Talk Like A Pirate Day!!! Arrr!

Arr, mateys! This be the day we be long-awaiting, when we can, nay must, speak like our pirate brethren! So says Brown Beard!!

So, gather up ye peg-legged, patch-eyed, parrot-adorned comrades, attack a few ships, and gather up some gold dubloons today, to celebrate yer pirate ancestry!

Oh, and if ye should perchance upon some busty lass (or brawny lad), throw yerself a pirate wedding, and walk that long plank with he or she.

Be sure to raise a mug to Stan Rogers on this day, too, for he be having a bit o' pirate in his soul. We miss ye, Stan!

Now, time for me to go gather up some treasure of me own!

Random Thoughts

Okay, I figured I should put something here, as I haven't in more than a week, and will not have another chance until October.

Since my last post, I've spent a couple of days in the office, returned to the field for a weekend, came back to Saskatoon, and caught a cold. Since Wednesday I've pretty much been confined to my apartment, trying to get better before today so that I could go watch my dad drag-racing at Saskatchewan International Raceway and be relatively healthy before my flight tomorrow.

I was rather excited about the racing, as some of the Young People from church were going to come out, but unfortunately all the rain we've had caused the track to re-schedule the race for the end of the month. I was talking with Ian G. on the phone last night, and he informed me that, according to their rain gauge, we've received 3 3/4" of rain over the last three days (~95 mm). That's a lot.

I'm not really looking forward to my upcoming masters class. There's been so much frustration trying to prepare for it, and I'm just too tired to comtemplate being on the go constantly for the next two weeks, but I'm pretty well committed now. This week I had to re-schedule a flight because it was going to be departing too close to the time that I would be arriving (I hope that sentence makes sense: I've tried re-writing it a couple of times now, and it doesn't seem to have become any clearer). I've also had to cancel most of my reservation at the B&B where I'm staying in Sudbury, because I found out this week that I'll actually be spending most of next week in Quebec as part of my course.

To sum up: it has not been a very good week. Mainly due to illness, I've been forced to miss several opportunities for socialization that I could've really used, and I've been unable to run. I'm not sure which is worse.

I'm also comtemplating shaving my beard off, as it's staring to get in the way. However, there have been some that have suggested I keep it until Halloween, in the hopes that I could incorporate it into some fabulous costume. We'll see. Any suggestions?

Thanks go to a certain Maryannish one, who still looks out for me even when I'm too stubborn to let her.

Prayer would be appreciated for my friends Chris and Claire, and their yet-unborn child. The baby was due earlier this week, I gather that if he or she has not come by Tuesday they will induce labour, but I'm sure they're eager to greet the new little member of their family without resorting to that.

I'll leave you with a few pictures I took at Tower lake during my brief sojourn back there. The morning these were taken it was very foggy, which makes for some very nice pictures.




I particularly like this last one.

As always, for Meg and Julia:

Crazy Train

So, a week and a day ago, our exploration manager mentioned to me that, since the drill crew was not likely to show up until after the long weekend anyway, myself and a coworker could head south for the Labour day weekend.

This was an exciting prospect, as I had worked for seven consecutive weeks by that point, however this was somewhat mitigated by the thought that even if I did head home, there weren't likely to be any of my friends around. So, I gave Joel a call, and found out what his plans were, and that got the wheels turning in my head. He and Sherri (a YP who had recently moved to Saskatoon) were traveling through Regina to pick up Bronwyn, and then continuing on to the a church camp near Winkler, MB. Since my dad was drag-racing near Gimli, MB that weekend, I figured I could travel with them, and then show up on the Saturday to surprise him.

With some help from Joel and Sherri, we arranged to get the oil in my car changed on the Friday, and I managed to get away from camp at a semi-reasonable hour such that I was ready to leave Saskatoon by 5:30 p.m. or so. We didn't actually get away for another hour, and after a brief stop in Regina, we were finally on the road to Winkler by about 9:30 p.m. Losing an hour to the time zone change, this meant we pulled into the camp around 4:00 a.m. So, I crashed for about four hours, attended the morning church service, had lunch, and then jumped in the car and proceeded to Gimli.

I got there just in time to see my dad go down the track, and then was waiting for him in the pits when he came back from the pass. Everyone seemed quite (pleasantly) surprised to see me, although the beard did throw them off a bit. Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday, I saw most of my relatives on my dad's side of the family, which is always nice especially since I don't get out that way as much anymore.

On both days I helped out with my younger cousin's junior dragster, and took pictures of my dad's, uncle's, and "adopted" uncle's car whenever they went down the track. The Sunday race turned out quite well, my dad ended up 3rd out of 25 cars, losing in the semi-finals by two-hundredths of a second. It was a good race, and it could have gone either way, so what can you do?

My aunts told me that, between the beard and the hat I was wearing, I look like Fidel Castro, and seemed generally to be of the opinion that I should shave it off. There are critics everywhere, it seems.

