blinkit

Summer begins now

WMD: It's still a little less than a month away, but I declare summer to be officially under way in this week's column. Text follows here:

Sitting on my deck last weekend, I had a brief glimpse of summer. It can't come fast enough.

We suffered a long winter in Vancouver. It wasn't particularly cold or snowier than usual, but it was interminably grey, with one sunless day following another. Spring came almost unnoticed with more grey--and a last fit of snow--overshadowing the annual bloom of our cherry trees.

This past winter also brought to me more work than usual, with more stress at our workplace than usual, which is why last weekend was my first two free days this year that coincided with sunshine and warm temperatures. Waking up Saturday morning, blinking at the light like a survivor of a planetary holocaust emerging from his bunker, I finally felt the season change. I leapt past our limp spring and right to summer.

I sat for hours on my deck. Ate meals there. Drank beer. Read at length a real book. And watched people go by on my street. It felt almost like childhood, except for the beer.

A few columns back, I described the endless days of my childhood summers. I equated it then to a freer time in our society, but that adolescent sense of eternity also had as much to do with summer itself. Summer is about long light and unrushed days, of heat and dreamy reflection. In December, we eat too much, drink more than is sensible, rarely get exercise, shiver through commutes in darkness, rain and snow, and plunge into overcrowded, chaotic malls to spend far too much money on our holiday rituals. In July, we take afternoon naps in the shade.

We open our windows wide in summer, and ignore the thermostat until October. We go outside and rediscover outdoor spaces that in winter's cold would have been dangerous to our health. We clean up our patios and decks, liberate our lawns and gardens from debris, plant food and celebrate being alive with flowering plants.

Echoing our distant savannah ancestors who invented the first barbecue, we cook outside and share meals in the open air with family and friends. We venture into the parks and onto the beaches and let our bare feet feel the direct touch of grass and sand. We let our children run and yell and make only token efforts to rein them in. We fill the walking trails and bike routes and try not to notice the bickering between dog owners and the people they annoy. In winter, strangers appearing in the dark of the night give us pause. On a summer's night, off-leash dogs, the odd beach stabbing or a riot on a fireworks night not withstanding, the same strangers might be an occasion for a chat.

If we're brave, we hit the ocean water and let the salty coolness wash over our bodies. We swim, sail and surf. Or we lie on the sand and pretend we've done all three.

We lose our clothes in summer, and in a supposedly casual city that remains hung up on ancient Anglo-Saxon guilt, newly restrained by an Asian sense of propriety, such freedom cannot be underestimated. We bundle up in winter, and because this is Vancouver we do our best to appear hip but end up looking like fashionably dressed astronauts. In summer all pretense is lost. The dress of the day is shirts or light tops, shorts or skirts and sandals. Repeat throughout the week.

The shedding of clothing is also when we realize how beautiful so many of our citizens can be. Yes, some of us should remain hidden, swathed in layers of fabric to prevent the rest of us from spitting up our coffee. But so many others, of all ages and both genders, are blessed. On sunny days, in shopping districts like South Granville, the girls of summer come out in flocks, lightly clothed and strolling unselfconscious in their loveliness. Ordinarily sober, serious columnists innocently lounging at sidewalk cafes suddenly lose their train of thought in mid...

And we read. I used to think the long-standing tradition of reading in summer was a bourgeois indulgence propped up by boring newspaper features about what books local celebrities are taking to the "cottage." But now I understand why people choose summer for reading. There's plenty of natural light, you can read outside anywhere you can throw down a blanket and cooler, and because you've worked throughout the winter in confined spaces to escape the dark and cold, books are needed to rekindle the soul. Television doesn't feel right in summer. Movies become more mindless than usual after Victoria Day weekend. Books are what save us. Live music, too.

Summer officially starts in a little under a month. It ends too soon. I started mine early, and despite the return of grey clouds this week, it's not going to stop until it absolutely has to--perhaps in mid-November.

Today's bLINKit: If real life were like Second Life, a video.

