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The Greenwater Report for March 1, 2004 |
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fog |
February 29th, 2004: Nice and warm again today, a bit above freezing for most of the day. We left on Friday for Kelvington, where Bryan and Laurie picked us up to go to Swan River for the Hockey banquet and awards. It was trying to snow a bit when we left, but not amounting to anything. Bryan said Highway #49 was snow-packed from the junction with #35, but east of Kelvington it was clear almost to Preeceville. It started to snow heavier, and seemed to be a bit of fog as well. When we pulled out of Norquay, visibility was almost nil. We considered staying there, but decided to try another mile or so to see if it improved, which it did. I’m glad Bryan was driving, because it was no fun. | ||||||
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grandson |
 We got there in time for a hockey game. As I may have mentioned in the past, our grandson, Dave Grimson, plays defence for the Swan Valley Stampeders. He earned a point at that game that broke the team’s scoring record for a defenceman. In the league, he is about three points behind the top scoring defenceman. Last year, we watched him get an award for top rookie; this year, he was the top defenceman. Do you think we’re not proud? |
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fighting |
That was a rough game. The opposition, from Dauphin, is apparently out of the playoffs and wanting to settle a few scores. A couple of times, the referees let a couple of kids go at it, then jumped them as soon as one hit the ice. I don’t know how many penalty minutes there were, but lots. Bryan showed us a videotape of the all-star game we were supposed to go to a couple of weeks ago - it was a very fast game, with just one penalty in the whole game! Fighting isn’t necessary, and I’m sure if a player was taken out of the game for fighting, there would be no fights. But would anyone go to see the games? I believe fighting is encouraged to get more spectators out. | ||||||
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horses |
A friend of mine from my Kelliher days, Marvin Vestby, lives near Swan River with his wife, Joan. He is retired, and they spend their time breeding and training racehorses. Mostly pacers and trotters, with the odd saddle racer thrown in. He speaks of standard-bred and thoroughbred, and I keep forgetting which is which. He let one of his horses out of the barn, and it and the dog went racing up and down the driveway. I believe the horse was actually playing with the dog. It seemed to like plowing through the knee-deep snow around the house, too. When Marvin was ready to put the horse back into the barn, it played coy, and when we left he was still trying to catch it. Marvin follows a race circuit with his horses; I asked him to send me a schedule when they are made up, so we can take some in. | ||||||
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snow |
We had some time to kill on Saturday, so Bryan and I went to the Snowcross races (top of page) while the girls went shopping. That was a lot of fun! The course is made of huge snow piles; the biggest is right in front of the grandstand, and there are two smaller piles right after it. The snowmobiles leave the ground at the top of the big hill, and if the driver is skilled, it will come down on the far side of the next hill, quite smoothly. If they err and hit the next hill on the near side, they really get a bump! One of the pros was great to watch - he could miss the first little hill completely and land on the far side of the second one every time. He also moved up from about fourth place to win the heat. We estimated he was flying about a hundred feet, and must have been a good fifteen feet above the ground at the peak of his arc. Bryan tells me they can control their attitude in the air with the throttle. There were a couple of minor upsets while we were there, but no collisions. | ||||||
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rare |
I don’t often get to submit a report on the 29th of February. Any of you mathematicians know how often it happens? Let’s see…it only happens once in four years, but I only submit it on a Sunday, so Sunday’s turn would come along once in twenty-eight years. Is that right? Does it really matter? | ||||||
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hard |
Ever since we got our first computer sixteen years ago, we are constantly reminded to back it up! And I do, on a more or less regular basis. At least three times that I can remember during that time, I have had a hard drive crash, and each time I lost a fair bit of data. Life goes on, of course, but it’s a pain trying to rebuild data from whatever scraps of paper are left behind. It happened to me again last week. A little bit of magnetic medium flakes off or something, and the hard drive is toast. I made a list of the files I would really not want to have to rebuild, and sent it to Keith to see if he can scrape them out of the old hard drive. You know, there just weren’t very many! A few photos I took during the past couple of weeks that weren’t very good anyway, my diary (which I can’t rebuild) and my household accounting data. I guess I’m not as important as I thought I was! | ||||||
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Doreen & Jerry Crawford Box 100, Chelan, SK S0E 0N0 (306) 278-3423 http://www.greenwaterreport.com/ |
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