewers apparently, either that or looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction I couldn’t be sure. Canada does have a lot of oil.

HHHmmmmm.

From Banff I made a stop in Canmore which is a cute little town where I decided I wanted to head off on a non-touristy path. And boy did I find one. After following what seemed like a trail, even though I was suddenly envisaging Grizzly Bears at every turn (just what sort of animal crap is THAT!), I ended up stranded when the trail disappeared in a field of nettles and gorse. There was nothing for it so I thrashed through in my new Cowgirl Boots from WEM towards what looked like civilisation.

Yes well. Just as I thought I had made it I encountered a river that I had to forge. OK so maybe a creek, but it was slimy and no doubt filled with Kiwi eating beavers….(um er so to speak.) I managed to get across with only slipping once and dunking my butt.

Did I mention the glamour.

From there I kept on to Calgary where I had arranged to stay with some members of the fabulous Obscene But Not Heard comedy troupe. Downtown Calgary was pretty cool, and even sports a statue to some suffragettes who got a law changed here in Canada that had determined that women were not people and therefore couldn’t run for parliament. Ahhhhh men.

After a night on the tiles I ended up staying somewhere other than expected due to someone getting lucky and me having no desire to knock on his door and say; “Oh sorry if you could just stop pleasuring the lady and let me in I promise to be quiet and you just get back to it….” SO thanks Nicole!

So then it was back to Edmonton to grab the bulk of my stuff, drop off the Ferrari Oestarossa and head here to the airport.

SO Vancouver here I come, I have a couple of poetry gigs lined up and yet another season of flashing my bits, oh and in exciting breaking travel news after V-City I’m going to VEGAS baby. AND I don’t mean Ashburton neither, wooooohooooooooo.

Fingers crossed for some Glamour!