Canada Day!
This Sunday was my first Canada Day. Canada Day is July 1st of every year, which is
suspiciously close to July 4th. I think that Canadians were just jealous because the
American's were getting an extra day off work. On Canada Day, my family (they were visiting
for a week) and I went to Granville Island and to Stanley Park. It was a beautiful day, and
everyone was in a good mood because they got Monday off work. On Monday, we took
a Gray Line tour to Victoria and Buchart Gardens. Both of those places are on Vancouver Island,
so we took the bus to the ferry and then the bus to the gardens to Victoria. The gardens were
absolutely beautiful. Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia. During the War of 1812,
America decided that they wanted all the land up to the 54th parallel (i.e. most of the usable
Canadian land). The slogan was "54, 40 or fight". Well, the Canadian border is at the 49th
parallel, but all the American history books say that we won. The Canadian's do not understand
why we think that we won, but I think it is obvious. Americans always win. Anyways, after the
war, when the British soliders were mostly home, America was still trying to claim more land.
The British Columbians, being very intelligent people, put their capital on the only part of Vancouver
Island that is below the 49th parallel, realizing that the British would fight harder for a capital city.
That is the reason why Victoria is the capital of British Columbia even though it is a small city than Vancouver
and not centrally located.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, my family just hung around West Point Gray (my neighborhood) and the University.
I worked on testing some data using Barry's program. We began to run into trouble with the program.
This was especially problematic because Laura and I did not have a good enough understanding
of how the code was written to fix it in an adequate manner. We emailed Barry about the trouble that we
were having. Then we worked on finding
efficient ways to test data, assuming that one day the program would work. It became
obvious that testing data was a non-trival task. There are many variables that
are thought to affect the secondary structure of a DNA or RNA strand. We worked on ways to
hold one variable constant while modifying the other variables. It is next to impossible. We also
could not decide how long of a stand that we should test. We decided that if every permutation of
the concatenation of three words would not fold into a secondary structure, then the chances that
a strand of any length made of those words would not fold. However, this is theory research, so we
decided that we needed a proof instead of just our intuition. We spent some of the rest of the week
working on this proof. My notes can be downloaded here .
On Saturday, Laura and I went camping with 6 other people from our community. We registered for a
program through our community center which takes people on a two day, one night, kayak trip. They
said that beginners were welcome, but I do not think that they were expecting people that were as
beginner as me. We meet our ride to the ferry at 5:45 am. For those of you who know me, waking up
before 9 is a challenge. We caught the 6:30 ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Naniamo which is a city on
Vancouver Island. Then we took a cab to a ferry to Gabriola Island. On Gabriola, we were meet by
Margret, who was one of our guides. We took everything out of our packs, and stuffed it into dry bags.
A dry bag is a special plastic bag that keeps everything dry. We then loaded the kayaks, carried
them down to the water, and began on our journey. We kayaked for about an hour, and then pulled off
for lunch. We ate the food that we had brought for ourselves for lunch (by this time, I'd been awake for
about 8 hours), and we just played on the island for a while. There were fisherman on the island who were
harvesting oysters. They let us harvest, shell, and eat some raw oysters with them. I did everything except
eat. They looked gross and slimey. My observations were confirmed by some of the people who decided to
eat one. Then we re-loaded our kayaks with the food, and were off again. On this leg of the trip, we
saw bald eagles, a blue harron, tons of seals, and lots of trees and ocean. After another hour or so, we arrived
at the beach we were going to camp. It was a wilderness beach. Wilderness imples no bathrooms, running water, or
even fresh water. They forgot to mention that in the brochure, but I was brave. The other people on the trip soon
realized that I had never been camping before. They were astonished at my lack of knowledge, and soon began lieing to me.
They told me about cougars and bears. Then the explained why we would not be able to leave in the morning if the tide kept coming in.
They were not very understanding people.
Laura and I set up our tent, and everyone
from our group went exploring by themselves. This was the best part of the trip. I did not go out of site of the camp because
of my amazing since of direction, but it was beautiful. See pictures below. After exploring time, we had dinner.
Immediately following dinner, I went to sleep. It was only about 9 pm, but I had been awake since 5. I slept until 8am the next
morning, which is very impressive since I had never been camping or slept outside (except in line for Georgia Tech v. Georgia football tickets, and
that doesn't count because I had a bean bag, friends, and they delievered pizza). I was also had no air mattress or cot, adding to the
impressiveness of my sleeping.
The next morning, we had a really good breakfast, cleaned everything up, and loaded the kayaks. By this time, I had
learned that if you do not drink any liquid, then you do not need to use the bathroom. I decided that dehydration could not
be nearly as bad as where they wanted me to use the bathroom. Therefore, this day went a lot better. We kayaked to a lunch spot
that doubled as a swimming hole. I was not about to get it. I am used to the Florida beaches, and it is freezing up here.
We ate lunch and just rested for a while. We began kayaking home, and that was when the guides (Chris and Margret) decided
to inform us of the current. There was a 6 knot current that ran from right to left we had to kayak straight though.
Our kayaks were loaded with gear, and we
were all novice kayakers; therefore, our average speed was 2 knots. If you have ever taken physics, you know that this is a very
bad idea. After we were back where we stared, we watched the yachts getting stuck trying to go fully against the current. We unloaded the
kayaks and packed them back onto the truck. Margret drove us back to the ferry. We boarded and all used the real bathrooms. Then we
caught a taxi to the other ferry back to Horseshoe Bay, and got a ride back home. The first thing I did when I got home was took a shower.
At that point I decided that toilets and showers were the best things in the world. I am so grateful to whomever decided to invent them.
And that was my first camping experience.