Category Archives: Family

APTI, Day 2 – Heathrow & the Flight to Mumbai

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Day 2 of our journey consisted of a nine-hour lay-over in Heathrow, followed by an equally long flight to Mumbai.The layover was – as with most layovers – uneventful. However, here are some observations from a first-time visitor to Heathrow:

  • Sitting for nine hours in Terminal 4 gives a person the luxury to do silly things, like time the frequency of flights out of Heathrow. The runway we observed, west of Terminal 4, sees, on average, a flight depart every 55 seconds. While I found that rather amazing, I could almost picture how planes could be queued up to take off at that frequency. What I had trouble wrapping my head around was the obvious corollary: that meant there was, on one runway or another, a plane landing every 55 seconds. I decided that if I come back in another life, I don’t want to come back as an air traffic controller in Heathrow.
  • No laptop battery is going to last through a nine-hour layover, so Steven and I were scrambling to locate power outlets in the terminal. As it turns out, these are about as easy to come by as petunias in a pig pen. The few that existed were most often gobbled up by other selfish, greedy travellers with laptops.
  • If you’re the squeamish type, skip this observation. But it has to be noted, the urinals in Heathrow are like none that I’ve seen in North America. Picture half an avocado with the pit removed and then tilted slightly and you’ve got a pretty good picture. One minus: they don’t afford a lot of privacy. One big plus: no backsplash. After a couple hundred years of peeing into porcelain, some British engineer has finally mastered the hydraulic physics needed to avoid one of life’s little unpleasantries. Kudos to him/her. I’m not sure why, but somehow I think a woman solved this one. After all, men have been content enough to pee on themselves for centuries, so why would they stop now. If you read this, and you were disgusted by it, you have no one to blame but yourself; I forewarned you.
  • For an airport that handles thousands and thousands of people a day, Heathrow is surprisingly uncrowded. Now, if they would just install a few more power outlets …
  • When I go to pay for food here, I have that moment when I think to myself, hmmmnnn, that’s a little expensive. And then I remember to convert pounds to dollars. Ouch.

Sunset over Heathrow Airport

The flight to Mumbai is thankfully far more peaceful and uneventful than the flight to London, so we won’t dwell on it other than to say that the evening meal was probably one of the best I’ve ever had on an airplane. Catering to the clientèle on the flight, which was overwhelmingly Asian, it was a vegetarian curry meal. Kudos to British Air on that front.

A Passage to India, Day 1

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Getting sleep on an airplane shouldn’t be this hard. Really. It’s an eight-hour flight from Calgary to Heathrow, after all. And I’m not a particularly light sleeper. But there are impediments.

First, we have to get past the gauntlet of service with a smile. Wine we probably shouldn’t drink. Meals we don’t really need, since we ate at the airport just before we left. I know that sounds like I’m complaining about the positive, but it probably takes an hour and a half for all of this to grind its course, and when the flight doesn’t leave until 10:00 p,m. that pushes back any attempt at sleeping until close to midnight. And with an engorged stomach because of too much wine and too much food, that’s not happening immediately. (Children of children of the depression inherit at least this much from their parents: we don’t waste food or drink, especially when it’s free – or included in the price.)

My travelling partners indulge in some Gravol to help them get to sleep, but I’m more stubborn than that. No drug-induced coma for me!

So, I listen to a talking book for a while to wind down (David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames, if anyone is interested). At about 12:30 I make my first attempt to get to sleep. And I do. For about ten or twenty minutes.

Now, please understand, that I like children. I’ve even helped raise a couple myself, one of which I’m currently traveling with. But man, there’s nothing to rouse a person out a light sleep like a screaming toddler. I mean screaming. No hyperbole. I have foam ear plugs in and the stock airplane headphones over top of those, and still the piercing shrieks make it to my tympanic membranes. I can’t blame the child. God knows what inexplicable pressure changes her own ear drums are suffering from. Or perhaps it’s the steady, other-worldly drone and vibration of the engines and of the airplane itself. Nor can I blame the parents. Heck, I feel sorry for them; they’re doing their best to calm the little gaffer. In the end, that’s probably what keeps a person awake the most – the feeling of impotence in the face of a little person’s discomfort. There’s nothing I can do – legally at least – to quell the little spud’s fear or pain.

So I crank up the Ipod again, but this time with music. What would shield me from the screams and have a pacifying effect at the same time? I decide on The National, and immediately my thoughts turn to musical tastes. Why is it, after all, that I like these guys? I could say that it’s somehow the simple layering of a lyrical vocal track over a persistent drum beat and a simple chord progression, kind of in a 54-40 sort of way, but that could describe almost any rock song or group. Or I could argue that it’s Matt Berninger’s voice, which sort of conjures up Brad Roberts of Crash Test Dummies but with a smoother, sleep-walking I-don’t really-give-a-shit-about-what-I’m-singing-about quality, but I’m hard pressed to turn that comparison into a sell job.

Here’s a sample of The National.

But I digress.

Nevertheless, I manage to listen to most of the CD before I’m ready to give sleep another try and leave behind little baby gut-wrench. I try, and I succeed. For twenty minutes – maybe.

