The Magic Satchel

What are your calls for Round 1? I don’t follow the East teams much, so I’m pretty much guessing. And don’t hate me for my Flames prediction… they did the opposite of what I thought in all 4 rounds in 2004, so I’m hoping that trend will continue this year. We need Regehr back!

Boston vs Montreal – Boston in 6 (sorry Al)
San Jose vs Anaheim – San Jose in 6
Washington vs NY Rangers – Washington in 5
Detroit vs Columbus – Detroit in 7
New Jersey vs Carolina – Jersey in 6
Vancouver vs St. Louis – stupid Vancouver in 6
Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia – Pittsburgh in 5
Chicago vs Calgary – Chicago in 5*

*As usual, this depends on which Flames team shows up. This could go to 7, but there would have to be a complete flip of how they played out the last part of the season. Go Flames!

To continue my verbal spewing this evening, it is time to talk about travel. Everyone likes travel! yaaay! wheee!

The Bad News: I have no plans for an other side of the world, gone for a month by myself sort of extravaganza in 2009.

The Good News: Working for a company that encourages you to take time off (unlike my previous employer who “strongly suggested” we only take time off in the slow time, and only with their approval) means I will be making a couple of smaller, gone for a week types of trips this year.
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Excuse me a moment while I chase the dust bunnies away from my keyboard and attempt to pick up the threads of my story where I last left off… almost 2 months ago.

It amazes me how quickly time has gone by, and how often I’ve told myself “I’ll write about that show tomorrow” or “man I wish I had my camera with me, again”. Truth be told I haven’t been doing anything incredibly amazing, life has just got in the way for a while. The good news is it has (mostly) been good times and good fun, so I don’t have anything horrible to relate as a reason for why I’ve been away.

Go go gadget summary mode!

First up, the review for the Watchmen concert will be posted shortly, and when it does it will be as if I didn’t put it off for the last 3 months as it will appear on the day it should have been written. Also, I’ll blab a bit about the Metric / Tokyo Police Club / Dears concert, and upcoming plans for yours truly including immediate and future travel plans. Yay travel!

Next, the cycling map and the total distance I’ve gone is horribly out of date, but I’ll have to fix that when I get to work tomorrow as I kept my records in my daytimer. Here is a picture to show my most recent milestone:

(executes a self high five)

6000km, and it looks more and more like the odometer can display another number (at least a 1) so I wonder how far I can go before the battery dies? More importantly, how much longer will my bike tolerate my abuse and lack of maintenance before the chain explodes due to excessive rust? Hang on until Thursday, I promise I’ll clean you!

Now that I’m sitting here there is a lot I’d like to say, so I’ll break it up to hit some of the “bigger” stuff in posts of their own.

Over on the “Games Night” page, Scott has been kind enough to provide the latest information. While it was needed, I’m glad to see he didn’t increase his post count while doing it. I don’t know what I’d do if he got to 5 total posts by the end of 2008, so this leaves him plenty of room to work with.

In other news, I finally got around to updating the cycling map page. I decided to do away with the route line (for now) and just go with markers indicating where I finished up each year and where I am currently. Huzzah for being in Atlantic Canada!

I figure that if I maintain my current pace I should be done my coast to coast virtual journey by the end of the year… and then I may modify the route I have been using to include the northern coast as well.

what can I say, I need to have something to ride for.

Tonight I went out to Canmore to do a practice run for this years installment of 24 hours of punishment, and I have to say I wasn’t totally disappointed with my efforts.

After an initial gong show to get myself on my bike and actually riding (it took 40 minutes to get out of downtown, I forgot my helmet, my camera, my large tire pump, I scratched my car when my bike fell over, I didn’t bring bug spray), I set off up what I believe the start will be for this year (I didn’t see the map until writing this post), and promptly almost bail on some rocks. Fortunately nobody was around to see that (mental note: don’t do that on race day), and I resume riding on what I have now named the highway to hell.
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I hit 5000km last night on my way home so I had to pull over and take a picture.

I wonder what will happen when it hits 9999.9?

Other things to note about the ride last night:

- I almost got run over twice while crossing with the signal in reasonably well lit intersections going north on 14th ave. to get to the river. I know the girl in the passenger seat saw me on the first one from the start because she was screaming at her boyfriend to look out as he hammered the accelerator to turn before a car came from the other direction.

…and people wonder why I avoid riding on the street as much as humanly possible.

