Matiss' Life

GIS part 1

2012-01-03T15:56:00.001-08:00

So at the End of August I moved to Vancouver. Well, actually a big suburb of it called Burnaby, in a place called Capitol Hill on Pandora Avenue (that is, Pandora - the first woman, created by Greek gods, who opened a box that released all the evils into the world). At the end of Pandora, about 100 feet from my house, is the Trans Canada Trail, and there is a nice view of the Burrard Inlet behind a barb wire fence, and behind the fence is a great big field where there is the remains of an oil refinery.

Where I live is sort of out of the way, near the city, by the woods and in the suburbs, industrial infrastructure but no factories and neighbors with broken-down cars in their yards... sort of like where I grew up!

In September Maby came up to visit. It was amazing seeing her again (and I can't wait until she comes up again!). We did many things together while here: went to Victoria to visit Carolyn and Carolyn, checked out Stanley and Pacific Rim parks in Vancouver, looked around Downtown Vancouver, went up to Squamish, went out to a noise-rock show and met some nice couchsurfers there. Rec Beach, that most famous of nude beaches was also interesting: it has two parts, one like a small music festival, the other basically a long series to paths along the coast where gay guys hang out. By accident we ended up walking almost the whole length of the gay 'beach', a truly awkward place to find straight-self. At least I had the most beautiful girl there with me!

I have now finished my first semester in GIS (that is Geographic Information Systems - if you don't know what that is Google it). From the start I knew it was going to be a unique challenge. I first met a few of my classmates in a scheduled class on the first day of school - that is orientation day... It would also be fair to assume there were no classes on orientation day, but since our orientation only started after the end of our first class, and no-one actually told us there was no classes, we went. So here we were, seven of us slightly confused students who would become friends, in an empty classroom. Then we did go to orientation. It was full of engineers and us GISers, and since GIS is about 70% male and Engineering about 95% male it was a sausage fest in the gym. The BCIT mascot - a cougar - was decidedly reluctant to pump us all up, more or less reflecting the, well, groggy September morning mood. The school president came up, and then a comedian. We felt sorry for the comedian in front of the generally un-impressed engineers and us. We were then given a tour of the school by students who knew about the same amount of the school that we did, and us, being in a program designed to design maps, mostly skipped out of the tour when it became clear the knowledge being given to us was unnecessary. This tactic of skipping the unnecessary would help us in our intense course, but of course most of us still can't locate campus security or the president's office.

The program itself consisted of 10 full-semester courses, listed here in a qualified order of reward/frustration:

Computers and the Internet (UNIX, HTML, Google Maps API, MapServer, ArcGIS Online, .php computer language - loved this one!)
Programming (basically Introduction to Java using NetBeans - the key thing to remember is the difference between brackets, braces and parentheses otherwise everything you do will FAIL)
Fundamentals of Mapping (Cartography - map projections, surveying theory, GPS)
Remote Sensing (Satellite image manipulation, 3D images - you ever see those satalite photos where the forest is red? Well I still don't know why people like using those images but I know how to do it!)
ArcGIS 1 (ArcGIS is the most common mapping software around, we made pretty maps)
Database Systems 1 (SQL query language, lots of php to make schemas, queries, using open-office Base)
AutoCad (learn how to use the most retarded Computer Aided Design program available that every company who does Computer Aided Design uses)
ArcGIS 2 (Using crazy ArcGIS capabilities to do spatial data manipulation, analysis, geodatabase stuff and even using the Python programming language to help build custom data analysis models)
Fundamentals of GIS (did you know that all maps used to be on paper! And that if you don't exactly answer every vague question you will lose marks? (hint - copy exactly the lecture notes)).
Project Planning (the course where you have to do presentations, make a spread sheet, make a project proposal, and oh yeah find yourself a project or practicum to do in the second semester in the workforce).

If you're brain hurts because of these courses imagine actually doing them. But it is cool, and nice to learn new skills. As you can probably tell I used computers a lot (like even right now!). One good thing was we only need one text book, though if you tried you could probably even get around that.

The class of 45 students was made up of 3 sets. I was in set B and we were the loudest, most popular and cliquey. That is where other sets would quitely do homework in the labs we would shout out the answers across the room to each other and generally help each other out more. Our set would usually have lunch together in the Great Hall on campus and vent about professors (usually just one), assignments, and other students that weren't around and a few people from other sets would come too (they became known as the Set B-plusers), but everyone in our class was pretty friendly. The professors even said our year was 'exceptional' in that we actually talked to one another, helped each other, and always tried to have a silly good time in labs.

Everyone had what we call a 'hell week'. This happened in the second half of the semester, and was caused by having too many assignments, not enough time, and (of yeah) no clue about how to actually do most of the assignments. Hell weeks usually caused a minor mental breakdown, resulting in baggy eyes, irritability, a look of impending doom on your face, frustration at the faculty (who we learned would laugh at us in private) and the tendency to take up un-healthy lifestyle choices.

School life was fairly typical: one hour of lecture (with all GIS students) and two hours of lab (with Set students) a week. Lots of homework, and often the feeling like you are not learning as much as we should because of the work-load, but that's ok. Friday after our last lab most of us would get together for drinks at the campus pub. Lots of homework (obviously), lots of staring at computer screens. On my spare time I would go over to my friend Ararat's place with other school mates to play Modern Warfare, or explore the campus and Burnaby on my bikes.

I also joined the campus student bike-patrol as a part time job. It was good to break up the homework to go ride a bike around and feel important in our bright yellow jackets... even though we rarely did anything. It was mostly boring - the most exciting thing I found was two cars that had been broken into.

All in all it was a good semester. It was the most intense educational thing I've done and am looking forward to next semester!

Revelstoke

2011-08-30T20:55:00.001-07:00

So here's a list of events and happenings that happened over the course of the past year in Revelstoke, in a vague order or importance:

In the winter there was skiing in lots and lots of powder. Though Revelstokiens (or Stokers) knew it was one of the best years ever for snow, it really sinks in when you go to a place like Whistler and everyone there is jealous of you.

In the summer there was biking. The downhill freeride mountain bike scene in BC is arguable the best in the world in that particular extreme sport - what with mountains literally everywhere and an outdoorsy scene into progression in any extreme sport. Downhill and cross country mountain bike trail networks have spread to all town, organized through local trail building and maintenance clubs, small groups of riders lookin' to make a new line, government and business sponsored networks, dedicated epic all-mountain and alpine trails, informal paths with some jumps and trick on the side criss-crossing all towns, and even professionally maintained downhill networks at many popular ski-resorts. This summer I visited Sun Peaks and Whistler with Riley, Phil, Emmanuel, Tyson, Dave, Krysten, Sarah, Chris and Jesse. Also did many local trails: Boulder (freeride) and Sale (alpine-DH) mountains, the MacPherson CP XC trail systems, Frisby ridge and sometimes participated in the Thursday night Peddle-n-Pint rides. The Peddle-n-pint guys are real lung-bustin' XC haulers, and the DH jumps, drops and birms just keep getting bigger.

This summer there was work. I started my job again at the local highschool. Its a good job, doing pure commercial carpentry and I learned a lot in the very interesting position I was sad to leave.

There was travel. Travelled back To Mexico at the end of April to visit Maby again. It was very nice to see her, of course, even though we both ended up getting sick - me due to food poisoning and her due to jet-lag and travel and stress and lack of sleep causing the flu. Despite this, it was a very nice trip. Maby and I spent a lot of time at the beach, dancing, sometimes dancing at the beach. We took a little trip to visit some towns along the coast and went to a place you can dig up the beach sand and find hotsprings, which was very very cool (and hot) and relaxing. Other travel included going to Whistler and Van a couple times and going out to Banff and Golden and meeting friends and going biking and kayaking for my birthday - Thanks Rosie!

There was a trip home for the holidays. It really turned into a good one this year. Every year it sort of turns into a rythm and soon its every other night an event and there's usually a wine or a beer which invariably turns to more so much that I'm afraid if I talk more about that my girlfriend will think I'm an alcoholic ;). This year all the festivities started and ended a little later than usual. But there was Christmas at Marty's bar, helping out at Marty's bar, visiting a ton of family. Also friends - building the loft and chillin' with lego at Steve and Josh's place and the friend's christmas dinner there, the club night, the night at Hess with Franc and a lot of highschool friends I ran into just to 'catch up'. New years and Brians in the cournty, the new-years day walk in the misty, icy fog there, the cold cold night on the ice, Austrum Eglite, and many other smaller gatherings and cruises on Zani's recumbent (which by now I've basically adopted as my bike at 4 homestead - Thanks Zani!).

There was the Baseball tournament held in town on Canada Day long weekend. Basically about 100 teams filled the town and everyone had a good time. Also tried to ride a bike up Mount Revelsoke because energy give you confidence and got a flat tire after quitting after about half way.

Went camping with Reilly and his crazy friend Rennie - slept in a lean-to and slowly watch Lake Revelstoke rise like a tide because of the hydro-dam and eventually swallowed the fire. Played in a canoe and with the pellet gun and reflected on life.

Treehouse movie nights and hang out at Dave's amazing treehouse. Worked on it a little, played on the swing a whole lot.

Riding to and swimming across Williamson Lake and finally jumping off the rope swing.

Climbing at Shaketown climbing area south of Revy with Dave and Tyson.

Not as much music this summer, but did go to a couple music night in town in the main square.

Lots of exploring - the paths and relics in Revelstoke National Park quite litterally right outside my front door - the abandoned dynamite lockers scattered in the woods and the crazy old water tower still full! Explore many trails all over the town and checking out Box Canyon, MacPherson trails, CP trails, Big Eddy, the huge sawmill log sort yard at night, the greenbelt - I almost felt like a kid again when I would just walk out and explore the post-industrial and agricultural country outside my house where I grew up - except in Revy the mountains and forests and 100 times bigger and you often run across bears, not deer.

The fun bbq with all my co-worker friends after my last friday at his truly beautiful (and very buggy) place past the airport.

The big party at Outta Bounds with DJ Neighbour.

Dinners at 209 house!

Livin' with chickens and roomies.

There's prolly more but that'll do for now.

Java time

2011-05-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

So Im applying to get into a GIS course. GIS courses demand mucho computer programming, so I'm trying to learn some.

HTML's one computer programming language, its not too bad at all actually. I think I'll convert my blog to HTML if im up for it (technically it already is, and now I basically understand how it works).

Then there's Java. It seems like a whole new world. I feel like I am delving into the deeper, darker subconscious that is a programmer's mind - there are countless versions and the download/file folder/path variable/MS-DOS promt stuff blows the mind (and thats even before the actual progaming). It dawns on you: even though you just downloaded, un-zipped and installed a 76 mega-byte program you can't actually open anything in the Java folder in Windows - at least I don't THINK you can. Never mind actually programming.

I'm sounding like a nerd already.

But before I learned of these challenges, I thought "hey HTML's a breeze! I did TurboPascal in highschool! lets try Java". Get a 'How to learn Java programming' book in the mail. Pop it open. Half way through the introduction and Im totally lost. Seems as though you need to know how to properly install, run and compile with Java before you start to learn how to use it in order to use it.

This clever little Catch 22 is frustratingly enhanced by its diversity of versions. Every online tutorial that's for 'starting out' with Java has the same premise, and none of the versions explained in any tutorial match what is currently available.

Finally I found a good tutorial on how to, basically, open Java. Three days after opening the book, I now know how to start Chapter 1. Lets see how it goes!

Ski-Bum Theory

2011-04-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

Being a ski-bum in Revelstoke is for many here is a right of passage. Today we posit that often a first-year ski-bum is tempted to repeat his experiences in another ski-season. We observe and draw conclusions of one first-year ski-bum's experiences in Revy.

The Revy ski-bum is amused in many ways. The ubiquitous 6 - 25 foot tall snow banks along all roads that make driving exciting (playing in said snow banks is also fun, especially for a certain sister of subject ski-bum, especially after friends' birthday parties). Its good to have all wheel drive.

Also amusing is the skiing. To people who have not done big mountain skiing at Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR) and want to do it, it is a lesson first in humility. If you consider yourself an intermediate skier, perhaps even expert in Ontario (if you go by ski-run difficulty ratings out east), consider that no longer in Revy. You are a beginner. Forget what you know. This mountain has many and much more vertical, powder, inclines, trees (glades), pow, cliffs, pillows, avalanches, beer, moguls, crud, slush, racing poles, boundary line, powder, GNAR, traverses, tree wells, tracks, pow pow, ice, rocks, fluffy white stuff, groomers, rollers, jumps, powder, off piste, slack country, nights in the woods, gullies, hammocks, alpine, terrain, bowls, POW!, skids, secret lines, boot packs, fat skis and extreme skiers that make your early attempts at skiing the 'black diamonds' look quaint bordering on embarrassing.

And less rules.

In fact, informally and officially, pushing the limits is highly encouraged. But only if you do it right. Otherwise you may get seriously fucked up.

However, the act of overcoming all these difficulties is quite satisfying to the first-year ski-bum.

The habitat of the ski-bum often includes the ski mountain: Mackenzie Peak. With 5,620 of lift operated vertical (add about 300 if you include in-bounds hiking accessible terrain), Revelstoke Mountain Resort is the tallest in North America. And, being in a temperate rain forest, it gets lots of snow. Also accessible is the back-country out of bounds* from the top. Called 'slack' country, the chairlifts do most of the physical lifting of said ski-bum's body up the mountain so he can go out of bounds to ski fresh powder. This as opposed to true back-country ski-touring, where the lowly ski-bum must lift himself up a mountain.

*Only go out of bounds prepared for avalanche rescues, nights in the woods and other hazards.

At many times the ski-bum may be found in local establishments. Often listening to his Denis, Mike and Steph's blue-grass band (variously known as Terradactyl and The Extinctions, Teds Amongst Men and Others), he knows all the songs which he never tires of hearing. Often his sister Lizette sings. Among his favorite songs is "I Hate Winnipeg", and "I Shot Your Dog". Frequent late night locations include The Big Eddy Pub, The Last Drop, The Village Idiot and The Regent. Added to this list should be sister's residence, as much merriment occurs there with fellow bums (and not quite bums) Reilly, Denis, Liz, Hil and Erika. Also visited are the residences of the Stoke House and the Pink Castle.

Other common habitat includes his residence, in this case who's fellow habitators include Tomas, the German manager of the local Denny's, local boy Joey, and the three chickens out back. The trio of chickens' eggs sustain the trio of humans. The ski-bum uses this residence in order to sort out his life a little in order to get to the rest of his habitat. Often this 'sorting out of life' is lacking, in order to maximize time on the mountain and other time with fellow ski-bums in local establishments.

The Revelstoke ski-bum is also amused by its people. Many of the locals are colloquially called 'Dog and Touque' people, as they often have dogs, have interesting 'piece it together' ways of sustaining themselves, and always wear touques at least occasionally. Said ski-bum could be considered a dog and touque person (despite lacking a dog), as can many of our ski-bum's friends. Also amusing are local grumpy people, often old Italians. It has been proposed that an inverse correlation has been found between grumpyness and the amount of time people spend outside here.

The level of ski and and mountain skill in Revelstoke is very high, as high as anywhere in the world. However, people here are modest, not taking their awesomeness too seriously. This is observed on event days when avid skiers and snowboards go down the mountain in costumes or naked.

Another interesting anomaly of the demographics is the prevalence of young males due to multiple factors: many 'manly' construction, forestry, rail and ski-resort and guide related jobs, and, arguably, the extreme nature of Revelstoke's recreational activities. This leads to many evening activities turning into 'sausagefests'. This does not bother our subject greatly, as he has a girlfriend already, though out of town, who he misses a lot.

Next week we will be discussing significant events in our ski-bum's experience in Revelstoke. Until next time!

Our subject was the only one who heard Julius say "Im gonna take a pic":

Back in Baja

2011-03-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

Funny things, the randomized security checks in Mexican airports. Push the button to see if a green or red light comes on. Red means your bags get checked by the heavily armed airport security. Then the cacophony once you get out of security: "hey my friend, NEED A TAXI?". Thankfully Maby rescued me, and we're off to San Jose del Cabo. Spend the night at one of her friends, then the next day to the hotsprings.

Its amazing how people live off the beaten path in Mexico, a settlement cut out of the thorny scrub desert. There's some irrigation, but most of it is broken, and not much is green, except for in the valley where the hotsprings are, hike a little ways into the mountains and its lush in the valley by the surprisingly cool stream. After that we head through Los Barrilles (definitely try the fish soup), then to La Paz.

The adventures in La Paz started almost immediately. I meet Zack and the Karaka sail boat crew right away. Zack had been travelling on the 52' catch sailboat, a big old steel thing with more character than could possibly be described than in a blog post. For 6 years the young french owner Tom has sailed it, charging a modest sum to anyone who wants to come along. It is definitely not a charter. Tom bought it for $1 in Hong Kong, fixed it up, sailed it everywhere, and 6 years later he's in La Paz with Zack and planning on putting it in dry dock and fixin' her up again. But first they decided to party for a couple weeks. Perfect! Onboard is Zack, Tom, Kim (Tom's girlfriend), Greg and Martin. Kim's Australian, Greg's from texas and Martin's spanish.

Hyginks ensured, which often meant drinking on Karaka and eating chicken sandwiches as a french themed café on the strip, obviously among other things.

So my days were occupied with spending time with Mabilia while she was free - she was finishing up her Masters in Marine Biology, and preparing to go Australia to do a couple months of sponsored research. So when she wasn't free I'd hang out with the Karaka gang. Eventually I ended up staying on Karaka too.

With Mabilia we did everything there was to do around town. We ate all of the best local cuisine, went to bumper cars, walked along the beach countless times...We also went to go see whale sharks. Now, whale sharks are litterally the biggest fish in the sea (all other whales are mammals), and they eat plankton. The panic portion of my brain seemed to forget that fact tho: when we got to where the sharks were, you could just sort of see 8-10m long blobs on the surface, and our guide was frantic, all like: "Go there!". Being the first one ready, I jumped in and snorkeled through the murky water. I saw nothing, and realizing I was swimming with the biggest shark in the ocean I was a bit scared, but by god I wasn't gonna look like a sissy in from of my girlfriend! Then I saw it. All 10 meters of it, heading straight for me! I was like "OH FUCK!" through my snorkel and quickly swam back towards the boat. I stuck my head above water and everyone was laughing at me. By this time the others were in the water, and I calmed down and started swiming beside it. They don't go very fast, and are quite majestic. Later we saw three at a time feeding. Their huge bodies would stretch diagonally from the sandy floor to the surface, sifting the plankton through their huge mouths. At one point two of the sharks were both feeding towards me at the same time and I had another freak out, but it was all good. It certainly helped seeing Maby in a bikini swim in front of me in front of the beautiful fish. The guide had a professional underwater camera and got some good shots too. The guide brought us back to Karaka and we told everyone about it, especially Zack, who was kicking himself for not paying the $25 to come with us.

Another highlight with Maby was going to down to Todos Santos. At first I was crabby at the lack of service in the town, but eventually the place one me over - we spent the first night dancing the night away in Hotel California (yeah, the one from the song!). The next day we went for a walk on the beach and right there, just chillin' and playin' out in the water were about 10 grey and blue whales. That was so cool, they came SO close to shore and were even jumping around! THAT was something very special. In fact there's a whale in my current blog profile pic.

Not forgetting the Karaka folks, it was more about the hanging out with the locals with them than particular events per se. One thing we did was spend a lot of time at the marina. It was mostly gringos in there (including us), and we would drink margaritas at their bar or sneak in to have showers. We also met a bunch of locals, and spent a lot of time with them... they knew all the best hang out. We went for a beach day, and they'd often came aboard too. I was pretty much an honourary Karaka crew member while I was there. Every day we'd take the dinghy and the kayak ashore, and sometimes we'd get split up, they'd meet up and I'd take the kayak back after spending the evening with Maby, or someone else would need the kayak or whatever. They were really nice to let me hang out with them and be flexible with the boats - that was the only way to shore! Other events with them: we went to a salsa bar opening, and somehow one of us (or all of us) befriended this local guy who imported all the potatoes in town and he kept getting us free drinks at several bars, and that was really cool. That night was Greg's first time he'd ever partied with straight people (he's gay, duh), so it was very eye opening for him.

Another thing I did with Maby was help her with her research. As far as I can tell it's easy to be a marine biologist. You just stick rods in the sand and take water samples. Oh and something about secondary research and analyitics and other mumbo jumbo, seems pretty easy to me! (I'm being sarcastic). I did make a good marine tech tho ;).

As my time in La Paz winded up again, Zack left, then Greg left and then there was a party and I left too. I can't wait until I'm back in La Paz in May!

Back in Canada

2011-02-28T13:34:00.001-08:00

So the flight was good. I find myself in Van with the guys I left my car with while I was away in Baja. I spent the next three days hanging out there, mostly playing board games. They have dozens of them. My favorite was one called Bang, an old west style card game. I highly recommend it. Also went to a hookah party in a very fancy house.

After that I ended up hangin with Evan and Eric, two folks from the Peterborough crew (and Evan's from Dundas too). That was a lot of fun, we went on adventures and drank most of my tequila I brought over from Baja.

After spending six rainy days in Van I drove back to Revelstoke for a week. I stayed with at my old place, hangin out with Riley, Liz, Dennis, Erika and Hil. To be honest not much happened during my week there.

Then I went to Calgary for a few days before I would head back to Ontario for the holidays. While there I hung out with Andre, Phil, Tom and Tracy and picked up my new fat skis for when I'd get back to Revy and shred the mountain.

Once back in Ontario I started working for a fellow named Marcis Pukitis, who works for REF Minerals, who look for used refractory (industrial) materials to ship to Europe to be recycled and reused. Unfortunately I couldn't help him too much, considering I know very little about the industry and I would be heading back to BC in January.

So the rest of my time back in Ontario was split up between hangin' out at Steve and Josh's new pad, hangin out in TO, and partying.

First thing I did was go to Hess with Franc, and it basically turned into a highschool re-union. Good fun!

I spent a lot of time at Steve's, a hip place on Locke street in Hamilton. Very hipster. At first I drove there a lot because my mom rented me a car (THANKS MOM!), after that I rode my bro's recumbent around Dundas and Hamilton to get places, just like last year. While there, mostly we just hung out, made lego (yes, lego) spaceships (yes, spaceships), went to farmers' markets, renovated the place (we made a loft), adventured in and around Dundas and partied on occasion with the Rebecca and Steph upstairs. I also want to give a shout out to Sarah W, Stephan, Evan, Meg, Dev, Tanis and Mel.

My time spent in T.O. was also always fun. I helped out at my cousin's bar where my bro works, helping them with the plumbing, drywall and drinking. Also I hung out with my granny which is always good, and with Shannon. Also spent a bit of time with my god-daughter at my bros's place.

The second half oh my month in Ontario was dominated by parties. They started a couple days before Christmas with the annual Friend's Christmas Dinner at Steve and Josh's. Then Christmas was at my cousin's bar where the bartender started sharing shots with me almost immediately. Then a random rave party. Then another couple drinking events with Meg, Dev and co., then New Years' at Brian's new place across the street from his parent's place. And on and on... Then I went back out west.

Other highlights: Walking on frozen Coots Paradise and seeing tundra-like snow across the ice - something Steve and Sarah hadn't seen before. Last day rental car road trip. New Years Day rain hike. Indoor mountain biking with Yuri, Terry and Sky. And many more little things!

The Baja Odyssey, Pt. 6

2011-01-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

Once again, da map of our adventure in boats.

Day 11: Finally, the end in sight. Took a leisurely paddle to Loreto, where our kayak trip ended. Slowly came back to civilization. Enjoyed the beaches, headlands and waters from our kayaks for one last time. Once in Loreto it was a bit of a pain to find a store which had phone cards for pay phones, but we arranged our ride, dropped off our boats, and got on the bus back to Mulage to hang out with Bill once more. When we got there he was drunk and happy to see us. Zack commenced to upload photos and do stuff on the internet while I drank with Bill, watched NYPD Blue and debated over the various stupid points of view of American right-wingers. I couldn't change Bill's opinions (I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a gun hidden somewhere in his place), but because I was in the military and a construction worker, he respected mine. I didn't tell him I was on welfare.

The next day we took it easy in town, cleaned our stuff and ate hamburgers and drank cold beer for the first time in almost two weeks. The day after we said goodbye to Bill for the last time and headed to San Carlos, where Zack knew some people at a marine research base. Got drunk on the bus doing down south, almost missed in when the driver took a break because we couldn't stop talking to an Asian kid from Vancouver. Got off the bus and hitch hiked to the base. That night we went with some of the students at the base to try Zumba - a crazy dance workout. It was freeking funny watching almost all the white people totally fail to keep up with the Latin instructor and his 7 year old daughter. Good work out though!

