Oh My... Oh My

Well as you might already know I am now paragliding on a regular basis. With 17 flights under my belt I still feel like I know very little but it's starting to make sense. I finally got my harness adjusted to my liking and am finding it gives me better control. Most of my flights have been short what is called a "sled ride" meaning no lift just gliding. But the odd flight I have found some lift and felt the power of "going up" I have to say it is most remarkable. Finding and staying in the lift has been a challenge but one I want to learn. I have met some great folks while involved in this sport. It was my brother Derek that got me started. He wanted to show me this new passion he had found and I was a willing driver (to save time retrieving the vehicle). I spent the summer watching the boys and getting several photo's of them but knew I needed to try this myself. Next Derek asked me if I wanted to come to Mara Lake and help drive for a advanced maneuvers course. I jumped at the chance to see more and was offered a tandem ride as a thank you. Well the view was amazing but the spirals left me nauseated (I never did do well at the midway) but I knew I had to try this. So in Sept off I went to take basic training. I have to say it was tough and I thought I would never get it. But we got three flights in and I was hooked. We where rained out on one of the days of training so I called and went back to get a little more confidence under my belt. They where great and so was the weather and we got four flights in one day. It was really good for me. I left the first time feeling kinda uneasy but the additional training left me feeling confident. Three days after my return I got a call from Derek, the conditions where perfect. We drove up to Little Dome and I did my first launch here with several of the local pilots and equipped with a radio and with one pilot on the LZ. All went well and my first flight was a success I was greatful to have the radio and did what I was told as I approached the LZ. The rest is history as they say.

Harold Returns To Earth

This is a shot of Harold my flying buddy coming in to land on his second flight. He planted a perfect landing.

Another Birthday... In The Air!

Well another birthday has come and gone. I turned 48 this year. My gift this year was to pool my resources and take a paraglideing course. I drove down to Eagle Ranch and took the beginner course. www.flybc.org A fellow named Harold Sartorius and I hooked up to share expenses and try the course. We spent Friday evening learning to kite which is to get the wing over head properly inflated for launch. This proved to be quite a learning experience. I have all the bruises to prove it. Saturday morning was more of the same. We spent our afternoon doing more of the same and then came the call. Round up your gear we are going up the mountain. We scrambled into the van and pounded up the mountain logging road to the summit and upper launch. The view is and was absolutely marvelous. If you look on the site you will see a picture of it. I must admit I was scared spitless. But I trusted that my instructor was going to see me fly. Well I blew my first two launches both times I stopped running and tried to jump into my seat. Needless to say I landed on my butt with a wing wrapped around me. Well third time was a charm and off I went into the sky. I have to say it was about the sweetest thing I have ever felt. To be in the sky with just a few lines holding some fabric is awe inspiring. I cannot put into words the feeling you have. Suffice to say I plan on getting my own equipment as I can afford it and continue to learn this craft. We both got three flights in and I plan to return soon to get my novice certification.

I Got A New Puppy

i'm not sure if I mentioned PuppyLinux in the past. This little distro is 72 meg download. It comes in several flavors. This Is "Seamonkey" this refers to the choice of browsers. The latest offering from Mozilla. This distro comes whith and amazing amount of software. You can surf, chat, music, draw, write a letter do a spreadsheet, you name it right out of the box. It takes about 60 seconds to load on a average system. It runs totaly in ram no install necessary. It can save files back to a hard drive, thumbdrive, even a rewitable CD or DVD. This snapshot shows you just a little bit of the Puppy's stuff. if you need more programs you just go to the package manager and look around. Two or three clicks and you have just about every thing you need. Hardware detection is awesome. I have tried this little distro on everything from a PII 233 with 128 meg of ram to a Athlon 2400 with a gig of ram and it has run on every thing in between. I have also used this to rescue Windows computers when they are fragged. I just boot into Puppy mount the windows drive and burn all the files to a cd and reload Windows. Think about it you don't even need a hard drive. Just as long as you have 128 megs of ram. If you need a free OS that can deliver give this one a try. Click the link to the website and you can click the picture to get a better look.