Monday morning I took off around 8:00 a.m., swung by Winkler, and then picked up Joel, Sherri and Robin (a trade-off for Bronwyn, who had went back in another car to give the sole driver a break; I was fairly sure we had gotten the short end of that deal, but he was surprisingly well-behaved. Maybe marriage does that to a guy). We passed through Regina, and I took a bit of time to visit with my parents, and then continued onto Saskatoon. We kind of got there in the nick of time; after dropping Robin off, we went to Angela and Stephanie's where Sherri had been staying, and found a small troop heading out the door to go for supper. Since we hadn't eaten, we came along, and had a good time at Chianti's. It was really nice to see a few familiar faces after a several month absence.

Now for the pictures!

As mentioned, I helped out with my cousin Gareth's junior dragster last weekend. These dragsters are basically a wire-frame built around a heavily modified riding lawnmower engine. This doesn't sound all that impressive, I admit, but they still hit 70 mph or thereabouts. Also consider, my cousin has been doing this for three or four years, and he's twelve years old.

Here is my uncle and cousin getting the car ready to go.


This picture is of my cousin in the car. You may notice the straps leading off the front, we use a golf cart to tow the car up to the staging lanes, and to bring it back after a pass has been made.


Here we are at the line, Gareth is doing a burn-out to warm up his tires prior to the run.


And here is his first time trial of the day.


Right after the run, we head up to the end of the track to tow him back.


Sometime during the weekend, my relatives were telling I should go sit in the junior. I didn't figure I'd fit. Guess I was wrong.



Now for the pictures of the real show. The junior is cool and all, but it's just not the same as my dad's car.

What you're looking at here is a 1967 Mustang Fastback. My dad has been racing it since 1988, although the car looked a lot different then. For one thing, it was street legal and about a 15 second car. Now he races in the superstock category, dialing in at 10.90 seconds, and his fastest pass has been in the low 10 second range.


Here is another burn-out shot.


This is a picture of his launch off the start. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of the launch this time around, so this picture is actually from the May Long weekend.


My dad had a good day on Sunday, but he lost in the semi-finals, in a very good race to Brian D., driving the car you see here. They have faced off before, and any given day it could go either way. Two hundredths of a second isn't a lot, but it makes a big difference when your race is done in under eleven seconds.


Here is a caricature of my dad, painted on the side of his car by a family friend and fellow racer, Bryon L.


When my uncle Fred isn't dealing with his boy's car, he races this 1968 hardtop Mustang. Kept in working order by our crew chief/mechanic (who also happens to be my uncle Don), the car is a real family effort. It wasn't raced at all last summer, so it's good to see it back in action again.




Last but not least among this motley crew is a friend of the family, Bryon L. Bryon has been racing since 1978, and has really become a part of the family. He paints cars for a living, and did the paint job on both my dad's and uncle's cars, and of course his own as well. His car is a 1970 Nova, the "Reston Rocket", and he also goes by the name "Rocketman".




As you can see, his truck (built from the body of a Ford Econoline van) is painted to match the car.


This next picture may well be the highlight of the post for a few people (Ky, Meg and Julia, I'm looking in your direction).


Bryon has a really good beard, but I'm catching up! Oh, and just in case you can't read the warning label on his truck behind us:


It was a good weekend.

Narrow Lake and Core

Well, this is post is a bit overdue, but that would be because I had a rather busy weekend, the details of which I will relate in due time.

There is (or rather, was) an old camp site on the shore of Narrow Lake, near the Kaslo Showing. I don't recall what there was in the way of infrastructure there, there may have been a shack tent frame or two, as well as an outhouse and six core racks. It's rather a moot point now, as last summer there was a fire which swept through the area, and burnt everything.

These fires were hot: there are no remnants of any of the (wooden) core boxes used to store the core, only charred fragments of the pressure-treated 4" x 4"s used to make the core racks, and many of the pieces of re-bar used in the racks were warped from the heat. We even found a glass vial that had melted in the heat.

So, what this means is that where previously six racks of core (very similar to those shown in some of the pictures from my previous post) stood, now there were six piles of rock, with bits of charred wood and pieces of rebar. This core is no longer of any use to us, because we can't verify which hole and at what depth any of it is from.

I figured I'd take advantage of this opportunity, so I found some old core boxes drillers had left at one site, brought them out there, and filled them up with some of the larger, nice-looking pieces of core. Why, you might ask? As a present. I'm bringing this core down for my mother, as a nice border for some of her gardens in our backyard. Gardening is something she has become quite involved with for the last few years, and she's always happy when I bring her attractive rocks to put in them. In total I'll have in the range of 50-55' of core to bring her, which should serve nicely to border a small garden. Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, she doesn't read this blog, and so it will remain a surprise until the 16th, when she is coming up to Saskatoon for the day with my grandmother to watch my dad who will be racing at SIR.

Without further adieu, pictures!

Here is my buddy Rich, who I met through our mutual involvement in Scouting. We hired him on as a summer student this field season, and he did very well. Ky may know him, as he would've been a year ahead of her through basically all of her schooling.


This is a close-up of a burnt rack.


As you can see, this is a Cat with a backhoe mounted on it, standing over another pile of rock. I expect by now it will have bulldozed the remains of the rock and the core racks, as part of our site reclamation.


You can see on one of the quads there the bundle of core boxes I brought in to haul out selected core.



Now, I realize not everyone finds rocks as interesting as I do, so here are a few pictures of Narrow Lake. You will see it is rather aptly named.






Next up: My crazy weekend, and an updated picture of my beard!