SCHOOL HAS BEGUN

Goodbye Fairmont, its been fun as usual, but now I must isolate myself in tiny little spaces where I will study many books, eat mostly perogies and instant noodles, and wait for snow to fall so I can make good use of my season pass. Just got my student ID today, another ridiculous photo to add to the collection.  

Tomorrow we start work in the machine shop. We'll be playing around with a drill press, a band saw, and two toys I have yet to have fun with: a milling machine and a lathe. Super stoked! Our first project is a magnetic levitation device. Sounds fancy, but it's just a levitating little metal rod. I'll post a picture once it's done.

LITTLE UPDATE

Life is awesome, and I'm having an insane amount of fun. Here are some photos of me having fun.

 This is an ABC party, I'm wearing a flag in the front, a flag in the back, and a sock.

This is a fire just outside the house, super fun.

 These is the lifeguard crew! Woo-Hoo!

 This is us on a boat, we are awesome.

Beer Fest!

I found a sasquatch!

My awesome fort building abilities became super essential when it started to rain while we were doing pool renos. Biggest frickin fort I've ever built.

Went homeless in Calgary for two days during the Stampede. This is the first night. Bed sheet provided by the Sandman Inn (Table cloth from a random table in the lobby.)


Life is awesome. Haven't posted in a while just cause I haven't had a break in a while from having fun. Tough life, right? Things are gonna change real fast though when I head back to school. Super stoked about it though! I got into Mechanical Engineering at UBC! Woooo-Hooooooo!!!

All for now, more to come later!

LAST NIGHT WAS GNARLY

For the following reasons:

1. We went to Faro's for a few beers at around 8pm. We then started playing with Faro's mom's new foot massage machine. The way it works is it sends a current through one foot and out the other so your feet repeatedly get little jolts every split second. If you crank the machine to full, its impossible to stand on the dam thing, so the game was who could stand on it the longest. Faro fell over and almost took out his 50inch flat screen. I stood on there for at most 3 seconds. Then the next game was make a human circuit. So I put one foot on the thing and then grabbed somebody while they put their foot on the other pad. That worked real well. Next we went forehead to forehead and shocked the shit out of our faces. It was crazy. The two of us saw a flash for a split second, that everyone else didnt see. Not sure how to explain it. I feel like the muscles in and around our eyes did something funny when they got zapped... no idea.

2. So after seeing the white light at the end of tunnel we decided fuck this thing, lets ride the GT behind the truck through the fields. Here is the GT I created at work from a bike and some skis I found at the dump:

And here is me decked out in all the necessary safety equipment about to ride it around Faro's property:

It worked so well. holy shit. Its freaking epic. I crashed once, but I was fine --> video. Then Faro had a turn and he broke off the handlebars. It's an easy fix though, so whatever. We're gonna throw on a new pair of handle bars and tow it behind the boat on Tuesday. Super stoked for that.

3. We dressed ridiculously and went to the bar, where funny things happened, half of which I remember.

AND TONIGHT IS GONNA BE AWESOME BECAUSE IT'S BEER FEST UP AT THE SKI HILL!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

A LITTLE REMINDER OF HOW RIDICULOUS THIS PLACE IS

A couple days ago I went for a hike with Murder Mark and Tyson. The hike was maybe an hour and a bit long, up a partly snow covered logging road. Instead of drinking water like most hikers, I consumed four beers before we arrived to our camping spot. Where did we make camp? Inside a 50 foot fire tower at the top of the hill:

From the top, you could see 150km in each direction of the valley. Here’s the view towards Invermere and Fairmont:

Murder Mark on the left, Tyson on the right:

Check out the view from the front door:

That was for sure one of the top 5 awesome places I’ve ever been to.

The next day someone decided to change my birthday on Facebook so I had a fake birthday! It was awesome! I turned 22 and a half! People gave me drinks, about 200 people sang me happy-birthday in the pool, and then I did a muff diver out of a stranger’s crotch! Then at the end of my fake birthday we went to the pools as they were draining them, and slid around on the bottom of the pools. We did that until Andy slipped and smashed his face into the concrete, then we made an emergency trip to Invermere to get him stitched up. It was the most awesome fake birthday ever!

Also, there's a lifeguard (Mark) that I work with that has had 3 near death experiences in the last week. The first: we were longboarding down a two lane highway with one passing lane, and Mark gets caught in the passing lane with a truck speeding by on his left and on his right. The second: he falls asleep behind the wheel going 110km/h  and drives into the oncoming lane and smashes into the barrier. The third: he is underneath his banged up truck trying to fix something when the jack gives out. The truck's fall is stopped by a block of wood. 

It's like the movie final destination, death is out to get him or something. He is still alive as of 3 minutes ago when I saw him leave the pools. 

POOR DECISIONS MAKE GOOD STORIES

So its me, two guys on mushrooms, and one girl with her dad's truck. We're in Whistler, and with a full day to kill, we decide to go up to the hot springs near Pemberton. It's about a 100km drive, of which roughly half is by logging road. I've been there numerous times in the summer, but I've never been in the winter. Without letting anyone know where we're going, we decide to go for a soak in the springs. Poor decision #1.

