Uhh... sure?

I went out to Joe Tomato's and to the movies tonight with Fr Dave and another guy from work. Cool beans. Didn't have anything better to do anyway, and the new Bruce Willis movie is pretty good (which is always a bonus).

We were sitting around waiting for our food to arrive and Fr Dave (he's my boss) says 'You still do youth stuff with your church?'

Well, no, I don't. Youth don't exist in my church. We pulled the plug on the youth group a couple years ago because we were quickly running out of interested kids and, quite frankly, I was suffering from burnout.

Anyhue, he looks at me and says 'Wanna go to World Youth Day?'

Gotta say, I wasn't expecting that one.

'Umm... where is it?'

'Madrid. 2011. We need chaperons.'

Uh... Sure. I think I can handle a 9 day trip to SPAIN.

I caught a fish with my bare hands

And it was THIS big!

Serious.

I did.

I did a lot this weekend. It was a really great weekend.

Start it off with about 3 hours of Apples to Apples with some great company on a Friday night.

A trip to the village at Blue Mountain to wander around the shops, ride the gondola, and walk back down the ski hill.

A pit stop at the local hotel to 'use the washroom'. Weird that the washrooms were through the main lobby, down the hall, and up the elevator?? Hahaha! SURPRISE!!! We're actually checking in for a fun girls night! Sometimes guys do things that are amazing! (I should really get me one of my own! lol)

Hotel room had EVERYTHING you could dream of! Ah, the wonders of double headed showers!

Good friends, good conversation, good wine.

Chinese food for lunch. Mmmm.

Too much food in general.

And a fun adventure down the river from Inglis Falls to Harrison Park which resulted in me actually picking up a rather large salmon out of the water just for fun! (Shh, don't tell anyone cause we were in a no fishing area and they're spawning) I won't say it was the highlight of my weekend, but it was rather unexpected and kind of Survivor Man-ish. Somewhere there is a goofy picture of me holding a big fish.

Oh, ps, A super humongous congratulations to Shannon & Mike. Mr Mike carried a ring around with him all weekend (I was wondering why he sort of looked like he was going to puke half the weekend). He did finally get the permission he was waiting for, and asked the girl he loves to marry him. Bonus - she said YES!! Congrats guys! Love you both. :)

Grey's :(

I kinda sorta absolutely love Grey's Anatomy and have been counting down the days until the season premier on Thursday for awhile now. Yes, it's even in my Google calendar.

But I don't have TV. I can't pick up any television reception where I live, and I'm too cheap for cable.

No problem though! That's what God made the internet for! I just venture over to one of my favourite sites: www.watch.ctv.ca, and voila! TV at my fingertips! ...A day late mind you, but at least its there!

Except.... IT'S NOT THERE!!!

!!!!

I donno, maybe ABC revoked CTV's permission to air it online or something. The point is IT'S NOT THERE! GAH!! And of course, you've gotta be in the great US of A to watch ABC online.

And then, I was warned - Do NOT watch the sneak peak, it will completely ruin the episode for you! And yet somehow today I managed to hit a wrong button and before I could scramble to make it stop, I had found out (absolutely the way I did not want to find out) which of the characters actually dies. It ruined my life for the next 5 minutes. *sigh*

Options...
Hope CTV is just messing with us and it'll be posted to the website on Friday like it should be.

Spend every Thursday begging my friend up the street to invite me over so I can watch it on her massive flatscreen :D

Download it *GASP* from a P2P website & risk getting a virus, or worse, end up in JAIL! ooh

Find a website to stream it from and still apparently risk catching a virus, but at least I don't have to waste my time downloading it. So far, the best I can find is: tvshack.net

Or... find an anonymous US proxy so that the ABC website can't tell I'm from Canada and stream it from there. I barely understand what that means, so I'm not sure its a good option.

Or... give up Grey's???? Hahaha... No. Not an option.

So... What are YOU doing Thursday night?

RIP Hip-Hop 1978-2009

It is the end of a rather short lived era; after a mere 31 year existence as a music genre, Hip Hop has died.

