Delphi Ramblings from Rolly View, Alberta, Canada
Today in the Edmonton Journal Canada in UN life quality ranking: #4. For me only Norway is a serious contender and they are #1. The Netherlands are trailing at #6.
Finally our application for Permanent Residence in Canada has been lodged to the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. It got a bit exciting in the end as the results of my IELTS test had not yet arrived at the Migration Bureau London Office, they were supposedly send by MacEwan College here in Edmonton. Obviously Canadian and British Mail service is slow, document was sent on Friday September 4th. So last Wednesday I decided to sent my original test results with Fedex to London, where it was delivered on Friday morning 11:09AM London time, setting us back $80 for ONE letter. JIT=Just In Time and what in eighty bucks on 30(?) some years. Our application was initially lodged to Berlin on February 4th 2007, registered on May 11th 2007, responded to on May 22nd 2009 and completed on September 21st 2009, exactly within the 4 months CIC timeframe. Now the wait for the medical has begun, and I am really hoping we can go to the US border this year to make a U-turn to re-enter Canada and obtain our PR-status. If and when that happens it took us 3 years and 6 months from original idea in Brasschaat to actual obtaining the Landed Immigrant Status and bear in mind they call this the simplified application. You have no idea how many documents, forms, translations and exhibits we have provided and produced in the past 3 years and I must say most of the time it was fun to do, sometimes digging in the past like this shows how your life has evolved and progessed. And with that I now realize how important a proper education is, cause thats the base of our immigration. Who would have thought you needed that again at the age of fifty bloody one. Next step? Canadian Citizenship? Who knows!
I always expected people to have the decency to identify him- or herself when commenting on my posts. A couple of posts ago someone, with no balls, left a comment on my Tang post. "Dit is echt gezever om niets! Ook tijd om niet te zeveren als je in Canada woont!" the comment read, where the second part makes no sense at all to me; other then "You fucked off to Canada, so shut up", but my blog it still read by this faceless someone. I do not object he or she having a different opinion, I strongly resist the fact it is posted anonymously. Which tells me a lot; he or she does not care about trust at all, hence he or she can't be trusted. If you call breaching trust, being a member of parliament, "zeveren" then you have a serious problem. I leave it at this because to strong a words come to mind, and in this post I have used quite some already.
When I went home today it was hot outside, just about 32 degrees Celcius, way too much for me. In the office we have, thank you very much, airco. And any weather condition passes you by, since all windows have a 50% see-thru shutter, and needless to say I am concentrated on the job (and stockmarkets). Only wind and rain are noticed and heared, and luckily for us it does not rain very much here in Edmonton-Leduc-RollyView. Downside of this heat is in most cases a thunderstorm develops in the early evening, but not today. They are a wonderful phenomena, except of course when it hits yourself, awesome to watch too. Have not seen a twister (also a movie with good looking Helen Hunt) yet.
The hike up the glacier made us wanting to eat something. I visioned a steak, French fries and a coleslaw. At the Saskatchewan Crossing (Highway 11 and Icefields Parkway) we knew a place to eat. As we got out of the car both of our legs felt like rubber, we did not feel very fit. We went inside to find out we were too early for a steak. Only burgers and sandwiches available, I ordered a chicken-burger as in a low-fat burger, Joka the real deal. Indeed it came with French fries and some coleslaw. But my burger was thrown in the with the French fries, so ridiculously fat, felt like a brick. The pop always comes with a refill, we were thirsty too. We took a look at the tourist-shop before we went out on our way to Rocky Mountain House, 180 km to the east. If you want to experience loneliness, come over and drive that highway. Halfway you can pull over into the town of Nordegg, after that there is nothing as in absolutely nothing. "No service for the next 92 km" is the last sign of life after passing Nordegg. This Highway 11 is nicknamed "The Road Less Travelled", and we know now that is actually correct. Abraham Lake stretches for 35 km along HWY 11, with absolutely no sign of life on or alongside of it whatsoever. No tents, RV's or boats in sight. I actually enjoy driving it, although I admit seeing the outskirts of Rocky Mountain House was a pleasant sight. Lets go to Timmie Ho for a coffee before turning north onto HWY 22; easier said than done, it is the last building on your right on the south side of town. But a Cappucino English Toffee tastes very good and is tooth-cracking sweet. After 180 clicks its worth the drive.
