Dad and Kids Weekend

The Dad and Kids weekend was kind of a bust this year.  All the Dads and all the kids bailed out, leaving only me and the three girls.  We headed out anyway, and had a great time together.  This was on the weekend of June 7 and 8.  As the TL Bar Ranch is now closed, we were not able to head back to our favorite camping spot this year.  Instead we tried the campsite at Starland Recreation Area, at the Morrin Bridge.  It is a nice campsite and we enjoyed the weekend.  River access is rather limited here, because the bush is rather heavy along the shore, particularly with willows.  I wanted to go hiking back into the badlands, but in order to get there from the campsite, we had to cross a rather rough and deep wash, which the girls were not really keen on doing.  So, mostly we just hung around at the campsite, and the girls spent a lot of time at the playground.  We did take a bit of a walk back into the hills behind the campsite, on Saturday afternoon.  On Sunday morning my friend Frank dropped by for a while and had a visit.

This was our first trip of the year out with the trailer and it was kind of mad scramble to get everything packed up before we left.  It was a rather late start to the camping season, but we had been rained out on the long weekend, a couple of weeks prior and then were away in Jasper.  I ended up forgetting a lot of stuff, including dish washing detergent, about half of our dishes, ketchup, mustard, and most of the ingredients for a salad.  But, we made the best of it and enjoyed the weekend all the same.  On the way home we must have taken a rock on one of the trailer side windows because the next morning I noticed that the window was shattered and a big chunk of glass was missing, but there was no broken glass on the ground where I had parked the trailer.  It was intact when I stopped and emptied the holding tanks at Peace Hills, so it must have happened on the highway, somewhere between there and home.

While the girls and I were away, Margarit drove down to Calgary.  She picked up Julia, who is coming to stay with us for 8 weeks this summer, visiting from Austria.  Julia is the daughter of Margarit's cousin Martina.  So when the girls and I got back home, we got to reacquaint with her.  Last time we saw her was when we visited Austria for Christmas in 2007.  Hailey was only five, Annelise was two and doesn't really remember Julia, and Margarit was pregnant with Helena at the time.... so it has been quite some time.

Summer Hockey - Game Ten

The Renegades played a game last Friday against the Ice Kings.  It was a real challenge to get a roster together for this game.  At one point just a day before game time I only had 10 skaters and no goaltender.  Between myself and some of the other guys on the team, we must have put the call out to at least 20 backup goaltenders.  Eventually one of the guys found a goalie.  He was an older guy, with really dated equipment, that hadn't played in a couple of years.  I kept working the phone and the e-mails and eventually I thought I had filled the roster.  But come game time, things went sideways.

Two of the guys I had lined up didn't show, so we ended up short for skaters and had to shuffle the lines and defense pairs.  Then mid-way through the second period, after the Ice Kings had lit up our backup goalie for five goals, his skate broke.  The plastic boot of his old goalie skate shattered and he could not continue.  We scrambled and eventually talked the goalie from the team that was playing after us to finish the game for us.  But, it took him at least 15 minutes to get dressed and while that was happening, under league rules, the clock had to be run down.  By the time he was dressed and ready to play the second period was over and we were starting the third.  Two minor penalties, one to me and one to another of our defense ran out during that time, but we were assessed a delay of game penalty when we resumed play so one of our guys had to return to the box.  We played a lot better after that and with better goaltending actually made a game of it.  But we ended up on the short end of a 5-3 score.  As a result of our recent losses, and some better play by a couple of our opponents, we now find ourselves in fourth place in our division.

I read my guys the riot act about attendance and commitment and expect to have a full roster out for our next game on Tuesday.  Hopefully we can put an end to the losses and patch together a winning streak going into the playoffs.  There are five games left in the regular season.

Kodak T-Max 400 - Spring Photo Weekend

I've started scanning all the 4" x 5" Tmax 400 negatives that I processed over the past little while.  Here are a few from the Monochrome Guild Spring Photo Weekend.  We stayed in Fairmont and explored and photographed in the area.  Weather conditions were not ideal with showers off and on most of the weekend.  We started out shooting at Templeton Falls over on the Bugaboo Road, and then explored an abandoned amusement park near Invermere.  The next day, before eventually heading back home, we did the hike up to the top of Hoodoo Mountain.

Kodak T-Max 400

Over the past week or so I have processed a few batches of Kodak T-Max 400.  I process this film in Kodak T-Max developer.  I posted some negatives a short time ago that were given plus development.

These latest couple of batches were given normal development.  Most of these images were from the recent Monochrome Guild trip to Fairmont, and my spring trip to Utah with the girls.  I will post those images in seperate blog entries.  These few were some older images from 2013 that were included in this most recent group.

Summer Hockey - Games Eight and Nine

On June 5th the Renegades played a game against the Chiefs.  I was forced to miss this game due to my sprained hand and dislocated finger.  The guys played a solid game and hung on for a 5-3 victory.

