Lake land

Now that I have recovered from the lost sleep and general tiredness of 1400km commute in 2 days I have the resources to write again. As is too often the case I find my blog posts lagging a week or two at least be hind real life. This is no exception.

As can be seen in my last post I got s Kayak. Because I was living in dialup country I did not attempt to make up any posts with the pictures from those adventures. Of which there were many pictures.

This time off turned out to have been my most expensive one since I got my car, not matching in for dollars spent but taking the biggest chunk out of my cash in a long time. A boat and dental work will do that. I managed to spend time at some of my favorate places on and off the water.

This post is really about lakes, all the ones I found my self on. In the first boat post I was on Wood lake out side of Kelowna, I have since found my self on Kookenay lake , The middle and lower portions of Arrow lake, Slocan lake, and the larger of the Champion lakes near Fruitvale. As well as Summit and Box lakes near nakusp. I am feeling lazy so I will leave it for you to figure which lake is which.

Afloat

Well I am back in the south. That means a chance to spend some of the money I have earned through my excessive working.
Today after some trial and a little error I bought a kayak. Due to having the chance to try out a few models at the beach this morning I found my self wanting a bout that was a big step up in both materials and price. Knowing that I could not have enjoyed the original boat I had in mind I coughed up the extra money and got me a boat I could really love rather then just like.

So having set my self up with a vessel and the odds and end needed to get out on the water with I headed off to a small local lake, Wood Lake out side of Kelowna. It was calm save for the wakes of the speed boats. I was out on the water for over 3 hours.
The latter half saw me with some company as I had came a shore to adjust my seating and in typical style got chatting.

So now I have some pictures to share of the boat and the lake

Changes

Well I am going home tomorrow morning. Yay me. And I will be entering a fossil fuel powered time machine, other wise known as jet. It is at this time of year as in spring that the differences in latitude show up most strongly.

Up here nearly all the leaves have turned nearly all at once. We had the first short lived snow fall over lunch a couple days ago. We're having crispy days with frost and ice on some lesser mud puddles. But this time of year is also when I start to see my favourate sunrises that many of you readers have seen.




I have this rotation for my physical and mental heath tried to go for walks on a daily basis. Well I did not go out daily I did manage to go for walks more often then not. This gave me a chance to photograph some of the wild life as on those days I remember to bring my camera. If I brought my camera with me every time I would have filed up my hard drive by now so its best if I for get it more often then not.




So enjoy the change of season, I my self look forward to moving a few weeks back in time to more gentle early fall.

The Long weeks

Post 100

As of today I have less the two weeks remaining in this rotation up north. Because this rotation is the first full six week one since april. Between then and now I had a 4 week rotation and a 5 week one to fit in my three weeks of summer break. The pairing of shorter rotations with a longer break leaves me with a better perspective on the nature of the work rhythm. I have to say that from that sampling of different work cycles the 4 and 2 pattern is best for my sanity. However I have not been given that as long term choice nor have I yet attempted to demand that.

With a mind freshened by a long an satisfying break which marked the hight of my longest break i routine since landing up here May 26 2006, I feel it is time to go over just how time passes out here. Its tough to say if I should start my chronogy of my routine with the first week of my vacation or the first week of work. I will spilt the difference.



I have a two day commute to work. I make that commute northward once every two months. The first day of the commute is the hardest, it is that day that I have to leave behind what ever life I am leading at that moment and drag my self off to the Kelowna airport. That is the day where I occasionally flirt with the idea of not leaving my life behind for work. It is also the only day I that choice. That is a long day, usually a several hour drive from Nakusp to get me to town, the killing the day with some last minuet shopping. By the time I am at the airport I am tired, my meals were disjointed or poor, and I still have some time before my flight, which is usually at 8pm. Once I am on that plane I am set, there is no going back. I fly to Edmonton.



Edmonton, is the worst part of the trip, by the time I have my bags and find the shuttle bus I am happy to get into my room by 11:pm, and happy to be sleeping by 1am. The next day is a haze. I drag my self to the airport by way of the same shuttle and on autopilot to gate 49. Often stopping at the books store near the gate just in case I did not pick up enough books along the way. This flight takes me to Yellow Knife.

Once I am in YK, I am nearly at work, its a simple matter of finding my others of my cohort, and taking a cab to terminal for our chartered plane. Before lunch time that day I am back at work moved back into my room and wandering just what the fuck is going on.



The need to find out wtf is going on makes the first few days up here a string of Mondays. In this first week I am a mix of cheerful to be back with some people I call friends when they are not being in charge of me and irritation for being up here and leaving muck behind.

With in a day or two I am back in my core shack looking at rock, building up momentum, remembering the how to do my job and I will have caught up with the state of the program. So for the first week I get my footing.

The second week is easy, I will have regained my focus, what little my ADD addled brain has, and I will be in steady routine, rock in make notes rock out repeat. As week two draws to a close I start to see how long I will be away from my life and I start to become less happy.