The next day we took kayaks out into the windy day, past the nasty fish factory and checked out some mangroves. One of the professors was conducting experiments that were testing the marine life's reaction to garbage, specifically to strategically placed empty beer cans. Zack saw something shiny and tried grabbing it before he was told not to. That night we got a lift with some people from the research base who were going to La Paz, the last stop on my first Baja Odyssey.

La Paz was amazing! My favorite city in Baja, by far, even though we were there for only a couple days. We met up with the only couch surfer host there who would have us, a fabulous and wonderful lady named Mabilia and her mom Marcela. That night we went out to a bar and played pool and hung out. A mariachi band came in and we certainly enjoyed it, along with the very drunk man who hired it for his birthday.

The next day, Mab, Zack and I rented a small catamaran off an old surfing bum named Carl, who I assured that Zack knew how to sail. While he was explaining how to sail it to Zack (who'd never sailed a catamaran before, or a small vessel for a long time), Mab and I went to get some sunglasses and tylenol because I had a migraine. Setting off, it was clear we didn't know who to sail the thing, we bumped into a sail boat (with an unimpressed owner) while I was yelling at Zack to steer the thing, dragged along the bottom because the tide was at an almost all time low and the strong wind and waves pushing us in all the wrong directions. We had grand plans to go 20k up the coast, but settled after about one and walked along the beach and empty resorts there soaking in the sun and waves for the last time in Baja. Carl came out and checked up on us and brought Mab back to an appointment while Zack and I sailed back in the calmer water in the setting sun, me standing at the front. That night we went out to a hookah bar, a truly wonderful night. Zack had to leave at 4 am, and that was the last I saw of him before he left on his crazy 40 day open water Pacific ocean sailing trip with Karaka.

The next day, after breakfast, I regretfully said goodbye to Mab and caught the cab that brought me to the bus that brought me to the airport. It started to rain when I left, but all the tanned and drunk Canadians getting on the plane to Vancouver didn't seem to mind.

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 5

2010-12-17T14:57:00.001-08:00

To better see what Zack and I were doing, check out da map

Day 7 - Woke up on the shore to see a rising sun going over the massive Punta el Pulpito, a major point, rising 200m above the sea, jutting out a kilometer from the mainland, like a pulpit or a fortress. This is said to be one of the most dangerous places to kayak in the Sea of Cortez, and Ronaldo told us that in the 70's several members of another NOLS course died there. Lucky for us there were no waves that morning as we coasted along the cliffs and admired the birds and fishies swimming around giant under water boulders. There were two huge arches, one more like a 40' tall tunnel, that made this a highlight of the Odyssey. Around the point we beached and climbed up for fantastic views. Spent the rest of the day heading further south and stopping at a beautiful protected cove with a sandy beach. Met some local sand and sea bums who fed us clams and fish they caught and gave us pointers on how to catch both, which we never managed to do.

Day 8 - Spent the morning fishing but only caught a dogfish - which are inedible and mangy looking. Headed out of the cove saying goodbye to the sand bums, who were planning on paddleboarding all the way to Pulpito and back and to climb it... They were fit. A couple of dogs from near by swam out with us as we left. Went into the very picturesque bay just to the south and admired the rocks, villas and yachts there. Stopped on a beach and goggled and tried clamming with no success, but I did snag a big oyster! Later shadowed a sailboat for a while and then found Captain Barnacle's cave. There the gentle waves washed into the 50' deep/40' tall cave. A dark crevasse inside the sea cave made a deep crashing sound with the waves that caused my heart to shake, and so that was the Captain's soul still beating. I'd say that cave was the single coolest thing we saw the whole trip. Hung out there, then continued down the cliffy and totally exposed shore until the next big bay where we cooked our oyster.

Day 9 - Checked out an abandoned resort that turkey vultures had taken over. Headed out with the mild wind and waves at our back, passed a busy fish camp where an anchored boat's motor wouldn't start (they didn't wave to us...), and the shore became very green and mountainous. Even though it was green and looked tropical from a distance, it was most definitely all very spiky and prickly desert plants. Stopped at a cool shore cave for a while before continuing the day covering a lot of ground. We stopped at a rocky beach and crash landed due to the rising swells. This shoreline was amazing, with green mountains behind and very cool headlands around, and we decided to drink the rest of our alcohol and chill out on the rocks.

Day 10 - Set off early after sleeping on the shore. Crossed over to Isla Coronados. There we stopped on a beach, swam for a bit then headed up the long dormant volcano there. The hike was brutal and hot, all loose rocks, steeps and pointy cacti, we didn't bring enough water and Zack was in his sandals. It took longer than we thought in the HOT afternoon sun. We got some of our best pics up here though. Headed back down and chilled out on the beach on our last night of the kayak trip. That night we both saw the legendary Baja fireball - something between a shooting star and comet, like a bright orange ball slowly coming into the atmosphere and it looks like its dissolving leaving a big glowing orange cloud behind. I've never seen anything like it, and doubt I ever will again. I wonder if it could mean anything...

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 4

2010-12-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

To better see what Zack and I were doing, check out da map

Day 4: Go up early beach and headed south east along the coast. Like the day before there was no wind for a while, and occasionally I'd look back at Zack way back there. Then the wind picked up, and today we were going with the wind and waves. Soon it was getting big. I didn't relish the prospect of going around big and exposed Punta Santa Marta. We cut wide out to sea so we'd save a little distance and stay clear of the nasty shoals off the point, but the waves there were still the biggest I've ever been in, yet still Zack managed to look like he was still back there, sometimes paddling, sometimes not, sometimes surfing. Once past the point we headed straight for the beach on the opposite side of the point and sheltered in the wind shadow and wave eddy there. There was a lone palm tree, and we relaxed under it and explored the headlands. We went no further that day. There was evidence of recent NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School, for young adults) course passing through and leaving some cool artifacts (bandana with knot diagrams on it, snorkel mask) which we scooped up.

Day 5: Woke up early at Lone Palm and headed out, optimistically for San Nicolas. Stopped at beautiful Medano Blanco beach and played in the dunes. When the coast finally turned straight south and into the big protected Bahia de San Nicolas we set up a tent-fly sail and really got moving. After about half an hour Zack's arms were getting tired so we started paddling again, Zack a little behind, sometimes filming, sometimes paddling. We didn't quite make it to San Nicolas, but found a really nice arroyo beach, and just down the shore was a nice big nook in the rocks where we could chill out, sheltered, with a little fire. Zack even slept there, saying it was his most favorite spot to sleep all trip.

Day 6: Slept in a little because we were sheltered in the big Bahia and were really close to San Nicolas, where we planned to spend some time. Before we left the 20-member NOLS sea kayak course passed us and we talked with them. Turns out we had passed them the day before while there were hidden somewhere in a little cove. We finally meet Ronaldo, a NOLS guide, the guy Zack knew who rented us the boats*. Zack had never met him in person before. We met up with the NOLS course again in San Nicolas. Running low on cookies and other supplies we headed up the lagoon into the arroyo, left through the fence and a barn yard, up the hill, and into the only store in town. We got some sweets and rice. Also practically bought out the only beer vendor in town (with his cooler beside his isolated house on another hill), and got some salt fish because I though it'd be a good idea. Noticed all the palm trees by the lagoon, and all the fish, shark, eel and ray carcasses on the beach where the NOLS course would stay for a few days... mmmm, dead hammerhead! We left late in the afternoon and headed east into the rising night, pulling around the point north of Punto El Pulpito, onto a sandy beach, while sea lions taunted us from the point, spooky and unseen in the moonlit sea.

*The boats we got were 18' figerglass expadition boats. They were good to us, but were used and re-paited ex-NOLS boats - mine was twisted so without the rudder compensation it turned port quite a bit. We thank Ronoldo again for renting us the boats and trusting us without a guide, because it's nearly impossible to rent boats without a guide in Baja.

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 3

2010-12-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

Sea Kayaking, the recreational activity where sometimes no matter how hard you try you achieve less. I'm talking about paddling into the wind, which is pretty much all we did on days 2 and 3. It was good though, all part of the challenge. Also, paddling into the wind is a convenient excuse for only paddling 3 or 4 hours a day, as opposed to the 6 or so originally planned. It is easy to overestimate one's ability/motivation...

Quickly we settled into a routine - get up early and get out before the wind picks up. Generally Zack would get up first, reluctantly wake me up, do our morning stuff (occasionally we would explore a bit around our campsite), then paddle for a couple hours, break for 1-5 hours, then usually set out again for 1-3 hours. Things move a little slower and more erratically in Baja, but you get used to it ('tranqilo hombre! were in Baja!'). The kayak trip reflected this go with the flow attitude, but we were still intent on finishing the 200km (or so) journey.

Generally I'm not a fan of wind and kayaking. It makes things complicated.Go into the wind and muscle through. Be hit at 90 degrees so the waves are hitting you broadside and that's the most likely scenario where you flip. If the wind is behind you that is the best, unless you're riding big waves, which is scary as hell (imagine being stuck in a big wide half pipe and the half pipe is moving). Sometimes the wind and the waves are moving in different directions. Often the waves, bouncing off the shore and refracting, get mixed up in what's know as a 'confused sea'. No wind = no waves, so we became pretty motivated to get up early before the wind started blowing.

Here's a link to a map showing our route with campsites and points of interest marked

Below is a more detailed daily itinerary:

Day 1 - we head west from Bahia Coyote, across the big Bahio de Conception, camp on the other side. Met a fishing crew skinning their sharky catch by the beach and watched hundreds of birds hang out in the 30m radius of where the fishermen were throwing guts onto the shore - gulls down the beach, turkey vultures inland, swallows just to the sea side swooping around the air in tight pattern, and Alcatraz pelicans cruising and perching farther out. All birds had their turn at the guts, though my human perception couldn't understand why the birds weren't pecking at it faster in the dwindling sunlight, then remembered I'm in Mexico. The fishers also left some bait fish, which we snagged and grilled up with rice and beans. Marvelled at the beach/dessert contrast of the land, took some of the millions of shells that littered the shore, gawked at blowfish carcasses, and had a hard time believing that, according to our maps, in the flat and totally empty scrub just behind our beach campsite was an airfield and a ranch.

Day 2 - Explored for a bit. Finding no trail to supposed pictographs, we paddle out at a leisurely 9:30, heading north, hoping to get around the huge Conception peninsula. A north wind (that is, coming from the north) started blowing fairly strong by 10:30, and four hours of paddling later we find ourselves only about 15kms farther, we stop and climb a mountain instead and took some photos, videos and beers into the sunset. Marvelled at all the desert plant life.

Day 3 - Start out early but the winds pick up sooner. The prospect of big waves going around the outside of the big Conception peninsula didn't faze sea kayak guide Zack, but they were the biggest waves I've ever been in, and they were hitting us roughly broadside. We managed to go all the way around the north shore, and turning south we started going with the big waves and involuntarily surfing them - very exciting! I also notice how were going 2-3 times faster, going with the wind and the waves. We would in general be going with the predominantly north winds from now on. Land in a very nice isolated cove with three beaches. We land on the most protected one and explore the very cool double-arch rock formation with a little shrine to St. Mary in it, and fishing camp on the other side of the cove.

This post and the map link have taken a long time to make, so I'll end it there. Cheers!

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 2

2010-11-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

Following San Jose de Cabo we found ourselves on a bus back to San Lucas fully loaded for a sailing trip only to find out there'd be no sailing trip, so we sulked the rest of the day mostly drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and hanging around the beach and eating tacos.

The next day we marched over to the bus station and headed north, to Mulege (pronounced Moo-leh-hey; population ~5000), where we hoped to get the kayaks we were promised. We were a little worried about that, as some of our recent experiences reflected the opinion of our couchsurfing host there, the locally infamous 71 year old gringo Bill. He believes people only tell you what you want to hear in Mexico, if you know what I mean...

We got off the bus after driving through desert vistas and mountains and nervous military check points. We were greeted by Bill, the first thing he said, in a raspy loud American accent, was "Fuuuck!". He was complaining about his knee, though that didn't seem to slow him down too much.

Bill was a bit of an enigma, not so much of what he is (a retired, crotchety, straight-talking, friendly, blue-collar, gun-loving, red-blooded republican), but where he is (11 years in Mulege alone) and what he's doing (hosting couchsurfers). He was very honest, didn't take bullshit lightly and seemed to despise half the people in the town, who one way or another bullshited him, and love the other half. We liked Bill, though because of my construction experience I had an easier time seeing through his coarse demeanour than Zack did.

It was actually pretty funny, the whole situation more so when the next day we were cruising around town in Bill's truck getting supplies for our kayak trip (which we found out was going to happen). I was sick again, swealtering and nauseous in the back, as Bill lurched the truck from one store to another, yelling 'Hola Amigo!' in total Americano to someone and talking shit to us about someone else, or else holding the horn down until some poor mexican driver who parked his car in the middle of the street moved. Zack, in the front, didn't see the humour in the whole situation yet and was a bit forlorn between understanding why Bill acted like he did and trying to figure out kind of cheese to bring on the kayak trip (we eventually got some cheap local goats cheese which Bill suggested, which at first we doubted, but by the third day into the trip our camping trip hunger got the better of us and we figured out that was some damn fine cheese!) The whole supply run came to an end when Bill found out the toilet paper sale at some store was the day before. All I saw was Bill come out all cranky like 'What the Fuck! This is Bullshit!', with Zack left to his own devices to try to figure out what we needed for the trip in the store.

The next day we headed out south of Mulege to start the kayaking. On the way we stopped by the restored Jesuit mission, which, like most centres of religious/imperialist expansion in the Classical era, was basically a fort with a church in it. We got our boats to the beach and started loading 'em up, which considering all our stuff (food, all our backpacking stuff, kayaking stuff, camping stuff and over 70 liters of water), Bill and I found it hard to believe we could fit it all in the boats. But the big 18' expedition boats had room to spare. We said goodbye to Bill and paddled out into the warm clear blue water.

Revelstoke: Where No Man has Been Before!

2010-11-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

Here's the post about my time in and just before being in Revi, BC:

So I left Calgary in early August, heading back mountain way, the first stop being Revi, dropping some stuff off, then Vernon. There I began the search for the ultimate hippy job, fruit picking. After a day of that, I found out cherry season had ended and apple season hadnt begun. No biggie, and the numbers didnt work out either if I wanted to afford to go to Baja in November, so I decided against fruit picking. So in the mean time I figured I'd hang out with my old friend Andris, from my LSH (Latvian School in Hamilton) days, and maybe check out Silver Star mountain bike resort.

Silver Star was right outside of Vernon. It was a Wednesday, so the lifts ran late, until 7. I started super early and got in like 30 rides (some serious vert). I progressed a bit, especially following this crazy kid from Enderby, hitting most of the jumps and tables he did on Rock Star, the black diamond jump line. Also saw a bear!

Andris lives in Nelson, one of my favorite mountain towns, and one that I will be visiting again this winter. I headed out and along the way I picked up a couple of 19 year old picker dudes (Max and Gabe) from from QC and we headed out. Along the way we crossed a ferry (their first) and went to Nakusp's free hot springs and dropped them off in Nelson. I headed for Andris's.

The stay in Nelson was very good. We partied, hung out, went on a hike, hung out, drank beer, hung out and really do much for a few days. I met up with my friend Steph there, and we went for a hike too.

Then I headed back up the Revi to look for work there. The plan was to look for work in every town and work my way East until I found something. I didn't have to look far. Even tho Revi's got high unemployment, there's lots of construction going on in regards to the new ski hill and such. Second site I went to asked me to show up the next day, doing the same shit I did with Elite before. It was doubly good because being in Revi meant I could stay with Liz AND help them move their stuff while they were away.

The work was good, and I felt I was in a better place than at the end of my old job, even if it meant I took a pay cut at the new one. The work wasnt too preassured, and I felt confident there and learned a lot. Oh, btw we were building the town's new highschool.

My sister and Deni (and thus me) were moving into their place in September, but they wouldnt be around until the end of that month. Luckily I started work on the last week of August, so I could move everything in. The last week of August I just camped up Hwy 23 a ways, which was nice but a little dirty. It was interesting living in a completely empty house, and I tried to make it a little more comfortable for when Liz and Deni moved in, but there was so little stuff, and they really put a nice touch to the place when they got there.

While in Revi I biked around the town a lot and checked things out in general. Also I hung out with co-workers, read a lot, and noticed how people were getting hornier and hornier for powder as the fall progressed.

The first weekend there I went back down to Nakusp and checked out the hotsprings with Steph. Then the weekends get a little blurry because it seemed like I was always out of town.

One weekend I went riding with a couple co-workers in town and in Vernon.

Another two I went to Golden to ride with Yuri because it was close for me and he had a seasons pass at Kicking Horse. One time there I had car trouble and we stayed the night and partied with our friends.

Another weekend I went back to Calgary to ride and hang out. That was actually really nice, riding at Moose, going to the flea market, and feeling the warm fall chinook air.

On Thanks Giving I went with Yuri and Jay to Whistler and Thanks Gaver for two days of sweet riding on its closing weekend in the rain. This is by far the best bike park Ive ever ridden, definately going back.

A couple of weekends I just stayed in town, rode around mostly with my roomate Riley but also Liz, Deni and Krista, and also partied.

I feel like I forgot a weekend. Owell...

That more or less summarizes my fall in Revi. Good times! (Pics coming soon)

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 1

2010-11-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well I skipped over in my blog the part of my life where I lived in Revelstoke for two months. Ill fill that in soon, I promise! But now Im in Mexico...

Originally the plan was to drive down here with Zack and hang out in Cali and Las Vegas at a conference. But due to circumstances outside of my control I could not do that and we got some cheap flights and are now here. And it is HOT.

So, from the beginning of the Odyssey -
I met up with Zack at Lussier Hotsprings. He was driving accross Canada with our awesome skiing and sailing friend Robyn. Because we couldnt drive south anymore we went on a little hot springs road trip. We hung out with our LU friends Sarah and Angela in Nelson and went to the Nakusp hotsprings. Also chilled with Andris there. Then we came back to Revi. I had a couple days to kill so I decided to go back down to Lussier and met up with Robyn and hung out in Kimberly for a bit.

Zack and I at Lussier

On Devil´s night I found myself back in Revi and went to the Wassabi Collective show at the Reget with Liz, Deni, Zack and other Revi folks. As usual for a halloween show with an amazing band it was a rager. Stayed out until 630 with the gouls and ghosts going to the after, after after and after after after parties and then left for Van at 11 to catch our flight to Baja. Along the way we met up with Zacks cousin in Vernon and stayed with a couchsurfer in Van for our flight the next day (Nov. 1).

Now another thing about Zack and Couchsurfing.org... he´s got such a good reputation from hosting couchsurfers in Thunder Bay, having been hosted so many times,and the fact he´s a natural born uber-networker and over-planner, we only paid on the first night to stay somewhere, and we didnt really need to. Im on Couchsurfing too, but due to Zack´s super-planning abilities and my general ´go with the flow but lets end up here´attitude, I let him do the scheduling.

The flight was uneventfull, though it was cool to see the jungly mountains through the coulds outside our stopover in Porta Vallarta.

Now in Baja, we´re staying with a couch surfer host named Ana who was working in one of the fancy jewlery stores here in Cabos San Lucas (there´s a lot of that garbage high-end developement here). Relizing her job sucks, she quit her job and decided to come sailing with us to La Paz for a couple days next week with this guy we met at this post-sailing-race beach party. We´ve been hangin out with her and her friend Ilse, who complains no one understands her name and Im like ´thats almost my moms name´ which she had a hard time believing.

Zack didn´t know what a ´Gringo´ was...
Ana and me at the fancy San Lucas marina

Other activities of note in San Lucas: Zack and Ana got sick (my luck was holding out), we partied truly Los Cabos style last wednesday (ladies night! which means Zack and I paid for our drinks, boo), climbed the mountain at the extreme south end of Baja (if you´ve see photos of Cabos San Lucas or its famous arch, it might very well be in it), hung out at a beach side resort with another couchsurfer and some resort bums we met (who gave us their booze because they were leaving), and generally hanging out on the beach. Other details about being in Mexico - learing Spanish again, learning the keyboards here, knowing where not to eat the tacos, walking everywhere, the sun and the heat.

On the mountain at the bottom of Baja

On friday night Zack and I took off for the other Los Cabos city, San Jose de Cabos. This place is a little more relaxed thand the full on resorty Cabos San Lucas, but still pretty touristy. I guess I shouldn´t complain; I´m a tourist. We met up with Nayalia, a spunky couchsurfing host that brought us out the other night for tacos, beers and a show. I dont know whick one of those things it was, but my luck ran out and the next day I got sick. Spent the day taking it easy, and later today we head out, sailing for La Paz. Can´t wait!

PS - sorry for any typos, the spell checker was checking for correct Spanish

To Ontario and Back Again

2010-08-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

So far, here are some of the highlights of my random summer since last time:

-Continued driving home to Ontario, picked up a hitchhiker named Alfredo who stunk up my car a bit but was nice.

-Probably the biggest news was my Krustmeitas (Goddaughter's) Olita's christening. The ceremony was at Sid and we had a big party at the Homestead house. We put of tarps, banners and made a feast and generally had a good time with tons of family (and I mean TONS) despite the heat.

-Spent Jani at Sid, which was awesome this year, probably my favorite Jani for a long time. Had a little bit of everything...

-In Ontario had a couple camp fires at my place with old friends.

-Met most of my old friends in general, Steve, Brian, Geoff, Matt, Meg, Jesse, among others.

-Went to a party at Pat, Franc and Pierce's place. Got roudy and fun, but my car got broken into. Thankfully the only thing they took was my old but great digi-cam. Ohhhh Hamilton...

-Worked for Nikolas painting and renovation for about four weeks. Thanks Nik!

-Hung out at Gullivers a couple times. Checked out some cool old trailers.

-Steve cut my hair into a mowhawk.

-Went to a cottage party in Quebec on Lake Magog with Carolyn and met new friends Anne and Yves there and generally had a good time.

-Chilled out at a cottage with Mel and Tanis on Lake Huron then we went to the Eclipse Electronic Music Festival, with all its good times, trance, drum 'n bass and house music, swimming, dancing and laughing.

-Finished working for Niks at the end of July then started driving out west again.

-Went to 4-2 weekend at Garezers. It was our GVV class' 10th year anniversary, so we rented a boat and about 2/3 of the class go aboard. Had a good time drinking on the water, swimming and catching up. We ended up almost sinking da boat and we lost the detachable ladder, so it was an especially memorable reunion! As for the rest of 4-2, it was amazing, staying up till the sum came up all three days, enjoying Burka World, catching up with old friends and having fun with new and old friends alike.

-After 4-2 drove up Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There I enjoyed the south shore or Lake Superior and the North Shore of Lake Michigan. Was amazed by the beautiful shorelines (it was Lake Superior, after all), nice people, the abundance of big hills and deciduous forests, and saw the Northern Lights to boot.

-Continued driving west through the American Prairies. I missioned it, and didn't really stay anywhere other than passing out in my car until I woke up, which turned out to be fairly comfortable in the Subaru compared to the old Honda. Was interesting driving through the windy Prairies. There wasn't a cloud in the sky but because out the strange haze the sky was never really blue. Passed abandoned dust bowl towns, bad-lands, huge dams, and checked my facebook frequently at like half the McDonald's I passed because they have free Wi-Fi now. Driving into the mountains at night was cool as there was lightning on the mountain tops which was both a bit scary and really exciting to drive up into. The interesting thing was there was barely any rain. The prairies in Washington were another un-expected cool point.

-Met up with Zack at his Outward Bound camp in Mazama Washington. Actually, when I got there, Zack had flight problems and missed his flight, so he got a flight later to Seattle, where I picked him up the next day. Spend my birthday hike-a-biking our bikes up a mountain then riding down again, swimming, sipping on fine beer, stacking and climbing milk crates (you have to do it at the same time, as single crate wide! Quite fun and tricky).

-Then I drove up to Revelstoke and met up with Benson, my sis and Dennis, which was cool and relaxing. Benson and I went to a ghost town, which actually was an old mining camp which closed down about 50 years ago. It was all crumbled, but was cool to check out none the less, and Benson found some burls he's planning on turning into wild kitchen bowls and plates and the like.

-Then I drove back to Calgary for a couple days. Gonna go riding and then go back out west somewhere next week. Only problem is, don't really know where to go! Will be good tho...

Road Trips

2010-06-21T23:31:00.001-07:00

So since Colombia I went back to work for a little while. Went on two road trips to Kamloops with Yuri to get some early season riding in, staying with Alex (from new-years) and Max out there. Its about a 6 hour drive from Calgary, which might seem excessive just to ride a bike, but the riding was good, rode a trail that was in a bike movie AND met legendary mountain biker Matt Hunter!

