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:

THINGS THAT BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

This epic dank blanket fort in our living room.

DINNERS

Now some people in the house have been surprised by how much I eat, and have asked me to take pictures of my dinners for a week. After much anticipation, here it is:

Day 1. Left over yams and potatoes, cucumber, beans, leftover lasagna, all sprinkled with cheese, with ketchup and sour cream.

Day 2: More leftover yams and potatoes, a sliced up red pepper, a fried hot dog, cooked egg white and an uncooked yolk on top, sprinkled with some kind of greens I found in the fridge.

Day 3: I was really hungry this day and ate most of the food before I remembered to take a photo. It started off being chicken, more of those leftover potatoes, way too much sauce of some kind, cooscoos?  maybe some kind of stir-fry? and of course cucumbers on the side to make me feel like I'm eating healthy.

Day 4: Ten perogies, a pack of noodles, sliced peppers and baby carrots, and a couple pieces of bread.

Day 5: Perogies, russian salad similar to potato salad (except WAAAAY better), a tomatoe, and buckwheat on the side. A true meal from the mother land.

Day 6: Hella mash potatoes, salad, beans on beans, and some carrots.

Day 7: Omelate with slices of hot dog, a bunch of pasta and sauce, and salad.

LIFE IN A HOUSE FULL OF JEWS

Let me explain my current living situation. I live in a house with eight other students on 28th and Granville. They are all friends I made at the Jewish summer camp that I have been attending for the last three years.

I've been procrastinating about writing this post for a while because of school, but here we go, this is my house:

This is my room! I share a room with Madi, plus we have a guest bed in our room. We also have a fireplace for some strange reason.

This is the master bedroom bathroom. There are no showers that aren't connected to rooms, so there are three people other than Me and Madi that also use this shower.

This is Rachelle's room. She is currently taking care of her dog Charlie while her parents are vacationing somewhere.

This is Finn's room. You can't see it but there is a hallway IN HIS ROOM that leads to a bathroom. There are a few things in this house that are strangely designed, that hallway is one of them.

Zach's room. He has samari swords on his wall. #swagferdayz

In the other double room we've got the honerable Isaac Kool and Brandon Awesome.

 

This is the view from the front door. Stairs go up to the upstairs bedrooms, to the left is the living room and to the right is the dinning room.

The living room!

The dinning room! The table you see is one of two that I built for the house. Both tables are 4ft by 8ft to accomodate the nine people living here plus the endless stream of visitors that mooch off of us. In the two weeks we have been in this house, he have had only one dinner with just the nine of us. Today we had seven extra people over for dinner. Three are friends of Leo's, one is Raphy's girlfriend who is over most of the time, and the other three are a group of Australian travellers that are staying with us for three days while they figure out where they're going next.

 

This is our kitchen plus a breakfast table. Our kitchen is gigantic. Its awesome.

Im not sure what to call this room. Its like a chill video gaming spot with a comfy couch. Also to the left is our second fridge because there is no way all of our food could possibly fit in one fridge.

This is our awesome garage! On the left at the top is all our bikes, they hang from the ceiling and are easily taken down with the ladder. Its awesome because they are out of the way but easily accessible at any time. In the middle there is a circle of couches and bean bags where people can get together and smoke hookah. There is also a hanging hammock seat type of thing in the circle of seats. To the left is our squat cage and bench press courtesy of summer camp! I also found four mirrored sliding doors for two of the bedroom closets and put them up in front of the workout equipment. It has basically everything I ever use at a gym. I basically have a gym in my garage. ALSO! There are official gymnastics rings that are attached to the ceiling which we work out on!! They are up in the photo and you can't see them but they hang directly in front of the workout equipment.

This is Leo's room. It has the smallest floor area out of all the rooms, but the tallest ceiling in the house. It was quickly decided that a loft bed was a definite necessity, so I made him one! His room has three stories, the first is the bed, the next is his study area, and the lowest level is a crawl space which is accessed through a trap door in the floor. This room went from being unwanted by everyone, to one of the more awesome rooms in the house.