That’s when Bozo Bob at the adjacent window seat decides to open up his window blind and wash the cabin in a warm, sunrise glow that just screams, “Wake up, knucklehead,” right through the ol’ translucent eyelids.

A geography lesson may be necessary here for some. You see, the path of least resistance from Calgary to London takes us up in Arctic Circle territory, over Greenland and down over Scotland. And on July 2nd, we’re still pretty firmly planted in the “Land – and Time – of the Midnight Sun.” Add to that 30,000 ft. or so of altitude, and you can pretty much be guaranteed that the sun is going to shine throughout the entire trip.

But back to Bozo Bob. Why does he open the blind, you ask? Is it to admire the sunrise? To gaze at the clouds? No. Bob is working on his laptop, which for some reason, he can’t seem to do without the glory of full, blazing daylight. Part of me wants to scream, “Your screen has a backlight, assface!” while the other part of me wants to school him, none too kindly, on the advantages of being able to touch-type. You see, Bob is in his sixties, and it would appear that he is a late-comer to the whole technology thing. His efforts are accompanied with much chin-scratching and staring longingly at the screen, as if he could will it to produce loaves and fishes, or whatever the frick he’s trying to accomplish. In the end, Steven, who is closest to him, asks him if he would kindly pull down his blind. He does so, sort of. He pulls down one and leaves another open. I guess that cuts the candlepower in half, but it doesn’t exactly do the trick.

At this point, I will summarize. I do get back to sleep, but only for a few moments before little baby gut-wrench fires up again. And so on …

On the upside, I became more familiar with my Ipod, discovering trivia games and solitaire that I never knew I had before.

The long and the short of it is that when we landed in Heathrow, I had had about and hour or an hour and a half sleep, tops.

So ends the tale of Day 1. Perhaps tonight, on the way to Mumbai, the Gravol will hold more appeal.

Christmas Under Renovation

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Any spare time this fall has largely been consumed with doing minor renovations to the Deobald hacienda. The house is now twenty something years old, and while it’s still in very good shape overall, it’s showing some signs of being dated. Or, maybe, since we’ve had satellite TV, we’ve just watched to many home improvement shows. Or, perhaps we were inspired by seeing what a difference a few changes made to Aaron’s House.

At any rate, the renovation saga began when we ordered windows in June. We had replaced a couple of windows five years ago, but it was now time to deal with the rest of the upstairs windows, partly because we were tired of painting peeling exterior window frames, but also because our massive living room window doesn’t open, making it hard to cool off the oven at the end of a hot summer’s day. The original plan was to install these windows in August; however, that plan flew out the window (pardon me) when the supplier didn’t get them to us until mid-November. When the windows arrived the dominoes began to fall something like this:

  • New windows meant new blinds. That only took three trips to Medicine Hat.
  • New windows meant replacing the interior window trim.
  • Since we have never liked the trim in our house (pre-finished crap), we didn’t want to replace it with the same trim.
  • And, if we were going to change the trim on the windows, we really should replace ALL the other trim in the house to match, n’est-ce pas?
  • All that new trim needed to be painted.
  • And while we’re painting the trim, we might as well paint the hallway, the entryway, the stair railing (spindles a different colour than the rail, just for a challenge) and a couple of bedrooms, right? We want that trim to show up nicely against the new colours.
  • Now, wait a minute. Before we put on new baseboards, wouldn’t it make sense to replace the flooring in the living room, dining room, kitchen and hallway? The carpet is worn and pretty nasty in the dining room and there is a patch in the carpet between the living room and the dining from my ripping out a stub wall last spring. So off we go to Medicine Hat to pick up a truckload of hardwood.
  • That’s when it hits me; I’m going to have to do the hardwood on the stairs from the bottom up, which means that if we are going to replace the flooring on the landing with ceramic tile, now would be the time. Add cement board, tile, grout and tools to the list. (I already had received the wet saw as a father’s day gift in spring.)

So here it is, December 21st, and the sum total of our Christmas preparations consist of a bare tree standing forlorn in the middle of the living room and some exterior lights on the roof. No presents bought, no baking done, no decorating – at least no Christmas decorating. And we still have two bedrooms to paint and the tile and hardwood to lay.
But, for the time being, we are putting a halt to that. Steven flies in to Calgary today. Aaron is coming home late tonight, and tomorrow he will travel with us to Calgary to pick up Steven. Somehow in the next 72 hours or so, most of which will be spent in Calgary, we will get all our Christmas preparations done. No problem

Global Warming, Anyone?

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The other night, the 3rd of October, we had our first real frost, and even then it wasn’t a very hard one. It just got down to zero. As a result, our yard had time in September to rebound from the brutal heat we had endured in July and August. So, ironically, it looks better now than it did in the middle of summer.