We’ve met a lot of new riders this year, a lot more than other years. We rode out at Canmore a couple times, where we met our new rider friends Dave, Terry, Cody, Jenny and Travis.

At work I was put in a labour job due to circumstances outside my control, hurt my back and decided enough was enough and finished. Right after I quit I went to Idaho...

Now, Idaho sounds like a strange place to go, but that was one of the main reasons we went – because it’s so under the radar. Let me tell you its great, totally recommend it. So Tanis, Steve and I loaded up Tanis’ little Suby and set out. Along the way we went to two sets of isolated hot springs, drove by amazing scenery, climbed a couple mountains, had three back seat shin-digs, and met Zack and his GF Natalie on the moon... Actually it was an old volcano lava field that just looks like the moon. I have to mention that the second set of hot springs were absolutely fantastic. It’s about an hour hike to get to them, but their perched high up on the side of a mountain, nice and hot, beautiful location too. It will be hard to top those ones.

I rode around Kananaskis country for a few days, now that I have all this time off! That was nice, but I’m a little concerned about the water quality out there. It all tastes smoky, which might be a result of the ‘rock snot’ algae that have wrought havoc on the Rocky Mountain river systems here.

Did another road trip in BC to go to the International Indigenous Leadership Gathering with Andre and Candace. It was very relaxing and spiritual, taking place in a beautiful location in the mountains on a reserve outside 2 hours west of Kamloops. Participated in a sweat lodge ceremony, and was touched by a healer, and the speeches helped me take stock of my life. There were a lot of speakers, met a lot of very nice people, and helped out in the kitchen.

Went to Golden with Yuri and Dave Dickson to go riding. Met our friends Cody and Jenny there and had an absolute blast riding the opening weekend at Kicking Horse, getting better at freeride every time I go out. It’s one of the joys of the sport: progression. But with that also comes pain – Dave’s starting out, crashed, hurt his shoulder and ended the day early. He’s like I used to be – reckless – but then I broke my shoulder. Hopefully he’ll learn to focus more! After riding we hung out and stayed with and old high school friend Nicole, who now owns a trailer in Golden, and also jumped in a lake.

Getting better at fixing bikes, so much so that I can repair just about everything on my bikes now, even complicated suspension components. I also fix a lot of other people’s bikes too. I applied to some cool bike related jobs here, but we’ll see how that pans out. Back-up plan is to get a regular job once I get back from Ontario.

Now I'm on my way out east. Staying at a Katimavik house in Assinaboia, Sask (yeah, I'd never heard of it either...). Tanis is the project leader here and I'm helping out for a couple days before heading out again.

Its all good!

Till next time.

PS - does anyone know a simple to use blogging website, because this one sucks to upload images.

The Colombian Era, pt. 3

2010-03-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh, to be away from the heat. Again, a night bus in Colombia. They say most kidnappings and police searches (where they plant drugs on you and demand a bribe) happen on night buses, but Colombia's safe now. At least it was for me. Mostly...

Well, San Gil was nice, and we met lots of nice people, and did lots of nice things. yeah. nice.

We get there, looking for a specific hostel, and a nice dude invites us in english to stay at his and his brother's new hostel. Good enough. The first day we didn't do much: Steve passed out and I went and go fried chicken that you eat with plastic mitts so your fingers don't get greasy. I also tried un-ripe mango with sugar. And later I tried giant fried ants. They tasted pretty much as you would expect.

That night we played rock band with some Israelis. They didn't know the words, but just (very effectively) "Wooo-ooo-ooooed" the words into the mic to Guns 'n' Roses and Boston. Also a whole bunch of people arranged to go rafting the next day, organized through the hostel.

The rafting trip started innocently enough... Abil, one of the Israeli guys, got stung by a wasp in the guides' van . The wasp was aggravated by one of guides. Abil's allergic to everything, and freaked out. I joked to Steve how what a good start to the rafting trip it was, I hope he doesn't die. Black humour. Ha ha haaaaa...

We get to the start location and the guides give us the safety brief (in Spanish). I remembered 'Alliente' (go) and 'Alto' (stop). There was much more. They also warned me Id loose my crocks (sandals) if I didn't tie them up to my feet. Unfortunately the day before I took off the string on my travel wallet (really). Do'h!! Oh, and the river was higher than the hostel owner had ever seen it.

The first set of rapids (class 4) were great! Then we get out. (But wait, there's more!). Class 5 rapids to go, a big long set. Yes! So we get going. The rapids come fast and furious. It all gets a little chaotic. I don't know what the guide's are yelling, just trying to do what they and the others in the boat are doing. More yelling. Bigger rapids. Soon enough the raft is perpendicular to the river, then upside down, and I'm thinking 'Oh man, this is real!'. I try to do what the guides told us, keep you're head up, feet down river. I come up, people and paddles all round. I'm spinning around rocks. I'm coming up trying to get breath (and generally stay alive). I'm bouncing off rocks. I'm trying to grab my crock that's fallen off. Then I'm under water again, up, bracing for the next rapid. I'm looking at the rocks at the shore.. can't get there. Gradually the rapids subside, and one of the girls from another raft is hollering at me from the shore in Spanish. I'm assuming she was yelling at everyone to get out and stay alive. I get out, coughing and gagging, but the weird thing was, I was in the first boat out, but she was there before me, her hair was dry (though she had clearly fallen into the rapids), and there was an inlaid cross in the rock beside where she was standing. I guess she was a guardian angel (or someone had died in the rapids prior to our trip). She doesn't speak much inglais so I never got an explanation of it all.

After a while we rounded everyone up at the next beach. Thankfully everyone was alive. But not OK - my shins, foot and knee were banged up (so were most people's), Steve's leg was pretty sore, and remember Abil (the wasp guy...), he ended up needing to go to the hospital. I lost my crocks. I was tired but excited, but Steve was pissed. We wanted to get out, but the Van had already left to bring Abil to the hospital, so everyone had to get back into their rafts again and shoot the rest of the 'easy' rapids. Well, they were a lot easier, but everyone was shaken up, the crews mixed up, and two of the three rafts flipped again. I stuck with the guardian angel, so we didn't flip, but Steve's boat did, and he and his crew ended up having and argument with their guides. The guides wanted them to get in the boats again, and the rest refused. In the end they ended up walking the rest of the way, and Steve and I left the hostel to try go to the first one we were looking for.

The next hostel was great, the 'Our Pick' in the Lonely Planet. That night we ended up playing drinking games into the wee hours with fellow hostelers, and we ended up going out into the warm pouring rain in flip flops to a bar, but I was drunk enough, so Steve and I went to a truck stop food stall and ate all their fritas and empinadas or like $4.

The next day Steve took it easy on his leg, while I went with a couple Swiss-German girls to check out some waterfalls. The 'waterfalls' were more like a stream with rapids, but it was still really nice, and we went swimming and got some beers (there's booths with people selling stuff even in the most remote settlements).

That night we played drinking games again, and ended up going to the opening night at a trendy club. A lot of rum, dancing and generally good times followed. I recommend checking out the photos on facebook to really understand how fun and noodly the night was.

The next day we took it easy and walked around town and enjoyed the beautiful vistas of the Andean mountains around the city before catching the night bus back for the coast.

At this point I'm more or less constantly moving until I get home.

We get back to Santa Marta and head straight to Tyronna National Park. Heart of Darkness. Well, not quite, but it is in the jungle, and the jungle gets under your skin. We have to hike 3 hours to get to the campground we want to get to. On the way we see monkeys and lots of lizards. No roads go there, only by human and horse foot, or occasionally a boat. We're searched by MPs on the way in, and again half way through the hike. We get there, totally sweaty and exhausted, in a campground like a euro music festival, but by the beach under coconut palms. The first day we relax (obviously, its suuuper hot and humid and we've been on the move for 16 hours), and meet up with Heleina (from my first Colombia post) again. The next day we all hiked to some ancient ruins in the jungle. Along the way we gathered coconuts. Ever tried opening one? Peel off the husk, crack the shell, and drink up. But its a lot harder than it sounds. Don't have too much, or else you need to go to the baño. There were spirits at the ruins, or at least we heard the famous screaming monkeys, which sound like lions. After the ruins we hiked to a nude beach and rocked out in big waves (kinda like the rapids), and went snorkelling, and then packed up our stuff and moved to another beach. That night we played cards with some locals and lurked on a rock.

The next day we set out. Two hours of hiking three buses and two taxis found us in downtown Barranquilla, where I would fly to Bogota later in the day. Steve and I had our last dinner together, I called work to touch base and I left him at the bus stop while I went to the airport. Now I was on my own in Colombia. Two more taxi rides and a plane trip found my at my hostel in Bogota. I even had a rudimentary conversation in Spanish with the taxi driver in Bogota! The next day I spent the rest of my thousands of thousands of Colombian pesos on rum and souvenirs and headed to the airport. Three bus rides and two airplanes I find myself back at the Sci-fi airport in Orlando. To get out of Colombia and into the US I went through 7 searches and checkpoints. Slept in the Chapel again. No security woke me, but I was roused to find my flight was canceled. One quick dash to the desk and I'm transferred to another airline, never mind my bags.

Two more flights, four more checkpoints and one ride with Yuri and I'm home.

And I got the tan to show for it all...

The Colombian Era, pt. 2

2010-03-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

So I now find myself in Taganga, a very touristy, hot and picturesque place on the carribean coast, right by Santa Marta. We left Solento and took the 20 hour night bus here. The bus right was comfy, like last time, and lightning was bursting all through the night. Like ALL night, ALL over Colombia.

Taganga is very nice, and Hades hot, but its breezy, so its OK. Kinda reminds me of a small town in Africa (even though Ive never been there...), all desert shrub and slummy suburbs. We ended up staying at a hostel thats meant to look like a pirate ship, and we´re sleeping in hammocks in the crows nest, above the village. Very cosy, and cheap, $7 a night, with a fantastic breakfast. And the view is unbeatable. But the domesticated birds! There's chickens and roosters who dont know when the sun comes up, and a parrot at the hostel which certainly does. Thats ok, on my last day I accidentally whacked it with a towel. Like I said, the town itself is very touristy, and we´ve met many. On the first day we just chilled out after the looooong bus ride and bought snorkel masks and tried ´em out.

The second day we went to a near by touristy beach. Oh wow the snorkeling here is amazing, all corals and colourful fish and things. Ive even seen a blow fish! no sharks, thank god... I was only out in the water for what I think was an hour, so I didnt think I needed sunscreen. Oooooh man I got roasted (and heckled...). Thats OK though, the last time I got this burned, the tan (or at least the tan line) stayed for years.

On the third day we hiked out of town into Tyronna National Park, to check out this secluded beach on the other side of a mountain ridge thats about 700m high. The hike was veeeeery hot, I cant remember the last time I sweat that much. The hike was picturesque, all carribean coast and villiage and mountains, and it was cool to see how the ecology transitioned from the deserty shrubs on the Taganga side to the less deserty trees and bushes on the other. On the other side we were greeted by thirsty cows, of all things, before we got to the beach. We hiked along the shore for a while, past empty, off season hostels and beach houses and fishermen, and we took turns snorkeling back and carrying our stuff too the beach, sort of leap frogging our way back to the beach. We saw the best corals there. On the way back a family which must have been away fishing was back and yelled at me. I was quite un-nerved, because I knew NOTHING of what they said. Hope I didnt piss them off too much, whatever I did.

Today was a relax day, but even still, we went far out along the coast to leap-frog snorkel back. Again, lots and lots (and lots) of colourful fishies, corals and other stuff, like you see in the carribean cruise commercials. Quite nice.

Tomorrow We´re off to go back to the mountains at San Gil. Cant wait to get away from the heat!

The Colombian Era, pt 1

2010-03-09T16:39:00.001-08:00

The Colombian era began in 1492 when Christo Colombo came to South America and generally started to fuck shit up. I dont usually swear, but in Colombia, in Spanish, there are just so many more elaborate and rude ways to do it the F-word is right tame now.

That doesnt mean Ill use it.

ANYWAY, I came to Colombia. The plan was to meet up with Steve in South America sometime this winter. Hes been travelling around South America for the last four months with friends, including Mel, Sara (fromPeterborough) and me. We didnt know where to meet up, and I work with a couple Colombians and it turns out that Colombia was pretty damn convenient. Not to mentions amazing!

So living in the twisted capitalistic society we do, the cheapest flight here was actually 4 flights: Calgary to Denver to Orlando to Miami to Bogata, all over 26 hours. It was all pretty painless actually. I slept in a little chapel in Orlando airport until I was kicked out by a security guard at 4:30am who said it was wrong for me to rest in a chapel and proceeded to pray. Oh, by the way, Orlando airport is awesome! Its designed like something out of a 90s sci-fi video game, with monorails and lagoons and space pod looking things and screens everywhere. The flight between Orlando and Miami was the most pointless thing ever, as soon as we got up, we went down.

I got to Bogota and everything was good, met Steve outside the aeroport and lurked the city for a couple days. The people here are very friendly, tho veeeeery few people speak inglais, so its pretty nutty for me. Its not that bad tho, Steve speaks enough of it to get by, and Im picking it up at about 10 times as fast as I tried to pick up french. That and now were hanging out with a Catalonian chicita who´s from Barcellona. My visit to Bogota consisted of walking around and soaking up the warm weather and tropical parks, drinking copiuos amounts on cervesa, eating amazing food at amazing prices, dancing the night away, learing spanish and teaching inglais to everybody, talking to all the nice people (actully Steve and ´elena ((Helena, you dont say the ´h´ in Spanish)) do most of the talking), noticing how freekin ALIVE the city and people are here, and, what I always to in foreign ciudades, just walked around.

Then we took buses to the centre of the Zona Cafeteria (coffee region). To look on a map and to be used to cruising around Canada, America and the EU you wouldnt think it would take that long, but about 12 hours later we finally got to Salento. Not that the bus rides were unpleasent. Acutally quite the opposite. To be used to cruising around Canada or America on a Greyhound, 12 hours on the bus is close to a death wish. But despite Colombia´s (and South America´s) poverty, plethora of aging vehicles and totally loco traffic, the busses are down right cushy. Tons of leg room, the seats go WAAAY back (and not to mention comfy), its not packed to the gills with strange and smelly people, no strange engine and/or other mechanical fumes, no problems! And you get to watch Action Movies in Spanish! Oh, and the view? Holy fuck! Sorry, last time, I swear... Bogota is about 8500 feet above sea level, just a little less than the top of the rockies around Canmore and Banff, tho you really cant tell except that you´re strangely out of breath on anything but the smallest hill. And its all mountains covered in tropical forests and banana farms and people doing stuff. Seems like half the people here on the street are doing stuff, as oppesed to Canada, where mostly they seem to be going somewhere else if there even are people on the street. And most of the highway is quite precariosly perched on the side of a 3000´ slope. Traffic is just loco, all hairpin passing on turns and switchbacks and that precarious highway, but ive never had a problem. Hell Im even considering dring down here at some point in the future.

So we roll into Solento. We go for a hike on the first day in the mountains, and its like the closest thing to paradise Ive ever found. Well, maybe BCs pretty close to paradise too, and maybe the north shore of Lake Superior, but you get the idea. Pics and vids on facebook soon. All green and flowing clouds and towering palms and pleasant tropical forest and mountain streams and mountain meadows with said towing palms and horses.

Its all just loco tho. First of all, to get to the trail head, you jump in the back of a 60´s era Willys Jeep (no joke) - they serve as the rural public transport around there. And theres only 14 freekin people limit to ride on one, roof rack and all! On something smaller than a Wrangler! ITS AWESOME! Another loco thing, all the military and security everywhere. All over Bogota. All kinds of uniforms. We were walking around a University campus and a shotgun toting guard smiled and pointed: ´vamos that way´. On the said paradise hike, theres soldiers passing us going the other way for the whole first half of the hike (tho Id say only about a platoon, they were right well spaced out in little groups). Might have something to do with the simering (and at times past raging) civil war going on fuelled by cocain and poverty. Dont worry, mom and dad, its actually quite safe (except for the traffic).

The next day in Solento we chilled out, went for a little nature hike with these home schooled poor rural kids who might as well have been natural science majors (think smart like Lisa Simpson), all plants and tropical forrest life cycles and human impact. Not that I understood much of what was being said. We even got to see coca, you know, that notorious plant. That night we partied like no tomorrow, all saying gibberish in spanish with locals and rum and hanging out with cattle and grass fights. The next day I felt like crap, but Steve and ´elana were fine. Might have something to do with the malaria pill I took...

Today we went to a couple coffee plantations. The hostel owner figured it out, a hippy with a distinct physical resemblance to Tommy Chong, but with 10 less years and 10 times the talkativeness and enthusiasm. He convinced us to go. He convinced us to stay at his hostel from the one we were at before. He concived me to drink a reeeeeaaaally strong coffee at 9pm last night. He convinced me that it was the best cup of coffee (cafe) ive ever had. I couldnt sleep until 4am. Anyway, we go on to these two plantations, again on the Willys. The first one is actually pretty much just wild coffee trees in the jungle, arribica, and the guy who owns the last is a natural scientist of some kind. He deosn´t harvest the coffee for money, and there isnt that much of it on his property. Im not sure how he and his family gets by, something to do with the government. I dont know, he only speaks espaiñol, but as soon as we got to his place in the jungle a butterfly landed on his daughter and said it was fate so he liked us. We were there for hours, walking around the jungle, had lunch, hung out with goats and talked about their contribution to cafe (they discovered it. Yes the goats), the fallacy of Juan Valdez, and then had literally, by far, the freshes cup in my life - processed, roasted, grinded and brewed right there, on a house on top of a hill in the most picuresque place ever. Then we went to another plantation, this one an acutal working plantation. We were all getting a bit gooffy (noodly) at this point - all lack of sleep and Willy rides and cafe cafe cafe (and more cafe cafe cafe). This plantation was shade grown coffee, organic or fair trade or something - I dont know, the plantation guide was talking en español. It really was really interesting. And noodly (goofy). At the end he gave us another incredibly fresh and strong cup of cafe that he said would keep us up till 6am. Its 8:45 now. Lets see how it goes.

October until Pre-Colombian era

2010-03-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

OK, so I´ll try to recap everything Ive done in CANADA for the last four months.

October was cold, so I just worked and didnt ride my bike much

November was waaaarm so I rode my bike a lot. Sooo much so that I ended up breaking my shoulder. To see the escapades check out "Matiss breaks his shoulder" and "Biking in Alberta 2(009)" on Youtube.

December my shoulder was broken, but I kept working. Went home for the holidays and proceeded to party for about 12 days straight, mostly with my family and family friends, it turns out. Highlights - biking to Ozolins Christmas party, Smit/enzelin side fam party, Valdman side fam party and breakdown afterwards, wicked awesome newyears with geoff, matt, tanis and alex and hangin with zack.

January started to ski. Went to Lake Louise and lucier hot springs in the winter with Tracy.

February was real good. Went to Vancouver for the olympics for a day and ended up partying at a punk rock show with cool random friendly Vancouverites. Hung out with Benson, Tracy and my sis in Revi. Bought a kite-skiing kite but haven´t been able to use it and only tangled up the lines, Nicks goodbye party, hangin out with Tanis for a week.

If you REAAAALLLY wanna see pics of all this epicness, become my friend on Facebook and lurk my profile. If you hate facebook then just ask to lurk on one of your friends facebook accounts. Everyone on earth has a friend who has facebook. I dont usually post pics here because its a pain

Cooling down in Calgary

2009-10-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm looking at the weather map and there's this dark blue bubble around Calgary and the southern Canadian rockies. Numbers like -5, -10, -15, -19 in Banff, and its the beginning of October. But Calgary's crazy that way - it'll warm up again. It was 20 a couple weeks ago and I went swiming!

The economy's a bit nicer, but to me that's just a rumor - our company has no more projects coming up (though they've been telling us there's more coming for months) - so our hours are so short I'm pretty much out of work. I was hired back to be the site assistant on a project on a Tuesday. On Friday the site shut down. Play it by ear, I guess. I'm not looking forward to working outside in any case. So with all my time off I'm applying to other jobs - hopefully I'll get a job at MEC.

Speaking of using my time off - it's good to nurse this cold I've come down with. Be careful - H1N1 will get ya!

Its not all cold, tho. I did go to BC with Tracy. That was nice. Got all the way to Tofino. I met up with my friend Zack (from Montreal, not the one from Dundas), from my Canmore days. We all went surfing, and it was interesting:

I almost got lost in the ocean on a surfboard. Zack saw, he was all like "Hey man, don't go that way, go THAT way", and I was like "Ahh shit, what'chu talkin' about maaan, wait, oh, wait, shit im gonna die, shit, oh wait a minute, no I'm not". Acutually nothing was said and frantic arm motions did. (I don't usually swear that much anyway...). It was good tho, but it IS scarry to get caught in a rip and be carried out even though you're paddling in.

Even though it was the off (tourist) season, there were still lots of other workers there. We went to a beach party where a couple dudes started wrestling each other they were heckling each other and trying to light a fire on the beach. Zack and I got the fire going when they turned their efforts on each other.

Other highlights of the trip were all the ferry rides, cruising around places like Whistler, Rossland, visiting friends in Vancouver, trying to get internet at various Starbucks' to figure out what to do next, and random hikes in beautiful B.C. I got a new (used) freeride montain bike in Powell River - one of those rigs that looks like a dirt bike with no motor.

Alberta HAS been nice too. Yuri and I've been freeriding, but not as much as last year for a number of reasons (mostly the weather). I've also been doing some XC in Kaninaskis too, doing to Tombstone pass, a 40k trek that whiped me.

Craig and Caroline from Dundas came through this way and we went on a nice hike in Banff.

Otherwise I've mostly been taking it easy, reading and playing games, hanging out with friends. Not much. But I'll keep you posted

Dundas and Peterborough, summer of '09

2009-09-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

So the flight back from Latvia was long. There were three flights actually: first from Riga to Oslo (I was in Norway for an hour!), then to London, then to Toronto. In Oslo they forgot my luggage so I had to hang around Heathrow for 12 hours - not very pleasant. To pass the time I commandeered a wheelchair and had people look at me while I wheeled around. Took the bus to Gatwick once I got my bad. Watched the Virgin Airlines jumbos until I could leave.

Finally made it to TO and mom drove me home.

Dundas was nice. Had a party for my brother's champagne birthday on the 31st. Went to the Crawford's cornhole competition (its not what you think, but then again maybe it is). Had a tent town at my place. We heard it was going to rain so we got a bunch of tarps and strung 'em all up. It did end up raining - a ton! The tarps stayed up (for the most part), and we stayed dry (for the most part...). We even kept the fire going all night! Played frisbee the next day.

Borrowed my brother's fancy recumbent bike. My plan was to take it to Peterborough. I got lazy and tired, however, and turned around after the first day and came back. Made it to Albion Hills, however, more than 100kms away by road.

The next day took the bus to Peterborough.

Did a lot of noodln and lurkn stuff there. Went to a couple shows (FM Hi Low and Plants And Animals), did some gardening, dug up potatos, made a lot of music (including a song about the new GO bus route to P-dot), went swimming, jumped off the Park St bridge, drank good beer, made good food, ate good food, hung out in FM Hi Low's new 1977 Triple E Camper van, made more music, read about Christopher Columbus, and a bunch of other stuff I tried to remember.

Now I'm at my friend's place in Toronto, gonna catch the next flight to Calgary.

Latvija

2009-09-09T09:40:00.001-07:00

So I stayed with Ilze for a week. It was very relaxing, going to the beach and taking trains downtown.

After that I stayed at my cousin Ieva's place in downtown Riga. I also knew her roommate Aleksandra from back in the day when we were classmates at GVV. I stayed there the rest of my time in Latvija.

So since its been a while since I posted anything (and a month since some of the stuff in Latvia happened!), I'll just rattle it off:

-Went and saw all KINDS of castles (in Sigulda and Cesis) mostly and monuments (all over the place).

-Ended up going to Sigulda 4 times

-Met up with my dad and went and saw all kinds of relatives, including my grandma's sister, friends Ainars Abols and Guntis Groskops, my dad's GFs family in Cesis, the major of Kandava and more.

-Went to Kurzeme with my dad, and again later with him and his friend Maruta. Saw the beach in Ventspils, and the town where my dad was born.

-Hung out at the family farm in Valmiera.

-Helped out at the annual Zallum Ballen (roughly translated into Green or Greenery Party, which usually happen in August). More than 100 people showed up to the dancing, drinking and eating in the big barn. The band Ilgi provided the music.

-Went on a rafting trip near the Estonian border with was veeeery relxing. Went into Estonia for the first time.

-Borrowed a car and went for a road trip into Latgale and to Gaizin Kalns.

-Hung out in Riga a lot.

-Read about fighter jets and gypsies.

-Took pictures of cats (photos will be up soon - gotta get back to Calgary for that).

