There were a few parties over the last two weeks, which fitted in with the events: On Saturday Fritz Dreisbach opened his new studio in the presence of many of his glass-friends, and on Sunday there was a skimboard music festival with lovely glass trophies which we had even helped to make. Over the previous days we had helped with organising both events by making glass and bringing things together for the party. In the early mornings, we enjoyed a beach empty of people and water which was ideal for us to skimboard on.

We made a whistle-stop in Vancouver on our way to Whistler. The speed limit was shown as 80 after the American border, which we found really fast. After the third sign, we looked more closely and simultaneously stepped on the brakes, realising that they meant kilometres rather than miles! At a more moderate pace we enjoyed the view across a varied landscape of sea and mountains and stopped every now and then for a refreshing dip in a lake or to pick up a hitchhiker.

We had given a lift to Ian, over the 50 kilometres from Whistler to Squamish, and he offered us a place to sleep in his house. In the evening he told us about his unfortunate circumstances which have been going on for a year. He works in a hotel in Whistler, where he fell in love with an Indian girl who had only recently immigrated to Canada. It’s an unhappy story because her parents are in the process of arranging her marriage to a devout Indian man, and so they can only see each other at work. With her iPod, she can connect to the internet and send him messages via Skype to tell him which room she is currently cleaning. She doesn’t have a mobile phone. Ian has a variety of jobs to do and therefore can move around the hotel freely, which enables him to coincidently find himself at a task in the room where she’s working. They’re living and working in the same locations, usually working the same shifts and yet can only write texts via Skype, which is really hard, but he handles it well even with a sense of humour.

Re-entering the USA turned out to be more difficult than we previously thought. The border guard thought it was strange that someone would just lend us their car and therefore we had to endure a closer inspection. They turned the whole car upside down; took away our hand-picked lemons from Los Angeles and other fruit, and kindly passed over our Weiberwalz visiting cards. After an hour and a half at the border, we drove to Ryan Staub in Seattle who we had arranged to meet on the 25th July to make glass together. We had met Ryan at Fritz’s studio opening party and today we helped him making bowls.