After visiting the Athabasca falls we approached the Athabasca glacier and were debating if we would take the hike and go up there. In 2006 we drove by cause of the crowd as I was sure we would return and I hate crowds (I know its single-minded). This time we decided to go up and take a closer look. When you drive to the parking lot you find signs beside the road with years onto it. Its starts at 1890 end end with 1992 and that is quite a long way, 2000 metres at least if I take a look with Google Earth. You can argue the melting is natures way and not because of the so called climate change; industrial revolution was just starting in 1890. Anyways while walking up the pretty steep hill we, again, came across a hurde of Germans. Nothing wrong with that but it seems they are everywhere from Jasper to the glacier. One if them commented "If I were here in 1982 the hike was done by now" with the steepest part still to come, I admit my sudden cultural reading and taking pictures was resting on the steep climb. I was listening to the guide for a while and he was telling the glacier melted down by 500 tons a day and you indeed could hear the water flowing at the end of the glacier, and it is a lot. Probably we all have seen the Artic Ice crumbling down into the sea, here that crumbling happens too as large pieces of ice fall onto the rocks and melts away. The glacier itself is a beautiful piece of ice, deep clear green-blue looking into the cracks, and awesome pruduct of nature itself and its hard to believe that in about 100 years the glacier is gone and is replaced by a lake surrounded by trees.
At last we could plan a trip to the Rockies, Joka had a weekend off. We decided to go to Jasper and use our little iglo-tent. Probably it would be cold and cold it was in the morning. We woke up at 7:15 due to the cold and some squirrels throwing pinecones onto our tent and of course I needed to use the restroom. I put on my flipflops, shorts and t-shirt thinking the sun would warm me up. I sat at our table for a while and after a couple of minutes I realized I was being stupid. Jeans, socks, proper shoes and a hoody soon found their way onto me. Still my head was cold and a woolen hat complemented my outfit, always be prepared for the cold in Canada. After cleaning up and packing my hands were so cold I had to put on gloves; I was not alowed to come near to my beloved Joka. Don't know why! In Jasper it was nice and warm again and we had breakfast at the "Soft Rock Cafe". Pretty good and tasty. We were wondering what people thought of us, while we were making comments, between ourselves, on almost everybody in the establishment. If you don't like what you see, just look the other way is my moto nowadays, makes life much easier.
"Wine and Water: to my friends who enjoys a glass of wine.. . and those who don't.
On this beautiful date 9-9-9 I will provide you with some tasty salmon recipes. If you don't like salmon you can always turn the date upside-down, right. Anyways start with a salmon fillet of about 1 kg, enough for 4, costing about $18 you can cook/grill the next recipes, all of whom are very tasteful, to say the least. Do it either at home or at the campground BBQ, it always works. Instead of farmed salmon you can use the wild version; it's darker and tastes stronger. I don't like the wild variety very much with the listed recipes.
Again, 3rd time, I had to sit the IELTS test. The first one, done twice in 2006 (because all my marks needed to be 7 or higher), had expired. For Canadian Immigration it is only valid for one year, the migrationbureau.com argues. For the now I have no clue why. Will try to find out. I am, again, not sure on the results, last time it turned out pretty well. So hopefully I improved a little. We will know shortly, 13 days after testing it is sent in the post, which is about today. Sitting the test is no fun at all. The examiners think the are the centre of the universe. Your passport is checked twice, even compared next to your face. Nothing can be taken into the exam-room, apparently they think anything can be used as a recording device. They are really unfriendly too, rude even. The entire day I have not heard the word "please" which, in ordinairy English/Canadian, is used almost every other sentence. No it were/are real bitches, not even nice asses. By the way, in Amsterdam it was exactly the same. No nice people at all. But the fun part is, in the end they only collect some papers and make nice stacks of it and turn it over to the real examiners. Really important, right.