Here are some pictures from the deoblog gallery:

Engelman Ivy and Golden Elder Golden barberry Front patio Back yard perennial bed
Engelman Ivy and Golden Elder Golden Barberry Front Patio Back Yard Perennial Bed

Cal & Irene Celebrate 30 Years on the Gulf Islands

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Day 1 – Fly to Victoria

When you plan around the cheap seats on WestJet, flying from Regina to Victoria can take most of the day. We took off from Regina early in the afternoon, but with a two and a half hour layover in Calgary, we weren’t scheduled to land in Victoria until 7:15 in the evening. To top things off, the connecting flight from Calgary to Victoria was a half hour late because of headwinds. That wouldn’t have been such an issue, but we were on a tight schedule once we landed on the Island. We planned to camp on the Gulf Islands, but, of course, we couldn’t take camp fuel on the plane. And to tighten the timelines even more, we planned to take the ferry to the Pender Islands at 8:30 the next morning. Translation: once we finally landed, we had to retrieve our luggage, locate our rental car, and drive down the Saanich Peninsula to downtown Victoria to pick up camp fuel at Mountain Equipment Coop before it closed at 9:00 p.m. So we were a bit tense when we hit the tarmac at Victoria Airport at around 7:45. And when I say “hit the tarmac,” I mean that literally. We were surprised by how small and quaint Victoria International Airport is. We actually unloaded from the back of the plane, down a set of outside stairs onto the tarmac. While I picked up the luggage, Irene went to get the rental car; fortunately, neither one took very long, and we were on our way into Victoria shortly after 8:00 p.m. We actually made MEC and picked up our fuel with about 20 minutes to spare. Then we headed back towards Sidney and the ferry terminal, to a small private campground on the ocean, Island View Campground, where we had pre-booked a campsite. We knew the place from a previous trip we had made to the coast with the boys back in 1997. Although we had to set up the tent in the dark, we were relieved that we had camp fuel for the next few days of camping

Day 2 – Pender Islands

Having to catch the 8:30 ferry didn’t leave us much time in the morning, but we managed to stroll down to the beach at the campsite with our coffee cups for a few minutes before
taking down the tent and heading out. The Island View Campground hadn’t changed much since our visit ten years ago, although they had cleaned up some of the broom that had previously surrounded the campsites and done a bit more landscaping. The main assets of the campground are its proximity to the beach and its convenience for popping into Victoria or Sidney or catching Butchart Gardens or the Ferry. We made it to the ferry in lots of time, although when we loaded, we were one of the last vehicles to get on. The early start meant that we made it to Pender Islands before nine o’clock, so we drove to one of the commercial districts and stumbled around for a while. We discovered that Pender has a great little bakery/restaurant. We sampled the “egganini,” which we would highly recommend (on the sourdough). It seems like one can’t buy a sandwich these days that hasn’t been squeezed in a panini pan.

Pender Islands campsite

A gnarled large-leaf maple in our campsite on Pender

The view of the bay from Mt. Norman - South Pender
Pender Island Campsite Gnarled Maple
in Campsite		 View from Mt. Norman

After that, we found our way to the campground where we had pre-booked a site and set up camp. Then we drove to South Pender Island. (Brief History: The two islands were originally one until a navigation canal was dug between them in 1903. A bridge now connects the two.) There, we hiked to the top of Mt. Norman, all of 244 m above sea level. Nevertheless, it was a nice view of the bay below. After the hike, we took the rest of the afternoon a bit easier, driving out to a vineyard on the east side of North Pender Island and spending an hour or so sitting out on the patio and sampling the local vintages. After supper we did a bit more exploring by hiking a short trail near our campsite.

Day 3 – Saturna Island

The next morning we caught the ferry to Saturna Island, our next destination. Before we caught the ferry, though, we decided to get a snack at the “The Stand,” the concession at the ferry terminal on Pender. If you ever get the chance, you have to visit this “4.5 star” culinary wonderland (their rating). We don’t necessarily recommend it for the food, although that was fine. The most interesting part were the proprietors, who, I think, may have smoked a bit too much that morning. It took over half an hour to get two coffees and a toasted bagel. It was a riot. We never had a chance to sample some of the more exotic things on the menu like the oyster burger or such burger add-ons as ostrich and lamb. We had another treat before we got to Saturna. While we were still on the ferry, the Pender Highlanders band picked up their instruments and played a couple of tunes on deck.

ditto Irene examines fauna - Winter Cove, Saturna Island
Pender Highlanders
Entertain ferry-goers		 Irene admires the
shoreline fauna at
low tide

Saturna Island couldn’t really be a more stark contrast to Pender Islands. Far less commercial, it evokes an air of travelling back in time, right down to the General Store which has everything from booze to hardware. Despite the varied product line, we were impressed with the selection of food, including the ubiquitous Gulf Island emphasis on organic foods. Actually, we found the emphasis on environmental concerns on all the Gulf Islands very interesting. None of the islands has a dump or nuisance ground, so the locals must pay for all garbage to be hauled off the islands. That leads to a pretty high priority on garbage reduction, recycling, and composting. For the morning, we drove to the south end of the island, where we were able to watch seals just off the shoreline. For the afternoon, we went for lunch at the local Saturna Island Vineyard, a great place. In a way, it was a blessing that a labour shortage made for some slow service, since that allowed us to waste the whole afternoon slurping back wine while looking over the vineyards and the bay beyond, not to mention the golden eagles soaring over the cliffs behind the vineyard. To top it all off, the food was worth the wait. Unfortunately, Saturna has no campgrounds, so as soon as we were done our meal, we had to get going to catch the ferry to Mayne Island, our next stop. We arrived at Mayne and drove to Mayne Island Eco-Camping, where we had a reserved spot.

