Literally Logged

a light bulb

The bike is prepped, the bags are packed. Tomorrow morning I will be off to the races. Literally. Shane, Mike and I are heading up Island to do Hammerfest! Yeehaw. This is the one race that I make sure I do every year. I always have lots of fun at this race, but unfortunately I usually injure myself before the race.

This year is going to be very different. After the last race, the course was logged. This means that this year there is a whole new race course! Also, this is no longer a BC Cup race, so it will be more low key than ever, and probably less people racing as well. Hopefully there won’t be an hour long wait for my race run like previous years. I am also crossing my fingers that the weather will be better this year. Previous years it has rained, hailed, and snowed.

Sudden Contact

photoshopped plants

:grr: Ok I am a little angry right now. I keep thinking I am mad at someone else, but I really should be mad at me.

Let’s set the scenario. I am driving down Catherine St towards Esquimalt Road. There is a red light for my direction. As I approach the intersection, there is a car in the left lane but that is it.

I pull up to the line, waited, and watched left for an opening. Some approaching cars signal they are going to turn, so the lane closest to me is open. I decide to go.

As I am letting out the clutch, and adding gas, a lady appears in front of my truck. I quickly slam on the brakes and come to a sudden stop. I am now straddling the crosswalk, with the front of my truck sticking out onto Esquimalt. I quickly scan to see if I am blocking the road, and notice that the pedestrians do not have a walk signal. The lady glares at, says something, then walks around my truck. Another lady then steps out in front of me holding out her hand like she is trying to tell me to stop.

So, I am mad at myself because I consider myself to be a good driver. After watching left for so long, I should have checked right to see if there were any pedestrians. I am mad at the lady since she walked through a blind spot in my vehicle (the windshield support), then proceeded to cross against the light, and didn’t make eye contact with me (the driver). As I drove away I was pretty pissed at the two ladies, but I also took part of the blame for that one.

I see way too many pedestrians just walking out into intersections without looking. This is a very dangerous thing to do, for all parties involved. I know that when walking I see lots of drivers roll through an intersection without looking for pedestrians. I also see many intersections and building entrances that are not designed very well, and can sometimes hide pedestrians.

In any event, I am still angry at what happened, but I am mostly angry at myself. I consider myself too good of a driver to make a mistake like that.

Final Beer

pumpkin on a tractor

Well, my final day at VMI is now done, and soon I will be drinking beer. I worked a little today, I packed a little today. A few of us went for lunch, then in the afternoon we ate cake. I got a nice card from the folks at VMI, and some gift certificates to Future Shop, and to A&B Sound. I am looking forward to spending those.

I was a little sad today as I packed up. I have been working for that company for 6 years. I cut my teeth as a developer while working there. It was tough to leave.

The last thing I did today was logout of my machine.

The last thing I saw on the screen was “Are you sure you want to log out? Yes, No, Cancel”

Yoshi’s Work

Yoshi sleeping on his bed

Yesterday was Yoshi’s last day at VMI. He wouldn’t believe me until we got home. This bed he is laying on is the one I kept at work for him. When he saw it at home he immediately layed down on it and began to reminisce on all the good times, and all the good treats he had at VMI.

He is pretty sad about not being able to go to work anymore. I know that with time he will get over it.

Lumpy Lining

Sean on a log ride

Yesterday myself, Sean, James, and Yoshi went for a jaunt at the dump. The trails were in prime condition, and the weather could not have been more agreeable! In short it was a spectacular spring ride.

Starting off from the parking lot, Yoshi limped a little as he trotted. Since he had hurt himslef a few weekends earlier, I wondered if he was going to be ok. As soon as I let him off leash, the limping went away. I decided I would keep an eye on him and make sure he was going to be fine.

Our plan was to climb the fireroad, find our way to North Ridge, then head down that to Lumpy Pants, and new trail that has a nice rock drop. The climb up was more difficult this week. This time I was riding my Bullit, and last week I was on my Chameleon. I shouldn’t be too surprised, there is probably close to a 10 pound difference between the bikes.

During the climb Yoshi seemed fine, but he was sticking pretty cose to me the whole way. Usually he is off running around more. I thought it was odd, but left it at that. Later on North Ridge, I noticed again that Yoshi was not acting like his normal self, and was sticking really close to me.

We came to the rock drop on Lumpy Pants, and I eyed it up a few times. There is a ride around, and I spied Yoshi running up and down that a few times. He was beginning to worry me, but there wasn’t much I could do. I did the rock drop once, then got the camera out to take a couple pics. While Sean was lining up for his second run, I realized I hadn’t seen Yoshi in a couple minutes.

Then it struck me. I couldn’t hear him either. I called him and whistled a couple times but nothing. A knot started to form in my stomach. I yelled for him, and whistled a few more times, and still nothing.

I hiked back up the trail a bit, and I thought I heard something, but it was just a bird. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of white on North Ridge trail. It was Yoshi, and he was trotting the wrong direction on a different trail. I yelled, and he stopped. When he saw me he looked confused as to how he was supposed to get back to me. Usually he would just run through the bush but this time he refused to. I had to walk through the brush to coax him back the right way.

Something was definitely wrong with him. When the group was all assembled again, I told the guys that I had to get moving. Yoshi was not himself, and I just wanted to keep moving.

After Lumpy Pants, we rode down “Who’s Your Daddy”. I hadn’t been on the trail since the structures were cut down (over 2 years ago I think). This was quite a fun trail. Something I wasn’t expecting. After WYD, we took the fireroad down to Skull. I noticed Yoshi was being really slow, so I took it easy with him. He trotted the whole way back to the truck. Usually he will break into a gallop on the fireroad.

It was a good ride, but it was also a strange ride. I never did figure out what was up with Yoshi (he is fine today). My only theory is that maybe he didn’t want to go biking today. He has taken off on my during a ride once before. All is well that ends well I guess.

Shredder Blowout

garden behind a fence

Friday I stopped at Office Depot to pick up a paper shredder that was on sale. I happened to browse the PDA aisle, and found a couple deals I just couldn’t pass up. The first was an SD card based Merriam-Webster Crossword Puzzles and Word Challenges. Regularly this used to be $30 or more, it was on blowout for $2.04

The other was Handmarks version of Scrabble for the PalmOS. That one used to be $40, and now it was on sale for $6.01! Such great deals cannot be passed on.

The crossword one is great, but I had to return the Scrabble. The box I had purchased was empty! Very dissapointing. I guess someone had ripped off Office Depot in the past, and noone noticed. It wasn’t a big deal getting my money back, but it was quite a shock when I opened the box!

Pristine Film

St Ann's Academy gate

The photo club has now switched to Wednesday evenings! I am pretty happy about this. It is much more enjoyable for me to get out during the evening and shoot pics rather than on a weekend morning.

This past Wednesday was our latest meeting, and the location was St Ann’s Academy. The grounds there provide an excellent backdrop for photography. The buildings are pristine, and we had an awesome blue sky overhead for some dramatic shots.

I haven’t developed my film yet, but here are my digital pics.

Conditioner Banging

strange sign at the entrance to a marina

As if my last few days at this job aren’t hard enough, Fosters is on the roof installing a new air conditioner. This means a crane in the back lot, vehicles scattered around the parking lot, guys on the roof walking around, guys on the roof grinding, guys on the roof banging away, and guys knocking on the door to check circuit breakers so they don’t get electrocuted. All in all this is a very distracting environment right now.