When maps weren't Google ... backing the Challenger

WMD: I had intended to post here weeks ago that the blog was on hiatus, due to my heavy work schedule. For all intents and purposes, it is, but since I don't like the blank page that now greets people because of my lack of posting, some catchup with columns that did not make this space are due ...

First, from early November: defending the Challenger Map, the big, wooden, topographical map any B.C. kid who went to the PNE until the late 1990s would have memories of. The original is here. My cut and paste is here:

Challenger Map offers still picture of vibrant B.C.

Province's geographical heritage worth saving

Barry Link, Special to Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, November 07, 2007

If Europe has art and architecture, Asia has ancient culture and philosophy, and the U.S. has lots of guns, what does B.C. have to offer the world? Geography. Say what you will about Vancouver's vibrant multiculturalism, our shiny downtown towers and diverse array of award-winning restaurants (albeit temporarily minus Rob Feenie)--our standout feature remains the one thing none of us had any hand in creating. That is, the gobsmackingly beautiful backdrop of the mountains, the forests and the sea.

Go further inland, along the Fraser and up the No. 1 or the Coquihalla highways, and you'll cross roughly parallel lines of foothills, mountain ranges, plateaus, rivers and cold, deep lakes, all carved out over thousands of years by the unimaginably relentless forces of glaciation, water and wind. That hard, physical nature is our truest legacy as British Columbians, whether we've lived here 60 years or six months, and it's why Germans, among others, are buying every scrap of B.C. forest land or beach front property in sight. They love our landscape, and when you meet them, they can't stop talking about it. Seriously, you have to kick them in the shins to make them stop.

A great way to shut them up would be to place them in front of the Challenger Map, and until 1998, that was possible by taking them down to the PNE. Painstakingly assembled over seven years from nearly a million pieces of quarter-inch plywood by George Challenger and his family, the Challenger Map is the greatest woodworking project in B.C. history. For years, before redevelopment of the PNE rendered it homeless nine years ago, it was seen by generations of fairgoers who would gawk open- mouthed at the contours of the valleys, high places and water ways. It showed in impressive detail the outlines of a wild topography that extended far beyond Vancouver's tiny, tame footprint. As a kid, when I first saw the map on a school trip, it was a lesson in how big this province is and how small my place in it is even now. Contrary to popular thinking, the "rest" of B.C. isn't Vancouver's backyard. Vancouver is the little concrete pad at B.C.'s side door. Through that door is where our wealth comes from and where much of our food is grown. It's also where the animals and trees are that show up in those Best Place on Earth commercials.

The best thing about the map was that it was physical. It occupied space, and although it was cordoned off, you knew if allowed you could reach out to touch it. The next best thing about the map was its silence. It told its own story by simply being there, the way a real mountain or ocean shoreline tells you its tale through their essential silence. Interpretive centres and Google Maps are unnecessary.

In a city of noise and constant stimulation, such silence is hard to come by, and that's why we should be thankful for the effort of people like Alan Clapp, whose Challenger Map Advisory Group worked hard to save the map, and business people like Larry Rosenberg, who gave up valuable rent revenue to house the map in his moving company's warehouse. Clapp and his group had a straightforward idea: preserve the map, restore it and exhibit it in a prominent location as a reminder of B.C.'s geographical heritage for everyone to see.

Unfortunately, their simple idea met unbelievable indifference, especially when they unsuccessfully attempted to place it in the new trade and convention centre, where it would have told thousands of visitors each year the physical story of B.C. The mayor's office under Larry Campbell dismissed the map as a sentimental relic. The business lobby found no economic value in it. And at 80 by 76 feet, the size of the map was too expensive a square footage for anything merely educational. If you're lucky enough to find an empty 80 by 76 patch of land anywhere downtown, Bob Rennie has already planted a sales centre on it.

But now the map has won a reprieve, and the provincial government, which ought to have carried the ball in the first place in rescuing the map, has kicked in money to move it to temporary digs in Richmond. Clapp and his group are still looking for a permanent home for the map, and they hope to get school kids involved in restoring it.