Day 4 – Mayne Island

Mayne Island Eco-Camping just may be the neatest camping spot ever. A list of selling features include:

  • campsites only two or three meters from the shoreline
  • a hot tub
  • an open-air tree shower
  • a gorgeous view of the bay
  • and feature we’ve never seen in a campsite before – a compost heap

The tree shower may have been the most interesting feature. It was an open, raised platform which was screened from campsite view but open to the bay. Since we had been rushing around and camping in campgrounds without showers, we got over our shyness and made the most of the opportunity. It was raining the next morning when we took these pictures, so they’re a bit blurry.

Again, with the compost pile Hosts The Tree Shower - Campsite on Mayne Island
The compost pile The campground owners’ house The tree shower

Our day on Mayne Island was August 19th, our anniversary. We woke up to a very rainy day, so we packed up as quickly as we could and headed to the local bakery for breakfast. Once again, a great little place to eat. After that we walked a short trail around Bennett Bay, It was still raining, but that just brought out the colour of the arbutus tree bark and made for some great photo opportunities. By the time we returned to the main business district, it had stopped raining, so we wandered around the gift shops and art galleries. In the end, we decided to treat ourselves to some anniversary presents: two prints by Jim McKenzie and a metal tree sculpture from a local gift shop. We had lunch at a neat little bistro, the Wild Fennel Food & Wine, where one of the owners was also an artist who did some absolutely amazing three-dimensional caricatures. After lunch, the sun came out, so we drove to the shop of a a local Glass Artisan, Mayne Island Glass Foundry, where the owner makes some very interesting pieces from recycled glass. Then we drove to the Japanese garden, which commemorates the local Japanese population who had been interned and had their land seized during the Second World War. The garden was beautiful, but the impetus for its creation rather coloured the enjoyment of the experience.

Arbutus Bark Road splits around arbutus tree - Mayne Island Japanese Garden
Arbutus tree bark Road splits
around arbutus		 Japanese garden

Days 5 & 6 – Galiano Island

After our whirlwind one-island-a-day tour of the previous islands, we decided to spend two days on Galiano Island. Our campsite on Galiano was a gorgeous location adjacent to Montague Harbour. When we were there, low tide occurred in the morning, so we spent both mornings ambling along the beach with our coffee cups, admiring the starfish and crabs, and being squirted by submerged clams.

Decorative stump Starfish Sunset, Montague Harbour
Tree stump on
shoreline made
entirely of seashells		 Starfish Sunset on
Montague Harbour

Galiano combines the commercialism of Pender Islands and the strong artistic community of Mayne. We spent most of our time on Galiano being prime tourists, wandering through gift shops and driving to local artists studios. Galliano has some amazing artists. Two that we were particularly impressed with were Sandra Dolph Pottery and Marci DeVicque Glass Works, but since we had blown our souvenir/artwork budget on Mayne Island, we had to settle for window shopping. On our second day, while we waited for the ferry back to Vancouver Island, we took advantage of one of the most intriguing ferry-side concessions on the Gulf Islands, Max and Moritz Spicy Island Food House, where the specialty is a peculiar fusion of Indonesian and German food. (Yes, you read that right.) Where else on the planet can you get Curried Bratwurst or Pad with Bratwurst?

Day 6 & 7 – Vancouver Island

Midday of day 6 we took the ferry back to Vancouver Island. When we arrived at our hotel, Irene was a bit concerned. She had booked the hotel with the airline tickets, and hadn’t had a lot of time to research the location. As it turned out, the location was excellent for walking around downtown Victoria and for access to the inner harbour. However, it wasn’t in the most desirable neighbourhood; the hotel shared a parking lot with the local Liquor Mart, and the receptionist at the front desk advised us to remove any items from the car, including chewing gum. That really got Irene’s paranoia going, but, in the end, everything was fine. The hotel room itself was a mixed bag. It had been re-done, but in the manner of a bad home reno; the finishing left much to be desired. But, it was clean and critter free, so we made the most of it.

With what was left of the first day, we mostly just stumbled around downtown and visited the harbour. We spent a portion of the evening watching the buskers at the harbour, always a treat. The second morning, we walked over to the Craigdarroch Castle, an immense, garrish edifice built by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir, who at one time owned half of Vancouver Island. The tour was one of those mixed-emotion experiences for both of us. While the architecture and detailing was amazing, the experience was coloured by the history of a man who built his fortune on squelching any attempts by his workers to unionize or seek any benefits, and by a family who managed to squander his fortune within one generation.