Week three adds not only the element of how my thinking about how long I will be away form my life, but also I start thinking about how long I have already been away from it. This rotation week three saw the increase in distractions from my real work.

I am currently at the start of week four, with 13 days and some change still on the books, I start to look forward to leaving and things get a little easier. A little, for it is also at this time that the cost of the daily cycle of 10 hour work days non stop for weeks starts to catch up with me. I had planned to write this yesterday but I hit a wall, I had no brains left at the end of the day to write this with.

The trouble with being out here for six weeks is passing, a few nights short of sleep a long day, a day with too much labour and I find my self running dry. The last week to week and an half are a drain, I work because I have to, I am tired and have a harder and harder time putting full length productive days. It makes six weeks too long.

The last half week is spent coasting on the prospect of freedom and time off rather then any real energy. So by the time I am on my flight heading south to Calgary I can not help but sleep the whole flight. I spend the first few days of my break at once trying to catch up on my sleep and fighting the urge to be as busy as was at work. These goals are mutually exclusive. The result I wake up at 5am most days of my brake and talk my self back to sleep till 7am. Because I am still recovering my energy I take afternoon naps. Naturally by the time I have regained the ability to sleep in its time to go back to work.

Repeat as longs greed dominates over personal life and sanity.

The Evenings Entertainment

The warrior got his send off out into the lake for a short trip before being attacked by a fish. Inspired by that vessels success I put forward the idea of taking one of the real boats for a spin. It was on my mind for the last few weeks that we should take a boat on to the lake but the weather was too cold and rainy to make that make work.
I had not in all of my nearly 2.5 years here made it out on to that larger lake. Some how when ever any one headed out on to the lake it happened when I was elsewhere. So I missed opportunities by only knowing of them after the fact.

Jakeway, which is not how it is spelt is one of the larger lakes around here and one of the few to have a long axis that runs east west more then north south. So we took the boat roughly east past some islands to a pair of islands hosting some cabins. The sky was interesting but proved too interesting. We had a comfortable trip out but the storm met us some where past half way and we got a little chilled and a little wet but no worse for ware.

Here then is a selection of the boat trip

The Proper Send off

The Fallen

This is perhaps the first case of a premeditated act to produce a blog post.
The back story the other day I was blind. Okey my hand lens was fogged up some water worked its way between the lenses. It made seeing some of the finer details harder. I went looking for a spare. I failed to fined one even in the currently empty spare core shack. I did find a fallen warrior instead. I fixed the hand lens by storing it in a back of desicant, over night which sucked the water out of it.



The fallen warrior was a dragonfly. Some how it had worked its way into the spare core shack and failed to find its way out, it was a sad death. The body was in perfect shap, not a mark on it save for the dust that had settled. I too it with me to my shop where I put it as side for a while after taking some close up photos.

It took a while for the idea to jell but after a day or two of it sitting on my shelf and in my head the idea of a Viking Funeral crossed my mind. So I set about improvising a mini long boat. What it lacks in style it makes up in soul. Dragonflys are our best allies out here, eating every that flys that is smaller then themselves. Since most of the things that try to eat me are smaller then a dragonfly they eat the bugs that eat me.



The boat came out much simpler then I had imagined it at first, but reality set in and minimalist started too look better then half cocked need less details. So this afternoon I finished it up and after dinner I set it free on the lake.

Its voyage was short lived and side ways of planned. The silly thing got stuck on some lake grass and went back wards before a fish jumped up and tried to eat the dragonfly on the bow. But I paid my respects to its kind and the good they do for use

The Late Post.

A slow day.

The last two days have turned into unexpected mental health days. Yesterday work too me to a drill site where due to arriving early but not early enough to make flying back to camp worth while I spent the afternoon at the drill walking around and enjoying not being in the office. Today saw me in the office as I had at long last finished off work in the core shack which in the last sentence I call the office. Today was spent doing all the computer focused cleanup and error correction. Work that progresses much smoother on a computer with a larger screen as I can fit the whole spread sheet on the screen.




Late afternoon rolled and round and my eyes grew tired of the whiteness in the for ground. So after a hurried proof reading, one that I will have to recheck in the morning I choose to call the day off a little early and go for a walk. I head south by west to the other end of the property. I had not been that way since I came back here after my break. And a long last I had my camera with me as I passed the old cabin.




I also took my morning walk to the weather station, with the sky clear and the moon up I had to snap a few. A day of less then perfect productivity but one that feels fresher the normal for being at the three week mark. This walk was written and I had wanted to post it 3 days ago when it was still fresh. Blogger until now has not let me post images which rather pissed me off.
If you need a break to refresh your mind then look no farther the the People's Mario, Nintendo as it should be.
The most glorious animation on the internets Thanks for the link ;)
The Peoples Mario