Summer Pictures

Fishing

After living at the lake and being able to go fishing at any time for a large portion of my life I have not gone fishing at all for about 4 years. Thankfully Christina's brother took pity on me and took me out a couple of times this summer at Amesk lake. It is a remarkably deep (140ft) yet narrow lake about 1.5 hours North East of Edmonton. Other than the depth it is a traditional prairie lake with the usual fish: Pike, Pickeral, Perch...

Being on the water in a boat again felt great. Generally, I am an inpatient guy that cannot sit still for more than 2 minutes. However, if you get a fishing rod in my hand I am usually content to do absolutely nothing for hours on end.

 I got lucky and landed a couple of fish. Nothing big enough to brag about as you can see here.

 Big thanks to Alex and Christina for taking me fishing.

Lacombe Alberta

A couple of weeks ago Christina and I went for a quick drive down to Lacombe to do some reconnaissance for a potential work project. I didn't know much about the town before heading out. I knew they had a 'historic downtown' but that didn't mean much to me. Many smaller centres that I have been to have advertised their downtown in a similar way and have been completely underwhelming when visited.

We arrived a little after 7PM with the sun hanging low over town. We parked the car on their main historic street and were pleasantly surprised by their historic downtown, anchored by a 'flat iron building', that was quite charming.

We walked around soaking it all in while taking pictures like obvious tourists. We barely walked a block before we were stopped by a local lady who offered us sightseeing advice and bar/restaurant suggestions.  She told us to make sure we walked down the alleys to see the murals. Being ignorant Edmontonians we assumed that meant there were one or two murals in a pockmarked rundown alley. Once again we were pleasantly surprised by the complexity and depth of the murals.

Eventually after wandering around we got hungry and picked the restaurant 'Salt' for supper. The restaurant is a modified old house just a side street down from the flat-iron building. The décor inside is both traditional and modern with old iron claw bathtubs in the wash rooms (just for looks) and suede couches to luxuriously lounge in while digesting.

The food  was traditional Canadian Staples (Steaks, Chops, etc) with a touch of South African seasoning. I can't quite express how fantastic the house, the food and the service was.

  If you are ever in Lacombe you owe it to yourself to treat yourself to supper or lunch there.

Overall - Visiting Lacombe was a fantastic experience and a great day-trip surprise for a couple of jaded Edmonton travellers.

Puss N Bats Slo-Pitch at Telus Field

The slo-pitch season this year for the Puss N Bats was one of bitter disappointment; but it did include a singular bright shining moment.

The disappointment comes from the loss in league semi-finals and our cancellation of the annual tournament in Mundare due to weather. The bright moment came when our team hammered the villainous 'Scallywags' in the awesome confines of Telus Field.

General Manager/Coach/ Pitcher/Cleanup Hitter, Sam is a big name in the lobbed ball society of Edmonton and with some finagling got us into play at the old ballpark. Well done!

Telus Field is the current home to the pennant winning Edmonton Capitals of the NABL and has served as the home field to past Edmonton AAA & AA baseball teams. In short, it's a for real baseball stadium.

Being that we are no where near being considered athletes we shortened up the base paths and started on Defence.

 

We had a lot of players for this game so for the first few innings I volunteered to be the umpire and take pictures with Christina. I'm rocking my #85 jersey in honour of Peter Klima.

 

 
 

Bald Jay up to bat.

 

 

All world Sam up to bat rocking our retro look.

 

 

My own batting has been streaky all year. This is my first at bat with the bases juiced.

 

 

 

I ended up with a stand up triple. This was my only real contribution at the plate that night though. My next two at bats were fielders choice and ground outs to the short stop.  I finally got a really good pop on the ball  in the 8th inning but the fielders were playing mysteriously deep. The LF made a nice overhead catch while tracking it down.

 

For reference, this is how much space I had to cover on a couple of innings in RF.

 

 

I switched off between RF, 3rd base and SS through the game. 

 

 

The infield at Telus Field is actually turf and remarkably fast.  Playing the bounce was difficult but a lot of fun.

 

 

Thanks goes out to Christina for taking pictures and being my number 1 fan.

She had quite a time picking out just what seat she wanted.

 

 

By the end of the night she was just so excited by it all she had to come out on the field and join us.

 

The whole experience was fantastic and I can't say enough about how great the Telus/Capitals staff was. We even had our own announcer during the game!

If you are interested in booking out the field for your own ball team or event contact the Capitals here today.  

I highly recommend it!

Also - Good Luck to the Edmonton Capitals in the playoff finals this week. I'll have another blog up soon of pics of the big team in the park from this year. Methany for MVP!

Career Change

I have an unstated rule for this blog - not to talk/bitch about work or my employer. Even though, most of the people that come to this page know me personally and chat about work in person with me; for some reason it just doesn't feel right to do so on-line.

That being said....As I catch up on my postings I would be remiss if I did not at least mention that I left my old job at the end of July and started a new one the first week of August. Things have been working out ok so far...

On my last day of work at my previous employer I got Christina to take a couple pictures of me clearing everything out and hitting the road. My last trip out was a mish-mash of goofy things accumulated over the last 3.5 years.

Needless to say I got a lot of weird looks on the street. 

Short Track Racing

Every once in awhile my buddy Bryce comes through town to Thorhild for some short track motorcycle racing. I try to go out and watch him and Mel rip it up. I know basically nothing about bikes but it's cool to see all the different rides.  The the races are entertaining and the good old boys on the bikes zip by really quickly.
Here are some pics of Mel and Bryce racing from this summer. They are both racing on the #29 bike.

July in Saskatoon

Chrissy and I road-tripped to Saskatoon for the July long weekend this summer to celebrate Canada Day and hang out with my family.

The Jazzfest was on while we were in town so we strolled the lovely riverside to the beer gardens near the Bez.

 My niece Nikki joined me for a drink and we got our first picture together in about a billion years. 

After a few drinks we decided to do some mini-golfing at Wilsons greenhouse. Christina and I have a long standing rivalry on the mini links. Would I remain undefeated on the 'real' grass surfaces and amidst the picturesque setting?  Of course I did. I dominated.

Stephanie and family were kind enough to invite us over for supper and a jump around on their new trampoline.

Christina thought this picture was funny as Liam and I are the same height. The near bottoming out of the trampoline is not cool. Hockey season needs to start up again.

One of my favourite places in Saskatoon is the Forestry Farm Zoo. We visited on a terribly hot day, so instead of walking around we chose to ride the train.

Even the animals were trying to beat the heat. It was pretty funny watching the grizzly bear frolic in the water. He was splashing around, batting back and forth a giant log with a content look on his face.

Additionally we got a quick visit in to the old hometown: Humboldt. My brother Lawrence recently purchased a lot on Stony Lake (aka - Humboldt Lake) and had moved our old cabin from Greenwater there.  It was really cool to see the renovations my brother had done. The old place looked fantastic with new flooring, bathroom and updated features. My camera battery had died by that point so I am stealing a couple of pictures from Betty and posting them here. 

The cabin as we saw it.

 The cabin now after a fresh batch of paint.

Like always the trip back home was too short. I already can't wait for my next trip to Saskatchewan.