-Improved my latvian.

-Drank a lot of beer.

-Had a good time.

Jurmala

2009-07-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

So the rest of Amsterdam was OK. Blundered around the city with one of the brits (Gaz - love the name!) I met in Rotterdam. Went to a park and saw lots of people and people on bikes. There's lots of people on bikes in the Low Countries. Really, the only thing you need to know about them is to get out of their way. That's why its so fun to ride a bike in the Low Countries.

That night went on a pub crawl around the Red Light District. Met some (more) cool people. I now realize how its easy to meet people who, like you, are looking to have a good time. Keep traveling! The Pubcrawl got a little out of control tho - almost got in a fight until two Spaniards broke it up. Hahaa! yikes.

The next day I packed up, got some souvenirs, and rode my bike to the airport. The bike had an ir-repariable flat, so I rode there on a flat. It was a loooong ride. Left the bike there, hopefully someone needy will get it. It was falling apart. Many of the souvinirs I got were porcelain, and the sticker said security went through my bag, so they unwrapped all the porcerlain stuff, and most of it broke. So guess what family, you might get souvenirs from Latvija! Balzams here we come! Wait, those bottles are porcelain too...

Got on the plane to Helsinki. Had to spend an overnight 10 hours there. So I took the bus downtown. Man, that place is expensive - 4euros to take a bus one way! Whatever. So guess what I did in Helsinki... I blundered around and took pics. Not much to see. Went back and read a book and tried to sleep in the airport.

I gotta say tho, Finnair is amazing! They had cameras at the front and bottom of the plane, so you could see everything on the TVs. The landing was the coolest! The foods great, complimentary beer, comfy seats... if only Air Canada could get their act together!

Got to Latvija, got to my friend Ilze's place uneventfully. While here ive mostly done nothing and sleep and relax, which has been great after four weeks of adventure. Met some people (obviously), met some people I haven't met in a while, went to a going away praty where the go awayer gave away a cell phone (still can't get it to work tho), drank some cheap beer, read a couple books and took a walk along Jurmala. Very chill.

Also, I've started uploading pics to Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/matisslife/

Amsterdaaaaaaaaamn

2009-07-21T02:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, so Rotterdam was nice. Amsterdam is wicked. more on that later...

So I didn't end up going to that BMX thing, instead I met some limeys and we went to The Hague. I inquired why the town was called that, and mostly its just because its called De Haag in Dutch. And why is the land of the Dutch called The Netherlands? So many questions.

De Haag was nice too. We didn't go to the ICC because it was actually far away, you can't go inside, there's nothing to see, it was raining, and we wanted to see Bruno. Borat was better. So it was good to rest up in nice Rotterdam.

Rode to Amsterdam. It was windy and I took a couple wrong turns into the wind. Grrr!

First day here I stumbled into the Red Light District - pretty much first thing I did. Good thing I didn't take photos of the prostitutes in the windows, I didn't know i'd get a cup of piss thrown at me or worse! Met a 'Charlie' - guy who takes you're money believing you bought drugs. I gave him 50 cents for showing me where the Banana Bar was.

Met more british people here. One guy was here for 5 days and couldn't find the RLD. He did find cheap internet and food which I was very thankful for. Took the free tour the next day (apearantly the canals are three meters deep: 1 meter of garbage, 1 meter or bikes and 1 meter of water) and the RLD tour later that evening (thankfully I now know not to go to the Banana Bar). Met up with the Brits later and stumbled into Downtown. I told them I knew where the RLD was, but couldn't find it. Eventually we DID find it, but did nothing there (I mean it). I think I'm gonna check out a sex show, just to say I did something truly Amsterdamish. But I hear you can do that in Vagas too.

The hostel I'm staying at is HUGE. Every other one was a localy run gig with charm and wit. This one has 500 beds, keycards, you need to get buzzed in if you don't have one, happy hour and breakfast end on the minute, pay for everything extra and sheets wrapped in plastic. It felt like it had some prison influence. I guess maybe that was because it used to be a school. It is still fun, and the best breakfast so far. And I did meet the limeys here.

So now I have to figure out what to do with the bike. I don't think I can sell it, so I'll try to pack it up and bring it to LV.

Or I might throw it in the river.

Ride to Rotterdam

2009-07-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

So remember that bike I was telling you about? Well I got to Rotterdam with it. It really is a clunker, and it sucks that its got an internal deraileur and breaks so I don't know how to fix them. It made it tho, and it should get me to Amsterdam in a couple days if it doesn't get stolen in the mean time.

The ride was very interesting. I gave myself like 6 days to get to Amsterdam. I could have done it in 2. So I'm spending a few days in Rotterdam. Along the way you notice things. Like how the entire North Sea coast line is like Wasaga beach. There's cafe's and restaurants and beach bums and wind surfers and change rooms and bars and towns along the way. Like the WHOLE way from the Belgian border to the suburbs of Rotterdam. I guess that's what you get when you cram 16 million people into a space half the size of New Brunswick.

It was really cool riding accross the Schelt. It was epic riding on the massive storm surge barriers along huge wind turbines with dozens of kite boarders ripping around on the sea.

Tunrs out Rotterdam is the 1st Annual Youth Capital of Europe. There's events all weenend, like a skateboard/BMX competition and some kamping festival, on top of regular museum trips and blundering around. So cool weekend lined up.

In Brugges

2009-07-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

So I left Paris. I will have to go back some day, tho better planned.

I decided to go to Brugges on the advice of Paul Auzins, and I was not dissapointed. I knew it would be good as soon as I got here - there was parking for a couple hundred cars, but bike racks for a few thousand bikes! And there was the Brugges Cactus Festival (yes, those familiar with the Dundas variety) going on, so I knew this place was gold.

This place is great - Venice of the north. Once again I blundered around for a while, but this place is made for blundering - everythings very close. And there are tourists EVERYWHERE. Its not really a problem, especially since I'm a tourist too, and I met a lot of them. Being in Belgium, I had to try the beer, and boy have I tried lots! So, naturally I got pissed. Seems to be a theme here in Europe. It helps when a beer and a soda cost about the same...

Things I did here: go on the brewery tour, go to the beach on my new bike (more on that in a bit...), play beer pong, eat croques, and chill out. Took photos of everything, but if you really want to see some good images of the place, see the movie 'In Brugges' with Colin Ferrel - very good stuff. All of us at the hostel watched it with our sides splitting.

Yes, like I said, I got a bike. I got a steal of a deal - 60 euros with saddlebags. It IS a bit of a clunker, but I figure I can get 50 for it in Amsterdam. Oh yeah, that's my plan if you hadn't already heard - I'm going to Amsterdam with it! So excited. I leave - right now!

Down and Out in London and Paris (and Stonehenge)

2009-07-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

So the beer pong went well - it turned into a hell of a party in the hostel bar. Its not really surprising considering its called Clink Hostel. Met lots of people from everywhere. Met some that were going to Stonehenge the next day and I tagged along.

It was actually really cool driving around London, looking at all the random monuments and stuff. Stonehenge was interesting - the tour guide put it best: "...so we don't know who made it. We don't know why they made it. And we don't know how they made it, but it wasn't made with slaves. We really don't know that much about it." We also went to Bath - very interesting and nice town. Got off the bus and took lots of pictures. I'm such a tourist! Also went up the Bath Abbey tower. And took pictures.

Got back to London and we commenced to blunder around and look at historical places some more. Actually that's mostly what I'm doing in Europe. That's ok. Its cheaper than actually going into the places. We went to Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, and a bunch of places I didn't know what they were for or called, but looked important. So I took a picture. We drank at the parliment buildings and went to some clubs, which weren't all that we imagined. We ended up staying up all night so we wouldn't have to pay to stay another night in the hostel and took the train the next day to Paris with some people I met on the Stonehenge tour.

Paris is nice. It doesn't smell like piss like I heard (mostly), its not as hectic as London, but its crazy expensive. A small coffee cost like $8 in some places that don't look too fancy. But it is nice, and has that cool Parisian vibe you hear about. We blundered around (obviously) and went up the Eiffel Tower. There's even more crazy big historic stuff everywhere here, especially downtown. In fact that's all it seems to be mostly downtown, so I don't really get how the city functions.

While I've been here its been more frustrating. They rent these bikes all over the city for pretty much nothing, but I can't because my debit and credit cards don't work here except to get cash because they're canadian. Also my phone doesn't work. And I lost the people I went with because the hostel they're staying at was full, and I can't call them and nobody seems to know why, but I could in England. There's lines of tourists everywhere (that's what we stood in like 90% of the time at the Eiffel Tower). For some reason there's also a lot of Mickey Mouse memorabilia here for some reason. So now I know why I never liked M.Mouse - he's actually french.

Its not that bad actually, but I'm leaving tomorrow.

Cheers!

Woooaah London...

2009-07-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

Its crazy here. Crazy right hand drive and weird taxis and double decker busses! People clean the benches for you! People don't speak english, but british. The streets lead you in circles. Acually its not that crazy...

I flew in this morning on the overnight flight. My mom drove me to the airport on the way to work and I had to wait like 8 hours before my flight. I thought it would be UUUUber boring but I met tons of Latvians who I knew - they were coming from the Latvian Song and Dance fest in Hamilton from the weekend (don't know if I told you about that - I'm Latvian too). I was talking to them for so long I almost missed my flight - they called me like 5 times!

The flight itself was good. I had the extended legroom seat by the window, and saw the sun set over Canada this morning for the last time for 6 weeks. The only issue was an air leak witch ended up nearly freezing my shoe before I realized my foot was really cold. Kinda made me question the integrity of the airlplane, y'know, being at 50,000 feet and all. We flew over England as the sun was rising. The whole countryside looks like a mis-matched patwork of odds and ends of green and red fabric - farm fields and forests and towns and cities.

So I land and am ready to go at 6am local, having slept very little on the flight. I also have 8 and a half hours to kill before I can check into the hostel. England's trains are awesome - I got downtown from Gatwick in no time. All the county towns are right out Coronation Street (if you've ever heard of it) - all red brick and kinda run down. I got dropped off at London Bridge Station, and sure enough, it was raining (which was fitting actually really nice), and there was London Bridge and the Tower (of London). So I stumbled around without a map during rush hour for a few hours drinking coffee. I look dishevelled as hell, and everyone else is dressed super nice. Not so much fashionable, but somehow formal yet casual at the same time. Soon I was delusional and walking in circles - the city streets were laid out two thousand years ago before city planning - all dead ends and curves and alleys. All the buildings are either crazy old or crazy modern. I was stubling into monuments all over the place. Cool, here's a 200 foot memorial to some war in the 1600s. Wow, there's where a piece of William Wallace (aka - Braveheart) was hung as an example to anyone who defies the King of England. OMG, there's a battleship in the river! Oh, that's just the museum of modern art or something epic.

I'm also hoping no-one mugs me, walking around alone and confused and paraniod down some dank alley by myself. It didn't help that the last bit of British culture I consumed as Lock-Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, where all Brits seem hell bent on fighting dirty or blowing each other away.

After about 5 hours of this I decided to get a map and figure this whole, like, y'know, London thing out. I decided to make my way to the hostel, even though I still had like 4 hours to kill. I walked there and thankfully they had a storage room to put my pack.

The hostel's crazy. Its an old courthouse. They kept a lot of the old furniture - I'm sitting in the witness stand right now typing this. And I'm asking where stuff is, but I don't really get it, because everyone speaks different kinds of english, and I'm still delusional. Finally, after stubling through two courtrooms I found the computers. And here I am now. Can't wait to check in, sleep for a few hrs and play beer pong tonight!

Livin it up in the mountains

2009-07-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, I figured it out, why I don't post as much -

I started writing these while travelling. Ofter I find myself having tons of time with nothing to do. And I got all these crazy times to talk about! So generally its good to write it down. Even better if other people might read it.

When I'm not travelling for long periods of time, I have to squeeze all the adventure in before returning much too soon to reality (ie - working life), where procrastination rules supreme.

So, really, it makes sense that I don't post.

That, and the pic uploader on this blog engine sucks, which drags to posting out waaaay too long.

So no pics. If you want em, go to Facebook, look up (you got it) Matiss Valdmanis. There's only one. Believe me.

So AAANYWAY, back to all that posting that was put off in reality...

So went skiing again with Tracy, this time at Sunshine. veeeery nice.

I went to Jasper with Zack. Saw ALL kinds of wildlife - like 200 big horn sheep in three heards, tons of elk, eagles and hawks and osprey and stuff. Met some cool people. Made some money randomly (and legitimately...).

Went to Banff a couple times. Always good.

Roach, Sonya and I went to Vernon. Got Ice Cream on the way. Met Niks there. Was excepionally nice weather. Took a hike and laughed and camped out. regretted going back to Calgary.

Got a car. fixed the rust on it - felt proud of myself (kinda like in those Colgate ads: Look Mom, No Cavities!)

Moved into Tamara's place - subleting is saving me tons of $$

Worked, as always. We were 32 stories high by the time I left (more on that).

Went to the hotsprings. Was awesome. Slept in the new car. Saw a momma bear and her cubs. Saw a wolf. Saw some random horses on a mountain logging road that stuck a head into my car. Went to The Top of The World.

Biked a bunch in the city with Yuri. He broke his elbow (and his pride).

Finished work and flew back home to Hamilton for Dziesmu Svetki. I sang and caried the flag and partied. Hung out at Sid a couple times (always great) and hung out and did epic Dundas things with Dundas friends.

Flew to London...

75 days of meh (and counting...)

2009-03-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Hahah! This is a record... 75 days!

Lately I've been in a strange headspace - not doing anything (well, not much), not hanging out with people and not caring. Before I would do be lazy and feel guilty about it. But not anymore! This is the totally apathetic new me!

I'm not really surprised by this new way of life. Mid 20's. Steady, shitty job that pay's decent. The Brits call it 'a shambles'. Seems all I want to do is ride, but the stupid winter here isn't going anywhere. It was like -15 ALL day the other day, and its the END OF MARCH!

In the summer I really became jaded and cynical (but not bitter!), mostly about the world. Then the stock market crashed. Obama won. Baby seals are still being harvested (but, really, does it matter?). Crisis everywhere. Now I'm more just like: meh. Life goes on. A little sad, I guess, but more in a pathetic than depressed way. I don't think I'm the only one who feels like I do tho. This winter has sucked, and I think this whole city is in a collective state of 'when will this end already, ugh' state of mind about it.

Another reason for my not doing almost anything: I'm saving up for travel.

I miss the randomness of being in school, or always being surrounded by fun people. Stupid life's caught up to me now.

I've got plans. Gonna take beginner french language courses starting next month. Gonna go to Latvia and France and Ontario this summer. Wanna bike around all of it, especially southern Ontario in the late summer.

News: Went to Revelstoke with Tracy, which was very, very fun. Umm.... That was a month ago... Work's very interesting. Some co-workers really piss me off, but then I end up being friends with them. Asshole formworkers. Fuckin' weird. Oh, and I've been doing it for years now. I'm fuckin' hard (just an fyi).

What else... fixing up a lot of bikes. Volunteered at a local community bike shop, but haven't been back in two weeks. Just realized I missed another Critical mass ride. I never went to many of those anyway. The bike shop in my basement's getting better. I can pretty much disassemble and put back together anything on a bike, without instructions for most of it. In highschool I viewed some bike friends in awe of their bike mechanics skills. Now I laugh at what they knew!

Anything else new?... I'm sure I could think of something, but, meh

Had some new-years resolutions. The most prominent one was the write a book. Zack's was to floss. I'm not writing the book anymore. But I am flossing. I wonder if he is.

I guess these little achievments of mine in the last few months have kept me from being sad, as opposed to just bored and lazy.

Speaking of Zack, who's lived at the Dreamhouse in T-Bay for ever, the Dreamhouse was destroyed! By a disasterous flood of the hot tub! It was in the attic and drenched everything in the place! In the middle of winter! Damn. It actually is the end of the dream. Its over. That really makes me sad.

You know what else is over? Battlestar Gallactica. I've watched all four seasons, and I'd do it again (and probably will). It is THE most epic thing. Ever. Lord of the Rings doesn't even come close. Wow, I'm a nerd.

Now I'm rambling. Owell, hope you found this mildly amusing, as, really, life should be.

Hell of a Drives

2009-01-11T07:10:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone -

Kinda went AWOL there. I've always had trouble keeping up with these, but almost 3 months in excessive.

Lets see - went through my first period of my in-school carpentry school. Was fun, and not too difficult. Learned a lot. It was good to go on an 'education vacation' as I called it. Don't know how totally serious I am about doing the whole apprenticeship, but it was fun, it got me a raise, and now I feel confident enough to be able to build my own house someday.

Drove home for the holidays with Yuri. Hell of a drive. Well really, could a drive across the country in the winter be considered anything less than "Hell of a drive?". At home for the holidays I seemed to stay out late every night until at least 1, usually around 3. Seeing family and friends, it was great! Went beer-bogganing (in case you didn't already know what that is, you drink beer and go tobogganing), played some epic pool, fell through the ice, did nothing much.

Went to Montreal for New Years. That was a total blast. Total. Walked around Mt Royal and various parts of Montreal and partied at the couch surfing hosts house (who was also hosting a new-years party). Totally awesome!

The drive back to Calgary was funny. It got so cold the brakes froze (fixed it, don't worry), and I think Yuri wanted to kill me for playing video games and not making conversation. Oops. Sorry.

Back at work now. It sucks - dirtbag kicked a piece of plywood in my face and word in the grape-vine is people think I'm bossy. Great. I think I know why, and I could explain, but I won't bog you, and simply it still just sucks. Whatever.

Details in between all that:

-Went skiing with Tracy at Lake Louise. It was so cold I got frost bite on my ears. Tried snowboarding on the big hills, and fell and hurt my ribs.

-Stayed at the Dreamhouse and had a party while driving down back home for the holidays. Got the hot tub and fire place going and everything!

-New roommates have a Battlestar Galactica board game, which I'm super excited to play with them today. I think I've turned into a closet nerd. Closet because being an open nerd isn't cool. I can write it here because no-body will read it. HA!

-Moved downstairs into Mitch's old room in the basement. Cozy! His jam room has been turned into my bike room, and the room upstairs where the bikes used to be has been turned into a living room. It was nicer than it was before I moved my bikes up there, but still just as un-lived in.

-Started selling stuff I don't use. It amuses me, and the money on the side is cool.

Peace out y'all!

Disjointed Recycled Messages

2008-10-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

I guess I could just write about the shit I do. It's a kinda interesting enough writing style, and its why letters even exist(ed), but, in my mind, simply writing out what you're doing doesn't isn't interesting enough anymore. At least in my mind I guess. Its got to be slick, but not too slick, and witty. Ooo, and inside jokes count too! (Unga!) (Noodly). (Remember sleeping on the dock?)

Well, this post certainly witty and all that. It's a little bit jarring; it has no flow.

Ha! You see that! I just used a semi-colon! They're never used anymore!

And imagine this weird fact: you have to press the Shift key to get a regular colon, which is used more often.

Flow. Its so sweet. Flow in biking trails is as awesome as any stunt.

Ahhhh... there it is, the ideas are flowing. This isn't how I originally though about writing back, in that witty and slick way, but its just comin out.

Though what I'm writing still doesn't have much flow. I think in order to get that you need to go back and revise it. Ahh... there - freshly revised.

I guess I could tell you a little about what's goin on.

(Who calls this cheating!)

I've been fixing and riding bikes a lot lately. Probably more of the fixing tho - there are 4 bikes under my wing in the house, and I've done MAJOR repairs to all of them in the last two weeks. I also sprained my wrist, but its better now. Working a lot too, but on Monday I start apprenticeship school. I'm sooooo looking forward to being a student again after all this stressy work/life reality.

Random - I got a pumpkin, carved it and put it out. All by myself. I don't know if I'm just being lonely, funny, or bored. Well, not lonely...

There was a couch surfer staying at my place for a couple weeks. He was french, his name was Olly, and he likes to ride bikes. I think I've told you about him already.

Yuri comes over every weekend and we go riding. I'm actually surprised how much better of a rider I am because of it.

Nick, Sanya, Tarara and friends had a great Thanksgiving dinner!

I just realized a good costume idea - a tiger.

Roooooaaaar!

Matiss

PS - what will you be for holloween?

Fall - like leaves and mountain bikes.

2008-10-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

So the falls here. Haven't had a post in a month. Wow. Most of the leaves have changed colour and fallen away already, but its still ok out to ride. Not doing too much of that right at this moment since I strained my wrist. Went to the doctor, took some x-rays and put on a cast-sling. Doc said no left handed or two handed work and re-schedule in a week. Otherwise keep the cast on, take it easy and ice it. "Can I go riding, Doc?".. "Hehe, no.".

That was on Friday. Now its Sunday and I'm typing this without it on - though I can still obviously feel it feels a little weird.

Obviously I'm not riding this weekend, which sucks because I just got a new fork and tire. Ironically it kinda worked out - I still need a new hub that's compatible with my new fork.

Riding a lot since I last wrote - been to Moose Mountain, COP and Fish Creek several times. There's a french couch-surfer staying at my place right now. His name is Olly (Oliver), and he came riding with us. He's pretty ballsy, considering he doesn't do a lot of mountain biking. As a result he's crashed a lot. He absolutely loves the fall colours, and cooks up a storm.

Work's, well, work. We're pretty hectic right now as we're trying to get rid of a lot of our inventory of construction materials (mostly scaffolding, used lumber and concrete form equipment) now that we're starting to build 'typical' floors. Typical floors are those from level 3 to 35 - the standard ones where each floor is the same and it's easy to make these things called 'flyer tables'. About 20 flyer tables make up the floor plan of a typical floor. You pour the concrete on top of the tables, and once it sets, you can lower the tables and fly them out one by one with the crane onto to floor above and build the next level. As a result it will soon only take a week to build a floor. In contrast, the difficult main and second floors have taken us since before the summer to build. They must be built very very specifically with supporting beams and all kinds of complicated angles and additions built in, they're much higher than typical floors (more than 20 ft for level 2), and there's a much bigger area. The main and 2nd floor plans are at least twice as big as the floor plan of typical floors. And now I've probably lost you. Sorry... So things are a little rushed. Lots of hours in. Its all good.

Here are a few notable events in the last month:

-Niks had a drunk Thanksgiving dinner last night where the food was good, the drinks plentiful and the Rock Band was rockin'. Haven't been to a drunk-party in a while. I remembered why I like them (sometimes).

-Went to see the Born Ruffians and Plants and animals. We wen't for BR, the first act, but P and A's went and we had to leave because it was a school/work night.

-Wen't to September Critical Mass.

-Hanging out with local latvietes Tamara Kirs and Aleks and Erika Muiznieces, along with Nik and Yuri.

-The weather was veeeeery nice the week before last. Rode a lot.

-Got a new bike (oh yeah...)

Miers!

(sorry, no pics yet. Lazy long weekend Sunday)

August in da mounteins

2008-09-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

In Fernie - a deer cow, two fawns, and a bull moose. I ended up riding right beside the moose - awe inspiring.

Wilkies' farm

No, it isn't

Alberta could also have a lot of wind energy...

Waterton

blog entry #7562-238-7b, driving on hwy22 on the way to Creston, BC:

Went to Invermere, Radium and Kootenay NP. Invermere and Radium were touristy but nice enough. Kootenay NP was morbidly beautiful. The mountains there were covered in dead pine. The beatle killed them. Global warming caused the beetle. Invermere and Radium were touristy. Most tourists were from Alberta here for the long weekend - just like us! Stayed in a bed & breakfast - cheapest place there. Actually very nice. Also closest to the Radium hot springs. You could walk there. We drove. I told a co-worker about Radium. Gave him one of the tourist maps they give out everywhere. He's going too. Got reservations at the fanciet place there.

Went to Waterton. Was a very windy trip. Checked out a wind farm on the way. They say Alberta could be the province of wind energy. Got there and hiked to the US border through the mountains.There was a dock just on the states side of the border. The campground was on the Canadian side. We cooked and ate on the dock, checking out the mountains in Glacier NP in the US. On the hike back the wind was blowing us home. Saw a big bear on the way and went swimming in the deepest lake in the Rockies. The water was cold and wavy, but the warn wind, sunshine and rocky beach dried us quikly. Met some tourists from Washington and Germany and they heard about the bear. I said just make lots of noise, you'll be fine.

Right now going to Fernie and Creston with Roach and Wilkie. On the foothills highway going to the foothills highway. Roach's never been there before. Neither of them have been here before. Wilkie grew up in Creston. He's gonna see some fam there. We're also gonna check out the brewery.

blog entry 2846-847-3z, sitting in my roon on wednesday night:

I forgot to mention that Roach and I went to the Canada Olympic Park in Calgary where they've set up a mountain bike park where you ride up the chairlift and ride down on awesome trails designed by the same people who designed those at Whilster. But THAT was just a warm-up for Fernie.