Raphy's room is very orange, as you can see. He recently traded a bed frame for his textbooks so that he wouldn't have to sleep with his matress on the floor. Trouble is that the bedframe didn't come with cross sections to lay down so that your matress would be elevated. He is still sleeping on a matress on the floor except now a bedframe runs around the perimeter of his matress. I'm not sure what he is doing with his life.

A big thanks to the Fairmont Hot Springs ski hill for donating this wonderfull chairlift sign to our lovely home! We hung it in front of the main bathroom that visitors use.

Zach mentioned a few days ago how he came to the realization that we live in the best possible situation that students could possibly live in. The only way it could be better is if we lived in a tropical location or a 5 minute walk away from the beach. I strongly agree with what he said, this place is awesome. I am thankful that I made the decision to live here and I see myself staying here for the next few years to come.

JEWISH SUMMER CAMP

This will be my last summer here. Nothing shocks me or surprises me anymore, which is what made me fall in love with camp in the first place. I'm falling out of love.

That's not to say nothing fun has happened at all. So far I've bathed in 40 litres of cheese sauce, stolen three locks of hair (one from a dog,) shit in a bag, dyed my hair blue, and gotten completely naked and painted clothes onto myself.

ALSO! I've also recently found a new cliff jumping spot on the island. The drop is about 40-55 feet depending on tides. After more than a month of doing absolutely nothing remotely close to the things we did in Fairmont, the 50 foot drop into the ocean was amazing. When I landed in the water I looked up to see my friends jumping down and I remember having a feeling of uncontainable joy. I screamed and cheered as they wailed their way from the ledge into the ocean with me. I found it impossible to contain my excitement and I loved it. The rush lasted the whole day, and it made me feel happier about being at camp. It made me realize that being at camp is only going to be as fun as I make it. This was a huge thing for me to realize. From this point on until the end of camp I've made a commitment to myself to always actively seek out activities that will bring out contagious uncontainable joy in people.

Aside from camp life, I'm really looking forward to living in Vancouver starting in September. The seven of us here have been talking about it a lot recently and the general vibe is very positive. It's going to be awesome, get stoked.

I'VE LEFT THE ROCKIES

I think that was the most fun I've ever had. I shot a rifle. I decapitated an elk. I got branded, twice. I took a truck off a jump. I shit myself on a golf course. I grew a moustache. I walked through a party naked. I had an awesome job. I licked a stranger's face. I drove to the top of a ski hill. I got ten stiches. I summited a few mountains. And I've made friends that are going to last a lifetime.

I wanted my last night in Fairmont to be memorable so I went out and bought eight bottles of tequila and declared it tequila night in Fairmont Hot Springs. Not as many people showed up as I had imagined so there was a lot more tequila than we could drink. Because of this, two people ended up spending the night in the hospital. One guy tripped and fell on a broken bottle and slit his wrist, and one girl had to get her stomach pumped. Tequila night was most definitely memorable.

The next day we still had four bottles left. I gave away three and decided to drink the fourth one before I had to jump on the Greyhound. I had to transfer in Golden and jump on a different bus. I arrived in Golden at 9:30pm and my next bus didn't arrive until 11pm. With all this time to kill, I decided to hike up a mountain with my longboard. Once I got to the top of the hill I sat down on my board and fell asleep. Without an alarm of any kind, I miraculously woke up at 10:45pm and calmly hiked back down to the bus stop and caught my next bus. Had I woken up 15 minutes later, my night would have been so much more eventful than it had to be.

