Wednesday, December 23, 2009

MERRY XMAS

Enjoy your holidays all!!! I plan on taking this time to relax... I hope you all do the same.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Inspiring... and fun

I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a grade 10 Prince Rupert class this week. I was dreading it, as I had NEVER spoken in front of a group of teens before. It sounds wierd, but although I'm comfortable speaking to the northern B-C masses every morning on Daybreak... I was terrified of facing off with a grade 10 class.

How did it go?

BRILLIANTLY!!! It was fun, and a lot easier than I thought it would be. The class was actually a "Planning 10" class. I basically shared with them, my story of how the "Green Traveller" came to be. I even shared a fair bit of myself that I had never done before.

I gave the usual intro about myself. THEN, I gave them the REAL intro about who I was. I felt it necessary to show them that I was not by any means anyone special. I consider myself an average dude, who like everyone else has the capacity to do great things (or terrible things). I shared with them the less then proud moments of my life as an alcoholic, smoking, college drop-out loser... before I changed my life for the better. I also told them why I was NOT a good "green" role model, and all the funny nuances along the way as Marc and I filmed over the summer. It sounds like it would have been difficult to have been so transparent in my presentation, but in fact it all came out a lot easier then I thought it would.

Before the class started, the students, did not seem attentative... they were chatting amongst themselves, and I thought "man, they're going to eat me up and spit me out..." but as soon as I started speaking, they were extremely attentative. It was nice. Hopefully they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Another neat update. I had been looking for some more music for our pilot and trailer. I found some. Local musician (Terrace) Brad North has performed in northern British Columbia for years. He's a family friend, and we are going to see if we can implement his tunes in our project. Pretty exciting!!!!

Also, by some wierd coincidence... I self assigned myself some homework over the holidays. That was to locate some archival Haida photos we could draw from, for our project. The very next week, i was booking a guest for our morning radio show to reflect the 'officializing,' of the name Haida Gwaii for the now former "Queen Charlotte Islands." The guest I booked is president of the Bill Reid Foundation. I quickly learned he has access to photos that date back as far as 120 years ago, and we may be able to use some. What LUCK!!!

So all in all, its been a great week. Now back to getting ready for the holidays!!!


rd

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Still chugging along.

What a productive weekend!!!

It's been a busy Fall/Winter for me so far. Already I've been to Vancouver twice, and Toronto once. All work related. The good news though, is that Marc and I were able to collaborate and get things on track. We now have a rough timeline for our project, with an overall deadline of March 30th 2010.

I can't speak for Marc, but it was quite amazing to relive the experience of this summers adventure. We went through the majority of the logged tape. We also wrote and voiced two trailer bits, which we hope will be posted soon online. At this time we're still working on getting our music together AND also getting our hands on some historical stills. Overall, just reconnecting with Marc made it worth it... just to get that excitement going again.

In the meantime, I'll be speaking to a highschool class next week about my current profession AND what the Green Traveller project was all about. It should be fun.

On another note, I've been bad. Super bad. Slowly, but surely the weight has been coming back on. It is all diet... I can't help myself. I love crappy food SO much, but I need to put a stop to this, or the first season of the Green Traveller will need a wide lens to ensure all of my 400 pounds fit into the screen.

Work life has been great... family life even better. Kali (my little baby) is growing quickly and already crawling all over the place. I have even more time on my hands, as I recently dropped out of my hockey pool (which quite honestly was taking up way too much of my working/family time).

In addition to getting this project together and the trailer, I must say researching the first season has been quite fun. Basically I'm at the 'gathering' stage. Province by province I'm clipping out all the amazing green travel opportunities our country has to offer. It's like planning for the holidays in a way... Some neat quirky travel finds to be seen for sure. I pray this project finds some success. Regardless, this will make for very cool Canada travel in my lifetime.

Anyway, holidays are almost here... and plenty to do. Keep an eye out for the latest Spirit of the North magazine. Its available now. I didn't know what to write, so I just put together a grab-bag of neat winter activities to do in northern BC. The Haida Gwaii chronicles should be out in the Spring.

Til next we speak. Ta Ta!!!

Robert