I hope there's a happy ending, and the map is restored and updated, perhaps by 2010, in a new home. Because when all those visitors, including even more chattering Germans hungry for natural terrain, show up for the Games, we can quietly take them aside to the map. They'll see who and where we are, and the amazing lay of the land we call home.

Christmas list; weather

Today's bLINKit: My Christmas shopping list for the notable and naughty of 2006. Browncoats rejoice: Firefly becoming an online game. And an interview with the one of the creators of the superlative The Wire. What's the underlying theme of the show, says David Simon? The devalued currency of human life in 21st century America:

Whether you're a corner boy in West Baltimore, or a cop who knows his beat, or an Eastern European brought here for sex, your life is worth less. It's the triumph of capitalism over human value. This country has embraced the idea that this is a viable domestic policy.

WMD: The snow reported in the last post (apologies for no posts in the past two weeks) has long since gone. But we got hammered by a big windstorm last Thursday. You may have heard about the destruction wrought in Stanley Park, one of the prettiest urban parks around. It's like nature did a mini-9/11 on us, minus the loss of human life, although around here, trees and humans are considered by some to be roughly on an equal footing (along with dogs, who soon will have their own luxury hotel). A couple of my colleagues toured part of the park today, and brought back photos, and it looks like a logging operation smashed through the area. One estimate is 3,000 trees gone. The storm is nature's way of cleaning up and rejuvenating the forest (fire is the other), but when it comes at you like this all of a sudden, it's amazing. Last week also showed how vulnerable our basic transportation infrastructure is. Last Friday, the morning after the storm, buses were sidelined or delayed, intersection lights were out everywhere and one of the key bridges linking the city to the North Shore was blocked for much of the day. I actually drove through the mess Friday morning to a meeting in a distant burb, only to find the staff at the office hosting the meeting sitting in the dark (thanks to a power outage) and eating all the muffins bought for the meeting, which turned out to be cancelled. The lesson here: You can multiply all those problems times ten when the Big One comes.

Bavaria, beer and belief, part five: Bruno, RIP

WMD: He eluded bands of hunters, wildlife experts, specially trained dogs from Finland and various traps. He survived getting hit by a car and he once hung out in front of a police station, taunting the Man to get him. He also snacked freely on domestic sheep, chickens, bunnies and beehives. He was the only celebrity in Germany not associated with the World Cup of Soccer, but to some, he was also public enemy no. 1 for his thirst for freedom and the good life. So it's sad to report that Bruno the Bear, believed to be the first wild bear in Germany in 170 years, was shot dead yesterday by hunters in the Bavarian Alps. Casper and I join all bear lovers in mourning his loss. The English version of Der Spiegel waxed eloquently about Bruno's legacy, comparing him, in just one story, to Hannibal, Hamlet, a character from Camus and a whole host of celebrities who died too young from Elvis to Princess Di. Bruno, writes DS, "shook the foundations of Germany's post-industrial society to its core." The magazine continues:

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel was prompted to comment: "If Europe has nothing else to worry about other than Bruno the bear, then it must be a happy place." In a way, he's right. The quality of life and security which Western European society now provides is unrivalled in human history: we are pampered and protected, led to believe we have reached the summit of human progress. Yet, a single bear, which kills a few sheep is enough to drive us to our baser instincts: kill what appears threatening.

For indeed Bruno was murdered, shot down in the prime of his young life, executed in cold blood. We should reflect now on whether we feel happy with what we have done. We share a collective guilt for Bruno's demise, our inability to co-exist with nature has yet again prompted us to reach for the trigger. Bruno is dead and we are all the poorer for it: May his ursine soul rest in peace.

You can read about DS's breathless coverage of the bountiful life and tragic death of Bruno here.

Today's bLINKit: Trouble in online paradise. See the video here about how some residents of Second Life worry relaxed registration requirements mean the online world will soon be flooded by horny teens and virtual griefers. Note, you no longer need a credit card to play the game.

 

Bavaria, beer and belief, part three: Bruno lives!

