Steppin' It Up A Notch

I just spent an amazing weekend in the mountains with my two best friends: Jesus and Andrew. Even though it was raining, we had an awesome time mountain biking. Another epic ride to add to my log, not that I'm really keeping one, it seems all our rides are epic in their own right. I am always amazed when I am out in God's creation, I love it out there and I am always drawn closer to Him. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera and the one on my phone doesn't produce very high quality pics. So you'll just have to use your imagination on this one.
Friday night, we camped in Didsbury and Jesus was so good to us. When we got there, it was raining lightly. We found a decent spot to set up our tent and it stopped raining. Pretty much as soon as it was set up, the rain started coming down again. On Saturday, we decided to go to Kananaskis Country instead of Drumheller. The rain was coming down real good in this part of Alberta. We were soaking wet before we even started riding. We didn't travel a long distance but it took a little while, partly because I'm out of shape, partly because it was wet. Even though the ride was short in distance it was good because we didn't break our bikes or ourselves. Afterwards, we went to Canmore and sat in Tim Horton's to warm up, read some books and talk about life. I finished reading a book that I have been reading called "The Shack", it is an excellent book, I definitely recommend it.
On Sunday, our ride began at the Canmore Nordic Centre. There are so many trails there, I don't know how many we were on. Some of the views are fantastic! There was one spot that I must tell about, it wasn't scary but after it happened it was like, 'Whoa! did that just happen?' So, we're riding down this trail and I can hear the sound of water running downstream. And sure enough we come to it and it is what it sounds like. Andrew gets to it first and crosses to the other side on foot to see if there's anything rideable on the other side. So I'm standing near the water's edge looking around, taking in the scenery. Andrew starts throwing some rocks into the water to make a little bridge to make it easier to get across. So I look around to see if there's anything on my side to throw in, next thing I know he's pushing over a dead tree from the other side towards me. I look up when I hear the crack and instantly raise my hands to cover my head as I realize the height of the dead tree. The tree falls quicker than my reflexes and is on the ground before my hands get any higher than my shoulders, and just barely grazing the side of my arm. Had it fallen six inches to the left, it would have hit me square on the top of the head. After a few seconds, I thought to myself: "Whoa! I just almost got hit by a falling tree!" Unfortunately after riding about 50 feet on the other side, the trail becomes unrideable so we have to turn around.
Normally, I'm more wary of the technically challenging parts of the ride because I know I'm not that good and rain always makes things more challenging but this time, I found myself more frustrated with the straight parts because they were the parts that were uphill and aerobically challenging. We got in a good 4-5 hours of riding and once again headed over to Tim Horton's afterwards.
Today was our lazy day, I know I was pretty beat from the ride yesterday and neither of us really slept all that well so we decided not to ride. We decided instead to drive. We drove up from Canmore towards Nordegg on Hwy 40 which ends up becoming one of them logging roads. After the paved road ended, we were on gravel and it reminded me of driving in Rwanda: very bumpy. We were pretty much the only ones driving on the road and the guys we passed going the other way were workers and I'm pretty sure they thought we were crazy especially since we had bikes on the back of the SUV. We saw a lot of deer and even though it was bumpy and slow going at times, some of the scenery was magnificent.
Spiritually, some of the things I'm taking away from this trip: a little bit better understanding of who God is, and re-learning how to let Him "BE" part of my everyday.

Posted by Phil at 9:30 PM 0 comments  

... to the tune of 54 mpg (4.36L/100km), booya! Take that Prius hybrid (supposedly the most fuel efficient car available: rated at 48mpg or 5.1L/100km). If I can pull off this kind of fuel efficiency with my regular driving style, just imagine what kind of numbers I can roll in if I actually tried this thing called hypermiling.

Anyways, I can't believe May is almost over, it's gone by way too fast. So I'm currently working at Totem Building Supplies while I continue my search for engineering work. Someone in marketing or whoever sets the price obviously failed grade 3 math. Why would anyone buy one of these:
(a 2 pack of BBQ lighters)



















when you can buy 3 of these for less?

Posted by Phil at 6:36 PM 0 comments  

Hello! Well it's springtime, and the proof: I killed my first mosquito of the year. So far, spring weather has been pretty funky, three weekends ago it was +20C, the following weekend we got a foot of snow, last weekend was pretty normal, now we're looking good.

