What a week it’s been! After the most amazing storms I’ve seen in a long time, California has been cleaning up the mess whilst the hills surrounding Los Angeles have been reaping the rewards.

Snow upon snow has fallen with 7ft of fine powder gracing the slopes of Mount Baldy, out to the east of the city. Over the weekend Ben Fleming (from TQ in the US) invited me to go and try out the snowboarding there….so of course I jumped at the chance. I won’t go into too much detail suffice to say it was an amazing day out – bar the constant queues, but when you have that much snow around a city it’s bound to happen.

Here’s just a few of the photos I took whilst I was there:

Back to business at the start of the week with a trip up to Toronto, Canada to make a presentation to the industry and to appear on some of the local television networks, this time Global TV and CP24 to discuss about the experience of the last six months in Queensland.

What a nightmare the travel to Toronto from Los Angeles was though. Now I consider myself pretty lucky in the fact that I haven’t ever really been delayed when flying before – and I’ve done a fair bit of it over the last ten years, so I suppose by the law of probability I was due my dose and boy did I get it.

I left LAX an hour later than scheduled (not so bad you’re probably saying) due to bad weather in Atlanta, which of course can’t be avoided. All flights in and out of the city had to be delayed as there was a tornado and two planes were actually struck by lightening. A good enough reason to stay firmly on the ground. As my connecting flight had also been delayed there was still a chance I could get to it in time…

The chain of events went something like this:

• Arrive at Atlanta airport with 20 mins before scheduled departure of connecting flight to Toronto
• Sit on tarmac meantime the arrival gate is changed from A to E. My next flight was departing from A so a race through the airport to get to it was in order
• Get to gate hot and flustered with minutes to spare
• Announcement made to delay flight by 30 mins – 10pm
• Announcement made to delay flight by 30 mins – 10.30pm
• Announcement made to delay flight by 30 mins – 11pm
• Announcement made to delay flight by 30 mins – 11.30pm
• Announcement made that we would be boarding in 15 mins
• Bemused flight crew board plane and start checks
• All information screens around gate turned off
• Flight gate airline representative disappears
• Wait 10 minutes until…
• Another passenger notices our departure gate has changed from 19 to 33!
• Race through terminal to new gate followed by even more bemused flight crew now off plane
• Announcement made that flight would leave at 1.00am
• Flight crew board new plane due to technical problems with other one
• Announcement made to delay flight by 30 mins – 1.30am
• Still no airline representative present, flight delayed by a further 30 mins – 2am
• 2.30am – flight crew walk back off plane as they have ‘timed-out’ and due to maximum number of working hours being reached can no longer fly plane
• Uproar amongst passengers – told need to rebook for the morning
• Trapse through terminal to customer services
• Join queue of approx 500 people all suffering the same problem with other flights
• 5.45am – reach front of queue and told new flight departs at 7.25am
• Make way to gate and board new flight
• Depart Atlanta 7.50 a.m.
• Arrive Toronto 10.00 a.m.
• Make way to baggage carousel
• WAIT
• WAIT MORE
• NO BAGGAGE TURNS UP!!!!!!!!
• Fill in forms and told bag will arrive at hotel before 9 p.m.

So you see the amazingly disruptive time I had trying to cross the US. into Canada. With my first television interview just a few hours away a quick shower and freshen up was in order. Shana (Tourism Queensland’s Regional Director for the America’s) had very kindly been out and bought me a set of fresh clothes and we headed straight to the studio.

I was shattered, with no sleep from the entire night before, my favourite double espresso was all that kept me going that day and by the time I’d got back to the hotel after my travel agent presentation I was ready to flop. One more twist to the tale though – MY BAG STILL HADN’T ARRIVED! ARGHHHHHH.

The next morning was an early start to make the Morning Show at CP24, one of Canada’s only 24-hour news channels. I loved this interview, really relaxed and with two hosts who were really interested in the whole Best Job story.

To kill time while the promised hour of 11 a.m. approached (my new expected time of arrival for my bag), Shana and I headed up one of Toronto’s famous landmarks – the C.N. Tower, or Canadian National Tower. Bre would be very jealous right now, not only am I on her land of birth but I’m taking on that fear of heights again. Something she’d have no problem with!

Even though it was a typically grotty northern hemisphere day the views were awesome. At 447m high it’s an imposing building which just about kept it’s head beneath the clouds during our visit. Walking on the glass floor still filled me with ‘the fear’ though…

Back at the hotel my bag had finally arrived – 36 hours later than it was supposed to. I’ve managed to hold my tongue throughout this whole experience about who the carrier was and the appalling service that I and the other passengers received. All we needed was for someone, anyone, to communicate what was going on and to keep us informed but noone did and that is where major companies fall down far too often. Maybe even a hotel for the night, a breakfast token or even a glass of water would have been good and taken the edge off the shoddy experience but nothing was forthcoming. Hugely disappointing.

I’d suggested to Shana the idea of a road trip may be good to get us from Toronto to New York, I love long drives and it just gives a much better understanding of the country you’re travelling through compared to flying there. So we hired a car (which was upgraded to an SUV – very stateside) and at 11 a.m. left Toronto for the border. Travelling with us was ‘Snappy’ – a particularly cute toy crocodile who we’ve been using as the Tourism Queensland mascot on the trip and it was our job to shoot him in some interesting locations…how did we do?!

It was great fun, we stopped off at Niagara Falls on the way, that famous landmark, and what an incredible place it is for two reasons.

• Firstly it’s stunning attraction with millions of gallons of water pouring over the edge into the mist below, there’s hardly anyone else there in the thick of winter with the temperature just below freezing. The banks of the river are frozen solid with huge lumps of ice floating down stream.
• Secondly because to me it is an example of ‘How not to do Tourism’. Take something as stunning as a natural waterfall and surround it with what can only be described as a disgustingly tacky theme-park with McDonalds, Burger King, Wax works, tacky shops, a Hard Rock cafe – in fact everything you do not want to see when you go to admire nature. Have a look at the street leading to the falls:

We had another appointment to take Snappy to. Lunch in the town of Buffalo for some famous chicken wings. On a recommendation by the border police we hunted out a restaurant and ate some of the spiciest food I’ve had in a while.

The road trip continued all the way to New York and 11 hours after leaving we made it to our hotel in the city – we both had a great time and took in some of the important sights too.

This morning I was up bright and early for another media appearance, this time on the Gayle King Show. Gayle is Oprah Winfrey’s best friend and after appearing on her show a few months ago it was time to visit XM Radio which broadcasts right around the planet via satellite, to have a fifteen minute talk all about the Best Job and what the future holds. She’s a really lovely, receptive lady who beams energy and we bounced well off each other making the final interview of the trip a total pleasure – thank you to all involved for arranging it!

And now I’m sat on a flight back to Los Angeles (using the inflight Wi-Fi system which every single plane should have as it rocks!) where I’ll spend the night before departing for the warmth of Brisbane tomorrow.

More adventures in the tropics of North Queensland are fast approaching as I have a Men’s Adventure Tour to take part in with my good friend and fellow Best Job finalist, Juweon Kim at the start of February. It should make another great blog!

Ben