BC Legislature Dining Room, Craigdarroch Castle Killer Whale
Moon over
BC Legislature		 Dining Room
at Craigdarroch
Castle		 Killer Whale
breaching

In the afternoon, we splurged on booking a whale watching tour. This was one of the highlights of the trip for a number or reasons. The day was beautiful and warm, which is important when spending three hours on the water in a Zodiac that travels like a bat out of hell. Unfortunately, Cal didn’t think it was wise to wear his hat and have it blow off, so he burnt his bald pate in the sun. The best part of the tour, though was the fact that we saw many killer whales – very close up. While our guide didn’t exactly break the rules of whale encounters, he certainly stretched them a bit. Rather than paralleling the whales, he would move ahead of them, stop near their anticipated path, and shut down the Zodiac, while they passed by. As the picture above would suggest, we had whales breaching withing ten meters of the Zodiac.

Day 8 – Butterfly Garden and the Flight Home

On our last day on the Island, we had enough time to visit the Victoria Butterfly Garden before catching our flight back to Regina. Cal was a bit skeptical about this, but in the end it was a good way to pass an hour or so. The day before we arrived an Atlas Moth had hatched, so we were able to see the world’s largest moth (8 inch wingspan) up close and personal. Since it’s a nocturnal beast, we could get right up to it to take pictures.

Atlas Moth Blue Clipper White Tree Nymph
Atlas Moth Blue Clipper White Tree Nymph

After the Butterfly Gardens, we got on the plane, flew to Edmonton, and then on to Regina. We spent the next couple of days shingling Aaron’s garage, the last of the reno jobs that he wanted to get done.

Aaron Goes Domestic

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Throughout the spring of 2007, Aaron spent a lot of time and energy looking for a house in Regina. The process was complicated by the fact that the Regina housing market had lit up around February or March, so it was definitely not a buyer’s market. On several occasions, Aaron bid significantly above the asking price, only to be outbid by someone else. Buyers were even foregoing house inspections or any other conditions to increase their chances of getting a house.

But, finally, in early June, he managed to be the successful bidder on a smaller three-bedroom house. Although it’s not walking distance to work, Aaron can drive downtown in five minutes. The house doesn’t have a basement – not necessarily a detriment in Regina’s shifting clay – but it makes up for it by having a HUGE heated garage, accessible from the back alley. The house sits on a well-treed lot, with huge, mature elms in the front yard and several ash trees and a maple in the back yard. The trees shade the house almost entirely, so it stays quite cool, even when the weather is beastly hot.

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Aaron’s House
from the Street		 The House
from the Back Yard		 The Giganto Garage
from the Alley

Aaron took possession on June 29th, so the day after school was done, we headed up to Regina to help him settle in. The original plan was to shingle the garage right away, but, as a result of the delivery of the shingles being delayed, we ended up starting to paint the interior of the house instead. We convinced Aaron that it was much easier to get that job done before he moved in.

One thing led to another and before we knew it, Cal had spent the entire month of July in Regina, and Irene had spent one week of holidays and every weekend in July there as well. We started by painting out all the trim in the house, as it was showing signs of age. That really helped to make the house look less dated. Then we painted the entire interior, with the exception of the utility room.

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The Living Room Living Room and Front Entry The Master Bedroom Spare Bedroom

After that, we moved on to the exterior. I had to re-build both the front and back steps, although, thankfully, they had sturdy steel frames, so it was just a matter of replacing the wood on the surface. After some eavestrough repair, we painted all the trim, soffit, fascia eavestroughs, and shutters on the outside of the house. Fortunately the house and the garage both have stucco exteriors, so that limited the amount of painting we had to do.

Then I moved on to the garage. The soffit and fascia on the garage had deteriorated quite a bit, so I replaced most of the soffit and all of the fascia and added some missing trim around the doors. After that I painted the garage trim.

The last job we managed to squeeze in was to do some rewiring in Aaron’s kitchen. His fridge was on a circuit with a ton of other stuff and kept blowing the breaker, and his main counter didn’t have a plug-in at all.

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The Kitchen

That pretty much used up the month of July, so we finally left Aaron to enjoy his house. I’m sure he was glad to get rid of us and finally start to live in his house. He had already arranged for one room mate who was going to move in on the first of August and his friend Jeff announced that he was moving back from Alberta and that he could use a place to live as well. So Aaron had about two days of having the house to himself before more people moved in

An American Experience – A Note from New York (Steven)

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Children drinking Starbucks. If I had to guess what the one and only culture shock of visiting New York would be, that wouldn’t have topped my list. But as it stands, that seems to be the only time I even remember I’m not back in Calgary. Oh. And any time politics or religion surfaces in a conversation.
I’ve been in the US of A for three months now. I have to admit, New York is a lot more fun than I’d assumed it would be. The restaurant and bar scene is as varied and high-quality as I’ve ever seen. The jaywalking is fluid. The apartment costs $6000/month. The delis are delicious. The sirens are never-ending. The accents are cute. (I like the ones that remind me of The Sopranos best.) The tourists are annoying as hell. The health care is efficient. The shopping is prime.

However! I’ve tried my best to avoid partaking in the 5th Avenue pleasures because — wait for it — I’m moving to India next month! Yes, sometime in April I will join our Pune office for some summer heat and torrential rains. The company is moving me to the Indian payroll, which means a reduced salary paid out in rupees. Thankfully, rent in Pune hovers around $300/month and it’s possible to eat for as little as $5/day. The excitement is nearing one-month-from-Christmas proportions, so expect me to go a little crazy by the end of March.

