The Killers at the Saddledome and Visitors

As a bit of a change of pace, we booked tickets to go see The Killers this past Thursday. We were a bit worried that it would cut into trapping time, but we did it anyway. Over that week, it was especially stressful because we had to keep postponing our trapping due to the weather. There was still snow on the ground the night of the concert, so it all worked out anyway.

The three of us and Tracy headed out to Calgary in the afternoon. We found what looked to be a shifty Vietnamese place to eat for supper, but it actually turned out to be really good. I wanted to try one of their hot plate or hot pot meals, but we just didn’t have the time. After dinner, we found our way to a transit station where we could park our car for free and take the light-rail train a couple stops straight to the Saddledome.

The concert was opened, to our surprise, by Hot Hot Heat. I only knew a few songs off the radio and found those songs rather annoying, but they put on a great show. I think I’m going to rip the album from Nikhil, who really likes them and was very excited to be getting two awesome concerts for the price of one. They were a perfect sort of band to open for a band like The Killers since both bands have a lot of fun, high energy songs.

The Killers were in top form and played all the songs I wanted to hear. I was very excited to be seeing them since I wanted to go to the show in Montreal, but that was happening a few days after I had arrived here in Kananaskis. The Killers put on a great show, and I encourage all who like them even a bit to go and see them live. I really wished we had thought to book our tickets sooner, so that we could find ourselves closer to the action. The Saddledome feels much smaller than the Bell Centre, so we could still see very well. I would have loved to be on the floor. Although they are not my favourite band in the world, being on the floor would have allowed for a much greater atmosphere. I would have loved to be jumping up and down and dancing in the crowd. As it was, I only gave in and stood to dance during the encore despite the reluctance of my companions to do the same, but I would have preferred to be on my feet the entire time with everyone around me dancing.

Even though we went to Calgary on Thursday, we had to go again on Friday to get groceries and pick up Yeen Ten from the airport. Yeen Ten, for those of you who cannot keep track of all the people I talk about, is the post-doctoral student of our lab, and I have recently moved into her basement. Nikhil and I spent the majority of the day stuck in traffic, and I’m really starting to loathe trying to get anywhere in Calgary. I now understand why Crisia would so easily pass up a trip to Calgary.

When we came back, our trailer had doubled its number of occupants, as Yeen Ten would be joining us as well as two others from David Green’s lab at Concordia, Kari and Edith, both of whom I had met prior to leaving Concordia. Yeen Ten is only here until Wednesday; she is here to offer us advice and to check on us since Jack is too busy to do it himself (We also like to think it’s because he trusts us). She will be back at the end of July to do some of her own work. Kari is only here to show Edith around for about a week before they head off to Edmonton. Edith will be joining us again, I think, towards the end of June.

Updates: I had added pictures of the snow we’ve been getting this past week. It’s mostly gone now except for some areas in the mountains. If you want to see the pictures of the PG-13 snowman Tracy, Kurt, Nikhil, Crisia, and I made, please let me know. I have kept those pictures unlisted because they are not suitable for all viewers. There are also some pictures from the Killers concert. We took a video from Crisia’s camera that turned out quite well considering how far we were. We could actually see better from the camera than we could with our own eyes. The sound, however, is not all that great. I’ve got the video up with my pictures; it's not as good shrunk down. Since I couldn't figure out how to embed it in the blog, here’s the best video from youtube that I found from the concert.

Snow and Bears

Monday morning at 6am, we woke up to a snowfall and snow covering the ground. We actually had to brush the car off before we left. It’s usually warmer by our trailer than it is at the field sites, so this didn’t exactly bode well for our morning. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife on the road, and we drove through several areas that were buried in snow and where it was snowing and others areas that had no snow at all and where it was raining.

