On Expertise
I used to order just one drink at Starbucks: a grande, 4-shot, long americano. I ordered it every day, twice a day, for about 4 years. Once in the morning and once in the evening. I know this drink. I …
Category: Blog Entry
Regular blog posts
Death by Snowshoe
I’m working on an article on the mechanisms by which snowshoers near Vancouver tend to get in trouble (injury and death). The summary is this: snowshoers tend to have slip-and-fall injuries on hard snow during periods of sunny weather either …
My Olympic Sport (Part 1)
I first volunteered for Search and Rescue in 1999. A friend of mine in university suggested it to me. It came up after a discussion about a high school friend of mine who had died on a mountain near Hope; …
That’s just how I slide
Looks like the 80’s, but it’s the 90’s; telemark skiing. Don’t emulate this photo for your own tele technique; I’m completely self taught and have a style that could be called unique if you’re feeling generous. For the geeks among …
How to get up in deep powder
I’m a Telemark skier. I started in university because the gear was cheap, and I was poor. Also, being poor, I did not have enough money for a ski pass, so I learned to ski in the backcountry. For me it …
On several occasions the following has happend:
I’ve secretly hoped I would be called on a search. I was called on a search. I did not feel guilty. I’m not saying I wish someone some misfortune, but given that accidents happen, there is a huge amount of …
Urban Searches and Homelessness
The SAR team was called out to search for a missing man in his 70’s with Alzheimer’s disease. This search was in an urban area of Burnaby near Central Park. Being a search and rescue team that specializes in wilderness …
Cell phone locations
The SAR team has had a run of searches at inopportune times. The first one was after an all night search, so we rolled from the first search, into breakfast …
SMS and Search and Rescue
Well it finally happend, and frankly I’m suprised that it toook this long. A pair of subjects we looked for all of last night and part of today initiated the search by sending an SMS (Text) message. I’m sure this …
Distributed File Sharing for SAR
Many people have asked me over the years how to share files amongst several people who may need to edit the same document. There are many clunky file sharing solutions out there (including the one I developed for my SAR …