Back to the chronological order... So the rest of the long weekend was fabulous. We stayed at Wilkie's grandma's place, which was absolutely, completely and totally beautiful - an old farm ourside of town beside a mountain getting their water from a year round mountain stream with horses and lush vegetation all around. While there we lounged around and hiked part of the way up the mountain. Roach and I also went to Fernie.

Fernie is in the winter a ski-resort, but they convert it in the summer to a mountain bike park. Now many in the mountain bike fraternity say BC has the best mountain biking in the world. It's because of places like Fernie. We rented bikes that are really more like heavy-duty dirt bikes without the engines so you can jump higher basically flying down the mountain. The trails are classified the same way as ski-hills: Green, Blue, Black and Double Black (diamond). We said at the start of the day we wouldn't hit anything harder than a blue. By the end we hit the only double black. To be fair, the rating system is a bit mis-leading: its based on potential hazard, and so the bigger the jumps, the harder the run. But still! It was un-real, and like last time I was at Fernie, which was in the winter, I felt like I was consciously dreaming, flying down through berms that lead into jumps and again you're forced to shift your world again through a 6 ft berm onto another jump and so on. Ahhhhhh....

The whole time in BC it was perfect, warm and sunny (except at night). Pretty much as soon as we got back into AB it turned cold, wet, grey and rainy. We all vowed to return and live in BC.

Frisbee's getting good. We're into the finals. That sounds more important than it is - all teams get in. It's a round robin. We won the first game, then lost the second one - the semi's. There's six teams in our league level, and I seriously thought we were last or second last. Now we're gonna play in the game that determines 4th and 3rd place teams. Nice. Our defence is really good - mostly because our offence isn't that and thus we play a lot of defense.

Works decent. I've taken a few days off here and there going to do mounteins. Now it fall. Time to buckle down again.

Default Birthday Parties

2008-08-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

Back in Calgary, work, frisbee and cruisin' continues.

At work the site super's gone on vacation, so the admin assistant (who I'm assisting) more or less took over his job, and I more or less totally now took over the assisting job. It a good learning experience, and also good because lately I've been feeling a little beat up so its good to sit behind a desk for a bit. The current site assistant doesn't really want to do that job anymore either, so I'm not sure what's in store for him (I don't think he really knows either).

Bin playin frisbee too. We lost one game (we didn't stand a chance) and won another (they didn't stand a chance). I think the scores for both games were actually 3-15 and 15-3. I've started to be a little surprised at our league - we're level C3 - the lowest one, yet some of the teams we've played are CRAZY competitive. Weird.

Went to see MSTRCRFT and Small Town DJs in town. Very very good techno show. They were showing clips of TRON on a screen behind the stage, so now I have a crazy craving to see it.

Also been longboarding a lot too since I've been back, pretty much every day.

Went to the mountains with Mitch my roommate and some new friends who'r friends with him and his new girlfriend Johanne for the long weekend. We went to the hot springs at Whiteswan in BC, and proceeded to drink beer, climb up and fall down mountains, drink beer, go into the hotsprings, drink wine, play frisbee, drink beer and come home. It was great!

Supposed to go camping this weekend too, but was feeling a bit too tired and beat up. Instead I rented a raft and went down the river with my gangster buddies (the ones who came with me on D-Tour '08) and drank beer instead. Very relaxing.

My birthday was this past Thursday, and I've been going to a whole bunch or default parties as a result. On Wednesday I went to a birthday BBQ for this guy who was turning 30. I kinda came along for the ride. He seemed to be feeling a bit sorry for himself, kinda that feeling like, wow, now I'm 30, and I haven't done anything with my life. Thankfully I don't have to feel like that for another 5 years! After a few drinks I snuck out and rode my longboard home. Good thing I was wearing a helmet - to get from the party to my place I have to down a big escarpment. I found some sweet hills, but went too fast and crashed. Twice. Ouch.

Thursday (my birthday) my company had a 'topping up' party, celebrating the completion of a building. It was fun, we took the afternoon off for it and had a few. Went home later and had some more. Went into work the next day too!

That night went to a party with my old roommates Sarah and Wendy. There were a lot of bands and hippies there. After a while the hippies made me angry and I left. Was supposed to go camping the next morning, but felt too tired and beat up to go. Went rafting instead...

Also all this frisbee, long hours and lack of sleep are making me tired too.

Last night my new roommate had a house warming party. One person showed up. I'm so sick of drinking all week that I decided not to. It was actually very fun.

Peace

Oh yeah, I went to an animal party too!

Matiss Was Here - Ontario July '08

2008-07-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

Leave Calgary

Arrive in Toronto, Bus to Peterborough, meet some Europeans in TO going the same way as me. Go to Elcombe Palace – Steve’s place. He’s at work, but his roommate Rachel makes pan cakes. They were good. They had vanilla and chocolate in them. Borrowed Steve’s longboard and went over to Gavin’s. I lol’d when I saw Steve had the exact same board as me. Gavin wasn’t home, wrote ‘Matiss Was Here’ in mulch on the driveway. Went back, had a nap, Steve got home, and later we got beer with Justin and hopped over all the downtown roofs of Peterborough. Got a ‘six-fingers’ souvenir… Next day went to Farmers market and later went to Hannah’s farm and went swimming, walks in the meadows, beer in the hammock, dinner, tried a motor scooter, played cards. Sunday back to Dundas on the bus.

Sister picked me up by the Dundurn Greyhound stop in ‘Ton. Saw Geoff, Maria and Matt that night, we walked around and looked at stuff in the Driving Park. Next day cut up most of the big Manitoba Maple in the back yard with the chainsaw because it was crowding out the pines and a black walnut. Met up with Yuri and cruised over to Wilkie’s and watched Sessions, a mountain bike movie. Yuri’s coming to Alberta in the fall, but had to work the next day so he left Wilkie’s early. We played vids and later still Wilkie drove me home in his El Comino. I’d never been in one, and I’d never had Wilkie drive me anywhere before, either. The car smelled like gas. Met up with Brian the next day and we went swimming and drank beers at Gulliver’s Lake and rode liz’s bike home. Wilkie was having a party at his old place because his ‘rents are going on vacation. Meet up with Geoff and Maria and go there to find Franc, his bro, Ryan, Cam (who’s getting married) and Wilkie just playing poker. G, M and I played vids and drank rum and cokes instead. Found out the driver improvement interview I was planning to go to the next day, which was ultimately the reason d’etere of the whole freekin' vacation, was cancelled because the bureaucrats at the MTO figured out I was a good enough driver only a week before the damn interview and sent me a letter saying I didn’t need to go to my address in Ontario the day before I flew out from Calgary (and they knew where I was, in Calgary, and I asked them the week before if I had any other options instead of the interview, which I did). Fuckers. The vacation is really good tho. Dad drove me to the bus station in TO from which I started my journey to the Slate Islands.

Bus from T.O. to Rossport. 18 restless hours in seats designed for beings the just sit straight and don’t sleep. Met a couple who were spending 4 days going to the Yukon – its her first time on the bus! I winced. Got to Rossport and had to wait around for a few hours while business hours wound down at Superior Outfitters, the place where I got my sea kayak, so Dave could give me a lift to my launching point to the Slate Islands. A heavy fog had settled on the lake between the islands and the mainland. A assured Dave I wouldn’t go through it, and once I was dropped off I just saw the highest point on the Slates, took a compass bearing and crossed. The water was very calm, but as I went I would get completely shrouded in fog so that I couldn’t see the Slates or the mainland. I heard birds and motor boats in the distance. Every time the fog lifted enough to see the Slates they were closer, making the crossing seem short. I finally arrived and went to the West side of the North Island, turned on my marine radio, and headed for the other side of the hill so I could try to contact the crew of the Lake Superior Research Group (LSRG). Well, rounding the last bend, there they were. They said it was very epic, wondering when I’d get there and then seeing me coming out the fog. We celebrated the meeting with some box wind (kayakers choice), and explored the rocky shoreline.

The next day we could hear thunder rolling in from out on the lake, but the fog had not yet lifted enough to see it. We were hit suddenly with heavy rain and hail and scrambled to put up a tarp. I was holding one end up on a big rock, but had nothing to tie it to, and my crewmates didn’t hear my screams for a rock or something I could tie it to, they were just having fun staying dry. We kayaked on the most exposed side of the island and went slow, admiring the rocks and plants. We would kayak this way for the rest of the trip, with me getting impatient in my smaller, faster boat. I occupied myself by darting in and out of shoals and rock out croppings trying to get as close to the shore as possible. Second site by an old lighthouse keepers place that was repainted for the tourists. Garden grass is mowed, and there is the BIGGEST patch or rhubarb I’ve EVER seen there – its just teeming with the stuff. Hiked up to the lighthouse and from there saw a few buildings on the south face of the island. We checked it out – its private property and the general work crew for the Slate Islands Prov Pk live there. I saw two teenage boys wheel barreling beer into one of the residences. We were invited to come back later and we hung out in their hot tub (no joke, I thought the trip would be all about roughing it) and drank beer.

The next day was the easy day. After a short kayak we ended up at a nice southern beach. There we walked around the shore, went swimming, and checked out a tiny, incredible island with nature packed unbelievably tightly. I have a priceless image in my head as Aaron got in his kayak, life jacked half slung around him, his gum-boots on and sticking out of the kayak, fishing pole mounted on the back, drinking the box of wine as we slowly made our way to the tiny island. Halfway there Zack got in the back hatch as well, and Aaron passed him the box to Jess and I laughing our heads off. As you look from up from the waterline where rocks can’t support any life the lichens turn into a crazy technicolour of blue, orange, grey, yellow and every shade of green, onto the mosses, shrubs, herbs, crawlers, bushes and finally the stunted trees at the top of the island. There were all kinds of those famous arctic and alpine disjunct plants, including one that ate tiny bugs. There were ponds on the island teaming with tad-poles and water spiders, and even aquatic and marsh plants. The plants grew in all the cracks and geologic formations there; I’ve never seen such lush and vibrant plant life on the North Shore in my 6 years here. Back at our site a fox came by and tried to steal a pita.

The next day we went over to the wine-drinkers, a group of older canoeists that the rest of our group had met the day before I got there. Now we were on the interior of the islands, the most popular part. We checked out some campsites, met with them, had some wine, and made vague plans on what to do next. We ended up going past the biggest ‘Shatter Cone’ on the Slates. Now, if you didn’t know already, shatter cones are geologic formations formed when the meteor that created the Slates. I still don’t know what they look like. They could be a myth, for all I know. The biggest shatter cone looked like most other cliffs here, so really I could have seen a hundred shatter cones, or just the one. After that Aaron and I went to the very end of a bay we heard the fishing was good. The fish were certainly there. I saw the biggest (and only) pike I’ve ever seen, about 6 of them, the biggest one 3’ long, wide, and at least 20lbs. I saw it, slowly swim under my kayak, the shark of the great lakes, that if we caught it, if would have easily pulled us under. The pike were lazy, mostly staying still, sometimes moving away from us. They weren’t very hungry either. Aaron literally dangled his lure right in front of the big old wise one’s nose, but it didn’t budge. Aaron hooked one, but it got away with his lure, and I’ve never seen him so angry. I also saw a school of lake trout, about 8 feet down, swimming fast. We went back to the wine drinkers for consolation. We were all tired and hungry and a bit frustrated at the lack of communication, but the wine helped that. I also saw my first caribou there.

The next day I got up early because I’d be catching a ride with the boat the wine-drinkers hired so I could catch my flight in time. I saw a laker off the dock and cast the lure, it nibbled on it but didn’t bite. That was as close as I got to catching a fish. I hope Aaron does. There were several more 'bou there that morning too, just munching on the grass by the site. The ride back to the mainland was un-eventful. Doug, the motor-boater, said he could hold onto my kayak and give it back to Dave later, an arrangement he’d done often before. Hitch-hiked from Thunder Bay from Terrace Bay. Had to wait 4 hours for a lift tho.

Now I’ve been in Thunder Bay for a couple days, and haven’t done much. Looking forward to going back to work, to throw a disc, and to longboard.

Flyin'

2008-07-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

Ahh summer (mostly) in the city. The weather's been warm, and the weekend's long. Canada Day long weekend was quite good. I was in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament here in town call Ho-Down/Slo-Down. The 'Ho-Down' part is the A- and B-level teams, and the 'Slo-Down' is the C-level beer drinking teams. We were definately 'Slo'. Its expected that the Slo-Down teams have a theme with costumes, and we chose a gansta theme, calling ourselves 'Huck Dat'. Our team was made up of members from Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Yellowknife, and despite our wide geographical range, we had good team spirit. Our costume was a good one for the hot weather: white tank tops ('wife beaters'), bling, and bandannas. We made some mix CDs of classic Rap and danced the 'Souja Boy' after the games as the Spirit prize. Turns out hip-hop isn't as bad as I thought it was. Some of the other more colourful teams were superheros, a wedding party (which actually won the Slo-Down tournament) and bumble bees. The wedding party won Slo-down after beating us in the semi-finals.

After the tournament Simon, one of the guys from Yellowknife stayed at my place for a couple days. It turned out he stayed for a couple days longer than planned because he missed his flight back to the arctic circle where he worked, and it was a real headache for him to make all the arrangements to get waaaay back up there and catch up on the missed work. So, in celebration of his missing his flight we had a couple beers in Kensington and went longboarding. He rode my roommate's board and we cruised over to the skate park 10 mins from my place. He showed some pretty sweet moves, but I'd never been in one before. It was fun, and we both crashed hard.

Also happening that weekend was the Sled Island music festival. The fest went from Wednesday to Sunday, but due to the frisbee tournament, I only made it to the Saturday evening show at the main stage. This is the big Indy music fest of the city, and it featured some pretty big names in 22 venues. Some of the bands we Of Montreal (my fav), RZA (of Wu Tang clan fame) as Bobby Digital, Mogwai, The Dodos, Wire, Jane Vain and a whole slew of others which, like the ones I did list, you've probably never heard of. The Of Montreal show was theatrical, with semi interpretive dancing/acting by chacarters in tiger masks and glitter tights interacting with each other, band members and the audience as if it was 1969 and ya just don't care, all to the psychedelic-y music. Fabulous! We spent about half the time there in the beer gardens enjoying the show.

Otherwise in my frisbee world our regular team won another game, but this time to a very disorganized team, so it was more of a casual game where we tried some cool strategies, including one called "The Flood", which has nothing to do "The Flood" from Halo, which I've also been playing lately. Then on Thursday Simon (since he had nothing to do...) and I subbed in for missing players on another team. The team ('Ivanna Huckalot') is the Thursday line-up of the first team we (as in my team: 'Random Play', and we play Tuesdays) played this season, indeed ever. ANYWAY the Thursday game was very epic. We were losing by 3 or 4 points most of the game, and it even got a little heated after some controversial fouls and foul calls. Games have to be won by two points, first to 15 (just like volleyball), or first to 17 if less than a two point spread. The game was verrry long and we got our stride and just dug in towards the end, as all the subs on our team (which were half the male players!) jelled. It was 14-15 for them, but we stuck it and adapted our defensive strategy and came back with three in a row to end it 17-15. We all celebrated after with beers. Simon left on a very good note before leaving from Calgary Friday morning: he got the game winning point, though he didn't realize it at the time. Seems he doesn't keep track of the important things... hopefully I'll run into him again.

Work continues, obviously. The assistant to the site supervisor for our company (the assistant I'm assisting) threatened to resign unless he got to go out onto the site more often and be a carpenter or supervisor or something. I'm not exactly sure what he wants to get into (and I don't think he does either). Basically he's getting sick of doing all the office stuff, so that means I'm being trained to do everything he does and take a load off his back. Its still up in the air in terms of what the final arrangement is going to be, but thankfully I know enough to be put on with pretty much any crew that needs the help for the time not spent in the office (which is still most of it). And I don't mind doing the office stuff and learning more about the not-strictly-construction side of the business, so work's lookin up. Otherwise work seems to be a bit more laid back of late. This probably has to do with it being summer and people taking time off, the long weekends, and the fact that the Stampede started. The Stampede grounds (where the midway is; not to be confused with a charging heard of cattle) are right by our site, so the first day say Snow-Birds and parachutists with coloured smoke in the sky, cowboy hats and attractive women (always a treat for construction workers) were on the ground, and the smell of greasy food and sounds midway rides were in the air.

ALL this stuff made me very sore, tired and aching by the end of last week.

This past weekend was relaxing. A friend and I went camping in the Ghost river valley west of town. It was just and overnight, but was very chill. In order to get to the campsite either you own a knarly 4x4 on the last 300m of old logging road down a hill or walk it. After walking it once I decided to drive it anyway. Whatevs.

PS - I wrote this post a week ago - I had trouble with the pics, so you only get two for now. More next time!

Summer

2008-06-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

Things are going good. It rained here every day for the first half of the month, but now the rainy season's over. Thank god! I realize now that working in the rain is the worst kind of weather to work in. Otherwise work is good. We had some beers after work on Friday that the foreman brought in because we had to stay an extra hour. It was great.

Last weekend went out to the mountains with some frisbee team friends. We biked about half of it before it got too rugged, but still, covering 30km in a day in the mountains is something. We went started at Kananaskis Village, and depending on you're definition of a village, its more like a hotel court yard with a couple restaurants and shops. Whatever - it was a seriously awsome bike/hike, starting in the warm summery valley and ending up trudging through the snow to get to a still frozen lake. We passed the beautiful Ribbon falls on the way too, which is the biggest waterfall I've seen in AB. We even had to do a section of climbing. There's a chain there to help you up, but only serious hikers need apply. A park ranger was there and suggested we don't go farther, looking at us doubtfullyWe went up anyway. "Ooo, look at me, I'm a park Ranger! I have a badge and a baseball cap...". He prolly sewed the badge on himself. Actually after the chain section there we no tracks in the snow, so I guess we were the first people up to Ribbon Lake that year! The ride down was awesome, but I was more enthused about the last bit of mountain biking down the rest of the trail after 10 or so hours than the rest of the crew were.

Frisbee's going great. We won our first game last Tuesday 15-12 after a hard fought battle. It was very windy, so the team playing with the wind would always get a point. So it went that each team would a point after the other team did. Half time. Score's 8-7. Strategy: zone defense, and just focus on possession on the offense into the wind (Liz would know what that means). And it worked - after we got out I think 9th point (to their 8), we held on into the wind and got the 10th, and it was over from there. They did get back to within 1 (their 12th point), but then we just took it. Ahh, good game.

Tracy's back from Africa. Spent Saturday afternoon with her. We wen't to eau claire market, and there were like 1000 skater kids around. I asked one of them what was up, and he said that July 21st is International Skateboard Day. Huh, Jani is Skater day. So I got I longboard at the shop in eau claire where I wanted to buy another board, but not only was the store, but the whole company out of the ones I wanted. So I got the #2 I wanted, at a discount to boot! It's sweet, and I've ridden it quite a bit in the last couple days.

Last night a few of us went to a free Sled Island pre-show over at Olympic plaza by city hall. A bunch of local indie bands played, and I realize Calgary has a huge indy rock music scene, like I mean as big as Toronto/Southern Ontario at least. You might have heard of Feist - yeah, she's Calgary Indy. Indy bands basically make up 2/3rds of the Sled Island and Calgary Folk Fest bands. Anyway, the free concert was good, and we played in the 6" deep fountain/wading pool that was behind the stage. Some people got wetter than others... After the show a few of us went to a small house party with a fire and drinks, and it was a good Jani.

Ligo Ligo!

Down in the valley near Kaninaksis Village

Ribbon Falls

Rehka, Vijay and Tanya on the wall

Roommate Mitch

Azeda Booth, City Hall and Splashy Fountains

Jordan and Leanne

Megan, Leanne, Tracy and Jordan

What do you do with a 12-pack, side walk chalk, and a roof that looks like a Pizza Hut? Ligo.

D-Tour

2008-05-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

The summer's here now. Leaves are green, flowers smell great, everyone's a bit relieved and more relaxed. It's looking to be a good summer here in Calgary, with lots of weekend trips planned. The first official weekend, the May 2-4 or Victoria Day weekend just passed, and it was a good'r! Originally the plan was to go to Thunder Bay, but the thought of driving 40 hours alone pretty much scared me right out of that idea. I DID go on a crazy road trip, tho...

I decided to go to Revelstoke. I invited my friends Geoff and Josh to come along too. We left on Saturday and the traffic was light. We stopped in Canmore and at the crazy place in BC where the train goes into a tunnel and back out again on top of itself before arriving in Reve 6 hours later. Somewhere in between we got out of Alberta Time and into BC Time and the radio reminded us how MC Hammer seemed to almost take over the world on Hammer Time.

Once in Reve we checked into the hostel and had some food. That night we hung out having some beers out back of the hostel and a local suggested we check out a couple local bars. Naturally we checked these out. There was a band at the first pub, which was cool, but I can't remember what kind of music they played. They were good tho. I remember that. Then we went to a club called the "Rock Pit". It was mostly empty, but the smaller crowd filled in the back of the club where the pool tables were and I sharked a couple games. The bad news about that night was that I lost my favorite sweater. Owell.

The next day we had breakfast and left the town after searching for the sweater in vain. We were stopped just outside the town as the highway was closed back to Calgary. Dismissing the immediate option of just camping on Arrow Lake like we had originally planned and coming back
the next day, we said 'NELSON!'. I don't know if it was logic or the caffine talking, but we went there. The trip there was great.

The first thing we say was the town of Big Eddy, which reminded me of my friend Franc. Then we drove to the ferry. Along the way we stopped and Josh and I got out (as Geoff as too sick from the night before) to see some scenery, check out a waterfall, and I showed him what Old Man's Beard was. We got to the ferry staging area and while waiting for the ferry Josh and I checked out the loading dock on a skate board the people in the car behind us lent us. Then we waited for the boat by the beach, skipping a few stones here and there, enjoying the scenery. The ferry ride was nice, and afterward we checked out St. Leon Hot Spring. It was a five K drive up a pretty rugged mountain road, and a short hike down a mountain side to get to the paved hot spring. There was a sign on the road that said the spring was closed, but we though "how to you close a spring" and went anyway. Turns out the spring was on private property and the sign was a deterant, but it didn't stop us or four other groups of ppl from checking it out. It was reaaaal nice to melt the stresses of the real world away amongst the warm waters and cedar trees.

So this post is taking waaaay too long, so I'm gonna burn through the rest of it.

We passed through Nakusp. The power was out in the whole town, but we still got wings and fires by the lake. Nelson was cool - we played frisbee and slept on the beach. The drive back was uneventful, except for we hiked up a big foot hill in Alberta.

Work's good (despite what I'm about to say): There was a hell week when I had a flu that was going around. A wet and cold rainy week. Last week, where I wanted to sleep in soooo bad. Also, the admin guy at our site went on vacation last week, so I got to fill in for him, which was cool, cause I got to do more office stuff. But by far I still mostly do stuff with tools and building materials.

I'm reading a novel called jPod, an ultra-cynical one about a Vancouver computer programmer who's parents run a grow-op, friends are crazy quirky (one's name is legally John Doe as he strives for absolute averageness after being raised in a lesbian commune), they have ties with Chinese people smugglers and bikers and all kinds of crazy cool stuff. And that's not even the half of it, and I'm not even half way done!

There are Magpies all around the house making magpie noises.

I'm on an ultimate frisbee team, and we're called Random Players. The name pretty much summs up our team - we're a collection of singles who applied to the Calgary Ultimate league. Originally I think we were supposed to be called Random Play (in reference to the facebook 'looking for' status), but communication slipped somewhere along the lines. We're pretty disorganized - I learned we have a game today late last night! But our team is really jelling, and I LOVE to play the game. We've lost all three of our first games, but that's not surprising considering more than half the people have barely thrown a frisbee before on our team, and the first three games decide where you stand on the listings, so we we're playing much better teams. There was a practice on Sunday, but the only way I knew was because it was in the park by my place and me and my roommate decided to throw a disc around there after going to the flee market. Crazy.

The magpies are fighting on the roof now.

Otherwise life's been good. Went to the mountains for an afternoon again. Wanted to stay the night but decided I'd rather veg out and play vids at home. Gonna get a long board. Partied a bit. Can't think of anything else.

Peace out yo!

Somewhere east of Nelson

Do BEEECH!

Road Trippin'

Big Mountain, Fast River

Reve

Waitin' for the ferry

By the hotspring

Hommies on the foothill

Sneaky magpie (gotta look closely)

Ultimate

Its a good view out my back window.

Green-House!

