Chapter 3

In the morning after he woke up at 8:45am and had a shower and went downtown to the core of Banff and visited the stores and boutiques but they were all closed, they dont open untill 10:30 am and so he feels its only logical place to head to would be to head to the internet cafe and then he noticed it didnt open untill 9:30 he had a whole half hour to wait for the internet cafe to open.

Not alot of restaurants or stores are open so he walks back to his hotel room to watch some TV untill 11 or so and happens to find a channel that is showing red bull air races. James loves aviation quite a bit and finds himself flying virtually with the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. Whenever James can find aviation on TV he watches it no matter what it is about and wishes the hotel TV had the wings channel that was created by the discovery channel.

Meanwhile it has become 9:45 and he waits till the show is over and heads down to the internet cafe, he wants so much to stay out of the internet cafe and do nature walks and bike rides but nothing is open yet and it’s too early to go on a hike. He settles himself on the furthest computer from the entrance and logs into his account. Checks his email first off and then his facebook and my.yahoo.com After this he walks over and grabs a coffee to keep him warm because it is a little cold in the internet cafe.

After a while of updating his friends on facebook and everything he checks if his account still has hours on it and if he owes anything before heading upstairs to the main street of Banff. He notices that there are way more people in the street than there was when he got to the internet cafe.

James goes back to his hotel and gets his car out of the garage and decides to drive to Radium, BC. His mustang roars to a start and he’s off on a road trip and this mustang is quite an interesting version. Instead of feeding the CD player cd's and for a few seconds taking your eyes off the road, no this one has a hard drive in it and it plays iTunes now renamed CarTunes. Al you have to do is connect the USB cable from the laptop computer to a hideable USB port on under the volume knob in the stereo area of the dash. Getting songs from your desktop computer is the next version in which they are researching at the moment.

Anyways he puts CarTunes on shuffle and merges onto the Trans Canada highway to the west toward radium. His CarTunes consists of alot of U2, Coldplay, Collective Soul, Bright Eyes and band that is hardly known unless you have seen his youtube channel, called Blue Skies and has alot of covers and originals. And he also has his own music.

After 30mins he gets to the intersecting highway that takes him to radium and merges onto that highway and within another hour arrives in Radium set to go to the hot springs and see the sights.

He arrives at the parking lot for the pools in Radium and gets out takes his backpack with him and heads for the pools. It is now 11:45 am. Kind of a weird time to visit a hot pool but he’s got so much to see (invermere and maybe a trip to interior of BC) why not?

He goes into the building pays his 5 bucks and heads off to the change rooms to change into his swimming trunks. 5 minutes later he emerges from the change area and has a quick shower and heads out to the pool. The pool isn’t very busy and there are only 5 other people in the pool with him. It’s hot outside and it’s hot in the pool.

After what seemed like half an hour of wading in the pool he got out and went back took a quick shower and went back and changed into his regular clothes and headed back to his car. A few minutes later he got back on the highway heading for Invermere that is just down the road from where he is and he hopes to lie on the beach and read his Harry Potter book.

While having the CarTunes on shuffle it came upon a few Bright Eyes songs every other song. This was a good part of the trip, anything your doing while listening to Bright Eyes is a good thing to do. He arrives in Invermere about half an hour later and the time is roughly 12:55pm and its very hot and a bad time to be outside at this time of day and he puts on his sunscreen in the car and waits twenty minutes and reads a bit more of Harry potter book before going to the beach with his towel in hand ready for maybe a bit of a swim.

He’s lying on the towel at the beach and reading more of his book. He seems to be really into his book when an old friend come walking by. This is his friend John from high school who he knew quite well and hasn’t seen in like 10 years and is wondering what he’s doing here, not like he’s not supposed to be here enjoying himself but he just never thought he would never see someone from his past out here.

James and his friend lay next to each other and talk about what’s been happening since high school and after all is said and done john asks where James is heading to and he says "im heading home after this" and then john says "that’s cool, hey have you been to the white swan hot springs?”.” No, what’s so big about that?” James says to John. John replies with stating "The fact that it is the best unknown hot pools in BC, i say unknown because not everyone knows about it, it’s on this old logging road about half an hour or so from here!"

