August 2004 Archives

Unbelievably, North Dakota has a free internet kiosk at one of their rest areas, so here I am. I had kind of a rocky start to my adventures, a engine (or tanny) shudder, loss of cruise, and a persistent check engine light. It would seem however that most of these issues have worked themselves out. Obviously, since I have driven a 1000 miles or so. North Dakota can be somewhat boring, but they have now more than made up for it with high speed limits and a free internet kiosk.

Being on the open road is not without its amusements. I have appreciated the solitude, and the time to listen to the Republican National Convention speaches, Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, and a whole lot of music. I have an open bag of Dorritos on the seat next to me, Bart Simpson whipping around on my antenna mast, and few pop bottles around my feet. I have my cell phone (sometimes), so it is never like I have lost touch with the world.

I should be staying in Moosejaw, Saskachewan tonight, provided I can stay awake that long, and I don't have any engine problems. Still not really looking forward to school, but it is a change from working, and I appreciate that. I now have my bike and TV, and that should provide a welcome change in efficency at U of A. Well, at least the bike should. Not much can be said for the TV...

More tonight or tomorrow. TTFN

I finished work the other night (with a farewell party), so now I am merely relaxing before I leave for Canada and begin my 9 month sprint through classes, work, and church. Luckily my last days in the States have been punctuated by colossal failures of machine and resolve. Yet I remain committed and determined to finish what I have set out to do in the best fashion I am capable of.

As I approach my 20th anniversary of life, my car is in the shop undergoing major engine and coolant system repairs. I am extremely disappointed with the way that this turned out, but I remain realistic in outlook. There is little I can do at this point, except to repair my vehicle and move forward. I try to put little stock into material possessions, because they inevitably let me down.

Defying all earlier expectations, I have enjoyed my time spent in the US this summer, and do not cheerfully greet the end of it. I had hoped summer would last a trifle longer, but at last I come to its end. The only thing that I will appreciate having back is a decent internet connection.

Well, honestly, it wasn' t completely bad, but close. I had a fantastic weekend, but the following Monday I went to the credit union, and discovered that a red fluid, which I had thought at the time to be transmission fluid, boiling on my exhaust manifold. It wasn't. I took the car to the mechanics, all the while carefully watching my temperature guage. By the time I arrived at the garage, the car was smoking quite a bit. The transmission has shifted hard during this harrowing adventure, and given the boiling fluid, I figured that the smoking was related to that. Wrong.

It turns out that the water pump in my car had busted, prompting $400 in repairs. The transmission is getting a flush. Not only that but it turns out that the head may have gotten hot enough to crack. Needless to say, four days later, I am still not in my vehicle. I can only pray that my engine didn' t sustain massive amounts of damage. I can't afford the time or money.

The passports have yet to be replaced, and I am still working 3rd shifts at Meijer. My razor stayed in the car so the first time I have had a shave was today. I am exhuberant that this week is over. I am counting on next week to offer something better.

I took a journey to Niagara Falls this weekend, ignoring such issues as lack of my Canadian cell phone, and the lack of the guy who was supposed to accompany me. I took off alone then, that fateful Friday the 13th, in my freshly waxed car with little idea of what was in store for me...

Actually, despite the rough start, I had a wonderful time at the Falls, staying with my (second) cousins. He is located in St. Catherines, ON for a summer seminary assignment. I have not seen them for over ten years, so seeing them came somewhat as a shock. Of course, in their perspective they had not changed nearly as much as me, and they were probably right in that assessment. Their kids are now ten years older than when I saw them last. Their son was but an infant that I had held at the age he is now. We sat on the couch till 1 AM and ate nachos and discussed the previous ten years.

I spent the following day at Niagara Falls, the Journey Behind the Falls, and where else but the Casino Resort in town. Unsurprisingly, the former two turned out in the end to be better uses of my time and money. Sadly, when spending time at table games, you have by far the best chance in a casino, but nearly even odds do not indicate a win. The casino has just as likely a chance of winning, and so my two $10 bets were lost in the span of about 3 minutes. Not being one to blow more than a few of my increasingly rare bills of currency, I moved on shortly after getting fleeced.

“The Journey Behind the Falls” was interesting enough, and while I did get thoroughly soaked, I found the experience to be rather expensive given the amount of time that one typically spends down there. I would posit a theory that the average person spends about a $1 a minute for the privilege of getting close enough to the water to feel the spray.

The Falls themselves are magnificent to behold, the most surprise there being that the American Falls are best viewed from the Canadian side, oh, the irony. Other than having my passport stolen, it truly was a fantastic weekend. That night we went out to Port Dalhousie for ice cream and walked the pier out over Lake Ontario. You could see Hamilton and Toronto from the shores.

I could have spent days there, but unfortunately reality has a harsh buzzer, and they had to leave for New Hampshire for a family camp, and I had to return to work the following day. Southern Ontario did however make it onto a list of places I would love to return to.

The week has begun in a poor fashion, although I still have high hopes to recover it. Yesterday afternoon my sister got in a massive car accident merely a mile from our house. Of course, this had to happen the week that my vehicle is in the shop with a downed ignition. My week has begun with me working frantically to assure that I have some kind of ride to jury duty or work, whichever it turns out to be for tomorrow. On the upside, I am getting this site completely figured out, and I am planning some fun updates over the next few weeks before school begins again.

I am planning on driving out to St. Catharines, Ontario to see some second cousins of mine, and the rest of the summer should be consumed with working. Nothing else is really exciting right now. I am just trying to get my motorcycle endorsement and enough money to buy my books this fall. After that? It's anybody's guess.

It is so hard to believe how fast the summer has flown by. I have been playing with my second computer all summer, as my first is biding its time dismantled in Vernon, British Columbia. This one is fantastically illuminated by the UV cold cathode tube, and it has a reasonable amount of power with an AMD Athlon XP 2100+. Games are alright on it, but I have stuck mainly to surfing and business type applications. The motherboard is an ancient ECS K7S5A, which supports both SDRAM 133 and DDR 266.

I am hoping to finish out this summer with a bang as I take an introspective look on how to correct what I view as key flaws within my psyche -- namely, my overwhelming urge to procrastinate and near complete inability to focus on what I want to accomplish, a distinct lack of talent for solving complex chemical problems involving multiple equations, and total disorganization. Desiring to conquer these and other issues in my life, I have taken the approach of figuring out how to properly balance personal, work, and academic issues in what appears to be an extremely busy calendar for the upcoming year. Needless to say, progress has been minimal, but I am dedicated to completing these tasks long before I begin school again.