I’ll have more details as the date approaches. For the time-being I’ll be in Chelsea, Manhattan and you can read frequent incoherent ramblings on my blog.

Christmas – 2006

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This year the boys decided that we should do something different for Christmas, so they planned a ski trip for after Christmas and arranged for us to have Christmas with my nephew Richard and his wife, Lauren. Aaron drove to Gull Lake after work on Friday, the 22nd, and then we travelled to Calgary on the 23rd. We sort of bummed around on the 24th, doing a little shopping at MEC (just two blocks away from Steven’s apartment). Then on the 25th, we drove to the north end of Calgary to have supper with Richard and Lauren.

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Lauren prepares the
Yorkshire puddings
The feast
Irene & Aaron
digest
 Richard & Steven
ponder the intricacies
of the fondue pot

In the 26th, we drove to Banff. Not too much has changed in Banff in the last few years, except that skiing has become bizarrely expensive. It’s still a Mecca for Aussies, who comprise 90% of the workers at the ski hills and at least 50% of the service industry workers (waiters, …) in the town itself. We skied on the 27th and 28th. We had one day of fresh snow and poor visibility and one day or gorgeous, clear weather. The crowds were quite bad, but we were skiing Louise, so at least we could go to the back side and avoid most of the insanity.

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Supper in Banff Steven & Aaron
on the hill		 the Bow Valley
From Larch

After two days on the hill, our legs were tired enough, so we travelled back to Calgary on the 29th and back to Gull Lake on the 30th.

Richard & Lauren’s Wedding

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In mid-October, we travelled to Calgary to attend the last wedding among Cal’s nephews and nieces. With Richard and Lauren’s wedding, the only cousins who aren’t married yet are Steven and Aaron, not that there’s any rush there.

The wedding was in a neat location, the Lynx Ridge golf club in northwest Calgary.

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The happy couple Feeding the hungry Oliver,
looking dapper		 Shawndell, Shainah,
Tyson, & Scott

It was a chance to catch up on some family visiting.  It was the first time we had seen Gord, Richard’s dad in years.

Sir Elton & the Stones

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The week of September 29th to October 6th was concert week for the Deobald’s. When the announcement came out that the Rolling Stones were coming to Regina, I went about snaffling up tickets for the Sunday show (his birthday) and then when the Friday show opened up, made another stab at getting even better tickets. In the end, I was the proud owner of 11 tickets in various places and times. I was fortunate to get rid of all the tickets we didn’t need without taking a bath on them. (I sold two on Ebay for cost and four to friends for cost).Then, a week before the Stones were set to arrive, Irene’s boss announced that he had “won” tickets to Elton John from the local radio station. In actual fact, they were a peace offering from the radio station for screwing up on some of his promotional campaigns, but hey, let’s not quibble. The main thing is that he had no interest in going to see Elton John, so, in the end, he gave the tickets to Irene.

So, on September 29th (A Friday), Irene and I took the afternoon off and headed to Calgary. The tickets were pretty good ones, five rows up just inside centre ice. With the distance that the stage projected onto the ice surface, that put us fairly close to Sir Elton, close enough that we spent more time viewing the concert in person than peering at the big screen. Which is good, because that’s a bugbear of mine – attending a live concert and watching it on video.

Elton John in CalgaryThe concert itself was great. He played for over 2 hours straight, left the stage, came back out for the encore, but spend about 10 minutes signing autographs first. Then they performed for over a half hour again. In total, the concert was a full three hours long. And the old fella still has both the chops and the pipes. We were a little surprised that there were no wardrobe changes, though (he never left the stage). The best part of the concert was when he let his band have a break and he just played the piano and sang. The worst part was the acoustics in the Saddledome, which occasionally, through some miracle of acoustic distortion when the keyboard and lead guitar met on some high note, would generate a horrid screech that had the old tympanic membrane crying uncle. The other minor disappointment was that he didn’t play more of his new stuff. He did short set of about 5 songs in the middle, but that was it; other than that, it was all the classics. I would have traded in “The Bitch is Back” (Blech!) for something newer, for sure. But hey, three hours of solid entertainment for free isn’t a bad deal.

Irene found a great hotel to for us to stay at in Calgary, the Hotel Arts. It’s not super cheap, but it’s reasonable, it has some really neat decor, and it’s EASY walking distance to the Saddledome (It’s on 12th and 1st SW, formerly a Holiday Inn, I think). Warning: it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but that changes the moment you walk through the door. Highly recommended.

Exactly a week later, we were taking another half day off to travel to Regina to see the Rolling Stones. Steven flew from Calgary, only a day after having returned from a business trip to India (more on that in another post). We just had time to collect him from Irene’s sister’s house, grab some pizza, go over to Aaron’s, to meet him and Jamie, his girlfriend, eat, and take off for the concert.

We decided to drive as far as Aaron’s work parking spot downtown and walk the rest of the way to Taylor Field, which turned out to be a fairly wise choice. We were later told that the lineups to get on the shuttle buses were very long and anyone who parked close to Taylor Field didn’t get away very quickly when the concert was over.

