David’s and my photos combined:

The Art of Glass

My photo set as a slideshow:

The Art of Glass - slideshow

David’s Multiply entry:

Trip to Corning

David mentioned that his local pilot’s association was having a fly-out to Elmira-Corning airport to the visit the onsite warplane museum, but we should visit the Corning Museum of Glass instead. When he first told me about this place, I was intrigued — I love glass art, and I’m a borderline museum geek. Let’s go!

Waking up relatively early for a Saturday morning, we made our way to Cherry Ridge, making a pitstop at Radio Shack to get a cable that will hook up my iPod to the Tri-Pacer’s intercom system. Previously, I’d been in my own little music world with the headset over my earphones, getting David to nudge me in the thigh whenever he wanted to say something to me, but it was time to share the tunes. He managed to find the right connectors, and we were on our way again.

At Cherry Ridge, the climate was clear and COLD. FRIGID, even. The Wimpy West Coaster (that would be me) holed up in the car with the heater at full blast while David dragged the Tri-Pacer out of the hangar.

“Wake me when you’re ready, OK?” I motioned, making myself comfy.

Meanwhile, David went through the pre-flight inspection:

1. drain the sumps on the fuel tanks
2. check oil
3. check brake fluid
4. walk-around inspection to check (in part):
   • hinges
   • control cables
   • condition of fabric
   • antennaes
   • tires
   • brakes
   • propeller
   • etc…

(That’s the outside inspection; there’s an interior inspection as well.)

I had the heater on so high, I was nearly asleep when David tapped on the glass to fetch me. He knows he’ll get his comeuppance once I learn how to fly and he’ll sit in the car in the subzero temperatures while I pre-flight the plane. For now, he’s letting it slide because he knows I’m just being a cold-weather chicken.

Buck-buck-buck…!

We were a bit worried the plane wouldn’t start, since it was the coldest temperature David’s ever experienced with the Tri-Pacer. It was -8 or -10C (13 or 14F) on the ground, and it had been six days since our last excursion. Our alternative method for getting the plane started was a pre-heat, David said, something which most of the other small planes have to do. In fact, a little earlier, a guy in the next hangar was trying to jump start his plane from a pickup truck, and while they were cranking the engine, they had a carburetor fire and David ran out of the hangar like a bat out of hell to the car to grab his fire extinguisher! I had no idea what was happening, so when I saw him race around the corner towards me, I thought he was on fire! Luckily, they were able to put out the blaze promptly without his assistance, which is a bit scary despite the fact that this is a common hazard of jump starting a plane!

Two engine cranks and two sighs of relief later, the Tri-Pacer started — good ol’ bird — and we rumbled down to the runway. We would’ve left the ground accompanied by Nina Simone if it weren’t such an aural conflict with air traffic control. In the end, we had to abandon the iPod intercom because we couldn’t control the intercom volume interfering with radio communication. Ah well… I suppose installing a state-of-the-art stereo system in the Tri-Pacer cabin is rather out of the question, too…

The flight to Elmira-Corning started out in sunshine, but it was shortly replaced by low cloud. As we climbed, the temperature fell, reaching a toe-numbing -18C!! Normally, the Tri-Pacer pumps enough heat into the cabin to cook my feet and I end up shedding clothing, but not this time — I could see my breath!! I should’ve put on my wool gloves and coat, but I thought I could tough it out this time — not be such a whinge — and shivered the rest of the way to Elmira-Corning…

… which turned out to be just over an hour, exactly what David’s GPS predicted. It’s 82 nautical miles from Cherry Ridge, or about 95 miles (153 kms). Elmira-Corning turned out to be a larger airport than I’d expected, and we recognised some of the parked planes belonging to pilots at Cherry Ridge. They’re probably also the ones who took the airport’s courtesy cars, because we ended up having to rent one to get to the glass museum!

The car rental was PRICEY, but worth it. The Corning Museum of Glass, newly renovated in 2000 (it took 6 years!), has amassed a collection comprising historical artifacts, masterpieces, and innovative designs ranging from the opulent to the eclectic. It is truly comprehensive — there are quite literally thousands of objects carefully arranged in contemporary galleries, and it takes hours to see them all properly.

