A firey winter carnival

Alright. Here is the deal. You are going to take this towel. Yeah, I know it’s just a hand towel, but if we soak it in water it should work. If anything lights on fire, just yell at me the body part – like Jacob, ass! Or Jacob, arm! If I don’t put it out – you put it out. You got that?

While everyone else was preparing to drink their brain out at winter carnival, I was spotting, Jacob, a fire spinner for the opening ceremonies. Jacob, Hannah and I decided to start a circus club, of which includes fire arts and Jacob was already a pro. So, I figured what the heck, I’ll spot. Low and behold, despite the below freezing temps, he went on to take off his shoes and perform barefoot. I think I’ll keep my shoes on in the middle of winter at least until I can figure out the whole spinning part! 

Sushi Time!!

End of the day? Need a break? How about a sushi dinner? That is what I call a good time. I picked up rice, wasabi, fish and hilarity ensued. 

Loggersports!

Who knew making wood smaller could be so intense. And fun. This week I was convinced to compete at a woodsman meet. Not that I needed a lot of convincing. I have wanted to go for quite some time, just never made a team practice. Not only did I make a practice this week, but I went to the competition in Canada. In Canada where loggersports are varsity, and the teams practice twice a day. The events are:

Pole climb – climbing a pole with spikes on your feet and a rope around the pole

Axe throw – think darts for burly people

Fire build – fastest to make water take a phase change

Splitting – getting the dot on all four pieces

Vertical chop – mimicking cutting down a tree

Horizontal chop – getting a log off the road

Crosscut  and bowsaw – quick quick!

Log decking – the most ridiculous event ever. Rolling logs up a ramp without the use of your hands.

Pulping – horseshoes with wood

In between events, the Macdonald Campus of Mcgill University served us gourmet five star food as part of their nutrition curriculum. Why didn’t I do this sport before?!

uh oh

This is bad. I am enjoying coding. There is nothing better than having the compiler accept your program, or running it for the first time. Wait, that sounded bad. Let me go back. Engs 20 is the required engineering computer coding class. The teacher is a boss and each assignment is like a puzzle. You get to build a computer program out of words like int, printf, amongst others. The you get to format the output. Then you try to get your computer top accept it. Most of the time it will reject the code because a semicolon is missing. You then debug and try again until it works and you get output like this:

engs20-1:~/engs20/workspace$ lol

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Getting better

I started the lathe and took a breath. Then I turned it off and re-adjusted my rest. Then I turned it back on. I couldn’t remember. Did it spin that fast the time I turned a bowl? Is my guage sharp? Oh boy. I guess its now or never. I took a cut, keeping the bevel flat and patiently getting through the wood. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. So I took another cut, then another. In little time at all, I had the log round and was working on the shape. Two hours after I got to the shop, I had the outside cut and put away in shavings.

The next day I finished the inside, keeping the tool sharp every four cuts, and within another two hours had a pretty light bowl. Success! Ain’t she purty!

Stors hill

One run. A sketchy poma. What else could you want out of a local ski hill? A ton of thoroughly entertaining people of course! It was all at Stors. As you can see, especially with a ski jump, I might be spending some quality time there.