The concert was great. We had a great night for weather. A light jacket or fleece was enough to keep a person warm, although Mick complained at one point that he was a bit chilly and went to put on a long-sleeved shirt. I can’t imagine how he was cold, given the amount of aerobic exercise he was getting. The old bugger’s in pretty good shape, I would have to say, and Charlie’s holding up pretty well, too, considering that drumming for two hours straight has to be a bit strenuous for a fella his age. Keith on the other hand … he had his first on-stage cigarette at the beginning of the third song, and many more after that. I think he pretty much sold his soul a few decades ago, but unlike Dorian Grey, it ain’t his portrait that’s aging.

Even if the band wasn’t great – and they were pretty impressive – you had to be impressed by the sheer enormity of the production. Seventy five trailer-loads of equipment makes for a big stage. And when you start to consider just how many people that must involve, especially because they have two full stages and crews that leapfrog one another from venue to venue (The stage in Missoula Montana was being torn down and heading for Chicago as the Regina stage was being assembled).

Rolling Stones Stage

Rolling Stones Stage

And this pathetic little image of the stage, ladies and gents, is all I can show you of the concert because cameras were forbidden. I did take my cell phone with me, though, and when the security guard asked me if it took pictures, I said “no” and he didn’t question it. The irony of this is that the previous week, every man and his monkey were taking pictures at the Elton John concert, but I had forgotten my camera, and I didn’t take my cell to that event. So here are some shots I stole off the Internet (but they are actually from the concert we saw):

Mick

Steven & Cal Grunt the Rockwall Trail

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Day 2

In mid-August, Steven and I travelled to Kootenay National park to do some backpacking on the Rockwall Trail. It was the first time Steven had been able to strap on the backpack for quite a few years.

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I drove to Calgary on the 17th, and Steven and I did some shopping at Mountain Equipment Coop to fill a few gaps that had developed in his equipment and clothing over the years. We got up at 5:30 the next morning to get an early start. We were out of the city by 7:00 and got to the Floe Lake trailhead before 9:00 a.m. The first part of the trail is a slow, steady climb through a large burn area from a forest fire in 2003. The second half of the trail, though, turns into a steep grunt. Steven and I kept thinking that we would stop at a good lookout point to eat lunch, but before we knew it, it was 1:00, and we had grunted our way to the Floe Lake Campsite.

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So, we had lunch, set up camp, and tried out a new coffee press I had bought at MEC. Around 3:00 we had our legs back, so we decided to do some exploring by hiking up a ridge above the lake. When we left, the campground was empty, but by the time we got back, it was crawling with people. One of the things that I found it interesting how many people on this trail were well into their middle age. On this first night we met a group of about eight women (the youngest in her late forties) who were on an annual excursion. With out early start, we were ready to hit the sleeping bags by 8:00 p.m.

Day 2

We didn’t push to get going too early on the second day, but we were still on the trail by 10:00. The trail climbed quickly, so we soon hit the meadows below the Numa Pass early. Unfortunately it was too late in the summer to see many wildflowers; they were past their prime. We made the pass by 11:00, and then it was downhill all the way. One thing about this trip, there was no trivial up-and-down. We were either grunting up or doing a rapid descent. On this particular day, we climbed 400m and dropped 700m. By 2:00 we were in the campsite. We just lazed the rest of the day away.

Day 3

The hike on Day 3 began relatively gradually, but with a lot of vegetation bashing. That was one thing that we found odd about this hike – considering the considerable traffic, the trails were quite overgrown. As treeline approached, though, the trail rose steeply up a grunty series of switchbacks until it broke at the meadows. We ate a snack on a large rock there before making a last push to the pass. Only when we reached the pass did the splendour of Tumbling Glacier and The Rockwall, which gives the trail its name, reveal itself. * WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *
Unfortunately, half-way through the descent, the lateral moraine of the glacier obscured a considerable amount of the scnenery. The drop to the campground was rapid, so we ended up in camp by 1:00 p.m. again. The campground had a good view of the Rockwall and the glacier, so that was rather nice. We set up camp, had lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon goofing around. We made inukshuks out of the rocks along the creek and went exploring along the creek banks. We probably spent half an hour just skipping pieces of shale – of all sizes – off the rapids above the campsite.

Day 4

In the middle of the night, I awakened to a rustling sound outside the tarp that Steven and I were sleeping under. Considering that we were just in a tarp and not a tent, a wildlife encounter took on some added dimensions, so I thought I had better investigate. I picked up my newly purchased headlamp to shine it out the opening of the tarp. Unfortunately, in the total blackness I made two “blind” mistakes. First, I pointed the headlamp the wrong direction, and second, because I had it turned around in my hand, I hit the “strobe” button instead of the “on” button. The result was that I blasted a retina-burning flash of light into pupils dilated by total darkness. I fell flat back in my sleeping bag in agony.

