Flattened

I went on a trip last weekend. I could have had worce luck, a few days before I headed off to town I checked my tired pressure it was extra low on one. Hoping to prevent trouble I puttered over to the tired shop and this was found in my tire.

Its a little two early for Easter, but I got nailed non the less.

Land Locked, Dry Docked

Poeple would think my nuts, But thats unheard of. A week ago I took my Kayak out for the first time since December 1st. To do this I had to dig the poor boat out from the snow that had fallen on to it from the roof. The boat named Wessel was unharmed, but encased in ice and partly remelted snow. I dragged it out on to the snow into the sun, the snow and ice melted quickly off. The next day I carried it into the cabin to compleat the thawing process. The thaw worked well I got the ice out of the cockpit and the seat dry, it was time to take it for a ride.


I drove a few klicks down the road to Bay View. It was along walk to the water as the road was blocked by the plowed snow. So I took advantage the trail cleared by an ATV consisting of compressed snow. Wessel nearly ran down the snow its hull was so smooth agaist the snow it was a peace of cake to take it to the water. I had to carry it 10 to 15m down to the water where snow was absent. I was smart on this occation and had all my extra gear packed in the rear hatch saving me a second trip.



There was some ice out in the bay, and on canue. The canue was making its way out around the ice. I followed the other boat and tracked along the edge of the ice. The ice was thin, some where between the thickness of a dime and a loonie. I caught up with the canue halfway across the lake. I had a brief chat with the other boat. I headed up the lake hoping to follow the western shore. This failed. There was too much ice. I could only follow the ice. There were big sheets of ice and it was hard to see the full extent of the ice for so close to the water.

For fun I tried to break through some ice a thin neck between two patches of open water. This was a dead end and had to double back. This would be a signe of things to come. After some fun paddeling I headed back to the beach finding that the ice had shifted. The 20m wide open channle had closed, I had to ice break my way back to the beach. Its a noisy process, like chewing on an ice cube. Thankfully no damage was done to Wessel.

Since then I had left Wessel outside on a snow bank near where I unloaded it form Serenity. Hoping that it would not snow. It snowed, cutting into the idea that I could take Wessel for a ride, the cockpit was filled with snow and ice from the freeze and thaw. The idea of going out with a wet seat killed the idea of going out on the water.



Last night I brought Wessel inside and made a dry dock out of the tie down straps. Now Wessel, is hagging upside down at long last a chance to fully dry out.

The Mountains

I have been enjoying two things that have happened quite independently of each other. The return of my repaired camera and now that it is a little later in the year the return of longer days. On top of the longer days has been a string of sunny days. With today's weather calling for sun glasses and skis I just had to go some where new. I had in December attempted to go for a ski by the hot springs. This worked to a point but I too the wrong entrance and caused my self more work then I had wanted. On top of that I never ended up on the trails them selves but was content to stay on the logging road.




Today I got on the trail at the first entrance, and found my self on a near perfect base which due to recent heating and cooling was solid and quick with only a thin layer putting up much resistance. It was quick and smooth. There were some minor issues. The track was oddly deep and periodically dented with foot prints. Moose it would seem were using the ski trail to there advantage. The moos tracks did not present any real challenge until after I had skied beyond the limit of the last fresh trail.




After a Kilometer or two there were no ski tracks that predated the most recent snow fall, the same could not be said for the moose tracks which were plentiful. They wondered making slow zig zags from one end of the cleared trail to an other, often strait down the center. And where there were not fresh tracks there were old ones covered in snow. Now I should point out that it works out that this moose or these moose made tracks that were nearly the same width as those made by a skier. So at a glance you might think the moose has done some work for you. it will be easier then plowing your own trail. This was wrong.

I found that the moose tracks were deep and caused my skies to sink irregularly and I was plowing through the snow between its foot steps in a deep channel. I did learn and start to move out of the moose tracks on to untouched snow where I hardly sank at all and a side from occasionally crossing moose tracks and the more frequent sinking of my ski pole into a hidden soft spot left by a buried moose track was able to make good speed. Now I feel slightly sun burnt on my cheeks and a little stiff in my legs but it was well worth it.

Karbon Kopy,

Hout support How may I help you

It was requested of me that I figure out the operations of a MP3 player that was a christmas gift. Since I am a reasonable tech savvy person I really agreed. I might be having regrets. The device is clearly a knock off, physically looking like a second generation iPod Nano. But that is where the similarity ends. The interfaces if painful and clumsy. Any effort made to do more then fast forward to the next song would likely lead to a car accident if done when driving. But my frustration with a bad knock off is largely countered by the entertainment value of the Engrish instruction manual. Highlights of which include.

My favorite regarding partitioning the drive to allow secure data storage. It starts with a some what technical set of instructions but ends with this gem of a sentence.

" When others borrow MP3, you may have to delete the private information, which may cause big brother. ( The Italics are mine)

The next sentence reads as follows.

"However, the "Private Space" fuction provided by this player solves the bothering problem."

I would never had thought to verbify the term big brother, thankfully there are folks with second and third hand views of our culture language and literature who can do that thinking for me. I would recommend this device to any one who wants to cause pain upon a ipod owner.



A visit to their website did not endear me to them any more, I could not find any firmware support, in fact the support page was listed as under construction. The page was dated as having been last updated in july of 2007. Karbon the power of digital, some one forgot to tell these folks that its silicon that powers digital things.