A spelling lesson

The other morning while walking Hannah in the park, we saw this.

Didn't realize that we were spelling ''eh'' incorrectly, but now we know.

Lots of frost that morning too - may have snow this weekend.

Canadian Wine Tour

The locals told us we needed to visit the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia in  order to try Canadian wines.  They said it was only an 8 hour drive through the mountains so we thought we would take a quick trip on one of Rolo's three day weekends.  Now that we are back in North America, he gets those every other week again.  So we went last weekend.

Well, it wasn't exactly 8 hours...  With all the rush to finish road construction projects before the winter starts, there were quite a few slow downs in the mountains, and we hit the only large city in our path right at Friday afternoon rush hour, so it was a 10 1/2 hour drive to get there on Friday.  But it was a beautiful drive through the mountains, and we had the opportunity to see lots of new stuff.

We stayed at a little hotel on the beach of Lake Okanagan, and found out from the owners that was their last weekend open before closing for the winter.  It wasn't very busy.  Saturday, we visited several wineries and were able to find some nice ones to bring home including ice wine, and port style wines for Rolo.

We took Hannah with us on the trip - she didn't find the wine tasting interesting, but she did enjoy chasing the Canadian geese off the beach back onto the lake.  In fact I think she really enjoyed the lake - kind of like her days in the canals.  Of course she smelled much better afterwards.

The drive home was much quicker on Sunday since all the construction sites were idle.  I think we might go back, but plan to take a few more days.  I'm still not adjusted back to those long distances and drives in the car.  But it's great to have a nice comfortable car to drive here.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Back in August, when we made our trek up from Montana, we saw a sign for this site and I was then determined to visit it.

 

Saturday we drove back south to Fort McLeod to have a look - about two hours south.  This is a site used by the locals, Blackfoot Indians for several thousand years for buffalo kills.  As the sign indicates, they would create a stampede and then corral the herd to the cliff so some would fall over the edge.

 

Here's Rolo with the cliff in the background.  According to the info, it's eroded a bit now but was much steeper in the past.  I think the last Buffalo Jump was some time in the 1870s.

 

 

While we were there, we tagged along with a docent, Edwin, who was really entertaining while telling us all about the history.  He's a Blackfoot who even knows the language so he was pretty knowledgeable.

 

We weren't able to find any buffalo to herd over the edge, so we had to stop at Five Guys for a burger and fries instead.

 

And as we've found while visiting other sites, the perennial bear warning sign.  Still haven't seen one, except on the signs...

 

Wildlife in the cemetery

Last week, I took Hannah over to the off leash area of the park for a run.  Once we got there and she was off lease, she was intent on sniffing a trail, but I could see her tail was tucked, which is a bit unusual when she's on a hare chase or something like that.  There were several other dogs around so she had a bit of a run and then we went over to the corner where I leash her up to leave.

I heard a strange bark/howl noise and couldn't place it at first.  Then I saw this in the cemetery.

That there's a COYOTE!  I know it's a bit difficult to see, but trust me, it was.  And he/she didn't seem to be concerned about the cemetery workers about 100 meters away. 

Later, I found out from another dog owner that the coyotes are known for sending one out to try and lure a dog away and into the pack for a kill.  I'm sure glad Hannah wasn't interested, in fact she was wary instead.

Update on the coyote front:  Last night when we took Hannah out for last call, we heard the coyote choir out in the graveyard and not very far from our house.  We walked down the street the other way, towards more street lighting and civilization and sure enough the zombies in the graveyard stopped the choir.  It's really kind of eerie to hear that so close...

Tour of Albert...aye

Here is a photo from the finish line at the Tour of Alberta - a six day bike race ending in downtown Calgary.

We rode our bikes down to view the finish.  And of course Rolo rode one of his Dutch custom bikes, the orange one, and got lots of envied looks and comments.  It was fun and exciting to be there, and a bit more relaxed than the other bike races we saw in Europe, of course not nearly as big.

