Back in the Saddle

Temp: -4 C
Sunlight: 17hrs 03min

Hi all:

I know it's been a long time since my last post. To be honest it's been a combination of laziness and busy-ness.

There is a lot of light now. The sun technically sets just before midnight, but it's actually light out till well after 1AM, and on the other side of the coin it gets light out at about 5AM, and the sun rises at about 6AM. It's still cold some days, at least the air temperature is cold. There is plenty of power in the sun though and snow has been melting for the last week or so. We will have plenty of snow and ice well into June though.

So what has happened since my last post? Plenty, actually.

I made a trip to Yellowknife a few weeks ago, and I spent a week there. It's a different sort of town. Where Whitehorse (the capital of the Yukon for those readers not familiar with Canadian geography) is spread out and squat, Yellowknife, by contrast is tall - the buildings I mean - and congested. While the town only has 20,000 people, it sort of has the feel of a larger city. There is one exception however. I arrived in Yellowknife on a Sunday evening and never did find a restaurant to eat in - at least not in the downtown area that I called home for a week.

Although Yellowknife is the capital city of th Northwest Territories, it is not a place I will visit often. It is basically impossible to get to, except by air. To get there by car, I would have to drive through the NWT, through the Yukon, through BC, into Alberta, and then North back into the NWT. That would be a four-day (or more) trip and I would pass through other cities like Whitehorse and some much larger cities like Edmonton. Basically there are much easier cities to get to than Yellowknife. I'll likely travel there on business only.

What else? I have a trip coming up in early May. I will be going to Fort Smith in the southern part of the NWT - basically on the border of NWT and Alberta. This is a CASARA-related trip to an area that I would never normally get to visit on business. We have some meetings and training to do down there. Should be fun.

Also, Lorie and I are the proud owners of two snowmobiles! We have one each. They are not exactly new - they are 1997 models - but they are in excellent shape and work well. We went for a trip yesterday and logged about 80 kilometres round trip with no problems. Lorie did very well for her first long distance snowmobile ride. There's about a month of snowmobiling left in this season, but I'll be away for two of those weekends. Best thing is, I will only have to wait about three months till the season for riding is back. I love living in the North!

A couple of other news items... I have a new rifle. It's a 243 Winchester with a monster scope on it. The other is that we went to a Gwitch'in wedding in Fort McPherson this weekend. But I have written enough tonight. More on those items later.

Cheers!