Photographing glass art is a challenge. For one thing, most of them, for the exception of the very large pieces (at least one of them was alarmed, we discovered), are encased in glass displays. I didn’t ask, but I suspect that aside from protecting them from breakage, the glass cases are probably sealed fairly airtight so the items don’t get covered in dust, either. Herein lie the challenges:

Reflections. Everywhere. Trying to take photos without reflections from the lights on the glass cases is difficult, so that means trying lots of different angles. The last thing I want is a photo of a glass object obscured by a pane of glass with points of light bouncing off it, or worse — a shadow or silhouette of me taking a photo of it in the corner. Finding good angles for each object is time-consuming, and sometimes I just had to give up.

1. Too far for macro, too close for zoom. Taking a good macro photo means getting the lens within a couple of inches, which is sometimes impossible with a pane of glass in the way. The alternative is standing further away and using the zoom, but the increased distance from the glass case adds the unwanted reflections of light so the camera can’t focus at all. What I ended up having to do was take more photos of the objects on the outer part of the display, closer to the glass.
2. Too much light/too little light. The placement of objects in the display cases are arranged for viewing at a certain height, and sometimes the best angle was from below, which meant I was shooting up into the light… argh! Sometimes I just couldn’t position myself properly to capture the object in the best light because I’m too short!

   I was using David’s camera and not my own because mine is in the shop — one of the menu buttons isn’t working. I like David’s camera, but I really miss my vari-angle screen!! The vari-angle screen is extremely useful for taking shots at odd angles. Being short, I often use my camera by holding my arm high to get a shot and tilting the screen down so I can frame it.

Anyway, challenges aside, I managed to get a lot of decent shots at the museum. There is so much beauty in glass art that I want to photograph EVERYTHING in sight. Light is so integral to the art that no two macro photographs of a well-lit glass piece could look exactly the same unless they were unmoved and the light source precisely in the same place each time. You move, and you see something different. Glass art is remarkable in so many ways: it’s liquid yet solid, it can be colourless like water or filled with colour, it can take on vastly different forms, textures, shapes and purposes. Its versatility is limitless.

All good things must come to an end, and eventually we were reminded to clear the galleries. I bought a few things in the glass shop downstairs, and we took our rental car through the town of Corning in search for food. Does food taste better when you’re hungry??? I certainly thought so, and I wanted to devour everything on the menu at the brick-oven restaurant we settled on. The French onion soup and smoked salmon (on a cedar plank, YUM) salad was scrumptious, but it wasn’t enough — I attacked David’s pizza, too. I even flirted with the idea of trying out their dessert pizza — baked apples and cinnamon on a pastry swirled with mascarpone cheese. Somebody stop me!!!

A stomach full of food kept me warm on the return flight, but I threw on a hat and gloves and kept my coat on for good measure. It was starting to snow, and the weather was chasing us. The air traffic controller at Elmira-Corning gave us clearance for takeoff, and I will say it is — without a doubt — an altogether different experience in a small plane than it is in a jumbo jet to take off at night when you know you’re flying in snow. Time was of the essence to beat the worsening conditions, and I observed as David kept in constant communication with air traffic controllers all the way home. Meanwhile, I watched the tiny lights of cars along the highways (how I imagine white blood cells coursing through the body), the clusters of houses, the winter wonderland that was upstate New York. We had a tailwind, so we were able to get back to Cherry Ridge in about 40 minutes, without a peep from me about needing a bathroom or being cold… (where are the hot towels? my kosher vegetarian meal? my reading light? my in-flight magazine???)

David never comments in his Multiply journal about his passengers, but I’m really not that bad as passengers go. As long as Fielding Airlines gives me my frequent flyer credit, I’ll keep flying the friendly Fielding skies.

Just a couple of photos I took of a biplane miniature that is usually parked on the side table beside the telephone.

Yes, I am a photophile. Later I’ll take photos of real planes — we’re flying to Corning, NY for some daytripping.

Technorati tags: miniature, model, biplane

Today’s shipment:

The Office Season 1 Special

One of the few series I’ve been dying to see. House of Fielding consensus: genius. More on this later.

Our Netflix.com faves since December:

More my fave (I’ve seen before) = *
More of Dave’s fave = ^

Spellbound, 2002 *
The Celebration, 1998 *
Pi: Faith in Chaos, 1998 *
Before Sunrise, 1995 ^
Before Sunset, 2004 *
Waiting for Guffman, 1996 *
Kolya, 1996
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004
Good Bye, Lenin!, 2003

We take a break from our regularly-scheduled program (wedding blabber) to bring you a message from one of our sponsors…

American Idol…

I watched my first episode of the season a few weeks ago (St. Louis, Missouri), and saw Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s episodes with David.