It's finally done. The previous owner, Glen who is a plumber, finished constructing the septic-tank mount. And a mount it is. About 15 meters long and 6 wide. A huge thing. The county required it, based on our 4 bathrooms, to be this size. The county inspector, this was his first mount, is on a mission. It needs to be fully up to standards otherwise he will not approve it. Which in turn costs Glen his plumbing ticket (permit) and has to apply for a new one. So it is serious business to please this inspector. $10.000 dollars of gravel, sand, gravel-sand and black soil went into/on it, along with quite the sum of hours. Way more then he ever expected at the time we closed the deal. $2500 would do, before he met the inspector, that is. Done by a contractor the mount would set you back $25000 at least. We are very happy to have made this mount part of the contract and to have Bruce inspect the septic-tank. That was $200 very well spend.
Take your fifth wheel, trailer or truck-camper (the one I prefer), drive to a quite place and start camping for a view days. Even a tent will do. The Canadians use it all. Especially on long weekends, like we have now (September 7th is labour-day), everybody takes off to somewhere. Of course to the Rockies but north of Edmonton are also great camping sites and possibilities; vast lakes for boating, smaller ones and rivers for fishing. Hiking is popular too, and there are literally endless hiking trails. But beware of the bear especially papa and mama bear, allways make noise when you're walking or biking the trails. The bear does not want to encounter you and if you do make yourself larger; chances are it will back off. No need to run or climb a tree; its faster and is a expert tree climber. If you are attacked by a black bear fight it fiercely, with a grizzly on the other hand your best way to survive is to play dead. If you run in to the bear; well then you are just plain unlucky. And at the end of a camping out day with no bear encounters, indeed a BBQ and a campfire or use the campfire for the BBQ. Depends whether you are hungry or not. In British Columbia there are roadsigns asking "Is your campfire out?" We saw that for the first time when we left the campsite of the photo, Manning Park, back in July 07.
Again I was waiting for Joka, this Saturday afternoon, to pick her up from work. I was waiting in my truck observing the parking lot. Next to the grey (or is it gray) car was another one parked. The owner approched that car and transferred his items into the trunc. Didn't move, touched or looked at the cart again and drove of. Lately it is pretty windy here in Edmonton, and I have seen wind proppelled carts driving by without a customer. So that loose cart can easily hit and damage your car. It would be fun to sue the PetSmart for that. I wonder if one would succeed. A couple of minutes later the owner of the grey/gray car arrived acompanied by a passenger. They talked for a minute when the passenger door opened. An empty milkshake cup was placed on the tarmac and they drove off. Nowadays at the bottom of an email message you probably find this "Please consider the environment before printing this message!!" Does that passenger considers this. Probably not, too studpid to operate email anyways.
These are used on gophers here in rural Alberta, according to the previous owner that is. "It is fun to do and they explode so nicely". I found 2 of these bullets when we were cleaning the house back in July. We only have one gopher (hopefully) and I could not hit them with an M16 in automatic mode probably. That is if I could pull the trigger en keep my eyes open, both are most unlikely. But then again, if you watch "Caddyshack" you might change your mind. In the summertime you do not see the gophers much but in wintertime, on the snow, you see them all over the place and people on skidoos with rifles hunting them using the .22 probably.
Don't know if its a coincidence or just plain luck, today I received my official business card from M&D. Probably this means they want to keep me. A few months ago I also did receive my name tage, to be attached to my cubicle. So it is not really an issue, right.
Next week is gonna be a hot week, weatherwise that is. Saturday thru Friday 29+ degrees Celcius. I DO NOT like that anymore. Way too warm, uncomfortable, sweaty and lousy weather. Luckily we have a airco at the office, here at home it is not cooling very well, needs freon. Normally it cools down rapidly when the evening arrives, but not now. Its 23:20 and still its 15 dergrees outside. It will be a long week.