Here's a picture of some of the most increadible people in Fairmont. I'm gonna miss you guys, and I promise I'll be back to see all of you again.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Yesterday my day began with work. I showed up at the pools a little early and put on my pool renovations outfit (short-shorts hiked up really high, a t-shirt wrapped around my head covering everything except my eyes, and guitar sunglasses.) I then climb into a shelf and sat there until everybody else showed up. This is what happened when they arrived:

http://youtu.be/LmkbEZ7upd8

With pool renovations going on, the last couple of days have been all grinding, patching and painting. Yesterday was a painting day. We stopped for lunch at around 11:30 and fired up the barbeque. With lunch usually being cold sandwiches in a staff room filled with old people, burgers in the sun with all the other lifeguards is a pleasant change. We ran out of burgers quickly so we decided to take a gander through the staff room to see if we could top up our bellies with whatever they were having. We grabbed some potatoes and sat down inside to eat them. Just then a group of new staff were doing their orientation walk through the staff room. The only logical thing I could think of doing at that point was putting on my face turban and guitar sunglasses and just staring at them. The guy running the walk through didnt notice me, but everybody else definitely did. I could see people trying to look away and focus on the orietation that was going on, but it was a loosing battle for them.

After working in the sun all day, we needed a way to cool down. The reservoir near the resort seemed like the best way. It was so cold and refreshing, exactly what we all needed. I did a barrel roll and a gainer off the building. Tyson lost a bet and had to sit in the water for 10 minutes. Then we all threw rocks at a towel that I was holding and the rules were as follows:

1. Everybody (except me) gets to throw only one rock at the towel.
2. If you hit the towel I (Max) must lick a strangers elbow.
3. If you dont hit the towel, you must lick a strangers elbow.
4. If you hit me with a rock, you must lick a strangers face.

Two people missed the towel, two people hit the towel, and two people hit me.

Then we split into two teams. Team one was in charge of getting rifles and ammo, team two was in charge of going to the driving range and stealing a backpacks worth of golf balls. We all met back at the point and shot golf balls and guns off the edge into the slews. We also rode dirt bikes around. Go teams.

The day doesnt end there. We then went to a party to fulfill our elbow and face licking challenges from earlier that day. I got an elbow, while my room mate licked a guys face. For whatever reason, he chose a guy with huge arms. Goddam. He is still alive today, go room mate. Also at the party, we played a game called Indian-Inch. Its where you go around the party finishing peoples beer that they left sitting around. Its a great way to get very intoxicated for no money at all. It is also disgusting and socially unacceptable, #whateverfuck.

LIFE IN THE ROCKIES

Feels like one gigantic long weekend. I like it.

180 PERSON BUSH PARTY

When we began gathering wood for the bonfire party a month early, I knew this party was going to be considerably bigger than anything I've ever been to. Two weeks ago when we were told that we would be getting DJ's coming out to our party I just about crapped myself. They said they would come out if we could make them a stage and get them a generator. What I love about the people here is when they are presented with a challenge they immediately think of ways to work their way through it. We built a stage out of the remains of a six-plex and fixed up a generator with a broken pull cord. Bam! We got DJ's!

The next obstacle we had to overcome was raising the money we needed to cover all of our expenses for the party. We bought two kegs, and the DJs wanted $450 to cover their travel expenses to get to the party. We raised around $300 before the party and the rest we gather at the party. 

The party was ridiculous. I made an effort to bring nothing of value to this event. No Ipod, no money, no wallet, nothing. Good thing too because somebody brought spray paint and decorated everybody, myself included. I also took on a false identity that entire day. I became Max Powers. Everywhere i went I introduced myself as Max Powers. A girl came up to me a few days later asking why I hadn't accepted her friend request yet, reason was because she added Max Powers and not Maxim Yushchenko. Because I had not made any plans on where I would spend the night that evening, I ended up sleeping in a tent with a buddy named Murder Mark (who took most of the blankets) which would not have been a problem if we remember to close the door... which we didn't... It dropped below freezing that night... sonofabitch...

I awoke craving two things: water and fire. I stumbled out of the tent and looked for anything that resembled water. I found a dirt covered 2 litre plastic coca-cola bottle. I looked like water inside. I opened it and took a big gulp. It was in fact water. I continued to drink it while walking to the fire which was still burning at 9am. As I walked a friend drove up to meet me at the fire in an unfamiliar van. 

"Who's van is that?"