Can you say… morbid fascination?

Since it started, I might have seen a total of two or three American Idol shows at Eliza’s place, but that’s about it. I haven’t watched any Canadian Idol, but I saw the grand finale of the French version called Nouvelle Star when I was visiting friends in Brittany last year. People go wild over this show in France, too. Nolwenn’s mother and sister were glued to the TV screen. (I think Nolwenn’s father went to watch footy somewhere else. I don’t blame him.)

Watching one episode of city auditions, it was amazing how many people with so little talent could get as far as a televised audition. Aren’t there any preliminary auditions just to weed out the truly awful? Isn’t there an objective idea of “you stink!” that needn’t waste the time of a 3-judge panel?

On Tuesday, they were showing the four rooms of prospects, and for the love of Mary, there were enough tears to drown the Titanic! All that crying! It’s bad enough to be trapped in a hotel room with 24 other nervous people, but the camera operators must feel like they’re stuck at a funeral or in a hospital waiting area. Either that or they’re too busy zooming in on the sidelong glances between contestants who are obviously thinking, “There’s no way I’m getting through with this bozo in the room.”

On Wednesday, they narrowed down the two rooms of 50 people who made it through down to 24 finalists, and David and I tried to pick which ones would make it through. David guessed wrong on all his picks. After watching some of my picks make it and some of them getting the heave-ho, I came up with some theories:

1) The two long-haired, rocker types — Constantine and Bo — were sent through just for diversity. If either of these two win, I’ll eat my shorts, although I think Constantine has a better chance because he’s simply better-looking. Neither of them thought they’d both get through, but hey — there’s an audience for rock and roll, and American Idol wants them to watch. At least the boys will have each other, they won’t need to listen to screeching ballads alone (well, until the first one gets eliminated, anyway).

There was this one goth girl who sang a song from Phantom of the Opera who made it through the city audition, but most of the theatre-types were sent packing. It looks like the diversity card is extended to the larger of the minority genres, rock. Country might stand a small chance, too, but it seems that screeching ballads are here to stay, ad nauseam.

2) “Niche” audience doesn’t cut it, eg. Aa’shia Jackson, who sounds like Michael Jackson in his younger days (when he looked like a person) on helium. With her hat, big baggy shirt, big baggy pants and a scowl, it’s tough to even tell she’s a girl. Something tells me androgyny is not an advantage in this competition. So how did she get so far? Did Simon, Paula, and Randy think “Oh look! A novelty! Let’s get her on an early episode but eliminate her in the semi-finals! Her feisty mother will scream at the camera, for sure! But Michael Jackson’s on trial, so we can’t let her win!”

3) Anything for suspense and drama. Let’s put 25 people in a room and make them wait for an eternity, and see if any of them will kill each other on camera. Walk into the room and lead people on emotional rollercoasters as much as possible. Bring on the tears, people!

4) Women are hysterical. Show the hysterical women. If you were from another culture and were to judge Americans by the show American Idol, it wouldn’t take long to reach a conclusion that ALL American women were emotionally unstable. There should be an official American Idol psych ward. Or, at least a sign:

A team of shrinks are on stand-by, for the ladies.

The camera crew shoot specifically for this and it’s highly edited to show the emotional highs and lows, certainly, but oh boy. I felt badly for some of these people, especially one who got rejected and ran right out of the hotel and down the street. Of course, they sent Ryan Seacrest out after her, but as with everything about this show, that’s for show.

I suppose that is endemic of all reality shows, as David mentioned earlier — the situations are orchestrated as such to provoke the strongest emotional impulses, because that’s what makes “good television”, or at least high ratings.

That is why, in a nutshell, I don’t watch reality shows. The fact that they’re real people vying for a real prize is exciting, but when the cameras are turned off, the ones who don’t make it are remembered for enduring camera-ready spirit-crushing by a panel of three judges (NONE of whom can sing — and that includes Paula Abdul!) AND millions of viewers. I can’t handle that kind of voyeurism on a continual basis, but moreso because I really do think some of them are being played like a fiddle for ratings. I cannot imagine the judges think these 24 are the cream of the crop. Selecting the finalists reminded me of the Spice Girls formula — a bunch of people brought together and called a “band” because each one represented a certain type of girl, thereby broadening the appeal, and broadening the fan base. American Idol want as many viewers as possible, so they threw in a country girl, some rockers, and of course the biggest draws: the ballad-screechers.

