This fault is an inpervious layer of rock lying at an angle of 45 to 50 degrees from Ainsworth Hot Springs to a point directly below the Cody Caves. Hydraulic pressure forces ther water up along the fault where it emerges at Ainsworth Hot Springs.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Cold Weather and Hot Springs
This fault is an inpervious layer of rock lying at an angle of 45 to 50 degrees from Ainsworth Hot Springs to a point directly below the Cody Caves. Hydraulic pressure forces ther water up along the fault where it emerges at Ainsworth Hot Springs.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Cow on the Moo-ve
1. Fortnight - they don't know what this is at all, it's great to fool them with!
2. Articulated lorry - they have no idea on this one as they say truck.
3. Conkers - what a hoot, they only call them chestnuts and they have never heard of or played conkers!
5. Handbag - over here is a purse and a purse is called a wallet. That is just all wrong!
6. The boot of the car is the trunk here and the bonnet is the hood.
7. A clothes peg is called a clothes pin.
8. They don't have Bonfire Night which is a real shame - they don't get the whole Guy Falkes story and seem quite horrified when we explain all about him!
We managed to catch a great film over here on the Independant Film Channel (IFC), it's a bit like Film 4 in the UK and shows some great films. They showed The Full Monty, so naturally we had to watch it - it was nice to see Sheffield again, especially as we left behind our copy of the film we had on video as we no longer have one of those archaic video recorders.
We have had our winter tyres put on to the truck ready for the snow. The locals seem to think that it will be about a month before the deep snow appears in town. The ski hill opens on the 1st December. One of the girls Rachael works with has suggested we go back-country skiing with her husband. He is certainly looking forward to that but Rachael will just be happy staying on the nicely groomed relatively safe slopes!
At the ski hill they run a free course on avalanche awareness so that when you are off in the back-country you can recognise early if there are likely to be any avalanches, how to avoid them and also some survival techniques. This seems like a sensible idea.
Well, that's all for this week, hope you enjoy reading our adventures. We look forward to hearing your news.
Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom
xx
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Lights Out In Nelson
1. Rachael managed to knock over a gallon pot of paint whilst decorating the spare room - thankfully we had dust sheets down on the carpet.
2. Shaun dropped a full 1L bottle of extra virgin olive oil out of the trunk of the car when unloading the shopping which as you can imagine took ages to clean up the oil slick.
3. Rachael then trapped her finger in the garage door.
4. One or both of the kittens - not sure which as they both looked as guilty as each other knocked one of our handmade vases over which we had carefully shipped over from UK. It was on the top of the piano. Unfortunately it is beyond repair now in about 100 pieces - here is a picture.
5. This week we experienced our first Nelson power 'outage'. This phenomenon happens quite frequently by all accounts and usually lasts between 5 minutes to a couple of hours. Well Wednesday evening turned out to be quite eventful Rachael had gone to her jewellery night class and Shaun had gone out for dinner with some clients from work. At 8pm just as Rachael was about to put drill to metal the lights went out and the power died - after waiting half an hour we decided to end the class for the night and everyone headed home in the dark. The whole of the town centre was in darkness, there were no traffic lights and it was really really dark! About a third of the city was affected including the area that our house is in.
Shaun was also having an interesting time with the clients as they all tried to eat their meals by candle light. You will be pleased to hear that the power did eventually come back at 8am the next morning just as we were leaving for work. By the time I arrived at work I was really looking forward to a nice cuppa! The cause of the outage was rumoured to be a lightening strike on a sub-station. In anticipation of the next imminent occurrence we now have replenished the propane in our BBQ so at least we can boil the kettle.
So as you can see rubbish things still happen even in Canada but really they are just minor irritations - albeit quite entertaining for our readers!
The excitement building over here at the moment is Halloween. It seems to be quite a big celebration, there are lots of pumpkins for sale in the stores ranging from moderately sized to gigantic monster pumpkins. We have been invited to a pumpkin carving party - you have to turn up with your own pumpkin and weapons of choice ready for carving your design. We shall take some pictures and post them next week. The hosts of the Halloween party have just had a new hot tub installed on their deck so we are also taking our swimming cozzies. This will be the first time we've ever been to a party with Lycra in hand.
We headed out for an easy hike over at Pilot Bay. After a nice trip on the ferry we went to visit the lighthouse which was built in 1905 to guide Paddle Boat Steamers on Kootenay Lake. It was decommissioned in 1993 and has since been renovated by a local heritage group. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the door to the lighthouse was open and you could climb the 2 flights of stairs to the top to look out.
The information board inside said that the lighthouse had been previously renovated in 1970 and the light had a 3.05 amp 12 volt bulb in a 250 millimeter lantern powered by two six volt battery packs. A photoelectric cell shut off the light during daylight hours to conserve power. The light had a characteristic one second of light and eleven seconds of dark. Should a lamp burn out the four position lamp changer would move the next lamp in to focal position. On the picture you can see Shaun at the top looking out across the lake.
Looking towards December when Whitewater opens, we have discovered that most of the outdoor shops in town will loan you demo skis for a day for $35 which they then take off the price of any equipment that you buy. They also take their range of skis to the hill to try as many pairs as possible in a weekend. So, these long-term snowboarders may turn to 2 planks of wood by the end of the season.
The weather this week has been a little bit changeable - we have seen temperatures up to 18 degrees during the day but then down to 2 degrees at night. The forecast is for our first overnight frost this week.
That is all our news for this week, next time we will post some photos of the autumn colours and of our tragic attempts at pumpkin carvings. As usual, we look forward to hearing all your news.
To quote Alan Titchmarsh "Whatever the weather this weekend, enjoy your garden, ta-ra"
Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley
xx
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thanks Giving Weekend
Well done Glyn and Lucie you have won the box of Nelson Brewing Company Faceplant beer, we shall be in touch about collection after 15th October when the production run starts. Unfortunately we are unable to ship outside Canada so you will have to collect in person. I understand NBC do a great tour of the brew house.
We also wanted to include a runner-up James Dixon from Halifax who sent in a picture of a homemade great big Yorkshire Pudding - we miss your Yorkshire pudds dude - this one looks particularly tasty although we are not so sure it was a toad in the hole - yum!
You will have chance to enter again as we are going to run a winter photo competition - so keep your camera ready for the best shots to enter. Well done again to Lucie, Glyn and James!
With winter in mind now the temperatures here have dropped and we have ordered our new winter tyres (Canadian spelling Tires) and steel rims along with studs in the tyres. As you can guess it is top priority not just for safety but more importantly to be able to get up the ski hill road, and back down again!