Amberations

Sunday, May 29, 2005
the mountains win again!

My housemate Jennie (she's in the picture above) and I took off early this morning on an epic hike up Mt Wesach, which is a fairly intense hike that takes you to a 4000ft altitude way up above the treeline. Words can't express how fantastic it was... it was definetly the most stoke-inducing hike I've been on yet!
It turned into a crazy adventure when we realised that the beginning of the trail had been logged. We had been expecting a fair bit of initial bushwhacking, but combing through the logged area proved to be far more of a challenge! when finally we located the trail, we wound our way up with the mosquitos and finally arrived at the summit 3 hours later.

These pictures don't do it justice but you get the idea!! The view was crazy- I've never climbed a mountian like that before I was pretty excited!
On the way down our fearless leader spotted two grizzlies napping down the cliff which we were about to descend upon... we just about peed ourselves! These Grizzelies' heads were dayam near an armspan wide. Also, Grizzlies tend to be far more agressive than black bears; if they find you on thier turf, they'll give you shit!! Luckily we managed to keep quiet enough not to wake them, I managed not to piss myself, and we got the hell down that mountain as fast as we could!!!

anyways things are so inspiring in kitimat, and my little grizzely bear eric is coming AGAIN this weekend to visit!! I can't wait for him to share this mountainy amazingness with me :D

Happy sunday everyone! I'll be adding pics to the site as I get more this week :) Hopefully the ones of the bears turned out!

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Sunday, May 15, 2005
Welcome to the mat!

Kitimat is GRRRREAT!! Aside from the lack of Eric, Heather, Sani, and Shanny... things are just fantastic! Alcan provides us with Accommodations here, so our building is essentially like university residence, with drunken fools wandering in and out of each others rooms and such.
We've been hiking every weekend and my new digital camera should be here soon so that I can take pictures! Yey pictures!
It's so nice to have the time (and $$$) to cook yummy things, play guitar, meet new peeps and of course, gong. Yes, Amber has been cooking!! And no, not just kraft dinner... I've made ummm grilled tiger prawns, an omelette fest, and last night was souvlaki with greek salad. I think Eric will be very proud of me :)
As for work, it's veeeery different from Alcan Kingston.... I won't go into it but process engineers are much different from the Aluminum gurus I had as bosses in Kingston. But, it's a fantastic experience, great money, and I get to conduct all the research for projects that they never get the chance to do. We're talking 11m long slabs of aluminum here; it's a beautiful thing!
Dad has been painting my new car door, and I wait- he'll be bussing the door out this week and I'll be starting the bodywork on Friday (nothing too intense, just some sanding, filling, priming and painting)... HURRAY FOR PROJECTS!


Events a coming:
1. ERIC! Hopefully end of this month!
2. Trip to Nelson! Eric and I are heading to Grandma's farm June 18 for her 80th B-day gathering... It'll be awesome to see mom's family again- it's been years! (As we all know, Grandma is quite a character so I am prepping Eric accordingly!)
3. Annual Roadtrip with the girls (I think they'll be road tripping over to these parts as I get no holidays... booo!)



Events I'll be missing, but that should be recognized none the less!
1. Julia and Andrew's Wedding
2. Dan and Clarissa's Wedding
3. Warped Tour and the Stampede

Cheers!
PS: I re-added comments as I miss them now

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Long Live the YSPH!

HAHAHA!!!
The new York St. Party House occupants clearly rule

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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
and like a chump!

(this story is dedicated my ICBC-employed Uncle Scott! not because he is a chump; I am the chump in the story; but anyways... )


My drive to Kitimat was cursed from the beginning!!! (also, sorry for the shitty english in this entry but i'm tired, man!!)

Dad had been pretty busy lately, but managed to have a little beater cabriolet up and running Saturday, leaving me with 30 hours to learn standard AND complete my 20 hour drive- no problem!!

Friday/Saturday: Vancouver-Victoria-Vancouver-Prince George
Our short (yet stressful) jaunt to Vic consisted of picking up my car and gonging/eating with the parents Friday night. Dad taught me stick on Saturday morning, then Ereek and I putted our way into Van on the 3pm ferry (the car was mad sketchy, randomly stalling, making strange gurgling noises and such). Thank goodness Eric was there to handle the beast as I was far too terrified! But, seeing as I had to be in kitimat on Sunday, I could procrastinate leaving Van-towne no longer. After a minor panic attack (followed by some Eric hugs) I reluctantly left Van around 8:30pm on Saturday. The car was being scary but I handled that bitch!!! (also, eric had created a fantastic sign for my back window which said “LEARNING STICK- STAY BACK!”- It proved to be very effective)

Sunday Morning
After driving through the night, I ended up close to Prince George around 6am Sunday. It was beautiful weather, the sun was shining, I had the highway to myself and my top down (the car top you sickos!). Yes, things were starting to look up, and my ridiculous coffee high had me singing Raffi's Bananaphone for most of the morning, looking at scenery and generally not paying much attention to the road. When finally I glanced back, it was too late for me to avoid the doe lying on the highway. She was already dead but it was still pretty intense. Poor doe. For the rest of the morning drive I sang her deer songs such as "sweet deer of mine" and "deer go to heaven, goats go to hell"....
an underlying theme occurs here: PAY ATTENTION TO THE ROAD!

Around 10am I called sweet ereek, who had been having strange dreams of things going awry with my travels. He cautioned that maybe it wasn't the best idea to drive on no sleep...

But since I am clearly a bulletproof superhuman, I continued to drive on toward Kitimat, through the FANTASTIC town of Stoner, B.C., and beyond!


Sunday Night
By 7pm I found myself in Terrace, 30 minutes from Kitimat. The tiredness was starting to get to me, I was a bit lost/distracted and as a result just cruised on through a stop sign ....SMASH!!
Yep. Car crash. My fault. The cabriolet's drivable but the driver side door is FOCKED (an d so is my pride!). Ugh. No more detail. No one was hurt. Dad seems to be calm!
Plus with a trip to the junkyard (and thus a "new" door) and a little body work on the beast should get me home in August and maybe to the stampede.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty stressed and loserlike for these first few days at work.
Today the notice board had a posting stating that "95% of personal stress is self-induced" and that a good way of overcoming it is to let things go; i.e. don't replay nasty events over and over again in your head and call yourself a chump repeatedly.

Thus, I've been calling myself a chump a bit less today. It seems to be helping so far :)

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