Trying to put together a diary for our first week in Canada has proved rather difficult. The fact that the diary part of the website hasn’t been available has meant that the diary is being written two weeks late, and since we’ve accomplished so little, there are few things to jog the memory. What follows is as much as I can remember of week 01.

Obviously it began in London. The three of us met at Victoria, amassing an enormous pile of luggage, which we managed to drag onto the 07:00 Gatwick Express.

The only complication at the airport was the payment for our excess baggage. Having paid that, we passed through the shops and breakfasted at McDonalds. There was much discussion about our choice of route - travelling via Dallas had seemed like a good way of saving cash when we booked, but the extra hours on the journey looked a little less inviting sitting at Gatwick at 08:00.

The flight to Dallas was fairly unmemorable, but on arrival we were amused to be met by an official from our sister organisation, the US Department of Justice. They didn’t seem to recognise us though, and waved us through without comment.

We tasted our first beers of the trip in Dallas, ate at TGI Friday, then caught a second flight north to Vancouver, where we were met by the Riders of Justice Vancouver representative, Dom, and his housemate, Mark. Mark drove us back to the flat he and Dom share with their other housemate, Jon, and we set up camp there for what would turn out to be 3 days.

After partying that night we went out shopping on the Sunday and made our first major mistake of the trip - the purchase of a Canadian PS2. We didn’t know at the time, but this would turn out to ruin our productivity during the first two weeks, though we did get quite good at Desert Storm.

The rest of our time in Vancouver passed in a haze (literally), and other than Mark sorting out the Wagon of Justice there isn’t much to report. Having test-driven the Wagon on Monday, we picked it up on the Tuesday, stuffed our kit in and headed up to Whistler.

The second half of week 01 passed with even less to report than the first few days. Having met our landlady, Dawn, on the Wednesday morning, we seemed to spend the rest of our time on the PS2, venturing out only for a quick trip back to Vancouver on the Thursday night to see the Freestylers.

Feeling bad about the amount of time we spent with our Vancouver hosts, we drove back up to Whistler for a quiet Friday night, then back to Vancouver for a big party on the Saturday night. That got a bit out of control, and Sunday was almost all spent recovering, though we did get out in the evening to watch Star Wars: Attack of the Clones in the IMAX, which was a pretty amazing experience.