back in 5....months, that is

Tomorrow I pedal off into the sun.... I'll be gone for about 5 months, biking through the US, Mexico, and South America. And I think an adventure like that is worthy of its own blog, so porbicicleta.blogspot.com is where I'll be posting from now on. And it'll be even more exciting than this blog (and you thought that wasn't possible!).

:)

a bartlett family adventure

on my last weekend home with the family, mom and dad treated me to 2 days of quadding in the mountains around fort st. john. it was tons of fun, with amazing views and loads of wildlife...

coolest mom in the world....really, she's cool. honest. even in pink goggles.

dad enjoying the view of williston lake surrounded by fall colors.
and we never go anywhere without maverick.
mom and mav hiking up for a better look at the mountains near sikhanni.
a herd of caribou cruising through the alpine - one of three herds we saw that day.

nerdy, i know

those who know me know that i'm a 'little notebook' nerd. i carry my little notebook with me everywhere to write down important and, more often, not-so-important things in so i don't forget them. i'm also a 'great quote' nerd - result being that i have a lot of good quotes in my nerdy little notebook. since it's time for a new notebook, i was going through the old one and thought i'd share some of the best quotes i read/heard this year:

"I looked at myself...as a monkey given my life to play with, prodding it, trying to stretch it into different shapes, dropping it and picking it up again, suspecting always that it must have some use and meaning, tantalized and frustrated by it but always unable to make sense of it."
- Ted Simon (in one of the best adventure/travel books ever, Jupiter's Travels)

"But I will walk the road, however hard it is, because only on the road can you see that yesterday lies behind you and tomorrow waits on the path ahead. The road measures life in distance. The further you travel, the longer you live."
- Ma Jian (a chinese political activist/journalist that walked across his country to learn more about life in it, and wrote about it in his book, Red Dust)

"Heaven's not a place where you go when you die, it's a moment in life when you actually feel alive"
- Spill Canvas (overall, not a great band, but damn, that's a good line)

lac-la-stupid

i'm officially nominating lac-la-hache for the stupidest town in bc award. it calls itself the 'longest town in the cariboo'. Bah. all that means is that they put the stupid welcome to signs 20km on either side of town so that they can lower the speed limit to 80kph through 40km of cow pastures. stupid stupid long town.

that's the rant, now on to happier things...

i drove back home today from a wonderful (albeit a little rainy) 10 days in the kootenays - the beautiful, mountainous, full-of-outoodrsy-people kootenays that helped me recover from my summer in the john and that have convinced me that that is where i want to live when i finally decide to actually live somewhere. i did some hiking and biking and visiting (big thanks to Chris and Rob for putting me up [putting up with me?] for so long!) and relaxing and overall had a great little vacation.

that wonderful time of the year again

Every time the seasons change, I find myself saying, "oh yay! ______ is here. _____ is my favorite season!" Now I think I've figured it out - I just love it when the seasons change.

Here's why I'm excited about fall:

~ because i knit about 5 new toques this summer and it's finally cold enough to wear them
~ i pulled my down vest out of the closet today and went for a long walk with it on
~ it's cool enough for cords
~ i love when the ground starts to freeze and the grass is all crunchy and dry when you walk on it
~ i love unexpected early snow falls and waking up to everything white
~ and, of course, i love school supplies. even though i don't have any reason to buy them this year, i love looking and touching and half-wishing that i had a reason to buy a nice new note-book.

meet the rhinos

the death of a fire season

First, I could see my breath.

Then there was frost on the ground.Next, it started to snow. And it kept on snowing until the entire fire was white.
So we lit a new one to keep warm. And that was the end of fire season 2006. For me anyway. Some hardcores are still at it for another 2 weeks but I'm headed somewhere sunny :)

chim-chimeny, chim-chimeny, chim chim cher-oo

Tonight, we got back from 3 days and 2 nights on a fire and headed straight to the grocery store to get some more fire food. We went right from work, without stopping to shower or even taking the time to wash our faces, so I was more or less black from head to toe and smelt like a campfire. Nah, a forest fire.

I was standing alone near the check-out when a friendly looking lady with an irish accent asked me if I had been to a wedding.

Huh?

When I told her no, she said, "Oh, well some people believe that it is lucky to have a chimney-sweep kiss the bride at their wedding."

Maybe that's a business I ought to look into.

the 11-hour shopping marathon

2 very tired fire girls
14 hours of driving
11 hours of shopping
3500 dollars spent

3 very productive, albeit not very relaxing, days off.

wonderful williston

What we expected to be a weekend fire turned into our biggest money-maker of the season. We just got back from 10-days on a fire near Williston Lake. The first 5 days felt a little rough since we were camping and waking up to frosty tents and frozen hoses. The last half couldn't have been cushier - we were put up in a beautiful heli-ski lodge where we enjoyed comfy beds with down duvets and were fed gourmet dinners every night.

Alex watching the action from the lakeshore.


Who's that sexy fire chick ?!

Johnny lighting it up....trust me, this actually does help put the fire out.

Another frosty morning - every day it got harder to get out of our sleeping bags.

The most beautiful pump site in the world.

and the fires burn on....

We're working on a fire near Hudson Hope right now - far enough in the middle of nowhere that we have to camp out. We just spent 3 nights, then they let us come back to town for one night for some more food and a shower and then we're back out for another three. You wouldn't believe how disgustingly dirty you get after four days on a fire without a shower! At least the hours are good (we're up over 1000 converted hours this season already!), and the setting is beautiful (in a steep, lush canyon), but man is it starting to get cold this late in the season! Yesterday morning, we all woke up to a thick layer of frost covering our gear. Brrr. Hard to believe that fires can burn in weather like that!