Onto the craziness: I am known to transport things in my car that you think wouldn't fit but I do it anyways and my latest one is pretty crazy (if you don't know, I drive a 2 dr Geo Metro). Some things I have transported in this tiny vehicle in the past (and how I managed to do it): 10 ft long 2X4's without anything sticking out the hatch (had the front passenger seat taken out), a 12 ft long copper pipe (had part of it hanging out the window), a mattress that was used as a sled (on the roof of my car). Today I transported 2 7ft cedars in my car, both at the same time, I considered making 2 trips but really didn't feel like it.
So here's the first one in the front seat.









And here's the second one in the trunk.








So last weekend I was in a Chinese supermarket and I saw 2 things that I thought were kinda disgusting and since I am now the proud owner of a camera phone, I took pictures (I think I am the last person in the world to upgrade to a colour phone, that's right, 3 weeks ago my phone did not have colour)

Ok, so normally when you think of swiss rolls, you think of chocolate, or strawberry flavored, or lemon, or something sweet, anything but butter! I mean butter is salty or flavorless, and greasy. Who wants to eat a salty swiss roll? Not me. I'll keep my butter flavoring to popcorn thank you very much.


Yum! Doesn't that sound appetizing? Crab fat paste.













So gas prices are stupidly high and it's just gonna get worse. For all you Americans complaining about $3.65/gal (well that's what I saw it at last time I checked) at least you aren't hovering around $5/gal. I heard a rumor that we could be at $5.70/gal ($1.50/L) within 3 weeks, I really hope that doesn't happen, that would not be cool.

Posted by Phil at 11:06 PM 0 comments  

Jesus is the man!! One week ago, I experienced my 3rd hard drive failure in 4 years. I am thankful to Jesus for keeping the hard drive going for the last week; I've been able to recover about 80% of my stuff. The first time I had a hard drive failure, it was so bad that the computer would constantly lose contact with the hard drive. I think this failure I just experienced was worse but it has miraculously been going for an entire week and only disappeared off the grid twice. You know it's bad when the drive makes clicking noises and beeps when you're trying to access the files. I had issues with ownership of the files: Windows wouldn't let me access the files with the drive plugged into a different computer because it detected that the files belonged to the user on that dying drive. I was able to get around it by taking ownership one folder at a time and copying files out with the only useful thing that Microsoft has ever made: DOS. With what I've recovered, I've been able to get back to pretty much where I was one week ago. The biggest thing I was working on was the DVD of my mission trip to Rwanda. Although I was unable to recover the movie files I had created, I was able to remake them and I think my DVD is going to be even better now than before. Lesson learned: don't be lazy and think you can back stuff up later when you've gotten rid of stuff you don't want. Not having a computer to work with at home could very well be a blessing in disguise. I can now spend more time practicing my guitar playing and reading the bible.... now if only I didn't have a TV.

Posted by Phil at 5:10 PM 1 comments  

I took some pictures of the lunar eclipse that happened on Feb. 20, 2008.


This first shot is a look through the trees in the park across from my place in Calgary at 6:45.



The moon at 6:51.

Moon at 7:27.
Moon at 8:07.

Zoomed in view of previous.

Posted by Phil at 5:41 PM 0 comments  

Hmm, where have I seen it before? It seems familiar and yet foreign. Oh wait, it's snow! Yup, it's been a while since we last got any snow in Calgary.

Well time is just flying by, I can't believe it's almost been a month since I got back from Rwanda. The weekend after getting back, we went to Edmonton for Missionsfest. I got to see some of my friends who came by the eMi booth, which was nice. I went to some booths to see if there was anything that I might be able to get involved with in the near future. I would like to do a mission trip that's at least a couple months up to a year long. I think something with Interserve might be possible.

I've been trying to put together a movie of the trip to Rwanda and it's taking a while. Windows Movie Maker just doesn't cooperate, it crashes/freezes after what seems like every 5 things I do. Then it takes at least 5 mins to reload everything and if I forget to save after every step, I have to redo the last x-number of steps. I am almost done, just have some audio editing to do. Unfortunately, movie maker isn't helpful with this. I have to do it all with Nero Wave Editor. If I was able to get Adobe's Premiere working, this movie would so be done. I downloaded the trial version but it wouldn't import the audio of the videos I captured. I don't want to risk corrupting the captured video by trying to split the video files into smaller pieces (Premiere will import audio of the smaller video files but not the big ones, don't ask me why).

