2011
(2 total photos, one video, November 26, 2011) — Some photos from butchering from this year's hunting trips with Kyle. Adrian was pretty keen to help with the butchering, spending nearly 3 hours watching, using the grinder and helping Esther wrap.
(9 total photos, July 25, 2011) — Last week, we extracted a couple frames of honey from my hive. I tried making most of them foundationless this year and the bees decided to make some of them a little wiggly -- this turned into "really wiggly" by the end of the box where I pulled two frames from. It was somewhat stressful trying to pull a falling-apart chunk of comb out of a hive with something like 60,000 bees in it, but the honey is pretty tasty. Theoretically, you can use an extractor on foundationless frames, but mine were too damaged and wavy (in my non-expert opinion) to try. The alternative is to do like you would with a top-bar hive and chop all the comb into a recepticle (bowl), smash it up (potato masher) and filter it (cheesecloth over seive). The filtering took a few hours (we left it overnight) and worked very well, getting all the wax and bee-bits (I killed a few) out. The first attempt we used three or four layers of cheesecloth which was far too much.
(5 total photos, May 25, 2011) — A few recent shots of Adrian doing various two-year-old sorts of things.
(12 total photos, May 25, 2011) — Rendering lard and turning it into pastry and then a delicious pie. See also my Lard Recipe and Pastry Recipe for the yummy details.
2010
(5 total photos, October 30, 2010) — A nice fall hike up Prairie Mountain with Adrian and Esther. Adrian wanted to walk, and made it much of the way down.
(5 total photos, 2 videos, May 21, 2010) — Installing my "nuc" (nuclear colony) into their permanent home. Exciting stuff! A few mistakes no doubt, but all seems to be well for now. Neat watching them all come and go.
(8 total photos, April 13, 2010) — Brad, Jeff and I drove out to the coast to meet Florian for some snow, turns and fun. Florian has some photos also.
(10 total photos, March 15, 2010) — Family trip into Elizabeth Parker Hut. Great weather, lots of stuff to carry. I don't know how much stuff weighed, but we took a lot of fresh food, canned baby stuff, yoghurt, frozen burritos and pies...needless to say quite a heavy food bag. I remember the trail being fairly flat from before, but it sure seemed hilly this time :)
2009
(2 total photos, July 12, 2009) — Adrian's first hike up at Highwood Pass (Ptarmagin Cirque). Quite a short hike, but definitely the highest he's been yet. He didn't like the wind in the Alpine but otherwise basically just slept.
(4 total photos, May 14, 2009) — Adrian Bruce Warren was born on May 14th, 2009 at 9:47pm weighing 3456 grams.
2008
(3 total photos, December 07, 2008) — Winter touring attempt with Anthony. Original route didn't work due to too much snow (luckily, it turned out, since we got a lot more Saturday night). Originally, we were trying to get over Rainy Creek Summit to powderface and hence to highway 40 and the Kananaskis lodge area. We ended up turning around a few kms from the top of the pass due to too much snow and headed to Cochrane. ...then got nearly as much snow the next morning in Cochrane.
(7 total photos, November 08, 2008) — My second-ever hunting trip, with Kyle teaching me the ropes. Didn't kill anything personally but learned a lot more, like how to skin, de-bone and butcher an Elk and a Deer. Cool!
(3 total photos, October 26, 2008) — Brad and I climbed Unnamed close to Halloween as (almost certainly) the last rock climb of the year. Pretty decent route, beautiful day.
(10 total photos, September 18, 2008) — This has been on the list for a while, and Brad and I finally got up Temple via the East Ridge. Fun times! A little wet, but hey.
(8 total photos, August 09, 2008) — Boating down the North Saskatchewan from Nordegg to Rocky Mountain House with Kyle and Aliah (about 100km).
(25 total photos, July 23, 2008) — I somehow got it into my head to try a "real" randonneur ride this year, targeting the Rocky Mountain 1200 put on every 4 years by the BC Randonneurs. Awesome organization, equally awesome food and spectacular weather. Great times! The full story is available.
(3 total photos, July 13, 2008) — Climbed "Red Shirt" on Yam with Brad. Very nice route. Some rat-shit on the first couple pitches, but mostly avoidable. The guidebook promises super-polished climbing, but most of the "polish" we found was mostly just the rock, not from other climbers. There were definitely some polished holds, but nothing too crazy. Not very many bolts on this one yet (2.5 of the belays, one protection bolt) -- nice to see. Although many of the "fixed" belays are pins, it was possible to back them all up with gear. Some people might like to take a hammer.
(12 total photos, July 04, 2008) — Dan, Peter and I stayed in Field for a few days for a self-imposed training camp. Craig came up for one day, too. Very good weather for riding, even if I do hate rain (but we only had a little). The cloud-cover helped keep temperatures reasonable.