Today Waiward Steel Fabricators were awarded 2 road bridges across the Anthony Henday Highway, which runs around the south of Edmonton. M&D Drafting will take care of detailing while WSF is engineering the connections. The Lessard and Callingwood community bridges are not that difficult; large steel main girders, connected with diaphragm beams (sort of "Andreas kruizen"), covered with a concrete slab to accomodate 4 or 6 lanes and at both sides a walk/cycle way. Unfortunately they are skewed and curved, which makes it pretty interesting for drafting and even more to the shop where they only have + or - 6 mm play, a quarter of an inch that is. The bottom line: we are getting busy again, all the signs point that way. Hopefully we enter the the winter fully loaded. Which reminds me; if you ever order a fully loaded baked potato, in a restaurant over here (along with a very large steak), you will get a big unskinned baked potato sliced open and filled with butter, cream cheese and chives topped with bacon crumble. Tastes pretty damn good, I must say.
Kort geleden ben ik, via Jan Dijkstra via Hyves.nl, digitaal in contact gekomen met Gert Blom. Een oud collega. Beiden hadden we toendertijds een voorkeur voor de Duitse Krimi Schimanski. Sinds die tijd spreken wij elkaar aan met Thanner en Schimanski. Dit geheel terzijde. Gert heeft in de loop der jaren aangetoond dat hij ook ballen heeft, is voor zichzelf begonnen en heeft zelfs een architectenbureau overgenomen, samen met een compagnon. Eerlijk gezegd heeft hij mij daarmee verbaasd, zo zie ja maar weer hoe iemand je kan verrassen. Na wat heen en weer gemaild te hebben o.a. ons vertrek naar Canada, kreeg ik het verzoek of een uitgever mij mocht benaderen voor een nieuw uit te geven boek. Het blijkt dat Gert in zijn vrije tijd schrijft, voor de lol en wellicht ook om bepaalde dingen van zich af te schrijven. Sinds ik blog kan ik mij daar iets bij voorstellen. En zo'n initiatief kan ik zeer waarderen omdat het ook weer getuigd van lef en hij verrast mij er weer mee. Click hier of op de foto voor een link naar boekscout.nl.
Every year Waiward organizes the "Waiward Golf tournament" at the Coloniale Golfclub in Beaumont, South of Edmonton. You are invited to join whether you are a golfer or not, it is about a fun day, having fun, eats and a drink or two. The method of play used is the "Texas Scramble", which means that the best shot of the group, four players, is used, the hole is enlarged with a two foot circle. So anybody in that circle is the winner, but we holed all our shots and ended -3 for the round. Actually not bad at all for someone who had not played for 22 years. We quit golf prior to Joost being born. On the picture you see Jim McPartlan in the middle and James Lee next to him, Mitch our fourth team-mate did not shown up, so we took turn in being Mitch. Downside is that tee-time is 7:00 in the morning. We had agreed to have breakfast with Peter, 06:15am we were eating bacon and eggs with Canadian coffee, which is best described as serious slootwater. And they keep ri-filling it at no extra cost.
I'm waiting for Joka to pick her up from work. At a certain point a large, 5 inch raised 23 inch tyred fire-red Dodge Ram 3500 Turbo Diesel shows up, right in front of me. In it sits a tough guy, mirrored sunglasses and a cap, broad shouldered. Wonder where he is going. The door opens and with that tough guy comes a little Spaniel with a lovely red leach, it matches his truck. Is he? No, not in a tough truck like that. He enters the PetSmart. For a wash and a groom? It looks like the dog has been groomed recently. A couple of minutes later he re-appears with a big bag of dogfood on his shoulder and the red-leashed Spaniel is walking cheerfully besides him. He puts the dog-food in the trunk and of course the Spaniel takes the front seat, and with a lot of noise he drives off. It is always funny to watch people, you never know what comes next or what to expect.
