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.
Category: life
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.
Categories
House Warming
I’ve been down in the dumps for the past week thinking about how things didn’t pan out so well with Kim and me during her last week here before field season. I talked to her on the phone the other day and that seemed to help but I didn’t really ask her the question I really wanted to, and that is, why did she do it?
Moving on, or at least trying to, I’m going over to Susan’s place this evening for a house warming party. I feel like I should be taking something over there, but I’ve got no ideas. I’m half afraid to drive anywhere after getting those tickets yesterday.
Categories
The Hot Tub Time Machine Party
We had a fun party at the Manor on the weekend. (Here are the flickr photos, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13). I brought my new friend, Kim, along to meet all the gang. She got rather drunk — I was even trying to follow a friend’s advice (ie. that couples should try and stay at the same level of inebriation) but alas, she did a shot or two that I didn’t get in on and next thing I knew she had lost her impulse control and began a journey to flirt with anyone that would respond. I took it in stride — I’m actually not that worried about it — it’s already a complicated situation, but it was embarrassing because it was in front of, and sometimes with, my friends. Shannon upon leaving the house happened to find me putting on my shoes (we are shoes off in houses in Canada) and told me in no uncertain terms, “Dump that woman!”. Yup.
Still I had a great time, despite the embarrassment, and aside from getting my sleep schedule back on time things are great. I didn’t even have much of a hangover — either I’ve learned how to handle my liquor or maybe it was not having those two shots on the booze luge that saved me.
Yesterday I slept in and though I’m trying to get back to my routine, I’m still tempted to take little cat naps throughout the day. I played around on the google reader for most of the morning, then in the afternoon I watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock. I made myself a pizza for lunch and then later watched the hockey game with Eric. He shared an amazing pasta dish with me that he brought home from the restaurant. I really like that. He asked (as he often does) if I wanted to go out back and ‘smoke’, but as usual I turned him down. Montreal won the hockey game and tied the series 3 to 3.
After the game I headed over to the University for a swim and it was quite refreshing. I finished my main workout in 17 minutes which is actually 20 seconds slow for my usual target time 16:40 (50m every 50 seconds). It’s still not a bad pace time at all. I stuck around a bit longer doing a few more laps, helped pull ropes for the lifeguard on duty. She’s a cute little blond girl but I would have offered to help any of the lifeguards, since it’s much easier to swim ropes across than it is to take all the trouble of walking each one around individually and I was just there swimming anyway so what did I care?
I steamed it up afterward; I really love the steam room and then on my way out I chatted up some girl that I recognized from water polo. It didn’t take long for my Mormon radar, my Mordar, (if you will) to go off. I told her that I grew up Mormon but that I know longer am and she asked what they all ask, why did you stop? So I gave her my typical and very brief answer that I could no longer suspend my disbelief. She asked what I believe now and I told her science. She laughed and said something like, well that’s not a bad thing to believe in.
I jumped into my jeep and discovered the engine light is on. A quick browse in the owner’s manual let me know that it’s ok to drive but that I should take it in to get checked out. I’m guessing this is related to the issue it was having the other night where the engine didn’t quite sound right.
And that brings me up to now. I can’t say I’m keen on not seeing Kim anymore so I’m not really looking for confirmation that that is what I should do but I really like her and she’s moving away for the summer in about 10 days, so I’m just going to hang with her until she leaves.
As for today, I took the bus over to the university to work out what I need to do to apply to the Education Faculty and to go for another swim. A couple of my female friends complimented me on my “rock hard stomach” at the party (and one of them told me that all the ladies were admiring me) so those compliments have given me an extra boost to want to work out even more. Ah, it’s nice to be in my prime. Life is great.
Categories
Last Week of School
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.
Categories
And I’m Back…
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?
Categories
Year in Review 2009
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 “A”s 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.
Categories
Google Wave
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.