new mother nature taking over

just a quick note to assure all of you concerned weather channel watchers that kylie and i are safe and dry. there was some serious flooding in chilliwack and hope during the week but our house is safe. our little creek did rise to the highest level we have ever seen it, but there is still a good 4 feet to go before it bursts its banks and washes away that egalitarian edifice that is our townhouse complex.

i took niko for a walk by the fraser river when it was still pouring rain. it was a fun time all snug and dry in my raingear and niko loved splashing through the copious puddles. the fraser was swollen and frothy brown and there was a continual flow of uprooted trees and assorted flotsam (but suprisingly little jetsam) sweeping downstream to the ocean.

to escape the torrential downpours (and to attend arie and leanna's wedding) kylie and niko and i piled into the 4runner to cross the rockies. we had just put a new set of all terrain tires on and i was excited to try them out. we hit snow on the coquihalla and they performed admirably. we made great time through the mountains, stopping in golden for some coffee and samosas at jita's cafe and the mohawk respectively (believe it or not, the mohawk has the best home made samosas in town - sitting in the drinks cooler between the powerade and diet coke). there was the odd patch of light snow or rain but the weather held out until lake louise. it began to snow quite hard going through banff and canmore but the real blizzard didnt hit until we had already turned off hwy 1 and started down to bragg creek. we started passing cars in the ditch and early on the 22X we came upon an accident between a semi and a snowplow. traffic was backed up and everyone was stopped, but i realized that if we stopped with them we would assuredly be spending the night in the truck awaiting rescue crews from the city in the morning. with that in mind we struck out past the accident and led a spontaneous convoy of SUVs and subarus (all 2 wheel drives were out of luck) down the 22X to hwy 2. it took us over an hour and a half to traverse the radius of calgary breaking new tracks in 8 inches to a foot of snow in near white out conditions but we made it! thank you to pro comp for your elliptical siping and to toyota for your 4wd on the fly!

anyways, the weather finally cleared up around high river and we finished the journey uneventfully. arie had a great time last night playing rock and roll bingo in a dress and i won 5 beer bucks with a blackout (thank you troggs for your distinctive intro to wild thing).

finally, returning to lethbridge has reminded me of something i found while cleaning out our garage last month. here is a video our friend darren made in university over seven years ago. its a preview for a fistpounding y2k conspiracy movie. lethbridge folk may see some familiar faces and places. everyone made fun of the doomsday prophets after we arrived at the year 2000 sans chaos, but maybe someone had your back?