Get out of your car and walk in to get your freakin donuts people!

I have to shake my head at the insanely huge lineups I see at a certian donut/coffee shop drive throughs and other fast food restaurants. It makes me sick that in this day and age when just about every scientist on the planet are publishing statistics that clearly show climate change isn't about to happen or will happen in the near future, but in reality is happening now. All those cars sitting there idling away, spewing out green house gas emmisions not to mention buring up all that fuel. *sigh*

So I thought I would do a little research into what we can do to reduce our:

1. fuel consupmtion and vehicle expenses


2. green house gass emissions


3. promote a greener community,lets face it, the changes that need to be made don't have to be huge if we all do our part at home and in our daily routines.

So lets look at point number one. A very common myth is still widely held in regards to idling your car and warming it up on those cold winter days. This in fact, is not the case, especially with the new cars. You should not have to idle your car for more that 30 seconds, doing so is very hard on the engine, catalytic converter, and wastes fuel. It is also a myth that frequently starting your engine is bad. Studies have shown that this will cost you about $10 per year (I am assuming in replacement starters) versus the higher costs of fuel consumption. Another way to look at it, it costs more to idle your car for 10 seconds than to restart your engine. Simple cost benefit analyis there.

When considering point number two, it isn't just our wallet that benefits, but the air we all breathe. It is estimated that 5000 people die prematurley each year with health problems that are related to the poor air quality from the smog created by the number of vehilces on todays highways and roads. However this number still doesn't seem to scare people enough to cause change. Perhaps these numbers will: If we were all to reduce our idling by 5 minutes a day we would save 1.8 million liters of fuel per day. That is almost 4500 tonnes of green house gas emmisions and a savings of 1.7 million in fuel costs (avg fuel cost .95cents/L), again PER DAY!

What are other ways we can reduce our idling? Thats a good question. Many municipalites have instituted anti idling bylaws. However they are very limited and not all that enforeable. Some are only in effect in the mornings on hot summer days but not in the afternoon when the temps are high and people are running their air conditioners. The reverse is true in the winter. The bylaws are not in effect when it is super cold because people want to be allowed to idle away to warm up their vehicles. In addition to that by the time a bylaw officer gets to the complaint the driver is usually gone. Frustrating I am sure.

I am not saying anti-idling bylaws won't work. But what we need to do is educate, educate and EDUCATE the public, then introduce a bylaw or a test area to find out which bylaw works best, then introduce a bylaw. But thats just my opinion.

And besides, oil is a non renewable resource. We will run out one day, and I think sooner than we want to believe and that the governments of the world will admit to. Lets all do our part. Reduce our idling by 5 (or more!) minutes a day, even better yet, don't go through drive throughs, get out, walk in and place you order. I find I am in and out faster when I go inside than the lazy asses sitting in their cars/trucks waiting in line, idling away.

For more info: http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/personal/idling.cfm?attr=8 yes it is a government website. If you don't like the stats here google "anit-idling" or something similar and educate yourself :)

Hanging by a pair of undies

I have to say I am impressed with my wife's and cousin's blog and the ability for them to find the time to read about or view something that then inspires them to write a great, worth while posting on their blog.

I have tried to find a interesting topic that I know enough about as well as care enough about to write a posting. So far I haven't been too successful. Not that I don't care about anything, I haven't had the time to review and comment on my many environmental or ecological interests.

So I thought I would post a short story, well a memory really. I stated in my profile, I grew up camping in the Harrison Hot Springs area. Located on the south end of Harrison Lake and about a 2 hour drive east from Vancouver. The area offers beautiful mountain scenery, water falls, old "ghost town" logging camps, on the lake camping, hot springs right from the mountain, and plenty of wild life. Oh and I can't forget a Sasquatch or two.

Growing up exploring this area has provided me with enough adventures that I could probably write a small book. So for this blog I intend to tell a tale of a cliff hanging adventure.

The year was 1988, my dad, his girlfriend Shirley, my brother Randy, myself and a good friend of mine Dustin all headed out to our favorite campsite located at Cascade Peninsula on Harrison Lake. We had our dirt bikes and plans to explore the many forestry roads that run through the areas valleys.

We had been camping for about a week, enjoying the hot weather (rare for this area as it rains a lot), swimming, and riping around on our dirt bikes. Dad had decided that we would search for some fabled hot springs again(we had been looking for these for a few years now) and packed up the dirt bikes with food and water and headed out.

About an hour into the trip we stopped at a very steep portion of the main forestry road to roll some rocks down into the lake. I believe this is called screeing. Not sure though. Anyway it was a load of fun to see the rocks roll down the hill wreaking havoc before launching itself about 100 feet into the air and into the Lake*. The last rock however hit something metal.

Intrigued, dad suggested that we should find a safe way down and see what it was. We walked up the road about 20m to move away from the section that was pretty much a cliff of loose rock and sand. We found a section that we could bound down in the soft sand and worked our way to the area we thought the metal object was located.


