First Impressions

So...Elkford. the Wilderness Capital of British Columbia. What exactly am I doing in this crazy little town? The easy answer is of course the one you all know: doing my co-op term with Elk Valley Coal for the next 7 or so months.


To answer in more detail, I'm figuring out what I actually want to do in my career as a mining engineer, assuming that I even want to do that. Since, this is my first time working at a mine, I'm starting out in surveying. I spend probably around half my time in the office and half my time in the pit. The pit work essentially consists of going around the mine with various GPS equipment and recording elevations and coordinates, as well as putting in stakes for the dozers, shovels, drills and blasters. In the office, we take the data that's collected while in the mine and organize it in a CAD program called MineSight which then is used for a variety of purposes which I don't really want to go into as I feel the technicalities aren't all that important/interesting.

It's a pretty cool job, and definitely much better than last summer's fabric cutting hell. There's a good variety of tasks, a solid amount of responsibility (with a lot more later in the summer when the actual surveyors start going on vacation) and even some thinking involved. Working outside is pretty cool most of the time, although I'd say it has snowed over half the days I've been working. Nonetheless, the scenery is pretty sweet, and as surveyors, we get to hike around places that nobody else in the mine goes to(tops of cliffs and such).

Did I mention explosives? Yeah, there's a lot of explosives. The mine has about three blasts per week, each blast is usually about 300 holes with each hole containing about the same explosive power as the Oklahoma City bombing (sorry to use a sad/morbid example, but it's how it was explained to me, and it gives a better frame of reference than some number in Joules). I'll get some pictures/videos of blasts once summer actually starts here (i.e. the snow and fog stops).

As for Elkford itself, well it's pretty tiny. Basically if the weather sucks (see above) there's not a whole lot to do. Luckily the long weekend was really good weather so I went camping down by the US border which was pretty cool, and hit up a bar in Fernie one of the nights where they had GIANT BOTTLES OF CORONA!(see picture below) That's 710mL of quality cerveza.

Also they definitely deserve the title of Wilderness Capital of BC. Every morning on the way to work I pass by like at least thirty elk and there's deer around all town the time. Also seen a some big horn sheep, although they're definitely much rarer than the other two. I need to get some pictures of that too...

That's all I'm really feeling in terms of posting for right now. I might post again later this weekend, but we shall see.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." ~ Lao Tzu

What's all this then?

So this is my blog.

I suppose the first question that begs an answer is 'why do you need a blog?'
Basically I started this blog as a way to chronicle my co-op term up here in Elkford working for Elk Valley Coal, but I'd like to take it further than that, both in terms of keeping it going once this work term is over, as well as what I plan (using the term loosely) to write about.

This brings me to the second question at the tip of everyone's tongues (fingers?) 'what's with the name?'
The name is from a Carl Sagan quote:

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities."

Basically I kind of like this whole idea of asymptotic approaches to absolutes, whether is be absolute truth, wisdom, happiness or sobriety. Essentially, in my opinion, the world deals too much in absolutes - in black and white if you will - when nothing ever really has clear boundaries. What I'm saying is life is just series of asymptotic approaches to different absolutes, never clearly defined, and always complex in nature. As this will hopefully be a blog about all my experiences, reflections, philosophizing and thoughts in general, I thought the name was pretty apt, while also being a decent alliteration (or assonance if your gonna get all literary in my grill).

Constructivism played a role as well...but I think I'll save that post for another day.

Also, as an engineer(ing student), so I was kinda bound to choose a title like this.