In a little over an hour from now I will be leaving work and travelling up Island to attend my 10 year high school reunion. I comtemplated long and hard about whether I really wanted to go or not. In the end I decided that if I didn’t go, I think I would have regretted it, and always would have wondered how it was. I have really low expectations.
A Dragon Bones Bug Vacation
This week Sue and I have had some visitors. Sue’s brother, his wife, and their son have been in Victoria since Sunday. Cary, has been attending some courses in Duncan, while Geoff and Alexander have been vacationing. Sue and I took Monday and Tuesday off to spend some time with them, and let me tell you, they were a couple of jam packed days!
Monday we went to the bug zoo. I love the bug zoo. There is lots of information about exotic bugs. They house a bunch of different species, and will even let you handle some of them. They have a large leaf cutter ant’s nest, millipedes, scorpions, spiders, cockroaches, and many more. I held a bunch of bugs including a scorpion, and the millipede. Most of them are incredibly light, and never really felt them until the guide removed them (most have sticky feet). Lots of fun. Check out the pictures I took in there.
Monday afternoon the four of us went out to All Fun Recreation Park. We played a round of minigolf, then Geoff and Alexander went watersliding for a couple hours. Sue went for a run, and I biked home. Although it was scorchingly hot that day, I quite enjoyed the ride home.
Tuesday we got up, went for breakfast at John’s Place, a well know, and excellent restaurant in the heart of downtown. Breakfast was good, and the service was outstanding (it can sometimes be spotty there).
After breaky we made our way to the Royal BC Museum to see the Dragon Bones exhibit. Totally cool! Most of the skeletons were not real fossils. The real deal are so heavy that the floor of the museum would never have been able to hold them up. There were lots of different dinosaurs depicted in a variety of poses. They even had one gentleman working on extracting a real fossil!
There were a few fossils from local areas (even some up Island), but for the most part they were depictions of fossils originally found in China (including the Szechunasaurus 
). I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit, but desperately wished I had brought my tripod. Lots of my shots are a little blurry, but looked great on my camera’s LCD. The rest of the pictures are here.
We then did a quick tour through part of the normal museum exhibits. We also did the Open Ocean Adventure. Lots of fun. The pics are here.
Today I am at work, with Yoshi, wanting to be on vacation still. Isn’t that always the way?
Monday we went to the bug zoo. I love the bug zoo. There is lots of information about exotic bugs. They house a bunch of different species, and will even let you handle some of them. They have a large leaf cutter ant’s nest, millipedes, scorpions, spiders, cockroaches, and many more. I held a bunch of bugs including a scorpion, and the millipede. Most of them are incredibly light, and never really felt them until the guide removed them (most have sticky feet). Lots of fun. Check out the pictures I took in there.Monday afternoon the four of us went out to All Fun Recreation Park. We played a round of minigolf, then Geoff and Alexander went watersliding for a couple hours. Sue went for a run, and I biked home. Although it was scorchingly hot that day, I quite enjoyed the ride home.
Tuesday we got up, went for breakfast at John’s Place, a well know, and excellent restaurant in the heart of downtown. Breakfast was good, and the service was outstanding (it can sometimes be spotty there).
After breaky we made our way to the Royal BC Museum to see the Dragon Bones exhibit. Totally cool! Most of the skeletons were not real fossils. The real deal are so heavy that the floor of the museum would never have been able to hold them up. There were lots of different dinosaurs depicted in a variety of poses. They even had one gentleman working on extracting a real fossil! There were a few fossils from local areas (even some up Island), but for the most part they were depictions of fossils originally found in China (including the Szechunasaurus ). I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit, but desperately wished I had brought my tripod. Lots of my shots are a little blurry, but looked great on my camera’s LCD. The rest of the pictures are here.We then did a quick tour through part of the normal museum exhibits. We also did the Open Ocean Adventure. Lots of fun. The pics are here.
Today I am at work, with Yoshi, wanting to be on vacation still. Isn’t that always the way?
Tempermental Retrospect
Sunday was a ride on Tzouhalem. Shane, Darryll, James and myself tackled the mountain in Duncan.
I took my hardtail for a little climbing fun. I felt really good on the long arduous climb up to the top, and never once really felt the need to stop. I felt like I could climb forever, and that is certainly is something I have not felt in a long time. It reminded me of days gone by where I used to love to climb. Climbs were a challenge, and often if I didn’t make a climb, I would turn around, head to the bottom, and give it another go. No such luck on Sunday, but I actually did enjoy the climb (maybe not at the time, but definitely in retrospect).
Once there we were treated to some spectacular views, and some stiff breezes. After a rest and a refuel, we started the descent which was loads of fun. Some steep loose sections, some fast twisty sections, a couple small jumps. Lots of big smiles.
We came to a couple sections of stunts. I tried a couple on my trusty hardtail, but with me in XC mode, and riding clipless, I was too timid to try some things. I am a chicken shit to ride stuff now when I am attached to my bike. I like them for climbing, and general XC riding, but when the trail turns downward, or the stunts start appearing, I begin to wish for my flats. My how times change.
I went over one jump, and my left foot came unclipped. I landed awkwardly, my chest slamming into my saddle, and my nuts getting raked over the tire. I grabbed fistfulls of brake, and stopped as quickly as I could. After a few minutes rest we continued descending.