We dropped Crisia off at the bridge to Fortress Mountain where the snow is coming down in huge flakes. Our long-term site is actually a 30 minute uphill walk from the bridge, but the bridge is barred supposedly due to construction on the bridge. We are in the process of trying to get access over the bridge. The government turned us down, but we ran into the president and GM of the mountain randomly one day. We gave him our research documentation and our contact information. He says he needs to clear it with the government before letting us through, but we think he's the reason they won't let us through. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with the bridge since he and his partner drive over it twice a day in a giant SUV. Supposedly the government has deemed the ski hill he’s trying to reopen unsafe and until he puts enough money into it to make it safe, they’re making it so that the public can have no access to the road leading to the mountain. So until we hear from him regarding our access, Crisia has volunteered to run it, while Nikhil and I do the nearby long-term site at Grizzly Creek.

The snow was coming down hard as Nikhil and I drove to Grizzly. Suddenly out of the snow, a baby black bear galloped across the highway – directly towards our field site. Where there are baby bears, you know there is a mother bear somewhere that would not be very happy to see anything she would see as a threat to her young. Nikhil parked the car, and we debated what we should do. In our little fire and safety seminar held by the staff at the field station, we were told that if we know there is a bear, especially a mother bear, in the vicinity of our field site, we should leave the area and come back later. However, we had animals in our traps that would die if we left them there for too long. We came to the conclusion that we would proceed cautiously on the opposite side of the creek and let our animals go without taking the time to collect all the information we usually do.

This took a long time since everything was covered in snow and looked so different. It was hard to see our flags and, when we found them, we had a hard time locating the traps since they were covered in snow. We proceeded slowly and talked loudly, hoping to inform any bears of our presence so that they would go away. We got to the end of one of six trap lines, and we saw the mother bear directly across the creek. It was huge. Neither Nikhil nor I had ever seen a bear this close before, so we decided we would finish the second line, go get Crisia and come back later.

We got back to the bridge around 7:30. We tried to estimate how long it would take for Crisia to get back to the car. If she took any longer than this, we would go after her because something might have happened. The time we decided upon, 8:40, came and went, so, reluctantly, we went out to walk up the hill with the snow coming down hard directly into our faces. We would either have to rescue her from a sprained ankle, or we would arrive there just as she was finishing up. Fortunately for her and somewhat unfortunately for us since we had gotten soaked in the cold for no reason, it was the latter. We heard her shout, and I answered. Since she was shouting for the benefit of any potential bears in the area, she didn’t expect to be replied to, so apparently I scared her quite a bit. She was wet and frozen from falling several times and losing her way in the snow but was otherwise alright. It took her so long because, in addition to falling and getting lost, 23 out of 31 traps had animals in them. We were told that 10% trap success was considered a good day. We’ve been getting much more than 10% trap success, closer to 40%, at Fortress and Grizzly. So this was even much more than usual.

As we headed back to the car, we told her our story of the bear and asked her what we should have done and what we should do now. Crisia told us that her instinct would have been to do what we did, but she got in trouble for letting animals go last year. We decided to go back and check the rest of the traps together and hope that we don’t run into the bears.

At that point, there was even more snow to contend with. It took a lot of digging and kicking snow around to find any of the traps. Our traps are made out of metal, so even handling the traps to lock them resulted in frozen fingers. It was difficult enough to handle any animals when you couldn’t move your fingers from digging through snow and handling the trap. Anytime one of us hit a branch underneath a tree, piles of snow would fall on our heads and down our backs. On the positive side, out of both grids, we only found one trap death, and we didn’t encounter the bear. We had expected to find more dead animals with it being so cold.

By the time we got back, it was almost 11am. Crisia’s fingers, after soaking through her gloves at Fortress and working without them at Grizzly, were burning for two hours afterwards, and I think I’m now coming down with a cold.

We postponed setting traps out that night to wait for the snow to disappear since we were told that we don’t often get a lot of animals in the snow and if it’s too cold, we could lose some animals. The snow was mostly gone by Tuesday night, so we set traps again and had no problems in the morning. However, right now it is snowing again. I’m reluctant to postpone another day of trapping since it means less time for me to catch my own animals, but I may not have a choice. Oh well, that’s life in the field with the mountains and their unpredictable weather.

