Quesadivas

Shannon and I have been incredibly busy preparing for a concert with a ladies singing group called the Quesadivas. Our performance was last night and afterwards there was a champagne reception. Here is a picture of Rodric, Brennan,myself and our accompanist Rob Lowe at the reception. BTW, the concert went well and I think everyone had a good time.

Happy Birthday Brennan!!!

Hey Bren, here's wishing you a very happy twenty second birthday. I hope you get out to celebrate a bit--but try to keep things under control, okay?

Secret Weapon eh?

I thought it was pretty funny!

Synchronized swimming redux

Since I know you've all been on the edge of your seats since last week, here's part 2.

Grammar for dad

'looking back on things, If I had paid attention in my English linguistics class in first year, I definately would have been better with my English grammar (pluperfect subjunctive). That I have not done so, is clearly reflected in my lack of knowledge of various grammatical tenses (present perfect subjunctive). So had I but known that the pluperfect subjunctive and other obscure grammatical tenses interested you so, I would have enquired further to my professors and perhaps have been able to clarify things further for you (pluperfect subjunctive). However, I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't seen your comment about it on dave's post...(pluperfect subjunctive). However, if I were to continue writing this thing, then I might not do so well on my math midterm...(future subjunctive). You might be interested in this ;)

Published Author

My first "published" writing.

Click here.

Sorry it was so light and fluffy...my editors wanted something accessible to everyone :)

Update: you can even digg-it now:

Digg away!

HALLOOOWEEEEEEEN!!!

So...due to the fact that halloween falls on a weekday, and that week I have two midterms, Justin, Julie and I decided to go out and celebrate last night! We were witchdoctor, cannibal, savages, and Julie was an 80's 'it girl' with a powder problem...and for some reason we were the only dressed up people in the club that night...but hey! It was awesome! We had a great time.

The Humility of Humidity

Figured it was time for a new post in the Entertainment Section. This is what happens to me when I get tumbled by a few waves, have my stuff washed out to sea in a tide I wasn't watching, then drive home for over an hour in a thunderstorm. Enjoy.

Submarine anyone?

Wahoo! Screw the hummer and the ferrari! I want this!! I just need to dig up the $78million to buy it...that's a lotta trees...
Click here!

From-The-Somebody-Needs-A-Life Dept.

Apple's NY Fifth Avenue store is an 'insult to Islam'

The original article is here and does it's absolute best to make it look as bad as possible by using a picture of the building while it was under construction almost half a year ago.

PS I have been in several Apple Stores, and never once have I had anything close to an alcoholic beverage.

Correction...I have had a virgin rum and coke in an Apple Store. My apologies. Sigh.

Shower at Shuswap

Although the master bathroom is not quite finished, we are thrilled with our new shower. It has had a trial run and the water flows, the jets jet, the radio plays, the steam steams, the ozone sterilizes and the phone rings. Wow!!!

Thanksgiving in Canada

We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. Here are a few shots of the feast--and one of the ineveitable work that one has at the end of the season.

Salmon Run 2006

Yesterday Rodric and I went to see the salmon run in the Adams River for the third time. This time I brought my underwater camera and got some cool footage... here are a few pics, and if you want to see a video go to:



For those of you who don't know anything about sockeye salmon, basically what happens is that they are born in a river, they swim to the sea and hang out there for 4 years, and then something inexplicable happens and they decide to return to the exact spot that they were born to lay their eggs. The female digs a hole with her tail, puts in the eggs, then a male comes along and fertilizes them, they get buried, then both parents die. For some reason every fourth year (being this year) is a particularly large run, and the spawning grounds are packed with red salmon. As well as these live ones that you see, there were hundreds of dead ones floating along the shores which attract lots of birds and bears, etc. It's really amazing to see. Canada's version of the Great Migration... or something.

Seeking a stripper

One of the more interesting job descriptions I've ever seen:

Seeking a stripper

followed by:

Seeking a transvestite

That being said, I just realized that we missed the new Cirque Show "Delerium" which was here in San Jose. Sigh...

More Sea 2 Summit Pics

I added a couple of more pictures from Mom to the set of Sea to Summit Pictures.

Click Here!