2008-05-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

So, BIG news: I moved into what is quite possible the house of my dreams. The story of how I ended up here began when I first came back to Calgary this time, trying to find a place to stay. I ended up moving in with Sara and Taryn, student friends of mine from last year, who live up in Banff Trail (Calgary identifies all its 'neighbourhoods', no matter how sub-urban and unidentifieable - They include about 5-10,000 residences each, I think). I say 'up in Banff Trail', but it really isn't far from downtown, its at the the fourth LRT Station out of downtown. Anyway, their old roommte went AWOL, and I got the room for the rest of the school year. So that immediately left me wondering where I'd live come summer.

After a few weeks of thinking of my options I decided on Kensington, AKA Sunnyside. Sunnyside is Calgary's official name for the neighbourhood, but Kensington is the name of the Avenue that goes through it. Calgary is made up of numbered Streets (North -South) and Avenues (East - West) layed out vaguely in a grid, and Kensington happens to be the Avenue between 1st Ave N and 1st Ave S. To give you a sense of scale, my old place was by 26th Ave N, and they go up to over 100 both North and South. Sunnyside is also where Kensington Avenue begins. And maybe people call it Kensington in reference to the hip and interesting street in Toronto.

There are several reasons I chose Kensington. Its on the north shore of the Bow River - the river that is the reason Calgary is here - right across from downtown (on the sunny side...). Its strung along the river pretty much the same length of the downtown core, 5 or 6 avenues deep, sandwiched between the river and a natural escarpment on its north side (which is by where I eventually found my place). So its got a lot of nature: the river is lined with trails and parks, and the escarpment area itself is an urban nature reserve. Its an old neighbourhood - nearly all buildings in Calgary are relatively new, so much so the city sometimes seems downright avers to renovating and improving the old as an alternative to tearing down and expanding. So the age of the neighbourhood give it an interesting and grounded feel, not to mention all the big old trees! Its one of the hippest places in town - between Kensington Ave and 10 St NW that intersects it - Kensington has shops ranging from down-right chique/boutique to dollar stores, used book shops, an awesome bike shop, dozens of restaurants and cafes, a few bars, specialty shops, etc... While many consider the area between 10th and 17th ave SW (of downtown) the most happening in Calgary (that's where the good clubs are), Kensignton is sort of like a separate town, cool and at the same time chill, kind of the place good people go to pre-drink, after-party, and nurse your hang-over in the shade all morning and play frisbee when you feel better. Other perks - an LRT Station in the middle of it, a walk on a foot bridge over The Bow then through a park to get downtown, and I joined an Ultimate Frisbee team (which I'll talk about another time) which practices three blocks from my house.

So that's the appeal of Kensington. The downside, being so cool and close to downtown, is of course price and availability.

After getting in touch with a few vacancies, I came to the conclusion that I'd have to settle a couple hundred over my original price range, which was a couple hundred more than I was used to paying... that and fierce completion. I talked to a whole bunch of prospects, checked out places with interesting, and sometimes down right strange people. I ended up lucking out an getting a place (which was the cheapest of all of them) with an Aussie (Andrew) and a musician (Mitch).

The house is sweeeeeeet. It's old, but not at all decrepit. Its on a very quite and little street literally seconds (yes, seconds) from the train station, with little green houses on one side, and a small playground and the aforementioned escarpment on the other. The walls of our house even have pieces of green glass plastered right into them! The front yard reminds me of the homestead I grew up in, with two big spruce trees (one bigger than the other) and two lilac bushes. The back needs quite a lot of work, though half of it is taken up a greenhouse used by the landlord. Inside is nice - the main floor is an open concept with big windows and sky-lights, and the standard kitchen (one section overflowing with empty beer bottles), bathroom and living areas. Its pretty well kept - lets see how long that lasts! Andrew's and Mitch's rooms are downstairs. I got the upstairs... An expanded attic, the stairs go up the middle towards the east wall with a skylight on the top. On the right is the living area with a big south facing window. Keep going right and you get to the sleeping area, where I can barely even stand up in the middle, but there are shelves everywhere build into the walls. Keep going right and you get into a sort of cave which leads to more built-in shelves, a coat-hanger rod. By now you're pretty much forced to crawl. Keep on going and you get back to top of the stairs! It seems like it was designed by a 7 year old with 2 years of couch fort and a season of tree house experience. Perfect for me!

Here's a tour from the outside of the house to the top of the escarpment outside. Though the day was cloudy and the leaves have come late this year, you'll get an idea of Kensington. I'll have pics from nicer days later on, but for now, enjoy!

Here's the Green-House! Note the spruce on the right...

Backing up a bit, into the playground, see some of the other Green-Houses and my car. Notice the two spruch trees on the right side, one bigger than the other - they're on our front lawn...

Starting up the escarpment, see downtown...

Keep going up...

And up.. See some of Kensington...

And up.. near the top, can all of the West side of Downtown Calgary...

Turn left, see the East side of Downtown Calgary.

This is a little ways along the escarpment, you get a good view of it and of another corner of Kensington.

Too Much Snow

2008-04-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

Went skiing again - this time at Norquay, just outside the town of Banff. Looking into the ski conditions the night before I learned that it was the last day of skiing there. Nice! The website also said all the runs were open. The next day I left. I got there just in time to get a full afternoon in of skiing. I didn't stay that long. The runs were increadibly slushy, kinda like skiing in oatmeal. Oh, and all the runs weren't open. I crashed hard, my knee still hurts, but it was still worth it to go skiing in weather so warm you could go in your t-shirt.

Saw tons of wildlife too. There were hundreds of swans on the lakes in the mountains when I went skiing. Too bad I didn't take my camera. Also, there were FIVE jack rabbits in our back yard.

Work's good. A sort of ironic thing happened - remember my buddy Chris that I talked about in the previous post, the one who got injured, well it turns out the safety guys liked my accident statement so much they got me to take down notes at safety meetings, then to type them out afterward. Also the site admin assistant got me doing daily concrete reports, which means making two different reports with info like where the concrete was poured, what kind it was, how much, who tested it etc... one report for our records, one for the general contractor, who pays for the concrete itself. I also have to draw on the blue-prints what was poured. The site assistant is a carpenter doing all the paperwork for our crew and what we do, and he wants to do more carpentry. I'm a business grad doing carpentry. I think the assistant and the foreman put two and two together and made this arrangement so that the site assistant can do more actual production. That also good for him because that means he knows more about what exactly's going on on site, and its good for me because I get a raise, and now I can tie in my construction experience with my business degree. Sweet. They also gave me a desk in our site trailer! I don't need one, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened in this city is the blizzards. Winter ended a month ago, but we've had two blizzards in about a week. The first one dumped 30 centimeters in like 10 hours and closed off traffic. Our site was only open for half the day. It looked like this:

That snow fall was thick, but the snow was all gone in a couple days. This Friday it snowed again. This time it didn't snow quite as fast: it was just slow enough for us at work to finish pouring concrete before we quite. Of course I was in the middle of it, on the top of a skinny column with a big new rigger pouring concrete. The snow was so thick I couldn't see the downtown builidings! Like I said, this snow didn't come down quite as fast, its lasting. It's Sunday, and its still snowing! They're calling for 50cm. And its cold too! Tracy and I went for Vietnamese, and we had to totally brace against the cold 50km/h winds. It was like January! This snow fall looked like this:

BTW - the second pic is of my place - two thirds of the way into April.

Up-Down

2008-04-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

Again, been too long. Blah, blah, blah...

Life in the routine continues. Work forms the basis of the routine, so I'll talk about it first. It continues... I've submitted my apprenticeship application, which is sweet. Concrete is still heavy, but I've gotten into a rhythm at work now. A friend once told me that it isn't natural to not have a routine. I'm inclined to agree with him a little. After about the first month of work, a certain heavy fatigue set in (my co-worker and work partner Riley told me about it). I'm past it now, thankfully (and hopefully). I'm doing more real carpentry stuff now too. A few of us put in the walls for the new lunch room (we put in a new lunch room every ten floors we build or so), so to do actual framing was great!

But construction is dangerous too. Chris, a friend of mine, got injured. Chris is the rigger, the guy who directs all stuff getting flown in and out of the site with the crane. We were pretty close, since when pouring concrete with the big bucket we'd have to wait for it to be filled and we'd talk a lot. He's pretty rough around the edges, a lot of construction workers are. Whenever he'd see do anything to get ready for the next bucket, he'd always say "Take it easy, tiger!". He was full of smart-ass comments like that. Anyway, we were pouring concrete into a wall with one of those huge crane lifted buckets I talked about, and the wind started blowing it all over the place, and knocked him off the wall. My Colombian friend Jaime (the third guy on the wall, who used to be a nurse back in Colombia) was down at the bottom helping Chris before I even had a chance to trip on the planks on the top of the wall trying to get down. Even though the fall was only about 10 feet, he flipped in the air, and landed sort of oblong on his head. He got a gash on the top of his head through which blood literally squirted out - stuff right out of horror movies. That turned out to be a good thing, since it put down the swelling and lessened his concussion. Oh, he also broke a vertibrey in his back (but his spine is fine), his shoulder, his right hand and injured his knee. It really was pretty drastic. The whole site shut down after that (it was about 4 anyway), and the next day was very sober and a bit sombre. I visited him in the hospital. He was doing much better than expected, even walking around and giving the nurses a hard time. I told him to 'take it easy, tiger!'. He liked that one. Thankfully he was out the next day. It was a bit ironic though, that at the time of the accident he had to be flown out of the site (in a stretcher) with the crane.

Other than work I've been in the mountains a lot. I've gone downhill skiing twice, both times with Tracy, both times it was totally awesome! The first time was at Sunshine in Banff. That trip really re-awoke in me how much I love skiing. It's soooooooooo good! The second time was at Nakiska, the resort they built for the '88 Olympics. Not nearly as controversial as today's torch running ceremonies, Nakiska is a haven for families of learners taking over the slopes. We stayed near the top where only 'experts' are allowed.

Also I went back-country skiing for the first time. It's increadibly simple: stick a pair on a pair of 'skins' and toe-pivoting bindings on downhill skis and go cross-country! Meg, her friend Ryan and I went to a lake to play with them. We ended up building a quincy, and throwing up Ryan's para-kite. At first there was only a little wind that played games with us and kept on switching directions after setting up the kite for action. Eventually we got it up, and it was really sweet seeing it in action.

Other than that: saw Beja Floor during the Juno celebrations, got lost for 3 hours on my bike with a (new) backpack full of groceries, applied to be a carpentry apprentice and got accepted into teachers college (wait and see on the last one).

Keep on keepin' on!

2008-03-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

So now I'm settling down to a routine here in Calgary. Working 9 or 10 hour days at the site downtown, 5 days a weeks and most Saturdays. Work is good, but it makes me sore. You know what they say: 'No pain, no gain'.

I've been watching a lot of The Office. I watched the first three seasons back to back, taking up at least half my free time in the process. I'm downloading the 4th seasons, and salivating. I just can't wait to find out if Pam and Jim are really together! Obviously.

I got a used bike. I won't say how I got it. Its a funny bike: an entry level mountain bike, intended for cruising around campuses, but it was heavily upgraded with some really good parts. But the funny thing is is that many of the parts were either poorly chosen (incompatible brakes and rims) poorly put on (exposed bearings, if you can believe it), or just missing (no low gear on the front crank, which I've never seen before). So I decided to swap the really good parts off that bike with the worn out parts on mine, thus fixing the lingering problems on my bike and the glaring ones on the new one. Thus I created a sweet (all) mountain bike, and a decent around the town/thrashing bike. I still need to buy some replacement cables - I can't wait to ride 'em!

Otherwise I've been hangin around with my house mates, Tracy and other folks. I've gone dancing at the Marqui lounge (where I took a photo of a guy who was just sitting poetically and either absorbed or bored in a purple spot light for like an hour), and to the Tiki lounge (where a guy who looked like Vanilla Ice tried hitting on Taryn). I went for a hike up Snob hill with Tracy, which was perfect for a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. Got new lineman's pliers and stuff for my camera.

And that's about all.

Hmm... seems a bit short. I guess that's what you get in a routine.

Peace

Shuting in and around Cowtown

2008-02-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

Hello, so it seems every time I right one of these things I regret putting it off as late as I do because it means that I forget the things that I should have written about earlier. Owell, here goes nothing:

So I got back from Kingston and packed. Said good bye to my family and friends, fixed and filled my car with my life's possessions, and set off for the west, without a final destination beyond Thunder Bay. I left on Thursday morning at 1Am after waking up and somehow realizing that the time to go was at that moment. A strange story came on the air as I listened to CBC radio as I turned onto the 403 to Sarnia, something about a woman who's being stalked by another woman who knows about her and forces her to face her past. The first woman, I mean. Anyway, the road conditions to Thunder Bay couldn't have been much worse: passing through where Madonna grew up (Northern Michigan) the highways turned icy. North of Sault Ste. Marie it was white out conditions and the highway way by then basically made of ice. By sunset on Thursday, east of Nipigon it was the worst as the recently partially thawed ice melted by the afternoon sun refroze. But I made it safely there.

In Thunder Bay I was reminded how much I love that city and everyone there. Thursday Night was Dog Aide, a Jack's night fundraiser that half the people I knew in town were at. Nice. Jack's is a local bar, and Jack's nights are Thursday nights there of the same thing ever since we started going a few years ago: Cosmic Granola play sweet melodies too loud so you're forced to talk close while getting drunk with friends. Its fabulous! I always seem to make it to Jack's nights somehow. The remainder of my time there was split between sleeping, watching movies, seeing people and partying some more. While there I decided that I'd be going to Calgary, since it is where I know a lot of people, contacts already lined up, and would have no problem getting a job.

The trip from Thunder Bay to Calgary was uneventfull except that, on taking a jog through the US south of Lake of the Woods, I got searched at the border and almost got arrested for smuggling drugs into the United States of America! My suspicions were that the border guards would be bitter since they were missing the Super Bowl which was happening at the time. Turns out they had the radio on inside. The Giants won, by the way. So after the lady who 'wouldn't let the Pope through on suspicions' (according to the other border guard) took everything out of my car, searched it, and called in the K-9 unit, threatened me with a $5000 fine, deportation, impounding everything I had, or worse, they decided to let me go. My guess is that I had a lot in common with lady (namely kayaking), I am ex-military, and, oh yeah, I wasn't smuggling. My conclusion: never go to Northern Minnesota again.

Once in Calgary I stayed at my old friend Nik's place while I lined up a job and a place to stay. By friday I had both. In the mean time I, in between looking for work and a place, I played the Xbox 360 at his place. He got that Rock Band game I was telling you about in the last post, and I'm on the drums.

While in town it's been good getting in touch with all the people I know too, and I'm hung out with most of them, but there never seems to be enough time for that, especially with my new job.

As usual with my employment in Calgary, I work in construction. I now with for a company called Elite Formworks, a conrete company that, as its name suggests, has pretty high expectations of its workers. The days are usually 10 hours long, 6 days a week (half day on Saturday), and it's really heavy work, like everything in concrete construction is. Unlike my last job site, which was a year and a half behind schedule, I heard our's is 35 days or so ahead after 5 months since breaking ground, reflecting the good management, co-operation and high morale of the site.

The site is just south west of the Calgary downtown core, one block from a C-Train station, which is great, since I live 6 blocks from Banff Trail station in the North West. Another sweet thing about the C-Trains is the fares are paid through machines at the stations (or you use a monthly pass); there are no ticket agents or booths at the stations. You are expected to pay for a ticket at a machine and get on a train. So essentially you can walk straight onto a train off the street, which is exactly what I do, since I know the fare checkers never check passengers during rush hour. Knock on wood...

I'm on the concrete pouring crew, the one that works around the huge buckets of concrete with a shute on the bottom of them that get flown in with the crane and you dump the concrete into the forms which either make walls, footings, foundations, landings, columns, floors, parking slabs... basically anything that concrete makes. Pouring is messy, cumbersome, dangerous, and you basically can't stop until it's poured, because it can start setting and become un-usable, or worse, harden in the bucket or break the forms, where you have to demolish the whole thing afterward. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Since you can't stop, we've had some long days. One day we worked before dawn, until after the last trace of sunlight had set behind the Rockies. Even with these challenges, being on the pouring crew is fun, and does involve some waiting for the concrete to be prepared for pouring, so we can relax on top of the forms and watch other people work, setting up the panels I'm glad that that's not the only thing I do. I work the vibrator, and anyone who's ever with or around concrete pouring knows that it has nothing to do with female pleasure. It vibrates liquid concrete so that it becomes even more watery, so that it fills in gaps, spreads out, and all air bubbles out.

Other than the pouring, which usually only happens for about 2-3 hours every day, I help set up the forms that make colums, and setting up the panels that the future floor above will be poured on. The set up of the panels, which involves moving a hell of a lot of (shoring) posts, stringers and the panels themselves, is basically labour. I've worked with the carpenters too, and hope to do more of that. The foreman offered me an apprentiship in concrete though, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it.

My co-workers at work are good. The site is exclusively male, which is opposite to my four roomates, who are all female. Like I said, morale at the site is good, with pretty much everyone getting along. My co-workers are Columbian, Jamacan, Newfanlandian, Vancouver Islandian, Aboriginal, Filipino, French Canadian, and standard Caucasian-Canadian-No-Accentian. A couple have business degrees, just like me! One, named Moose, is fantastically ugly, and always reminds us how handsome he is. One has dreadlocks, but rather than being really laid back, has to have things done his way or will argue with you about it. A new, young 18 year old started, and is really hurting after 3 days, and believes that his lifetime warranty on his $350 boots will be validated, and his feet hurt. All in all, a great crew, site and job.

As I mentioned, I live with 4 girls. Two live downstairs in a seperate apartment, and two upstairs with me. One's Sara, an awesome friend of mine who I lived with last year here in town, and the other's Taryn, who's good friends with Sara and we were also friends from last year. I ended up here after I called Sara to ask to use her as a reference at prospective shared apartments/houses, but ended up staying with them when she told me that their third roomate had to move out un-expectantly. Coming to the place was very interesting, as many of the same posters and furniture were at the place, but all facing a different way, like the house was fliped, turned around, and everything got a little mixedd up. I guess the familiarity was nice, as I felt right at home by the time I got all my stuff in.

On the social side of things, I hang out with Nik every once in a while and play Rock Band with Jancis Klavins (Chunk) in Chicago over Xbox Live, Nik on guitar, Chunk on bass, me on drums. I think I'm gonna start to sing.

My good buddy Zack came to town, and we hung out for a few days. He stopped by here for a week before going to Nevada to do a desert adventure course or something. While here we went to Golden BC to go skiiing. It was extreme: we hiked along a ridgeline to get to Fewzbowl, which was really really over our heads, as there was a sheer cliffs on one side, an avalance zone on the other, and a really narrow, icy shute in the middle. The rest of the day was great. Zack stayed there to hang out with some friends and snowboard some more, and I drove home. Again, the wearther was awful, and I was stuck going 20km/h through the Rockies during white out conditions which almost made me turn around again.

Last weekend a bunch of Latvians came up from Colorado and Ontario to go on a week long ski bonanza in BC. They all met up in Calgary and a few of us from here met up with them and we all hung out, and went to the Republic nightclub. I am definately gonna go back there, with four floors with all different types of really good electronic music with many different stair ways, halls and elevated walkways and bars everywhere which makes for great people watching.

Other than that I've been taking it pretty easy, considering I work so much. Today I put my bike together and rode to get a new camera to replace the one I lost somewhere on the mountain at Kicking Horse in Golden. Here's a pic!:

Word?

2008-01-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

So the theory goes that a postings should be every two weeks. Due to un-explained circumstances, to that theory has been added a few days at least, though, in writing and spirit at least, the two week rule is maintained.

I've been saying 'Word' a lot lately. I like saying it, and is especially useful in that it's applicable to pretty much any informal context (you -"Hey, that was an Awesome show!", me -"Word.", or "Thanks for dinner." - "word"), you can say it even if you don't know/care about what's being said, is slightly humourous, gets more humourous the more you use it, is generally perceived positively, and is now, because I use it so much, identified it with me!

I've also been reading up a lot on the medieval ages lately because of the lack of good books and the lots of books about the medieval ages and the Teutonic Knights around the house all of a sudden. The biggest book I'm reading - Barbara W. Tuchman's 'A Distant Mirror", 600 small print pages full of 14th century war, debauchery, plague, death, killing, mysticism, pilliag and rape, extreme extravagence against poverty, avarice, suffering, sex, divided church, revolts and their bloody repression - is full of big, disjointed, sentences (like this one), with big words and vague historical figures who were described 100 pages ago and I forget their significance, but a book I can't put down.

Since last time a number of interesting occurrences have happened. In the first weekend after new-years Zack and I went up to P-dot for the weekend, Tanis, Alex and Mel came from Kingston, and we all hung out at the Elcombe Palace crew of Steve, Josh, Liz, Justin, Pat, Daniel and others. Cool stuff happened, including a show, an after party, and we checked out the canoe museum.

Work at Greenpeace returned to normal - then I got fired! I love saying "I got fired from Greenpeace". It turned out well in the end, as I found out I got paid for the holiday week and a half, I was going to quit in a couple weeks anyways, and I got to focus on my Austrums entrance lecture.

I really got to focus a lot on the lecture, titled "The Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area and its Importance in the Future of Canadian Waters". All 3000 words needed to be written in Latvian, which was VERY challenging and time consuming - considering my Latvian reading and writing is at about a grade four level, and ALL the sources were in English. It went off very well, however, and I wasn't nervous giving the lecture, reflecting my comfort with the people there, the fact that I really wasn't going to be judged, and I was genuinely interested in what I was writing about. I did the lecture at the Latvian Centre in TO, and afterward was a Mexican themed dinner there. My brother Zanis was there, and it was very ironic that almost exactly a year ago was his and Julia's wedding there with the same theme and same mariachi band. After dinner I caught the 9:30 bus for Peterborough.

Once in Peterborough I went to the Reverie and FM HiLi show at The Spill and felt like I was coming home again. I had a great time, talked to lots of friends. I stayed in P-dot until Tuesday. Activities while there included helping out with Food Not Bombs, working around the palace (changing light bulbs, fixing the vaccum cleaner, making a new chill spot under the stairs, moving in a new piano...). On Tuesday I hitch hiked for the first time. Destination: Kingston.

Hitch hiking was pretty easy. I got four rides, got picked up very fast, had a big sign, and there was a blizzard outside (which I didn't mind), so people were driving slowly and probably feeling sorry for me!

Once in Kingston I mostly took it easy. Steve and Josh hitch hiked up on Friday, so in the mean time I hung out with Tanis, Alex and Mel. Activities included doing laundry with Tanis, visiting Alex at work, haning out for a while at Tanis' work, reading, going around town, visiting my brother Mitch. One of the funnier occurences happened when Alex and I went grocery shopping for the big feast we were planning when Josh and Steve arrived: going into the store during the day, we were frustrated by not having the vaguest idea what we were making, the scope of the food we were buying (we didn't know how much food to get to feed them for the weekend) and the multitude of choices, prices and sizes of all items, and we ended up leaving the store after nightfall.

Josh and Steve got there on Friday, and they also hitch hiked. In talking to people about hitch hiking (mostly people who pick us up), it seems like people used to do it a lot more, and that its more dangerous now. I don't know if that's true, but it's free, THE most environmentally friendly way to travel long distances, and you meet interesting new people.

One they arrived, we had a big dinner all together. We went walking downtown and went to a pub where a guitarist playing cover songs was way too loud. Why can't some musicians get that people at pubs like to talk to each other and new people? Anyways, afterwards we walked back, ran around the ice rink at the old Canadian legislative buildings, found a big power switch in a construction site powerbox and flicked it on (and nothing happened) and lost Alex on the way back and we all frantically looked for her, and on assuming she went home we started back and found her in a Tim Hortons. Once at home we relaxed and spent the night chatting.

Saturday we lounged around a lot, and went downtown. Later that night we all went to Steve's cousin's place. He had the video game "Rock Star", where you can play (models of), bass, guitar, drums and vocals. The vocals you sing are real, and your accuracy is based on timing and pitch. It is sooooo cool, and would be the main reason for me to get a new video game system.

On Sunday my mom came up to visit my brother and gave Steve, Josh a ride back to Peterborough. We all said our regretful goodbyes and were on our way.

11 Days of Holidays

2008-01-04T22:47:00.000-08:00

Jan 4 - Hung out with Greenpeace buddy's after work.

Jan 3 - After work Steve, Zack and Josh came over, we went for a walk to the RBG, had a fire and later ate some pizza.

Jan 2 - First day back at work after holidays.

Jan 1 - Happy New Year! Party continues very late, go on crazy adventure down the mountain and back up again. Turned on the dryer. Played Boggle. Other details too. Wake up, clean up and hang out at Steve's place with whoever's still there, head home.