Updates: More velociraptor (a.k.a. bighorn sheep) pictures and pictures from the bridge to Fortress (taken this morning when it wasn’t snowing, as Nikhil and I were waiting for Crisia).

In news unrelated to anything I’m doing right now, here is a trailer for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass coming out December 7. If you haven’t read the books by Philip Pullman, I suggest you do so immediately. I’m making Eliott read them right now (Eliott, I hope you have started that book by now), and JJ has read them already.

Banff, Troll Falls, and Kananaskis Village

Crisia’s friend Meghan from Regina came to visit us over the weekend, so we had plenty to keep us occupied for a couple days. We took Saturday night off from setting traps to make plans to go to Banff for an evening out. We were at liberty to make such plans since Meghan was coming with her own car and could, therefore, drive us around. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but we do not have unlimited use of our vehicles and must record our kilometre usage and give in gas receipts. However, Meghan’s 4 hour drive turned into a 9 hour drive after receiving poor directions from a friend who neglected to tell her he couldn’t come until after she had been lost for 3 hours and later, her car suddenly stopped being able to go faster than 80. Since we had already made the plans, we took one of our cars into Banff anyway.

In Banff, we had dinner and drinks at the Rose and Crown pub. Nikhil, Crisia, Meghan, and I were joined by Kurt, another researcher at the field station, and his assistant Tracy. Dinner was very good. I was very excited to be having fish (maple salmon!) for the first time in a while. Our grocery budget would not allow for us to buy such expensive foods as sustenance.

We were soon joined by Crisia’s friend Justin from high school, who works in Banff and who was there with some friends, and some random guy from PEI who I think works on an oil rig. He just sat himself down between me and Tracy. He was incredibly high and spent a good amount of time talking to Tracy. Apparently he said some weird things about how he believed Germans were the greatest people ever and how she looked German because she was the only real blonde in the place. It was very loud in there, so I could only hear the people directly beside me only when they were yelling directly in my ear, so I didn’t hear everything he had to say.

This guy only addressed me once and that was to ask what animals I studied. I told him mice and voles. I think he thought I said wolves and asked me whether I sawed beavers in half to trap wolves. Crisia, Tracy, and I thought this was absolutely hilarious when we were discussing this a couple days later. Kurt ruined our fun a little by saying that he had a friend who studied wolves and they had a deal with beaver trappers. The beaver trappers would take the fur from the beavers and give the carcasses to the researchers who would saw them in half and stick them in freezers for use later to attract wolves. Maybe I should have studied wolves.

The pub had a live band that played some stuff that was very heavy on the bass. Music included Bob Marley, Sublime, and The Police. It was pretty good, but didn’t allow for a lot of conversation.

After the random guy disappeared, Kurt and Tracy went home and we waited until we were joined by someone Crisia and Meghan knew from a camp they both worked at in Kananaskis. He brought a few female coworkers from that camp who didn’t stick with us. After staying around for a bit, we went home. Since I’m not a big drinker, I offered to drive home. I had never driven this car before, which is a boat with little acceleration. This was a very interesting 45 minute drive on a highway with a speed limit of 110 km/h and no lights whatsoever in a car whose highbeams are as bright as a normal car’s headlights. That night was the latest we went to sleep in a really long time: 1am.

The next day, Crisia, Meghan, and I went for a short hike to Troll Falls. It’s about a half an hour there on a wide, fairly flat path. There is less of a path going to underneath the falls and above it. The path was rather muddy, and Meghan fell on the way down. She slid a bit and got her jeans and hands all muddy but was otherwise unscathed. Meghan risked taking her car out, and it would appear that the car only had problems going beyond 2^nd gear.

Afterwards, the three of us went for a lunch at a pub called Woody’s in Kananaskis Village. This is the closest pub to the field station, and we will apparently end up spending a lot of time there. Kananaskis Village is unfortunately not, as the name would have you believe, a village and is in fact a hotel complex. After lunch, we walked through some of the shops there. These shops are mainly souvenir shops.