WMD: Remember the brown bear I mentioned in my initial Bavarian post? It's a wild bear that wandered over to the German side of the Alps from Italy via Austria, and is believed to be the first wild bear to be roaming Germany since 1835. But because it went on a "rampage" killing domestic sheep and chickens and vandalizing beehives, the German government wanted it caught. The problem: the Finnish dogs brought in for the job of finding him couldn't take the summer heat and the chase was called off. And it appears Bruno, as he's being called, has won a reprieve after being marked a wanted felon. The Bavarian state government, under pressure from wildlife groups, rescinded permission for hunters to kill him and have set aside a fenced wildlife area for him. I assume that's if he's caught.

Photo: A ferry on Lake Chiemsee in southern Bavaria. In the background, the Alps: could Bruno be there?

A walk through Strathcona

Today's bLINKit: A great way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the summer is take a walking tour, and a great walking tour is through Strathcona, Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood. The entry point for successive waves of immigrants, it features century-old homes, lovely gardens and a sense of community. I'd consider living there, if the housing prices even there weren't through the roof, because you can almost forget while walking around there that it's besieged by the effects of the drug trade. The old homes, store fronts and churches, many renovated up to heritage status, and the streets don't show obvious signs of despair or decay, the way some sections of Main Street used to, or some areas of the Drive now do. The day I was there on the tour was blessed with a clean sun and an open sky, and no neighbourhood looked more at rest or happy with itself.

Some people I know or have heard about have moved into Strathcona intentionally. Others I know couldn't wait to leave. I've heard two opinions on Strathcona's future: 1) that its sense of community, history of civic activism and influx of new home owners investing money and determined to make a life there will see it through; or 2) that it's destined to implode as the effects of drugs, prostitution, property crime and poverty erode it from within.Obviously, I hope for the former.

The tours are organized by the Architectural Institute of B.C. and led by a charming UBC student. They cost just $5, a real deal. After taking the tour, I learned there's a difference between Queen Anne and Edwardian styles of housing, that bay windows come from San Francisco and that Strathcona in the '60s and '70s was slated by the governments of the day for bleak social project-style housing towers, some of which actually went up before the community rallied and defeated the proposal. While the social housing initiative was probably well-intentioned, it's dull and hard-edged compared to the human-scale of the old homes, themselves an old style and sufficient form of densification, that survived. You can see more and better photos of the neighbourhood here.

15 notes about Galiano Island

I just came back from three days camping at Montague Harbour on Galiano Island, in the Gulf Islands about 45 minutes west of Vancouver by ferry. Here's what I learned/observed:

1. Price differential: I paid $45 for the ferry trip from Tswwassen to Sturdies Bay. It was the first stop on the ferry's Gulf Islands route. Three days later, I paid $25 for the return trip. Same distance. What gives?

2. It pays to research ferry schedules. I've never been to any of the Gulf Islands before, and had only a dim idea of the schedule of the ferry that services it. For some reason, I thought there would be one every two hours. There are exactly two per day, most days. I didn't research the schedules beforehand, which is incredibly stupid, although I have had an extremely busy month and got this trip together in a rush. The upshot is that I arrived at Tswwassen at 3 p.m., and learned the next ferry wasn't for four hours. The ticket cashier selling me my ticket quickly handed me a schedule, with a look on her face that said she hoped this dolt could read. So I parked, the only one in the lot for hours, and waited. Meantime, I got to know the new public market at the terminal very well and became a fixture there. The pizza deli owners are naming one of their children after me. The market itself is fine: bright, airy, big windowed, West Coast wood kind of thing, through which waiting tourists trudge the length of repeatedly like a legion of undead shoppers. It has a Starbucks, but it wasn't operational yet. Why they didn't think of a public market several decades ago to prevent motorists from going stir crazy with boredom during the wait for inevitably late ferries, I don't know.