May 31, 2008: Rocky Mountain House
(6 total photos, June 03, 2008) — My last qualifying ride for the Rocky Mountain 1200 put on by the BC Randonneurs every 4 years. Beautiful weather marred only by headwinds for two days (although light for the most part on Saturday). A massive south wind greeted us for the entire second day from Rocky Mountain House back, making for slow progress and minimal stopping time. Chester pulled us back from Cremona by himself...great work; should be good for that "fitness kickstart" he was looking for prior to the Cascade 1200 at the end of the month... Food: Saturday: Cinnamon bun + sandwich in Canmore; iced tea + chocolate milk at Castle Junction; chocolate, iced tea and chocolate at Lake Louise; 1/2 Cliff bar near Bow Lake; burger+fries, chocolate milk, Pilsner, apple pie, chips, 3 coffees at Castle Junction; peanuts, real fruit gummies, coffee at Nordegg. Sunday: ceral, toast+PB, banana, coffe, OJ in Rocky; iced tea, peanuts, ice cream cone in Caroline; footlong meatball sub, chips, coke in Sundre; Peter's burgers + onion rings in Calgary.
(8 total photos, May 17, 2008) — We had a pretty rugged headwind (30km/h forecasted; felt about right) on most of the trip out (except bits of the 1A after Banff), which probably helped the temperature feel reasonable. The other side of the pass was a little better, but pedaling down 4% grades is never fun. The ride home was much nicer, but I was in less and less of a state to enjoy it. After Castle, the evening ride down the 1A was pretty nice and I saw a black wolf (I'm fairly certain; miiight have been a black bear) at the first single-road section, and a bear scampered across the road a little further on. Even though it was only about 20 seconds in front of me, I couldn't see it at all as I rode by. From Banff on was more survival, especially on the Transcanada. A fair number of cars honked in a friendly fashion; perhaps people who saw us earlier? The 1A through Morley at night seemed quite a lot rougher than normal, probably because I didn't care about dodging stuff as much. Let me also say I was Extremely Happy to have a triple (30x26) for Big Hill. I finally rolled in at 03:30 and Esther picked me up. I had entertained thoughts before about riding home, but I was pretty happy to see the car at Crowfoot. Update: cool kids apparently include "nutrition" information about their rides, so here's mine. canmore: cappuccino, club sandwich w/ spinach soup + ice tea. castle junction: 2 beers, 2 cookies, iced tea x2, power-cookie, chocolate bar?. castle junction (on return): 2 beers, pizza sub, 1L chocolate milk, iced tea, salt+pepper chips, cinnamon bun. cochrane: chocolate bar. Lots of water, probably filled up a dozen times on the route. The Route.
(1 total photos, May 06, 2008) — Esther, Brad, Eric and I headed out for a mostly-leisurely ride to Cochrane to meet Jenny and Meghan for coffee -- which ended up being Esther's longest ride of the year -- so far (about 45km). Woo!
(1 total photos, May 06, 2008) — After reading the article, I was a little disappointed as it wasn't quite what I first pictured. Funny, still. (I bet they didn't shock him 3 or 4 times and then kneel on the back of his chest, though).
(1 total photos, May 06, 2008) — Brad and I's first rock outing of the season saw us heading (predictably?) for the afternoon shift on the West end of Yam.
(23 total photos, April 03, 2008) — Neil, Brad and I drove out to Vancouver to meet Florian (who recently moved there) and Rene (who flew there) for a bit of a spring ski adventure. We did a day trip up the Duffy Lake Road, then headed in to Keith's Hut for a couple nights. We liked it enough to come out for burgers, beer and more food and go back in for another couple nights. Let me say for those who haven't tried: 5 dude's ski stuff in one hotel room "drying" out isn't the freshest scent in the world...
(1 total photos, March 25, 2008) — There's a great sunny hillside out in Bearspaw for loitering on. Typically, it is also near a recycling container but that won't be there until the golfers start staggering around the course...until then, the winter collection becomes a Beer-a-mid.
(1 total photos, March 23, 2008) — One gong led to the next on this outing. First, we forgot the ropes and didn't realize it until the weight scale on the Transcanada. Our original plan (Coire Dubh Integrale) didn't look to be in shape, mostly because we couldn't really see it very well through the fog -- so for some reason we thought "Professor's! That's a great idea without bikes!" About 100m from the gully coming down from the climb, Brad asks, "Did you see me put my harness in my pack?" He demonstrates the sling-harness he made when the answer turned out to be "no".
(2 total photos, March 16, 2008) — Esther and I were finally successful in tagging along with Kyle and Aliah on a cougar capture -- they are doing cougar research near Nordegg (Kyle's PhD) which (partially) involves finding, capturing and GPS-collaring cougars. This is the part we came along for. The GPS collars come off when the batteries are (close to) dead. Kyle, Aliah and (volunteer) crew collect data off them via VHF radios, analyze it (for example, by clustering it [I helped with this software]) and then doing field work looking for kill sites, dens, feces, etcetera to see where the kitties go, what they eat and how they die. There has been no cougar research done in Alberta. In the zones near Nordegg, 29 cougar hunting tags are issued per year.
(3 total photos, March 11, 2008) — Some shots from some recent rides with Steenbergen. This is, apparently, "winter" cycling now -- sunny days, warm weather and narry a facemask or frostbitten finger to be seen.
February 2, 2008: Valley of the Birds
(5 total photos, February 04, 2008) — Went into the Ghost with Rene, Kev and Sarah to Valley of the Birds. Rene and I did Yellow Bird and Seagull and then followed Kev up The Eagle. Great fun!
(19 total photos, January 25, 2008) — Neil and I had a great four days of touring and turns in Farm Pass (up the Bostock Creek drainage near Roger's Pass).