At the office, I've worked on bits of the project report, just waiting for more of it to come in. Last week, the staff went to Missionsfest in Toronto so Jason and I were left to run the office for a few days. This past Wednesday, I put together a new computer at the office, it wasn't until Friday morning that it was fully updated and all the software was installed. Never in my career in building computers (I've now got 3 under my belt) did I have as much trouble as this one. USB 2.0 didn't install properly and I racked my brain trying to figure out what went wrong. In the end I found out that the drivers that came with the motherboard tried to install USB 2.0 before XP's service pack 2 was installed and so it screwed it up. When all was said and done, there were 143 updates for Windows downloaded and installed. I also fixed the internet/network connection issues we were having.

Last Friday (7th) afternoon, Jason and I went to the zoo with Kevin's (civil engineer on staff at eMi) wife and kids. His two little girls are really adorable. It was funny with the younger one, Kaisa, she kept saying "I want to go home" then we were about to leave and she wanted to see the dinosaurs, so we went to the dinosaurs. Part way through she started whining about going home again. Afterwards, Jason had his cousin's ball game to watch but I went to play Lego with the kids, it was fun. We built some houses, cars and I built a very simple airplane.

The last couple days has been a hoot with the e-mail conversations bouncing around amongst the small group I joined. I won't go into the details but there was talk of dismemberment of body parts and holding of captives, it was all quite hilarious joking around.
Last night, we had an awesome bible study and had excellent discussions about what it means to follow Jesus and persecution. Afterwards, we had a very involved discussion regarding facebook that went almost an hour and a half.

I'll be posting some pictures soon, right now I'm going to the auto show.

Posted by Phil at 4:13 PM 0 comments  

As the title suggests, it's time for a rant. Two things in particular are bugging me right now.
Firstly, I was flipping through channels on TV today and saw on CNN what I thought was another campus shooting, thank God it wasn't. But it was still shocking to hear that the student body president at UNC was shot to death in what looks like a carjacking. My prayers go out to friends and family of Eve Carson, may you find comfort and peace in Jesus Christ. I know this is a rhetorical question but, what is wrong with this world? I've got a jumble of words in my head that I can't get straight right now...uh....I guess I'm extra sensitive after having gone to Rwanda; just seeing and being at some genocide memorials has had a profound effect on me, I can't put it into words, I went to WWII genocide memorials in Europe but they didn't affect me nearly as much as Rwanda has.
Second rant: I thought people who worked for the government needed to be smart, oh wait I forgot, only morons work for the government. Which reminds me of a quote I read the other day: "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. - Kurt Vonnegut" here's another good one from today: The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'. - Larry Hardiman
Anyways, morons at the National Student Loans Service Centre obviously don't know how to read. I'm trying to apply for Loan Relief and if this keeps up, my internship will be over before I get it. So I needed to send proof of my income for the month of December, so I sent copies of my pay stubs along with my application. They sent me a letter saying they couldn't process my application. This is what it said: "No proof of income or insufficient proof of income was provided... Actual amount of your income is required for (no supporting documentation required): Dec. 2007." Ok so you want proof of income but don't need supporting documentation, but the reason you can't process my application is because you don't have the supporting documentation. What?! So I called them and they said I didn't give them enough information, I asked what I didn't give, they said proof of income, I said I sent it with my application, they said they didn't have it. How do you go from me sending it in the same envelope, to them not having it, but they have my application form? So I send it again, this time by fax, clearly marking the dates and income amounts. This was 2 weeks ago; I was supposed to get a response within 5 days. So I called them yesterday and they said I still didn't give them enough information. I found out I was "supposed to" send proof of income for Dec. 29. I only got paid on the 1st and 15th, there is nothing for me to send for the 29th! It says on the pay stub "Pay period: Semi-monthly (24 pay periods per year)" READ WHAT I SENT YOU MORONS! ARGH!!!!