There, we were hit on twice. Once by a group of pushy guys who upon being told that we were only browsing the shops suggested that we “browse together.” We didn’t take them up on that offer. The second time was by the clerk at one of the shops when I was buying some things. His method was a little less annoying and simply involved trying to keep us in conversation for as long as possible and suggesting many times that we come hang out at Woody’s over the course of the summer, where all the staff in Kananaskis go regularly, and he genuinely seemed to be a nice person and made it rather obvious that he was hitting on us by blushing at times.

We went back to the station after that and set traps in the evening before supper, after which we did end up going back to Woody’s for a round and some crab and spinach dip. Meghan left for home the next morning as we left to check the traps we had set the evening before (a morning which deserves a blog post in its own right) and emailed Crisia to say that she and the car got there in one piece later that day.

Updates: I have reorganized my photos a bit. Pictures of our trailer and other buildings at the field station were moved to Facilities at KFS. I’ve combined all my animal photos into the album Wildlife in Kananaskis and I have added some new ones including a couple of bighorn sheep and one of the behinds of some elk. We can’t seem to get a picture of them not running away. I have also updated my links to include Caitlin’s new blog Road to Zanzibar.

My Average Day

Kevin wants me to write more blog since he is bored with Mein Kampf, so here I am, writing more blog. In an earlier post, I had expressed the wish that people write in my comments anything they would like me to post about, as eventually, I will run out of ideas of new things to write if nothing I feel is of interest is happening. However, anyone reading this, may have a different idea of what can be called interesting. Although this was not in my comments, Eliott has expressed the wish to hear what my average day is like. I was going to wait until my weeks became a little more routine, but it may be a while until that happens.

So here is my average weekday:

6:00-6:30am: Wake up, change into field clothing, eat breakfast, brush my teeth

6:30-7:00am: Get field bags from the lab and drive to field site. At least twice a week, if we are driving on a particular stretch of road, we are required to perform a wildlife survey where we mark down how many kilometres we have travelled from the field station, the number of each animal, the species, and whether there are any roadkills when we see an animal. This data may eventually be used for someone’s Honours Thesis project. Typical animals we see include mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, bighorn sheep, ravens, and robins.

7:00-~9:30am: Walk through the grids we have set up at a particular field site. If it is one of the long-term grids, we check all traps along the grid, which vary between 30 and 45 usually, and when there are animals, check tag numbers, tag the deer mice or red-backed voles that are missing tags, check their sex and reproductive condition, write down all the information, and let them go. If it is a grid that we’ve set up for ourselves to bring mice back to the lab, we check the traps that have something and take back the animals we need. We lock the traps open when we are done checking them.

~9:30am-5:30pm: This is where we are a liberty to pretty much do what we want. Usually we spend at least some of this time doing work. Right now, what has fallen under the category of work for me includes taking an online animal care course (which I have now passed and finished) and figuring out the protocol for my own experiment. In the future, I will be taking care of my animals in my experiment, and researching and working on the proposal I am supposed to submit sometime this year to my committee. Although this is only really due, I think, at the end of the school year, it will be good for me to get it over with now as I am doing the field work since during the school year, I will be busy with my courses, TAing, and doing the lab work for my own experiment. Occasionally, we devote some time to getting traps ready if we need to set up new ones anywhere. During this time, we also do normal things such as shower, eat a second breakfast as well as a late lunch. Often we combine our meal times with T.V. time. Right now, we are finishing up the first season of Lost. When I feel like procrastinating, I also watch the T.V. shows I’ve been missing over the Internet, take naps, or think up blog posts. Obviously I haven’t been doing an awesome job at the latter, so you can imagine what I’ve really been doing.

5:30-~7:00pm: Drive out and set and bait the traps for the next morning. We use sunflower seeds and oats as bait.

~7:00-8:30pm: Make supper and eat it while watching Lost (this will change once we are done the second season of Lost).

8:30-10:00pm: Free time. I usually use this time to call Eliott, read a bit, and then get ready for bed.

