shoutouts to global warming

whoa...i better get this load off my mind before it melts away like a smog induced mirage. well, we have finally returned to big city. yes, big city has many sushi places. speaking of which i never got a call back from teh sushi restaurant i applied at in nanaimo, or any other sushi restaurant i applied at in my life for that matter. hmm. i wonder why.
thats about all i can think of that i like about big city at the moment.
let me take you on a trip into the past. me and antonio spent three uneventful days on the greyhound bus getting to toronto, but just getting on the bus was an effort in itself. we departed from sooke by bus to get to the swartz bay ferry on the morning of the 19th cuz it was raining like a mofo, and i was just not in the mood to bust my knee sockets for 100km, then sit in my own slop of sweatiness on the bus ride to toronto. ferry. bus to airport. bike to station. all took way longer than expected (sumpin like 6.5 hours). our goal of catching the 6:45 bus out of vancouver, while still realizable had one minor flaw. that being that the courier office needed to ship our bikes back home closed at 5pm. we arrived 20 minutes late. fortunately the bus was "full" anyway (whatever that means) so we were stranded. its so lovely having wonderful friends you can count on to offer their floor to you, and Matthew Carol and Elissa Smith are some of such friends. very wonderful and cuddly friends who sheltered us from the lurking dangers of the big wet west city for the night. next day despite pre-planning we ended up running around sweating anyway while trying to get our bikes packed and onto the bus along with lots of trail mix for the journey ahead. whew. relax. ahhh.
sooke was also a wicked good time spent with the lovely leah and her lovely parents, eating lovely salmon freshly fished, taking some lovely leisurely bike rides, picking lotsa lovely berries, and just enjoying ourselves. can your parents adopt me leah?
the look on her face was priceless when we pulled up to her house at 9pm (after pseudo-stalking her address from teh phone book). it was my first day riding over 100km, just. from ganges on saltspring island, along the lochside trail, to victoria and the galloping goose to sooke. the goose is one kickass trail. flatter than roadkill.
the same cannot be said for saltpsing island, further enforcing the hilly reputation of the gulf islands. getting there was an easy 50km ride from cedar, the crew being the usual 2 suspects accompanied by our brutha in bikerly brawn, brian williams. we camped out at really cool farm (http://www.ecoreality.org) habitated by equally cooool hosts Jan and Carol. We went on a tour of the place to learn about all teh coooool projects that were in teh works such as the cooooooool veggie oil run van and the biodiesel production area. thats what got my toes a-tingling. for the rest of the two days we got put to work real good like good farmer boys diggin', hoin' and tractorin' up a storm and were provided with lots of yummy food and a wonderful atmosphere to live in exchange.
well...thats about it. hope the next batch of interns have as much fun as we did. until next time, here's john and antonio sayin'...keep your stick on the ice...ka-boom-boom-psshhh ka-boom-boom-psshhh...ineverplayicehockeyanymorecuztheresnowinter...ka-boom-boom-psshhh, oh yaaaaa...globalwarming!!!

tales of the homeless homeboys

interns log: blogdate...umm...i have no clue. but time is running out. it seems like so long ago that i updated since it has been a time filled with noteworthy events.

shortly after moving out to cedar we decided it as time for a much belated trip to lasqueti island. it was about an 80km ride from cedar to where we eventually camped that night, which was a nice refresher from our oteshing days. we made a stop at a wild patch of black berries by the side of the road and ate as much as we could and then filled up our tupperwares too. a stop at rathrevor beach was the perfect picnic spot, complimented with pb&h on a tarp like the nice couple that we are, then we made it to french creek to catch the last ferry of the day to lasqueti.

upon our arrival we realized that we had very little water, and nowhere to stay for the night. the only remedy to the first problem was to buy small 750ml bottles because there was no free drinkable water to be found, and the remedy to the second was found by biking around the island until we found an abandoned house with a nice view of the sunset on a bay.

the next morning we checked out the saturday market and bought some yummy things to tide us over until the fireman's fundraiser picnic in the afternoon where much yummy food was had. we met darren and lisa (from the bike generator workshop) and her sister there, then antonio smoked some unmentionables for the first time and became so incapacitated that he could not move and we had to hide and camp in the yard where the picnic was held.

the next day we just lounged around on the beach for a while then biked to squitty bay and camped there for the night all the while eating lots of pb&h augmented with some canned fishies. we just caught the 1pm ferry back to the big island but not before meeting and chatting with this cool guy named robert at the free store who had wrapped his bike frame in birch bark. it was BC day (i dunno what this day is celebrating exactly...maybe the greatness of BC?!) so everything was closed, including the sushi place we were dreaming about hitting up for the past few days. we just pigged out on black berries again instead. gotta love free roadside food.

here's antonio taking over...