At last we found a Dutch grocery store here in Edmonton. This one advertised in the Edmonton Journal, Emma found it, about their grand re-opening; Gouda cheese for only $1.00 per 100 grams. And indeed as we arrived all Gouda cheese was sold out due to high demand. But re-stock will be done by Thursday, the race is on. We purchased a nice chunk of Leerdammer (1 kg) for $25.00. Actually not that expensive I think, back in NL it is a pricy cheese too, right. We bought 3 jars of sambal, Atjar Tauge en several boemboes. Chocolate sprinkels were brought in by Joost and Eefje, 5 boxes, no need to buy it now. There are about 10 or 12 different brands of peanutbutter here in Canada but there is none that I like, so now I tried the AH (how and where DD purchases I don't know) sold at DD, still have to taste it. The best, in my opinion anyways, Dutch peanutbutter was sold by the Aldi; PCD for only 0.60 EURO, but they took that out of the range of products. Also a smoked mackerel ended up in our shopping cart with several other "we miss"-products. We brought with us "The Windmill Herald" , a bit colored church paper, where we read on the merger of Woudenberg, Scherpenzeel and Renswoude. Of all places...
Found a nice site on the Firebag projects I worked on, and hope to work on again, shortly. It explains nicely how the bitumen recovery works; if you want a in depth technical analysis look here. I still have to go up there to have a look and maybe a tour is also possible, because the technique is quite interesting and the projects are huge. So from a technical, drafting, point of view it is beautiful, environmentally they (have to/are forced to) become more aware. Public opinion demands it, rightly so. But no matter which way you approach it; the bitumen needs to be harvested, if it's not for us or the Americans, its for the Chinese. And that is not one of Nena's "99 Luftballons".
"Politie wil hulp burgers bij afpakken patserbakken" (Quote from nu.nl)
This is pretty soon, even for Albertan standards. A Frost Warning in August. Its rotten weather anyways, rain and some 10 degrees in the shade. But its favourable for our lawn and the farmers are cheering that its finally raining quite a bit. Hopefully not to little to late. We need the water also for our well, we are not connected to the city watersystem. But frost in August? Brrrr...
Joost en Eefje zijn vanmiddag vertrokken naar Nederland, helaas. Want het was heel prettig om het geheel weer even compleet te hebben en wij weten niet wanneer wij Joost weer zien, misschien met Kerst om te snowboarden in Jasper/Banff. Zij vliegen via de US, en dat is ook meteen de laatste keer. Veel te veel rompslomp met die Amerikanen, Customs. Dan maar een paar uur wachten op London. Bagage op de heenweg is 2x23 kg en op de terugweg 1x31 kg. Waardeloos dus.
After packing, cleaning and moving our stuff from our old home in Maarn, mostly done by Joka, we decided NOT to collect so much stuff (junk actually) anymore. That in mind we were building our Ikea cabinet and could not find a good location for it. So we decided to put it in the spare room. Some parts were almost ruined by the move, Ikea quality right, and I was thinking to keep it in the garage where it would probably stay until the next move or be simply forgotten about. Solution: BURN IT. The cabinet will most likely not survive a next move and we got rid of the excess parts. There were some strange colored fumes when burning, probably the glue or cardboard. Frightning is the speed the flames consumed the shelfs. Look here for a small photo-impression.
Helaas zit het er al weer bijna op voor Joost en Eefje en natuurlijk voor ons ook. Het is weer even heel fijn om ons gezinnetje compleet te hebben. En zelfs meer dan dat. Ze hebben een leuke rondrit gemaakt in de Jeep van Joka. Drumheller-Banff-Icefields-Jasper-Edmonton-Rolly View through the Rockies. Met de tent, zelfs 2 beren hebben ze gezien. 100% meer dan wij in 2006. Ze hebben even kunnen proeven van het Canadese rural leven, ze zijn zelfs in downtown Rolly View geweest. Veel te rustig natuurlijk maar toch ook wel weer leuk, zo voor eventjes. Nog een paar scouting kampen, als leidinx, en dan start voor Joost het afstuderen, wat hij dan in Feb.2010 hoopt te doen. Bachelor of ICT. Cool. En dat geeft hem ook een zeer goed gevoel. Nu nog een keer een Canadese winter meemaken, snowboarden in Jasper en Banff bij minus 20, dat is dus downhill ca minus 35. Seriously cold, but fun.