3. I passed the time reading. Looking around, I noted younger people passing the time playing PSPs.

4. Is there a difference between an ax and a hatchet? I bought a hatchet. Couldn't cut blocks of wood to save my life. I arrived at my campground with about an hour and a half, so I set up camp pretty fast, bought some wood, and because of the lack of available kindling, used all my available newspaper, a torn up cardboard box and half a bottle of kerosene firestarter to get the logs going. It worked, after a fashion, as my old woodcraft skills from school and church group outings slowly resurfaced. Hint about fires: build 'em with lots of internal air, because the air needs to fuel as many surfaces as possible to get the conflagration going. You also want heat to reflect off complementary surfaces to create an internal red hot zone of coals. The next night, I scrounged a few branches from the near the biffy (you're not supposed to do that, but ...) and used some solid firestarters to get the fire going nicely. I'm returning the hatchet. Unless I'm going to war 18th century Mohawk style, I don't need it.

5. Galiano is boring. It is essentially one or two roads going from north to south, with a bunch of roads branching off in the deep south, and almost nothing in the north. It has no cleared town centre, just some intersections near the ferry dock overshadowed by heavy bush and high trees. Unless you're into B&Bs (which are fine) or absolutely in love with pottery and ceramic studios, which bore me to tears, there's nothing really to do in Galiano. One of the few stores even had a sleeping dog lying in the doorway. They do have a bit of live music on weekends at the pub, and a local theatre group was putting on Shakespeare, but all of that is during the July-August weekend tourist trade. In winter, I was told, the place closes up. There is one semi-public area, where the tiny library, islands trust office, touristy art store, and a couple of delis are. Also a flush toilet there, which I thankfully used on more than one occasion during my jaunts "downtown." There's also a bookstore, which has a really broad and impressive collection of stuff.

Note that boring was OK. I went to the island to get away, to walk around, hike, explore and read by a campfire. Also to eat a lot. So there's a good tourism slogan for the island: "Galiano, a great place to read a book."

6. Half the people on Galiano are old. The rest are either men in plaid shirts and utility vests (I saw more B.C. Hydro trucks in three days than I've seen in 10 years driving around Vancouver) having discussions about saws and stuff or plain-faced, middleaged women with that equally plain natural foods look. I heard tales of lesbian colonies, but found none, but then I wouldn't quite know where to look. Some kids. A couple of teenagers, but mostly the demographic skews elderly. Almost no babes, aside from the university student at the museum and the two women (who might have been lesbians) reading books about plants or herbs or something outside one of the town's few delis. The lack of youth is interesting. The local theatre group is putting on Romeo and Juliet: can they even find anyone who can play two 15-year-old lovers? Or did they import the actors from the mainland, or even Saltspring?

7. That said, the people I talked to who had been living there awhile like the place quite a bit. Some were born there, some moved there and decided to stay put. I had a milkshake at Scoops, a deli near the ferry dock. The woman there moved from the mainland about eight years ago and rarely goes back. She puts up with island oddities, such as the haywire electrical job in the deli: she has to turn the lights on, even in the middle of a bright summer day, to make the milkshake machine work. I told her I found Galiano very quiet, in a good way. "Yes, but summer is when it gets pretty hectic around here," she said. I looked around to the outside, where in a small courtyard, a family with kids, the two plant-book reading, possibly sapphic women, and a pair of tourist cyclists drank coffees and juice and munched on snacks. Birds chirped. The wind played with the trees. I nodded. Hectic.

8. On the road leading out from the ferry docks through hectic downtown Sturdies Bay, there are one-hour parking signs posted. For what? And who enforces them?

9. I slept remarkably well, sleeping on a thin but comfy mat in a tent barely big enough for me to stretch out in (it's a two person tent, which is great if the two people using it happen to be midgets). The birds at the campsite would make me every morning about 5 a.m., but that was a better sound than construction and traffic noise at 6:30 a.m., which is what I get every other day of the year.

