Gregory Hildebrand

Here are some photos from my Paid – on – Call Firefighter training. Most of them are from Greg Wretham with a few of mine. If anyone has any other photos they would like added, let me know via email.

It was conducted by members of the Squamish Fire Department. Thanks Steve, Grant and Neil !

I have also added a short video of Pascal and Greg Wretham putting out the car fire at the bottom.

If you want to download all the photos, click HERE for a zipped file with all of them in it.

[View with PicLens]

This summer I bought myself a mountain bike, and decided to go out and experience the local trails. Whistler is quite well known for its biking, with plenty of top quality trails around the place. Whistler is mainly known for the bike park, but I decided to get into the cross country (XC) style to get a bit of exercise out of it.

Well I bought myself an ‘all-mountain’ 2007 Giant Reign. I ended up loving it so much I bought a 2008 Giant Reign towards the end of the season. I expected the new bike to simply be lighter, but it was slightly different in geometry, and a lot stiffer making it overall a much better bike than the 2007 model.

Anyway, I had a great summer, and went from being scared of the mellowest rock roll, and too afraid to try a 2ft wide bridge to doing some pretty gnarly rocks and feeling more comfortable on the woodwork.

I decided to make a little video of me, and here is the result.

I just finished reading a book by Jed Rubenfeld called Interpretation of Murder . It is a fictional novel based around the visit of Sir Sigmund Freud to  New York around the time of 1909. Basically it is a great murder mystery that also makes you think about various ideas / theories Freud has suggested. It has been well written, combining the murder story with various famous ideas that have come from Freud. I read the book in a matter of days, as the story kept me interested the whole time, and kept me wanting to know what happened next.

A  good read.

I just finished watching ‘The Incredibles’ again, I love that movie. I just wanted to make a post saying that I support the motion of making a sequel. Brad Bird, the director has been quoted as saying he would love to make a sequel ’so long as the story was good’. Anyway there is a rumor going around that Pixar has given the green light to making a sequel, well apparently that is not true, as reported here.

Well, all we can do is hope that Pixar finds a good story, and one day goes ahead with a sequel.

Last night I went and saw a performance of the much talked about ‘Famous Puppet Death Scenes’. I did some researh on the internet, and all I see is great reviews of it. Well mine is different. I didn’t think much of it, perhaps it was too ‘cultural’ or ‘classy’ for me, but I thought it was stupid.  There are something like 21 or so different scenes, and in each one, at least one of the puppet characters dies. Apparently they are all re-enactments of single scenes from ‘complete’ puppet shows, and maybe if seen in context, some of them would’ve made more sense. As it was, I heard a lot of murmurs in the crowd along the lines of ‘Please explain that scene to me’.  Some scenes very child-like, and others were quite macabre, yet none were ‘entertaining’ and most didn’t really seem to have a point. I realise the whole point was ‘death’ and yes, each scene had death ( although sometimes you had to infer it ), but overall, there was no flow and was mostly nonsense.

On a positive note, the puppets themselves were intriguing. While some were very basic, others had obviously had a lot of time gone into making them, as they had amazing detail. Also props should be given to the puppeteers, you can tell the fully devoted themselves to the performance.

I am no expert in any kind of stage productions, and would normally recommend that people go and see it for themselves, as everyones taste is different. However in this case, I must honestly say, that I don’t think anyone should bother seeing Famous Puppet Death Scenes.

Well Australia Day has come and gone. Once again the Longhorn Bar was the place to be, with people lining up before 9am to get in the doors. Every year the Longhorn celebrates Aussie Day in a big way, normally importing some Australian beer. Every year something to remember always happens, and this year is no different. Apparently one of the Aussie lift attendants thought it would be a great idea ( must’ve been a slightly alcohol influenced idea ) that he should ski down Whistler mountain wearing only a pair of Speedos ( thong like swimwear ). Well, at temperatures cold enough to freeze your spit before it hits the ground, skiing ( therefore increasing the wind factor ) in basically nothing is NOT a good idea. People spend a lot of money buying insulated, waterproof and windproof ski outfits for a reason.

On a side note : We also had some overnight snow, around 10cm so it was an awesome powder day. Its not very often Australians get to celebrate the national day at -1o degrees Celsius, yet alone get to ski some powder.