on the road....

believe it or not, i am actually posting this from the very top of whistler mountain. it is 2183 meters above sea level, and is the second largest ski mountain in north america--dwarfed only by it's next door neighbor, blackcomb mountain. the average snowfall here is around 10 METERS!!! unbelievable!!! if you go HERE, you can see the large chalet that i was posting from. it is supposed to be a "LIVE" webcam, but after many attempts at getting myself captured by it, i discovered that it only refreshes every 15 minutes or so. i even took a singer from quebec city with me, so that we could both be in the picture that i was intending to post here, but alas it didn't happen....(you can see her page by going to pascalepicard.com. she is a brilliant singer in both french AND english, and i have pasted a video of hers below..... you heard it here first - this girl is going to be HUGE. i saw a family of bears doing some pre-hibernation grazing today, but unfortunately i didn't get a chance to get a decent photo of them, because i had trouble with my camera, and the gondola was moving fairly quickly.... i am running around the country a lot lately, and have been taking some pretty cool photos, and i hope to post them in a big pile when i get a chance. keep checking back with me to see what's going on!!!!

summer's approach

. last night, i was out playing basketball with a friend, and we were amazed by the amount of bugs flying up to the huge lights shining down on the courts. all kinds of moths and mayflies and junebugs. i found myself marveling over the fact that if they are insects of the night, then why would they be drawn to such a bright object, which will almost definitely cause them to perish? then i thought of the song by jethro tull, where the frontman, (ian anderson), sings : "The leaded window opened To move the dancing candle flame And the first moths of summer Suicidal came." i looked down on the ground and saw this absolutely STUNNING moth, just fluttering around : the photo just doesn't really do it any justice, since the lens isn't meant to do close-up photography, or even high resolution images. it is, after all, just a phone. i found it rather strange that after all the time i have spent outside in the evenings of the summer, that i have NEVER managed to see anything even remotely close to this beautiful insect. off on another part of the court, i found another interesting moth, that looked like a small version of the hummingbird moth, but didn't manage to take any pictures. and just to fill my narcissism quota for this blog, here is a picture of the moth compared to my hand, in order to give you some perspective on size. i measured the distance afterwards, and the wingspan on this gorgeous moth is around 7 cm. edit : i got the measurements wrong. i was a stupid idiot, and measured the wrong span on my hand. while looking at the picture of my hand. i don't think i can get any more stupid than that. i have corrected above as soon as i have managed to identify what kind of moth it is, i will post it right here : edit : 06.07.07 one of the faithful readers of this tiny blog, (Honker), managed to find out what kind of moth i happened to see. it turns out it is the Hyalophora Cecropia well done, Honker. feel free to stop by the comments section, and thank him for helping solve this mystery!!!

the white stuff

we had a green xmas this past year, and it was a bit of a disappointment, because it just doesn't seem like xmas without snow. and on new year's eve, we had terribly heavy rain, and for the first three weeks of the year, it appeared as though we weren't going to get much snow before spring arrived. in fact, it seemed as though we wouldn't get any snow at all. well, we got hit with a cold snap. and i mean REALLY cold. minus 25 celcius cold. and then came the snow this past weekend. and it seems as though it is not going to stop. from monday night to tuesday morning, we got pummelled by somewhere around 20 cm of snow. then tuesday gave us a nice gift of another 15 cm. yesterday, i think we got another 15 cm. (for those of you still reading, that's a total of 50 cm). yet we are supposed to get ANOTHER 15 cm today. how crazy is that? england apparently got hit with some snow, and although it's not much by canadian standards, it is wreaking havoc on all transportation in the country. anyone got a massive snowfall story they want to share? (out of the total of 2 readers of this blog). .