Shave to Save

Great things happen in the coffee room at lunch. I have often said that far more gets done in a social setting than in a meeting setting; perhaps I just think better while eating. And it may not even the food that stimulates the good ideas, just the setting of couches and comfy chairs. You can thank Jack and Wendy for this good idea, and a good idea it is:

Shave to Save
Students and faculty from Olds College are heading to Bolivia—
but some heads will be better prepared than others.
Help prepare the travelers by donating funds for their haircut!!

In an effort to raise funds for the Bolivia Rural Health Project (an initiative that covers medical costs for individuals and families who cannot afford medical care) and for Bolivian agriculture projects, members of the team are donating their bodies (well, just their hair) to science (okay, it’s cosmetology, but that is science, right?) Gordon Gilchrist and Brent Nicol have already agreed to participate in this hair-raising scheme; others will soon join in the fun. These brave travelers have agreed to have their hair cut —shorter and shorter as the funds raised pile higher and higher. So choose your favourite and give, give, give!!

Whoever “wins” 1st place (raises the most money) gets their head shaved clean! Whoever wins 2nd place gets to keep a ¼” of hair. Whoever wins 3rd place gets to keep a 1/3” of hair. And so on…

To donate:

• Email ggilchrist@oldscollege.ca,
• Sign a pledge sheet for your ‘favourite’ volunteer,
• Or go to http://www.a-better-world.ca/ and click ‘donate online’ (Be sure to specify ‘Shave to Save’ and the contestant you are voting for.)
• Charitable receipts available for donations of $25 or more. (Include mailing address, please.)

Not a bad idea eh? I must confess that, as ideas fester in my brain, they invariably morph. I added the contest part, and, trust me, I will be motivated to save as much of my hair as I can—so please consider sponsoring anyone other than me.

Everyone will be working hard on this trip, and I know that we’ll discover even more opportunities to help when we get there than we even imagine now. Consider your donation a preemptive strike on future needs, a way to get involved without risking snakebite, and a show of support for our next generation that has taken the initiative to make a better world for all.

If you want an idea of the kind of work these donations will support, read:

It is Not All Laughing Children and Happy Endings
How Does Your Garden Grow?
You Can’t Get There From Here
Bolivia or Bust Tour 2009!
Bolivia or Bust
How I Spent My Summer Holidays

Death of a Friend

I ended up at a meeting by chance last week and there learned of the death of some good friends. It is funny how these things impact you. It made me think about the last time I saw them or talked with them. I was closer to some than others, of course. I haven’t kept in touch as much as I should have, I admit, but we had a pretty good relationship for the most part.

I think I will miss B.W. Piper the most. We don’t see each other often—only once a year—but we are certainly part of each other. He was in my class just last week. B.W. showed up in his old straw hat to talk to my students about his role in an innovative little research company called Rat Bastard, Inc. He is doing great work to protect the province of Alberta from rats moving in from next door.

In January and February, I spent 7 weeks with Jack and Sue and I will certainly miss them as well. It was great to have them share their experiences of building a farm with my Farm Structures class. My students were always amused when they would disagree with each other and debate decisions they had made. Jack was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he never backed down from a challenge and Sue was ever patient with Jack. I guess it is a good thing they left together; I can’t imagine either of them alone.

I will even miss uncle Bob (not really my uncle). Though he has often been described as the typical luddite boss, I always appreciated conversations with Bob; he reminded me that, although progress marches on, not everyone falls into lock step. He demonstrated that the further up the ladder you are the easier it is to pretend you are marching, or to just not give a rip and stand at the side watching everyone go by.


I can’t say I am surprised at the passing of these friends, I have known for a while that this could happen, but to lose all of them at once, well, I will miss them. I know that losing them means that there is an opportunity for me to start new friendships, to build new working relationships and to broaden my circle, but there is so much work involved to make that happen. A relationship doesn’t materialize on its own, and I don’t know if I have the energy to start all over again.

I am sure that my feelings right now are charged with emotion, and perhaps when I have a chance to process this, I will feel better. But the fact remains, we all lost friends in that meeting last week, and I ask that you take a moment with me now to remember the fallen, a moment of silence for good friends who are no longer with me:
CADD 100 - Computer Aided Drafting and Design
LGIS 130 – Digital Land Graphics
MECH 269 – Farm Structures
HORT 170 – Turf Graphics
LGIS 230 – 3D CAD
LGIS 430 – Software Customization, and
LGIS 250 – Remote Sensing

I will miss all of you and the character that lived inside each one. I hope I find the strength to build new friendships or find a way to revive some of you. If we can’t meet again, thanks for making my life richer and improving the lives of thousands of my students.

Back to the Basics of Lift

I have had more than a few interests in my life—often frivolous at first blush. There have been far too many different interests to actively be involved in all of them at once, so I tend to be engaged in something for a while, then box it up and shelve it. If you looked through my shop, you would find boxes containing Beta fish breeding equipment, pottery tools, squash equipment, sheep shearing tools and, of course, pretty much every type of model airplane you can think of.