Steveston Wharf

This is a shot of the boats at Steveston wharf is was a postcard kind of shot 

Monk McQueens

This a shot of a table of trouble. We had a wonderful dinner at a place called Monk McQueens on the water. It was the scene of Dad's birthday dinner. The food was ok and the service great but the view was extrarordinary. 

Vancouver By Night

The picture was taken of the water front during the birthday visit. 

The Butcher Bunch

Here we are from left to right.
Derek, Ginger, Dad, Shane, and Me (Terry).
It was a great day. 

Matt & Shane

My brother Shane and his son made the trip from Ontario to be a part of the birthday celebration. It was great to see Shane again and to meet his son who I had not seen since he was about 6. Matt was haming it up with dad for some happy shots
 

Harry & Hazel's Boy

This is my dad. Caught here during a lunch with his kids during the birthday visit

The Siblings

During our visit all four of Mr. Butchers kids got together for the first time in 34 years. A historic occasion. This a little picture of the youngest and the oldest. Derek and Ginger respectively. 

Mickey's B&B

This is the B&B that Derek found for us in Kitsalano two blocks from the beach. We all gathered to honor our father on his 69th birthday The rooms where nice and the beds very soft. If you need a place close to the city and beach Mickey's is a good choice.

Kitsalano

This is the view from Kits beach back to Vancouver 

Let The Sun Shine

We made a little trip to Vancouver and decided to make a stop at Bridal Falls. While the falls where great the sun pouring through the canopy was also very nice. I loved the dappled effect of the sun straining to reach the foor of the forest 

Kubuntu 6.06 Desktop

Well here is another screenshot of a Linux desktop. This is as the title says Kubuntu. It's Ubuntu with the KDE desktop environment. I have made several mods to the desktop. I love the wallpaper and it's message just double click to see it larger. I hacked the menu to hide itself and then used Super Karamba to setup the OX 10 style menu and added a system monitor to keep an eye on the internal goings on. Just need to use Gimp to get rid of the penguin from the bottom right

The Ceiling

Here is a view of the ceiling of the cave showing the beautiful mineral deposits 

The Entrance

During my visit to Vancouver Island I decided to stop and take a look at Horne Lake Caves. It was worth it. The picture you see is looking back up at the 2 foot square opening that is called the entrance. They have a very strong steel door that is locked open when there are tours and closed when they are not. You climb down the steel stairs to the base of the cave to start the tour. More pictures to follow. 

A Walk In The Woods

Justin and his Grandpa (me) took a little walk around Cathedral Grove during our visit to Vancouver Island. You have to see these trees to believe the size of them. I have seen these woods several times and I still stand in awe. The oldest trees are over 800 years old. Think about it they where good sized trees before Columbus even thought about stopping by.

 

Electric Scooter aka the "Blue Bomber"

Well we have had the bike for a few days now and made a few discoveries. The bike goes about 40 km and still has some juice left. The brakes are terrible. They are noisy and hard to setup. But they stop good. We took the rear box off as it was kinda noisy. And we replaced it with our soft bag for our regular bikes. This works very nicely. I have taken it to work and found it runs great on level ground. Hills are a bit much with me on it. It is rated for 220 pounds and I meet or exceed that. Jackie has gone to work and back several times and it had done well except the brakes. We estimate the route to be about 34 km perhaps more and the bike does the return trip no problem. So I will keep you posted. 

Not A Big Motorcycle (Just a groovy little motorbike)

Well we took the plunge. With rising gas prices we decided to try one of the new electric assisted bicycles. They are considered bicycles so no licence and no insurance. The claim is about 25 cents to charge with a range of 50 km. The top speed is 32km but I think that is optimistic. This translates into 875 km per gallon I'm told. The hope is that this little machine will get Jackie to work and back on a single charge. That should save us about 60 to 80 bucks a month. And zero emissions. I will keep you posted on how it all works out.