I don’t know if we’ll be watching next week, I don’t know how many more floods of tears and running mascara I can stand.

(Weirdly, it suddenly occurred to me that I can actually VOTE now. Any Canadians want me to put in a vote if I watch next week? And who for?)

I had this bizarre dream about a week and a half ago, one that was so vivid I still remember some of it now, which is extraordinary since I usually don’t recall dreams, let alone details.

In the dream, we were getting married, but EVERYTHING was on the cheap: food, decorations, our clothing, the whole schmeer (I’m learning Yiddish!). It was more like a nightmare… I kept picking at my horrendous outfit, thinking, “What on earth am I wearing?” and my hairstyle was so… big, like a bouffant. I had on this faux-velvet dress that was dark (???), with something I can only describe as a handkerchief-like cummerbund in a lighter shade dividing me horizontally. Loud, more like my mother’s taste in apparel. I was dazed and confused, muttering under my breath, asking myself how my mother could talk me into thinking this was a good idea. We were truly scraping the bottom of the taste barrel for this wedding.

I know wedding details have been on my mind lately what with a ceremony and two receptions to arrange, and one of my main concerns has been cost. But I’ve told David that one thing I won’t scrimp on is the food — we MUST have good food, right down to the presentation; I don’t think it should get short shrift at social functions. It’s not just about satisfying hunger… for some people, it’s their trusty icebreaker, like the weather (unlike Vancouver, there isn’t enough traffic in Scranton to warrant discussion). In a roomful of people you don’t know, you’ll head to what you do know, and that’s eating. People may not remember what colour scheme was going on at a wedding, especially the men, but people DO remember when the food was low-quality. Think back to all the weddings you’ve attended, and I’ll bet even when you don’t remember exactly what you ate, you’ll recall if you enjoyed it, went back for more, or wanted to spit it out discreetly in your napkin…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

ADDITION: Thursday, Feb 17

*sirens wailing*

Help! I’ve been hit! David Photoshopped me today! My worst nightmare!

Happy Valentine’s Day

for the chocoholics out there

No, I didn’t make these, but don’t they look great? They’re courtesy of David’s mother, who also gave me a lovely pair of earrings for Valentine’s Day. Click on the pics for comments.

As for me, I’m going to slink off to bed to die a sweet and slow chocolate death from the calories of the one I managed to consume…

ADDITION: 6:30pm, EST

card - front

card - inside

serpentine bamboo

Click on the pics for info.

Lest anyone think I actually celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought I should clarify. I think Valentine’s Day is on par with silly standards about engagement rings: pressure-laden, commerce-crazy. Give people a day off from work to go and do something fun, but until then, it’s just another day on the calendar.

I may be engaged, but I was recently a perennial, hardcore singleton, and I’m still rather entrenched in that mentality.

I don’t begrudge people who feel like spending money on their loved ones. By all means, indulge your feelings. Retail therapy, if that works for you.

David’s well aware of my viewpoints, so I was curious when he showed up after work with stuff in his hands.

“I know you don’t like mushy cards, but this one is perfect,” he said, handing it to me. He’d made it himself, at work. (There was a message in the inside back cover, but I didn’t publish it. It’s not mushy, though.) He also bought some bamboo.

“I know — get something alive, not dead.”

He’s learning…

Plan A: avoid restaurants. Cook. Not only are restaurants chock-a-block on Valentine’s Day, but I avoid PDAs whenever possible. Since we opted for snowtubing on Friday, the plan was to go ice skating tonight, but it’s blustery and the rink is outdoors. We’d get blown around the oval. So, David and I are hanging out doing stuff on our computers, listening to the wind gust its way around, and later we’ll head for Plan B: bowling.

Freezing Windex by AviatorDave
winged winter sunset by gailontheweb
Montage Mountain by gailontheweb

We planned to go flying today rather than yesterday because of the weather — yesterday it was a bit snowy and overcast, and today was bright and sunny. We had a late start this morning to make up for a late night, but we couldn’t miss out on a fab lunch with David’s mother at an Italian place that filled us up probably more than it should have (as is the case EVERY week — food lovers, we are!)… David had the idea we’d fly to Reading for hot wings, but Colarusso’s took care of our appetites for the next, oh, three days.