"Not sure," he points "I found it over there" I look inside and find an old breakfast roll, fantastic. This morning is going well. I went back to the fire to begin thawing my hands and feet. As I was warming myself I looked doing and found a gummy candy in the dirt, brushed it off a bit and ate it. Just as I thought this morning could not get any better, a few more people showed up to the fire with hotdogs, ketchup and bread. Wow. Best morning ever. One guy showed up and had no idea where his shoes went. We assumed they went in the fire that evening.

After finishing the hotdogs and exchanging stories from the evening we decided to go for a soak in the hot springs. On our way out we found that someone had dragged a deer carcass onto the field... Whoever did that... what the hell is wrong with you.

The following is a picture of Max Powers the morning after:

TWO NIGHTS OF DRINKING

Here they are:

So the first night started out with drinking. Near the end of the night one guy stopped drinking about an hour before he was going to go home. He planned on driving home and he thought that an hour was enough time for him to sober up. Fact: That is not enough time for anyone to sober up. Just as he has done several times before, he ended up driving home anyway. Once everybody left and there was only three of us in the apartment, we decided to go climb into the abandoned barn near my place. It was kinda cool because the barn is now used as a storage spot for all the of the resort's old stuff. Afterwards we walked across the highway to meet up with a few friends when we ran into the guy who drove home drunk. I took it upon myself to teach him not to do it again. We tried several times before to talk to him about his reckless habit, but it never really had any effect on him, he continued to drink and drive. Having had a few drinks, I took on the problem from a different approach. I thought violence might have more of an effect on him than simply talking to him about it. Once I pinned him down hit him a few times in the chest, he quickly promised me over and over again that he would never drink and drive again. At the time we thought that I might have broken one of his ribs because he was having difficulty breathing. As it turns out I dind't break anything, and he came up to me several days later thanking me for what I did.
After beating him up that night, I stood up and noticed a bunch of grass in the wound in my knee. By the way I tried to jump into a moving truck a couple days ago and ripped my knee open and got 10 stitches to patch it up. I started picking out the grass until I got to one piece that didnt wanna come out. I got a firm grip on it and pulled it as hard as I could. As it turns out, it was not a piece of grass, it was one of my stitches. That night I learned that it is really hard to pull out your stitches by hand.


The following evening also began with drinking.

We then decided to walk down to a party happening across the highway. As we were on our way, we received a message saying the guy that stole my ipod was at this party. I got excited because I could finally give him a piece of my mind with my fists. Once we got into the area we discovered that the party had been shut down and everyone was now aimlessly wondering. Amongst the wanderers, was the thief I was looking for. I walked straight up to him and started pushing him around. I did that for a bit and then went to face the crowd and make a public announcement, "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS! I WOULD LIKE EVERYONE TO MEET  ------- -----------! IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING EXPENSIVE IN YOUR POCKETS CHECK RIGHT NOW TO MAKE SURE IT IS STILL THERE! BECAUSE THIS GUY RIGHT HERE WILL STEAL IT AND SELL IT ON KAJIJI AND CRAIGSLIST THE MOMENT YOU TAKE YOUR GUARD DOWN! HE IS A THIEF AND A LIAR!" I focused my attention back on the obese lying thief. Walking towards him with crazy coming out of my eyes, I kept whispering at him "im gonna kill you! your gonna die!" I started throwing fakes at his faces and punching him in the gut. This went on about three times until a very large bicept came up from behind and wrapped itself around my neck. I tried to wringle my way out of it, but being half the size of this bicept it was no use. I got dragged around the pavement for a bit and I could see my lights slowly going out. Just as I was about to black out, the bicept was removed. I thought to myself "man, I love air."
The events after that are a little blurry. The thief ended up running away or hiding. I ended up talking to bicept man (who was a nice guy by the way) and as it turns out he doesn't even know the fat lying thief, he just wanted to jump in and break up the fight. As I left with my friends the crowd boo'd me away and celebrated that I was gone. You little boys and little girls... I AM THE GOOD GUY.
Whatever, the next day we found out that the guy hosting the party had his Ipod stolen that night. What now little boys and girls.. what now!