Sea 2 Summit 2006 - Race Report

The Sea 2 Summit is one of Canada's premier adventure races. I did it back in 2002, and this year, Bren and I decided to do it as Team Cardiac Arrest.

(You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger version. See the bottom of this posting for some links to the photo albums. Warning, this is pretty long)

Rough Google Earth Map of the Race
Thursday Sept 7, 06

Mary, Don, Jen, Keira and I drove from Shuswap out to Whistler via the Pemberton highway. We got to Whistler in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel room at the Tantalus lodge. I rebuilt my bike and we went out for Thai food before calling it in for an early evening.

Friday Sept 8, 06

Since Ecomarine wouldn't allow Brennan to strap the kayak to his car with no roof racks, I ended up having to drive down to Vancouver to pick up the kayak and drop off a whole pile of stuff at Bren's new pad. I picked up a hitchhiker along the way who turned out to be a really cool guy so at least I had some company on the way down. After dropping Cody off at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, I met Bren and Julie down at Ecomarine and we strapped our rented two person kayak on to the roof of Mary and Don's mini van. We then drove to Brennan's new digs, and dropped off all of his stuff. While we were there we realized that Brennan was supposed to be picking up his rental bike in Whistler in about 45 minutes. After a panicked phone call to Mary and Don, Don got sent off to the rental place to pick up the bike and Julie, Bren and I headed off to Whistler.

Once we got to Whistler, Bren, Julie and I raced over to the conference center for the pre-race briefing. Keira had been sick in the afternoon, so Jen stayed with her to give Mary and Don a break. At the briefing we found our what we were going to do.

The first day was pretty much in three stages. Starting at 0800, we were going to kayak 23 km down the Pemberton river, at which point we were going to transition to our bikes and peddle from approximately 45 km from Pemberton to Whistler. Once we reached Whistler our time officially "stopped" but we had to go to three places in Whistler and do some activities before checking in at the final check point at the bottom of Whistler Gondola. The bike ride was described as "epic" on some brand new trail. Dean, the race director, expected the fastest riders to finish the ride in about 4 hours, and told us to expect about 6 to 8 km of "hike-a-bike".

On the second day we were going to start from the base of the Gondola, and ride up the mountain, and then down into Whistler Creekside. From there we were going to ride up to Emerald Lake where we would transition to our kayaks for a quick paddle up the lake and back. Once we finished kayaking we were going to go out on a short run with some navigational components before racing back to the base of the Gondola once more. Sounded pretty cut and dried. Once we got back from the briefing we packed up our stuff and got ready for the next morning.

Saturday Sept 8, 06

Keira spent the night throwing up, so Dave and Jen got virtually no sleep. At 0600 Don was enlisted to take Jen's place as a support person, and Don, Julie, Bren and Dave hopped in the van and headed up about 23 km north of Pemberton where the race was to begin. We got there about 20 minutes before the start, so Dave checked in while Don, Julie and Bren got the kayak down to the river's edge. It was at this point that Dave realized that Ecomarine had been kind enough to supply him with two female paddle ends, which weren't going to do him much good.

Luckily the Ecomarine representative was there at the starting line, and had a couple extra paddles lying around. Dave and Bren frantically got ready to go, doing final kayak adjustments, and trying to think of any last minute things to take care of. At about 0800 Dean called us all in for the final pre-race briefing, and then off we went. We were a little slow getting going in the kayak, but it didn't take us long to get the hang of it.



We were paddling down river which was really nice, but there was an incredible strong up stream wind blowing which was a royal pain. In some places it was blowing so hard that the surface water was blowing up stream, while the lower water was flowing downstream causing weird little disruptions in the water. It was also at this point in the race that Bren and I realized that we had rented a really slow kayak...or else we really suck as paddlers. Since I refuse to believe the latter, and it's way easier to blame my problems on someone else, we're going to blame the stupid kayak. Bren also discovered how the lumbar support in the kayak worked which made paddling far easier on his back.



After two solid hours of paddling we got to the first transition point where Don and Julie took over with the kayak while Bren and I stretched out sore arms. We grabbed some food and hopped on our bikes for the upcoming epic ride.