In a strange set of circumstances involving Hip Hop artist Kanye West, country music artist Taylor Swift, and President of the United States Barack Obama, it is unclear who is to blame for the untimely death of the Hip Hop music genre.

As the young country music sensation Taylor Swift humbly collected her MTV Video award for Best Female Video last week, a reckless Kanye West stormed the stage, ripping the microphone out of the confused Swift's hand along the way, and with his cutting words effectively sliced Hip Hop's wrists in front of a concert hall of onlookers.

Much like The Fonz jumping the shark as the TV series 'Happy Days' painfully dwindled to an end, is the desperate act of an artist looking for attention too much for Hip Hop fans to take? Or did Country kill the Hip Hop star? There is much to speculate about this odd event. Was it a botched murder attempt on the life of Country Music? After all, what right does Country Music have to be at the MTV Video awards anyway? Or was it a Hip Hop suicide attempt in front of thousands of onlookers? Some believe that Beyonce isn't as innocent as she lets on and was actually the brains behind the operation. Possibly West was a casualty of war, a used pawn in an unseen battle between competing female artists. We may never know the reason behind his actions, but as West left the stage after his rampage, Hip Hop was left a mangled mess, a mere fragment of it's former self; beaten, bloodied, and shamed in front of the entire world.

Enter the President of the United States, Barack Obama. As the leader of a free nation, it is in the President's best interest to remain impartial to the entertainment industry, never taking sides in the ongoing genre wars. Obama is a different kind of president though, firmly putting his foot down and letting the nation know where he stands. "That was totally inappropriate", remarked Obama as he casually rested his hand on Hip Hop's life support after the incident. "He's a jackass", were the last words Hip Hop heard as the President pulled the plug on the genre forever.

So long Hip Hop; to those who were paying attention to your short life, you'll be missed. For the rest of us, this incident will surely be used as a stepping stone for Country Music's rise to the top. Domination of all musical genres by Country Music is on the horizon. Look out Show Tunes, you're next!


------------

Videos of this event are being removed from YouTube right left and centre. 'copyright laws' pfft. Those that remain typically have the embedding function disabled. Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z8gCZ7zpsQ

Killarney Day 8 - Saturday Aug 15/09

Even though we did absolutely nothing all day yesterday, we were still all in bed by about 10:20.


I had suggested that we try to get up early and do the bulk of our hiking before the intense heat of the day, so somehow, I felt responsible to make sure we got up at a decent hour. I woke up at 6:30; everyone was up by about 7am. And, miracle of miracles: we were ready to hit the trail at 8:30!


Today was a grey and damp day, but still remarkably hot. We're all very glad that the sun is hidden behind the clouds.


We had expected today to be a relatively flat and easy hiking day; it was not. In fact, it was one of the most challenging. Lots of little ups and downs, and plenty of slippery and loose rocks to trip on, it was hard on the knees and feet, and made for a long morning.


Everyone's getting pretty tired, and there has been mutterings of just walking out today and going home depending on what time we arrive at our campsite (we also don't want to have to drive all night after a long day of hiking just to get home when we've got a perfectly good site to use).


Some easier trail, a quicker pace, afternoon rain, and a campsite in a swamp sealed the deal - we're walking out and going home today. Back to civilization! We're all in agreement that 8 days in the woods is a little too much of a good thing.


Made it to George Lake Campground at about 3:30 after hiking across 'The Ridge', down 'The Crack', and around George Lake itself. Once again, very stunning views; even the mist couldn't hide that.


Got cleaned up a bit and left the park at around 4pm, somewhat disappointed that we hadn't seen anything larger than a porcupine during our 8 days in the wilderness. Not 10 minutes out of the park a black bear runs across the highway 300m in front of the van! Josh slowed down at the point where he crossed the road, but we didn't really expect to see the bear because of the pace he had been moving at. But there he was standing on the top of a rock outcrop, lifting a rock that had to weigh over 100lbs with one paw and tossing it aside like it was nothing! It's unfortunate that we saw this while driving by at 60km/hr, and there are no pictures to prove it. :(


Got to Huntsville at around 7:30 to pick up my car, and then we went our separate ways. I arrived home at about 10:30, tired and sore, but with plenty of stories to tell!