View of Cascade Bay

What we found about 250m down slope was quite amazing. A portion of an old Model T Ford car. How long it must have been there, and how it came to rest hanging precariously against a tree right on the lip of a cliff, that plunged straight down into the lake, is anyones guess. If we had only brought the camera. We had explored the area around our find, to see if there were any other pieces, then we headed back up. Thats when the trouble began.

On our way up we took a different, more direct route. We ended up right below the top cliff portion of the slope where we were rolling the rocks. The cliff was about 60 to 80 feet high. Dad told Dustin and I to go around to up the way we came down. Dustin and I made it to the top and looked around for Dad. We didn't see him anywhere. We headed over to the cliff area to get a better look. What did we see when looking down? Dad holding on to a rock ledge about 8 feet below the top of the cliff. He looked rather worried, a bit scared even. Not grasping the seriousness of the situation I offered to drop a rock to him, he didn't find that funny. He tried to find more hand holds to pull himself up higher with no luck. And as it turned out he couldn't go back down and jumping to the sand below was too far. Dad's legs were starting to give out (old knee injury form another camping trip).

Starting to panic a little, I sent Dustin to go back to camp and get Randy and a rope. He headed off, top speed back to camp. Dad and I tried to find other options while Dustin was off. About 15 minutes went by before we heard the roar of Dustin's bike engine. He wasn't gone long enough to have made it back to camp and didn't have Randy or a rope. He looked a little sheepish.

It turns out he had neglected to fill his gas tank and had been on reserve for that past 20minutes of the ride prior to us stopping to scree some rocks down the hill. Dad and I were pissed. I told Dustin to take my bike and head out again. In the mean time Dad is really looking scared and I could see his legs starting to really shake. Time was not on our side.

Some might say that luck was with them, or someone above was watching out for them, I have no idea nor much of an opinion on that, but when I heard the sound of a truck coming our way I was counting our blessings. It was Randy with Dusting close behind. It turns out Randy was traveling towards us looking for firewood. He got out of his truck and I informed him of what the situation was. Thats when Randy informed me had no rope.

Our time was up, Dad was hollering and starting to freak out saying he couldn't hold for much longer. We all looked at each other and started to strip. We got down to our tighty whities and tied our clothes together. Randy anchored himself to his truck, Dustin and I lied down, grabbed each others ankles, lowered three pairs of pants and three shirts down to dad. We just barely managed to pull him up and over the cliff.

Well that put an end to our trip for the day. Dusty, sweaty and hungry, we headed back to camp.

That was just one story of what we all got ourselves into when camping. I may tell the story of coming face to face with a cougar (no not the two legged kind that prey on young men), being picked up while trying to cross a swollen river and washed down stream while on my ATV, Randy rolling his ATV over and dislocating his shoulder while 5 hours away from any town, the list gos on and on. Anyway I hope you enjoyed this little tale.

*Screeing is fun, however being "more in the know" of environmentally harmful things one can do while enjoying the outdoors, this is one of them. I wouldn't carry out such activities anymore.

Feel free to comment on any interesting situation you may have had while enjoying the outdoors.

BC's 14 Billion Dollar Transit Upgrade

Well I have read over the detials of Premier Campbell's unvieling of his governments plan to upgrade the provinces transit system. Primarily it will focus on the Vacnouver area. Initially I was not too impressed, all the money, or most of it anyway is being spent down at the coast, and there are badly needed upgrades to our interior highways. BUT after reading it I was pleased to see that the money is to be spent public transit and not on more roads, bridges, bypasses etc...

for more detials please check out the following link:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/01/14/bc-transportationannouncement.html

So I guess we will see how this all turns out and whether or not this isn't just another election promise.

for those who know me...

I was reading over my "about me" section and started thinking, I do love the outdoors however it has been way too long since I have really been outdoors they way I used to. I hope to change that especially when my daughter gets old enough to go on camping trips and other outdoor adventures. Then I can take her out with me, and start to pass on the knowledge I have learned about what we come across out there.

Anyway I didn't want to come across as a complete outdoorsy type of fellow when lately I have been far from it, not regrettably so either, until recently all I did was work outside and on my free time the last thing I wanted to do was "go outside" .

So Why am I adding such a post you ask? Well check out a http://www.randolph-pm.blogspot.com/
I went to high school and college with Randy and he is still hiking away like we did WAY back then.


Well I better run and feed my always hungry child o'mine

My First Post

Welcome to my Blog!
I had another one with Windows Live and was disappointed to see you had to sign in to comment. Not good when you are trying to spark discussion. Anyway my intent of this blog varies. On one hand I want to post opinions related to the environment, ecology, global warming, climate change and biology. Why? Well that is my background both in school and interest and to a certain extent my job. I work for a municipality as an Environmental Technician and deal with all sorts of environmentally related projects, issues, emergencies, and planning.

In addition to the above, I love to discuss movies and other pop culture topics. So I would like to keep the topics on this blog wide open.

So to start please check out this video that I think is absolutely super and I hope makes you all think a little. Now I can't figure out how to embed a video in Blog Spot yet so here is the link:

http://ca.video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=669834

Later!