stubsadventures

As I’ve gotten older, I find myself being more introverted. I find I say a lot less than I used to, use far fewer words in the run of a day. Because of that, I find I notice more, see more, hear more. Most of my friends will tell you that I’m the most observant person they’ve ever met. I think it’s cool…

This is where my love of taking pictures comes in. I am always trying to take a picture of those moments when people are their most candid. I take very few pictures of two people standing with their arms around each other looking at the camera, in fact when I’m taking your picture, you’ll often hear me tell you to look away. To me, those are the real moments. My adventures often overwhelm me, I want them to be well-rounded, so I am often exposing myself to the sad histories of locations, it helps put places in perspective. You can go to the most beautiful tropical island in the world that looks postcard perfect but for me to truly appreciate the beauty you have to understand the history of the land and the people who live there.

My pictures always tell a better story about my adventures than I do. They are filled with those candid moments and rare and remote landscapes I so often find myself in. They are a laugh, they are a real glimpse into that moment, no words required.

My pictures are not altered in anyway. All of these pictures I took myself. I wanted a place where I could look through some of my favorite pictures of all time, and this is now that place. That’s why, this blog is for me. You might as well look too while you’re here. Some of them are pretty badass.

Stubs.

When you have stubs and your old friends find out you’re playing hockey, you get BBMs like this:

                              “Now for the most important question how do u manage to wrap

                                your thumbs around the shaft of the stick or do u use a knee

                                hockey stick?”

True story. Quote from one of my oldest friends, he knows who he is.

Stubs.

Poncho’s dream was to lay eyes on a polar bear before they were extinct. There were several ways to go about this trip. Our way? Rent a minivan, drive to the northern most part of Manitoba you can drive to (Gillam) and take the train 12 hours north to Churchill. Along the way, we stopped and hiked in Grassy River provincial park. The confusing trails, lack of a map made it a  long 22km trip, the highlight of which was Manitoba’s largest waterfall.

We took a gamble when we went. We went right before the season and took the chance of it being too early and not seeing a bear at all. The train, normally without an empty seat during bear season, was empty practically which made for meeting some amazing new friends. When we arrived in the town, we had rented an SUV. The lady showed up with a 15 passenger van. When we inquired about the location of the SUV, she said a hunter had taken it and hadn’t come back. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned and I got a mental image of a big old polar bear with a satisfied look on his face rubbing his belly on leaning against our SUV.

The adventure began immediately. We started the tour and one of our first stops was a crashed airplane named Miss Piggy, a cargo ship that had missed the runway and no one ever bothered to move it. Driving around the barren terrain of the north, you never quite ever knew when you were going to see a bear, or if one was just on the other side of the hill you were peeing behind. Not seeing a bear for the first two days was discouraging especially after talking to people who had been there for months and never seen one. Not seeing a bear was not an option for us! We had intended on camping while we were there. When we arrived and started to talk to people, we quickly found out we would be arrested because it was so dangerous, so we quickly abandoned that plan. Had we been there during the peak season, we would have been out of luck but because we had gone early, we were able to get a hotel in town.

We set out to hike to the Ithaca, an Italian cargo ship that had run aground in 1960. When the tide is out on the bay, you can hike right up to it. On our way down the remote road to the ship, it happened. Poncho spotted a bear. He slowly came out behind a pile of rocks and for the next fifteen minutes we watched him make his way over to us. To our amazement, he was coming straight for us. It is a surreal moment. You’re always telling yourself, he’ll turn, he won’t come the whole way, anything to not get your hopes up but it happened. He made his way to the road we were on and started to head straight for us. The pictures tell the story better than I can. When he got about 20ft away, we drove off. You aren’t supposed to let the bears have interaction, that’s when they get used to people and stop being afraid. When we drove away, he looked up as if to ask where we were going! Then he took off running into the tundra.

Later, we saw a momma and a baby bear while out on a Tundra buggy tour. Near the end of the tour, we even got the opportunity to drive the buggy! Churchill with its 26km of roads, one town center that held all of its services in a building the size of my high school, polar bear horn and jail will always have a piece of my heart. I was lucky enough to see some of the worlds most beautiful creatures and once again be enchanted with the northern region of this country.

Stubs.

Caper Hagell. She is almost her own legend and isn’t even four years old. She has been to almost every province in Canada (except PEI), she has been on airplanes, trains, ferries, stayed in five star hotels, seen both coasts of Canada by car, come face to face with a polar bear, has come nose to nose with a coyote, kayaked, completed a three day canoe trip and been stolen and missing from me for three days. Yep, you read that right!

After mistrusting the wrong person, Caper was stolen from mine and Poncho’s home and was missing and feared lost forever. Although the three days were filled with fear, anxiety and deep sadness at the same time they were so filled with love. It is in those times that you realize what you are made of but more importantly you realize the depth and feeling of those you have surrounded yourself with through the course of your life. Without telling the very long, very indepth story, it’s one of those good news stories where she was back in my arms and some good life lessons were learned.

True to my life, even the first time I saw Caper was an adventure! I purchased Caper from someone in southern Manitoba and making her mine included a solo road trip to pick her up. I had never bought anything from the internet and was convinced that I had likely just handed my hard earned money to some scam artist. Even pulling into the parking lot of the coffee shop, I didn’t really believe that I would leave there with my puppy. When I first laid eyes on her, it was the first time I ever experienced true love, lol. She was soaked to the bone (it was pouring outside) and full of barf (car sick) and shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. We drove away and I couldn’t help but pull over so that I had time to cuddle my new stinky bundle of joy!

Caper makes me laugh everyday. She sleeps as much as a cat and has probably broken more hearts than I have. She has had an epic, several year battle ongoing with my sister’s cat. Over the years, she’s been stalked and bitch slapped more than once but keeps going back to her cousin Ida, that’s the true love of family!

