Android :: How To Interface With Google Calendar?

I am building an app for Android 2.1 that provides notifications based on calendar events. But I'm aware there are issues with the Calendar API not being readily available / stable / whatever. What I'd like to do is somehow communicate with the user's Google Calendar to get a list of tasks every few hours, or perhaps when the calendar is updated, and then store that data locally so they don't need to have an active Internet connection at all times. Then at a particular time, the notification event would occur. Surely, someone must have determined a way to interface with Google Calendar? I'm sure there must be numerous apps and solutions available that connect to it already, and my users can use any interface they like for interacting with it, but I need to be able to read the data and store it locally.