My bike was being a little tempermental, and kept dropping the chain from the big ring to the granny. This caused my grief in more than one situation where I stomped on the pedals to ascend a small hill, only to find no resistance on the pedals. Only once did this bite me as pedals swung around unimpeded until it connected with my shin. Ouch!
The rest of the ride was uneventful, but fun. We were on the hill for a little over three hours. Fun ride, and I am definitely glad I brought the hardtail. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I might DH-ify it a bit by putting on some flat pedals and taking my shin pads, just so I would feel a little more comfortable descending steeps and riding skinny logs. All in all though, the bike performed pretty well, and I am feeling in pretty good shape. Bring on the plane trip! Woohoo!
Click here, or the first pictures to see more pictures from the day.
Insistent Dresser
Cats are crazy. This does include our cat Aphro. Yesterday morning she provided more evidence of this. At 5 am I was awoken by a loud scratching noise followed by a thump. I was groggy, and confused so I listened for it again.
It happened again, but this time the scratching was more insistent, and the thump louder. I bolted upright, in time to hear the scratching again, and see the cats head appear behind my dresser. The face disappeared, and the thump followed!
My dresser sits at an angle in a corner. Somehow the cat got herself trapped behind it, and was trying to get out. She was knocking stuff off my dresser, and making a lot of noise. I jumped out of bed, ran to the dresser, just as she leapt one more time, got to the top, and sunk her claws into my nice oak dresser 
.
I gave her a shove which sent her flailing back to the floor. I moved the dresser away from the wall, she bolted out of the bedroom, and I was left wondering about how my cat got behind the dresser.
Not a very nice way to wake up is it?
Canada Day Fireworks
Here are some of my favorite Canada Day fireworks shots. You can see the whole gallery here.
Extraneous Disbelief
My first movie review ever. Woohoo.
I will be reviewing Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, so if you are planning on seeing it, but haven’t yet, do not read any further.
Is Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle all that it is cracked up to be? I would have to say depends. I enjoyed the movie, but I didn’t think it was as good as the first one. The stunts in this one were good, and it is evident that someone put a lot of thought behind them, but they were so over the top, that I had problems suspending disbelief (something I usually have no problems with).
Some of the chase scenes were good, and as with the first moive, there was lots of skin, good humour, and dancing to old 80’s tunes.
Character development was pretty sketchy this time. I knew that Bosley (Bill Murray) was now Bosley (Bernie Mac), but they never gave a good clear description of how or why the change occurred. I thought Bernie’s role was horrible. Bring back Murray!!!!! There were a few characters that were given too much screen time, were totally extraneous, and took away from the movie. Some of the subplots were difficult to follow, and distracted too much from what was happening. One key event in the movie was something that I never picked up on until after I left the theatre. I think it was supposed to be noticed by everyone, but it was far too subtle.
I was quite taken aback by how much Prodigy they used for background music. Makes me want to go buy that album again (my first copy was stolen a while back).
In all, I would say this movie was alright, and maybe worth seeing in the theatre if you have some money to spend. If you are penny pinching, save your money.
The final note was that I felt the volume in the theatre was a little too high. Picky I know, but when I spend that much money to see a movie, I want my money’s worth.
Electric Spoon Instruments
Next post today is my review of Artis.
In a word: WOW! If you have a chance to see him perform, I would recommend it. I arrived a little late to Centennial Square, and he had already started. He is a master of the spoons. He was jumping, dancing, crouching, switching between “instruments”, and in general just going off. The sounds from his instruments was complex, rythmic, and just plain beautiful. Truly a treat.
Besides playing the spoons, he also recited some poetry he had written, entertained with songs, played with string figures (including this incredbile series of figures that accompanied a story).
He also played the electric spoons. He said that ever since he started playing spoons, he wanted to play the electric spoons, so he invented how. Don’t ask me how it works. I saw that his spoons had one wrie coming from each, and these went into a yellow control box. He sat on a stool, and with some background effects already going, he began to play. He worked a couple of pedals while whe was strumming along, and got some pretty intense sounds going. Very amazing!
He also played along with a Satriani song.
In all I really enjoyed his performance. His poetry, and songs are very in your face, and dealt with current topics (one being the war in Iraq, but also violence in general). He is a very interesting and unique individual and is not afraid to speak his views. It would be a treat to sit and have coffee with him and just chat.
There aren’t many professional spoon players any more.
I apologize for my pictures. I tried my best with everything I know about photography, but the stage was a pain to shoot. I was sitting in sun, Artis was in shade, but behind him was a sunny backdrop. These were all I could salvage.
Surreal River
Here are the pictures from the Englishman River camping trip. There are some good ones here that I really like. The daytime fire pictures look very surreal to me.Happy Bed
First off, Happy (belated) Canada Day everyone!
Yesterday was quite a busy day, I went and saw Artis the Spoonman, checked out the Folk Fest venue, wandered through a couple open air markets, went and watched Charlie’s Angels, then ended the night with the fireworks. I was pretty pooped by the time I crawled into bed. I will review more a little later.
Superunknown Festival
I just found out today that tomorrow, Artis the Spoonman is playing at the Folk Festival here in Victoria.
For those that don’t know, Soundgarden did a song about him on their album Superunknown. They even took him on tour in support of that album.
I am going to try and get out to that show. Tomorrow 1pm at Centennial Square.
On a side note, the festival’s website has a few issues with the year. Evidently someone wasn’t paying attention when the site was uploaded.