Into the Wild

Well, how did I do. Ahh, who cares. It is the season to be festive and not only that, I have a HAC fitness test to prepare for.

Alright, I passed. My lowest mark was in Silviculture, which as you may or may not know, is my most challenging class. I didn’t do so hot but I didn’t do so bad either. The rest of the classes were more or less what I had expected. The instructors are very good at keeping us updated as we went through the program. Speaking of which, the program in now 25% done.

But what is this of a HAC fitness test and what is a HAC fitness test. Well, it is pretty easy (the explanation, not the test). In order to be a member of the Provinces of Alberta’s Type 1 Wildfire Response Unit you have to pass the fitness test. This consists of a 5k walk, some upright rows and the infamous pump hose drag. The first two aren’t that bad but the pump hose drag is one that can kill you. I tried this out at Kidney Lake and although it didn’t kill me I was pretty hungry after. Perhaps I’ll bring some cookies for after the test.

If you want more info regarding the fitness requirements you can find them herehttp://www.srd.gov.ab.ca/wildfires/employment/helitackfitness.aspx

Let’s not forget Mr. Fish (Chubbs as I like to call him). This little guy has been quite the adventure. Sure, he is trapped in a bowl but don’t let that fool you. So far I have taught him to fetch and to come when called. I’ve also been surprised by how hungry he makes me. I’m not sure if it is because I am a guy and we apparently think about food quite a bit, there is after all that old adage that the way to a mans heart is through his stomach and I know that I would be a sucker for any lady that grilled me a steak. Anyway the short of it is thatevery timeI look down at Chubbs my mind drifts to Sushi, not Chubbs Sushi, just Sushi.

Little Chubbs and I like to have staring contests.

Well, this is the make or break week for some of us enrolled in NAIT’s Forest Technology Program (NAITS’s Environmental Eco-Forest Program as I like to call it since we are actually learning about how to make educated environmental decisions that allow us to use Nature’s resources while make sure they are sustainable as opposed to something non-sustainable like, oh I don’t know, oilsands maybe.)

Anyway I digress, back to the topic at hand. So I have learned that there are actually numerous study methods available. There is the slow and steady; these people plug away a little bit each night reviewing the material learned from the day and perhaps reviewing some of the material from a previous day. There are the crammers; these people wait until the last moment before embarking on a near impossible feat of trying to cram 4 months worth of material into a few short hours. Then there are the sleepers; these are people that like to sleep surrounded by their papers and books reviewing late at night and then letting the information drift in through osmosis while they sleep. However, in Alberta, there is a fourth way. What way is that you ask. Well, it could be a combination of all of them. The magic variable is of course oil. If each night before bed you could coat your head with some good old 10w-30 and then stick all your papers to you head, the information would definitely be transfered through as the oil would make that magic happen. Just a though.

K, back to studying and then off to Canadian Tire to pick up some oil.

Happy birthday Mountain Girl!

I’m going to apologize right now for this being poorly written but I am in the middle of working on a 50 page Microsoft Access assignment.

Well it has been a good ten days since I have posted anything but fear not avid readers I took notes and pictures. Of our fun filled week with lots happening and things falling in all over the place including Remembrance Day, a few school labs, a great walk with my dog Joey and an attempt to make Prairie Girl a birthday cake. All that plus the big move into a house with Plant Boy.

I suppose I should start with the labs because well, this blog is about forestry after all. The labs were fun.

Okay, now on to something I like to call procrastination and creative ways in which to do it. One way I found is to do off season activities. For example, my aunt and I made some Easter Eggs. It was pretty fun and the dye was pretty old which I think made the eggs a little darker in colour. Now, although this alone sounds like a good procrastination activity, it becomes a great procrastination when the layering happened. “Layering?” you ask. Yes that is right, layering. The act of lacing an egg in one colour and then moving it to another colour to create a deeper colour. It might sound good but as you can see by the picture they are all just a bunch of spotty eggs. Plant Boy ate one.

Draw a bridge or colour some eggs? draw a bridge or colour some eggs? I think the photo says it all, my marks on the bridge assignment tell that same tale.

Okay, now on to the labs for real. We traveled around West Central Alberta looking at bridges and culverts and how they are constructed in regards to forest roads as well as the legislation around there construction. It was pretty fun to learn this stuff but the the real part was how I was fortunate to learn all the words to the new song by Britney Spears ‘Womanizer’. Here, let me give you a sample.

Womanizer

Womanizer

Womanizer

Womanizer

Womanizer

Womanizer

Womanizer

Now, just imagine that to a beat. Unfortunately do to some time constraints we were unable to visit a bridge that would allow us to touch the tops of 80 foot trees so that has now been planned as a weekend adventure with some friends.

Look, a culvert in the creek and one a good meter higher. Might be good for low flying birds to go through.

Speaking of friends I have been craving a Burger of Doom from Neighbors Pub with my friends in Athabasca. The premiss of the Burger of Doom is that you actually never know what it is going to be. One time there were three patties with mozza sticks in the burger, another time there was one patty with the hottest hot sauce in the entire world on it. Another time it was two patties on a piece of garlic toast. That was the great part about the Burger of Doom was that you never knew what was going to be on it.

Okay, the second lab that we went on was to a cut block where we had to measure the parameter with some sting type contraptions that turned out to be quite useless. The very useful part though was the air photos and how they can be used to find your way around. I remember so clearly the moment when I had realized that I didn’t know where I was as opposed to the feeling of being lost.