After a small mixup where Dave thought they'd gone the wrong way we got into some serious peddling. The trail we were following was called the Soo Valley Trail. It had fallen into serious disrepair and had been "resurrected" by the Sea2Summit crew. It was supposedly all well marked by pink flags and tape, so it should have been easy to follow. The first bit followed some really well established trails which aside from being very sandy were pretty easy riding. Slowly though the trail became worse and worse. We started having to carry our bikes up lots of hills and had to be extremely careful on the downhills to avoid losing the trail. At one point Bren was chasing after one of the other racers when I noticed that he had gone flying past a turn off and luckily he managed to hear me yelling at him before he went to far down the hill. The views of the valley were absolutely incredible, but we had to fight our way up for everyone of them. At several points we nearly got lost because of almost non-existant trail markes. At one point we ended up near a construction site, and the trail builders got extremely creative going around it by running us straight through a swamp with several fallen trees on it. At another location it was so steep that it required throwing your bike on your back and scrambling up an embankment hand over hand. Once we got to the top we had a crazy downhill ride through some young alders which were all exactly face high. As long as you were happy not being able to see anything, and having your face clawed at by trees it was a great ride. We saw at least one pair of mangled sunglasses hanging off the branches.



At the bottom of the hill there was an incredibly beautiful but spooky swamp that looked like it was straight out of the Lord of the Rings. Sadly once we got to the bottom, they immediately sent us back up the next mountain, and what a mountain it was. I think we spent 2-3 hours slowly climbing/hiking our bikes up very steep logging roads. About two thirds of the way up Brennan ran out of water, and luckily we managed to find a stream to refill our water bags. At about four fifths of the way up (after about six hours of peddling) we found out that they were starting to cut teams off at the bottom of the mountain for being too slow. We finally made it to the top and had a ripper of a ride down about 7 km of fast single track to the final timed check point. Since we had to ride through the village to get to the Gondola, the race directors wanted us to head through the village at a safe speed. To make it interesting we had to do a little scavenger hunt along the way which is where we met "Killer Kailey" and some of the other racers.




We finally crawled over the finish line about 10 hours after we started where I found out that Jen and Keira has spent the day at the hospital trying to get Keira straightened out. Luckily everyone was reasonably ok, so we headed back to the hotel room where Bren and I cleaned up ourselves and our gear and we chowed down on some well deserved pizza before crashing for the night.


Sunday Sept 9, 06


0600 rolled around and so Bren and I rolled out of bed. Our support team was bushed so we let them sleep while we made our way over to the base of the Gondola with the other racers. This morning was going to start with a 30km bike. We started with a mass start at 0700 and started riding straight up the mountain. We then sped down to Creekside and had a great ride through some awesome Whistler single track. Aside from a small incident with my seat colliding extremely solidly with some sensitive bits of my anatomy we had a really good ride, both of us cranking up some really solid hills. We got down to the transition point and hopped in our kayaks. We later found out that our lovely support crew had been woken up by Mom at 8:15, and had made it to the transition point minutes before we got there.



The paddle took us down the River of Golden Dreams onto Emerald Lake. The river itself was a cool paddle in that it was narrow and twisty, but we ran into some problems with it being very shallow, and actually ended up grounding ourselves at a couple of points requiring us to jump out and drag the kayak. After about an hour or so on the water, we got back to the transition point, and grabbed our running shoes to go for a bit of a jog.



The final stage required us to do some basic navigation on the running trails up above Whistler, finding 5 check points that were hidden in the woods. We ended up joining teams with Mike, a solo racer who was moving about the same speed we were. Bren was in charge of navigation, so I was running out in front calling out trail names while he was keeping us located on the map. All of a sudden Bren yelled out "Dave! Bear!" and I froze on the trail. Right beside me was a big black labrador retriever taking a dump behind a log. To give Bren full credit, it was black, it had four legs, and it was furry, but I wasn't in any danger short of being licked to death. We ended up finding the five check points pretty quickly, and headed back to the finish line. On the way back we followed a team of four and ended up finding ourselves on the wrong side of the river. We decided to ford the river and ended up getting soaked yet again as we mushed through the river. We finally made it across the finish line just before noon.

We had a nice afternoon/evening in Whistler, and our friend Scott Ferris drove up to see us for the evening. We headed to the awards ceremony that was amazingly unorganized as per usual, but got to see a nice slide show of all the pictures taken on the race.



