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...

MIRIAM

For the next two months ill be on Gabriola island working as a lifeguard for Camp Miriam. I worked there last year as a cook, but that job included long hours and low pay. Lifeguarding for a summer camp also doesnt pay a lot, but the amount of work Im required to do is close to nil. I clean the pool once a day, then I watch kids swim in it. During each day there are about 3 hours of free time during which the kids can go swimming in the pool, so a three hour day would be a busy day for me... let the good times roll.

Because I'll have a lot of time to kill this summer, I brought my bike up so that I could ride it every morning and get better at trials. I also brought my camera so I could take a bunch of photos this summer. Ive already got a few keepers and I add more every week. Check them out here.

RV Trip

During the two weeks immediatly following my last exam at BCIT, I went on an RV trip with two friends from highschool. We started going up highway 99 through Squamish and Whistler, then headed east towards Banff and Calgary. The farthest east we got was Dramheller. We then went back through Calgary and South through the Okanogan before coming home.
On three separate occasions we snuck into hotsprings in the middle of the night. We climbed down a wall into a huge museum in the middle of nowhere. We shot a potatoe canon at highway signs. We stole antlers, a pick axe, and two large street signs. We also found a large green plastic horn in Whistler that didnt have much use until we drove through downtown Calgary during rush hour blowing it at every pedestrian within 20 feet of the RV. We walked into several hotels as if we were average guests and used their hottubs, saunas and showers. We parked illegally everywhere we went. During the 14 nights we were gone, we paid for one campsite in Whistler. We spent one night parked on a patch of grass within walking distance of Lake Louise, which we got kicked out of in the morning... big surprise. WE FOUND AN ABANDONED HOTEL. We did so many ridiculous things, I dont think i'll be able to remember them all. This is how life should be. 

Here's a link to a few of my favorite photos from the trip. The full album can be found here.