Gone...again

I noticed yesterday that every summer I seem to drive a girlfriend to the airport for an extended absence from the city. Why do they all seem to leave at just the wrong time? The summer is the best time for girlfriends!!! :-(
Anyway, her flight was at 5 pm, so I thought we needed to get her there by 3:30. At 2:15 I started looking for the car keys...and discovered that they were not to be found in the house! And NOONE with them was reachable in any way. My mom was in a meeting, my dad in Mississauga, and my sister listening to some talks and unable to tell me where my dad was. Soo frustrating. I had meant to go and get CC some film for her camera as a sort of going away gift, but was unable to do so. :-( We ended up taking a cab, which cost us 60$. Fortunately we still managed to arrive just on time, giving us ten minutes to say goodbye before boarding began.

And so I see her again in August.

Happy day, sad day, good day, bad day

Today is a weird day. I am both extremely happy, but also very sad. CC is going away later today for 3 months. I'm so happy when I'm with her (which I have been quite a bit this last week, understandably, I think), and happy that I have her as a girlfriend even as I walk home from her house. Everything looks so beautiful to me when I'm feeling like that. Then I think of what it'll be like for the next three months and I get sad. So annoying.

I've also discovered that I think it is a good idea to talk to random people. Especially those that look like they're backpacking, or well-travelled, or just plain interesting. I think I will try and talk to someone random at least once a week, and write about it on here. Today for instance, as I walked home, I saw a girl with a huge backpack with camping gear tied on, so I just asked her where she was from. It turns out she's from Toronto, but is on her way to Caledonia to support the Six Nations in their land claim! That is interesting, I think!

Alright, that's it for now, much work needs to be done.

A nice holiday, but now back to the grindstone...sorta

I got back from Kentucky tuesday night, at around 10 pm....it was a long drive. Most notably, Ohio has got to be one of the most unnotable places to drive through on a highway. It is perfectly flat, there is nothing interesting to see. It's the kind of driving that makes you wonder if you're actually tired or just being mesmerized by the same scenery passing by for 4 hours. The only interesting thing I can recall from the drive is seeing the General Electric Aviation headquarters....it is HUGE! It is at least 2 km long along the highway. My friend and I were astonished at how big it was.

Other than the drives, the weekend was amazing. We arrived at our camp site at 4:30 AM Friday morning, and slept until 9 or so when a bulldozer drove by making lots of noise, and then started digging up the ground not far from where we were sleeping. Not surprisingly, we moved to another camp site, where several of our friends were already set up. We thought it would be a great idea to carry our tents fully set up to the new sites, which worked fine, but then we let them sit there while we grabbed other stuff, and a sudden gust of wind carried our empty tents into the river!!!! haha. There will be photos of these things to follow of course.

We eventually got climbing. It'd be silly and boring for me to describe all the climbs that we did. They were awesome. I took a bunch of photos of my friends climbing from the middle of neighbouring routes, so I will post some of them soon. In terms of camping, we pretty much ate like kings....nice healthy dinners, great pasta, steaks, decent sandwiches for lunch, pizza at Miguel's...ah, the benefits of car camping!

Other things of note are that I learned several important skills. I learned how to properly clean up a route (remove all gear) after we're done with it, how to rappel (using a prusek knot), and how to properly set quickdraws while climbing. I lead my first outdoor climb, it was a 5.10a with a really big last move, pretty high up above the last bolt, so a fall from there would have been long. It was also great getting used to climbing outdoors and learning how to read the handholds. A lot of the time, a place that seemed like it might be a good hold ended up being a piece of crap, and all the chalk smeared on it only threw me off more!

In other news, CC is going away for 3 months!!! :-( She's going to do some field work in Washington or Oregon, counting birds in some wildlife reserve or something. There will probably be limited access to phone and/or internet, which really does suck. It's going to be pretty rough! But possibly it will help me finish my masters!

Anyway, stay tuned for photos from Kentucky.
GS

Off to Kentucky!

I'm off to Kentucky for two full days of driving...and 4 full days of climbing! I hope the weather is nice, and I also hope that i can fight off this cold that CC gave me!!! Her stupid coworkers are all sick and she brought it home. grrrr.

I will write when I get back. Wish me fun! :-D

hihi

I haven't had much to write recently...nothing too remarkable is going on in my life....the photo marathon that I participated in last weekend was I guess somewhat noteworthy. We were given a roll of 12 pictures, and 12 themes, and we had 24 hours to take one photo for every theme. It was a LOT more challenging than I expected! The themes were

Affluence
Power
Red
Birth
Trade
Magic
Human
Choice
Mother Earth
Patience
Crowd
Kiss

this is what I did for each subject:
Affluence - photo of a bright blue BMW with license place 'SCNDALIS'
Power - a bright red muscle car from the 40s or 60s at an interesting angle
Red - a glass of red wine with light shining through it held by CC, very short DOF
Birth - the creation of Walnut Cakes in Korea Town on Bloor at Christie
Trade - the owner of Il Solferino Gelateria in front of his shop
Magic - The front of a herb shop with sign saying 'Chinese Herbs'
Human - A very cute baby held by its father
Choice - The Condom Shack
Mother Earth - close up of flowers in my front garden
Patience - messed up shot...darkness
Crowd - A can or sardines!!
Kiss - Me and CC sitting on a bench, just our legs and torsos cut off to below our heads, her hand around my forearm, slightly leaning towards me.

That's what I did! I hope that my photos turn out, and I'm really excited to see what everyone else did. CC had a few technical problems with her bro's camera, near the end of the marathon, so 4 of her shots may not turn out. At least she got most of them. In the evening we went for dinner with my family to a very nice restaurant on Bloor called Mt. Everest...YUMMY!

Anyway, Sunday we finished up the competition, shopped for lunch, ate lunch, had a nap, then went climbing.

As you can see, nothing earth-shattering is going on in my head...haven't had any major life-changing thoughts or anything recently, other than maybe doing something with my photography that I had never done before.

that's it for now, gotta ride my bike home.

To the market and back, again

Once again, we present to you....

On McCaul