- I’m discovering I need to ring my bell about 10 times for some people to clue in what it means… and even then so many people have their iPod cranked they can’t hear it anyway (but still get pissed at me for riding by them with “no warning”)

- blowing wind does suck. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a tailwind when the wind really decides to kick up… last night wasn’t one of them.

but… 5000km. yay!

Well, I’ve already equalled my camping trip total of last year at a massive 2 weekends, so I take it as a sign this will be a great year for outdoor pursuits. The snow was pretty much gone from the sites, but most of the hiking trails were still closed. Looks like Mount Sarrail is closed for the season, too. Boourns!

The girl and I spend some time at the dam (the water is so low!) and managed to get quite a bit further up King Creek than on May Long, but had to cut it short because of Sunday’s rain. The best part: after turning off the fire and crawling into our bags we were treated to a symphony of wolves. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it before – it was chilling! So cool, just to lay back and hear them call to each other. Looking forward to the next trip!

And can I just say that putting recycling bins at the sites was LONG overdue?? Kudos for getting that setup

Ahh.

May long signals the return of camping season (for those of us not crazy enough to camp year round), making it truly one of the happy times of the year. It isn’t the greatest day this earth has ever known, because as we all know that is my birthday… but May long ranks pretty high up there on the list.

This year we headed up on Friday, trying to get there early enough to ensure we got our traditional spot. We did manage to make it out there by around 1pm, but sadly some family and their camper had already taken the perfect spot by the time we arrived. After a brief tour to see what other sites had to offer, we decided on one with a fairly large area cleared of snow (the piles in some of the sites were up around 5 feet high), and a reasonable amount of distance from neighbours.

After we set up the site, we went and explored a bit up the Smith-Dorrien highway to try and find a hike that didn’t have drifts up to our waists. This was not to be as the Black Prince Cirque trail was clogged with snow, but we did have a good deal of fun “helping the thawing process” along the side of the creek nearby (read this as trying to see how big of a chunk we could break off the banks at one time). Repeat this at another creek and the north end of Lower Kananaskis Lake and then it is time for burgers and Big Bear!

Ok, I’m lying about being excited to have Big Bear (really bad beer in a 1.18L format), but it was certainly cold enough to choke down hanks to the snowbank refrigerator we had stored it in since we set up the site many hours before.

Saturday was supposed to be the day we conquered King’s Creek, rebuilding the bridges we had constructed last year and adding more further along the trail, but the dang snow and a creek that was as big as I’ve ever seen it made reconstruction nearly impossible as landmarks I expected to see were either washed away or completely under water.

Our very first bridge did survive the winter, but I think it may require some cleaning up as I believe that a fairly large log jam has formed above it and will wipe that bridge out if given enough water and a few more logs. I’ll have to do a picture comparison to see if my brain is telling me the truth, but I’ll have to get the new ones off Scott at some point to do so.

All in all, I’d say this weekend was a success… no rain, no wind, no snow, minimal jerks in other sites, and some seriously good time spent watching fire-tv. plus Big Bear!

oh look… pictures!

We will be in town attending game 6 on Sunday, which means I will likely finally be regaining my voice sometime on Tuesday while driving back to BC after screaming my face off at a live game instead if just at my TV. Swollen uvula. I am bringing my hardhat. Though Jen says the Flames have to win the cup before I even have a chance at winning the hardhat bet.

I can see the future and it looks like this:

And does anyone else find it funny that the injury Chara has been nursing is his ribs after he did that terrible “it’s the ribs” radio ad for a restaurant when played for Ottawa.

Karma baby, it’s a bitch… just like San Jose is going to be on Sunday.

Go Flames!
(and go road clearing crew in Roger’s Pass!)

(and Al, you are so going over the waterfall on Saturday… unless you want to see if you can irrigate 5 sheep farms? I know it sounds dull, but Squatter is a pretty good game!)

The Flames beat the Canadiens in 6 games to win their 2nd Stanley Cup… this time on home ice! Al has an aneurysm trying to cheer against the Flames.

Teams Montreal beats along the way:
Boston (in 5)
New Jersey (in 6)
Washington (in 6)

Teams Calgary beats along the way:
San Jose (in 7)
Detroit (in 7)
Dallas (in 5)

Worst Stanley Cup playoffs prediction ever? Probably not. But I’m sure TSN’s Maggie the monkey will do better.

Suck it San Jose!