I Have a Crazy Friend Named Charles

I got an e-mail this past weekend from burchil (aka-Charles) asking me if I wanted to go caching. Charles noted that I had been leading a very busy life lately and thought he would invite me out to walk around with him in the snow and de-stress a bit. Nice.

Some background on Charles: He has the superhuman ability to ride his bicycle in any weather, to any destination, at any time. He can snowshoe at a brisk 5KM/h through knee-deep powder, against the wind for at least 40 mins without pausing. He has canoed in all but one month of the year, I believe. And in Manitoba, that's saying something.

I have been out with Charles on a couple of other occasions and have had a fantastic time. I have never had concerns as to whether or not I would be at risk. I always felt that if there was ever an issue with fatigue, or if I was ever injured, Charles would simply load my body on his back and jog back to the car, or perhaps to the nearest hospital.

The cache my good buddy had chosen as the subject of our adventure is MuStash's Elk Island Cache.

4/5 Difficulty - 5/5 Terrain

20 (!) KM round trip

Cliff climbing involved

And the map on the cache page shows the starting point for our journey is some 200m off the shore in the icy waters of Lake Winnipeg. Yes, I realize that that is just a Google map, and the actual location is likely bone dry. But consider it an omen. One more tick in the "cons" list of whether or not I shoud attempt this cache, or perhaps advise my friend Charles that I have come down with some rare illness that prevents me from walking any farther than 5 km without going indoors for a while.

Well, as luck would have it, we are going to be busy for the next few weekends anyhow, so it looks like my geocaching adventures will be a bit more urban. At least for the time being.

Where to? North, I say!

My good friend, and fellow caching reptile, TurdleEggs, and I went and visited a couple of caches yesterday. It sure was nice to get out and get some exercise. We tackled a few caches in the North end of the city until it got too dark to be very enjoyable. And it was a school night after all. If anybody needs their beauty sleep, it's TurdleEggs. :)

I learned of some parallels in the earlier years of our lives on this trip. Odd how that happens. Seems every time I go out with this guy I learn something new about him. We swapped stories about our upbringing. Told him of my being raised by my grandparents and my step-fathers illness. He told me about his parents and some about his sister. I think she's a lawyer, or perhaps collects ocelots...who listens? :)

I have decided I need to do more winter caching. The exercise felt good.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Mitchell and I went to go see Walking with Dinosaurs at the MTS Centre on Saturday. Wow What a show! I was totally blown away. When you first walk in and the lights are bright, you are struck by how boring the setup looks. There is a whole lot of bare concrete floor and in the centre are these odd painted plywood polygons.
But when the show begins, the lights dim and the floor becomes lit by a textured light that makes it appear as the arena floor has been transformed into a mossy carpet. Combine this visual with the effective aural stimulation of small amphibian and bird noises and the setting is complete.
As the show progresses through the various eras (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, etc) the lighting changes as well to represent the changing biosphere. The plywood polygons represent various props. Mostly they act as a landscape to make the field less stark. But they also represent the shifting of the continental shelf from the original Pangea to the separated continents as they are today.
The whole show is narrated from the floor by an Indiana Jones-y kinda fellow. The dialog is clear and understandable by most everyone. I'm sure even Mitch, at 5 years old, was able to grasp alot of the points.
The creatures were really awesome. The smaller ones were portrayed by costumed actors, while the larger creatures were moved about on self propelled carts. Yet, if you didn't focus too much on the cart, the image was quite believable. The hulking Stegosaurus, and the huge Brachiosaur pair whose head seemed to almost make contact with the arena roof, were very impressive at staving off attack by the ferocious Albertosaur. But the obvious hero of the show was the T-rex. The momma T-rex and her baby were very loud and quite entertaning trading roars at the audience. All in all a very entertaining show.
I found out later that Mitchell had trouble visually digesting the "dinos on wheels" concept. So that took a little bit of the magic out of the show for him. Oh well. 21st century kid. They're pretty jaded by the CGI effects. But until someone actually develops a working holodeck, or a time machine, this is the best show I could imagine.

European Tour - Postponed

I thought I should update my progress on my guitar playing. Back in June, I got a nice new guitar for my birthday from my loving wife. Well, I can play it as well, or perhaps slightly better than I could play when I was in my musical peak in high school. I have picked up on a couple of tutorial websites which, while good, have not yet coaxed me to visit them while I am holding my guitar.