10. Montague Harbour campground is pretty nice: Nice trail around the park for a good hour walk in either forest or along the beach, which included a couple of miles of beach covered in millions of crushed clam shells apparently left over from aboriginal days. (There is an Indian reserve at the very north end of the island, but I'm told no one lives there except for one guy, who makes drums. And he's not native.) The first day and a half, the campground was less than a third full, just the quiet I was seeking, but on the third day a fleet of campers and vans invaded, bringing kids, dogs, more old people. Aside from the teenage girls at the site next to me with their self-involved, inane chatter day and night, most of the people in the campground were OK though. A buoyant Chinese family moved in across the way and down the road some, setting up an efficient campsite in remarkably little time in the dark of night. They had two kids, and when I met them on the trail, their little boy was holding a giant, plastic scorpion in a bug net. "I'm trying to scare people with it," he told me. To add to the diversity, some Quebecers also moved in next door. Didn't really chat with any of them, just met them on the trails or at the water pump and said hello etc.

11. Mosquitoes: not bad at all, despite the campground being in an apparent swamp. Had maybe two bites.

12. Some of the other camps were amazingly elaborate: multiple tents, huge awnings or tarps covering eating and cooking areas, hammocks stretched out in trees, numerous lanterns hung from trees. My campsite, with a simple tent, Coleman stove, weak electric lamp and the truck, was neolithic by comparison. I was fortunate I was there between rains.

13. My great discovery of the trip was Bellhouse Park, which I discovered looks out on to Active Pass, which is what I've been by numerous times on ferries during the course of my life. Now I know what I've been looking at all those years.

14. The official Galiano Museum is smaller than my living room, and I have a small living room. There you'll find native artifacts, some logging tools, a cannonball, an anchor rescued from the sea bottom, genealogies on the founding families (ie the Georgesons, whose name is everywhere), maps and a friendly university student, raised on the island, staffing the place. She'll tell you what's hot and what's not in Galiano. Hot: the quiet life. Not: the museum house, which, if the Islands Trust allows, will be replaced by a new museum building on land donated for the purpose. Fundraising is ongoing. I pitched in $2.

15. On my last night, after good campsite meals of canned organic soups, veggie dogs, pasta with tomato sauce and braised broccoli, I treated myself to dinner at the island pub, the Hummingbird. Mediocre food, and the waitress frequently forgot the details of my order ("Sorry, was that cream ale or honey nut brown?" "Uh, what kind of tea did you order again?"). But she was prompt, the place seemed like a gathering spot for locals and tourists alike (and I think the seafood would have been a better bet for me) and I had dinner with the pub cat, who wandered in after I entered, came up to me when I offered my hand and then jumped up and plopped himself down on a chair at my table. Neither the other patrons nor the staff made any attempt to eject him. He (or she) is a regular, and one of the regulars even came over to pet him. He didn't do much. Napped while I waited for dinner, and then when my food came, popped up and stared at me while I ate. "Not a chance, pal," I said to him, so he left as I started dessert, for better pickings elsewhere. I gather he gets them regularly.

16. I haven't camped in years, so this was an adventure for me, even if the version I experienced was quite mild. Camping in a provincial campground a short ferry hop from Vancouver is no hardship, especially when stores (and flush toilets) are a short drive away. And camping for most people, especially with kids, is an expedition to bring as much technology and convenience with them as possible: trailers or campers with electric lights and propane stoves; radios or CD players; coolers packed with ice bought from stores which get their ice from industrial sources; prepared foods; fishing boats powered by gasoline or diesel; tents, sleeping bags and clothes made from synthetics; chemical bug repellent; and animal companions, ie dogs, whose existence is entirely dependent on human largess and economic surplus. It's a kick to hang out outdoors for a few days, and the forest, wind in the trees and crabs, clams and little animals that squirt out jets of water from tidal pools are great, but this is no wilderness. Just a tame area where you can get some peace and quiet.

Final note: I finished off and re-read parts of The Long Emergency, Howard Kuntsler's book about the end of oil and the dire consequences he says will come about as a result. Leaving aside the accuracy of his claims, it was a wicked kick to read about the twilight of sophisticated, oil-driven economies and the winding down of so much we take for granted as I read in the late evening to the light of a simple electric lantern and a few candles, stripped of many of the energy-driven technologies I take for granted. I also wrote the notes for much of this post late, last night, in old fashioned pen on time-tested paper, as the sky grew dark and the woods became quiet around me. As I finished the book, and then my notes, I looked up, and saw the stars.