All in all, it was a good trip! It's a great experience to be out in the wilderness with no one else around; silent and peaceful, gorgeous views, cooking over fire, watching the sun rise... However, I feel that my hiking days are numbered and I have no intentions of doing a trip that long again. I think that my hiking boots will remain buried in the closet for quite awhile (at least until the current blisters heal and the feeling returns to my toes).

Thus endeth the tale of four friends hiking in Killarney Provincial Park.

Killarney Day 7 - Friday Aug 14/09

VACATION DAY!!!

We got up this morning at a leisurely 9am and Heather made us pancakes for breakfast.

It is a beautiful hot and sunny day; a great day for laundry and napping and splashing around in the water! (It actually would have been awful to hike anywhere today in this heat! I wonder what the temp is?? Easily the hottest day of this summer anyway.)

We have a beautiful warm breeze up here on the hill. Perfect for doing laundry really. It'll be nice to wear a shirt that doesn't smell like smoke for a change. It was also nice to finally wash our hair for the first time in about 5 days too.

Not much else going on. We had some lunch, are sitting around soaking up the sun, tried to find some blueberries for bannock tonight (no luck, the bears have already cleaned up this patch). I think I'll take my camera and go for a walk.


I feel as if I got a little too much sun (and yes, I did use sunscreen).

Big bannock dinner tonight. Then, just hanging by the fire reading a book.

We want to try for an early morning tomorrow. 12km to hike.
Then, 2km on Sunday.
Then, HOME!
I'm ready to come out of the woods now.

Killarney Day 6 - Thursday Aug 13/09

Well, I had a decent sleep last night (as decent as can be expected anyway - considering that every part of my body I try to lay on seems to be bruised). That is, until about 3:30am when a loon made its terrible sound. They are not peaceful creatures. And then I woke up realizing I was starving.

Such is life I suppose. We're not really consuming very many more calories than I would in an average day, but we're doing some pretty strenuous hiking for 6 or 8 hours a day. Luckily we have lots of snack food to fill the gaps between meals. But at 3:30 in the morning, all that food is tied up in a tree and there's no way I'm getting up to get any!

I woke up again at 5am and had a pretty restless sleep until 6am when we all got up. It still took us 2 hours to have breakfast, pump water, and pack things up. After watching a very pretty sunrise over the lake, and realizing that it was going to be a very long and hot day, we left our site at 8am. By 8:30am we had already climbed to the top of our first mountain of the day.

A quick hour-long 3km hike got us to the base of the mountain we've been both looking forward to, and dreading, for a week. Always a visible point in the distance, we were now ready to tackle the 1.7km climb to the summit of Silver Peak. At 589m in elevation, it is the tallest mountain in the La Cloche mountain range and a good 140m higher than any other peak we've climbed in the park.

We set up a tent at the bottom of the trail for Deanne (she had made it clear that she was not coming with us) and left all our gear with her. Josh & Heather and I made it to the top in about 50 minutes (we were on a time limit, so we were trying to go as quickly as possible without giving me a heart attack). Challenge-wise, its a well used trail, popular with both hikers and canoers and people of all ages. Other than being an uphill walk for an hour, its a much easier hike than I had been expecting.

Pretty great 360 degree view of the entire mountain range from the top. We spent a lot of time wandering around and taking a ton of pictures. There's a spot marked out at the top where a fire tower once stood and something written on the rocks which isn't quite legible anymore dated May 1955.



We boogied down the hill in about half an hour, re-packed our things, and walked another 3km to site H38 for lunch on Silver Lake. Its not a site I'd want to stay at - beautiful lake with a stunning white rock outcrop on the far side, but poor water access and very little privacy being that it's right on the trail (a lot of the other sites are quite a way off the trail. Sometimes you have to walk half a kilometre or more off the main trail to your site). 9km of hiking before lunch today! That's more ambitious than I am most days, that's for sure!

