Cold and Rainy

Cold Bike ride!


So, Michelle's Grandma fell and broke her hip in early August, but the plan was still to have her b-day party as planned. That all changed when she got an infection and had to stay in the rehab facility. We decided to go to Calgary anyway and just have a weekend for ourselves.

The original plan was to take the bike if the weather cooperated, so we figured we would still plan for that. As the weekend approached the weather looked to be cold and rainy. I figured we would just take the car and not worry about it, but Michelle wanted to take the bike anyway. Away we went!

The trip down on Thursday after work was not too bad. No rain, just cold. 5c on the highway is pretty cold on a bike, but we made it.
Friday was zoo day and it was not a bad day. Again there was no rain, so the day worked out. I took a ton of photos and will upload them to my facebook soon.
Saturday we took a trip out to Canmore via the 1a as it is a nice ride on the bike. Michelle loved the road as it is nice and windy with nice scenery. We had lunch in Canmore at the Grizzly Paw. I had a Bison burger and a Moose Knuckle Stout. Yummy! When we got back to Calgary we went to the rehab hospital to see Grandma and have some b-day cake. After that we went to a friends place for a BBQ. Long day, but we had a great time.
Sunday we stopped out at Cochrane to look at Grandma's computer then headed home. It was raining and cold all day. I found out the hard way that my boots and gloves are not designed for wet weather. It was a LONG day as we had to stop a bunch of times to warm up.

While the trip was cold, it was nice to get out on the bike for another long trip. It won't be much longer before I have to park it for the winter. :(

This coming weekend is supposed to be nice with temps up to 24c. There is a Santa's Anonymous Toy Ride scheduled for Sunday that I will probably participate in, so that should be nice. Hopefully we can get a bit of a ride in on Saturday too...have to wait and see how things progress I guess.

That's about it for now...

The month of August

So...Fragapalooza was to be the highlight of my summer vacation again this year, and once again it didn't disappoint.  Not only did I have a blast, but we had a ton of power issues on our first day that caused us to have to actually shut things down for 12 hours while we attempted to fix everything.  What a cluster****.  Beyond these problems, the event went pretty well.  The venue was awesome and everyone ended up having a good time.  What more can you ask for?

The next big thing was Michelle's birthday.  We always go to the Fringe as she likes to get a Henna and a hair wrap.  No hair wrap this year, but she did get her Henna.  We also saw a booth where they do a caricature drawing and thought it would be perfect to have one done for our party.  $25 lighter we had a great picture.

Speaking of our party, I spent WAY more than I expected to.  The food was more, the decorations more and the costumes more.  However, it was a really fun time so in the end it was all worth it.  The Murder Mystery was a great time and you can look at some photos here.

The next thing to come along will be my birthday and then our 5th wedding anniversary.  After that we have a trip to Calgary planned for Grandma's 90th birthday.  Maybe then things will slow down a bit!  LOL

In other news, I have put almost 7000km on my bike since June.  I ride that thing whenever I get the chance and am really enjoying it.  It doesn't hurt that Michelle loves going for rides too!  Hopefully the weather will stay nice for a while yet as I am not ready to put it away.

That's it for now...don't stay tuned as these updates are too infrequent...

So, our trip to Bonnyville was pretty good.  We did take the bike and managed to get everything we needed for the weekend in the saddle bags and in one medium duffel bag that we tied to the back of the sissy bar. 

The ride there was cloudy and a bit windy, but there was no rain.  Always a bonus when traveling anywhere by motorcycle!  We checked into the hotel then headed out to the cabin for the party. 

It is a really small world...Michelle knew a bunch of people there.  Some from when she was growing up, some from her work and some from the Folk Fest.  Strange how that works eh?  After talking to one couple for a while I found out that he grew up in the same town as I did, and was in the same class/year as my brother.  Small world!

We ate too much, drank too little (can't drink when riding the bike) and I was relaxing on the front porch when I heard my name being called over the PA system.  Kathleen's brother is a stage hypnotist and was apparently about to put on a show.  Seeing as I have been hypnotized before they wanted me in the show.  I reluctantly agreed.

As it turns out, I was the ONLY one who got hypnotized, so I WAS the show.  Apparently I am a Barbie Girl, I can teach Irish Dancing, I can't do the Twist but I can dance like Cyndi Lauper.  I am a gentle but firm Spiderman, swear when I lose the winning Lotto Max ticket and kissed a ton of people.  At least Joe was nice and kept the show clean!  LOL

The ride home was looking to be perfect on Sunday.  Not a cloud in the sky.  We stopped in Vegreville at my friend's place for a BBQ and when we were leaving the storms had come.  Almost the whole ride was in the rain.  Oh well...the windshield on the bike kept us pretty dry actually so it wasn't bad.

Any excuse to ride...another 500km on the bike!  :)

Motorcycle Trips

So...in the past 2 weeks I have put on over 2000kms on my motorcycle.  YAY!

The first 1200km was a weekend trip with some friends.  2 of us rode to Hinton on a Friday to meet up with the other guys who were coming from Grande Prairie.  The 4 of us (with a 5th following in a car) then rode to Jasper where we spent the night.
Saturday we rode the Icefield Parkway from Jasper to Banff.  We made a bunch of stops along the way to check out some of the sights, as well as rest.  The ride was AMAZING but at one point it did hit 8c, though when we were riding by the glacier it felt a LOT colder than that.
Sunday we left Banff and headed home.  At Canmore we veered off and took the 1A to Cochrane, which was an amazing ride in itself.  From there we headed home.
It was a long 3 days of riding, but worth every second.  Of course, the day after we get home my new seat arrived.  Even after doing 1200km in 3 days I still had to test out the new seat.  150km later I can say that the new seat is worth every penny.
One thing I didn't have for this trip was a windshield.  After fighting the wind for 1200km I knew I had to have one.  Subtract another $350 from my bank account and that problem has been resolved.