So what does all this mean in terms of my average week? We have three long-term grids that we have to take care of, and two of them need to be done twice a week, while the other one only needs to be done once a week. If this was all we had to do and we did the first two on the same day, our week could be done by Wednesday morning. However, we all have our own projects, so it will not work this way for the most part. For my own project, I need 30 male mice, so I have to keep going out until I catch that many. I think Crisia needs 10 male mice once a month, while Nikhil needs a number random species at varying times. This could mean working every day of the week at some times or only until Wednesday later on when Nikhil and I have all that we need and Crisia has done her monthly quota.

Friday in Calgary

I had my first real weekend this past week. We had scheduled is so that Nikhil and I had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. Crisia has chosen to continue with her own personal project through the weekend. We had decided that since we needed groceries and had a few errands to run at the University of Calgary, we would head into Calgary to run our errands and then go see Spiderman 3 at the Imax. Nikhil and I would have to go by ourselves if Crisia was unable to finish up her work by 11am.

Luckily she was done before that since she didn’t catch any animals and we actually left here soon after 10am. Since we had some time to spare because we had only reserved parking at noon, we walked around a mall close to the university. We got ice cream and went to HMV. It seemed kind of pointless to look at and buy clothing we would be mostly unable to wear this summer since we spend 95% of our time in field clothes smelling like mouse poo.

Entering the city felt like we were coming out of the woods into civilization. We got to the university by noon and went to their Biostore, which it turns out is closed from 12-1pm. As soon as we got there, the guy locked the door and said, “We’re closed.” We went to get the mail for the field station but that room was locked as well. Unfortunately, our parking was only until 12:30, and the grocery store (we can only go to Superstores because they’re cheaper) and the Imax theatre were at least 20 minutes away. So much for saving on gas.

We decided to go for groceries anyway because there was no point in waiting around until 1 and our movie started at 2:30. Crisia needed to be back for 6pm, so we needed to be out of Calgary by 5pm. By the time we got through traffic and were done our groceries, it was 1:45. If we went back to the university and then came back, we would be late for the movie. We couldn’t miss the movie since we came all this way and Nikhil had been dying to see it since before it came out. Crisia decided to drop us off at the theatre and go back to the university herself since she was the one who needed syringes from the store and did not think she would die if she didn’t see this movie. She would hang out at the mall near the theatre to wait for us afterwards.

I was expecting the movie to be really crappy since I had spoken with Eliott about it earlier, as he had seen it the week before. He thought it was horrible. Since I went in with low expectations, I came out of the movie thinking it was not as bad as I had been lead to believe. Sure, the ending was cheesy, but I like my happy endings. It was definitely not as good as the first two, but I didn’t think it was terrible. I laughed until it hurt at emo-Spiderman, who danced when he walked. A lot of that was entirely unnecessary and not what I expected black-suit-Spiderman to be like given my knowledge from the cartoon. Nikhil, who had read reviews that had said it was good, came out of it very disappointed. Poor Nikhil.

Meanwhile, Crisia had gone back to the University of Calgary and paid for parking. She waited until her parking had expired, and no one came to open the Biostore. At least she was able to get the mail for the field station, but the mail she had been waiting for was not a part of it. Poor Crisia.

Afterwards, we abandoned Nikhil in the parking lot of the theatre so that he could meet with his relatives with whom he would be spending the weekend, while Crisia and I picked up some items to make our weekend more enjoyable and headed back into the woods. Hopefully our next foray into civilization will be longer and will result in more fun for us.

Emo-Spiderman!

Kananaskis Field Station

Some of you may be wondering what kind of facilities we have here. Details are readily available on the University of Calgary website for the field station. There are in fact two stations; we are located at the Barrier Lake one. Here is a map for you to check out:

Our trailer is the first one in the bottom right corner. There are three bedrooms; two of them have bunk beds, and the other one has two twin beds. We have a reasonably sized washroom. Water is always hot when you need it unless someone is doing dishes. Water pressure is variably but usually on the low side. Sometimes two flushes are not enough. Our kitchen has everything we need, and our living room is spacious with a couch and an arm chair and a book shelf with enough books to keep us entertained all summer. Crisia brought a small T.V., and we have a DVD player and a CD player. I brought Eliott’s Gamecube. For pictures, see my photos in the Drive to Alberta album.