Posted by Phil at 10:28 PM 0 comments  

Well it's been just over a week since I got back from my short-term mission trip to Rwanda. We didn't have internet at our guest house, nor did I really have the time to write and post something when we did go to internet cafes. Now that I've had some time to process some of my experience, it's a good time to make a post, also, today is my birthday. I am now a quarter of a century old. I know that people are going to ask me "how does it feel to be 25?" and I think that it's the age when you know you're still young but you also know you're old (or at least getting there).
So, Rwanda.... there's so much to say and yet words will never be able to convey what I experienced. In terms of the project work, I got a little bit involved in almost every aspect: I helped with the surveying, putting together the model (it's like playing with Lego) and helped with the water test. I have to admit I was amazed at all that was accomplished in one week's time. In reality, there were only 4 days spent doing the work. There were also many times when I was just observing the other team members working and I wondered how they knew that whatever it was they were doing was going to work. But that's what you get with years of experience; you just know. The highlight of the trip for me was hearing Eddie's response after we gave him the presentation of our week's work. It was a special moment, that's all I can say. I am excited for him and his ministry. I would love to go back to help build it or to see it when it's fully built; Lord willing, I just might.
This trip is the best thing to happen to me since finding salvation in Jesus Christ. Even so, it was overwhelming at times. Visiting the genocide memorials was.... difficult, yet necessary given the scope of our project, and I'm glad we did see them. We were at one of the churches where people got massacred and afterwards I was dazed, I couldn't really think and the second church didn't really affect me much because I was still stunned from the first one. It's hard to explain but I was stuck in this rut, almost like a depressed state and some of the team saw it on my face when we went to get food. It took me 6 hours to get out of it, with some help from Jesus. I'm so glad I have Jesus to help me, unfortunately for a lot of Rwandans, they don't have that.
More to come on my experience, it's pretty late now.

Posted by Phil at 10:34 PM 2 comments  

Hooray! I've got pictures. I spent most of Saturday fixing up and uploading pictures to the internet. One thing I noticed while fixing the red-eye on the pictures from orientation was that Connie and Tammi almost never had red-eye problems (as well as myself but I think that's because I'm wearing glasses). Anyways here's the site where I posted some pics: http://philipchan.myphotoalbum.com/

So we're making our final preparations for our trip and here's some fun that we had with that, a couple of pics from the office:
This is my desk, complete with mosquito net and sign, practicing usage of the net for when we are in Rwanda haha :)

Posted by Phil at 10:25 AM 1 comments  

Brace yourselves for this one, what I'm about to say will probably shock you. It may have you thinking that I've gone crazy or have you crying "occult" or "false teaching". Anyways, I believe I received a vision from God this morning. It gets tricky because I can't remember all the details. Here's how it went: In this vision, I was reading Brad and Alisha's blog (link on the side under 'Crawford family') and no there's nothing on there that's part of what I read. Then there's two lines that stick out but they don't stick out while I'm reading them, because I just keep on reading; they stick out after I've woken up. So I finish reading and I wake up (I know I'm awake because I hear the furnace start up); immediately I can see those two lines and the first thing that goes through my mind is "This is from God" if you were in the room at that moment I could have read those lines to you. Unfortunately I can no longer remember what they are but it was something only God would say. This is one of those "I can't tell you how I know, I just do" moments. Here's where most of you will say "Aha! if you can't remember it, it can't be something from God." but let's play a little game of "What if..." What if I can't remember it because I'm not supposed to share what was said but only the experience? What if it was God showing me that He still speaks in this manner? What if God was just using this to prepare me for something bigger? Is it possible? I believe that with God, anything is possible. Some of you may be wondering where did this vision stuff come from, I mean it's not like I've been talking a lot about hearing from God. Well, I have been reading a book titled "Can you hear me?" by Brad Jersak. All of what I've read so far is biblically sound, don't believe me, go read it for yourself, I picked it up at Christian Publications. On Tuesday evening I read pages 53-60 where he talks about hearing/seeing, imagery and spiritual blindness. I like what he says on page 57 "Must we truly blindfold our spiritual eyes for fear that seeing anything at all is dangerous?" and "Should we not be far more alarmed that we don't see at all than by what we may see and test by God's Spirit, his Word, and his church?"

Last night, I watched "Sometimes in April" one of the movies about the genocide in Rwanda. It was a sad movie. I can't even put into words what I'm feeling. The main character watched as his friend was shot while he fought within himself because he was given a machete to kill his friend. The brother watched helplessly as his nephews were killed. The movie depicted Westerners with no compassion whatsoever, not even a drop. So much hurt, but from what I hear, they are healing. Praise God for that, and our project trips to Rwanda will help with that healing process. It's hard to believe we leave for Rwanda in less than 6 days.

Posted by Phil at 11:01 PM 2 comments  

So I took up swing dancing, first lesson was last night. It was fun. Mythbusters is cool, but it's much better to get out, meet new people and have some fun rather than sit in front of the TV. I'll try to get a picture next week or something.

