This last weekend my friend Dave and I made a hasty escape from the city and headed towards Pemberton. I ad a pretty rough prior week, as did Dave, so we were both looking to get away for a few days and simply enjoy some time in the outdoors. The place we ended up going to is called Owl Creek, and it's a small campground about 15 minutes past Pemberton, BC. Usually when I'm up in that neck of the woods I head on up to Birkenhead Lake, but Owl Creek is about 40 minutes closer from Vancouver, and offers a nice bit of seclusion. Despite forecasts calling for heavy rain, most of the weekend was a ...

About two months ago I was packing up my items in Buenos Aires, getting ready to fly to New York City and then to Europe. I've been out in Port Coquitlam now for almost a month and am pretty much back into the swing of my normal routine here. I've been thinking quite a bit about the summer, and of course what my plans are after that. Everything is still up in the air, but here's how I think things will shape out. I've been planning for quite some time to take most of July and August off. I have a few little personal side projects to work on as well as some house keeping items over at BNC, but ...

It won't be much longer now until things start heating up around here. It seems like just a few days ago that Christmas was here (or possibly it only seems that way because my tree is still up). I for one am getting pretty excited about enjoying the sun again when it comes. This summer I'm hoping to do quite a bit of camping and hiking. The campground reservation system for the lower mainland isn't open yet, but I found out that the one in Tofino actually opened the other day. So I decided to whip out my credit card and book three days of camping on the Island in July. I'm going to probably take ...

I woke up yesterday to another sunny day here in CowTown™. I was debating going to the gym, but decided instead to go and try a local hike. So I pulled my hiking boots out of a box, found some clean socks, and drove up to the trailhead for Teapot Hill, which is only about 10 minutes from my house. Teapot hill isn't that hard of a hike, but considering I haven't been hiking really in years, it did a good job of wearing me out. The elevation gain is only around 300 meters, but a lot of that comes near the end. At the top of the hike is a pretty nice view of Cultus Lake, so I snapped a few photos ...

Last night I had the choice of staying up at my campsite, which was all set up, or staying in my nice air-conditioned apartment. Given how gross it was outside, I actually decided to stay here and get a good night's sleep. So this morning I had to wake up, do an hour long client call, and the head up to the lake and tear my campground down, which is thankfully all complete now. So I'm back at home, and definitely looking forward to a semi-normal weekend around the house. The last few weekends have been fairly crazy, either because I was driving down to Oregon, or because I was involved in a 24-hour ...

I briefly went into town this morning to water my plants, take a shower, and get a few groceries. I also managed to hook up with the guys and gals down at Hawk FM for a follow-up interview to the blogathon one I did on Friday. Other than that, I spent most of today sitting shirtless on my picnic table, trying hard not to melt in today's heat. Thankfully I was in the shade most of the day, but man oh man, when that sun hit it sure was hot. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew came up for dinner, and just left a few minutes ago. So right now I'm catching up on a few emails, and probably ...

Well, yesterday was an interesting day. It started at about 8am for me when I went up to the campground site to check in. As I pointed out, checking in was an hour long process, made longer by a few people who for some reason thought they were privileged campers. Unfortunately I was stuck in a wireless hole, so I wasn't able to take the call at 8am where I was supposed to be on the radio. I'm going to be camping up there for three days, off and on, so I thought I'd write a few camping related entries. The strange thing about camping is that you always seem to run into the same types of people. ...

I'm up at Cultus Lake now, doing some weird cross between camping and working. I honestly wasn't too sure if I'd get 3G up here, and had planned to head back into town during the days. But given how I have four bars on my phone, and that 3G is working great, I might just work from up here. To that end, I went back home a while ago and picked up my 15W solar panel and my 75Ah deep cycle battery. Right now my laptop appears to be drawing about 25W, which is fairly awesome considering I'm charging it and also working on it at the same time. At 120V, that means it's currently drawing roughly 0.2 ...

I went to bed last night at around 11pm, and slowly drifted off to sleep. For the most part, I had a decent sleep, and managed to get myself out of bed at around 7am. So I think I'm basically recovered from Blogathon at this point. I was just up at Cultus lake sorting out my registration. There was a line up of cars about 20 deep waiting for the registration office to open, so it took me about an hour to get to the front. Of course, there were a few people who showed up and cut right to the front of the line, thinking for some reason that a re-registration or some issue from the night before was ...

I woke up yesterday in Cascade Locks, Oregon and decided to hit the coast for a few hours. I bounced through Portland, grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, and had a really great, leisurely drive along a forested road towards Cannon Beach. I pulled in right around lunch time, and hunted around for a good place to grab some food. Thankfully I found a neat little brew pub, just a block from the water. I tasted a few of their beers, and also a nice plate of Halibut and Chips. Afterwards, I grabbed my camera and spent about an hour down on the beach. Cannon Beach is of course super beautiful. The ...

