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Saturday, March 24, 2007

More avalanche photos



Sorry. I came across some photos of the recent avalanche in action, and I just had to post them for posterity. I'm actually not sure who took these photos or where they came from. They are one of those things that have been circulating in mass e-mails around town. And we identify with them and pass them on to our friends because we *almost* share a common experience.

Tonight I went with friends to see The Who's "Tommy" at the Perseverance Theatre. We were under the impression that we were going to see a local production in a small-town theater in Douglas, so we showed up thinking we'd just be able to buy tickets. They looked at us like we had twirled in wearing bed sheets and begging for free seats, but they did offer to herd us into a corner and sell us a seat if something opened up. It seemed unlikely that they'd have five extra tickets, but we persevered and they managed to wedge us into the last five seats available, even vaguely within sight of each other.

The play gave me an idea to create a rock opera about ice biking in the Arctic. In order to sell it to the masses, there would have to be at least one contrived love story about a cyclist who loses his way in a roiling storm, only be rescued by a beautiful Inuit girl who he then loses track of in another roiling storm. Then there'd be an encounter with a wayward polar bear, a harrowing ascent of some gnarly pass, a self-revealing moment of clarity beneath the northern lights, yet another roiling storm, and then a happy reunion. I can't decide what kind of rock would narrate the story best. I was thinking maybe Pearl Jam. Or Jimmy Eat World.

Um ... yeah. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the avalanche photos.

6 comments:

  1. I think you have been couped up to long Jill. That would be one wack play

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  2. i'm thinking pearl jam. go for it, and let me know when it opens!

    peace out, yo!

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  3. I enjoy your posts immensly. I got hooked in January during your self-flagellant rides. I also think your pictures are really good. I have two questions that may have been answered in previous posts, so please forgive me for not combing the archives: First, what job do you have that allows you so much time to ride and write? Second, since I haven't read you write about photography as a hobby or profession, and since your photos are so good, and since you surely are not carrying gobs of camera equipment on your treks, I am wondering what you use to capture/edit photos and what is your background in photography?

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  4. Hi Brian,

    Thanks for commenting. To answer your questions, I'm a full-time working drone just like everyone else. The only difference is I work a late shift, so I usually have several hours in the morning free to ride. But when you're out partying at night, I'm working.

    Photography for the sake of photography really isn't a hobby of mine. But I am into journaling - as you can probably tell - and I see photography as an important extension of that. Most of my post-December pictures are taken on a Canon PowerShot S70 that was graciously given to me by a blogging friend whom I have never even met. Before that, I had some embarassingly outdated Fuji digital camera - about 2 megapixels. My pictures looked fine on screen, but terrible in print. The PowerShot is a huge upgrade, but it's still not what I'd consider "gobs of camera equipment."

    Also, I don't have any photo editing software at home and no formal background in photography ... although I did work at a one-hour photo shop for about three months in college ... before they fired me. But I do live in a beautiful and unique place, and that alone makes for an endless source of cool photographs. Thank you for the compliment.

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  5. I say go for it.

    Many a year ago I was in a band that wrote a rock opera called "The Illumination of Marshall Mcluan". The plot revolved around how Mcluan was abducted by aliens, becomes one with the univesrse, fights with the demon/god Cuthulu, takes over the world, gets encoded in to a vat of nano-computers and is utimately revealed as some kind of second coming. It even had a "Northern" component as Canada became a superpower and the ruling political party was The Baffin Island Party. You'd think such a thing would never get staged, and you'd be thinking wrong.

    We did a 10 day run at a local theater and even came out ahead finanacially. Not much ahead, I made 28 cents an hour but it was really fun.

    If we could get that staged I'm sure yours would be a hit.

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  6. Pearl Jam. Definitely Pearl Jam. Speaking of Pearl Jam and rock opera, their cover of the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" from the amazing rock opera, Quadrophenia, and covered for the movie of a similar title, is absolutely fantastic.

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Feedback is always appreciated!