Dogs are Getting Groomed - Not Cowboys - at Country Suds in Greenwood, BC

Lifestyle Change

What if the end is only the beginning?

People are often confronted with significant changes and choices in life. We've all been through it. The start of a new job, the loss of a friend, sickness. Moving away from home or moving in with someone you love. Buying a car or choosing a house. Starting of a new business. Some changes are forced upon us due to circumstances. Others, we do to ourselves. 

Whenever a significant change occurs, we are confronted with at least two perspectives. The one view is a feeling of loss, decline, powerlessness, and the lack of control. The other a sense of gain, re-birth, strength, and a new beginning. 

It doesn't matter how small or large the change is. The key to success in life is how well we deal with changes. How good are we at moving away from what we had, towards something new? 

This is part of the TWO COWBOYS' EPIC GLOBAL TRAVEL & CULINARY EXPERIENCE - 2019! 

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Nature is in a constant cycle of decline and renewal. It should be natural to us as humans too to easily let go of the old and to welcome the new. Why is it so hard then for people to embrace the same fluidity of life?

It is because we trap ourselves in temporal illusions. Our imagination creates time, circumstances and places in distorted realities. In our silliness, we fear losing things long gone, while holding on to things that may never be. Our perspectives define our reality. The hardest task then is to tie our reality down to the truth of where we are now and what we need to give up to move forward.

When we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that every change is a goodbye to get a hello, an end for a beginning, letting go for something new. Without this realization, we risk being trapped in an illusory twilight of despair. It will destroy our spirit if we cannot say goodbye. We won't have a future if we do not say hello.

Greenwood

Greenwood City in British Columbia has been saying goodbye since 1918 when the copper mine and smelter closed. It's been saying goodbye for such a very long time that it became trapped in a very real twilight of despair and decay. Old buildings crumbled, people moved away, and businesses left town despite the city seeing an average daily traffic pattern over 3,000 vehicles during the summer months (Traffic Patterns, 2011). It may well be on the road to oblivion like its predecessors Phoenix, Bridesville, Sidley, and others if it doesn't embrace a future.

Because of the city's rich history and its record resistance to change, Greenwood also attracted people fearful of letting go. You can see it in the junk of the yard collections. The failed upkeep of its small houses, and the prevailing rust of the old clunkers in the driveways.

We think that Greenwood and the area are poised for change and on the verge of a millennial renaissance. It is the right time now for the City to move towards its tomorrow as more and more people drop out of big-city life, avoid daily commuting, expensive mortgages, and having too much meaningless stuff.

Greenwood could and should say hello to young families, college graduates, entrepreneurs, crafters, makers, small houses, new buildings and people that embrace lifestyle, simplicity and old-school authentic values. The mine won't give it a future. Instead, it should court producers, makers, and telecommuters - the foundation of a new economy.

The last thing Greenwood needs is a Mickey D's on the corner, Starbucks or a Safeway parking lot. Instead, it requires a butcher, doctor, grocer, candymaker, woodworker, cabinet maker, knifemaker, weaver, and it needs more people that realize that it is an affordable place to work and live - really live. It has the required vehicle traffic. Greenwood just needs to give people more reasons to stop, and some will even choose to bring their dreams, hobbies, businesses and jobs to stay.

Observations

Tammy Bowering moved to Greenwood and established her Country Suds Dog Grooming in 2018. She just realized that Greenwood has dogs that need grooming. Her love for dogs compelled her to say hello to her future, and she started her small grooming business. It's been growing steadily, and we are proud to feature her as part of our portfolio of Boundary Country stories.

Tammy is so passionate about the future of the City that she is now heading the Greenwood Board of Trade. It is an organization that was incorporated in 1899, just two years after the city itself was incorporated. The chief goal of the Greenwood Board of Trade is to promote economic and community development, networks with local and regional businesses, and to provide small business support.

The Cowboys are glad that we can throw in our support too for the future prosperity of Greenwood. It gives another opportunity for people to find a better way to work and live in the Boundary Country of British Columbia. It is a chance for us to have our chosen lifestyle.

Hendrik

Boundary Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. Please book us here so we can tell your story too.

Photos

City Hall

Powder Room

Grooming

Doggy Love!

Doggy Wash!

Two Cowboys: Smoking Meat, Cold Beer and BBQ is a Lifestyle at Trappers Mountain Grill in Waterton, Alberta

A BBQ Lifestyle

I once asked a competitor at a Canadian BBQ Society sanctioned competition how long he's been grilling and smoking meat. He surprised us with his answer. Two years, he said. Truth be told, my question was meant as a joke! We didn't know there was another way to cook meat. We've been doing it for all our lives.

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BBQ, smoking and grilling meat is a lifestyle for the Two Cowboys. Five out of seven days, at the close of the day, we are outside doing our thing with steak, chicken, pork and whatever we can find to cook on the grill or in the smoker (including vegetables like pumpkin, asparagus, potatoes etc.).

We've done it in rain and sunshine, in blazing summer heat and when it is -30 C in Canada. To us, it is a sacred, primal, right of passage as a reward for being at the top of the food chain. We cherish the opportunity. The rite that plays itself out alongside our grill, fire or smoker is as old as humanity itself. It is who we are. We love every moment of it and are always looking forward to it. In the same way, we are always on the scout for fellow comrades with a similar passion and commitment to the lifestyle.

