November 01, 2004
A River Runs Through It - Sort of.
In the garbage there are five torn wrappings of Reeses peanut butter cups, three empty bags of Lay's potato chips and a tiny empty Smarties box. I feel like I will eventually become overdosed with halloween treats. And there's still much more to go. I don't know what happened this year. All the children disappeared leaving me with enough candy and junk food for a whole elementary school. I could try to eat it all but that doesn't sound like a very good idea.
I stayed home alone last night waiting to hand out all the treats but at the same time, I tried to watch a chinese horror movie called 'The Eye'.
To begin, last monday I went to the Orpheum to watch the VSO. It was the first time in ages and Anne Meyers was the guest violinist. Her performance compelled me to pick up my violin and try playing again. I began by listening to a couple of my old violin records with recordings done by Itzhak Perlman. Then I went through my music to look for various songs which I had liked before but found that I had lost them. Paganini and Zigerweissen to name two. If I have time, I think I'd like to pick up a copy of Carmen's Fantasy. Perlman's rendition of it is simply perfection.
At one point while playing or tyring to play (its been almost fourteen years), I stopped thinking that I heard the sound of children knocking at the front door. I passed by the television and on the screen was a blind woman in the movie playing a violin. She was playing in an orchestra for the blind. I also noticed that this weekend the movie Ray was playing in the theatres. Ray Charles that is. Notice the theme? Blind people of music? Maybe I'm blind too - figuratively.
I finally got all the pictures of the San Francisco road trip scanned and uploaded. The collection has been whittled down to 167 pictures from the sixteen rolls of film. Have a look if you are interested. Click on the 'show all' at the top right corner to have all the pictures displayed at once instead of just twelve or so at a time. Then you can pick and choose which ever one that you might find interesting. Below are a few of the pics.
The camp did have a river which ran through it and like I said before, it was cold and the temperature dropped to minus seven celsius over night. Some of us would seek shelter in the public washrooms because they were pretty clean and really really warm! I went to university with the guy in the front flossing his teeth. Engineers...
Not even the freezing cold wilderness could keep us from having freshly made cake. It went well with the authentic Wisconsin Bratwurst sausages which we had brought with us. Our water froze during the night.
Again, it was good to see Mr. and Mrs. LifeRaft in the cold and sometimes foggy city.
We really lucked out with the weather the whole trip. Otherwise, I would not have been able to get some of the photos. Click on the link above or go to the DPG page to view some of the photos.
Yeah I know, I shouldn't slouch so much. But I'm working on it. Did I tell you that I'm also the part time pool boy for the spring?
What would San Fran be without a trip to Alcatraz island? Notice the attempt to conceal my identity by wearing the dark sunglasses. There are two pigs in this picture if you haven't noticed.
My friends 22 month old daughter happy as can be.
Uh oh! Save the car!
A number of us went mountain biking the other weekend up in Whistler. I managed to one or two good shots. Everything else was too much for my camera to handle. The trail which we rode on is called "A River Runs Through It". It is mostly sheltered by trees and is probably getting very close to being buried in snow now. We managed to get in there just in time again just like the Yosemite park which is now closed to vehicles and rode the bike trail twice. The first time was very slow as the women came along and we experimented with the various obstacles. On the second loop, it was just the guys so we covered the whole trail in just forty minutes as opposed to an hour and a half.
Here my friend carefully crosses a bridge but cheats. He grabs onto the safety rope!
This is the bridge which Doug fell on. Next is a shot of me on the teeter-totter. Its been years since I've been on one. Now I'm riding one on my bike instead.
