I just finished up the week working at Lake Louise yesterday and now am heading back to Vancouver today. Since I worked this week right up until the Sunday and have to get back to Vancouver for my best friends wedding, I don’t have a job lined up for the week. It will be nice to take a few days off to just get myself organized before heading out again in a few weeks.

I will tell you more about the end of my week and how the event up at the mountain went when I get back to Vancouver, but for now I got to get out on the road.

-Sean

I had a great day up at Lake Louise Resort today. I was working as a ticket scanner; the person who greets you and scans your lift ticket when getting onto a chair lift. Amazing the amount of satisfication that comes with hearing that little beep, reassuring you every few seconds that you are doing a good job!

Could I do it for the rest of my life? Probably not, but I realized again how much I like interacting with and meeting new people. It was a lot of fun being in a position like that in which new people are constantly coming through.

It is definitely a work hard, play hard, party even harder mentality up here. With all that I got going on right now, I am trying my best to keep up. Not too sure how well I am doing, though I got to keep in mind that it’s the end of the season and so most here have already had close to seven months practice.

I am working here until late Sunday afternoon, and so need to make my way back to Vancouver on Monday somehow. If you have any ideas or know anyone heading that direction, please give me a call.

Tomorrow I will be running around helping out with Spring Episode, the spring wrap up event for the season. I just might have been convinced to enter into the hot dog eating contest, yet we will see if I can overcome the peer pressure. I have never entered an eating contest of any kind before so I guess this is a good as time as any to give it a shot.

On the other hand, I am not certain if stuffing your face with whole hotdogs, drool pouring out of your mouth, holding back the gag reflex, and secretly vomitting under the table out of the view of the audience sounds all that appealling. No promises, but we will see!

-Sean

PS - Make your promise today, click here.

I set my alarm for 8:45am this morning figuring that would give me plenty of time to write an entry about my first day on the job before I had to be at work by 10:45am. As I was about to leave to go to use the internet at 9:20am, I suddenly realized that it was 9:45am I was supposed to start and not 10:45am, oops! The other problem being that there were no more shuttles from staff housing up to the mountain and it takes 45 minutes to walk it.

I set out hitch hiking in hopes that somebody would see the sense of urgency in the expression on my face and stop to pick me up a long the way. I guess it was believable enough and somehow managed to get to work on time.

My first day on the job I was working with Trail Crew which was great because I was able to get out and see the mountain. Since it is the end of the season, all the temporary fencing needs to come down and so we spent the day cruising to different parts of the mountain and removing steel poles and plastic fencing. It was a beautiful sunny day and the raccoon style sun tan I received as a result helped me fit right in with the majority here.

Today I was with the Snow School and so accompanied a couple of the instructors as they taught a beginners snow boarding lesson. Although it was freezing, it went well and reminds me how much I enjoy teaching; seeing others overcome challenges, make improvements and be successful.

Tomorrow I will be working at the lifts scanning tickets. I am looking forward to the interaction with customers, not to mention hearing the beep when scanning something is always undoubtedly a good time. That and I met the scanning supervisor today and she had made a name tag for me with my hometown on it, very cool!

It is great to be able to try out different departments within the same company and it really makes me realize how much work and organizing goes into operating a company with over 600 employees effectively.

They certainly do a great job here!

Thanks for the emails/comments with all your suggestions on how to get rid of my sore throat! Hopefully I will be back to 100% for Spring Episode coming up this weekend!

-Sean

I arrived safe and sound in Lake Louise this afternoon after hitch hiking from Calgary. I got a tour of the resort today and was introduced to I don’t know how many people. Poor Rebeckah, the resorts Event Coordinator, who had to explain One Week Job to each person she introduced me to. (I thought I would let someone else sound like a broken record for a change)

Everyone at the resort is super nice and it is going to be a really great week! I got set up with my snowboard, boots, snow gear and even have a my own staff season’s pass!

The only problem is that I think I may be getting sick. The throat is starting to hurt and I am not feeling the greatest. Not good timing and I feel bad not having as much energy as I should when meeting new people and starting a new job. I guess everything is finally catching up to me, but I am going to head to bed early tonight and get some vitamin C in me.

