jeffmilner.com

During my “Music of Quebec” workshop at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres in the Explore program, together with almost 100 students, we created this “lipdub” music video. Students from the Summer 2010 session of the workshop participated in the video singing along to the song “J’taime comme un fou” [I love you like a fool] by Robert Charlebois.

Yesterday at 3am, a bomb went off at the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Centre Ville, Trois-Rivières. Nobody was hurt. Catch the CBC’s coverage here.

I am in Trois-Rivières this month studying French.

On Friday I took a little trip to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When we noticed the sign warning us of a police barricade ahead, we thought we might have to wait for an accident to be cleared.

It turns out that due to all the rain, the highway was “washed out”. It ended up not really affecting our trip, we just turned north sooner than we had planned, but I understand the flood waters have been very terrible for the people in Maple Creek and Irvine (among other places).

Here’s some footage of the “wash out” on the highway. I had no idea.

(Thx, Kim)

Over the long weekend my friend, Andy, and I went to the Castle River Rodeo Grounds to take part in the biggest whitewater festival in Canada, the Three River Rendezvous. My decision to go wavered when I read that the weather forecast predicted cool temperatures, variable cloudiness, and sprinkled showers. Luckily we pressed on and, as it turns out, the weather wasn’t actually that bad, and for most of the time, it was actually sunny — I even got a little burned on my face.

Unfortunately tragedy struck on Sunday night. After we had returned from our trip running the Five-Alive feature on Carbondale River a couple of times, Chuck Lee, the organiser of the event broke the news that one of the participants had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He explained that a group of kayakers were going over Lundbreck Falls and that on this particular run the boater was held under the falls for several minutes. He was revived once or twice but that’s all he let us know at the time. He emphasized again the need to always be vigilant and to remember that these kinds of things don’t just happen in other places, they can happen here too. We held a moment of silence in respect for the victim.

It was a sobering thought because I had never heard of anyone getting caught in the flow of water under the falls, and to think I, myself, have braved the 12 meter drop and walked away without so much as a scratch.

Jeff Milner going over Lundbreck Falls in June 2008.

I found out later that night who was involved in the accident. I had hoped that it would be someone that I didn’t know but that’s not how it turned out. His name is Jaron and I had bumped into him just the morning before at the put-in for the Upper Castle run. I have paddled with him and his twin brother Dave a couple of times over the last two years.

I looked up some old paddling footage and found some with him in it:

He’s the one in the yellow and orange boat, yellow jacket, and blue helmet. His twin brother is also in the video.

I didn’t know him that well, but it was obvious that he had a passion for kayaking. Both he and Dave are the kind of enthusiastic friendly people that you want to spend a sunny day with floating down the river and enjoying nature. I remember talking to Dave for a long time about his decision to become a teacher and although I have many other influences for my decision to go back to school, it was that conversation that tipped me over the edge.

Kayaking isn’t always considered an extreme sport where you expect to hear about someone dying but every year there are a few news stories where someone drowns in a river. Almost always they are inexperienced or not wearing PFDs, or there is alcohol involved somehow so Jaron’s death comes as a great shock to the paddling community.

I’ve only got one more week of school before the summer. I hate to talk about how posting has been rare lately, but I have been feeling guilty about it — hopefully I’ll get back to regular blogging when I finish up my final projects.

This summer looks to be very exciting for me, I’m headed back to Quebec in July to learn more French.

I had a great birthday weekend but things really went downhill yesterday. I always think it’s pretty silly when people get thrown off by the time change, however, it turns out I’m now one of those people. My iTouch had the correct time on it, but the alarm clock beside my bed was an hour slow. When I figured things out I had less than a half hour to get ready for school and make it to class. Lately I’ve been doing my part for the environment (not to mention saving money on gas) by taking the bus to the University, but since I was late, I had to drive. Since I don’t drive regularly, I parked on the street, and since I was late, there were no close parking spaces — oh except that one with the “no parking” sign. What are the chances they’d give me a ticket? It turns out, the chances are pretty good.

A ticket for parking without a pass at the University works out to about $8. That’s less than some people pay for parking at regular price. A ticket for parking beside a no parking sign? Sixty @#^^ing dollars! (With a reduction of $19 if paid within a week). Argh.

It also turns out that I forgot to renew the jeffmilner.com domain name when I paid to renew the hosting plan. The stress caused by the fact that I might not be able to get my web site back easily made me pretty mad and I found myself racing home from reffing water polo with the pedal to the metal. Knowing full well that if I wasn’t careful I’d end up with a speeding ticket too, I calmed down and slowed down. No sooner than I slowed down to the speed limit, someone’s cat darted out in front of my vehicle and if I hadn’t taken a moment to simmer down, I would’ve taken that cat’s nine lives with nothing more than a bump.

I thought, this might make for an interesting story to post on my blog. Oh… right.

Luckily, LUCKILY, I was able to renew it when I got home last night and once again all is well in my universe — oh except for that nasty parking ticket. What was I thinking?

With another year coming to a close, I decided to take a look back and recall some of my highlights for the year.

• January – Attended the show “Stomp” in Calgary
• February – Went cross country skiing for my first time, 19km on the Goat Creek Trail
• March – turned 30
• April – Lost jeffmilner.com
• May – Drove to Washington State to attend the Sasquatch! Festival
• June – Saw the Rural Alberta Advantage play at the Slice in Lethbridge and made a few leisurely but excellent trips down the Old Man River
• July – Sasquatch Gathering near Drayton Valley
• August – Attended a Virginfest event in Calgary and saw Pearl Jam perform for my first time ever
• September – Back in school at the U of L
• October – Interviewed Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant from Age of Persuasion and had my photos published in Alberta Views magazine
• November – Recovered about 1000 posts from 2002-2006, but mostly I buckled down and did a lot of homework
• December – Won the intramural water polo league and got straight As in school

Happy New Year!

BEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBE…The whining screech of the fire alarm wakes me abruptly.

I glance at the alarm clock beside my bed. 6:10am seems a bit early to get up on a Saturday morning but I decide that I’d better check just in case nobody’s around — nobody is.

There isn’t a lot of smoke, in fact, in my groggy state I can’t figure out the source of the alarm. Then a moment later I flip on the oven light.

It turns out somebody’s cooking one of those Delissio frozen pizzas. I hope they like a crispy crust… with black toppings. Yum.

I just received an invitation to join Google Wave. I have yet to have an actual conversation in it yet, but I’ve been supplying nominations for a few of my friends to get invitations. It’s sort of like being the first person with a telephone—it’s not very useful until the people you want to talk to, get one too.

Previously

I finished the homemade jib I started working on last Saturday this afternoon. Here it is:

Here is some of the first footage.

I realize I need to work on the steadiness of my hand, but so far I’m quite happy with how easy it was to get a more professional looking shot. The whole contraption cost me about $45 CAN and a few hours of work — not bad!

I used the plans I found here.