FIRST TRIP TO THE HOSPITAL + PARTY TIME

Long story short, I tried to jump into a moving vehicle. I WAS GOING TO MAKE IT. Unfortunately the driver stepped on the gas as I was in mid jump so my trajectory was completely thrown off. I didn’t make it. Probably for the better because in the back of the pick up truck was a machete and a chain saw. I bounced off the truck and rolled around the ground a couple times. When I got up my knee hurt a little, so I looked down and to my surprise I found a flabby piece of flesh hanging off my knee cap. My dad always told me to tear off hanging pieces of skin because its better to get rid of them now than to wait for it to catch on something unexpectedly and rip off. This piece was a little too meaty for that to be an option. We decided that stitches would be a better idea.

We went to the hospital in Invermere to get my knee fixed up. It was definitively my most entertaining trip to the hospital because the entire time the doctor was stitching me up, she was making fun of me. As she gave my knee shots of some kind of numbing medicine, I would cringe my face. "Does it hurt?" she asked, "Nooooo" I said growling while flexing every muscle in my body "I doesn't hurt because Im a maaaaaan!"

I hate needles. It hurt. The guy that drove me to the hospital kept getting text messages throughout the whole stiching process so eventually I said "Wow you must be a pretty popular guy" to which the doctor says "Well at least one of you guys is popular." Like I said , It was an entertaining visit.

After the stitching was done we went out to the point for a little fire before bed. Hold on, let me tell you about the point.. So the point is a piece of land on the native reserve that sticks out in our little valley here and there is a sweet view there. Every April there are a bunch of staff that have their birthday, so a giant bonfire party is thrown for them all at the point. This year’s bonfire is going to be the biggest one yet. I have never seen so much preparation go into one party. The current stack of logs that are going to be burned sits higher than my head. The picture below shows half of the logs that are currently sitting there. There are over 100 garden lights that run around the perimeter of the field at the point. There over a dozen skulls hanging in trees on the road out to the point (some of which are fresh and still have tongues hanging out.) There is a GoPro mount in a tree that will time lapse the entire night. There are several DJs that are playing a free show for us, as long as we can provide them with a stage and a few generators (yes of course we will do that for a free show!) Also because this party is happening on a native reserve WE CAN BE AS LOUD AS WE WANT BECAUSE THERE IS NOBODY AROUND FOR GODDAM MIIIILLLLESSSSS!!!!!!

I am so hella stoked.

A FEW SHORT STORIES

People here are different. They react diffrently to certain things. Take hunting for example; when I posted pictures of us gutting an elk that we killed I immediatly received a pretty digusted reaction from people back home. Whereas people here don't think much of it. It's an animal that tastes good on the barbeque, why wouldn't you hunt it and eat it? Elk are abundant in the Kootneys, and their population isnt under any immediate threat. When I mentioned peoples reactions to the locals working here, they would just shake their heads saying "Silly city kids.."

Another thing that is different here is drinking and driving. On many occassions i've noticed people driving after more than just a few. Because Fairmont Hot Springs doesnt have a police department, they rely on the police force of the nearest town which is Invermere. This means that most of the time, the nearest cops are 30km away. So getting caught for drinking and driving doesn't happen here unless you've been in an accident. With that being said, I make sure to pick my rides carefully, or walk.

Last night we went to a restaurant that was having a special on wings. Its a weekly thing we do here. I had been drinking before we got there and just ordered a pitcher of water. After effectively rehydrating myself it was time to urinate. I went to the bathroom, did my business, and just as I was about to leave I noticed an extra door in the bathroom. It wasn't a stall door, or an exit door. Being curiously intoxicated I try opening it. It opened. It was a steep staircase that lead to an office in the attic. At the time I thought it was the Bat Cave. I did some snooping around trying to find cool Batman gadgets and was upset when my search turned up with nothing. I decided that the next appropriate thing to do was to leave my mark in the cave. Did I throw his papers around the office? Did I pee on the floor? Did I steal his computer? No. I would be so upset if someone did any of those things to me. Instead I went on his computer and left this message on whatever he was working on:

LIFEGUARD INITIATION

I went on my first successful hunt yesterday. As we were driving back to Fairmont from Invermere I spotted a bull elk from the highway and pointed it out to the guy driving. Being native the driver doesnt have any restrictions on shooting elk as long as its still light outside and he isnt within 300ft of a road. We went back to his place and got a rifle as well as a few friends to help carry the carcass back to the truck.