After lunch... tired, uber heat from the sun, sore toes & blisters, and stiff joints from sitting for an hour, and a lot of annoying uphill/downhills, made for a pretty silent afternoon on the trail. I fell pretty far behind for awhile. My knees just won't bend as quickly as the others, and I seem to be the one left huffing & puffing halfway up most of the hills. They say a group can only hike as fast as the slowest person. That would be me.

I have learned that I like being out in lead setting the pace because, believe it or not, on certain terrain (especially the open rocky stuff) I can actually gain some ground over the rest. Being in the lead also means that I get to see every new sight first!

But then the uphills or rooty woods trails start and I fall behind again. It doesn't bother me to fall to the back of the pack because I don't like to feel like I'm holding everyone up; I'm also not a fan of having anyone follow me so closely that I feel like I have a shadow. Not picky, am I? :P But I really don't like it when I fall so far behind that I can neither see nor hear the people ahead of me. I know they'll wait for me at their next break, but I always feel utterly abandoned. Severe pychological fear? Maybe. Go ahead, analyze away.

Anyhue... In my grumpy left-behind state, I at least got to see a moose track. That counts for something, right? Six days and no moose sightings. That's disapointing.

The afternoon was HOT but we just kept tramping along, taking breaks whenever we found a cool shady spot. Considering we had 13.7km (plus the Silver Peak trail for a total of 17km) to hike for the day and figured we'd be eating our supper on the trail before finding our campsite, we made really good time and actually got to our campsite around 5:30pm.

Site H47 - Heaven Lake. This is to be our home for the next two nights as we are taking tomorrow off and doing absolutely nothing - we ARE on vacation after all!

Heaven Lake has been a source of conversation for a day or so. What will we find at Heaven Lake?? A nice turquoise blue lake with a great swimming spot? Pizza? A cooler of beer? A Jacuzzi Tub? A campsite paved in gold? Ok... so our expectations were a little unreal, but man! A beer would be great!

Heaven Lake is NOT as the name implies. It's nice... I sorta like it actually, but it's a dinky little pond with not much for good swimming as the bottom is covered in gross green weedy slimy stuff, and we had some trouble getting space to set up 2 tents, AND we can't find a bathroom box. BOO. Not to mention that there's not much firewood around. So, heavenly, not really.

It gets its name from the view. Heaven Lake is at a higher elevation than the other lakes. It is a mountain lake. Right behind our site, across the main trail, is a lookout over a very pretty valley and lake much further below us. Heaven Lake is in fact IN the heavens.

Cheesy broccoli rice for supper followed by a big bowl of Dorito crumbs (they don't pack well, but they sure do taste good!). It's a lazy evening. We're all exhausted and don't really want to move let alone do the usual campsite stuff we should be doing. Been sitting around a campfire for awhile now. Stars are out nice and bright. Probably should get things cleaned up and head to bed. It's already well past our usual bedtime at 10:30 GASP! We really do need to get lots of rest so that we can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TOMORROW!!! yay!

Killarney Day 5 - Wednesday Aug 12/09

Josh was up at 6am this morning. Lucky for the rest of us that his wake up call didn't come until 6:40! Woo! Yay for sleeping in.

It took us until NINE AM to get on the trail! Sl...o.....w.... stiff morning. Bonus though, we got to see the sun come up over the trees across the lake. Its a chilly morning, but once that sun gets up, it promises to be a scorcher.

The goal for the day is to hike about 8km to our next site as quickly as possible so that we can enjoy our next site during the beautiful afternoon hours (we also have a lot of wet laundry to dry!).

Turned out to be a pretty slow moving day though. We're right in the middle of the 'Hensen Township' section of trail. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that its the roughest section of trail out here. Definitely proving to be true! Lots of ups & downs, some pretty spectacular views, and some pretty rugged climbs. The fear of heights thing has slowed us down a bit, but not nearly as much as yesterday; Deanne's dealing with it the best she can.

Got lots of pictures today; lots and lots! Even used someone's fancy SLR to take a group shot of a bunch of hikers moving in the opposite direction.