Posted by Phil at 1:23 PM 1 comments  

Definitely been a while since I've experienced cold like this. -31C (-35F) and -42C (-41F) with windchill. I'm glad to have a garage to park my car in; but I'm told it was still -27C (-33F) in the garage this morning. Jason's car didn't start so he didn't make it to work today. Not really anything new but I just had to announce that I had the best lunch today: Vietnemese Sub! YUM! They are so tasty, if you've never tried it, you're missing out. It's very good value, but I think they cost less in Edmonton. There's a Vietnemese sub place directly across the street from the office, I can't believe I didn't see it until Friday of last week! Before coming to Calgary, I was hoping that there would be one close to the office and wouldn't you know, right across the street.

Posted by Phil at 10:35 PM 1 comments  

So this is my first full weekend in Calgary since arriving on the 6th. On a somewhat side note, I'm starting to get used to driving in Calgary, so that's good. There's not really a whole lot for me to do after getting off work, but that should change after this week. I've been watching Dukes of Hazzard DVD's on my computer and Mythbusters on TV.
Since it's my first full weekend here, today I got to check out a church. I was really hoping to be able to check out a couple of churches but all of them had their services at 11 so I couldn't go to an early service then go to a later service at a different church. I decided to go to South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church because it was relatively close to where I am living and when I checked out the website, I really liked the fact that they have a clear vision and an established four-year plan that focuses on community and discipleship.
So I went in fully expecting not to know anyone but it turns out that a guy I knew (Eric) from Engineering Christian Fellowship at the U of A goes there. It was a nice surprise. It was pretty random; I randomly pick a seat to sit in and I end up sitting beside the one person I know (well there was one guy between us). So I met about a dozen new people and we went for Dim Sum after church and had a good time of fellowship.
So that's pretty much what's new for now, I know I'll have plenty more news in the next few days so stay tuned.

Posted by Phil at 5:42 PM 1 comments  

So I spent all of last night trying to make my own blog template but it didn't work. Oh well, maybe some other time, after I learn more html/xml. I am self-learning AUTOCAD at the office; I found a copy of AUTOCAD for Dummies online which I am working through; after 1.5 days, I'm almost done reading 100 of 400 pages. Well, my lunch break is over, back to more AUTOCAD! :)

Posted by Phil at 12:34 PM 0 comments  

Hello! Welcome to my blog, this is cool. I tried to get "Step it up a notch" but it was already taken. For those who don't know, the phrase "Step it up a notch" has become my trademark phrase and only after 2 days. I'll tell the story some other time.

I have been relatively out of touch with the rest of the world since last Saturday, but this past week has been so much fun. Sat. Jan 12, I left Calgary (for Colorado Springs) at about 9 AM with Jason. The drive was relatively uneventful. One thing we saw that I thought was strange but cool was a wind farm. On one side of the road, the turbines were turning clockwise but on the other side of the road, the turbines were turning counter-clockwise. We stopped overnight in Buffalo, WY and the nice lady at the Super 8 motel gave us a discount for apparently no reason. Thank you Jesus! The next day we continued driving and arrived in Colorado Springs at about 3:30 PM where we met a bunch of really cool people.

The next 5 days were spent learning with and getting to know them. It is so cool how the commonality of being followers of Jesus Christ brings us so close so quickly. It was sad to have to part ways but I am so looking forward to seeing them again either sometime in this lifetime or in Heaven.

The drive back to Calgary was much more eventful. We decided to take a detour to see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. On the way, it was so windy that when we stopped at Chugwater, WY for gas, the wind just about took the passenger door off my car, well not quite but you get the idea; it was probably gusting to at least 100 kph (60 mph). Approaching Mt. Rushmore, it looked foggy but I knew that God would bless us with a clear view when we got there and He did, yay praise Jesus! Afterwards, the drive got quite a bit more interesting. We drove the I-90 back to Wyoming from Rapid City, SD. What was cool about this part was that my radio picked up a Christian radio station from Rapid City even though we were 100 miles away and my radio often can't even pick up stations less than 10 miles away because I broke the antenna back in December while transporting a mattress on the top of my car. It was snowing by then but nothing major by Canadian standards. At first, we were thinking of driving straight through the night but after some difficult driving, we decided against it. Now it's time to apply some culture training! After having arrived back in Alberta, I figured out why it was more difficult driving in the US even though I have driven in much worse weather conditions here. Here are some differences between driving in Canada (Alberta at least) and the US:

1. we noticed that at night, the interstates (main highway) are much less frequently used than the main highways in Alberta. For example, if you were to stand on the I-90 at 10PM you would probably have an average of one car passing every 2 minutes; if you stood on Hwy 2 at 10PM you would average one car every 30 secs or less. Less traffic = more snow accumulating on the road.