This morning I woke up and decided to make some plans. Strangely enough, that line from Shawshank Redemption kept going through my head -- "get busy living, or get busy dying. You god damn right." Anyways, it also didn't help matters that Dave and Lauren took off the other day, as well as Tanya and Gus. Even Dale left yesterday to go do some relaxing at a cottage. So Instead of just heading south without a plan (something I've done many times before and been burned for), I decided to call a few campgrounds first. Thankfully the little KOA right outside of Portland had one tenting spot ...

So yesterday I was sitting on my patio trying to figure out when to take a vacation. I still have a few small client-related items to finish off, so I've been waiting around for that. While going over everything in my head though I remembered that because I work from a laptop, there's really no reason why I can't work remotely. All I need is an internet connection once and a while to check email, and I'm basically golden. With that in mind, I'm thinking about testing my Nexus pass out in the next few days and heading south. Pretty much every KOA nowadays has free Wi-Fi, so I could easily do a ...

As most people already know, I am a big fan of camping. I'm not really sure why to be honest, but there's something about being in the wilderness with nothing but a bit of nylon between you and the outdoors that I've always found appealing. Maybe it started years ago when my dad and I used to crash out in his camper when I was a kid. Maybe it was all those trips I did with Brennen and Jeff in the old days. Needless to say, it's one of the things about summer I always look forward to. Last summer was unique -- it was the only summer in ages where I looked back and actually felt like I did enough ...

I gotta say -- I'm fairly amazed that it's still snowing on the west coast. I woke up to a white coating on the local mountains and houses here. I actually spent a few years living in Ottawa, and one of the reasons I came back was because the weather was so much warmer out here. But this is without a doubt one of the craziest winters I can remember. Cultus Lake provincial park is only a few weeks away from opening, so it's pretty incredible that we're still plagued by this cold snap. I sure hope we're privileged enough to have an extra warm summer as payback for this dismal winter. Anyone have ...

Well, I'm not actually sure if it's today, but Dave Olsen recently had a birthday. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Dave in the last year or so through Rebecca and John, and he's an outstanding guy with a real love for the Internet and his friends. Not only is he an amazing podcaster, but if he were about 75 pounds heavier I'm pretty sure he'd be one of the few people to keep up with me at the bar, no doubt about it. In addition, Dave and I have actually been cooking up a little web kung-fu that we'll be talking about real soon. I was down in San Francisco this weekend, but had I been ...

Two more people have donated recently to the Union Gospel Mission. They are: Kevin Haggerty Grant Jordan Thanks for your support. If anyone else pledges before my next entry, drop a comment or an email and I'll make sure I add your name. I don't have the exact number, but I think that brings us close to $300, with a goal of $1000. So if you can help us hit that goal, please head on over to the pledge page and lend some support. To sweeten the deal, I'll give any person who donates $50 or more to the Union Gospel Mission an 8x12 photo of your choosing from my HDR gallery located at SmugMug. One ...

I love camping. It's perhaps the second most enjoyable thing in my life these days, the first being a nice, toasty warm plate of nachos. There's something magical about a campfire next to a lake, or sitting around drinking a few beers under the stars with people you care about. I have always, for as long as I can remember, had trouble sleeping. Part of the reason is that I have a bad back (due to an injury I obtained in high school), and frequently wake up when I have an achy back. I also find that most city noises wake me up, and that I generally toss and turn most nights. The only time I find ...

Well, thus marks the end of my first two-week vacation stint. This vacation saw me bounce from San Francisco, to Los Angeles, back up to Vancouver, to a Matthew Good show, then to the North Cascades, up to Whistler, and then back home. Not bad for just over two weeks. Golden Gate Bridge, taken during my trip It was great getting to hang out with my sister, brother-in-law, and their two kids down in Disneyland. Despite only being an hour and a bit away, I don't get a chance to head home that often. Plus, I haven't really spent much time with my niece and nephew (although I was there in Chilliwack ...

Here's a shot I took the other day while camping with my friend Rob. It was a great trip, and I had a really good time catching up with and old friend. ...

Birkenhead Lake, last summer At the Matthew Good show the other night I ran into a good friend of mine from high school. We ended up chatting and drinking beers over at Doolin's after, and it was great to catch up. Rob and I became friends back when I was working at Bonanza when I was 16, and I haven't talked to him in a few years. Birkenhead Lake, photo by wenno on flickr It turns out that both Rob and I are on vacation this week with not a whole lot to do, so we decided to head up to Birkenhead Lake tomorrow and just chill out over a few beers. Birkenhead was the biggest surprise of last summer, ...