Josh tripped on practically nothing around noon and gave his ankle a good twist, so we stopped for lunch and Heather wrapped it for him. Its our first (and hopefully only) major injury thus far. Heather's knees bother her, I've got one that hurts once in awhile, and so does Deanne; blisters are to be expected and I had one pop on me at some point, but that's pretty much it. My toes have really been bothering me but I've realized that the one which actually aches long after we've stopped hiking for the day is the one I broke at youth group years ago (backyard soccer: toe meet tree stump.)

Anyway, we poked along with our sore joints and blisters and muscles across huge fields of rolling rock, through wooded areas, even across a pretty impressive beaver dam. We basically walked over the top, and down the other side, of two mountains today. Climbing Silver Peak tomorrow should be interesting! (Deanne says she's sitting in a tent at the bottom of the trail and waiting for us there!) Still not sure how we're gonna climb 2km to the peak, 2km back, and then another 10km to our site! It might be a painful day!

We got to our site (H34 on David Lake) at about 3pm. It's a big lake and popular with canoers. There was a group just leaving the site as we got there. It's a nice site - in the woods but with a nice big slab of rock for a beach. This lake is of the crystal clear variety too, but with a nice shallow wading area; no deep drop offs here.


Had a little shaving party on the beach, did a little laundry, got it all hung up (maybe it'll dry for a change). I've been sitting on the beach journaling and enjoying the scenery. It's to bad its an east facing beach with no direct afternoon sun.

Having some classy KD for dinner tonight - looking forward to that! Deanne mentioned pizza earlier... that'd be good too but I don't think anyone would deliver, considering we don't even have any cellphone reception out here. There are times when I'm hiking, especially walking up a trail through woodsy areas, I often find myself expecting to walk out into a farmer's field. That happens all the time on the Bruce trail, but not here! Nor do we have to walk on any roads. I like it!

Bedtime... 9:20pm. Boy, we party hard!

Killarney Day 4 - Tuesday Aug 11/09

7:30am wake up this morning with oatmeal for breakfast. Sort of a chilly morning but nice clear skies promise a beautiful day ahead.

On the trail by 9, we made pretty good time for awhile. But then things started to get interesting. A lot of ups & downs, climbing over rocks and things. It made for quite the adventure! (and hopefully a few good pictures too!)

Ups & downs hurt though. Ups are just plain hard and I find myself sweating like a maniac and out of breath with my heart pounding out of my chest in no time at all. Downhills, well, they hurt too. Toes jammed down to the front of boots, achy knees. The up pains are different than the down pains, but it's just as difficult. But Man! Do I feel ALIVE! My knees hurt, my feet & toes hurt, my shoulders hurt... lol

Anyway... We stopped for lunch at some site along the way. Cheese & crackers; the usual. NOT impressed with water access here. First off, it was down a cliff. Then, when we got to the bottom, the only shore access was right beside a beaver lodge. Not cool. I trust our water filter, but I also am not interested in getting beaver fever half way through an 8 day trip! Heather & I decided to just get enough water to get us to a nearby stream.

Things in the afternoon got interesting. We had to climb a pretty huge incline - the highest we've been so far. It was AMAZING!! The views we saw were spectacular! We got a sense today that we're actually in the middle of a mountain range.

Unfortunately, Deanne took one look out over the view that the rest of us thought was amazing, and realized an incredibly real and intense fear of heights! Vertigo, wobbly knees, the whole bit. It took some convincing to get her talked through that open bit of trail along the edge and back into the bush. Standing on the edge of a mountain really isn't the most ideal place to find out you're horribly afraid of open heights!

The last part of the hike was long and slow. I hurt. I think we all hurt. But, we pressed on and got to our site around 6pm. H32. Its a bit of a long walk into the site because you have to walk around the end of Lake Skiguag. But, its a pretty nice spot. The lake is a dead lake just like Acid Lake, so it's turquois blue and clear to the bottom. Tents and fire pit are up on the rocks - lots of big slabs here; the rocks stair-step themselves down to the water with the last few steps being 4 or 5 inches underwater. Great for getting cleaned up, doing laundry, dishes, swimming, for just standing in (after a long day shoved in a pair of boots, the ol' feet like to soak in some cool water). Watch out for that last step though! It looks like it's about 15ft of crystal clear water straight down! I can't help but think that my brother's fiance would probably love to scuba dive here! We cleaned up, set things up, went for a quick dip to get clean (it was cold; but we had also missed the sunshine), did some laundry...

