Test Drive

On the last day of July, I slept in....   I actually woke up at about 5:30AM, just as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten.  But I knew it was too early to get up, and that I would run out of gas later in the day.  So I tried to go back to sleep.  I laid around in bed for over an hour, with my hockey-injured shoulder bothering me a little.  Eventually I dozed off... but then I woke up again and dozed off again five or six more times.  Finally I woke up and got out of bed, only to realize that it was after 10:00AM.  Angry with myself for sleeping in I had a shower, coffee and breakfast and then went back to work.

I went into the guest cottage and finished up the last of the trim.  This was to the gable end and side wall above the kitchen cabinets.  With that done, I set about cleaning up the place.  I packed up a whole bunch of tools and leftover supplies and stored them away on the new shelf units that I had constructed down in the crawl space.  Then I cleaned up a whole bunch of construction waste and garbage and realized that I had enough to make another dump run.  With everything out of the way I put away my sawhorses, pulled the tarp up off the floor, and swept out most of the sawdust.  I was amazed at how much bigger the space looked without all the crap in the way...!  When I return on my next visit I will be able to finish up the cleaning, and then start on installation of flooring.

The dump is only open from 10:00 to 2:00 on Mondays, and of course with my late start I missed the deadline.  Fortunately there is a small gate at the entrance that permits carrying in of small amounts of waste.  I only needed to make two trips in to get rid of this second batch of rubbish.

About a month ago, my close friend Rob decided that he was giving up on large format photography.  Rob and I are very close friends and have been shooting together for many years.  We made two trips to Utah, one to Vancouver Island, and numerous visits to mountains over the years to go shooting.  Rob is a retired electrician and did most of the wiring for me in the main cottage, and was my consultant when I did all the wiring in the guest cottage.  Rob used to live in Beaumont, but a number of years ago sold his house and moved to Vernon in the interior of British Columbia.  More recently he retired, and has since avidly pursued cross country skiing and cycling.  It seems that photography fell by the wayside for him.  Rob insisted that I purchase his large format camera gear from him, at a bargain price.  He did not want to have to deal with piecing it out and trying to sell it online.  I obliged, and bought everything from him.  I decided to keep his Ebony SV45 view camera and two of his lenses.  But I put everything else up for sale.  Fortunately for me I was able to sell most of it to my friends and colleagues in the Monochrome Guild.  I recovered most of my initial investment, and ended up with a third camera at a reasonable cost.

I decided that I will leave this camera, with a small selection of lenses, out at Nordegg.  This saves me from having to drag camera gear back and forth every time I come out.  Going forward I will only need to bring loaded film holders, and perhaps a few extra lenses and a tripod.

After my stop at the dump I took a drive down Secondary Highway 734.... the Forestry Trunk Road.  I only got about 15km north of the David Thompson Highway.  But I made several stops along the way and had a chance to test drive Rob's camera.  I shot the backside of Baldy and Coliseum Mountain from a high spot along the highway.  Then I shot the forest edge beside the road... and later I stopped along the north fork of Shunda Creek and took a couple of photographs there.  I ended up exposing eight sheets of film, as well as a few frames in a roll film back.  I'm sure there are no masterpieces here, but it is important to shoot regularly and stay in practice for when better opportunities arise.