Mar 10, 2012
08:00 PM
STEVEN PAGE!!!!!!!! with Craig Northey
Quadra Island Community Centre
Quadra Island, BC
970 West Road
Tickets: $20

Go, go, go and enjoy! STEVEN PAGE!!!!!!!

Awesome! Winter storms, wind, waves, power outages!!!!

Anywho, this is the Whizz-Bang Chicken Plucker.  The idea has been floating around the internets for a few years, it was invented by this guy.  Ben has been lusting after it for a few years so finally he bought the chicken pucker fingers and the plans from the website and scrounged a few other materials and…. Whizbang.  The hype is real, it took under a minute to pluck those chickens clean.  Here is the video to prove it!  Good job Ben!

I blogged about this little house in Bordeaux a few months ago, but here a video about it.  It really helps to solidify the place in my mind.  It would be great for a couple but I’m not so sure about a family.  Maybe when your kids were small but perhaps not when they get older.  Still on the search for some small but functional family homes.  Don’t know why as I’m not in the market to build anytime soon… Anywho, enjoy.

Friends came to visit and the kids went from clothed to starkers!

Still struggling to get back on the Blog wagon.  Maybe I’ll smarten up!

Here’s the Nepal dispatch:

25 October, 2011

17 members and staff reached the summit of Mera Peak!

This morning (night) our staff woke us at 12am with tea and porridge. We all left high camp at 2 o’clock. The weather was calm and surprisingly warm. Only close to the summit we encountered some winds. Everbody managed to summit between 6 and 8 in the morning.

Read below what Vivian and Jan have to say about their summit push.

Greetings,

Arnold Coster, exp. Leader.

By Viviane Pendleton

Mera Peak. Around 6500 metres above sea level and incredibly cold. We trekked up to high camp on Mera yesterday and today was our first summit attempt of the trip. We were woken at midnight (!!) to prepare for our bid for the top. I managed to whimper “coffee” and, courtesy of our fantastic team of Sherpas, my request was granted. 

We set out into the freezing pitch black, the glow of our head torches a poor match for the impenetrable darkness. I felt completely disorientated as I followed the head lamp in front of me, hoping that it was going in roughly the right direction. After about an hour, I turned to my husband and whispered “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think that we may be at the front”. A brief bout of questioning revealed that yes, we were indeed embedded in the lead bunch with the assistant guide and three climbing Sherpas. The arrival of Switzerland’s Marcus and fellow Brit Rich (normal habitat, Somewhere Near The Front) convinced us that we had accidentally entangled ourselves with the A Team, so we dropped surreptitiously back, knowing that we would not be able to keep up their pace.

It transpired that this was a bad time to be on our own, as a howling wind struck up, blowing snow into our faces and, more pertinently, covering the footprints of the group ahead. By this time we had been joined by Mia from Finland and the three of us battled into the snow and wind, in the direction we’d last seen any semblance of head torch. I was starting to get cold and even the sun, rising rather spectacularly over the stunning backdrop of the surrounding Himalayan peaks, did not alleviate this. Mia moved on ahead and we were joined by team guide Arnold. He pointed out Everest, Lhotse, Kanchenjunga, Makalu and Cho Oyu to an enthralled Husband. Five of the world’s 14 highest mountains towered over us, it was a spellbinding sight and went some way to consoling me for the fact that I could not feel my fingers.

At about 6.30am we arrived just below the summit of Mera. There, I was confronted by a near vertical ice wall and expected to climb it. I did a quick analysis of the situation. 1: I had been up since midnight. 2: I was substantially higher than any mountain in Europe. 3: I couldn’t feel my fingers. And crucially, 4: I was now supposed to negotiate a precipitous massif of ice. I won’t lie. A small part of me thought “well…. heck, I’m nearly there….. I don’t really have to climb up this.” Sadly, The Husband and Rich decided that now would be an opportune moment to inflict some more suffering on me and proceeded to issue a series of conflicting commands from the foot of the ice wall. I started to scramble up the block of ice, pausing at times to hang off my ice axe, gasp for air and contemplate mountain etiquette with regard to falling asleep whilst roped onto a wall of ice.

Eventually I arrived at the top and collapsed gracefully at the feet of Mia and Noora, also flying the flag for Finland.

Somewhat exhausted, The Husband and I trailed back to base camp to prepare for our ascent of Baruntse. At 7100 metres, Baruntse is suspiciously likely to be yet colder than Mera, and may or may not involve ice walls…..   

