The
Squamidian Report – July 27 / 13
Issue #583
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Well, I promised that I’d post a link to the video I shot while riding the Duffy last week. That video has now been edited down from an hour and half to 18 minutes. But that created a problem. Most web sites that will host a video, like Photobucked and U-Tube, have a 10 minute time limit and a maximum file size limit for normal users. I simply could not include everything I wanted in that video and get it down to any where near 10 minutes. The best I could do after some rather aggressive cutting and clipping was 18. I could not upload it to anywhere. However, a friend of mine who has his own U-Tube ‘channel’ has hundreds of his own videos up for viewing and because of his high traffic volumes he is permitted vids that are larger than the limit, and longer than the limit. He gets so many hits to his ‘page’ that he actually gets paid by U-Tube each month. Anyway, he offered to upload it for me and so that’s where it is, under the ‘DrMucker’ section of U-Tube. Where this is going is that don’t let the web address bother you when you click the link, it is taking you to my video, not someone else’s.
Some of you have already seen the vid as I’ve sent out the link to some and its been shared on Facebook as well. So, if you haven’t seen it and would like to, just click the link below. As I wrote in last weeks issue, it is simply a motorcycle ride over the 100k of the Duffy Lake road and into the little town of Lillooet. It’s a high, narrow mountain road that attracts riders from all over the continent, and for good reason. It is a fun road to ride as long as you respect it. Every year many bikes, and cars, and trucks, and RVs end up missing a curve due to excess speed or burned out brakes and end up in big trouble. But ride it with respect, especially on week a day or ‘off season’ when traffic is light, and it’s a wonderful experience. Enjoy the vid.
*
Now here’s a silly thing….half the world was all excited about the birth of the royal baby. That’s fine. What was silly is that many people around the world who were also expecting around the same time were all hoping for their event to take place on the same day. Now, the ‘same day’ is a human invention and is not the same as ‘the same time’ or necessarily even fairly close to ‘the same time’, both of which would have these other births being ‘the same’ as the royal one. Here’s an example. There is currently an 8 hr time difference between England and BC. So, the royal kid was born just after 4am on Saturday morning. For a kid in BC to pop out at the same time it would have to be born just after 8pm Friday evening of the day before. So, if it were born at the same time, it would by our counting method be a day older. If it were born on the same day at 4am, it would be almost a day younger yet share the same date. The whole thing is really pretty silly.
*
‘The Wife’ and I have had some nice motorcycle rides to Horseshoe Bay and Whistler. Once the rains finally ended in June we’ve been enjoying a pretty spectacular summer. We don’t have any real good road trip type rides planned for this year as we seem to find ourselves tied down a lot, with both Kyra and Willow, neither of which fit into a saddle bag all that well. I’ve been doing some nice day trips, you can see bits of one of them if you visit that link above. I had planned on doing a day trip over to the Sunshine Coast on Friday but that fell through. The rider I was going with was rear-ended on his bike the other day while sitting at an intersection. He’s ok, he didn’t go down, but was shaken up and was understandably very angry. What happened was, he was stopped behind a car that was waiting for the light to turn green, but was also waiting to make a left turn. My friend watched in his mirror as a car pulled up way too close behind his motorcycle. He then noticed that the sole occupant, a woman, was putting on her makeup, using her car mirror. All his alarm bells went off and he intended to put as much distance between him and that distracted moron as he could, as soon as he could. However, as soon as the light turned green, the woman pulled away, not paying enough attention to notice that both vehicles ahead of her were still stopped as the lead car had to wait for on-coming traffic to clear. She ran right into the back of my friend’s bike.
Needless to say, he was livid. She wanted to keep going saying she was late for work. He ordered her over and into a parking lot to collect license and insurance info. I don’t know how he kept from kicking in the front of her car because nothing else seems to get the attention of people who continue to drive while distracted. Anyway, and unfortunately, around here the cops won’t respond to any crash unless there are injuries. That means the morons who cause the crashes keep getting off with nothing more than paying their insurance deductable. And to make it worse, because we all have the same insurance company in BC, ICBC, there is no incentive to figure out who is at fault because the same company covers both vehicles and to go any further is just unwanted paper work. So, its vital to get the person responsible to confess in writing or the victim ends up paying too and ends up with a blemish on their insurance record.