Here's the bike used for the prologue - well our prologue anyway.  A few days before, we participated in a charity event with Chevron.  We collected money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and then saddled up this bike with 28 of our close friends to ride around Prince's Island a few times, while shooting from water pistols at each other.  At one point in the ride, we came face to face with a truck on the path and had to detour off the path shooting the gap through the trees.  Ok, we skimmed a tree at one point, but no recordable injuries.

Lots of laughing...

Labor Day Weekend

Who knew it was a North American holiday - but I think up here it is spelled Labour Day.  Anyway, we took Hannah hiking.  First we spent an afternoon at Nose Hill Park on the north side of Calgary.  It is high enough that you can get a great view of downtown and the surrounding areas.

Hannah has been on a hunt for wild hares ever since she saw her first one, and here she is at Nose Hill, searching for hares.

Monday we drove up to the mountains to see Lake Moraine and hike a bit.  At the base of the trail we found this sign.

 

 

 

So we waited a few minutes until some other hikers came along so that we could all go up together.  We didn't see any bears, just more hikers.  I suspect the bears were taking the weekend off since there were so many people.  This was a view of the lake from further up.  According to the other hikers, the water is such a beautiful aquamarine color because it is fed from glaciers up on the mountain.  It really was beautiful.

 

 We encountered a bit of traffic driving back into town, but nothing like what you would find in Texas on a holiday weekend.

Death of the Rodeo

We are finally all back in Calgary now with all of our stuff we had delivered to my Mom.  Not so much for the Rodeo which belonged to my step-father.  What happened is Isuzu uses a big shouldered bolt for securing the belt tensioner for the timing belt which controls the valve timing in relation to the crankshaft.  Most manufacturer's us a standard shouldered bolt and then put a thick sleeve on it but Isuzu knows better and put really big shoulders on the bolt so it is a specialty bolt.  Regardless of that, the bolt snapped at the shoulder but before snapping it bent with the load on it releasing the tension on the belt just enough so the belt had ample opportunity to slip a tooth or more before the bolt actually snapped.  I did notice a drop in power but still running before full failure occurred over the course of about 3 seconds.  With the bending bolt and then updated cam timing there was a coming together as in the holy spirit of valves and pistons.  There was only one cylinder of significance that I could tell using a boroscope into each combustion chamber that had real piston/valve contact.  So confirmed bent valves in one cylinder, maybe more and one significantly damaged piston.  Keep in mind I'm dealing with the only shop that works on import cars in the large thriving metropolis of Lewistown, Montana which has just under 6,000 people.  When the tensioner came off it dropped down onto the crank belt wheel and got thrown around which busted up the lower part of the plastic cover so the cover was trashed and that would have to be replaced to prevent dirt and water from getting in there....try finding that in short order regardless of the cost!!!  Any rate, the shop wanted to drill out the bolt and then retap the hole larger for a larger bolt and then have a sleeve machined to match the diameter (standard sleeved shouldered bolt arrangement) I needed and this is without any knowledge of whether the block could take that or not.  No idea how much aluminum (yes aluminum block) material is down there and whether this would be possible or not and I was not going to risk it.  Knowing I was going to potentially have a compromised block that won't last long and knowing I was going to have a nice winter project to pull heads and rebuild for valves and only hoping I could still drive it home on 5 cylinders (at best) it just didn't seem like a good plan to move forward.  At a certain moment you need to cut bait and run so I did.  The shop gave me $200 for it which seemed reasonable for a non-running messed up car and now I don't have to dispose of it and pay someone to tow it away.  Hopefully he will source a used engine and insert but I just wasn't going to mess with it from long distance and then in a small town (430 miles away).  Sadly I had almost $3,000 in it with all the refurbishment that was generously completed under the watchful eye of a good friend of mine in Las Cruces, NM but when you have compounding problems like these, you know you will see more problems down the road.  It would have been nice to have a beater 2nd vehicle but this one is not to be.  The timing belt itself looked really new with almost no wear on it but no telling how old it really was....regardless, there was nothing wrong with it that I could tell.

As far as I'm concerned, this is simple equipment failure of a single component that destroyed the engine.  Sometimes bad luck happens.  There was no warning...just within a few seconds it all self-destructed.