The laboratory is where we spend most of our time when not in the field. There we keep everything needed to trap animals in the field, while we also have everything we need to keep animals in the lab. We are the only researchers here to have our own office. The entire building has a wireless network, but we can also plug in using an Ethernet cable. There is a computer lab for anyone else who doesn’t have a laptop. We can also print using these computers. Mail sent to any of us goes to the University of Calgary, where it is driven out here maybe once a week and put into our box. There is also a box for us to put any of our outgoing mail. The offices of the permanent staff of the field station are also located in this building. We can also buy souvenirs of the field station from the main office such as hoodies, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and mugs. Crisia and I have already bought mugs so that we can carry our coffee around. See pictures here.

Speaking of coffee, we can get free coffee and tea at the main lodge. Other researchers and sometimes visiting students stay in dorms there and eat there. We are one of the few researchers who stay outside of the lodge. At the lodge they have cooks year round. Unfortunately we don’t really get to take advantage of this, but we are on good terms with the head cook who sometimes brings us leftovers. I am told that when the field station gets busier, we often have get-togethers in the lodge at night. There is a picture of the lodge, as well as the duplexes that can be rented out, in my Ground squirrels album.

I’ve also take a couple pictures of the deer that we see everywhere around here. There is also a picture of Crisia with the awesome matching deer antlers that she found.

Training in Kananaskis

We three new grad students have had a pretty hectic several days learning how things are done here in Kananaskis. Jack, our supervisor, was here when we got here. He just left today and will be back in a few weeks to check on us. I will once again do this in lists since I find it easier to get my thoughts down this way, and it doesn’t leave any of my readers with too much to read.

Things we learned:

- How to operate, set, and lock live traps.

- Where to put them when trapping.

- How to identify, handle, weigh, sex, and ear tag deer mice and red-backed voles.

- How to tell if females are non-breeding, breeding, pregnant, and lactating.

- How to tell if males are scrotal or non-scrotal.

Things we REALLY learned:

- Males are often feistier than females and do not like it when you feel around for their testicles

- Red-backed voles are much less docile than deer mice. Expect to be bitten. Several times.

- Expect to be urinated and defecated upon. Continuously.

- Tagging is difficult to pick up. You have to get used to holding a squirming mouse in one hand and using a tag stapler in the other.

- Mice and voles do not like being given overlarge and unattractive earrings.

- Chipmunks do not like being stuck in traps.

- Weasels smell really bad.

Crisia has already done all of this before. So Nikhil and I have been lucky to have had someone here to tell us stories from previous summers and to show us what to do without us feeling stupid and inept. I think Nikhil and I are picking things up rather quickly. Today, we did tagging in the field rather than taking the animals back to the lab. We had a 43% trap success on the one long-term grid that we did; 10% is considered to be good. We also had no escapees, which is pretty much unheard of in the first couple weeks of doing this.

We are not constantly doing work here and have a lot of free time at least until we get our own projects set up, and we start thinking about our own research proposals.

Things we’ve been doing to keep ourselves occupied outside of being in the field:

- The Internet

- Reading

- Cooking

- Taking pictures of mountains and ground squirrels (see my pictures)

- Finding an excuse to drive out to Canmore (20 minutes away) or Banff (40 minutes away). Both of these are very touristy mountain towns with cute shops. We actually didn’t need an excuse for the last one since it was Jack’s idea. We will, however, need excuses in the future, so if you come to visit us here in Kananaskis (and we encourage guests since we have extra beds and like showing people what we do), please bring a car since we must log the kilometres on our vehicles and cannot constantly use them for our own pleasure.

Pictures uploaded

I have uploaded some of the pictures Crisia has taken. I have added some to the Drive to Alberta Album. The others are of our first few days here learning the ropes in Kananaskis.