I did make a point, however, to AVOID beverages as best I could so as not to repeat my bladder-bleating of last Sunday at 1,500 feet above the Hudson River. If you were in Manhattan a week ago on the west side, looked up and saw a little blue plane with yellow wings flying over, you might have seen me hanging out near the window, trying desperately not to look at the water or think of water or dams or reservoirs or otherwise imagine water flowing…

Anyway, today’s flight was much different. For one thing, it was colder. A LOT colder. It was bright and warm during the day, but the temperature plummeted like a stone on our way to Cherry Ridge. I tried to clean the plane’s windscreen, but only managed the starboard side before the Windex started to ice up on the port side. (I sit on the starboard side, but that had nothing to do with it, honest, photographic needs notwithstanding.) B-R-R-R-RRRRR….

Thankfully, the Tri-pacer is always toasty, so it wasn’t long before I warmed up and started filming our take-off. Since it was getting dark and we had a Cherry Ridge Pilots’ Association meeting at 7pm, we didn’t fly very far. I managed to get some decent sunset shots once the sun peeked out from behind the clouds again, and got lost in my thoughts listening to my iPod and peering at the treetops as we skimmed the high points of the Wyoming Valley. It struck me, looking at the trees bare of leaves and exposing the snow-covered ground, how much it resembled a sort of stubble…

We tried to catch the skydivers at Skyhaven in Tunkhannock, but we missed the last dive by a few minutes. There was some cloud cover by then, so I don’t know how well the shots would’ve turned out, but maybe if we make a practice of heading over there on sunny days, I can make videos of the skydivers and sell them the clips!

The other thing I’d like for us to do sometime is set up some air-to-air photos of our plane and other planes, not just for our ourselves but to make some money. Apparently, the going rate for such photography is in the neighbourhood of $500-$700 or more, although I don’t know if that’s for the session or a set number of photos, and because the outfit is using a helicopter to shoot from. At any rate, it could be lucrative, and there is definitely a demand for it. The conditions have to be optimal, and I’d need a raft of equipment with me, so it’s probably not something I’d do until later, once I get my equipment upgraded… it’s ex$pensive… I was looking at the Nikon D70 yesterday, and it’s over a grand…

We did a touch-and-go* at Scranton Wilkes-Barre Airport, and I took some shots of Montage Mountain nearby. David nudged me to shoot the snowtubing chutes, but by then we were nearing the top of the mountain, so I didn’t get any. Next time!

I attended my second Cherry Ridge Pilots’ Association meeting tonight after we put the plane back in the hangar. The first time I attended, in November, I had to suppress some chuckling at the reading of the minutes from the last meeting. The main item on the agenda was the purchase of a windsock. There’s even a Windsock Committee. Apparently, there’s a lot more to windsocks than draping material at the top of a pole to show which way the wind blows.

Cherry Ridge Airport is in a rural township, and the pilots who have hangars there are a mix of New Yorkers weekending in Pennsylvania and hobby pilots, along with enough commercial activity to keep a little airport cafe humming, too. Since the weekenders are the least likely to attend meetings, the ones who do attend tend to skew older… retirees, bless’em… David is definitely one of the spring chickens in the group, but everyone is very friendly and I am highly entertained by the blend of East Coast accents and local dialects** floating around the room. It’s a real treat for my linguistic fascinations.

To read more about our little plane, a 1954 Piper Tri-Pacer, read David’s post in Multiply:

Fielding Airlines, Flight 001

* Touch-and-go: pilots do them to practice landings.
** Yes, there is a Scranton accent as well, which I have been studying and using to poke fun at David… I’ll post about it another day.

the hill by scottgravatt

We’re a little sore today… David has some bruising on his legs, and I can feel my leg muscles today after hours of snowtubing last night. But, we made it down with our limbs intact, and we’ll DEFINITELY go again!! WOO-HOO!!

David’s account in Multiply:

Test (tube) pilots

First, to clarify: this pic isn’t mine — it was uploaded by scottgravat on Flickr, but it was the closest photo I could find that shows what the snowtubing hill looked like. In reality, the hill was steeper, more like this, except with two steep rolling inclines on the way down, like a roller coaster or a gigantic waterslide. Honestly, we were both kind of SCARED when we looked at the tubing hill at Montage Mountain, but neither of us said anything until later. Because of the sloped chutes, we couldn’t see the top, we could only see people coming over the edge, screaming, drifts of snow whipping off their heads and leaving trails in the cold night air…

GULP.