This winter hasn't seen a lot of snow, and I figured the constant traffic to the spring would have kept the logging road relatively clear and drivable. Once we arrived at the turnoff to the logging road portion we see that it's icy but completely clear of snow. The girl we were with was driving and she takes the corner at an above average speed (but not unreasonably fast, I would've probably done the same) and we loose all traction and slide right into the ditch. Just as we hop out of the truck to access the situation, a tractor drives up right behind us and without much conversation the driver of the tractor throws me a chain, we hook our truck to his forks, and just like that were out of the ditch in under three minutes.

At this point I realize the truck clearly doesn't have winter tires, and is a rear wheel drive. I figure the drive might take a little longer because we would have to drive more cautiously, but we would still be able to make it to the springs. We decide to continue on our way to the hot spring. Poor decision #2.

As we continue down the logging road, the snow on the ground gradually becomes deeper and deeper. About 20km in, we re-access the situation. We've gotten stuck twice already although it wasn't anything major, and the road has become less of a road and more of a bunch of powder with two tire tracks for us to drive in, kinda like this:

I, along with the other two guys, expressed that we were indifferent to continuing or turning back. The girl driving points out that if we turn back now then the last 70km would have been completely pointless. She hasn't had any previous experience driving on snow covered roads and despite feeling a little uncomfortable driving, she chooses to continue. Poor decision #3.

At around kilometer 41 we arrive at a steep hill and the truck clearly can't go any further. I recognized the area and I knew the springs were at most another kilometer away, but at this point the girl driving begins having an emotional breakdown. And so after about 2 hours of driving we decide to turn around and go home. Our first wise decision.

Unfortunately turning around is much easier said than done. The truck is stuck on a narrow and steep section of road with about 30cm of snow on the ground, and a drop off on one side. I wouldn't turn around here in the summer if I had to. And the icing on the cake? There is no cellphone reception here. Awesome.

First thing, I tell the girl that we need to back the car down to a less steep section of road, a maneuver that she is currently too emotional to accomplish, so I get behind the wheel and back the car down and few dozen metres. Next, we needed to clear enough snow off the road to be able to pull a 25 point turn. Of course we didn't bring shovels so we used two snowblades and a pair of snowshoes. This was the best idea I could come up with, the girl kept whining about how the car would get more stuck and that we would never be able to get out of here, along with a lot of other things that didn't help our situation out a whole lot. She was having a very tough time keeping a calm head. I ignored her and focused on getting the car turned around because I knew it once we were facing back the way we came, she would calm right down.

Once we cleared enough snow, I got behind the wheel and went for the turn. The truck turned about 45 degrees on the steep slope and as predicted, became more stuck. Now the girl had been pretty emotional up to this point, but when she could see that the truck is now more stuck than it was before, she really started to freak out. Once again... not helping our situation. I continued ignoring her. One of the guys on mushrooms also starts to freak out. Also not helping our situation. The two of them decide to walk up the hill to find a more open place to turn the car around. The hill they walk up is the reason we are trying to turn around in the first place. I tell them "Awesome! Good idea!"

They left and I finally had some time to think clearly without anybody whining down my throat. The truck doesn't have enough traction to drive out of this. It has to be dragged or pushed into place so that it could drive along the tracks created by other drivers. I definitely remember wishing a guy would drive by on his tractor again. Then the one guy who stayed with me came up with the most brilliant idea I've heard all day. He suggested rocking the truck back and forth and sliding the front around. At first I was a little skeptical, but after trying it quickly just the two of us we were able to move the front about 5 inches. Once the other two came back down to the truck and heard our plan, they calmed down and started helping out. By now the mood got a little brighter I was able to get these two shots of our progress:

Although these photos clearly show the predicament we were in, the definitely don't clearly describe the mood everyone was in about 30 minutes earlier.

Once the car was finally turned around, we made our way back home without another incident.

A MOMENT OF REFLECTION: A lot of shitty decisions were made that day. I will be much better equipped the next time I try going up there in the winter, and I will tell someone that I'm going up there before I head out. ....holyfuck.

BEEN UP TO NO GOOD

A couple days ago I had a pretty boring day that ended in me sneeking into a construction site with a few friends and climbing up a crane. It was terrifying for the following reasons:
1. It was insanely high up.
2. There was a cop parked 15 metres from the bottom of the crane with his lights on; who as it turns out was just checking the ID of a guy biking by.
3. There was another construction site across the street. In that construction site there was a guy in a safety vest staring at the top of the crane. He was on the phone talking to someone when we started climbing down.
We got out of that place pretty quick. I was able to take this before we left:

HOME BREW POTENCY TEST

So we started brewing our own beer recently, and a few nights ago I volunteered myself as the guinea pig to test out how alcoholic our beer turned out. We bottled our beer in 500ml plastic bottles, and after each one that I finished, Raphy would administer a few drunk tests and record the results (along with comments) in an excel sheet. The "simon score" was this test. Here is said excel sheet: