God only knows what I'd be without you

The Bearded Backpacker has gone on holiday and in his place we present the Mustached Mountaineer. No loyal readers, its still your hero, the Bearded Backpacker, but I have made some changes to my appearance so that I can go undercover in my quest to understand the world of the cowboy. This weekend Calgary is playing host to the National Bull Riding Championships and in honour of that I thought I would shave my beard and just leave my moustache in its place. I don’t know what I was thinking when I made that decision, but I guess I just wanted to change things up a bit, what with having the beard on for a year and a half now. Sometimes you need to go with a complete overhaul to strengthen the beard’s power. Anyway I was hoping for some input on the mustached look and so feel free to post your comments, I look forward to your thoughts.

So I hope some of you had a laugh at my expense and we will continue the adventures. The cold weather is really moving into the Sandstone City now. We are enjoying or are expected to enjoy minus 20 temperatures and the snow has returned. Its not too bad I tell you what.

Did you know that Calgary was called the Sandstone City? I have to admit that I only found this out recently myself. The story behind the nickname seems to be that after the great fire of November 1886, where Calgary's downtown was almost entirely destroyed, it was decided that to keep this from ever happening again all large buildings in the city's downtown would be built with Paskapoo sandstone. So over the next 15 years over 40 sandstone buildings sprung up downtown and the city got its masonry moniker. Fantastic. I'm so glad I was able to teach you this amazing tale. This is just some of the fabulous insight you will be privy too if any of my loyal readers decide they want to drop in. We'll learn alot.

Oh yeah so I guess I should wish a Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the U-S-A. I hope y'all enjoyed the turkey and football.

Later