We also have a brand new teacher. He is a pretty good guy and was some interesting stories about his experience in the industry. We’ll see if he buys us doughnuts though, our engineering instructor owes us a box of doughnuts.

Trust me, Prairie Girl’s bday cake was funny even though I almost killed everyone with the three pound of icing sugar that was in it. Opps.

Lets see, labs…check, procrastination…check, birthday…oh wait a sec, happy birthday Prairie Girl, k, birthday…check, Joey…awe, my Joey. I got to see my dog Joey again this week and it was pretty fun. I went on out to my Aunt’s ranch and we went for a walk. It is a little sad to see how old and white she is getting but I know that she is pretty happy staying with my dad while I am back in school awaiting.

Joey wondering when we can go for a walk.

Joey and I stumbling across some dinner.

Anyway, this past few days also held the moving in of the new house. It has been quite the adventure getting us into this house as we were continually being told that it would only be a couple of more days while some renovations were finished. Well the ‘couple’ more days turned into an extra month and the renovations are still not done. We have an extra fridge as well as no bedroom doors. However, we now have a bunch of Ikea furniture to make it a bit more homy. Oddly ikea furniture is mostly make from pine and I just did a presentation of Lodgepole Pine. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

A random shot this week of nothing for no reason. Thanks class B.

A funny thing happened Today while I was standing in line to buy lunch. I forgot that the NAIT cafeteria only takes cash, no credit, no debit. So I made a quick apology and ran outside to get some cash from the ATM machine and a few moments later some girl walks by, smiles and says “You should go get your lunch, it will get cold”.I wasn’t sure quite what she was talking about but I did recognize her as the girl that was behind me in the line up. So when I had returned to the cashier, sure enough the girl had bought my lunch for me. So here is a thank you to the girl that bought my lunch. Thanks a bunch and I think that next week I will pay it forward myself.

Have I ever been taking notes (for the blog and school) and pictures (for the blog, not school) because it sure has been a busy weeks.

I want to say the big event this last week was our class trip to Jasper but it also happened to be my birthday, my goddaughters birthday, as well as a week full of classes that make your eyes go buggy after fifteen minutes.

Lets start with the buggy eyes first.

In our forest science class we have to do aerial photo interpretation. It is pretty amazing when you can get everything lined up the way it should be as it allows you to see 3D looking down on the earth. It is pretty impressive when you are looking at a river valley or even Edmonton’s downtown core but it is substantially even more impressive when looking down on a 13,000 foot mountain. It is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen even if it leaves my eyes wanting to roll back in to my head by the end of the day. We have this class every week.

This week however, there were some extra treats, the first being a dot grid we had to create to do area calculations. Why is that such a big deal, you ask? Well, we had to draw little dots on a seemingly big piece of paper and it is only when you start drawing dots, if one can actually draw a dot, that you realize how big an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of paper is. Then after completing that task you have the joy of then counting all these little dots. In the end, like everything in this program, it was pretty cool, even if it is now the second class that makes my eyes want to roll into the back of my head.

But wait, yes, there was a third eye stain class this week. In our engineering class we had been given the assignment of drawing a road on a contour map. For those of you that are unfamiliar, a contour map is a map of an area that has a bunch of squiggly lines all over it to represent a change in elevation. So one line might mean twelve hundred feet while the line right beside it might represent thirteen hundred feet and so on. Okay, simple enough, now draw a road on it when some of the lines are only a couple of millimeters apart. Huh? What is that sound, you ask? That is the sound of my eyes rolling into the back of my head for the third day in a row. But wait, this is where something grabbed the attention of my nose and pulled my eyes out of my head. A birthday cake!

Yup, on my birthday, when my engineering instructor made me draw a road and did NOT buy me a coffee that morning, one of my classmates (for those of you that have been reading this blog you know that I like to respect the privacy of my classmates) that I will call prairie girl made a fantastic birthday cake, with a tree. I think it might be a white spruce but because I am doing a presentation on lodge-pole pine I will say it is a lodge-pole pine. Anyway, it did not take long for me and the rest of my classmates to finish the rest of the tree/birthday cake. Yum, thanks prairie girl! I didn’t do much that night because it was onto Japer the next day to view glacial land formations and I had to get up at 5:30 to pick up some people.

Jasper was fun for a few reasons. I now understand what is going on with glacial land formations, about 72% of the time, and I can now appreciate how the land under our feet has come to be. I was happy to see the Athabasca Falls, which turns into the might athabasca river that flows through both my hometowns of Athabasca, and Fort McMurray and then gets polluted from oil-sands development. It was nice to see it blue and clear instead of oily brown and murky. But I digress.

We were able to stay at the Hinton training centre where all Alberta SRD people get to go train as well as conservation officers from all over Canada. I’m not sure why Saskatchewan dresses their conservation officers up in UPS delivery uniforms as it is not very intimidating. There I go digressing again. This is where I will get to go if I do end up getting employed as a wildland firefighter to train and also get beat up by conservation officers from Saskatchewan for making fun of their uniform.

And of course while spending the night in Hinton I was able to go with a group to the SPCA to walk some dogs which ended up with us… well never mind.

Hey, wait for me!

A bit windy and a bit sandy this day.

Athabasca Falls from the Athabasca Glacier.

Dancing with the Glacier Bear! She didn’t follow my lead very well though.

So then after getting home it was on to my goddaughter’s birthday which allowed me to pick up some sugar that I felt I had been missing from the trip and then home to bed.

Holy, I haven’t even started this week yet.