Check out the pictures of Ida (cat cousin) and Caper, and some pics of my little puggle from over the years.

Stubs.

In 2008, I did a 7000km road trip up through the Yukon and crossed and camped north of the Arctic Circle. Best rental car deal of the century. The north captures you and overwhelms you in a way that can’t be matched. It’s one thing to feel tiny in some of the largest cities in the world and it’s another altogether to feel tiny in the north. Desolate takes on a whole new meaning. The trip with Poncho gave me a new appreciation for parts of Canada that are much less travelled. We spent three days on The Dempster Highway (a 500+km gravel highway that goes through the north part of the Yukon and into the NWT). The whole three days, we saw three other people, an older couple who were also camping and a semi heading south. The sun hardly set during the trip, so we made the best of all of the hours in the day by doing things like crazy hikes in grizzly territory over a random glacier, attempting to raft down the Yukon River in a Canadian Tire special raft, which almost ended our lives after going through a culvert (which was one of the most exhilarating 45 seconds of my life until the raft spilled us).  We explored semi ghost towns, hot springs and did the famous “sour toe cocktail” drink in Dawson City. Real human toe in a shot of whiskey!

Back to the north I go but not in Canada this time. Iceland has been on my list for a long time and in June, I’ll be hitting the ground running. Some of my greatest adventures to date are in the works right now and this is taking it to a whole new level, even for me. I will be crossing the Arctic Circle for the second time and have a good chance of seeing puffins again! I have some dives planned that take you to a place on earth where the american and european tectonic plates meet and you can dive under the shelves and touch both plates at the same time. New certificate for the wall!

Luckily the flights depart from Halifax so the whole thing couldn’t be more perfect if I tried.

Stubs.

So many things sound like a good idea at first. You can really psych yourself up to believe that things are the greatest idea you’ve had in a long idea. Then, the dust settles and you shake your head and realize you’ve done it again. I have done it again.

My company is having a hockey game in two weeks, Site vs. Calgary. No girls from site were going to play this year, so I felt I had to step up. Women working in my industry isn’t as old school as it used to be but we are still seriously outnumbered. A girl HAD to play in this game and I felt like I could step up. This despite the fact that I have only ever played in one other game before and haven’t put on a pair of skates in seven years. Meh, no big deal right?

The only game I have ever played in was when my brother was playing in atom division. Their team tore it up that year, they won everything there was to win. Their coach recruited the moms on the team for a game but told the players that they were playing the top team from NB. While they were out on the ice getting ready for the game of their lives, the moms (and me and my best friend) were in the dressing room trying to figure out how to put on gear and deciding if we needed to wear a cup. When it was time to hit the ice, one of the moms lead us out with the bag pipes. Watching the boys stop one at a time and hearing them say, “dude, that’s your mom” over and over again was priceless. The game was full of laughs and cheating. My mom took a puck out of her pants, shot it into the net and they counted it, her name was even in the paper.

Now, I find myself playing against full-grown men for the company pride of taking back to site our replica Lord Stanley. To do this, I have bought brand new skates (terrible idea) and a helmet and have been skating on our outdoor rink at work, which means skates between -20c and the coldest night being about -35c. My feet get sore after ten minutes and I could barely remember which way I shot. Ok, so rough start to my training program.

Two weeks. I now have two weeks to make my site and just as important my family proud! I can smile my way through just about anything and if nothing else, this game will be full of bumps, bruises, trash talk that would make most people blush and lots of lots of smiles.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can… damn I hope that really works.

Stubs.

Just got back from six days in Toronto.

Got to see my bff Poncho again and we hit up the town with some of my family and a few friends but not without a few bumps along the way. After we got all girlified and called a cab, we went to the wrong bar, not knowing the difference. Who knew there could be more than one bar called Shoeless Joe’s! After having a few drinks, Poncho out of the blue asks if we’re at the right place only to find out, we were about 20 minutes in the wrong direction. No big deal. We went outside to grab a cab and turns out it was more of a big deal than we thought. So, we decided that we would start to walk to stay warm, I failed to mention it was stupid cold. So, we started walking until cars started to slide all over the road. The hilly road was a sheet of ice and none of the cars could stop. It was terrifying! Poncho was freaking out (as always). Oh, I forgot to mention the part where we were crossing the road and I fell in the middle of it. Not a slip, complete arms flailing, legs doing the cartoon deal and then finally coming to a stop in the middle of the ice road. I had no choice other than to mention it or else Poncho would have commented on it anyway. I know this because for the rest of the night when we ran into someone, it was the first thing she told them. Then, everyone laughed at me. All. Night. Long.

The distance between where I stay outside of Toronto and where I visit my cousin is a little less than an hour. In that drive, you see people make decisions with their vehicles that they should be put in jail for. How someone doesn’t die every five minutes on the 403 highway is something I will never understand! People drive speeds like their in one of those race deals, people cut each other off like it’s funny and no one follows the proper spacing for vehicles… until it snows. Then, people all find their inner senior citizen and no one goes over 40km, it’s the weirdest thing. I also saw a car that is actually smaller than a Smart Car. I have no idea what kind it was but it looked like an overgrown dinky. It took up about 1/8 of a parking spot. Obviously this is more crazy to me as I drive a Suburban which is routinely filled to the brim. I got this awesome mental imagine of the burb just driving up and over that thing, crushing it in one pass. Man, if only….

Other highlight from the trip was going to a Leafs/Pens game at the ACC which was the first time I had been there. Me and the cousin had awesome seats and we made it on the jumbotron thing! We were those people though who acted like they were too cool to notice that they were even on there in the first place. It was either that, or take the opportunity to make an obscene gesture. I like to think I took the high road.

Stubs