Our combined snowtubing experience consists of me tubing with the older kiddies at Mt. Seymour, where there are no chutes, only a gentle hill with a variety of winter sledding-type equipment careening downwards, unsupervised. It’s usually fairly crowded, but it would be even moreso if there were some mechanised way of getting back up to the top. Nope, no such luck — it’s free, after all — so it’s trudge, trudge, trudge upwards and try not to get knocked down by a wayward sled or slowpokes sliding backwards. David’s only been skiing at Montage, and he didn’t know this part existed.

Me, pre-snowtubing by AviatorDave

When we were getting ready, David had the foresight to think of buying me a toque (that’s knitted hat for you non-Canadians). Being a winter-wimpy Vancouverite who doesn’t ski, I had to borrow some cold-weather gear from David. I left behind my unused wool hats, I only found one pair of wool and flannel gloves and some scarves to bring to Pennsylvania. I also sold my Gore-Tex jacket. But at least my toes were taken care of — David got a pair of suede winter boots with sensible soles for me.

Waiting with a mix of anticipation and dread at the bottom by the tow lifts, we watched as people grabbed a tube, which had a nylon lead with a rubber hoop at the end of it. A lift operator attached rubber hoops to metal hooks along the tow line, and people were towed to the top in their tube. Nobody explained anything — there was one sign with some rules on it at the bottom, and that was it for information. We figured, with no instruction, how dangerous could it be? They had a minimum age limit of 5 years old, kids under 8 had to be accompanied by an adult, and you were allowed one person per tube. Simple, right?

Behind us a few runs later, there was a girl who had also never snowtubed before, dressed in a long white fashion-not-function coat and looking like she’d just come from dinner. She pretty much summed up what we didn’t say:

“I don’t know what’s happening, or what I’m doing,” she said to her friend. “I don’t like to do things when I don’t know what’s happening.”

We’d done a few runs by that time, but we kept our mouths shut and let her find out for herself. Sometimes it’s just better that way!

Here’s the breakdown:

RUN #1: TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL

One sign: DRAG YOUR FEET TO CONTROL YOUR SPEED. That was it. In other words, if you were too busy yakking in the line to pay attention to the different techniques of people coming down the mountainside, then you might be in for a spill. As the disclaimers say: results may vary.

When David and I reached the top, there was one staffer there, and he walked away! We stood there, contemplating our strategy. The tube was basically an inner tube, sitting in a separate hard rubber piece shaped like a doughnut sliced in half horizontally, with two handles. Sit down? Lie down? Lying down looked aerodynamic, but we were more interested in control than speed on the first run. We decided to sit down, but the incline was still scary. The chutes looked like ice runs with an icing of snow.

I was freaked going over the edge, but I was even more freaked because I ended up backwards! I don’t even remember seeing David come down in the next chute, I heard the wind whistling by and my tube picking up speed… need brakes! Brakes=feet? I have feet? Where are they? How can I control my speed when I don’t know where my feet are?!? I didn’t know where I was, or where the next slope-down was, and… oh crap, I’m now whizzing by the line of people… I’m at the bottom! BRAKE! BRAKE! I dug my heels down into the snow as hard as I could, but I didn’t seem to be slowing down much… where’s the NET??? IS IT STRONG ENOUGH??

I think I swore as I hit the net hard, limbs akimbo, and I had this thought of taking the whole net down with me over the drop-off… rolling down the side of the mountain and snowmobiles coming to retrieve me from the road. My only hope was for a big pile of snow and not sharp trees. To my GREATEST relief, I bounced instead, the tube flipping over and landing on top of me. I’m sure it looked like a Tom and Jerry cartoon crash. I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. I was covered in snow and my hat was coming off. But I was alive!!