We had a rice dinner at like 8pm. Made some pretty tasty bannock after that and then it was a pretty quick cleanup of the campsite after that because it was getting late and we were losing light. There was also a mouse scurrying around this site, so we had to get our food bag hung up before anything disappeared on us.

We're sitting around a fire right now, but we'll likely be in bed by 10:30.

I hope I hurt less tomorrow!

Killarney Day 3 - Monday August 10

"Today is Monday, right?" "All day."

Made it to bed at 9:50 last night - the bugs were just too bad to sit out in them.

Much better sleep had by all last night with wake up around 8am. We're still having trouble getting packed up & motivated to go a t a decent time, but, after a group picture at our site, we hit the trail at 10am.

Pretty decent trail today. Only going 8km and it's all pretty flat. Actually, we're going around the edge of a 'great bog' today (although, there were a few big climbs during the day).

We motored for the first hour, made great time and started to hope we'd make it to our site by early afternoon. We definitely slowed down after that first break though and stopped pretty frequently for awhile. I led the pack most of the day. Not sure why they let me do that (I'm kinda slow) but no one seemed to mind. We stopped at site H18 in hopes of water - today's been a pretty warm day and we've even seen our fair share of sunshine.

H18 itself has a gorgeous view of Three Narrows Lake BUT... About a 20ft drop to the water. Not an easy task to get water. Josh is determined though and managed to climb down to fill 3 or 4 bottles. By the time he was finished, it was pretty much lunchtime so we pulled out the cheese & crackers. Spent quite awhile at H18. Turns out it was a good thing - we found a blueberry patch and managed to fill an entire water bottle full for later.

Kept on plodding along. Had some pretty steep inclines & drops at times. And at one point we had to walk through this swampy lake/beaver pond, across this narrow dirt path with water on each side then, just for fun, across a pile of logs. I accidently jammed my trekking pole between the logs and it went down about 2ft with no sign of stopping. I'm sure that one wrong move off the logs would have meant a dip in muddy, disgusting water over your head!

Somewhere along the way, I found a pen laying on the trail. Good find actually, I was worried my mechanical pencil might not last the entire trip.

It was 3:30 when we got to our site - H20. Strange little site on a tiny little lake just off of Three Narrows. The site is up on top of a rock, with the fire right out in the open on a point with a good 15ft drop to the lake. It'd probably be a good cliff jumping spot if you weren't chicken.

I am chicken however. I took one look at the water (you can walk down to the edge on a couple slippery rocks that descend into the black depths like water slides. One look at that and there was no way I was jumping in! It didn't help that there was a catfish swimming around. Josh & Deanne went in though; seemed to like it, didn't die anyway. Heather & I used a pot on the shore to wash up in (and shave). It did feel good to get rid of the bush woman feel (let me know if I'm sharing too much information!).

The rest of the site sucks. No decent place to set up tents without rocks, tree roots, or terrible slants. And, the washroom box doesn't open for privacy's sake, no, its up on a hill with a full view looking over the entire camp site! Yay! :S

Couscous for dinner after Josh finally managed to get a good fire going (all the wood was wet). Odd stuff couscous is, but it did the job. Then all the ingredients for a berry crisp were put in the pot with the blueberries we had picked earlier. The lack of oven to bake it in meant that it turned out somewhat like blueberry pie filling - pretty tasty stuff really!

Time to get the camp cleaned up. 8:30pm - its almost dark and the bugs are coming out again. Probably early to bed again and then we really do have to get up at a decent time. 12km or something to hike tomorrow.


Ended the night with a nice long campfire, star gazing, watching some shooting stars, sheet (heat?) lightening, and a bright orange moon rising over the lake.

Of course... We also somehow ended up talking about lions & tigers & bears (oh my!) and other big animals which might kill us in our sleep.

Night!

No... I have not fallen off the face of the planet. I've just been busy.
One of these days, (maybe later this week if you're lucky), I'll continue my Killarney adventures so that you can live vicariously through me.
But not today.