Watch Out For Moose!

In many parts of Canada, large animals on the roads are a significant danger at night. If I'm not on a full divided highway, I rarely drive much above 80 km/h at night, and often slower than that, much to the annoyance of my passengers. Although it is kind of slow and painful, it occasionally pays off, like the other night.

On Thursday evening, I was driving a few kilometers away from my property in Port Elgin, and saw a moose on the highway. I swerved to the left, and missed it by about a foot. It's a good thing I swerved left, because if I had gone to the right, I would have hit a second moose behind the first that I didn't see initially. Or maybe even worse, I wouldn't have made it past the first one and hit TWO moose at the same time. This is exactly why I drive a lot slower at night.



(Click on the photos to see them in higher resolution).

I find that moose are harder to see than deer. For one, their coats are darker, so they don't stand out as much. Also, deer are skittish and usually turn to face an oncoming vehicle, so motorists often see the reflections from their eyes. However, a moose is usually either stupid or indifferent, or too high off the road surface for drivers in low cars, so you never see their eyes.

Hitting a moose isn't anything like hitting a deer. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have hit deer. It's the kind of thing that nearly every rural driver expects could happen at least once in their life. But all that a deer usually does is trash your car. I don't mean to downplay this type of accident, because hitting a deer is still very dangerous. Unfortunately, more than a dozen people die every year in Canada because of collisions with deer. I looked up the stats for deer accidents and the numbers in the United States are stunning: there are an average of a MILLION AND A HALF collisions per YEAR between deer and vehicles. That translates to about 150 deaths, which means that 0.1% of collisions result in fatalities. It seems like a low percentage, but that's still far too many. But your chances of getting killed when hitting a moose (or elk or caribou) are a LOT higher. A deer might weigh up to 200 pounds. A moose is usually north of a thousand pounds. Check out the photos at this link:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/moose.asp


Recently, our part of the province saw a very high profile moose accident just outside of Moncton, where a young couple died, leaving behind a 2-year old child:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2010/10/07/nb-neguac-funeral-rousselles.html


Here are a few tips from a BC website:

- Moose eyes do reflect the light from headlights, but often the moose's eyes are too high above the beam to catch the light. A grown moose often stands taller than a car.

- Moose are a hazard in summer (as well as in winter). They crave salt and often get it from the side of the road.

- Long straight stretches of road are still hazardous. Drivers tend to speed and thus cannot react in time if a moose or other animal does appear.

- Deer are herding animals. Just because you miss one does not mean you are clear of them.

- There are no studies proving conclusively that deer whistles work. It is better to be wildlife aware when driving, and not to rely on the whistle.


Anyway, next time you're driving at night and see a "wildlife on highway" sign, remember that you're going to get to your destination a lot FASTER if you don't run into an animal. Driving slowly isn't a bad idea.

Under The Bridge

I spent this past weekend in Seattle and Vancouver. Originally, I was going for no good reason, just because I wanted to go to a party at the Pacific Science Center on Saturday night and to visit a friend (TProphet) in Seattle. I know, that’s a unique name – but it's a long story.

A couple weeks ago, he emailed me and said that as long as I was coming out for Saturday night, I might as well DJ somewhere on Friday night. Since he is a Seattle promoter and has a full sound system of his own, he said he was going to set up an event for me. I said that I’d definitely be willing to play if he got anything together, and I asked where I might be playing. He said, “oh, maybe under an abandoned bridge.” Hm.