RUNS #2-5: APPLYING WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

Things that went wrong the first time:

1. I didn’t know how to sit properly in the tube going up. I didn’t see the sign at the bottom until later, the one that said: RIDE TUBE WITH FEET DOWNHILL. I didn’t see people doing that, they were mostly lying down, but I thought that was just personal preference.
2. Try and dismount earlier rather than later. Why? See #3.
3. I couldn’t get out of my tube at the top of the tow lift. Simple physics will tell you that trying to dismount an inner tube from a sitting position facing uphill on an incline is making life hard for yourself. The lift operator at the top had to tell me to get out — I’m TRYING!! — then I tried to get out of the way of the next person, but drifted off to the right instead of left…
4. Use a tube that isn’t so inflated that a short person like myself can actually touch the ground in order to brake.
5. Brake EARLY, and use heels to steer.
6. When using far chutes, watch out for incoming tube traffic!!
7. It took me five runs before I felt brave enough to try lying on my stomach. Also, seeing the toes of David’s boots worn off made me wonder if it was such a good idea with a pair of suede boots.

RUNS #6-10: EVERYBODY ELSE GET OFF THE HILL! WE WANT 10 RUNS BY 10 O’CLOCK!

David was right — lying on my stomach is SO MUCH BETTER, and if I turn my toes out and dig the corner of my heels in, I won’t go flying over the chute wall into the next one! I’ll even go sort of straight! I can even hold on with one hand so the other one can keep my hat on my head!

Meanwhile, David’s strategy was to get airborne off the first peak, aiming for maximum lift and speed. The downside was that hard braking at the end was wearing off layers from his boots and his fingers were getting numb, but he didn’t seem to mind. Small price to pay for FLIGHT!

We were so hooked, we stayed until the very end, when they stopped the tow lift. I even had flashbacks of tobagganing as a kid in Winnipeg, streaking down the nearest landfill-turned-sledding-hill at top speed, disappointed when we had to go inside again. Winter is suddenly feeling a whole lot shorter…

David Photoshopped Karl in his Multiply journal today.

Decision: 2005

Not to make light of Karl’s quandary, but to add some comic relief. I don’t envy him one bit, especially after just making a big move, myself. But he’s a trouper with a positive attitude, so I have no doubt he’ll land on his feet.

Speaking of landing on one’s feet, I had an idea to go tubing tonight down Montage Mountain, only 4 miles away. I’ll post later, but I don’t think we’ll take a camera this time… something tells me I won’t be landing on my feet much!

It’s not often I write about myself, or fill out those “About Me” lists that arrive in my e-mail inbox from time to time. But I saw this version on Katy’s blog, and thought I’d do it.

In no particular order…

TEN random things about me:

1. If I had the skill, I’d be a professional comedian
2. I haven’t been to the dentist since I was 10
3. I’ve never had PMS
4. I can write straight without ruled paper
5. I hate pink
6. I was the only girl in my co-ed Grade 12 Phys Ed class
7. I’ve never had a headache
8. My birth name is not Gail
9. I’ve never broken a bone
10. Handbags: ugh

NINE places I want to visit:

1. Indonesia
2. Madagascar
3. Galapagos Islands
4. Quebec City
5. Cuba
6. Croatia
7. India
8. Portugal
9. Brazil

EIGHT things I want to do before I die:

1. Go to the dentist (haha!)
2. Have an exhibit of my favourite photography
3. Learn how to fly
4. Visit those nine places mentioned above
5. Read all the correspondence I’ve ever received
6. Learn how to scuba dive
7. Meet the three World Vision Canada kids I sponsor (Haiti, Chad, Brazil)
8. Throw my own “wake party” (except I’m alive and present)

SEVEN ways to win my heart:

1. Be able to guess musician/song titles within five bars
2. Be geeky and embrace one’s own geekiness
3. Show your imagination
4. Be kind to little kids, old people, and animals
5. Be consistent
6. Make me a hot beverage
7. Keep in touch with me

SIX things I believe in:

1. Universal healthcare
2. Highly subsidised education
3. Preserving the environment
4. Exercising the right to vote
5. Public transportation
6. Affordable housing

FIVE things I’m afraid of:

1. The concept of infinity
2. The power going out and having to go into the basement to re-set the fusebox
3. Deep ocean
4. An emergency in the plane and forgetting the transponder code
5. Losing photos/photo data getting corrupted

FOUR of my favourite items in my bedroom:

1. Cypress reed diffusers
2. Flannel sheets
3. Humidifier
4. David

THREE things I do almost every day:

1. Drink hot beverages
2. Wake David up
3. Feed Hugh

TWO things I’m trying not to do right now:

1. Eat
2. Lose this Scrabble game (no danger, though! I’m ahead!)

ONE person I want to see right now:

1. 5 little people (the MJEs) — together they make up one big person

If you make your own list, I’d love to read it!