Luckily it was a slow speed hit, but it just points out why we have been waging a continual, and mostly ineffective, war on drunk drivers, distracted drivers, aggressive drivers, and on and on. The morons just don’t get it, and they don’t want to get it because they are stupid, or selfish, or have no interest or concern about anyone else, or most likely, all the above. So, if see some jerk or idiot texting or applying makeup or yapping on their phone or any number of brain-dead things when their full attention should be on the full-time job of piloting their vehicle through traffic or down the highway, honk at them, yell at them, do what ever it takes to pound in the fact that they could end up killing someone. That someone could be you, or your child or your friend. They probably couldn’t care less about others, but that someone could also be them and selfish people do at least some of the time care about themselves.
doug
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I was just browsing
through the news articles that are posted on the Internet whenever I open up my
e-mail. Some of them are interesting and some are not but I prefer the ones
that are of a lighthearted nature to the disastrous ones filled with gloom and
doom! It seams these days that the world is filled with more bad news than good
and it’s getting a little tiresome. There was one article that I found
interesting and am hoping to hear more in the coming weeks. It appears that the
flooding in Alberta has created a whole new age of archeology for that province
and the professionals are keeping their fingers crossed that many hidden secrets
of the past few thousand years will be unearthed as they continue their
investigations. There was a young fellow walking his dog along a washed out and
widened river bed and without having to look very carefully, he discovered a
couple of very long bones in the gravel of the river’s edge. He took a few
minutes to search a little further and found a large rack of ribs protruding
from the raised bank of the river and quickly realized that they were too large
to be anything he’d seen before. He realized that even the skeleton of an elk
would be dwarfed by the size of the bones he’d found. He contacted the
authorities in Calgary and they confirmed that the bones are prehistoric and
were very excited to have been given the opportunity to investigate the find further.
They intend to set up an official “dig site” and will no doubt be reporting to
the news media just what it is this young fellow has found. Apparently there
have been other “treasures” unearthed by the rushing floodwaters in Alberta and
no doubt we’ll be hearing about such finds as they make the news!
This just might be
an opportunity for an enterprising “Metal Detector” salesman to set up shop in
the area. I’m sure it would only take one good find of monetary value to set
off a rush of purchases of such gadgets that would make some entrepreneur a
tidy fortune! I can just imagine all the lost jewelry that was flushed out of
the dozens and dozens of homes washed away and shattered in the floodwaters for
hundreds of miles! Not only personal jewelry but also the personal cash
fortunes that many people tend to stash in their attics and walls to keep the
taxman from getting his grubby little governmental hands on them! Why, if I
were a retired person with some time on my hands, I might just be tempted to
buy a few dozen detectors and head out to Calgary for a month or so to see if I
could maybe make a little extra cash myself! Wait a minute I am retired! I’m
not sure if I could convince my lovely wife to go along with such a hair
brained idea but I might just casually mention it to her over tea tomorrow
morning and see how she reacts! She might just be all too happy to get rid of
me for a month or two and … then what do I do? Maybe I’ll just keep my big
ideas to myself and let someone else think of making all that cash! LOL! Oh
well, it was exciting to think of all the possibilities for a minute there
anyway! I’ll just keep my eyes and ears tuned to the news and see if any more
surprises come out of the river banks of Alberta!
Like the old saying
goes: “From disaster comes prosperity!” Or something like that anyway! Or maybe
it’s: “When one door closes, another opens!”
I guess I just
proved that what begins as a gloom and doom story can easily turn into a
positive story and that makes me smile! I like to think of myself as a “Glass
is half full!” kind of guy so if you look hard enough, most clouds will have a
silver lining! It will help you to build up your spirits if you “Always look on
the bright side of life!”
Sounds like a song
doesn’t it? OK, enough is enough so I think I’ll pack it in for this week!
Thanks for tuning in
and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion
Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To
Think About>
If you’re driving a
high-speed train and you know you’re approaching a tight curve in the tracks,
SLOW THE HELL DOWN!
PPS: I’d just like
to let our Squamidian Group know that I spent one afternoon this week with my
friend Clyde Gilmour and after being through one bad assed year fighting
Cancer, he is looking great and feeling back to his old self! I’m so happy to
see him up and about and doing well and I wish (as I know you all do too) him
continued good health and it’s great to know that the Squamidian / Ontarion has
helped keep him going! LOL!
We Love you Clyde! So hang in there Pal and keep the Faith!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.