RIP: Rouge

"He was a good fish"

Rouge was one of 4 fish that the guys bought on our way through Kamloops a couple weeks ago coming home from the fire in Golden. The first one quickly met it's demise when Cole ate it - whole and alive - in the restaurant where we had lunch. Rouge, shown here, was the next to go. He died of apparent overconsumption after going 3 days with no food at all. The other 2, miraculously, are still going strong.

why does biking make my bum hurt so much?

I took my new wheels out for their first long ride - 100km along the Hudson Hope Road. The first half was beautiful. It was sunny and the riding seemed easy. Then I turned around and realized why the riding was so easy: I had a 20kph tail wind. Which meant that on the ride back, I had a 20kph headwind. Ugg. Still, it felt awesome to be out getting some exercise and training for my big bike trip this winter. I just have to do that, oh, 50 more times and I'll be in Mexico :)

20 raging rhinos and a kiddie pool full of pilsner (cont'd)

20 raging rhinos and a kiddie pool full of pilsner

rhinos in the rockies

We just got home from an amazing 2 week fire near Golden, BC. The fire was at 6000 feet, right in the rockies so the terrain was steep and the views were spectacular. Pretty much my ideal fire, in fact, made all the better by the fact that we stayed in a beautiful log lodge and ate in restaurants every day.

Still, it's nice to finally have some time off to relax and catch up on sleep and chores. Ok, and to party it up a bit. I'm sure there will be some great pics after our big rookie party slash year-ender tomorrow night.

Dustin and Alex hard at work


A burnt-out bear den...or so we figured


Working and enjoying the view of Kinbasket lake.


"Oh, please make the helicopter stop!" A hungover Jodie on the long flight to work at 7am.


Just another day at the office - John reading the morning paper on the way to work.


Cooling off after a long hot day on the fire.

the pump site

I can't believe I've been in FSJ for 6 years and I've always complained that there's no lake to swim in. Of course there is. We call it the pump site. It ain't pretty, but it's got a dock and water and, hey, those are the most important components of the whole beach experience, right?

oh those rhinos (cont'd)

After a few days off, we were back to work, this time about an hour up the Alaska Highway in Wonowon. The fire was pretty dead and we got a bit of rain, but it was still overtime and, like always, we managed to have a lot of fun:

Dustin and I worked our asses off one day trying to lay as much hose as we possibly could. Jake loaded us up with as much as we figured we could carry and off we went down the muddy cat guard. Dustin had 12 hoses (= 180 lbs) and I had 10 (= 150 lbs). We made it the full 800 meters to where we needed to go, but not without a lot of yelling and pushing each other on, in part to keep it fun, but also because it was excruciatingly painful


There is nothing more fun on a fire than to have a quad to rip around on, especially when it's really muddy out. I had a blast wowing the guys with how fast I ride and how I could get through the mud pits that they all got stuck in ;)


The only crappy thing about the fire was all the rain we got...rhinos hate the rain!

oh those rhinos

The past three weeks have been insanely busy with fires all around northeastern BC.

First, we were sent out to Tumbler Ridge, where we worked on three different fires, one of which actually caused the town to be evacuated for a few days. The fire we spent the most time on was out the Wapiti Forest Service Road and in the mountains where I had done some hiking before.

We got a great smoke and flame show right from the camp where we were staying. The first night that we were sent out to the fire, we actually thought that we were helping to tear down the camp because they were worried about it burning over. It was a little unsettling to hear that we were actually going to stay and sleep in it instead!


This was the most impressive fire behavior that we've seen in a long time...which got us all pretty excited.


The perfect helipad - on a sandbar in the beautifully clear and cold Wapiti River.


You don't see this every day - a helicopter had a mechanical problem when it was flying right over where we were working and got his bucket caught in a tree and had to drop it. The pilot was pretty excited when he found out that we had found it and cut it down because I guess these things cost over $20,000. If this ever happens again, I think we'll sell it on eBay.

colored chalk

I was out for coffee with Jodie the other night (ok, it was actually cheesecake, not coffee) and I she asked me what my plans were for the next few years and whether I'd be firefighting again next summer.

I told her that I hadn't really thought about my plans since Rob and I broke up, and that for now, I just look at my future and see a big blank chalk board.

She said, "yeah, just like an empty chalk board with a whole lot of brightly colored chalk at the bottom, just waiting for you to write on it".

I think that sounds pretty exciting.

a quick catch up on stuff too complicated to blog about

Ok, so I've been avoiding my blog. There's just no funny way to write about bad news and so I've just not been writing at all. Well, it's finally time to get on with blogging so here's the quick and dirty about what's gone on over the past month:

~Rob and I broke up. Yup, big news after 5 years.
~I'm slowly shifting from sadness to excitement at the prospect of being on my own and making my own decisions for the next few years. On that note, I've found a travel buddy for the winter - Jodie, the rookie on our crew this year. We get along really well and she's super adventurous and into the biking idea. More on that later
~We've been incredibly busy with fires for the past 3 weeks - they say that the situation has been more complex than in Kelowna in 2003 with all the interface fires that we've had. It's slowed down a bit now, but we're still on fires around FSJ.

That was easy enough. And now that it's over with, we return to our regualarly scheduled blogging.

finally, the dry spell is over!

Well, the dry spell is actually in full swing, but we actually got a fire today! Five weeks to the day since my last fire. That's one of the longest dry spells I've ever experienced....here's hoping the fires keep popping up so we get to work the long weekend :)

i heart slacklining

Walking the line

Doubles slacklining - this only lasts about 5 seconds, but we're working on it.

Ooo, getting fancy

And getting rejected

Beavis getting up from sitting

Brett - the latest slacker