So then we came back to Nanaimo with empty PB&H containers, sticky sweat-layered skin, and extremely stinky clothes. We were all ready to sit around the next day and do nothing, but we got a hold of this awesome natural builder, Adam Perry, and we repacked and another adventure was on the way.

We had to get from Nanaimo to Victoria where we would randezvous with Adam - so we left our bikes behind for the first time in a gazillion years, stuck out our thumbs, and hitch-hiked for the first time on the island. it was awesome - we never thought two homeless-looking guys would get a ride, but i guess we're just that cool! =D (The trick is to raise your thumb up high and confidently, and to smile the shit out of your face).

Then we got a drive to Sooke via Adam, and got to work on a really awesome natural building. We spent two days smearing horse poop on the walls, and by the end of it all, our wrists and elbows were about to disintegrate. But we got a lot done and our plaster looked kick-ass! We expected to work for nothing at all, but being the always-fortunate punks that we are - we were fed yummie foodies, had super cute energetic twins to hang out with, and at the end (since we did such a wicked job), were paid! Grooovy baby...

After chilling after a long day's work, talking about macho manly things, and drinking our nice, cold, V8's - we decided that our job there was done. We paid a short visit to Adam's friend in Victoria, laided on some hammocks, drank some tea, and had a good 'ol time. With our happy-tanks full and back muscles relaxed, we headed home in the quiet of the night under a sky full of...RAINCLOUDS! F*CK!!!

now we've got another weekend cobbing workshop and a trip to saltspring island to learn about biodiesel to look forward to before heading back east. whew!

the loaves and fishes were made plentiful

After a week of putting all of our effort into becoming experts on producing power with a
bike, it all finally came to fruition. By thursday afternoon we had a working DC electricity producing, bicycle powered generator...which was none too soon because we had a workshop to give on the topic less than 48 hours after that. Thanks to the ingenuity provided by myself, antonio and sally (our eletrician guru friend), we came up with a an awesome setup which will hopefully soon be decribed with images. Unfortunately, some time between when the generator was working and the morning of the workshop, our power generating source (a car alternator) died on us, leaving only an AC generating model which sally had thrown together at the last minute. AC is the type of current we use mostly in our daily lives, but the disadvantage is that it cannot be stored directly in a battery, unless converted to DC for storage and then back into AC for usage when coming from the battery (conversion results in power loss and is very inefficient, and also involves added cost for inverters), so it must be used right away when it is produced. So while this AC model did manage to produce enough to power a light bulb (in a rather strobe-like fashion) it is not really the feasible solution we are looking to implement in a sustainable lifestyle. Me and Antonio are going to try and perfect our model upon our return to Toronto in just a few weeks.
The workshop went quite well despite this minor glitch, with about 20 people coming out to Gabriola Island on a beautifully sunny day. The next day we set up shop at the Mount Benson festival and allowed people to ride the bike to produce their own power to turn on the light bulb, and we talked about Earthmasters and other power producing stuff. This generator model had its own share of problems too, but hey, not bad for a first try.
Now we are pretty much permanently moved out to the building site in Cedar (with all our
gear and uber party tent) where we will be for the duration of our time in BC. Its a nice change of pace from the somewhat sketchy confines of south nanaimo. just trees and quiet out here. me and antonio even went for a ride into ladysmith today, as it is now our closest city centre, to check out the scene, and got there just in time to catch the 6pm showing of Transformers for $5 each in a cozy theatre about the size of a large living room. Now we're stuffed with more yummy food provided by our host to top off yet another yummy day. no thorns.