I ended up catching Keira's tummy bug, and spent Monday night being violently ill. The original plan was that we were going to leave for Vancouver bright and early Monday morning to see folks, but since I could hardly move, we didn't end up getting out of Whistler until about noon. Sorry to everybody in Vancouver that we accidentally ended up ignoring/snubbing due to my disease. You really didn't want to see me. As it turns out Judy and Al came up on Saturday to visit with Mary and Don while we were our racing, and both Judy and Don ended up sick as well. Jen got a touch of it too, so it was pretty contagious.

After spending the evening at Petey's place we headed back to San Fran first thing Tuesday morning, and I ended up being back in the office before my office mate made it in.

Total time taken for the race was 13 hours and 57 minutes; 9:17:41 the first day and 4:40:15 the second day. We came in 11th overall in our category. We actually did significantly better the second day compared to some other teams by coming in 9th, but we didn't make up enough time to make it into 10th place.

The ride the first day was a killer. To give you an idea, our average speed on it was only 6-7 km/hour. I probably could've run a good chunk of the trail faster than we biked it. Even the fastest teams who were expected to take about 4 hrs, took over 5 hrs to do it. As you can see from the pictures, there was more than a little hike-a-bike going on.

According to the official results:

Day 1	Day 2
Kayak 2:04:00 (23 km)	Bike 1:14:00 (6 km) <- This must be wrong...there's no way it was only a 6 km bike.
Bike 7:13:41 (45 km)	Paddle: 1:59 :00(19 km)
	Run: 1:27:00 (12 km)

Massive amounts of thanks go to our support crew (Julie, Jen, Mary & Don) for getting us there, fed, accommodated and taken care of. We can't thank you guys enough for all the work you did. We know that being support crew is a boring job, but we hope you know how much we appreciate it. Bren and I had a great time, even if we looked like we were in a lot of pain. Hopefully you guys enjoyed yourselves as well. Double round of thanks to Mary and Don for the amazing babysitting they did, and arranging dinners at odd hours due to mix ups.

Thanks also to Scotty for putting us up for the evening in Vancouver, and Bren's roommate Justin dealing with us crashing at their place for a while due to a mix up with keys.

Team Cardiac Arrest Photo Album. Mostly taken by Julie Rieter
Official Sea2Summit Photo Album. Gives you a better idea of some of the terrain.
Killer Kailey's Photo Album

Whistler

WAHOO!!! Justin and I went to Whistler on Friday, and rode on Friday and Saturday...we had an amazing time. The riding style was slightly different from the weekend before...;). I had a new found confidence riding, and my style and ability soared...litterally. I was finally able to dirt jump and do things that before I only dreamed of. So here are some of the better pictures...enjoy! (I dunno how to make the thumbnails work...sorry dave can you help there?

August 5, 2006

Happy fifth anniversary to Dave and Jennifer! What a party we had five years ago. You two have had an amazing five years! Congratulations. We all wish you many more years and much happiness.

Funky!

If you don't have a video camera this may be very boring :)

Get Human!

Sorry...this is for folks who have to deal with US companies only, but I think it's a killer resource

How to speak to a human via phone support

Windows Give No Tongue...

If it's printed in the paper, it must be true....

Caution mildly disturbing...

Too much time....

I'll let the link talk for itself...

Space Invaders!

Worth a look see...

So I went out for a ride...

So I went out for a ride on Saturday morning to do some training as I can't let Army Boy even think about kicking my butt on Sea 2 Summit. My favorite "how fit am I" training evaluation is to bike to Henry Coe, go for a run, and bike back (Click here for GoogleEarth Tracks). I've measured myself on this particular course a couple of times, so it's a great way of evaluating my overall fitness. As I was heading up towards Coe I passed a man who had stopped to adjust some stuff on his bike. I nodded at him to make sure he was alright and continued on my way. As I was on my mountain bike and he was on his road bike, I tried to see how long I could stay ahead of him. After about 6 hard miles he caught up to me, and the chat went something like this (edited as to not bore the reader to tears):

Him: Nice pace. I didn't think you could hold me off for that long.

Dave: Well it only cost me a couple of coughed up body parts that I left along the way.

