A storm hits Edmonton...

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.

Back to 40 hours.

And indeed its picking up. We are back on 40 hours effective August 3rd. So that is good news here from Edmonton, Canada, back to full time again. Maybe Flaherty was right and is Canada ready for economic growth again. The locals are used to the bust or boom principle here in Alberta, me a simple Dutch guy is not. Go with the flow is what I'll do. No other option, is there?

Looks like it picks up

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".

Cold?

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.
There is officially a drought now here in Leduc-County and most likely in many parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Last week it rained some, and you could see the crops grow. But this week has been extremely hot and dry, the fields are not watered at all. Too large? Not enough water? I have been told they let nature do its cause. I have no clue. I will try to find out.

Our MacIntosh

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.

Ford F150 - Storck Multitask similarity

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.

Mowing my lawn

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.

Johan is here.

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.

A bear, a lion and a pig meet.

Bear says: "if I roar in the forest, the entire forest is shivering with fear."
Lion says : "if I roar in the jungle, the entire jungle is afraid of me."
Pig says : "big deal.... I only have to cough, and the entire planet shits itself."

Can't beat this combo!!

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.

Tire Change on a F150

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.

Canadian banking System

A pretty nice column on the Canadian Banking System, conservative but healthy. (Thanks to LGdH).