I do have aspirations to pick it up again, however. I have fun with it, and it would be fun to be able to play some songs around the campfire. It would likely thrill Tannis that I had actually made the effort to put some wind into the sails of the family music schooner. Brooke is taking piano lessons and doing quite well. And next year, we will probably get Mitch in there as well.

But for now, concert dates are not confirmed. Stay tuned.

The Oasis has Landed

As I type this, my wonderful wife is having the time of her life. The long-discussed, often-fretted Oasis has begun its maiden voyage. We worked hard this morning getting everything ready. Setting up the projector, taping down cables, sound check, writing...and subsequently re-writing the PowerPoint presentation ad infinitum. Well, it seems to have paid off. It sounds great, and from where I am sitting, everything looks and sounds great.

I am very proud of her efforts. I hope she gets the buy-in from the congregation she seeks. It would be nice to offer a service that caters to the musically inclined new-agers.

There has been a large pause in the sound, so I think I'll go out and see if they need any help.

What a day!

Hope you are having a good day. I spent the morning at the regional conference. It was great to be having to answer as many questions as possible while setting up the a/v systems in 2 rooms.

Now I am at the Waverley giving advice to a user who has the mannerisms of a budgie and the attention span of a strobe light.



I hope we have some scotch left.

Camping in Blue Lake

Blue Lake is awesome! We went with the Young(?) Couples Group from FGUC to Vermillion Bay Ontario. It is about 80KM East of Kenora. This is truly a jewel.

There was a large group camping area that had a nearly new picnic shelter and washroom building. And it ran alongside the lake, so we basically had our own private beach as well.

Being that it was later in the season, we had some cooler temperatures than on past trips, but al in all, it was a really great time. There were 8 or so families, and just about 25 people. The layout threw off Tannis and I as we are not used to having such an expansive campsite. Kitchen tent and sleeping tent have never been so far apart! But we tore down the kitchen tent after a day or so due to the wind and made do in the kitchen shelter on site.

We took a canoe out for an afternoon tour around the lake. Mitch hates canoeing. 100M from shore and he wants to go back. He's so worried about the thing tipping. Dude. You're wearing a life jacket that would keep us all afloat. Relax. I tried to keep him interested by dripping water from the paddles onto his legs. He wasn't buying it. I think he got a bit too much sun on that journey, though, cuz he was a bit pissy that evening. Brooke seemed pleased enough.

I had one of those parental "ping" moments watching Brooke play with some of the other girls. They had gone off on their own to some little piece of bush beside the lake to, well...be girls. They established territory in their place on the Canadian Shield. They had a bathroom...no, two bathrooms. One for pee, and one for, well, you get it. They had a stump that the one who was talking would stand on and the rest would have to listen. There was a kitchen, and I think a living room. When I asked about the absense of the bedroom, I was told that there was NO WAY they wanted to be out here in the dark.

We went out to do a few geocaches on one of the days. It was totally fun. We did a few caches, built an anukshuk, and got some snacks. These pictures are at Wanapigow falls. There was a cache nearby, so we couldn't resist the view. Tannis was wearing the worlds worst caching shoes, so she had to be extra careful. I think we ended up finding 5 or 6 caches. So It was a productive day by anyone's measure.







We all went to Fort Vermillion to do some miniature golfing on one of the nights. Great time. Everyone had a blast. The mini golf course groundskeepers were 8 and 3 years old. But they kept a tidy course. It seems that family issues may be forcing the privately run Fort Vermillion to close. I hope not. That place is a treasure.

We ended up staying an extra night after everyone else left. The last day we spent there was kinds gross and dreary. I approached Tannis to suggest we go into Vermillion Bay to get some ice cream or hot chocolate and shop around in the general store. She beats me to the punch and says "Wanna go do that other geocache on the trail behind the fort?" Why, yes. Yes I do! I love her.

That hike turned out to be the highlight of my weekend. It is less than 2 KM, but it is absolutely beautiful. Instead of turning back on the trail and returning the way we came, we did the entire trail loop and I am so glad we did. That is a beautiful piece of the world. Loved it.

On the day we packed up, the sun was shining brightly and the temperature was nice and warm. Would have rather had this weather on the previous day, but you take what you can get.