Him: How do you like your bike?

I was riding my 2002 Specialized Stumpjumper FSRxc

Dave: Love this bike...I've put some serious miles on it, and it's never let me down.

Him: You changed the rear shock. Why?

Dave: My Fox Shock wore out...

Him: They wouldn't rebuild it for you?

Dave: Nope...they wanted to sell me a new one, and I got the Cane Creek for way less

Him: Hmmm...

Dave: You know your bikes. Do you work for Specialized?

Him: Yep

Dave: What do you do for them?

Him: I'm the president

Dave: uhhhh....I'm Dave...

Mike: Nice to meet you...I'm Mike.

We chatted for a few more minutes, and then he dropped me. Now for those of you who don't know, Mike Sinyard is a mountain bike god. He designed the first StumpJumper back in 1981, and has been working with them ever since. I'm very sad because I hadn't had a chance to clean or oil my poor 'jumper (which I usually do regularly), and it was creaking so badly as I was peddling up the hill, that I had cranked my iPod to drown out the noise...what did Mike think? Sigh... :)

Sea 2 Summit 2006

It's now official. Bren and I are going to do Sea 2 Summit Whistler the Sept 9/10th weekend. We'll be racing as Team Cardiac Arrest.

If anybody wants to come up to Whistler to cheer us on, we'd love to see you.

How geeks waste time...

Go to:

http://n.nfshost.com

You are allowed to look at the source, and you are allowed to change the URL. Can you make it to the finish?

This little puzzle probably cost Google a couple of million in "wasted" time alone :)

Sacre Bleu! Tabernacle! Ou est le sirop?

Thieves Steal $1 000 000 syrup

How on earth do you fence 270 000 kg of syrup?

Also, according to this very official looking paper the density of maple syrup is about 1.25 g/ml. At 270 000 kg, that gives you 270 000 000 g of syrup, so you get 216 000 000 ml of syrup, or 216 000 litres of syrup. According to this price sheet, that's closer to $3 615 300 000 (yes that is 3.6 BILLION) dollars of syrup. Now we know that the province of Ontario enjoys fleecing the tourists, but even still...

BTW for our American audience, I realize this is all in Canadian dollars and all those colours (yes coloUrs) can be awfully confusing at times...but even still, that's 3.2 BILLION US.

Edit - who knows what I did on my math. As my Dad has kindly pointed out in the comments it's only (ONLY) $2 892 240...I somehow added a small factor of 10^3 in there. Oops.

Hummingbirds

We have been enjoying watching the development of two hummingbird chicks in a nest near Gran's deck. Although they are still in the nest we think they are almost ready to fly and will likely leave soon.

Summer at Shuswap Lake

We celebrated Robert French's birthday today. Included in the celebration were our very good friend's from Burbank--Jim and Ann Atkinson. Of course Joan and Dutchie were there. The kids are Holly and Piper French as well as their cousins Hanna and Elias.

The Big Surprise

So for two weeks now Rodric has been telling me about this "Big Surprise" that he has planned for us after I finished teaching. He wouldn't tell me what it was, but kept giving me hints like "we need to take a ferry", "You need your tent", "It is really fancy and expensive", etc. etc. He said that we wouldn't be able to leave on this trip until Sunday or Monday, but that we could go for as long or as short a trip as I'd like and to celebrate my last night of school he would borrow his buddy's boat so that we could cruise around in English Bay for a couple of hours on Friday night. He even suggested that I invite friends along on this evening journey, so I asked Tom and Cecile if they'd like to cruise around and share some wine with us as well.
Meanwhile, in preparation for "The Big Surprise", Rodric has been running around like a madman, not sleeping, giggling at all hours of the night, and telling me repeatedly that I am "going to flip". I started truly believing that he really is nuts, because all the while he was also suggesting things like, "I think I'll go get us a little place up in North Van on the water..." "Don't you think we need a new vehicle?" "I think I'll put an offer in on a charter yacht..." "Maybe we should get some crab traps."
Now, after all of this, in my logical mind, I'm thinking that he has a serious spending issue and can't tell dreams from reality. I'm envisaging a) a new vehicle b) a very expensive open-ended journey c) a new water-front apartment in North Van d) a huge mortgage on some cruiser in the Caribbean... and all of this while we're planning to leave the country in 2 months for an unknown length of time. I'll admit that I had a breakdown on Thursday while he was in the middle of telling me about all of his dreams... he promised that it would all make sense soon.
OK. So the point of this story.
I finished work yesterday. Rodric told me to go to the Granville Island Ferry dock, so I did... with a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers, all ready for an evening of floating in English Bay on his buddy's boat.
Sure enough, he showed up, in this:


