The 27th year...

My birthday has come and gone and time for reflection on the year as a whole is in order. I certainly didn't accomplish all the school goals, but that has just been side-tracked for the next couple of years, it'll get done when it gets done and not a moment sooner. A few goals accomplished:

1. Quit smoking for the last time, now that I'm 27, and have good things to look forward to, and it's Day 7 again, I'd like to say to people in the future that I quite smoking when I was 26 period.

2. I had my first piece of writing published, the Cabinda genocide article in the Ubyssey campus paper, the full article should come out in in May's issue of the The Knoll.

3. Kept active with the VOC and kept in generally good health all year. Increased climbing skill to sport leading 5.6s and 5.7s consistently, when before I could only top-rope a 5.9 at the max, that level is up to 5.10a. Learned Traditional and multi-pitch ascent. Got in more days climbing this schoolyear than last year and still have atleast 2 days planned at Squish before work starts.

4. Completed the third and fourth chapters of my novel. Both need editing, and the third needs to be pared down (God damn Dan Brown), but I expect to have Ariat's chapter written by the end of my 3rd season in the bush.
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The birthday was a blast, for many reasons but mainly because I got to see my bro, Gareth, who's on the Canadian National Ski Team, for the weekend (he's pictured at right doing Zoolander's Blue Steel I think). My sister and friend Reuben and my Aunt Lois (Back from New Zealand) were also there and we all had dinner at Milestones on the Victoria wharf. I drove back home in the rain and Gareth and I hit the sack in the studio. The poor guy's totally exhausted from all his training but I insisted on saturday that we go summit Mount Tzhouhalem.

We took dad's truck and ended up wandering around below the actual hiking trail looking for the correct path up the rock. We back-tracked for a while until we found a small trail leading up the rock.

It definately wasn't the trail I took with Blaire, it was smaller and ran up the cliffs and outcroppings towards the first summit.

We ran part of it and after every sramble there was a nice viewpoint of the cowichan valley. My brother had his digital camera and took the photos.

We found, and I was able to capture a garter snake on the way up. It released its defensive stink on my fingers but it was worth a picture or two before I set it free.

We eventually found our way to the cross at the first summit. There we rejoined the main trail and headed down after a little rest.

We jogged the bottom of the trail to make time. I was just glad to spend some quality time with my little bro.

He's off at the airport now with my folks. JB and Reuben left early this morning. I'll upload the rest of Gareth's pictures to this blog.


Then I'm going to try to finish off one of my papers. The next post will be a bunch of my photos from recent hikes.