It had snowed the day before so tracks were easy to spot. We followed the elk for about a kilometer until we spotted him down the hill on a frozen lake. Two shots brought the animal down.

After it's dead, the organs have to be removed quickly because they spoil the meat if left in for too long. It was pretty similar to gutting a fish. Slice the belly lengthwise, pull out all the organs, and skin it. The one difference is that this was at least 1000 times bigger than the biggest minow I have ever gut. Once that was over and done with, we had to cut the legs and head off to make dragging the carcass back up to the truck easier. Having never decapitated a large animal before, I was pretty eager to give it a try. I sliced away all the meat first, then went on to aimlessly hacking away at the spine. After realizing my decapitating method was going nowhere a guy named "Murder-Mark" stepped in and started twisting the head round in circles until it snapped off. He was pretty good at it, as if he had done it many times before.

The next part sucked, we had to drag it uphill to the nearest road which was about a half kilometer away. Having slippery street shoes the drag was hard as hell and I couldn't contribute much. Once we got up there, the truck came and we loaded the elk in the back. We brought the elk back to one guy's house where we began skinning it. I got a knife and went to help skin the elk when Murder-Mark approached me and asked if I had ever shot a gun. I told him I hadnt and he was pretty eager to show me how. We set up an empty beer can on a stump and he gave a quick run-down on how to shoot a rifle. I took my first shaky shot standing up and missed. The next one i took down on one knee and hit the can a little off center. On my second shot I focused more on aiming than I did on holding the gun firmly in place, and so it recoiled and the scope wacked me in the eyebrow. It was pretty cool.

Once it was completely skinned we loaded it back into the truck so it could be taken to the butcher the following day. We kept the heart and tenderloins to cook up for dinner. Dinner was amazing by the way, we had elk heart and elk tenderloins, with this sweet bread called bannock and home made plum jam. Satisfied is the only word I can think of to describe how I felt. It was very similar to the feeling of the first beer after your last final before the summer. Satisfied and content.

First Day

Have you ever walked in half way through a movie? Stuff doesnt really make sense, a plot has already been established and your forced to simoultaneously spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out what happened before you got there and whats happening as the movie continues?

This was pretty much my first day at the resort here. I had my first soak in the hotsprings today, and we went to the hoodoos which were only a 5 minute drive away, followed by a short 15min hike. Although it was a fun day and all, I noticed an uneasy vibe amongst a few of the people that have been here for a while. I was told they went through something tough before I got here. With the plot already established, Im trying to focus more on what happens from now onward and how I can have as much fun as possible with the people here. By the way have I mentioned the people here are awesome? Everybody is friendly and very welcoming. Im stoked.

At the hoodoos I took my first photo for my new selfies album. Ive decided that the best way to cope with my insecurities as a 20 year old male was to post self taken photographs on facebook. I'll keep you all up to date on my progress, heres my first shot:

A Change in Lifestyle

For the last 6 months my life has mainly revolved around working. I would wake up at 5am and carpool my way to a lumber mill where I would repeat the same task over and over again for 8 straight hours. As much fun as that was, I was starting to get tired of it. Plus the idea of telling people 10 years from now that all I did at 20 was work at a lumber mill wasnt very appealing.

I realized early on when I started working at the mill that I didn't want to stay there for long, so I searched the internet for all the cool jobs I could think of. I applied for various jobs on the local mountains, a few oil rig jobs in Alberta and I also sent my resume to several treeplanting companies. No luck. I gave up after a while and started to focus on University applications for next September.

Life become pretty dull and repetative in last month and a half, until I received an email from a lady looking to hire me as a lifeguard for hotsprings in the rockies.

Long story short I took the job and im hoping onto a bus in an hour that will take me to Fairmont Hotsprings. So begins my change in lifestyle, and the revival of this blog...