After getting instructions from john he thinks he best be off onto this hot pool place. He gets back into his car and drives an hour or so to the entrance to the white swan provincial park and drives up the old logging road till he gets to a small parking lot and parks the car, with his swimming trunks still on. Gets out and walks down the boardwalk to a set of 3 pools. He gets into the top pool and notices it’s very hot, stifling hot. So he goes to the smaller pool and notices it’s quite cooler than the top pool.

After a few minutes in the bottom pool he slowly makes it to the top pool and i guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be. He then meets some new folk sitting in the top pool and they tell im that it’s not a big deal but you are supposed to dip your body in the cold river then get out because as James finds out it has to be in the 30 to 40 degree range because it’s very cold as in very cold. B-r-r.

After 20 minutes of hanging out at the hot tub he goes back to his car gets dried off and gets in the car. He looks at the map and notices that Kelowna is only 4 hours from here and so he decides to head for it. He starts the car and heads back down the logging road and finds himself back on the highway and heads towards Kelowna. He turn’s on the CarTunes and listens to some Coldplay and some U2.

It will be nearly 4 hours of straight sailing to Kelowna. They have a nice beach there and a nice little airport that he has virtually flown to many times. The highway is busy. Its almost 2pm by the time he gets there it will be about 7:30 and so he thinks to himself maybe kelowna is too far and turns around and heads back to town. 2 Hours later he gets to Banff and goes back to the hotel and lays down and thinks of the good time he had today.

Later that night he packs up and gets ready for the flight back home. He can’t wait. He has such a fun time out in the town that he’s been in for the past week and a half. He wishes that he could keep the car but the car goes back tomorrow at the airport. He has a flight at 7:45 am back to London on Westjet. He watches some TV and falls to sleep.

In the morning he wakes up at 4:50am after getting a wake-up call to give him enough time to get to the airport. He gets in his Mustang and heads towards Calgary. He stops in Canmore for a few minutes at the Tim Hortons and gets himself a coffee and a doughnut and heads back onto the busy highway.

After an hour and a half it is now 6:30am and he’s approaching the Calgary airport and heads for the Parking area for returning a rental car. He cleans out the car quickly then lends the guy working the keys and asks quickly if there are any of these cars being sold and the guy says in the next few weeks they are going to be released to all ford dealerships. James now looks pleased, maybe he can own one.

He gets a cart and puts all of his bags on it and quickly gets to the Westjet kiosk and tells them his name and the email agenda paper he has that has the number the agent enters into the computer. “James Katchen we have your ticket here” as he prints out the boarding pass and hands it to James. He then loads all the bags he has and takes his backpack on board with him and heads to gate D40. He walks through the airport entrance and enters security and takes off his bag, takes out his wallet and all the stuff in his pockets and walks through and it doesn’t beep so he waits for his stuff to be checked and then puts it all back in his wallet, grabs the backpack and heads for the gate. He arrives a short few minutes later and notices there a few people waiting to board he goes to the clerk and shows him his boarding ticket and his license. The clerk says “you may board now if you wish!” and James thanks the man and boards the plane. He notices the plane he is flying on is the 737-200, he thought that Westjet had retired them but they had brought them back for a few flights as they had a few 700’s that were being worked on and they needed a loaner plane to fill in.

The plane slowly did its pushback and get ready to start its engines and ready for normal flight from Calgary to London. After a few minutes of being towed the engines started up and the plane was ready for taxiing. A few moments later they were taking off and flying towards London Ontario.

After takeoff the plane quickly climbed to 10,000 feet and was half way to his cruise altitude of 20,000 feet. James was watching out the window looking at the mountains in the background before the plane made a left turn to head towards Ontario instead of more westerly areas. Once the plane reached the cruise altitude he heard the captain speak “good morning this is your captain Darren Elliott speaking, welcome to our special Calgary to London filler flight! Because of a few extra fleet planes being taken into the hanger they lent us this plane to fly untill they are fixed! Thank you and enjoy your flight!”

