Sign Your Donor Card

I was involved in transplant surgery this past weekend, a surgery led by Dr. Joe. This is the second transplant surgery I have been involved with but the first time I’ve dealt with a scenario where there has been one donor and many recipients. I have mixed feelings now, after the procedure: sadness for the donor but happiness for all of those who benefitted.

Part of my role on the transplant team was to escort the donor to the procedure on that fateful Good Friday morning. (Well, it was a “good” Friday for some; not the donor!) It was eerie knowing that I was the last to have a conversation with the donor before Dr. Joe began. I found it odd that the donor willingly proceeded to the site of termination. I questioned the ethics of assisting in the act that would end a life even though I knew that the death would save many. I could intervene and save the donors life, but at what cost? Is terminal really terminal? What if a treatment was found and the effects of time could be reversed? Would the death of one on Good Friday really save the lives of others? If so, how many would benefit? Could such matters be reduced it a “score card” type of evaluation?

With the donor immobilized and then terminated, Dr. Joe began to remove the heart. I had the honour of helping by removing many other vital organs. Even some cosmetic donations were made. It took only a few hours to take the donor from fully functioning, albeit worn out, to a stripped-out shell. This was the saddest part for me. I hate to think that we are only a few boxes of good parts in an aging, decaying case.

But with death comes life! A younger recipient with a bad heart now has a new heart, (new to them at least) and the opportunity to live again after years of convalescing. To see her come to life again, reborn , and leave the surgery under her own power was very rewarding. But the death of one on Good Friday meant life for not just one but many by Sunday. A new heart for one, yes, but a new front end for another and a new brain for a third and boxes of hope for many more yet to be touched by Friday’s Sacrifice.

Thanks to Dr. Joe for giving life to our newest and best-looking shiny blue firefly, for fortifying the front end on my dear old friend and driving partner (515,000 km and still going), and for adding a new CPU to Heather’s pride and joy. My shelf of pretty-good parts is also growing, and has inspired me to begin planning a little cosmetic surgery on my old girl.

Sign your donor card, and you, too, can bring life where only death looks likely. Remember those who have made sacrifices for us, and always be nice to your mechanic!

Shave to Save Update

Well the battle is on! At the end of the first week, I am ahead by a hair (which means I won't end up with any!), so I decided to use this space to strongly urge you to pledge money for BRENT's haircut. Let me cut to the chase: if I can't raise some funds for Brent, I am going to have to pack an extra suitcase just for sunscreen!

I have received a number of email inquires about the beard; no, it is not coming off! Rumour has it that a consortium is being formed to double whatever funds are raised by 'shave day' if I will take the beard off, too. To quote Ray R., "Talk is cheap. It takes money to buy whiskey." I suspect Gord A. and Trish are behind this anti-beard conspiracy. As for me, I am still looking for a corporate sponor to donate to Brent's haircut. I think that may be the only way I will get to keep any hair.

It has been a hair-raising week. I never thought that people's need to get even with me would result in saving lives in Bolivia, but, hey, whatever works! In all seriousness, though, my thanks go to all who have cut into their own funds to help those in need. Brent has been doing a wonderful job of drumming up support to cut me down to size. There are now a number of posters up on campus that I suspect have seen the less-flattering side of a PhotoShop program. The Student Association has also gotten behind this and is advertising on our behalf. Funds are being donated online, and I recieve a number of emails every day.

To better serve the students and to drum up a little more support on Shave day, the event will be held in the Time Square in residence on April 24th at noon--the last day of classes. Please plan on coming out to see the hair come off! If you are wondering what I am talking about or can't remember how to become involved, please see the origonal release below. Thanks for you support, and keep it coming!

In an effort to raise funds for A Better World’s Rural Health Project (an initiative that covers medical costs for individuals and families who cannot afford medical care) and for Bolivian agriculture projects, a few 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, who is also ABW’s technical director, and Brent Nicol, student extraordinaire, have agreed to participate in this hair-raising scheme. They will 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 comes in 2nd gets to keep a 1/2” of hair.

To donate:

• Email ggilchrist@oldscollege.ca, indicating amount of donation and who you are sponsoring.


• Or go to http://www.a-better-world.ca/ and click ‘donate online’ (Specify “Shave to Save” and either “Gord” or “Brent”)

(Charitable receipts available for donations of $25 or more. Include mailing address, please.)

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

Re-inventing the Wheel (or Why I should Document My Thinking)

When my mind is fully engaged, it’s a bit like a NASCAR race--always more than one idea racing along, sometimes bumping into another resulting in a crazy spectacle. All the ideas are headed in the same general direction, but it is hard to tell which one will win at the beginning of the race. I believe in putting a lot of cars on the track and letting attrition weed out the weak ones. Experience and skill slowly moves the best idea to the front of the pack, and 500 miles later, I have a winner.

I love to be fully engaged in a project: the smell of gears smoking in my brain, the flash of new ideas to explore. Last week, I found it necessary to become fully engaged with the cancellation of the GIS program at Olds College. Extreme disappointment and depression would soon fill the void left in my head by the departure of our program if I did not engage in some other activity. An idle mind is a dangerous thing (a saying never truer than with me)!

So I need an activity to engage in. As luck would have it, I also have an airplane I need to get built—the one we will use in Bolivia to gather mapping data. Before I build it, however, I also need to design it. Before I design it, I need to know components I will use. I know that this may appear to be backwards thinking, but I like to start with the outcome and work in reverse so that each part of the design meets the requirements of the final product. In the case of my plane, I started with the motor and prop. Making the best choice involves recording thrust, watts, amps, and volts for one of many motor/prop combinations on a test stand.

As I started testing with Murray one Saturday morning, it occurred to me that I had seen these numbers before and that the idea-car moving to the front of the pack looked awfully familiar. I began wondering why I bought 6-cell speed controls and such. I suddenly realized I had done this all before! I knew which idea was going to win this race because I had seen this race last year. I just didn’t write down the results!

Some might say that I wasted a Saturday morning doing these tests over again. I prefer to think of it as spending quality time with a friend and confirming previous results. Of course, if I had written the results down last time I could have spent that Saturday morning designing instead of testing. Murray wrote the results down this time so we won’t have to do this again.

I am well on my way to finishing the plane—thanks to Murray for help testing and my daughter for help cutting wings. I hope to have the plane built by the 14th and test flights run by the 21st. That gives me a whole week before I get on the airline to Bolivia! Uh oh! How am I ever going to fill the time?

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.