As East as One Can Go

I declined an event on Facebook today. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend my 45th reunion for high school graduation. Forty-Five! How'd that happen? 

I should have provided a little more information during the planning stages. We will be in the general area on the chosen date of July 30, 2022. I just checked the itinerary of our summer cruise and we'll be in St John's, Newfoundland on that date. 

We board the Holland America Nieuw Statendam in Copenhagen, Denmark on July 16th. We'll be at just one port in Norway, but circle Iceland visiting three small towns and staying overnight in Reykjavík. (Our second day will be my birthday.)  From there, we have two scheduled ports in Greenland too. The subsequent stop in St John's is on the 30th. We also have a full day in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We shall disembark in Boston on August 3rd. Jay and I have scheduled our flights back to Vancouver on the same day. 

   

Jay stands at Cape Spear, where we were closer to Europe than our Vancouver home.

It's been quite a while since we were in the Canadian Maritimes or beyond. I found this old scanned picture of Jay standing at Cape Spear. That's only about 15 km from downtown St. John's. We drove across Canada and returned in my Ford Ranger in 2001. Wow.  So, it'll have been over twenty years since we last visited Newfoundland. 

I'm excited about the cruise but sad it means I won't see some of my former classmates until our 50th!  We'd better pick a weekend now, so we can all plan the summer of 2027 well in advance.

Friday Flashback

This week I made a few dozen more of our old paper images 'Internet-friendly'.

Whereas the farthest we got today was to the Home Depot across the river, the following image was taken twenty years ago. Jay and I were in dinosaur country in Alberta on our way across this great nation to Newfoundland. It took us six weeks to traverse Canada and return. We put 15,000 km on our former Ford Ranger on this mega, camping, road trip.

 

Its 33rd Oil Change

I bought the new Ford Ranger in July of 1996 because it was cheap. I never expected to still own it in 2016.



Today, I had the engine oil changed although the truck is going to soon be sitting for five months straight. The very first time it was changed on December 15th the first year at the dealership in Bellevue, WA. I've followed the Heavy Duty Schedule for a change every 3,000 miles. I have always written each occurrence so the dates and mileage are like a mini-history laid bare.

The little, blue book shows the summer dates of 2001 when we changed it in Sydney, Nova Scotia and in Thunder Bay, Ontario, both coming and going, on a trip as far east as "Canadian Route 1" could take us. I see I also changed the oil at 24,372 in Terrace, BC once. All other times have been pretty close to home, although some of the automotive shops that did the work are no longer around.

After 20 years the odometer will soon show just 99,000 miles. All bets are now off as to how long I'll own this dependable, old set of wheels.

Recounting Life Online

Just like a tottering old man, I often forget what I've already said. I guess one doesn't really need to be old in order to repeat oneself. In fact most couples I know have already listened to each others' stories many times. Listening again can be less exciting the umpteenth time, mind you.

As my eJournal and images contains a daily dose of what I'm thinking, it too contains a lot of repetition. On some days it feels as though everything I might want to say has already been thunk up. Things that have happened since 2003 have been recorded live here but anything before that is completely up in the air.

As an example, Jay wanted to put some pictures from the cross-Canada trip of 2001 onto Facebook. I remember scanning some and figured they'd be on Flickr. Some were. Was it already ten years ago this spring? Next, I wondered how many times I'd blogged about the seven-week roadtrip to the far side of Newfoundland and back to the Pacific coast. I found nine entries. So this tottering old man, obviously HAD mentioned it before. Still, I guess it'd be fine to include one of those pictures I sought out.


We camped most nights in a tent. Here, we were set up in Ontario for the night.

Irony: Burning Them to Visit Their Fossils

My original goal for the truck was to have it last ten years. I figured that $US 1,000 per year was a reasonable cost for transportation eqipment. Well, 2006 has come and gone and I'm still lumbering around in my Ford Ranger. I have enough cash on hand to go and buy any new, replacement vehicle that I want. Yet, I cannot justify the expense as, at the moment, my truck has a measly 79,000 miles on it. Although it would be nice to have that fleeting new car smell, it simply doesn't seem necessary at this time.

The truck used to travel. In 2001, Jay and I took a seven-week, camping road trip. We left Vancouver and didn't turn around until after hitting Cape Spear, Newfoundland. In the past few years, we've not taken any substantial road trips. I like the feeling when pushing out in the morning with at least 400 miles of tar to cover. Maybe we can take several weeks this summer just to slide up the Canadian Rockies and visit Northern British Columbia. We could easily travel 3,000 miles and hardly leave our own province.

On the 2001 cross-Canadia trip, I'm standing helpless 'neath a menacing dinosaur in Drumheller, Alberta. It's in the Canadian badlands and is considered the dinosaur capital of the world.

Eight Summers Ago, Already?

It is another hot July day, almost too hot. So, when I thought of uploading something to YouTube, my mind wandered to old camcorder video taken in the summer of 2001. At one point, I had copied quite a lot of old 8mm tape to DVD. I wondered if our cross-Canada, camping trip was amongst that which made it to disc. That journey took us all the way from Vancouver to the other ocean on the other side of Newfoundland. All seven weeks were on disc but I only wanted a few minutes worth to upload. Rather randomly, I copied a clip from the morning at the Bay of Fundy. It was Canada Day 2001. When we bought tickets, we got those ubiquitous tiny paper Canadian flags on a lollipop stick.


Bay of Fundy - YouTube Clip - July 1, 2001

This is Canada's 142nd Birthday

It's our fourteenth time celebrating. The picture of Jay was taken in Ottawa in 2001 on a summer, cross-Canada camping trip.