Dec 31 - Priecigo Vecgad Vakaru! Go to Steve's place on the east Mountain brow. Steve, Zack, Aaron, John, Kasia, Dave, Cat, Brian, Tanis, Alex, Mel, Josh, Mike, Adam and many others are there. The theme of the party is Themes (ie - any theme you want). Zack and I go as Mexicans, which went down well.

Dec 30 - Go tobaganing with Geoff and Matt. Geoff and I do Beat-Boxing. Matt throws Geoff and I spinning wildly down the hill in the fetal position on 2' diameter plastic disks.

Dec 29 - Zack, Dave, Steve, Josh and I hang out in Steve's dad's basement studio.

Dec 28 - Go tobagganing with Geoff and his bros Erik and Andrew. They're mesmerized by the band Justice. Osolins and Zack's Christmas parties.

Dec 27 - Andris has a show in N. James street - Liz and I can't find it on S. James street. Afterwards with to Absinth with Andra, Vija, Gregger and Sara.

Dec 26 - Boxing Day - got cool new MP3 player. Went over to Brazus' place, Cousins were there too, uncle's car got hit, afterwards went to Casbah to see hip-hop and rock (including Young Rival) acts with Andra, Vija, Gregger, Steve, Zack, Aaron, Alissa...

Dec 25 - Priecigos Ziemas Svetkus! Cousins came over.

Dec 24 - Ziemsvetku Vakars. Christmas dinner in TO with family, sang carols, had food, and opened crackers.

Dec 23 - Last day at work. Dundas Friends Christmas dinner at Adams, and Zack, Steve, Brian, Tanis, Mel, Kasia, Lisa, John, Dev, Dave, Josh, Meg, Guy... Went in a hot tub there too.

Dec 22 - Work union meeting in TO.

Dec 21 - Work.

Dec 20 - Played Super Metroid.

Dec 19 - Hang out at Gregs, watched Predetor.

Dec 18 - Tobaggaining after work.

Dec 17 - Realize days fly bay at work.

Dec 16 - First day to bike to work.

Greener

2007-12-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

Started work: door canvasser for Greenpeace, of all places. Its cool working for Greenpeace, but there are better jobs out there than door-to-door canvassing. But if you think about it, not many. And it helps that I'm doing it for something I for the most part believe in. GP has just opened a permanent canvassing office in Hamilton, and the crew here is good. There's a lot of opportunities in this organization, both for travel and advancement. But right now I'm just focussing on my door-to-door rap - it's still the probation period. There's the usual people you'd expect working for such a 'radical' activist organization: long hair and dread-locks, people who've been to Thailand, and hardcores who've been arrested multiple times chaining themselves to stuff. I hope to do that!... someday...

Orientation was good, and on the second day we went to the holiday party at the new GP warehouse in TO. 15 cases (or so) of organic beer, wine, more beer - all chilled in the first snow in Southern Ontario that's stayed on the ground for more than a few days, in the beginning of December, since I can accurately remember. When the booze was done, the half melted snow was thrown all over everyone. A samba drum band played, and I played air hockey and chess. Won at chess. Lost at air hockey twice. Along the way met up with a Latvian high school friend I hadn't seen in years. Word.

Other highlights of the last couple weeks: hung out at Jeremy's. In fact I'm there right now! Went to Peterborough again, but only popped in and out like a ghost. Reading The Shipping News. It's about a guy who's ancestors are from Newfoundland, wonders why he's sch a blockhead, ends up going back there, and feels right at home. Well, there's more to it than that, it really is a good read. Also seen the entire first season of Flight of the Conchords - best thing I've EVER seen out of New Zealand.

November Rain

2007-11-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

The last week I spent in Peterborough was fun. Before I left I went to some shows, including one band called U.S.S., which stood for Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, but I really think they were just Star Trek fans. But they were really good.

The next day I set off for Montreal to visit my friends Geoff and Maria Smart. The timing of the trip worked out well because Geoff was moving to Toronto and I could give him a ride (Maria would follow when she'd finish the school semester). The stay there was great; Montreal is a beautiful and crazy city. Some activities we did there was go see Geoff's old school downtown, go to Old Montreal, visit my brother Mitch and cousin Paul (and their respective girlfriends, and Geoff and Maria) for dinner, saw The Simpsons Movie, did a LOT of beat-boxing, saw some really cool graffiti, and played some video games. We also went to a crazy Montreal club where couples were grinding on the floor like I've never seen before, and a couple girls got into a fight and the bouncers had to pretty much stop the whole club (it was a small one though) to break it up, then litterally throw out one of the girls.

Upon coming back to Dundas I started looking for work. Now, finding work here isn't like it is in Alberta, where you can usually start work the next day or week or something. This is how it works in Ontario:

Week 1 - contact employer, employer contacts you for an interview. Week 2 - have interview, employer will get back to you next week wether or not you will be considered, in which case you might get another interview. Week 3 - Great! You got the job, training starts in a week, or two. Week 4 - training. Week 5 or 6 - Actually start work.

I made this prediction a couple weeks ago. It turned out true, as I start training for my new temporary job next week. True, I could have been more energetic about finding a job, but I don't mind the time off at home. The job I got is working for Greenpeace as a canvasser. It's basically door-to-door sales, but intead of doing that for something I don't really care about (selling water, or window cleaning), I actually care about what I'm doing it for, and the pay and hours are good.

In the mean time, I've gone over to my friend Cam's place for Tuesday Night Poker, hung out a Jeremy's place and played Guitar Hero 3, gone biking, tobaganing on dirt hills, gone to the collins, read, gone out with friends (including to the Beers of the World in Hamilton) and basically enjoyed the finer things. I also went to Peterborough on the first weekend I was back! Brian and Matt came with me, and we had a great ol' time - we explored the city for a while (they couldn't believe how cold it was there) - the Peterborough Locks are really cool at night, then went to The Reverie (Steve and Josh's band) show at The Spill, then went to a noodln heavy after party at the band house, which included spontaneous dancing, apple cider and candle wax on the carpet. Don't worry, we didn't need to call the fire department.

Last night I went to the Collins with Brian and his sister Jill. Afterwards we went to Jeremy's to play Guitar Hero. The were going to take a cab home, but I insisted that it I could drive them home. And besides, saves them from waiting for a cab. Brian noticed my tank was empty, so to placate him I turned towards the nearest gas station. However, we didn't make it that far. We ran out of gas a couple of kilometers from the place. Then it started to rain at 3am. Perfect. All in all I considered it a character building excersize. I don't know if they saw it that lightly...

White Pine

2007-11-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

So the time has come for me to leave Peterborough. Work's winding down in a town notorious for lack or work, and I'm gonna move on: first to Montreal to visit Geoff for a few days, then back to Hamilton, then who knows.

Now my last days in this great town have been very very nice to me. The last days at work have been fun, as usual. Like I said, it's been winding down, so its been more of a part time thing. That's OK, and it's given me time to enjoy finer things.

Two weekends ago I ended up going back to Dundas again for Austrums Gadasvetki. That event was pretty standard formal stuff, with a very interesting lecture given by Chris Macleod (a commercial lawyer) exposing the humanitarian BS dealt by the government of China against Huseyincan Celil and the Uyghur people (in a similar situation as Tibetans). Toms and I went to Hess Village afterwards and ran into a few people from Dundas at the Side Bar, and good times were had by all. Since I was in a suit and my hair was getting quite long, some people mistook me for a Beatle, which was fine by me, surrounded by all the other people in real costumes. The next day I met up with Brian and we went to the Klavins' old place out on Sulpher Springs road. It was really nice going back to where much of my childhood was spent.

The next weekend I went hiking at Petroglyphs provincial park. Now, yes the park is closed, but tell that to the dozen or so cars parked outside the gates. I got there pretty late so the first day I just hiked for a little while then set up camp and read half of Kurt Vonnogut's Cat's Cradle while enjoying nature. I heard beavers munching, birds flying, rivers burbling, and wolves howling. That night I slept under the stars, and seeing the stars I didn't think to set up my tarp, so I was rudely and franticly awakened by some hail. Nice. The next day I hiked to the Petroglyphs and High Falls. The weather was great, almost like summer. The Petroglyphs site itself was locked, but you could see inside the building to them, and they really were quite cool. It would be nice to show you a picture of them, but since it is Native custom not to photograph or videos of sacred sites, you have to go there yourself to see. The hike to High Falls was awesome, with typical Canadian shield territory, huge pine trees intermingled with more southern species. The falls are a site for parties, but despite the occasional fire pit and pieces of beer bottle glass, it really is worth the hike to the beautiful spot.

I was telling you about finer things. Well, that includes reading. I was reading Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities, and it was getting to the point were I couldn't take any more info in. I reached that point seven pages from the end (she wasn't concluding anything by then, still just giving us more new points on how city planners are like children in a sand box). I needed fiction! So I started reading Cat's Cradle instead. Yes, and by the time I got the Chapter 33 of that book (on page 66, FYI, very Vonnegut), I realized I might finish that book's 270 pages before I finished the last 7 of Jane Jacobs' book. And I did.

Well, tomorrow I'm off to Montreal. See you then!

Lurkin and Noodln

2007-10-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

During a small road trip I went on this past weekend, a thought came to me: I like to make you smile because it's infectious. Makes sense, doesn't it! And sounds cool too.

I forgot to mention a few things in the last wave of posts. Work's increasingly funny. We defined Bogans (working class folk who like their NASCAR, Bud, and those baseball caps that come in cases of Bud) and Pooges (un-employed Bogans, usually seen out front of liquor stores asking for change). Between that and impersinating Psychedelic Punk rock (it WAS possible for a brief moment), work's great!

On my first day in Peterborough I left a stick of butter on my car dash as I rushed to get to work on my first day. The butter melted, and now my car smells like moldy milk, combined with some wine that spilled in the trunk, smells like moldy vinegar. Great.

Another thing I forgot to mention was that I've been harassed by security four times: Once, drinking in the McMaster U parking lot during the Hedley show we saw, which was unfortunate, since they made me pour out this great gin my mom got me from her visit to Latvia. Second, that same night, Greg, Carolyn and I snuck off so that Greg could pee, and an eager volunteer with a radio stopped and questioned us, assuming we were up to other things than just nature's call (which we could very well have been). Third, at 3am a few of us were kicking around a big inflatable ball in a baseball diamond by my highschool. I left some stuff on a bench when the police came by and scattered us. I was forced to go back and get it, and politely told that curfew there is sundown... And finally, here in Peterborough, there was a noise complaint at the house I was at. My friend Steve cried "Oh no! I've already gave them my name! I can't talk to them! Someone has to make up a name and sort it out!" So I became Matt Bogan and talked to the kind officer. He even called it in on the radio ("Operator, that's correct, 'BOGAN': Bravo, Oscar, Golf...").

Anyway, on with the story!

So the fall has been in its prime since the last post, being the middle of October. A few of us have defined two new words: Lurkin, which basically means to loiter for the purposes of amusing oneself (or group), which can cause suspicion in others. Noodln is very silly and goofy Lurkin.

Two weekends ago was very noodly. We had three potlocks within twenty four hours. The first one happened on Friday night, which degenerated (or generated, depending on how you look at it) into the atypical noodln party. The floor turned into lava and we were forced to make human pyramids. We were exhausted, so we had massage trains and cuddle puddles while singing about thinkin about the ocean. Really! The next afternoon we went to a potluck were we decided to go to another one. That one was out in the country and we got lost on the way. But the food was great!

The next weekend was the road trip I told you about. Friday night Steve and I biked around to various locations, including a Dragon party (at a fellow named Dragon's place), a jam party, and a teepee party. The rest of the weekend I drove to TO for an Austrums orientation, then to my friend Robyn's place in Northern Southern (ahem...) Ontario where I saw the great Beaver Valley, crashed a Boomer yuker tournament, and slept outside in the perfect weather. Sunday I drove some more, to Sid, and learned how to make beer through Austrums and my bro, then marveled at how there were traffic jams on Sunday night in TO at 7pm. Yesterday I Gavin, Phil and I got drunk after work and played guitar and sang songs on our porch, and went exploring around the canal at our place.

So thats all folks, see you in a couple weeks!

T-bay to P-dot

2007-10-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

So after Labour Day I went to Thunder Bay. Originally a few of us were planning on going on a sea kayaking trip to the Slate Islands, but eventually everyone backed out until it was just Zack and I. The the weather turned bad (it really was, rainy with gale-force winds), so it was impractical for us to go there, or really go sea kayaking anywhere on superior. So instead we tried to organize a weekend trip to the Sleeping Giant, but more people backed out, so eventually Zack and I did a bike-hike day trip there. We biked as far as we could, then hiked to Thunder Cape. I got a couple flats on the way, so got to practice my patching skills. Don't buy inner-tubes from Canadian Tire! Also I was doing trials at Tea Harbour and got soaked when I fell into a pool of water. When we got to Thunder Cape I noticed there was sage growing there! I gathered some too. We also visited to bird observatory there and talked to the people doing research there.

Other than that my visit to Thunder Bay was pretty uneventful. I partied a lot, hung out with a lot of people, biked around, read, helped people move, and generally took it easy.

After Thunder Bay I drove straight to Peterborough. The drive was very interesting, as it often is. Beautiful in the fall colours, though they are out early as it was a dry summer (a bit concerning, considering it was the second year in a row now). I swam in Lake Superior at Pancake bay, and the lake was still tolerable there! I hadn't slept much the nights before, and had cat-naps on the way. I had McDonald's for lunch, and felt fast-food drowsy and was knocked out for 4 hours soon after. I got to Peterborough at 2 AM and passed out in my car at Emily Prov. Park, and went to work little more than 4 hours later.

Now, a lot of people have questioned the move: Why P-dot? What are you doing there? Nothing really important, just landscaping. Why? Well, there were a number of reasons. One is that for years I've been wanting to live through the Southern Ontario fall. Another is that this town is sweet, picturesque, interesting, with a vibrant social, arts, music and activism scene. Another is that I was planning on visiting anyway to see my friend Steve (from Calgary) and others I know here. So, I decided to move here and landed a job landscaping with Gavin (who was in the wedding party of Zanis' wedding). And I'm only planning on being in town until the holiday's anyway.

Originally I was going to try to find another job, but that didn't really work out: this city is pretty notorious for no good paying jobs. It also has the lowest average income of any city in Southern Ontario. So I'm landscaping mostly full time, and I'm not complaining! Other than landscaping I was interested in working on an organic farm, which I'm still trying to get into.

Well, about the job: mostly we seem to move rocks. BIIIIG ones, tiny ones, flat ones, round ones, smooth ones, rough ones, ones that look like people but mostly ones that look like rocks. Also a lot of digging, and stone cutting, moving stuff, gardening, building stairs and leveling. The job is a lot of fun, and my co workers Phil, Juris (Duty, who works occasionally) and the boss Gavin have a great time, joking around. The job is physical, but we use a lot of tools too, and a tractor with a back hoe! Man, I felt like such a farmer the first time I used it!

After some frustration in trying to find a good place to stay, I moved into Gavin's basement after the previous tenant moved out. It's good and clean and quite, and he takes the rent off my pay, so I don't pay as many taxes, and I get a free ride to work every morning!

My free time here has been very good:
-Gone on a couple critical mass rides
-A little bit of activism (Food not bombs, going to a seminar on dam proposals, like Ptbo doesn't have enough already!)
-Met a lot of people who are now friends
-Got in a wrestling match with a girl and broke my rib
-Went to the farmers market a few times
-Kayaked to Trent campus from Steve's place (those dams got in the way though)
-Played 18 holes of golf at the exclusive, $20 a round Liftlock Golfland
-Went to concerts: the very dance-funky Wasabi Collective and amply named The Superfantastics
-Partied a little bit
-Went to Head of the Trent rowing regatta (hung a pick nick table from the main campus bridge the night before for that one!)
-Walked and biked around town
-Went to Sid for Austrums and afterwards partied with Zanies and his friends in TO
-Went for a sweet mountain bike ride, still good despite the lack of mountains or even many hills here.
-Laughed at the rascally cuteness of squirrels

So its pleasant here. Until next time!

More news from the past

2007-10-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

So after labour day I'm just lazin' around home. My mom was gonna hire contractors to do the ease-troughs and paint all the doors, but I did it instead, because I can. Basically I wake up around 11 or 12, work 4 or 5 hours a day, and go out and chill with friends, bike ride, read and play a bit of guitar. I should play more, tho.

Man, remember how I was saying my beat-boxing got Geoff's wife dancing? Well, one night me and him met up with some friends and we started beat-boxing the same song again. And guess what! a couple of the girls we were with started dancing! I have to record it now. Oh, before Geoff and I ran into our friends we walked onto a movie set. No joke, Dundas is picturesque, low traffic, and low movie interest, so they film here. Right now their doing The Hulk sequel. We saw Liv Tyler. Wow (sarcastic). I didn't even realize it, and didn't really care actually, but Geoff (he's a film student) freaked out, and we walked all over the set. We couldn't find her, and concluded that she was doing the directer. Obviously.

2007-10-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

All this stuff also happened more than a month ago, but here it is anyway!:

Thunder Bay was very relaxing, and basically that's all we did.

The trip back from Thunder Bay was very interesting indeed. Carolyn and I went swimming four times and caught the ferry. I got home at 4am. I had this strange nasal headache that coming on every afternoon, always when I drive. It makes me a bit angry. Now I'm at home and this weekend is 'Cactus fest' in Dundas, which means I'll be getting drunk with all my old highschool friends. Went for a couple few bike rides, hung out with friends, did nothing in particular.

After a week in Dundas I went to Sudbury to go to Marty MacDonald's (a relative) wedding. My bro Zanis was in the wedding party and he had to dress up in a kilt. It was funny to see him in a skirt, but my mom thought he looked handsome.

Went back to Dundas for a couple days. My mom declared war on Gypsy moths. They're worms have infested the trees around our house. There are billions of them. They take over trees. You can hear them in the woods - you can hear the leaves crunching as they eat them. Right now they're in egg stage on our yard, and my mom has declared war on them. But she's not here, she went to Latvia for my grandpa's funeral. So its just me, and the eggs, clung like little brown poo stains on trees. Only after eradicating thousands of eggs did we find out that the eggs are sterile anyway because of little flies that eat them. Owell.

I was supposted to go on a canoe trip, but we couldn't get our stuff together, mostly we couldn't find a canoe. I did go up to the Bruce Peninsula tho with my two buddies Jeremy and Brian. It was really really nice up there. We went biking and snorkeling in the cold, clear water. Very, very nice. Sooooo nice, in fact, that it's blown my mind! Now I have to try scuba diving!

Labour day long weekend was great! Friday drank in the park by my highschool with a couple buddy's of mine. It was inteded just for pre-drinking. We ended up beat-boxing some really good dance tune (remember, my favorite music) while Geoff's wife danced to it. Later we ran into random people on the way to the bar. Once there we had a drink, then went to Steve's house (remember him!), with a big group of ppl. I ended up walking back to my car at 3:30 and sleeping in it because I was too drunk to drive. I woke up with morning runners passing my car, which was in the park. Must have looked COMPLETELY normal.

The next day I went to a party up on the 'mountain'. Heheh, since being back I laugh at what people call a mountain here. Owell, it's still nice. I thought this party would be just a few friends, but it turned out it was very much a whole family thing. There was like 50 people there of all ages! A band! Kereoke!!! There was this 'corn-hole' competition going on (this was in the country, with lots of corn growing): basically you try to throw a bean bag into a hole in a board 15ft away. Oh, and painted on the boards were a pair of naked old man's legs and butt. Guess where the 'corn-hole' was. heheh. That night was fun, with the kareoke blasting and me behind the mike sometimes. Nice.

The next day I stayed there. I was my friend Brian's place BTW, and we went snorkeling again at the swimming lake and park near his house. Though the water was hard to see in, it was sunny, warm, and there were many many fish under the water. Later we went over to where the next party was going to be, just a country block away. This was my friend Mel's place, and this time only known friends showed up. I stayed for the pot-luck, which went to 9:30, then rode my bike to another party where my friends had set up a stage and were playing. This too was in the country, on the 'mountain' and was three blocks away, which took me 30mins to ride to. That was a lot of fun, as it was just like a high school reunion. Talked and partied with many old friends and acquaintances. I ended up riding back to Mel's at 4, and once there ran into a few ppl going swimming in her pool. Naturally I joined them, then went to sleep.

The next day Mels parents made up breakfast, we cleaned up, and we went swimming again and played on their trampoline. On the trampoline were four of us. You know when you read comic strips and where people get in a fight it sort of looks like a cloud with arms and legs sticking out, well, that actually happened on the trampoline. Once the cloud had dispersed we were left breathless lying on it and chanting 'DoverDoverDoverDover', in reference to Port Dover, where we decided, in the cloud, on the trampoline, between the four of us, to go. Port Dover is a beach town on Lake Erie, and it was nice. Most of us went and we played in the surf. Later we went to a local restaurant. I was still in my trunks, which were dry, and wanted to put my jeans on over them. I did it right there at the table, and tried to be sly about it. But in order to get my jeans over the trunks, I needed to just stand up a little. Unfortunately that caused the chair to fall over, and as I sat down I ended up falling on my butt, so I had to stand up, but my jeans were still only half way up. So basically everyone in the restaurant saw me fall and stand up with my pants down. Nice. Did I mention that I was at the head of the table of 9? Yeah, most embarrassing thing ALL summer.

To Thunder Bay from Calgary (two months late)

2007-10-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on the way home from Calgary in August. Here it is in October!:

OK, so I waited way too long for this one...

Work ended, spending my last two weeks there in a carpentry apprentiship capacity. I'll miss Centron. Moving on.

My last week in Calgary was very busy, basically packing, working, adventrue and some partying. On my last weekend there a few of us from work went to the Spray Lakes in Canmore. We random camped on a lake, there was a full moon, sweet echos accross the lake into the rockies, and beer drinking games. The next day we climbed the Middle Sister, which is now the highest point I have been on the ground. It was quite a challenge, and most of the people that went (Steve, Nate, Jude, Josh and me, BTW) ended up missing a day at work because of it.

The trip to BC was very interesting...

The drive to Vancouver was more or less uneventful. It was loud, though...: the muffler was still gone, but it improved gas milage. Vancouver was cool: on the first day there Tracy, Carolyn and I went to Lynn Canyon in North Van. The traffic was atrocious, and by the time you actually crossed the Lions Gate bridge into North Van, there are hotels and a visitor information centre. But it easy to see why everyone wants to live there. Meg, Craig and Pamie showed up that night. The next day we all piled into Craig's ride and went to some lake in the mountains, attempted and failed to rent a boat, went swimming, drove to the Ocean, went swimming, and had pizza afterwards. Between everything we did, we watched excessive amounts of South Park. You might consider one episode of South Park excessive. Ahh Vancouver. Priceless.

After having waffles at Craig and Jeremy's place on the 6th, Tracy and I left for Mazama, WA, to visit Zack. We arrived to the Outward Bound basecamp after an very pleasant drive through mountains. We stopped and saw Desolation Peak in the distance, the place where Jack Keruac spent two summers as a fire watcher in a hut on top of the peak. Bill Gates bought the poperty of the basecamp, you know. Anyways, the next day the three of us proceded to go on a canoe trip to get to an island off the base of Desolation Peak, the next day we climbed it, and on the third day we came back. The hut where Keruac stayed, on top of Desolation Peak, was locked, so we broke in. Don't worry, it was plainly obvious that everybody does it. Inside the hut we had lunch, and enjoyed the shelter it provided up there.

A note about mountains: glaciers are sweet. I haven't been on one sice I was 10, but they're sweet. They just are. Its too bad their melting.

After Mazama, we left for Nelson, BC, to go to the Shambhala music festival. It wasn't really our scene. On the first day we became friends with our neigbours to the south of our campsite, They actually were our neighbours to the south, a couple from Washington. We walked around and took in all the strange and beautiful surroundings, and danced a little. The nex day I met up with Steve and Geoff from work, with their friend Adam. G, A and also T went to town, and S and I snuck out of the festival bounrdy, stealtaly avoidng fat men wearing big, brash knock off wrestling champion belts, riding ATVs. No joke. We climbed up about 3/4 of the way up the mountain overlooking the felstival grounds to the East. About Shambahla, if you don't really know what goes on there, ask someone. Its true.

Drove back to Calgary on the 12th, swam in some rivers. Packed all the next day and started driving with Carolyn back to Ontario.

It is now 7:20am 1 hour outside Winnipeg. Road trippin' continues. The muffler problem is growing, and now everything from the catalitic converter back is off. Thank God for ear-plugs. I'm gonna fix it in Thunder Bay. Or I should say will get it fixed. No more "I can fix it myself" and "too busy"ness, I gotta bite the bullet and go to the shop. We can do that in Thunder Bay. Ahh Tbay, our safe haven, port of harbour. Can't wait!