2a. on the side of the highway there are those reflective posts. In the US they are flat reflective diamonds on the top of the post, in Alberta they are completely cylindrical with the reflective tape wrapped around the top of the cylinder. On the flat diamonds, snow sticks to it and you can't see it anymore, on the cylinder, snow can't stick to the entire surface so you can still see it.

2b. again the reflective posts. In the US (at least in Montana), the posts are all along the side of the road, one every 15 feet or so. In Alberta, the posts only mark the road when there is a curve, when the road is straight, there are no posts.

Ok, so difference #1 is the major contributor to us ending up in the ditch somewhere around Wyola/Lodge Grass MT. I'm not sure about #2, you'll have to ask Jason since he was driving at the time. Anyways, we're driving along and a semi passes us on the left side kicking up so much snow that we can't see anything for a good 5 secs, enough time to put us in the ditch. We also came within less than 1 ft of taking out one of those reflective posts, or maybe I should say it came within 1 ft of taking out my mirror. We started clearing a path (there was a good foot of snow on the ground) to drive the car out when a guy from Calgary stops and helps pull us out. So I took over driving and had some difficulty because of difference #2. I'm used to only having reflective posts when there's a curve so I'm fully expecting the road to curve when I see the posts but it doesn't neccessarily happen. It doesn't really help that I only see some of the posts. So we make it to Billings, MT but not before one more event. A big thanks to God for keeping us safe. So I go to pass a semi not realizing that it's driving partway into my lane (remember we can't see the road that well). I'm about halfway past it when I roll over the rivets that let you know you're off the road, 1 second later the left side of the car is rolling on grass, to keep it from going further off road, I crank the steering wheel to the right and put my foot down harder on the gas to keep up my speed knowing that slowing down would likely mean going into the ditch again. All this time, we are still right beside the semi going 100 kph (60mph) so if my car had suddenly jumped back onto the road, we would have driven right into the side of the semi. With some pretty obvious divine intervention, I got the car back on the road and we ended up at a totally ghetto inn. It was inexpensive so we took it. It was so hot in the room we had to sleep with the window open. I looked at the thermostat that was in a locked box outside the room and it was set to 80F (26.6C)!!! We got breakfast at Denny's and went on our way again. I think Jason was getting a little nervous when we passed the little town of Belt just outside of Great Falls and I didn't stop for gas. We were pretty much running on empty, I ended up putting in 9.656 gal (36.5L) when we got to Great Falls. I didn't even know my tank could hold that much (I thought max capacity was 9.25gal/35L). Needless to say, we cut it really close but it definitely took some faith especially on my part, I knew that we were going to cut it close and I didn't bring a jerry can. The night before, Jason gassed up in Sheridan, WY and we made the 200km/120mile trek to Billings, MT. I figured that another ~220miles/350km wouldn't be a problem since we were averaging 45mpg. What I didn't take into account was how windy it would be since that put us down 5mpg the day before. I also put us into a snow bank, which I thought would be better than the rear end of a van. We were in some small town and I have to admit that I was following too close so it's partially my fault, there was a semi completely blocking one side of a two way street and the van in front of us decided to stop at the last possible second. Getting stuck twice (once today and the one last night) and having a heavy head wind ate up more gas than we should have had to. I know that the gas gauge in my car is pretty inaccurate but I watched as the gas needle came down more and more. It was in the red zone and we still had a good 60-70 miles to go and I was sure that there was no way we had more than 1 gal left in the tank, well that's what I thought anyways. So, if some crazy driving conditions and almost running out of gas wasn't enough fun, when we got to the border, they decided to search my car. The lady who searched it was really nice though. It was kind of funny because we had to empty our pockets and she looked through our wallets. She looked at everything in Jason's wallet but only glanced at what was in mine.

So, that was our eventful drive back to Calgary. Wow, that was long, now I have to go to bed. Good night, keep it real and if the opportunity arises, step it up a notch.

Posted by Phil at 8:14 PM 1 comments