We meet many during our travels and we love telling their stories. This is how we've come to know Steve and Debbie West from Trappers Mountain Grill in Waterton, Alberta. Steve shares our love for BBQ and cold beer. He is also an innovator and a passionate entrepreneur that makes Waterton his home for six months of the year when he is not fishing in Florida. Steve likes to do something unique that allows him to share his passion for good food, BBQ, Gin and Beer.

Observations

This is how Trappers Mountain Grill is launching something new in Waterton this season. Steve calls it his Backyard BBQ. The plan is, once the rush of the summer days subsides and the lines for food and ice cream are over, to do a delicious smoked meat sandwich. It will be available at the back-door of his restaurant on main street Waterton Avenue.

It promises to be an excellent sandwich that will go down well with your own crispy cold beer (sorry folks, you have to bring your own beer). For Steve and his team, it is another way of sharing their passion for cooking meat in one of the worlds most picturesque locales. He is doing it with his new US$35,000 smoker!

Apparently, he's been practicing all winter to get the recipe locked down, and it is finally ready for the "big time". In his own words, "It is a mean piece of equipment with the single purpose of delivering the best-smoked fair available in Waterton town" - authentic Southern-Style BBQ.

Steve's venture promises to deliver a hearty meal and great fellowship when most food establishments in the town close down for the evening. It is the way it should be done, simply and deliciously with good friends. The Two Cowboys were there to give it a try. Enjoy our experience with us.

Hendrik van Wyk

Trappers Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. Please book us here so we can tell your story too. If you want to see us do more of these, then please forward the favour. We will use it for the next episode promoting a local business or event.

Photos

With Friends

Backyard BBQ

Southern Pride

Chevy!

See You There!

Traveling Cowboys: Kicking off Fulltiming and the Dreamy Lifestyle of a Nomad in North America - Starting in Canada

This is Serious

I've counted every hour I've spent commuting to and from work. In my thirty-long working years thus far, while committed to the soul-destroying act of a "rewarding corporate career", I clocked more kilometres than most. Three hours a day. Fifteen hours a week. Sixty hours a month. Seven-hundred-and-twenty hours a year. A full ninety, eight hour work days on the road, every year! Two-thousand-and-seven-hundred "rewarding" days of my life staring through the windows of a commuter car. A lifetime lost!

As the days clicked by, I wore out cars. I sacrificed my time, to be amongst people I deplore. I did "work" with little to no value, without recognition, so that I can have and afford the "expected lifestyle" for my middle-class family. Every day I asked, "Is this meant to be life?" until one day I proclaimed, "This cannot be it!" 

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It was a lifestyle that took seventy cents in every dollar I earned, for direct and indirect taxes. The remaining thirty cents I paid towards extortionately high and never-ending loan interest and fees to banks for accommodation (mortgage), transport (vehicle finance) and insurance. With the responsibility for four dependents, I lived for the welfare of the government and the profits of the banks, and for the privilege to borrow a small amount back on my high interest and low fee credit card to feed my family and fill a house with trolly loads of meaningless stuff. A home located in an artificially crafted "lifestyle community" or suburb.

The house I lived in belonged to the bank and what I was allowed to do with it was determined by the city or town. Even the insurance company prescribed what I can and cannot do with supposedly "my vehicle". Starting and operating a business was even harder, but a story for another time.

Inevitably, anyone in my situation - which is an increasingly more significant number of people - come to realise that this cannot be it! There must be more to life and better things to do with my time in a place and space I want to be, that is mine, and where I am in control and can choose, where I can hold on to what I make and can live with what I earn. Where I can work and spend time with people, I actually want around me.

Observations

So far, I've migrated through three continents looking for this place and life, and came to realise it may be nothing more than an elusive dream. Or, is it?

Is the dreamy digital nomadic lifestyle pre-empting what so many people have lost and are hoping to attain, ultimately again? Are technology and mobility finally putting it within reach for us to go and live and wander. To go to places where we want to be, instead of where we have to be. Can we go where we are valued and where our experience is needed? Is the life of a Fulltimer a way to ultimately be free to live more with less?

My generation will probably never see retirement. When we read the newspapers, we realise that there probably won't be money left in the public purse for pensions when we clock around sixty-five. Why then delay the inevitable. Get out. Hit the road now. Live!

As we wake up beside the ocean or in a forest next to a lake, will birdsong or crashing waves become the rhythm of our routine? Will we finally be free from the daily grind and "ideal life" the Baby boomers craftily "left us"? Is home-anywhere the salvation for the Generation X'ers, to live and do what we love. Will we finally be able to say, this is it!

The Two Cowboys invite you on our journey as we learn how to deal with the challenges of the self-imposed nomadic lifestyle.  Come with us to explore and enjoy the spoils along the way, as we explore a new, and hopefully better way of living. The house is for sale. The storage container packed. The RV stocked. The maps rolled out. The dart is thrown.

See you on the road, fellow travellers.

Hendrik van Wyk

Home-Everywhere Cowboy

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Photos

Two Cowboys Van