The Long Road

**Updated July 7 **

We are back! The trip was absolutely awesome. I’ll update with some details later today - for now I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do!

Tomorrow we set out on the first trip of the summer - The Broken Islands Group, Pacific Rim National Park. We’re very excited about this as it’s been a while since we’ve done a multi-day paddling trip, we’ve yet to paddle on the ocean, this is our first trip of that sort with Tod and Catherine, and the weather forecast is getting better each day! As a bonus, this trip got me to get my butt in gear on a project that was started BEFORE we moved to China! It’ll be done today, so more on that later.

Wow. It comes every year for me, but every year it seems as fresh and new as ever. Summer holidays!

“They give us those nice bright colours.
They give us the greens of summers.
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day
So, mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”

- Paul Simon -

Well Eastman Kodak has announced that after 74 years, production of Kodachrome, the film that made color photography what it is, is coming to an end. The end of an era? Certainly. But with the masses eschewing film for digital instant gratification (myself included) this hardly comes as a surprise.

I’m sure someone will come up with a “Kodachrome” plugin for Photoshop. Heck, maybe there already is one…

Anyway, take a few minutes to check out the slideshow that Kodak has posted to pay homage to the late, great Kodachrome. They are stunning images.

Food, Inc. opened in theaters a few days ago. I have my doubts that it will actually make it to my town (though the local film society might bring it in….), but if it does, you KNOW I’ll be there to check it out.

How cool is it when out of the blue on a Friday night you get a cryptic text from your bro saying “if r u home look in the sky in ten minutes to the north”?

It’s even cooler when you do look north in ten minutes to see, in the distance, a chopper piloted by your brother flying past your city slinging a big fire fighting water container.

Kamloops is home to one of BC’s regional Fire Centers. So we see and hear the water bombers coming and going as they head out on fire suppression missions. Today as Mich and I and Lindsey paddled the North Thompson from McLure to Riverside Park, we floated right on by a fire. As we approached it was amazing to watch up to four planes (three water bombers and the bird-dog plane) buzzing around the fire site. They seemed highly organized and coordinated. Good thing as they were all in pretty tight.

Mich and the bombers.

Lindsey wondering if peeing on the fire would help out any.

Anyway, we got closer and closer and came around the last corner in time to see the last run. Yes we ended up a little close, but these guys are pretty precise with their placement of the fire retardant. It was a sight that we likely won’t see close up again anytime soon.

Lindsey thinking about peeing for a different reason.