By Jan van den Bos

Yesterday all members and most sherpa’s walked in their own pace to the Mera Peak High Camp, over the snow fields and glacier. The location of this camp is such, that you should not sleepwalk out of your tent. The tents are placed on small ledges, mostly on a different level. Also finding a ‘toilet’ place might be very risky, on some rock sticking out. But this, I guess, is one of the adventurous things we booked for. As Arnold remarked, Mera Peak is of course lower than the big giants of 8000+ m, but it has a lot of the things you will find there. So an excellent training mountain for Baruntse that we will reach within a week.

Late in the afternoon our really great cook staff made a dinner, served in the tents. We tried to get some sleep till wake-up time, 0.00 h. A breakfast was served, and everyone except Erich prepared for the climb. At 1.45 all climbers and climbing sherpa’s were ready and we left. Soon the group was split up into smaller groups (there’s a variation in climbing speed), all led by a sherpa. As I later heard most of us had a hard time climbing the 800 metres from high camp to the summit. Was it the early time, or the wind that blew snow in our faces?

Apart from Andrea (cold feet) everyone reached the summit, after the last 10 m of iceclimbing with a fixed rope. The first group (Richard, Markus and me) had at 5.30 a.m. an astonishing view on the surrounding mountains and a beautiful sunrise.

At about 8.30 all members had reached the summit. It was hard work but worth while! After taking their belongings from high camp all climbers are now back in base camp. Tomorrow we will leave this camp in the direction of Baruntse base camp, which we hope to reach within two days.

Jan van den Bos

Here is my dad’s letter

One 20$ chunk of parmesan, almonds, walnuts, a bottle of olive oil and countless numbers of garlic cloves and 32 bags and one jam jar later we had our pesto.  I love S’s food processor, it kicks the ass out of my 1980′s era food processor. MMMMM pesto.

As it’s getting colder we’ve started the woodstove again and I’ve also been making oven roasted “sundried” tomatoes as I have a crazy over abundance of tomatoes.  So all that means is that I cut up the tomatoes and put them on a cookie sheet with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pop them into the oven at low heat for about 8-10 hours.  Easy peasy, lemon squeesy.  Sadly I keep eating them and there is none in the freezer as a consequence.

In the vineyard we finally got up our nets around the petit milo and the foch and things are progressing here.  We harvested around 100lbs off our siegerrebe which is pitiful but at least we got something, we had to get to it before the birds as the robins are back in a big way.  We are going to be installing irrigation this year, I think that we are too dry during the summer and our vines are struggling for it.  Oh well just getting into more debt.

Other than that there was a second birthday and a 60th birthday,  we had barrels from Okanagan Barrelworks delivered, got our car-top tent, went on a whale watching trip in Ben’s boat and broke down (sort of) and I learned how to run the kicker, built our wood shed, tried to fix a leak in our roof and still haven’t, and went on a vineyard workshop in Victoria.

Also we were part of Tastes at April Point on their closing weekend, it was fun and interesting, we were part of the wine tasting on Friday, with wines from Alderlea, Averill Creek and Blue Grouse.  The next night we attended their 5 course dinner paired with wine from the Mark Anthony group which is the company that owns Mission Hill.  The food was great, the wines were a bit Meh.  Also that Saturday we served at a VIP reception before the Campbell River Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.  It was nice and it took place in the Art Gallery.  I think that the Gallery curator was a bit nervous though, all that food and wine around all that beautiful art.  The food was made by Michelle and her staff at Cheddar and Co.  SO GOOD!  I especially like her butternut squash pesto.  Yum.

However, here is a very cute and poignant video about factory farming and going back to the old ways.  It is for a restaurant but, I think that the actual message is quite well done.

Other things that have been happening.  Sunday was the first annual Quadra Island Fall Fair.  That was fun.  Your truly won third prize in the pie division and a Conveners Choice award (though I’m not really sure what that means).  I’ll post pics of the pie in a bit, I’ve misplaced my camera so am unable to take pictures right now….

Our garden is now producing tomatoes, carrots, beans, kale, chard lettuce, squash (summer and winter) beets, alas the potatoes are now done.  We are going to go pick up netting today so that we can finally net the grapes in our vineyard…. No money but hey what’s another 5000$.   Also we need to buy a boat for Ben because his packed it in after only 1 glorious fishing trip which netted 2 pinks.  We need to spend a bit of money on the boat because obviously in the $1000-2000$ range, the boats available like to go kablooey.  Ben was unexpectedly called in to week overnight twice last week and once during the weekend and the ferries were a bit hard to deal with as one of the calls xame in at 200 in the morning.  No choice but to wait until the first ferry.  Anyhow, my vacation next year is turning into a boat… Sigh.

However, a boat that isn’t teeny tiny might be fun!  Who knows!  OK.  More picture heavy the next time.

Jack Layton, 1950-2011