Hello I'm in Alberta

Since the drive to Alberta was really long, I’ll summarize some things I found interesting in point form.

- Cruise control is awesome, but it is difficult to use it all the time if the acceleration on the car in front of you, in this case an ’89 Oldsmobile, isn’t very good.

- Nikhil is a Leafs fan (boo) and likes Radiohead and other bands that I like (yay). He is very sad to be missing the opening of Spiderman 3 in Imax. I told him we would go when we have an excuse to go into Calgary.

- Crisia is obsessed with the Pride and Prejudice BBC mini-series and really wants to see the Mists of Avalon miniseries after reading the book. She is also extremely happy that I brought the second season of Lost. I may also have someone who will go see plays with me in Stratford, as she hasn’t gone since she moved to London since she can’t find anyone to go with.

- It is bad to be sleepy when driving through a one-lane highway surrounded by construction with a passenger who is asleep.

- Nikhil and I, both city kids, saw our first tumbleweed and laughed really, really hard. Crisia saw us in her rear-view mirror. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture

- Some motels are nice enough to be hotels despite outward appearances. Some of them also have wireless Internet and continental breakfast. Unfortunately, my wireless card isn’t very good.

- Never drive through Illinois if you can help it. There is a toll on the highway every couple of miles, and they toll you to either get on or get off the highway, which can be a pain if you have to turn around. If you do drive through Illinois, carry lots of change on you.

- Bug goo comes off the windshield with great difficulty.

- Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat are a lot bigger than most of the cities in the States that we drove through with the exception of Chicago.

- It is such a relief to see a Tim Horton’s after driving most of two days in the U.S.

- You only ever really have to go to the bathroom when there is no gas station or even a house for miles and when it’s raining outside with no bushes along the side of the road.

- It was snowing in Calgary when we drove through it.

- Mountains can and do come out of nowhere, just like little rodents and birds on the highway.

I was going to give you a rundown of my last couple of days, but I think I will wait since this is already rather long. Let me know in the comments if there is anything specific you would like me to address in future posts. You can do this throughout the life of this blog, and I will do my best to do your inquiry justice.

Here is a video of a song that describes some of the feelings I have right now. It is of City & Colour's "Hello I'm in Delaware" from a concert in Calgary. I find it fitting.

So there goes my life
Passing by with every exit sign.
(...)
But I will see you again,
I will see you again,
A long time from now.

Drive to Kananaskis, Alberta

I'm rather tired, and I have some phone calls to make, so I'll make this post rather short. I left London, Ontario to drive to Kananaskis, Alberta on Tuesday morning. There were three of us driving to Alberta in two cars. I will introduce them to you now since you will probably be hearing a lot more about them all summer. Crisia and Nikhil are the other Masters students who will be starting in September. Crisia has already been out to Kananaskis as a field assistant, so she will be showing Nikhil and I the ropes. I think the three of us will get along great. We survived three days on the road together, and we haven't killed each other yet, so I think that's a good sign.

For those of you who are skeptical, yes, I did do some of the driving. It wasn't as long as the other two, but I will eventually be able to work my way up to that. I did about 8 hours with a break for lunch on one day and 4 hours this morning. We drove through the U.S. and up into Saskatchewan. We stayed two night in motels that were nice enough to be hotels, one in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the other in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. There isn't really much to say about the drive since there wasn't really much to see, but I did get to know my fellow Masters students a little more.

We arrived in Kananaskis around 6:30 today. We are living in a trailer. I know that sounds like we'll be living in very confined conditions, but the trailer is actually rather large. I have pictures of the drive starting from Western and ending at the trailer. I will eventually get around to commenting on some of them so that you know what they are. You will find them in Pictures linked on the right.

The facilities here appear to be rather nice. I will eventually get pictures of that. I have access to wireless internet and a computer lab in the lab building, and we will have our own office.

In Moose Jaw

Just letting you all know that I've made it through the drive through the U.S. I am now in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and will be in Kananaskis, Alberta by tomorrow night.

Update

Pictures from my move have been uploaded. To see them, see the link on the right.