I pulled one of those many boxes off the shelf this week, and I have been amazed at how it has come to consume my train of thought again. The box was labeled “PRS” for Portable Remote Sensing. To be honest, PRS has never been fully shelved; it has been lingering in my grey matter since Murray and I started the project. With the Bolivia group going to map CERENID next month and an old friend, Dawn, working to create an information database for project sites, the need for good remote sensing data increases. My mind has shifted back to airfoils, amps, thrust, and lift.

I feel like my mind is reloading memory slots at the front of my brain with information I had pushed to the back. I have started sketching and drawing, thinking and evaluating. I stare off into space and recall what I have done, then start inserting new information gathered since the last time I did this. New camera information, new GPS equipment, better servos, smaller gyros and so on. I revisit old locations for inspiration and new ideas. I spent time inside my plane room--standing, thinking, experiencing new thoughts and feelings. I tried, somewhat successfully, to penetrate to the heart of the issue, savor the moment and energize my mind. Time well spent!

That night, only a few hours after new possibilities opened to me there in my plane room, a new drawing file appeared on my computer. It will morph over the next few weeks, and then the dust will start to fly. Years of diverse experience and fresh new ideas will combine to produce one black box. The contents of this box will have roots in the basics of lift, the fundamentals of aerodynamics.
I love to look ahead, but I have learned that you must never forget to look back first. There are physical laws that govern our universe, and there are past experiences that govern our perspective. With the exception of the bumble bee, things don’t fly that don’t conform to applicable physical laws; our new experiences, too, are more likely to ‘fly’ if we reflect on what we, and others, have learned before us.

Form Challenged

Those who know me well will know that I am form challenged. I am not referring to poor body image; I mean that when I have to fill out a form, I freeze up. I once heard a comedian talking about childbirth who said that, when her baby was born, half her brain came out with the placenta and the other half slowly leaked out every time she breast fed. That is sort of how I feel when confronted by a form; half my brain leaks out my ears!

I am very careful with my passport when I travel; it is strapped to my body under all my clothes at all times. I do this for two reasons: first, if it is attached to me, I cannot lose it, have it fall out of a pocket, leave it in a bag on a bus or set it down and forget to pick it up; second, it is my hope that, if I am robbed, the robber will see the environment my passport has been in (fat, hairy, sweaty waist/groin region) and be so disgusted that they won’t want it. I hope I never have to put the second half of my theory to the test!

When I am home, I am not so careful with the passport, unfortunately. After my last trip, I accidentally washed my passport when I did my laundry--turning it into a 'coming home' passport (so called because, if I'd done this in Bolivia, I think I could have ironed it enough to get me back home). But it was not a 'going away' passport anymore, so I needed to replace it.

Enter “The Form.” With the passport form filled out and all the ID I think I need, I steeled myself for the dreaded trip to the passport office. It is not so much the waiting I dread, though there is sure to be plenty; it is the forgetting to fill in one line, having the picture somehow not being right, or running into any one of a hundred imagined circumstances that scares me. Filling in a new form on the spot would certainly have my brain leaking out and the rest of me hoping I retained enough grey matter to speak and walk.

We (my wife and I; she is my first line of defense against forms) entered the office and were greeted by the always-present white-haired commissionaire who was not surly or authoritative but pleasant and respectful. He politely asked us to turn off our cell phones and held the door as we entered. Next was the form-tearer/ID-checker. She, too, was very pleasant and efficient, sorting through the assorted documents, photos and ID, and neatly clipping the appropriate documents together. She handed back my documents with a number tag and suggested what wait time we might expect.

Eventurally, my number was called and up to gate 5 I went. I was greeted by a very pleasant and professional young lady who started processing my form. Everything was going swimmingly: all the boxes seemed to be filled out correctly, the ID seemed adequate and I briefly had a sense of hope. When I showed her my washed passport, she asked if I had filled out a lost or damaged passport form. My heart sank! She assured me that it was going to be OK. She gave me the form to fill out and explained that it had to be notarized. Seeing the look of terror on my face, she gently wiped the dribbling brain matter from my shoulders and handed me a sheet with addresses for nearby notaries. She gave me driving directions, her business card, and said that upon my return, I would not need to get in line again but that the commissionaire would direct me straight to her gate.

She was right! The copy house containing the notary was right were she said it would be. He was very pleasant, very welcoming and very understanding about my extra washing. He professionally did his duty and sent me on my way. When I got back to the passport office, the commissionaire held the door and directed me to gate 5--no waiting. My additional form was pleasantly accepted, and all is well...I think.

I want to thank all of you who dealt with me that day. Your cheerful manner went a long way to relieving my stress. If only I could have avoided driving diagonally across the entire city during rush hour! I will see you all in two years when I get to renew my passport; I promise I won’t wash this one.