I got to Seattle on Thursday evening and we spent most of the night getting things organized, and doing a little bit of touristy stuff. Then, on Friday, we started getting ready for the bridge party. I won’t lie, I expected something pretty low key - maybe a pair of speakers, a dozen people, and the chance to annoy or entertain some homeless people, or to get into a fight with bikers. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The party that he and his friends pulled off was one of the most entertaining evenings I’ve ever had. After we convinced the K-9 unit at 10:30pm that the entire cube van full of sound gear we were loading up wasn’t stolen, and said that we were preparing for a nice responsible folk music concert, we hit the road. Upon arriving at the bridge, there was a flurry of action, and within about half an hour we had two full sound stages set up with power generators, propane heaters for the crowd, a small kitchen selling drinks and snacks, and an art display/sale. The equipment and sound system was better than what I’ve played on in a lot of clubs in Atlantic Canada (five bass bins for my stage alone). A couple hundred people showed up, even though it was a totally unadvertised renegade party. It was pouring all night, but we were completely dry under the bridge. With two stages, and a total of ten DJ’s playing throughout the evening, Friday night alone was worth the trip.





On Saturday, TProphet’s sound system was being used at the main stage of the party of the Pacific Science Center, so he went off to set that up while I went exploring the Seattle social scene for several hours with a couple of his friends. One of his friends in particular was quite entertaining. TProphet introduced him by saying, “this is possibly the sketchiest guy you’ll ever meet, but I mean that in a good way. Try not to end up in jail before the show.” This person, who I will leave unnamed, was quite entertaining. He was discussing his plan to take out a life insurance policy on himself, fly to Zambia to buy a death certificate in the black market, then buy a Zambian identity and passport in the black market, then come back to the States as a different person and cash in on his own life insurance policy, and then use the proceeds to tour the world as a Zambian. Or something like that. Anyway, it was an entertaining start to the evening.

When we got to the Pacific Science Center, I was extremely impressed, once again. They had a full blown party IN the Science Center. There were four stages with DJ’s from 10pm-4am, three or four full bars, and best of all, all of the exhibits were open. I had a few drinks and went straight to the planetarium, where I spent the next hour and a half looking at the stars. The butterfly exhibits were open, and there was a bar in the dinosaur room, and basically the whole place was interesting. The best thing was that the tickets were moderately expensive, which meant that there weren’t a lot of street kids, so it was a very clean and respectful crowd. This, of course, is good when you have several thousand people partying in a museum.





Seattle now ranks near the very top of my list of fun cities to visit. Click here to see more photos from the trip.

Stoner, British Columbia

When driving from Prince George to Kamloops last week, we drove through a small town called Stoner. I'm sure that hundreds of thousands of people have been amused by this name over the years, and I can't imagine what their road signage budget is, because I bet the "Stoner" signs have been stolen repeatedly over the years.

British Columbia is a very pot-friendly province, in fact, it is probably the most tolerant Canadian province when it comes to the use of marijuana. I have no doubt that the anti-drug population in Washington State must just hate having BC as their northern neighbour.

According to Stats Canada (info provided by the RCMP), in 2005, the value of the five highest ranked industries in British Columbia by financial value was as follows:

Forestry = $10 billion
Construction = $7.9 billion
Marijuana = $7.5 billion
Hotels, restaurants = $3.8 billion
Mining, oil and gas = $3.5 billion

That's pretty impressive. Cultivation of pot is estimated to contribute more to the province's GDP than hotels, restaurants, mining, and oil & gas put together. That's not small "pot"atoes.

I'm not a pot smoker at all. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with other people smoking it. I just have absolutely no interest for the same reasons that I don't smoke cigarettes - because I don't want to abuse my lungs with the smoke. But although I am convinced that there are some negative health repercussions to smoking marijuana, I still think that pot is probably quite a bit less harmful to the general population than my own drug of choice - alcohol. Canada appears to be slowly moving towards decriminalization of marijuana, which I think is a smart idea.

Anyway, I know that people from around the world have a lot of different views regarding the consumpation of "soft" drugs, and since I'm not a smoker myself, I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to debating the pros and cons of marijuana use. However, I am always amused to see the business value of this underground industry, and I always have to smile when I drive down Highway 97 and see that sign.

So the big question is, if you actually live in that famous small town, how do you describe yourself? I guess you would just have to stand straight up and proudly say, "Yes, I'm a Stoner."