When I finally recovered, I stumbled out into the darkness only to find a small black porcupine just five feet from the mouth of our tarp, gnawing on some branches that some idiot had piled in the campsite. Now, porcupines in general are rather inflappable, but mountain porcupines are particularly phlegmatic, so this fellow wasn’t interested in going anywhere on anyone else’s timetable. While he continued to munch, I quickly rounded up any equipment that he might find tasty and made sure it was well under the tarp. (Porcupines crave salt, so they love to chew on pack straps, hip belts, hiking boots, and hiking pole handles.) Then I went to the outhouse, hoping that the little bugger wouldn’t choose to stumble into the tarp while I was gone. When I returned, he had moved on, but I spent much of the night lying there wondering what the heck I would do if one of the spiny little devils lumbered into the tarp. None of the scenarios I envisioned had a pretty ending.

When we got up the next morning, we had a long hike ahead of us, but it was all downhill. We came upon several avalance slopes with considerable expanses of snow to cross. On this particular slope, we could even walk underneath a large snow bridge.
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We added a little excitement to the hike by losing the trail on one of these slopes, but we were lucky enough to get back on track without any mishaps. The large spring runoff had also claimed one of the bridges on the trail, so we had to make our way across the creek the hard way. That, too, was uneventful, but a bit time-consuming. The trail met the highway near the Paint Pots, strange cold-water springs that burble up murky water laden with ochre.

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When we made it to the parking lot, we still had the biggest challenge of the day ahead of us – hitchiking back to the car. We tried different tactics. I tried the traditional, thumbs out approach on the highway. That bombed. Then Steven tried to approach people in the parking lot. That wasn’t any more successful. Finally we prevailed upon a couple eating lunch nearby (who had a massive rabbit cage in their van) to take Steven with them, crammed into the back seat beside the rabbit cage. They actually specified that they would only take Steven; I guess I looked too sinister.

At any rate, we were finally able to get on the road after about an hour and a half delay.

After that, it was a quick drive back to Calgary, where I dropped off Steven, and then I continued all the way home on the same day because I had a meeting out at Lac Pelletier Park the next day. Blecch! Work had started.

PA National Park – 2006

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In August, Irene and I decided to repeat a trip we had done a few years ago, a short canoeing route in PA National Park. We took it extra easy on this trip, only paddling for a two to three hours on any given day, and using the rest of the time to lounge around camp and fish. Unfortunately, the fishing was less productive than on our earlier trip, but the lounging was good. Physically, the loop we did could be done in one day. We took four days to do it instead.

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We had good weather the whole trip. We were especially fortunate to have low wind on the two days we had to canoe on Kingsmere Lake. This was especially critical since we were using our old fibreglass canoe, which doesn’t ride all that high in the water. We were also lucky enough to have the campgrounds to ourselves in the smaller, backcountry campgrounds.

Deobald Family Camp

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Every year the Deobald family gets together for at least one weekend of camping. Last year, because of mom’s 85th birthday, we gathered at the exotic Morse Campground, where we were serenaded by the ear-splitting blasts of hourly freight trains passing, only meters away. So this year we returned to Outlook Regional Park.

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Richard & Lauren

Richard and Lauren (Cal’s nephew) came down from Calgary early and brought Steven with them. After they spent the night, we all travelled together to Outlook on July 27th. All Cal’s siblings made it out this year, and many from the next generation as well: Richard & Lauren, Cindy & Rick, Derrick & Rachel, Nicki & Aaron, Kurt & Judy, Steven, and Aaron. Regan & Maureen made it out from Saskatoon for one day.

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Good thing we went for a walk, so Derrick could get his exercise
Old railway bridge converted to walking path

Before we left for Outlook, I had spent a day making a “Kubb” set, an outdoor game purportedly dating back to the Vikings. It’s a great game in that it is incredibly simple to learn, yet it lends itself to some interesting strategy. The adults got about one game in before the kids claimed it for their own.

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Dayton moves in for the kill
Hannah shows off her form
As Hayden looks on

While some people took advantage of the proximity of the golf course, for most of us, the weekend consisted of eating, drinking, lazing around, a little shopping, some visiting, and a whole lot more eating.

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Nicki and Dayton load up Lauren, Richard, Kurt, & Judy

Year of the Moose

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Today, Irene and I decided to take advantage of the fact that there was finally some snow in the country Rumour had it that Cypress had received a foot of snow in the past few weeks, so there was actually a chance of some decent cross-country skiing.So we packed a lunch and headed off. We arrived at the park just before noon and skied until 1:00 before we stopped for lunch. The snow was all right where it hadn’t been disturbed, but there is a lot of logging activity in the park right now, so a number of roads and trails had been plowed to allow access. (The logging is part of a new “forest management” policy; the park is full of old-growth lodgepole pine which are overdue for a burn-off.)

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Shortly after lunch, we encountered this girl just a few metres off the trail. She had been bedded down, but she managed to stand up as we slowly skied past her. But she wasn’t going anywhere, and we probably took close to five minutes to ski by and take 16 pictures, most of which were of her hind end.
The Moose Checks Us Out

After we were done skiing, we had coffee at the resort and watched the birds and the squirrels at the feeders (chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, red crossbills, and a downy woodpecker). The pictures of those didn’t turn out so well, as I had to take them through the window, so you’ll just have to trust me.

We finished off the day by having supper at Fred and Barney’s in Maple Creek. taking advantage of a gift certificate some of my karate students had bought for me.