August 2010 Archives

I spent this past weekend at a wedding in Kelowna (pinned above), where I enjoyed the company of seldom seen friends, and spent inordinately large sums of money on leisurely pursuits. In short, it was a fantastic weekend. The weather was sunny, if a bit cool, and the company was great. Over the years, many friends have moved on, gotten married, and followed their dreams to other cities and continents. It’s starting to be the case that the only time I see many old friends are at weddings. There’s not too many of those left, only one of that sizeable group has not married, and as nearly everyone reminds me lately, myself.

Now I am busy trying to figure out a way to get out on one weekend camping trip before the season closes. Septembers in the Great White North are unpredictable and fickle in nature, so planning any sort of activity that relies on the temperament of Mother Nature is always a dangerous endeavour. Nevertheless, circumstances have conspired against me this summer, and if I am do some camping, it will have to be in September. This weekend looks promising, and it’s a long weekend too. And hey, camping in the snow just provides a greater excuse for a bonfire.

It’s odd to walk out of the door on a fine summer morning and gag, because it feels like you’ve fallen into an ashtray. I have never seen anything quite like it, and it’s bizarre because of how fast normal disturbances blow through the area. Edmonton is, after all, on the prairies and normally has unobstructed wind flow. It’s now starting to get better, but at one point it was strong enough to  bring on a decent headache. It’s hard to fathom the size of a fire that could push that much smoke hundreds of kilometres into another province (BC, which is having the worst forest fires in a decade). The chief medical officer actually had to issue a health advisory due to the high amount of particular matter in the air.

I am trying to figure out how best to enjoy the waning weeks of the summer, and I still really want to squeeze in a camping trip. I suppose I have at least one smashing way to end the summer — a trip to the Okanagan in BC. Get a chance to swim in the lakes, do some hiking, and see some old friends. Probably can’t ask for much more than that. I just hope there isn’t a fire.

I have never actually attended a music festival, much less the Edmonton Folk Festival, which is somewhat surprising, as they’re relatively popular in Alberta, and I love music. Nevertheless, I think that I started on a great note. The festival had some great performances, and I put a lot of hours in there. I roughly figure between 25 – 26 hours of solid music for the 4-day weekend event, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. It was also a chance to sample some good food and hang out with friends.

I made what is called a “tarp run” on Saturday morning. The festival is all first-come first-served for the purposes of seating, and because they don’t wish to disturb the neighbourhood with all-night line-ups, they do a lottery. You arrive at 6:45 AM and they pass out a band name and a number once you’ve show a ticket or wristband for the day. At 7:30, they randomly pick a band, and that’s who gets to go in and place their tarps first, and so on and so forth. The obvious way to get a good seat is to show up with twenty people, and try to collect that many band names with no duplicates. We did that, and we had 17 names on Saturday morning, which gave the group 1^st,3^rd,4^th,5^th and 6^th choices. I showed up for the name, and then I took the bus back to my condo to go back to bed. It did get us a good location, however, and I really enjoyed it later that night when we listened to Brandi Carlile.