After leaving the Slomp family dairy farm in Rimbey, Alberta for Week Eight, I headed back to Edmonton and spent the night there. That night I was cruising down Whyte Ave and was in the middle of the street trying to hail down a cab for a couple of people when a random guy walked up to me and with a sly smile said “So what makes you think you get to do all the fun jobs?” I laughed, and then he said “somebody’s go to do the crappy ones.” Thinking back to my last job, he may have been speaking literally.

If you are in the Lake Louise area and are coming to Snow Episode this weekend (and you should), be sure to give me a shout and we will meet up!

-Sean

This week I will be working at Lake Louise Resort, one of the most spectacular mountain resorts in Canada located in the beautiful setting of Banff National Park. They have 4200 skiable acres and are one of the largest ski areas in North America.

I will be starting on Tuesday working through until Sunday doing various things each day such as a liftee, shadowing a snow school instructor, and working with the events team to help run their spring wrap up event for the season called Spring Episode. It runs next weekend, April 28/29, and for sure is going to be goodtimes!

If you are anywhere near Lake Louise or the surrounding area next weekend, I would definitely come by and check it out. The event will feature a full line up of Free concerts, demos, bike trials riders, and a bunch of other activities (there will even be a hot dog eating contest!)

Find out more about Spring Episode ‘07 here.

Hope to see you there!

-Sean

PS - ‘Pledge Your Passion‘

After getting a sun burn from being outside all day on Tuesday, it has now been snowing yesterday and today! Crazy, but it did give us a chance to stay in doors yesterday morning and play some scrabble.

Anyways, just finishing up a video of what I have been up to on the farm for the last few days. I will have it up in a couple of hours!

-Sean

After trying to avoid it for the first 15 minutes, I realized quite quickly that there is just really no way around it; having cow manure all over your hands and occasionally splat on you is just part of the job. I call it “surrendering to the pooh.” It is kind of like walking in the rain. We may try to avoid it for a bit, but if you are in it long enough and just commit to ‘being’ in the rain, it really doesn’t matter anymore and you can then start enjoying yourself.

So am I enjoying having cow manure all over me? Well, I wouldn’t say enjoy, but it certainly doesn’t bother me as much as it once did and allows me to focus on other things… such as not getting kicked in the face from a hoof or getting the right positioning of the milking suctions on the ‘teets.’ (maybe by Friday I will be able to say that word without a smirk, though I highly doubt it) Continue reading this post >>

This week I will be working with the Slomp family on their 300 acre organic dairy farm in Rimbey, Alberta. Today I am heading to an organic milk convention where I will be meeting George, the head farmer, and afterwards will be heading back to the farm with him. Apparently his girlfriend is a Yoga instructor so perhaps I will be able to keep up with my newly developed Yoga skills in farm country.

My tasks for the week will include milking cows, shovelling manure, feeding the calves, and general barn maintenance. I remember milking cows once when I was on an Elementary school field trip which was quite the experience, but I have been told that now they have machines for that and so don’t need to worry about my lack of aim or the spray back.

I am really looking forward to the week ahead as I have always wanted to try out working on a farm, yet have never previously had the opportunity. As I continue with One Week Job, I am realizing more and more how many different options and possibilities are out there that I would love to try my hand at.

Perhaps when all is said and done, it may just be all the more difficult to decide as I won’t want to choose just one!

The next two weeks I will be working in Alberta, and then am heading back to Vancouver for a friends wedding May 19th. If you are in Vancouver and have any job offers for any of the weeks in May, send me an email!

-Sean

PS - ‘Pledge Your Passion‘

Shortly after graduating from college, I made a promise to myself:

I will not settle for a career that I am not truly passionate about, I will not allow yearning for weekends and the illustrious two week vacation a year to define my life, I will be in a positive work place situation and I will love what I am doing.

I made a promise for passion and I think you should make that same promise today.

What exactly will this particular situation look like and how am I going to get there? I am not too sure, yet I believe it is far more important that we first start by making this commitment to ourself, taking the leap wherever it leads, and find the courage to persevere in the face of our fears, self-doubt and uncertainty.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” - Ambrose Redmoon

To me this ‘something’ is our happiness, our well being, our choice… our life.

I think we would all agree that it is well worth it, yet many of us still choose to let this innate fear paralyze us and settle into comfortable, secure positions despite being unhappy in them. The encouraging thing is that every day is a new opportunity to change this.

Here is another one of those opportunities. Leave your name in the comments section below to make your promise today.