I found this satellite picture of my neighbourhood. The Thames river runs right around our building. It does not seem to be much more than a class 1, but I have seen the water come up over a foot after rain and come a little more to life. I really like the idea of playing on a river so close to my doorstep. I'm hoping in the spring it really comes to life. I found some pictures of people kayaking on the river mostly in touring kayaks. (http://www.skydogsports.com/kayak) I'll have to make sure I invest in a dry top over the winter.

Behold! My new pimp'in ride. 2003 Pontiac Sunfire, with approx. 10,000 km. I will be picking it up this afternoon.

Fire Extinguishers and HUD's

While shopping for a new, well new to me car, I am reminded of the fact that a newer car is not only a more reliable car (hopefully), but a safer car as well. Chances are my next car will have things that I did not have before, like air bags, A.B.S., etc.. But there has always been a couple of things I felt should be standard for every car, maybe even by law. I probably would not think this way were it not for my time in flight school in college, where we would spend a lot of time covering what can go wrong, how a problem came to be, and what could have been done to prevent it. It's amazing how often a little and cheap a solution can save lives.
First off a fire extinguisher, within the drivers reach like underneath the seat. Now I don't think this should be here so you can try to put an empty car engulfed in flames out, but its not hard to think of situations where you would be glad it was there for you and others. (Also works well for breaking through glass.)
Second a heads up display showing you're speed. I know some cars already have these, and it's just a very cheap led display that reflects off the windshield, which may actually be cheaper to manufacture than a traditional analog display! Accidents can happen very quickly, the more time you spend looking outside of the vehicle the better. I will be looking for an aftermarket one for my next car for sure. A HUD would not have saved me from hitting that deer but if I had looked down at my dash for a split second at the right time I would have had no time to slam the brakes instead of the fraction of a second I did get which bled off atleast a good 25 km/h.

Hand Rolls and Thai Food.

I decided I needed to blog about good things that have happened in my life, and not about hitting deer or re-elected man-chimps. No I'm not talking about sushi, although that is something else Sara and I have gotten good at. I speak of our kayaking skills, last night I managed to do my first hand rolls. For those who don't know what the heck I'm talking about the hand roll is basically an Eskimo roll but without a paddle. It's hard to practice unless someone is willing to stand by me in the pool and help me up after a few trys due to my lack of gills. Thankfully Sara was willing to be that person, and after some coaching and some messed up contorting of my body I figured it out, this was a skill I did not expect to acquire for a very long time.
Afterwards we went to a Thai food place near downtown called "Pad Thai". Have you ever had food you enjoyed so much you wanted to lick the plate? If you have than you're hip to my jive. It was some of the best Thai food I've ever had. My enjoyment may have just been due to extreme hunger and beer, but I'm sure my next visit will confirm my reviews.
For more kayaking stuff see: www.scofokayak.blogspot.com

Oh Deer.

Yup, one managed to appear in my headlights on the way to work this morning. I'm okay. I've posted pictures below.

Antler.

:(

Where the head/antler hit the windshield.

That small rust spot on the hood doesn't look so bad now.

My rebuilt engine says "peek-a-boo".

Thankfully the hood took most of the impact.

Bush is Back?

Wow, I knew he was favored but for some reason I thought he would loose. I also thought that if was close the Democrats would fight to the finish, especially after the last election. Having been raised in a border town, Windsor Ontario, I guess I've always viewed the "States" as sort of an odd place. Of course living across from Detroit Michigan, a previous murder capital of the country didn't help, nor did the nightly Detroit news casts, endlessly switching between things that can kill you, murders, rapes and a story of say a kitten rescued from a tree. I can remember being very young and laughing at the news with my younger brother, not because death and tragedy are funny but because of it's sheer insanity. (Those of you who have seen "Bowling for Columbine" know what I'm talking about.) Is this really what adults wanted to see every evening? On both sides of the border? Not that things have gotten much better, Y2K put me off the Detroit news for months (how the heck could a water main break be y2k related? Really..) , and then most recently the wars in response to Sept. 11. Now not all of my exposure to the states has been through the news. I have relatives I see at least once a year who live just outside of Detroit, and some in Florida, and in my last job I got to travel to all over the states, and over seas to Japan. So I've met a lot of Americans, and seen a lot of their major cities. So what is it that seems so odd to me about the states? I guess I can only describe it as a mass underlying fear/uneasiness. It's the little things that you notice that sometimes make my Canadian friends laugh and then say oh you're serious. Bulletproof glass at a Kentucky fried chicken with a sealed door to get your food. A huge amount of households with a gun for protection, despite the fact that it's more likely to kill a occupant of the house than an intruder. Racism I never knew still existed. There is always places you never go, or you will be mugged or attacked. Smoking and drinking are okay but weed will land you in jail. It seems like a lot of gas stations don't trust you to pump then pay. Police pull you over for doing less than 10km/h over the limit on the highway. Now I'm not saying that its some hell hole over there by any means, it is an amazing country, and some of the friendliest people I've met are from there. The key word is underlying, and by no means is my country perfect. To start bringing this post back towards the election.. On September 11th I was in Houston Texas. I was watching CNN news when they first broke the story of the first plane hitting. I immediately knew being a pilot of small craft myself that a larger craft had hit and good visibility pretty much ruled it out as an accident. My immediate worry was about how they were going to respond, even before the second plane hit. War already seemed inevitable. Later that day we went to our job site, a oil drilling rig just outside of Houston. All tall buildings had been evacuated and the sky's were completely void of condensation trails. (something only a plane nut would notice). Everyone was talking war and revenge to a point that made me and my college's uneasy. No one had claimed responsibility, but it really didn't seem to matter. Later it came out that things were not much different in the white house at the time. It took us a while to get out of Houston but a fellow worker and I eventually went home. That was the only flight in a commercial airliner that I was afraid. The pilot lowered the nose just after coming off the runway and seemed to do this low altitude evasive turning followed by a harsh pull up to climb, something I can't even explain accept for possibly collision avoidance. Anyway here we stand in retrospect and most agree that the wars were a bad idea, and that they have furthered themselves from other countries. I would like nothing more than to see the states repair these relationships and start thinking more globally and cooperating with the UN more. The nation is in fact split, right down the middle actually if you look at the map. I think it is a good sign that so many people voted, but I'm not sure what to make of such blatant boundaries. To clarify I am not afraid of the states, I am more so concerned for it. After all they are our neighbor, and we are fairly dependent on them economically. I just think things could get better if the country as a whole just took a deep breath, ignored the current terrorist alert level, which I believe is currently at Bert, turned off CNN, and just relaxed. I hate to think that Bush won out of fear, and that both major parties talk about being responsible for the world and in charge of it. Is it ever a good idea for the most powerful person to be in charge? How much longer will they be the most powerful? What does this say to the UN? Other countries are getting more and more powerful, and many are not their biggest fans. Maybe it's just me getting older and more aware of what's going on in the world but I feel we're moving further away from peace. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure historically these situations don't work out well for anyone. In summary this fear and uneasiness is felt by me, which if you've gotten anything out of this post is not a good thing.