Despite all rules and regulations, English style, here in Canada this happens quite often. A falling crane. Nice detail being the fact we are engineering and drafting the widening of this bridge. There is not much that is going smooth on this project and that translates in things happening like this. We bid and were awarded this job back in March and it looked liked a smooth one, but looking smooth and being smooth are two different entities. For example, we made templates for drilling anchors through and through the piers, after drilling and surveying them the were 3 inches off. As the steel was being fabricated the shop ended up plugging and re-drilling a few hundred holes. The falling crane issue will have a bigger impact, all traffic was suspended and a full blown investigation will be taking place. What that does on the schedule? No clue. But there will be severe penalties for not living up to that schedule. There goes the profit, if any!
Every year all etnic cultures in Edmonton present themselves at the Heritage Festival in Hawrelac Park. The Netherlands, of course, were also there. Joka has an very adequate description on her blog. I didn't feel like going, had worked hard on our land and was building a fire, but I was forced to go and there was another reason: haring met uitjes. Surprisingly there was no line-up for the herring and we could order ours without waiting. And they were good, nicely salted and tender. Johan had his on a bun, I like them the Dutch way.
We have had our own small twister in the backyard, I call our own nature reserve (about 11000 square meter). It touched down when we had a thunderstorm out here. Fortunately it was only a small one, we discovered it the next morning. Pretty cool. Twisters are not uncommon here. In 1987 there was a fullblown F5 tornado, which pretty devastating.
There is a lot of debris, pine and poplar branches, on our acreage. We have given the pine trees a golf-coursecut, and that's pretty neat I would say. The lower stem is exposed for about 3-4 feet, so the grass can (but will it?) grow beneath the tree. I looks nicer and is more convenient in the maintenance department. We can use the John Deere tractor to mow the grass. A during the winter it looks much nicer with all the snow beneath it. We can mulch all those branches or we can build large campfires. The latter we like the most, it's fun and warm too except for your backside, right. Evenings can be a little cold here in Alberta. When there are scouts around, well campfires grow large. No point in stopping them, branches have to burn, preferably all at once. And actually I like that too, but there is a limit to the size of the tractor rim.
On July 18th a severe thunderstorm hits Edmonton and Sherwood Park. It was on a Saturday night and we saw it pass by. Pretty Cool I though. The day after I heard it wasn't that cool at all. Golfballsize hailstones, broken trees falling on peoples homes and cars. Not nice at all. And a power outtage at several refineries. A week later they are up and running again but in the meantime the service-stations are running dry. Take into account the fact Edmonton has their own refineries, Shell, Petro-Canada.... We are consuming all that fuel pretty rapidly, with our big and bulky engines. On the other hand there will be no shortage of gasoline in the near future or should I say decades. All around Edmonton and in Alberta in general there is talk and actual projects are under construction to upgrade and upgrading the BPD (Barrels Per Day) output to secure future demand. There is a lot of oil (to be) in the tarsands of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Only 15-20% of the Alberta oilsands are being developped, so a huge potential still. And one day Saskatchewan and Manitoba will be developped too. And they all need steelstructures, large ones! And there I (we) come into play...... On my way home today I was thinking we made a pretty good decision, going to Canada. Where it will take us, permitwise, we will know shortly.
Last week I got the feeling it is picking up again, the number of jobs are increasing and more hours need to be put in. Unfortunately not the big ones, but we keep pretty busy. Most of the detailers are back at 40 hours and even some overtime is required to get the job done. So I am relatively hopeful with the current developments on the Canadian and US markets, like mentioned before; we rely on the US markets too. The sign on the picture maybe is wishful thinking but it allways prevails negativity. Like Donald Sutherland said in "A Dirty Dozen": "Positive Waves, man".
It is not only about the cold and winters here in Edmonton and meanwhile Leduc. As you can see on the picture it can be pretty hot here too. The sun is shining directly onto it, but still. My car-temp-sensor showed 32 degrees Celcius while driving. Temperature wise we went from minus 35 in January to plus 32 in July, a difference of 67 degrees. And no rain. Quite something else compared to Holland. It feels like a hot summer day in southern Spain this week.