The Trans-Canada Highway

If you're Canadian chances are you've been on it before. In fact I'd venture that the majority of rural Canadians live within an hour of it. We've pretty much done the whole thing.


This is the Port Mann Bridge as Highway 1 crosses the
Fraser River less than a half dozen kilometers from downtown
New Westminster. Click it to load a live webcam shot.

In actuality, through most of the country, the Trans-Canada comprises several routes. Out west there's Highway 16, or the Yellowhead Highway which runs the Queen Charlottes in British Columbia through Edmonton, Alberta to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Closer to home is Route 1 with Mile 0 in Victoria. It runs though Calgary, Alberta to meet up with the more northerly route in Winnipeg.

There's an entrance to Highway One a few kilometers from here, so I tend to think of that naming designation for the TCH. When we drove to Newfoundland one summer, we were a bit surprised by how different the highway can be. It's pretty much left up to the provinces to build and maintain their portions. So although many sections are like freeways, there are parts where it is similar to a secondary-type road. Also, east of Winnipeg the numbering system goes out the window. Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have no Route 1.

A Change of Pace

My summer classes are officially over. I finished up with my Oral Fluency for Health Sciences on Wednesday evening. Today, I completed with my Tech. Communication Skills course. The grades have already been turned in for the former and after I get the final examinations corrected this weekend, I can enter marks electronically for the latter. So it's now official that summer is finally allowed to begin ...

I get to switch gears as I've nothing on the burner for August. I can devote a little time to other hobbies and tasks. For example, I set up an appointment for an oil change and brake work on the Ranger on Monday. At 9:00 I can take it to the shop that's about a block away.

I am expecting the guys to replace my brake pads and shoes. After all, I've been 69,000 miles and still have the original set. I guess I don't stop much. In fact, the truck is eleven years old but has only been 115,000 kilometers. I guess that means it doesn't go much either.

Although the blog in several places boasts the little, green, wheeled darling went all the way to St. John's, Newfoundland and back in the summer of 2001. The same brake pads stopped the vehicle at the Bay of Fundy way back then!

One Road Trip Revisited

If my eJournal and images is a scrapbook, then today, I'm just going back to paste in some new memorabilia from events which occurred five years back. On several occasions, I've mentioned this topic here. Pardon my repetition.


In this photo Jay is standing at Cape Spear, Newfoundland. It was taken in the middle of our ultimate, Canadian road trip. In June and July of 2001, we headed east until we couldn't any more. Then, we turned around and headed back to Vancouver. At that easterly-most point in Newfoundland, we were actually 1,200 kilometers closer to England than home.

Can-what?

Canola is now the second largest oilseed crop in the world after soybeans. You might have heard a little about its reputation as a healthy oil.

HISTORY
Although variations of rapeseed are among the world's oldest cultivated crops, canaola's background doesn't begin until the 1960's. The name is a combination of the words CANADA and OIL. In order to create a healthier oil, Canadian specialists started working to reduce a chemical that produced a bad taste, and several types of fatty acids. Success was reached in the 1970's by plant breeders in Manitoba and it now differs genetically from its plant ancestors. Even the name is a registered trademark of the Canadian Canola Association.

DESCRIPTION
When you see a field of canola, you will be overwhelmed by the yellow colour. These flowers produce pods, similar in shape to pea pods but a fifth the size. Inside each pod are tiny round seeds that are crushed to obtain canola oil. Each seed contains about forty per cent oil. The rest of the seed is made into canola meal, used as high-protein livestock feed.

LOCATION
It's produced extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, and to a limited extent in the US. In Canada, canola grows well on the prairies due to it's ability to thrive in environments with little water and high daytime but low nighttime temperatures. One reason for its popularity is because the same machinery can be used to harvest canola as other cereal grains. In fact, it's become Canada's major crop, and since 1994 has produced greater agricultural revenues here than wheat.


Here's Jay standing near the seemingly
endless fields of yellow canola in Saskatewan.

Driving Range

The scanner was plugged in yesterday. I figured that I might as well find a print for a blog entry.

We're considering taking a weekend road trip. I'm off and Jay doesn't work on Monday or Tuesday either. Perhaps, we'll head down to Portland, OR and swing back through the Cascade Mountains. We've only stopped in that city as a rest stop on trips down I-5 and have never stayed long enough to look around. Portland is just over the border on the other side of Washington State and is about 508 kilometers (315 miles) due south. The distance is perfect as when we return it'll be exactly the time to change my truck's timing belt.

I would have far less mileage on the Ranger had it not been for our cross-Canada trip. We took seven weeks in 2001 and camped in a tent. Our goal was to reach the other side of Canadian Route 1. It was also possible to cruise through most every major Canadian city along the way.

So when searching for a picture, I looked for us at Cape Spear, Newfoundland. That is most easterly point in North America. In fact, in the photo we were actually over 1200 kilometers closer to England than New Westminster!

East to the Land of Oil and Beef

Jay and I have some time off, so we'll head over to Calgary on the weekend. It's a bit over 1,050 km (650 miles) away. If not skiiers, who goes for a stay in Calgary in December? Many of its residents are probably on their way to Arizona, Mexico or a 'tropical' destination! That's okay; it's been a while since we've headed over the Rocky Mountains.


We last passed through Calgary in 2001. On that trip, we saw a lot of
Canada. In this picture we're at the big Falls. We did a 15,000 km
Vancouver-Newfoundland-Vancouver, camping trip for two months
of the summer.