World Wednesday: Explorers discover lost trestle

VANCOUVER - Canadian explorers Randy Smith and Barry Link announced this week they discovered the long lost Kinsol Trestle, a Vancouver Island railway line relic once thought to be a mere legend.
Smith and Link discovered the trestle after a gruelling three-day bicycle trek through the wilds of the Saanich Peninusla, Shawnigan Lake and the Cowichan Valley.
"This proves behind a shadow of a doubt the trestle exists," said an elated but tired Smith. "The naysayers can all apologize now."
Smith and Link's expedition last year to search for the trestle was famously frustrated after the pair got lost in the woods near Burnt Bridge. They almost perished and resorted to eating the Nepalese mountaineers hired as guides for the trip.
"Yes, it was tough last time around," admitted Link. "But not as tough as our guide Barati before Randy added the seasoned marinade he brought along. Really, you'd think for the money we paid him, Barati would have been a more tender cut."
This time around, the expedition did not have to eat its support staff, in part because no one was willing to be hired. But the pair also found the proper trails through the woods without a hitch and reached the trestle, one of the largest wooden structures of its kind in Canada.
"We take credit for discovering this," said a triumphant Smith, noting the existence of the Kinsol Trestle had been disputed in recent years. "Now it can be celebrated by the Canadian people as a proper part of their heritage." He noted the dozen or so tourists they met at the trestle's government-built viewing platform overlooking the Koksilah River over which the trestle towers agreed with his claim.
Despite not having to eat anyone, the expedition was gruelling with much danger and privation.
"I don't know how we made it," said a visibly moved Link. "The B&B in Shawnigan Lake with the DVDs and hot tub, the steak dinner at Steeples restaurant and the plummy pinot noir, the complete lack of rain, the friendly people on the trail, the waitress in Lake Cowichan -- sorry, I just can't talk about it right now."
Complete coverage of the expedition will be provided on the Discovery Channel this fall.

Science and Environment Saturday: Holy MEC! and the death of TechTV, pt. 2

Today's bLINKit: A piece on Dooney's Cafe by a self-described oldster about the travails of worshiping at the church of Mountain Equipment Co-op. As a MEC member, and when I ride my bike a moving billboard for mid-range MEC products (or when I'm outside on mountaintops, such as right -- note the only thing not MEC on me is the helmet ...), I too wondered about the offshore sweat shops churning out cheap jackets and backpacks. I'd also heard the low prices offered by MEC considerably annoy its competitors. One called their low-prices anti-capitalist. Maybe, or perhaps they're just using their profits in a different way, by both supporting environmental and outdoor projects and more importantly by making their products cheaper, since they don't have corporate shareholders or private family ownership to satisfy. It works as a business model, people get jobs out of it, investments are made, suppliers receive contracts, people buy like crazy and money gets moved around the economy. Sounds reasonably capitalist to me.

WMD: The G4 game channel takeover of TechTV formally occurred today, which is the way things go. The old TechTV web site, which was an excellent source of computer and tech advice and help, has been replaced by the ad-laden G4 site, which, in the words of one forum poster on a blog belonging to former TechTV host Leo Laporte, "really blows." That's the business world of broadcasting. I noticed the difference today when I was watching the The Screen Savers. The show makes frequent reference to its detailed and helpful web site for links, how-to articles, consumer advice and other features, all quite nicely laid out, but when I wanted to check something out today that was mentioned on the show, all that stuff was gone and replaced by a new, clunky G4 site for the show, with hardly anything on it and much that doesn't work yet. You used to get a site that looked more like this, in which the design is clearer and easier to navigate and meant to inform, not just throw ads your way. (Note that the links on this orphaned site no longer work.) The new channel might migrate the old information over, which dates back years and is extensive, but so far the transition is clumsy and a lot of folks out there are pissed.