And I hopped on board and said that his buddy is Mr. Fancypants. Rodric said, "Do you like it?" Of course I did, and was immediately wandering down into the cabin and opening doors, etc...
He then said, "Good. Because it's ours."
We also own the boathouse that it's parked in, under the Second Narrows Bridge in North Van. This is the new apartment and the holiday (he's taking me cruising through the Gulf Islands this week) and the reason for all of the odd giggles and unexplained stress. It's been his life-long dream to own a boat on which he can travel, so now we have her... all 30 feet of her, with new teak throughout and a brand-new engine that hasn't even been broken in for 6 hours yet.
I'm still trying to absorb it. In the meantime, we're off to spend the night at a local island. (The hints about the ferry ride, tent, etc. were all just to throw me off... as if I'd guess it or something!)

Jumping the snake

So tonight Taita, Keira and I headed up to Anderson lake park to go for a quick after dinner hike. It's one of our favorite "quickie" hikes, as it's got a nice 15 minute walk down to the reservoir where Taita can get some swimming in. As I was unloading Keira from the car and getting her tucked into the backpack, a convertible pulled up with a woman with two very excited dogs. The dogs immediately jumped out of the car, and ran past us headed for the park. I was busy futzing with the backpack trying to put the sun shade on it, and Taita was locked up in the car, so I didn't give them a second thought. The lady chased after them yelling at them to get back here this instant, when all of a sudden I heard her scream. I quickly stood up and looked around the car just in time to see one of the dogs get struck by a snake that was lying in the middle of the trail. I don't even think the dog had noticed the snake, and if the lady hadn't screamed it probably would have ran right by, but unfortunately "Jackson" had frozen at the sound of the scream, and ended up standing right on top of the snake.

Jackson came back to his owner immediately and hadn't yelped or anything, so I don't really think he got bitten. I think the snake made a mock attack to try and scare him away. The lady appeared to be a little confused and not sure what to do, so I told her to get Jackson down to the vet immediately to get him checked out, and to tell the vet that she thought Jackson may have been bitten by a medium sized Western Rattlesnake. She asked how I knew it was a rattler, so I stepped towards it and settled any doubts she may have had. (click here).

While she was loading her other dog in the car, I quickly examined Jackson and didn't see any bite marks. He also didn't seem too upset to have me rubbing up and down his legs, and since I understand that rattlesnake bites usually have a burning sensation, he should have gotten at least slightly upset about me checking him out. The lady was understandably upset, but I think I calmed her down a bit when I told her I couldn't see anything, and that even if he did get bitten, that snakes only use venom about 50% of the time. It's actually between 50-75% of the time for rattlesnakes, but I was trying to make her feel better while at the same time still keeping her scared enough to go to the vet immediately for Jackson's sake.


She finished loading the dogs and sped off down the road, I went back to the trail and watched the snake for a minute or two. He was about 60-70 cm long, and was quite happy to shake his rattle at me while I watched him. I found a stick just off the trail, and used it to convince him to disappear into the grass. After making sure he was going to keep going I went back and grabbed Keira and Taita and we headed off on our hike which was pretty uneventful after that, although I must admit I was a bit more careful about where I stepped, and kept Taita's leash a little tighter than usual :)

Click here to download a Google Earth link to where it happened.

Jumping The Shark

I recently heard someone use the phrase "jumped the shark" and had no clue what it meant. As per usual, a quick search found a great definition which cleared things up immediately. Well this week I saw something that causes me to believe that our entire species has jumped the shark, and really we should just give up now:

Humanity has truly reached a new low.

Understanding Boredom

OK, I like being bored the same way that Dave gets bored. It can be fun out here in Geek-land.




(See? I always wanted to be a Disney Princess....)