Then on June 10th we played another game, this time against the Banana Hammocks.  I was back on the ice for this game, but my hand was still pretty sore and swollen.  I played the game without incident but could not take a slap shot.  We lost the game, by a score of 6-2.  Despite the loss we are still in second place in our division.  But there are two teams, the Banana Hammocks and the Nighthawks, that are only a point behind us in the standings.  And only the top four teams will make the playoffs.  So we need to get things back together for our next game.

That will be a challenge as our next game is coming up tomorrow, Friday June 13th.  I fail to understand why the league schedules summer league games on Fridays.  I am only able to round up about 10 guys that can make it to this game, and we don't have a goaltender.  Our regular goalie is unavailable for this game, and every backup that I can think of, has also turned me down.  Between me and the other guys on the team we must have already contacted at least 10 goalies and so far no luck. We may be forced to forfeit this game, which would probably knock us out of playoff contention.

Family Weekend in Jasper

At the end of May we had our annual family weekend.  This was with my brothers and their families, and my Mom.  We started this tradition about eight or ten years ago.  It started out as an opportunity to get the whole family together, and take my Dad out with everyone.  Most of the time we have gone out to Jasper, but in years past we have also stayed at Banff, Nordegg and Waterton.  This was the first one that we went on since Dad passed away.  I kept looking around, expecting to see Dad shuffling along after the kids but it was not to be...  But this a tradition that I think we will continue to keep alive...

On the Saturday we went rafting on the Athabasca River.  There were ten of us in the raft, but Margarit stayed behind with Helena, Barb Pohl wasn't feeling well, and Mom didn't want to get wet. We put the raft in just upstream from town, and then floated down to Old Fort Point.  The rafting company had a photographer that took some pictures of the rafts as they floated by various rapids and points along the way.  Here's a few shots of our group starting out, as well as a shot of us negotiating a small Class 2 rapid they call "The Wall".

Over the rest of the weekend we were pretty much lazy and just relaxed and visited.  At one point we got a touch football game going between we three brothers and most of the neices and nephews.  With the game tied, my nephew Colin was making a run to score the winning touchdown.  I managed to run him down and tag him out before he scored, but I wiped out at a full run and fell to the ground, landing on my hand.  When I got up the pinky finger on my right hand was dislocated, with the upper part of the finger, above the second knuckle, pointing off in a wild angle.  I managed to massage it back into place, but my hand was pretty sore and swollen for the rest of the weekend.  It forced me to miss a hockey game once we got back home after the weekend.

Later in the weekend some of us adults went for a walk along the river and into the woods behind the cabins we were staying at.  It was at this very spot that my brother Wes was accosted by an irate cow elk last year.  He actually managed to capture most of his ordeal on video and it is posted to youtube.  Here's a link to it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8atDCp5cmdo

Summer Hockey - Game Seven

On Thursday May 29th I had to head down to Drumheller for the day.  I was attending a Municipal Planning Committee meeting of the Town of Drumheller.  They were reviewing an application that I had made to potentially occupy a commercial building in East Coulee.  The application was approved and we now move on to the next step... the appeal process.  Eventually if this all comes into place I will proceed with the purchase of this building, and lease it to our recently re-branded operating company... Dinosaur Valley Studios.

Because I was away for the day I was unable to make it to the hockey game that evening.  The Renegades played another game against the Canadians.  It has only been in the past winter season and this summer that we have found ourselves in the same division as the Canadains, so we have only played them a few times in the past.  Up until this day the Canadians had won every game.  But that streak game to an end as the guys played a really strong game and managed to defeat the Canadians by a score of 5-3.  We are just about at the half way point of the season and we find ourselves in second place in Divison 5.

Late May

On May 25th we headed out to Wetaskiwin for the day.  We visited with my cousin Vic and his family, at the cabin that they recently built on their farm.  It is beside a dugout, near Maskwa Creek.  The girls had a blast paddling around the dugout in a rowboat, with their cousin Ceyanna.  My cousin, Vic's brother, Donald also stopped by with his family.  We headed over to the nearby Hillside Community Hall, which will be the location of the upcoming Pohl Family Reunion that we are organizing.  We needed to size things up and make sure that there would be space for everything that we had planned.  This also provided a good opportunity to get a handle on some of the things that we would need to do, and supplies that we would need to get together, for the reunion.  Since that time we have been starting to put things together... insurance, raffle tickets, name tags, etc.   In recent days I've started canvassing all my cousins and their families to see if we can nail down a more accurate head count.  So far I have 51 confirmed to come, 3 maybes, and 3 that can not make it.  There are still a lot of people yet to reply so I expect that our final number should be over 100.

The next day I booked most of the day off work and we had a memorial service for my Dad.  It would have been his 85th birthday on Saturday.  This was just a small family service attended by my Mom, my two brothers, Margarit and the girls, and me.  We buried Dad's ashes at the cemetary over by Ellerslie Road.  It was a cool and cloudy day, sort of fitting of the somber occasion.  We spent the afternoon together as a family and reflected on all our memories of Dad.