Laid back*

2007-07-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

*I realized I was posting blogs every two weeks. I did this for regularity. I did this for those people (or that person) who ever actually reads these things. Then I remembered why I was writing blogs: I just was, to record what I do, sort of as an alternative to taking pictures. So this ones three days late. I guess that makes me laid back. Or lazy, depending on how you look at it. As opposed to someone who gets things done. Or anal, depending on how you look at it.

Anyways, since Banff, things have been interesting. I can't remember what I did at work day to day, since it was two weeks ago. Most likely I cleaned up floors and threw many useful things out, and carried some heavy stuff. We did carry these heavy, concrete filled steel doors, which was hard but rewarding. And I most likely enjoyed the job in general.

On the Friday after Canada day our work set up bleachers in front of the site and we watched the Calgary Stampede Parade, and got paid for it! We came into work, watched the parade, and soon got bored. Lots of horses and street cleaners. It had its moments, especially the military with the tanks and big armoured engineer vehicle. So after a couple hours we walked across the
street (and the parade) and went to the bar and had a couple beer*. After the parade there was a BBQ and a few of us went down by the river for most of the afternoon.

That night there was a "plaid" party at our place**, and everyone who wore plaid was invited. It went of smashingly! After a while we brought out the "Truth or Dare" Jenga board game. It was epically good, with singing, dancing and all manner of slightly impolite truth or dare. Lance and I were bear hugging Tracy from both sides for some reason and the big BIG painting in the living room fell on us and smashed that Jenga tower (which was the highest I've ever seen). I realized at the point that this is the greatest Jenga game I ever played.

On the weekend Steve, Josh, Geoff and I went to the badlands! We drove to the town of Drumheller, where the worlds biggest dinosaur is. We didn't pay the $3 to go up it with all the kids and their parents. We did learn, at the co-located tourist info centre, that there most campsites were full. This surprised me, as I thought everyone would be in Calgary for the Stampede. So we decided to search out a free one, a 'new' one. We drove back out of the badlands (which rise out of the river valley) in search. We drove by an oil rig, one of the bobbing duck kinds you see on farmers fields***. They're very noisy and rickety. We checked the place out. I took my bike down an old drive by a pond and train tracks, from where I could see my friends on the hill above.

We kept that place in mind and moved on. We got lost on side streets, trying to stay near the edge of the badlands. We ended up on a free ferry on the river, which was about 50-75m wide at this point. It was basically a car barge attached by three cables to the shore on both sides: Two on either side of the barge to hold it against the current, and on that pulled it back and fourth. I don't think I've ever quite seen it, and it too was a bit rickety****.

On the other side of the river was a provincial campground. We drove in, and we optimistic at all the empty campsites. Many people gave us dirty looks and I soon figured out why: four guys who look like they could very well be looking for a party riding in a dirty car with no muffler*****.

We moved on up out of the badlands and ended up at a lookout over them. We could see the provincial camp site in the distance to the north by the river, with cow fields on either side of the river and bad lands all around in the valley. We set up a camp not far away, behind a copse of aspens growing in a ravine along the edge of the badlands. It hid us well enough. Soon we decided to go for a walk into the badlands. We scrambled along down, in and around the badlands, and soon found ourselves walking to the provincial camp site. We had to cross a field full of cows, by the river, and full of nasty mosquitoes. There was nothing interesting there, so we came back, and scrambled up back through the badlands, getting scratched up and eaten, and made it back to our camp side just before dark. We had a fire and drank a few. Had a very badlandsee moment watching the orange new moon rise, watching the dwindling fires barely visible in the distance at the bottom of the valley, and hearing a coyote call, and one reply to it in the distance. The sunrise was nice and soon we were gone.

I don't think anything too particular happened the following week at work. Sometimes it always seems that way. The following weekend I took a basic bicycle repair course and the U of C Outdoor Centre. It was mostly review, but I did learn many very good new things and am much more comfortable around a bike. The best part about it was the fact that you get a certificate from it, which looks like a diploma or something, with "University of Calgary" with the title of it. I put it with my business degree.

Other than that, this past weekend I only partied on Friday, and basically consisted of going to the regular pub with the crew after work, going home briefly so shower and change, then going to the Roadhouse club with them again. It was fun, and afterwards we had a hell of a cab ride back, the drunker ones yelling at the cabbie to find a beer store. After finding two empty ones, we ended up in outside the Cecil pub******. At this very scetchy turn of events I very much wanted to leave, we went back to Jed's place, had a couple more and passed out. Got back just in time the next morning to get to the bike repair course.

War Report: in the weeks that have followed the ending of the main hostilities in our** War on Mold, results have been mixed. All practical repairs have been made, the big rubbish pile in the back yard taken away, and even a new fence has been put up in the back yard. Remnants of resistance remained as a moldy smell lingered in Camile's room. She has since been forced to evacuate to the U of C residences for the remainder of the summer. The official casualty count of the war is now 50%******* of our population! We have all witnessed and experienced the trials of this long and costly war. I vow, from now on, to avoid and oppose, at all costs, the misery and destruction that is war, and to seek peaceful means as to a resolution of our differences.

Vegetable Report: since our last installment, the first of the beans and tomatoes are coming up, and the fence should hopefully suppress the hares, so as to eliminating a need for offensive operations against them. What was I just saying about war again?

********

*Thats how people often say "beers" in Canada.
**The Unicorn House of Love
***Farmers and landowners have no say in weather oil drills are placed on their land. Corporate bastards.
****I now realize all machines in the badlands are rickety.
*****It fell off. I'm in the process of fixing it, but am being laid back out it.
******You may have one in your city, usually known by its common name "Cracktown"
*******50% = Steve and Camile.
********Thats Josh and I. More photos of our adventures can be found on my Profile in Facebook.com.

Banff Champion

2007-07-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

Work Continues. I'm still feeling my way around a bit, but I have found my place at the construction site. I'm learning cool new things: learned to use a fork lift, but I need to get a license for it before I get to use it more. Generally day to day is brooms, shovels, gloves, power tools, hand tools, gray garbage bins, yellow dumpsters, hard hats, orange spray paint, pipes, steel, dry wall, wet dry wall...

I've figured out Banff is a dangerous place. Last weekend Steve, his friends Xavier, and work buddy Josh went to go kayaking on the Bow River. Josh and I went first, while the others went to Canmore to pick us up. With all my gear on, Xavier said I looked like a 'Champion'. Nice. Anyway, Josh'd never gone kayaking before, and the river sure was fast. Fast. And cold. Real cold. I was having some difficulty staying straight. So we went off a to an easier section of the river that forked off, but it was still fast, and cold. Unfortunately, since this branch of the river was narrower, there was a tree fallen across it. I had no time to tell Josh to get to shore before he ran into the middle of it. Did I forget to mention that grabbing onto a tree is really really dangerous? Yeah, it forces a boat to tip. I've sank - sank - a tank of a canoe doing that before. I guess tanks don't swim well, but anyway... Josh grabs the tree, the back end of his kayak goes into the river, soon the rest of the kayak does too. Josh tries rolling the kayak like I showed him, and almost get over! Almost. He felt like he was under for an hour, and after fifteen seconds he comes up, convulsing because of the water he swallowed trying to do the roll I showed him, and the extremely cold melt water. His boat was half full of water and upside down. I yelled at him to let it go, for no-one could hold onto it. I was now stuck with a dilema: leave Josh and get the now very heavy water filled boat that's barreling down the river and risk giving Josh hypothermia, or leave to boat and help Josh and be out $1000. Well, figuring Josh could help himself, I futilely tried to get to boat to shore. What seemed like a mile, I got to an eddy and was able to bull the boat out. I but my sandals on and ran to where Josh went in. At this point I was regretting not brining a lighter for fire. Or warm cloths. Or leaving a cell phone with Steve and Xavier. I ran into some people we saw on the shore just before the tree, and they said they hadn't seen Josh. Bad news. So I ran to where he went in, and he wasn't there!
I went back and finally ran into him. I gave him my sweater and we got ready again. He was really shook up, but OK. He had a hard time getting back into the water, but eventually we got going. Funny thing was was I got a window cleaning appointment over my cell phone while we were out of the water! So Josh risked his life so I could get a client! The rest of the trip was beautiful, with mountains slowly passing, and train coming by the river and blowing its horn for us, and (now) having fun playing in the river. Three hours later we got to Canmore, cold, exhausted, and happy. We drove downstream to meet Steve and X at Exshaw, and Josh and I fished, threw railway hooks at power lines in hopes of one catching, played with my slingshot, and basically had a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon.

Josh took the Monday off, and I took Tuesday off, due to exhaustion. I did go on a really really good bike ride that day though!

Thursday my good friend from Lakehead Kim was in town. We hung out after work, and got some beer, and sat on a highway embankment watching wonderful dry lightning go off on the east side of the city for a few hours, shooting the shit. Though it was a strange place to be, it was somehow perfectly fitting.

This long weekend I went to the Hifi club on disco night on Friday with Tracy, hung out with her again on Saturday at the Development Studies Club BBQ in a nice riverside park in the southwest side of the city. But on Canada day Steve and I met up with some work buddies in Banff. We camped out at Two Jack campground, and went to town to watch the fire works and go the bars. We met up with my old roommate Rose and had a blast: somewhere between the beers, the (mostly unsuccessful) hitting on girls, the wandering, the pre-drinking, the lost wander home, the hangover, and realizing the weight of being in Canada's first national park, we had on of the best Canada Days ever.

Steve and I picked up three hitch-hikers on the way to Calgary. One was Icelanding, the other two Danish, and we squeezed into my already packed car. Turns out they like Sea Kayaking, and promised to take me out if I ever go to Iceland or Denmark.

But right now Im on my room with my roomates watching the sunset and getting eatin alive by miquitoes, so I will go now.

When it rains...

2007-06-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I stopped window cleaning. Somewhere between worsening weather, general dis-interest of window cleaning as a way of life, and laziness, it occurred to me that I needed a job where I have to be somewhere at a set time, usually in the morning. So Steve and I are, once again, working to help build Alberta, 9 hours a day, six days a week.

This year we're working in downtown Calgary on an old 5 storey post office being turned into an office high rise. Work's very dusty and loud, but fun. Our co-workers are funny: Steve named a guy Jordy, but his actual name (on his hardhat) is Jordan. The name stuck, and everyone laughed, except Jordan, er, Jordy. He now tries calling Steve as Stephanie, usually between swear words, to little effect. I let Jordan know his name's easily turned into Jordana. After work on Saturday I drove a couple of our co-workers home, and went to a Church garage sale where I got a real good bike rack, real good dart board, Tommy Boy the movie, a couple books and big Canada flag stickers for $4!

Remember the worsening weather here in Calgary? Well, last week it rained so much in one day that that DAY broke to average Calgary rainfall for the MONTH. Did I mention that June is the rainiest month in Calgary... Yeah, so our basement flooded. We tried scooping the water out, but the damage was done. the carpets needed to be ripped out and the underlay removed and replaced. The carpet and cement needed to be dis-infected from mold. All drywall on the outside walls 4ft from the ground needs to be replaced, along with any wet insulation. EVERYTHING in the basement needed to be moved upstairs, including the people sleeping. So right now our house is basically a storage warehouse/refugee camp, as the Unicron House of Love declares war on Mold. Through intense (verbal) fighting with landlords and contractors, the Uncorns have had their first casualty: Steve is moving out due to the conditions. I am pleased to report that the battle is going well overall, with the underlay removed, with it and the Carpet disinfected. Though there have been 'setbacks' due to the rainy weather conditions, the drywall, insulation, underlay and carpet will be replaced in the 'foreseeable' future. There will be no timetable for troop withdrawals (oops, that was the Iraq PR stuff..). We Unicorns are a proud unicorn, er, people. We will have victory, and this unprovoked attack will be avenged!

Anyways, back to reality, last weekend we went camping in Peter Laugheed Provincial Park, beside Banff National Park. The mountains were spectacular! We camped on Upper Kananaskis Lake, and the conditions were a bit rainy, but nice enough to have an awsome time and see the truly awsome mountains shrouded in cloud.

All this past week I worked and didn't sleep enough. Last night I went to a party with Tracy and some of her school friends north of Wendy's cottage. It was fun, and the place is very beautiful. I went fishing in a picturesque fishing pond, with fields of planted trees beside the shore and thick forest beyond. Saw a muskrat in the water, but no fish bit. I got a ride down in an ATV... sweet. The party was fun, but I went to bed early. Guess what, it rained a lot there too!

2007-06-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

So not much since the camping trip to the Unicorn Love Shack:

-Went to Canmore again and hiked half-way up Mount Rundle before being snowed out. Saw some goats on the way

-Steve moved in and we're working together

-Went and saw the Dandy Warhols at Mac Hall in U of C

-Gardening is harder than it seems ~ also reading Watership Down, and am now afraid of all the jack-rabbits around our house of eating them

-Determined my Unicorn nickname as Tectonic

Unicorns

2007-05-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Window cleaning is off to the races! Its working out well, and I've got my technique down. Clients are coming readily as often neighbours see me working and a house and want their windows cleaned too. Janics left Calgary to go do Diz-Dancis in TO. He left me all his clients and scheduled jobs. That helped a lot, thanks Janc!

Went to the the Peter, Bjorn and John concert two Fridays ago. PB&J are a Swedish alt-rock band that are sweet! I highly recommend buying (or downloading) their latest album "Writer's Block". Before the concert we pre-drank at our place, then at the beer gardens. We snuck into the U of C student newspaper office (Sara and Andrew work there), and drank some more. The concert itself was very good. They have this song called "Amsterdam" and you could smell the marijuana smoke as they played that song. After the concert we ran (through some bushes) home.

Went to Canmore with Tracy last Tuesday. It was a perfect day. Last summer I put a tent up for sale at a consignment store there, and pretty much forgot about it. I checked into the store and found out the tent had been sold and a check was waiting for me! Got some gear there too. We went for a hike on a trail up to Old Goad glacier. We couldn't find the right trail, just kept going on old 4x4 trails that petered out after a few hunderd meters. It was still good though, and we played in the mud of a stream. Ran into highschool friend Jen, last summer's good construcion buddy Felix and his girlfriend Aubrie before we left Canmore too!

My friend Steve from Dundas came to Calgary last week on his way to Vancouver Island. We hung out and partied for a few days. Turns out his Nippising U buddy Bryden lives a block away from me! I dropped those two off, in the rain, after driving them to Canmore with Sara.

For May 2-4 this year all my roommates (Andrew, Wendy, Sara and Camile) and I went to Wendy's cottage for a night. We get there after a picturesque drive into the sunset through misty foot hills and prairie ~ the sun set over the mountains far away. I set up my new tent and mattress, while the others slept in the cabin. That night we hung out in there, went for a walk through a field, and groped our way through the forest to a rocky riverbank near-by. We sat on a blanket and listed to nature and looked at the innumerable stars, counted shooting starts and rolled around on the blanket on top of one another.

The next day, Andrew drove home early to get to work. That left four of us. We saw four cattle in the field accross the street who were looking curiously at us. We all sort of stared at each other until we generally lost interest and start eating the grass. That cows, that is. There was a lot of damage in the area from a flood two years ago, so we re-built the path to the rocky riverbank, and pulled out some cans and barrels from the debris. We also cleaned up the outside of the cottage. after cleaning up and throwing everything in the car, the drive home was through some cool hail and lightning. We decided the name of the small cottage would be called the Unicorn Love Shack.

Work's started again, and now I sit in the newly dubbed Unicon House of Love and watch my tomatoes growing by the side of the computer.

Lake Superior and back

2007-05-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

So window cleaning has been pretty slow, mostly due to 3 parts weather and 1 part laziness. I did one house after the Muizniece's place, but it was snowing while I was doing it! Calgary's crazy that way.

The biggest news since the last entry was my trip to Thunder Bay to go sea kayaking. I drove over with Meg, and noticed all cities were exactly the same: a Home Depot here, PetCetera there, and, of course, the ubiquitous Wal-Marts. We saw a Perkins breakfast franchise in Regina that Meg hadn't heard of though, but I have. Woo-hoo suburbia!

We pulled into Thunder Bay around 3PM on the 21st. The car sounded like a helicopter: thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump... Turns out a tire was out of whack. Canadian Tire replaced it quickly and at reasonable cost, on a Sunday! Maybe there's more to this suburbia thing after all...

On the 23rd, Meg, Allison, Jess, Zack, Brian, Aaron, Ryan, Nick and I set out for Rossport to start the sea kayaking trip, after some delay. We got there, set up, got in and set off in our tandem kayaks (Zack had the solo boat as he made all the arrangements and worked for the guy renting out the boats last summer). We got to Wilson Island beach around 7.

Note - to get a better idea of where we went, go to maps.google.ca, click on Hybrid view, and zoom in on the north shore of Lake Superior, look at the eastern islands to see where were we were. Start at Rossport.

The second day we traveled all the way to the eastern side of St. Ignace Island - a 25km day, our biggest. The way was frozen between the group of islands between Simpson and Wilson, so we had to go around the south side. The camp site on St. Ignace was very nice, with views of both sunrise and sunset. There were remnants of an old cabin there.

Our original goal was to reach a place called CPR Slip still 25km farther - a very nice campsite with a sauna and other ammenities. That would have let us have like less than half a day of chilling out (relaxing). We decided not to go there, and instead relax more and explore and appreciate the islands while slowly going back.

On the third day we decided to not go anywhere and relax. Zack and Nick went for a pretty intense paddle over the the south-central side of St. Ignace. The day for the rest of us consited of making a sweat hut, taking naps and exploring the shoreline. The sweat hut was more of a sauna, but looking more like a sweat lodge, but you can't call it a lodge because of the ceremonial connotations associated with them. The original plan was to use it in the middle of the warm day, but we procrastinated and ended up using it in the cold night instead. Afterwards we dug up the hot rocks, which were still warm, and Aaron, Ryan and I acted like cavemen for some reason as if we were semi-inteligent animals discovering hot rocks in the sand. That was a lot of fun.

On the fourth day we went back over to Simpson Island and climbed the highest mountain on it, on the SW side. Most of Simpson's forest was destroyed by a forest fire a few years ago (you can clearly see the burn on the google map), so we named it Fireburn Mountain. You have to say it in a sort of noble, Lord of the Rings-ish accent, however. Always. The climb as a lot of fun, scrambing up rocks, rock climbing, traversing fallen trees, riding rock slides on the way down. Again, Aaron, Ryan and I had a stick fight on the top and generally acted a bit more primitive. By the time we got to the bottom we all realized the mountain had done something to us, and we were all a bit more crazy. Maybe it was the isolation, the sun, the group gelling, the fresh air, or, just maybe, it was the curse of Fireburn Mountain, which we lifted when we reached the summit. Now the slopes of Fireburn can be ascended by those of less pure spirit.

On the morning of the fifth day Zack, Ryan and I jumped in the lake. Remember that significant parts of it were still frozen, and that ice forms on it in the night. The people watching said we looked hilarious, desperately scrambling on the slick, silty and slippery rock trying to get out of the icy water. Go Team Polar Bear! That day we were especially lazy, planning to go at least 10, and maybe 18km, but ended up going only 5. We stayed at McKay harbour on the south side of Simpson Island, and for most of the afternoon and evening we explored the very nice site, the forest, the Nature Path, the coastline, the moss, and the mushrooms. Yes, there were mushrooms. One of my best moments was there: After going for a walk on the Nature Trail, I looked out over the small cove where the campsite was, the sun was going down behind me, the water was perfectly smooth, the trees majetic, the moon over the water, the trees lightly swaying in the breeze, and an eagle was swooping over our campsite all to the jolly sounds of the campers having the time of their lives.

The next day, the last day, we got an early start. It was the first day it rained, and that spurned us on as we had a lot of kms to cover. We made it to Rossport earlier than expected, and by then it had turned sunny again. Rossport harbour was still frozen, so we were forced to go to around Nicol Island (which is now a peninsula thanks to the water level of the lake dropping more than a foot - thank you intensive agriculture sucking up the Great Lakes water table!). We packed up our gear and headed home.

Overall the trip was excellent. The nights were quite cold, but my new sleeping bad kept me toasty, even when we slept outside and frost formed on Aaron's face. Hopefully we'll be able to turn this into a spring tradition.

We stayed in Thunder Bay for a couple days and relaxed. Meg, Zack and I drove back to Calgary, but this time we drove through Riding Mountain National Park. If you're ever driving accross the Prairies and can spare a couple hours, I highly suggest going there and taking hwys 16, 10 and 5 instead of the boring Trans-Canada. It's beautiful country and you get many more of the nice prairie scenery.

Back in Calgary now. It's supposed to rain for a few days, so so much for window cleaning!

Picture: From left to right - Meg, Jess, Aaron, Me, Brian, Zack (in front), Nick, Ryan and Allison.

RIP, Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

So since the outdoors show Ive been a bit bored. Haven't been able to work because the weather's been quite bad for window cleaning - winter decided to come back. Its nice now, and Jancis and I did wash the windows on the Muizniec's place. Today I went for a ride up Nose Hill again.

Since last time I played Resident Evil twice, then I got a new lap top too! Its pretty nice, right now I'm transferring music to it. Also got an SD card reader so that I can put pictures from my digi cam onto my computer, and I also got a MP3 player that takes SD cards for just $35. Nice, take that IPods! Also downloaded an Super Nintendo emulator for the computer and played some games with that too.

My new computer needed a new desk, so I decided to build one. Now, I'm no craftsmith: Its basically a board I nabbed from a constrution site one night put on top of milk crates. The board was actually taken from where they're building a church, I found out later. That's OK, it was in a scrap pile anyway - it was a used piece of plywood used for cement forming, I really doubt they will realize its gone. Anyway, I bought some tools, cut it to size, sanded and cleaned it up, chisled out grooves on the underside where milk crates can fit in and the board wont slide around, and I spray painted it green. I want to make a stencil and spray paint brown and then black on top of that - camo colours - but I want to make some cool pattern out of it. Haven't decided what yet though. Oh, this spray paint job was a LOT better (its actually good) than that one I did on my old Ford Probe a few years ago - anybody that sweating look? How it chipped everywhere? Anyway, I'm quite proud of my desk, and its easy to move too, very important for my mobile lifestyle.

I took out two books by Kurt Vonnegut a few days ago, since I didn't have much to do. Well, he went and died on us! Crazy, that I have two of his books out, and he bites the dust. "So it goes"... K.V., 1922-2007. By the way, the books are Breakfast of Champions and Jailbird. I'm half way through the my second book, Jailbird.

Lieldienas (Easter) was spent at Jancis' place with Nik, Aleks, Erika, Diana and Dags (the priest who came from Montreal). It was exactly the way Jesus would have wanted it - playing drinking games on the porch after church in the afternoon as the sun went down. Good fun.

Its nice out now, and Jancis and I did wash the windows on the Muizniec's place. Today I went for a ride up Nose Hill again. Gonna go to Craig and Wilkies place tonight.

2007-03-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry 'bout the wait!

So since church last time, the window washing gig has progressed with Jancis and I. Quit my warehouse job last Thursday, im gonna miss that place and the people there. Im still sick - I don't know if I told you but I've had this lingering sore throat and stuffy nose for the past two months. I have come to terms with it and accepted that I will be sick forever. Or maybe I'm just alergic to something here...

Ive gone mountain biking a few times at this place called Nose Hill thats by my house. Its a big, hilly section of pristine plains that are now a nature park. Its REALLY muddy now in the spring, but the ridings still fun. Cant wait till it dries out tho!

Two days ago went to the Tiki lounge downtown, kind of a cool modish place with a 50's/60's beach theme, and last night had a camp fire at Jancis' place with Tracy and Niks.

Yesterday Jeremy and I went for an adventure to try to find a video game called Resident Evil 4. Due to the fact that the game is about 5 years old its hard to find. So hard in fact that we went to 5 shops before we found it. All this in rush hour traffic. After we got it, we found ourselves in a bit of a scenic area of town and went for a hike. It was nice, with bluffs overlooking a stream, golf course and (of course the famous) Calgary suburbs. But it was cool, and we played hacky-sac on the green.

Anyway, went to the Outdoor and Adventure show today. That was cool, saw a bunch of intersting exhibits, and got a whole bunch of free knick knacks. They had a deal that if you get tickets to that show, you get $3 admission into the Golf show in the next (big) room. So I thought I'd check that out too. On the way there was a nursing job fair that I decided to check out for more free stuff (this was all happening in the Roundup Centre, on the Calgary Stampede grounds, so its really big). In there I got a bunch more free stuff. There were these bandaie dispensers one booth was giving away and the lady there asked me if I was in nursing. I told her I was a paramedic. She didn't ask me any more questions. The golf show was bad, with no free stuff. I did get a free used 7 iron tho!

Don't feel like partying tonight. Jeremy left Resident Evil here, so I may just curl up, grab a cup of coco and kill some zombies...

Peace