I know, Joka also has an item on Mac. But I took some nice pictures of her and wanted to share this. I know this is appreciated by some among you guys (this is a real Canadian expression, even more true in Vancouver). And yes she is named after the Apple MacIntosh, required by Joost, if not he did not want a dog in the house. Click here for some more pictures. In the mean time she has grown a bit older, 9 years alltogether, but she adapted nicely to her new environment. It took her a while but now she is happy too, and she has her own nature reserve here on our property. Sometimes I call her Nez Gris.
There he is again with his Ford I hear you thinking. But it struck me that there are some similarities between the above mentioned toys. Both are or have been used to relax after work or to get a bad day out of your system. True, the Storck is far more effective but now it will take me 2.5 hours to get home, back in Holland it was only 25 minutes. And I really do miss the daily bike commute. Both are real fun to drive. Unfortunately the Storck is not being used nowadays, at all. I had pumped up its tires (to 6 bars), left it in the sun when we heard a loud bang; my back tyre blew, most likely on the valve, as always. Distances are simply too long for commuting to and from work. Edmonton, rural Alberta, is not that interesting to bicycle through, long straight and often (sharp) gravel roads. Although cycling is growing in popularity as there is serious talk on a Tour de l'Alberta, cycled through rural Alberta. For now it is only 180 km with some 600 cyclists, and that number will increase the next few years as the baby boomers are concerned on their weight. I will pick up cycling again, for sure. Its too much fun to do, and somehow we will make it work out here in the country.
Dear oh dear. That takes a long time. mowing my lawn. Today it took me 4.5 hours. But its fun to do. Only need to sharpen the blades. tried to mow some rocks. They won, but sparks were flying. The mower we've got is an old one and only 38 inches wide. For the now it will do fine. Save some up and I will by a larger and more versatile one, where I can attach all kind of nice toys to make life a bit comfortable. The large front lawn is now diagonally mowed, pretty difficult to mow in a straight line, especially the first one. But it looks OK, if Google Maps or Earth was up to date you could check. Downside is that I have to this every week during the summer, and that only 5 months a year. Right.
Yesterday we collected Johan, Emma's boyfriend, from Edmonton International Airport (YEG). We were there right on time, but customs decided he had to unpack all of his stuff and give an explanation almost to every item. So Emma grew more anxious by the minute. "You're sure he is on the plane?" we teased her. We were waiting for an hour and 15 minutes when he finally cleared customs and came walking thru the entrance door. At last the wait was over for Emma. Of course crying a bit, when I heard a sniff beside me. Joke too had tears in her eyes, you know me she said. Of we went to our acreage where we lit a campfire, had a beer and heard all the stories on his customs endeavours. Customs had obviously made the decision to rigorously check this flight from London. Normally only one officer will check you, this time three officers were involved. And they are the "Yes officer, no officer" kind. But anyways he is here and Emma is even more happy.
Bear says: "if I roar in the forest, the entire forest is shivering with fear."
Canada-Rush-F150. What more does a guy like me want? A nice girl? Guess what, I've got that too!!! There is not much beating this combo. Or it should be Pink Floyd. But Rush is far more versatile, modern and still creating music. So I will go for Rush, and probably that is no surprise, right. And now now I've got a nice John Deere tractor too, for the lawn and the rough patches below our pine trees. I'm getting green. We even think of installing solar panels for the hot watertanks, also a small windmill crossed my mind. Some things do change indeed!! For the better I think anyways.
That is a lot of fun, not really, and a very time consuming process. Luckily for me it was a warm day and could do it on a Sunday. Unfortunately she wasn't there to lend me a hand. For some reason I had picked up a 4 inch nail that liked my front-right tire very much. It took me half an hour to find the bloody jack, hidden and bolted under the backseat, another half hour to figure out how to get the bloody spare tire from under the truck and an hour to unbolt the flat one and bolt on the spare tire. An 18" wheel is big and bulky but looks very good on my truck. Nope, not a pleasant experience. And off course the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) is flashing all the way to the dealer, where it took another hour and a half to fix and exchange the tires. I expected a huge bill. Only $30 I had to pay, cool.
It always surprises me how many pieces of data or input you need to achieve a relatively small and simple task. In this case just a simple c...
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