Sailing in Paihia

I just received an email from a friend who has moved down to New Zealand for a year with her family. Every email I’ve gotten has had the requisite photos attached and a description of where they’ve been on this weekend and where they’ll be going next week.

I may never speak to them again when they get back. Not jealous at all. Nope.

The email does remind me of when my buddies, Murray, Cliff and I, all went to New Zealand and Australia for six months in between years at University. The fact that the University encouraged me to take a year off to reassess my academic goals had nothing to do with going on the trip.

Cats and Dogs

One of my friends I grew up with had a Springer Spaniel dog named Liz and a cat named Cat. Liz was a pretty excitable dog, really friendly but easily bored and always wanting to play. I think they named her after a relative. They named the cat ‘Cat’ because their dad said why should they name an animal when it wouldn’t come when it was called anyway.

Cat put up with the dog as cats will, ignoring her completely or tormenting her by kicking all the dog food out of the bowl. Liz probably just thought that dinner was a smorgasbord every night – more fun hunting kibble when it was spread all over the house.

Family Pranks

People sometimes wonder where I got my sense of humour from. Actually, people sometimes just wonder about me in general. Oh well.

I’m going to come right and say it’s all my parents’ fault. Mostly my dad’s to be honest.  He’s 77 years old this year, going on twelve. He’ll still deny stealing a fresh baked cookie, even when he has chocolate on his face and crumbs on his shirt. That’s consistency!

Sense of Humour

I can’t imagine living life without a sense of humour. I actually don’t think anyone can really accomplish that – I mean, look around you! Just looking at your relatives or coworkers will tell you that God has a sense of humour and he passed it on to us!

I had this epiphany one night walking back to my apartment after a late class at University.

Opposites Attract

We were driving the other day, out on the highway and started talking about the small compass that my son bought for the car and stuck on the dashboard. This got me to thinking about how opposites attract.

Believe it or not, that’s how the creative process starts, at least for me. Try to follow along...

Writers

Being a writer is a weird thing. This is my opinion. Maybe it’s yours as well, but I think I’ll stick with my own point of view for the moment. It’s probably safer for everyone. Sing along if you want.

Now that I have the chance to actually think and create and write on a regular basis, I find myself staring off into space a lot more than I used to. Some of you may not notice a difference, but believe me, next time you see me with the thousand yard stare, you can be sure that I am working away diligently...

Self-serve counters

Technology is a great thing, when it’s been thought out properly. I love techie stuff, all of it. Cool phones, shiny lights, buttons everywhere, obviously built to attract the male of the species. Kind of like crows and magpies, come to think of it. Hmmm, I don’t like where this is going...

Anyway, I really want to talk about the new “self-serve” check-out counters every store seems to have installed.

When they first arrived, I thought they were a pretty good idea – cheaper for manpower and faster for the folks that only buy a few items. Seeing how I buy groceries for three teenagers, it didn’t seem likely that I would ever get to use one of these counters at a grocery store for the foreseeable future.

Losing your Mind

Have you ever lost your mind? I have. Take my advice – once you lose your mind, don’t bother looking for it. There are better things to do than look for something that’s only going to get you into trouble.

It’s like forgetting your lady’s birthday, your anniversary or Valentine’s Day. You know these dates come every year, so put them in the smart phone, send them to your own email address or better yet, staple a note to your forehead at the beginning of the year. That way, your girl can rip the reminder off your head and hand it to you a couple of days beforehand. Believe me, it’s cheaper than a data plan for your phone. And a lot less painful than trying to apologize for missing an important date...

Alarms!

I have a love/hate relationship with alarm clocks. Actually, to be perfectly clear, it’s more of a “sorta like”/hate relationship.

When I was a kid and not yet going to school, waking up was an absolute delight; eyes slowly opening, all comfy and warm under the covers, and the prospect of a really sugary breakfast cereal or bacon and eggs for breakfast. I still have dreams like that.

Apologies - Summer days

I just realized that during the summer, it's remarkably easy to forget what day it is. Even what week it is. I just realized it's been almost a month since my last post. 
Between spending days in the basement office on a couple of big projects and sitting in the hammock and watching the vegetable garden grow, I've let the blog languish.


Which, come to think of it, is exactly what summer should allow everyone to do...

Church Memories

Some of my earliest memories of church are from when we lived in Mississauga, Ontario. We were able to walk to this HUGE church – although when I think about it, everything was huge when I was four years old. I always remember trying to have the same stride as my dad as we walked. I was always looking down at his shiny dress shoes and I tried so hard to match him step for step.

Old and Young Travelers

At one of my yearly physical exams, my doctor and I were discussing everything and anything under the sun when he says out of nowhere “You know, once you hit 45 years old, everything starts to go downhill”. Where that came from, I don’t know – we were talking about hiking trails in National Parks. I might have mentioned that my knees were hurting a bit and it was harder to see the fine print on things like stop signs and the like. Still, saying something like that during a physical exam can be disconcerting. 

Seven Miles Downhill

My buddy Murray, called me up one day, to see if I wanted to go cross country skiing. He had found a trail that would take most of a day to ski but had a great thing going for it – after a short climb of a few hundred meters, it was a long, shallow downhill run. Seven miles downhill, he swore.

I really should have known better.

Older Brothers

So I’m driving my Number One son somewhere out of town and ask him “What’s with you and your younger brother today?”

“Well. I think he’s repulsive and I hate him” he said calmly.

Not one to have knee-jerk reactions, I promptly pulled over and said, “Okay, we’re going home”.

Then I thought it might be better to continue on and try to get to the bottom of this, to delve into the mind of a teenager. After all, I was a kid once, and many of my peers believe I still have that mentality.

Showers

I made it. I finally made it. The plan this morning was to go for a walk first thing with my darling wife and our goofball of a dog. We could be up and out for a brisk thirty minute walk and be back in time to see the kids appear sleepily from rooms, look at the clock and then do the mad morning dash to get ready for school. That never gets old. Then it would be a quick shower and right downstairs to write a column or two.

Percussive Maintenance

Everyone knows that I have older, more mature vehicles. I’d like to say that I prefer older vehicles because they’re easier to fix. The fact that there are more of them on the road certainly doesn’t hurt. More spare parts, for one. You don’t have to worry where you park it, either. A great thing about older cars and vans is that for many minor repairs, there is a maintenance procedure that everyone, I mean everyone, can use. I’ve heard many names for this procedure while it’s being performed (most of them not fit to print) and the one I prefer is ‘percussive maintenance’.

Flying Fish in the Rockies

Flying fish in the Rocky Mountains. Not something you see everyday.

My buddy, Murray, and I had made plans to hike into the Kananaskis backcountry and camp by a small alpine lake. The idea was to relax for three days, away from university life, take in nature and fish a little.

The reason we picked this lake was because Mur had never fished before and we needed any and all the help we could get. The lake was used as a breeding pond for trout and it hadn't been open for fishing for a couple of years. I was hoping the fish were really hungry.

Tourist Questions

I just have to pass on some of the tourist questions that I and others have had to field over the years. I had the pleasure of working and living in the Kananaskis region, both in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and in the Canmore/Banff area. Believe me when I say that I love tourists unequivocally. They force me to answer questions diplomatically and imaginatively. Excellent skills to develop.

Here we go...

Indispensability

We’d all like to be indispensable at one time or another. Sometimes you plan to be that way and other times it’s accidental. This is about the latter.

I started work at Nakiska Ski Hill in 1987, in preparation for the 1988 Olympics. In case you think I’m dating myself, remember I started working when I was eight years old. Or was it six?

Just had to put this in...

"We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend."

Jeffrey Rowland