Carrick to Calgary

Sunday night here, 11:30pm and we're just back from An Evening with Ian Wright at the University of Calgary, which was excellent. 90 minutes of stories and slides, and then another hour of questions and answers with the audience. Highly recommended.

It's been a long, strange and stressful week. We're behind with our blogging and you can expect detailed posts on Banff, Lake Louise, Atlanta and Las Vegas in the coming days. Plus more in our 'Canadian 101' series. We started the week arriving on a night flight into Las Vegas and had a great couple of days there. Then the week turned upside down with bad news from home, when we discovered that Granny Brown had fallen down the stairs at home, breaking multiple ribs and sustaining a major blunt inury to her chest. At first it seemed that she wasn't getting the optimal treatment as there was 'no room at the inn" in the Intensive Care Unit, but after a few phone calls and thanks to the efforts of some dedicated staff (you know who you are, Brian) she got the same care that she should have got in any modern hospital. She spent a few days on assisted ventilation (CPAP) with an epidural in, and for a while it was touch and go, but in the last few days she's improved a lot and is now breathing for herself and is well enough to return to the general surgical ward. She's not out of danger yet, and it'll be a few days before we have her home again, but the situation is much better than it was a few days ago. So here's to Granny Brown, well done for not giving up - keep fighting the good fight and we'll have you home again yet!