During the flight James ordered a few cokes and a package of licorice while the plane flew them towards London. 4.5hrs later they landed in London during a small rainstorm. They parked the plane at the gate and opened the doors and as soon as they did everyone got their stuff and headed for the gate and towards the luggage carousel.

James found the rest of his luggage and headed for the door and out to the parking lot. He got there and put all of his stuff in his car and paid for his parking for the week and headed home. Within the hour he was home and back by himself again ready to get back to work the next day. He picked up his cell phone and called his work and said im home I had a good trip and im ready to get back to work now and the manager said take a day or two off and come in when you’re ready.

He took 2 days off to get back to work and reset all his clocks and get ready for work. During the two days he spent all day flying virtually and driving virtually and he did manage to get some time to relax and read a book. The next day was his first day back after taking a flight to the west. His manager greeted him at the door and asked him how his vacation was and James said it was wonderful. After spending a few minutes explaining the kinds of things he did there in Banff and the things he didn’t get to do he got straight to work.

The next few weeks were as usual, there wasn’t a lot of traffic in the store. But he kept busy by thinking of his trip to Banff that was fresh in his mind. He loved climbing the hills and taking walks at night. During one of the nights he was sleeping at home a dream came to him that he didn’t understand. It seems he couldn’t stop thinking about the plane he flew back home on. It was a Boeing 737-200. In the dream he was flying the plane so perfectly he wondered if anyone was watching him. He awoke suddenly after what seemed to be an alright dream to be woken up by the sound of a doorbell. “3:45 am?” he said to himself, “Who would want to talk to me outside my door this early in the morning?” he mentioned to himself. He opened the door to see a total stranger at his door. “Hello?!” James muttered to himself. “Who is this?” he said to the stranger.

“I am someone you don’t know but I met you in Banff one night” she says. “Um im sorry I didn’t meet anyone out of the internet café or climbing mountains, you’re face looks unfamiliar to me” James replied but didn’t know how he knew this girl who was standing at his doorstep. “Don’t you remember being out at Bruno’s one night?” she said trying to get him to rember the night she met him.

“I didn’t go to Bruno’s at all during my trip, or wait yes I did but it was during the day, not at night” James said back to the total stranger who was looking offended he didn’t remember her. The conversation went on for a few more minutes before James said “im sorry its 4 am now I don’t recognize you from Banff or anywhere I went, I have to work in 2 hours....sorry but can you leave now?” James said back to the stranger hanging outside his door. He decided to stay up and check his email and have a coffee before work.

Later that morning he was ready for work and got to his place of work 1 minutes early, told his boss about what happened this morning and got himself ready to start work again. His day was spent with thoughts of who that girl was or who she was not. “I do not remember going into Bruno’s at night at all on my trip” he thought to himself.

The day ended and James went home, back to being alone again. He was quite sure he only visited Bruno’s in the day time, when James got another knock on the door. It was the same girl from last time, the unknown girl that somehow entered James’s life very recently, like last night perhaps?. This time around she said she worked at UNLTD and that James had walked into the bike/snowboard/skate shop and again James was confounded. “I did not go into Bruno’s or into what you say is unltd store, I do not know you now leave me alone” to which the young girl replied “I know you more than you know me”.

James was now mad, he had now claimed a stalker to his list of unknown friends and added what she looked like and put her out of his mind...”so now wherever I go im going to be followed, like I need this” he said to himself just before bed.

The next day he was surprised to not have to wake up so early to fend off some unknown people so he slept in till just before his wake up time of 5:45am. He didn’t have to worry about the girl stalker at all that day and the rest of that week untill the Saturday that was coming up. The girl arrived on his doorstep in the afternoon of the Saturday. “Why hello again stalker, what else have you got of me visiting that id didn’t go to?” he wailed at her like he was totally mad. “Listen to me sir, Im having a hard time remembering where I met you but I know it was at a bar or something during the night, maybe it was a café not a bar and stop calling me a stalker” she said.

The weeks that went on were quite strange, not sure what to make of the mysterious girl he keeps going to work. Things were going much better at work and no mysterious girl had even shown up there either. He was very pleased with this. He didn’t have to fight with someone he didn’t know at all. He found this to be a benefit to himself.