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The Long Drive in from BC
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2403
Sunday, the long drive in from BC for the final three weeks of work. Maybe more, we'll see how the new owners are.
The drive, snow covered roads, long, slippery, advisories posted everywhere and by the time I reach Fernie - some 6 hours later, there are signs warning that the Crowsnest Pass is closed. Check the phone, so is the one at Invermere, many road closures, no choice, no hotel rooms in Fernie, bluster on forwards to Crowsnest...
...by 7:30 I arrive, Pass is closed, not due to open until sometime the next day, I try a few back roads to the highway but they've got them blocked off as well. Choices, go back to the Firehall in Sparwood, grab a cot and a blanket, or backtrack to Cranbrook and Invermere, that pass - for the moment - is open again.
No liquor at the Firehall and so I'm off. The roads, bad already, are getting worse, visibility a few meters, can't see the road, only the abyss off to the left, slowly, slowly...cars vanish over the edge here in winter, leave no trace, the embankment loses the tracks in just a few moments, the snow covers the wreck, if they're lucky they'll be found in the spring, but read the missing people, many aren't found for years...When I was a kid my mother told us of the story of the family that went missing on the way to Vancouver, found, 22 years later, by some hikers in the Hells gate, over a cilff and into some treetops...go off the road here, now, and that could be you...
Eventually I make Calgary. A miracle of sorts, the next day, checking the road reports, every road from Nelson - the pass, south of Creston, the Crowsnest at Elkford, the #1, is closed. I made it, just barely, 30 below and 1:30 in the morning and I'm looking for a couch.
Withnail and I
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1328
Watched this again for the first time in quite a few years. As brilliant and darkly comedic as ever. 5 Stars.
Bowling Green Massacre
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: WTF
- Hits: 1948
This is funny. Remember the Bowling Green Massacre, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Friendly Brown Nuthatch
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1626
It's probably not a nuthatch, small, the size of a sparrow, dark brown, long beak that seems to hook downward at the end.
Saw it on a walk, flitting, quick movements through the bushes, almost always in the periphery of my vision, then in the morning as I drink my coffee, smoke my cigarette outside, flitting up from underneath the stairs, keeping itself at just over an arms length, curious, it tilts it's head at me, inquisitive, watches.
As I chop wood, curious, it's following me, delivering it to the house, studying me, I suspect that I'm a new species as well. I don't know what it is, a nuthatch is the nearest description I could find, the color, shape of the beak don't match, it's movements, sharper, more abrupt than those of the common sparrow, friendly and curious.
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