This past weekend Michelle and I went on our first bike trip together.  We did a "Giants of the Prairies" tour and hit 5 of the "giants" - Pumpkins, Mushrooms, Perogi, Easter Egg, Sausage.
The ride started out with rain, but we had our gear on and were prepared for the worst.  It was a super long day, but it turned into a beautiful evening and we had a blast.  The new seat held up nicely for Michelle, so again...worth every penny.  I look forward to more day trips like that one!

Photos for both of these trips are on my Facebook page.  I may upload them to my Shutterfly page, so I will update the blog if I do with the address.

Next weekend, we are to go to Bonneyville for a wedding reception.  If the weather is even remotely nice, we will be taking the bike again so I can look at putting another 600km on it.

I have to say...I am sure enjoying my mid-life crisis.  I put a lot of money into it, but I plan on getting a TON of enjoyment out of it, so it will be worth it.

Keep the shiny side up and your right hand cranked!

Empire Avenue

If you look to the left you will see a new widget for Empire Avenue.  This is the newest thing to social networking.  Basically, it is a stock market where YOU are the commodity and your stock value will depend on your social media footprint.

At this point I am not sold on it yet.  It appears to require people to basically spam all the social media tools they use in order to keep their stock value high.  For someone like myself who only posts a few updates a day, my stock is rather neutral.  I will continue to play with it as they continue to tweak things, and we will see where it goes.

If anyone is interested in an invite, I do have some left that I can give out.  Let me know!

BYU for mayor!

So, somebody has created a Twitter account called bobs_yer_uncle and has been tweeting about stuff from work.  Normally I wouldn't even mention this, but apparently this Bob character has caused quite a stir.

It started during Technocon, which was a joint tech conference put on by the UofA and the COE.  Apparently tweets were made during the conference that were basically making fun of a bunch of stuff.  The thought was that this person had to be at the conference as they were referencing stuff that was happening - as it happened.  Instead of talking about individual tweets, you can read them for yourself.

Now...the thing that stood out for a lot of us, was that these tweets basically captured what a lot of people were thinking, but nobody had the balls to say.  Most everyone that heard about it assumed it was me!!!  I know I have been very vocal about stuff in the past, but why would I need to create a fake account when I am vocal on my own twitter account?

A lot of people are trying to find out who is behind the account.  It would seem we all have our suspicions, but nobody seems to know.

Our CIO was at a web conference in Toronto and apparently did some sort of panel discussion.  During this discussion he apparently talked about BYU and how this person was rumored to be one of Chris' staff using twitter to criticize him.  The fact that this has been brought up in some nationwide public forum is almost funny.  Bobs_yer_uncle is famous!  LOL

BYU was quiet for a while, and then made fun of some survey results.  Through all of this, if nothing else, it got a lot of people animated, engaged and talking about all the things that BYU said in his tweets.  Is that a bad thing?  I don't think so.  HOWEVER...it now appears that there is a manhunt on for BYU.  Rumor now has it that HR is trying to track this person down.  For what?  From what I have read, nothing was said that: wasn't true; was hurtful; slanderous; or personally attacking someone.  Perhaps the line was bent somewhat on some of the posts, but I personally don't think he ever crossed it.

What is going to happen if/when the secret identity of Bobs_yer_uncle is ever discovered?  Will the person be "Merl'd"?  Will they get a slap on the wrist?  Will they be publicly ridiculed?

As some other people in the branch have said, even if they knew who this person was, they wouldn't tell.  That is the stand I am going to take.  As long as BYU continues to keep his tweets clean, concise, honest and to the point, I will quietly cheer him on.  BYU has been quiet lately, so maybe someone found out who it is and he decided to quit, or maybe the person behind BYU is away...here's hoping we never find out.

Oh yeah... BYU for Mayor!

Honest...

So, every time I think to myself "I should really update my Blog", something comes up and I forget about it.  Then another week goes by and I repeat the process.  Well, today I decided at the very least I will make a small contribution to the vastness that is the interwebz.

In the past few months I have purchased a motorbike, taken my bike safety course, and have booked my road test.  You may say this is nothing more than my mid-life crisis, and you would probably be right.  However, as far as mid-life crisis goes, this one is pretty tame IMHO.

The bike course was actually really good.  Anyone can get on a bike and go fast.  It is the actual SKILL stuff that we all need to learn/practice.  This course (at TNT Motorcycles BTW) was fantastic.  We spent like 12 hours on the bike, right from the first hour we were there.  Learning everything from the correct way to make u-turns, to controlled swerves and stops, the course was awesome.  If I had something bad to say, it was that the bikes were too small for me.  I am not so much concerned about the power, but the physical SIZE.  I was unable to try out the Honda CBR's because the handlebars kept hitting my knees.  Oh well...still learned a lot.

The next step is to actually GET my Class 6.  May 28 I take the road test and if all goes well, I will be able to legally ride my motorcycle without a chaperon.

Other than the motorbike stuff, I did a small amount of work around the house.  We had a Sunshine Ceiling that had all but one of the ballasts go within a 2 week span.  I spent literally months trying to decide what to do - replace them with new ballasts, replace the whole fixtures, or tear down the sunshine ceiling and replace it with something else.  I finally decided to replace the ballasts and the panels with new ones.  Looks really nice now.  Here is an example of what a Sunshine Ceiling looks like (not mine) in case you were wondering.

That's all I have for now...like every post I promise to update more often.  Don't hold your breath.  :P