Bom-ba-deers and bicycles

 

    As the first full week of school comes to an end, I can honestly say I'm exhausted.  To start the semester, we began with a week-long CTS course offering.  My section happened to be a health course with a smattering of information from the furthest reaches of the health field(s).  Starting with the 12 things Health Canada says directly effect your health, dabbling around in the Canada Food Guide (which has changed by the way *hint* fruit and veg have replaced grain products on the bottom of the pyramid), blasting through physical and mental fitness and well being, and ending smack dab in the middle of condoms, RCMP alcohol and tobacco lectures, and a pancake breakfast.  To break up the dry kill and drill Canada Food Guide information, I took the girls out on walks around the community and out on to the land (walking is also heart healthy but for all intents and purposes, I really just wanted out of my classroom).  I managed to snap some pictures with my crappy Blackberry phone camera (still no camera cord).

A view of down town Gjoa from the Amunsen Monument  (south)

Standing at the Amunsen Monument looking up town (north)

My class 

As we were walking around on the land, I spotted a yellow "tank" down by one of the inland lakes and I asked the girls what it was.  The damn thing looked like a skidoo/tank/joke that I couldn't fully comprehend and the girls called it a BOM-BA-DEER which I later established meant Bombardier and after some research I figured was actually a Bombardier Snow Bus.  Unfortunately, my pictures of this specific archaic monstrosity were too dark and grainy, so I found a photo online of one in significantly better condition but with the same tongue in cheek joke quality that one can only approach these Frankensteins with.  Just picture a busted-ass, boxier, rusted-out, skidoo-tank and you've got yourself a BOM-BA-DEER.

To end the long week, I came home to find a super-fantastic bike (read - free) sitting on my porch!  Have you ever wondered where that thing you ordered in the mail went after the 3-6 weeks promised for shipping? Well kids, I'll tell you.  Your random crap ends up dead ending on freakass little islands in the Arctic circle.  One of the RCMP guys had his stuff shipped in when he moved up here and low and behold, he also got a woman's bicycle.  Now being the fair-minded officer of the law that he is, he tried very hard to return the bicycle to its rightful owner but alas, as the solution to most problems up here, it was deemed a write off by the shipping company because it was actually cheaper to pay out the $300 worth of insurance than it would have been to ship the $250 bike to its rightful owner.  Fortunate for me that the RCMP guy is too manly to ride a girl-bike because this heavy, jacked up, easy rider is allllllll mine! HUZZAH!  Far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth, that is unless it was spitting out free bikes... I mean, serious, who doesn't want a free bike? All the cool kids ride them AND it will cut down my commute by at least half! Now I can take the road without feeling like a wuss for not taking that godforsaken sand-hill that divides the upper(where I live) and lower parts of town (the main part).  

The other update for all of you fine folks wishing to lavish me with gifts is that I made a mistake in previous posts about my PO Box.  You can send your gifts and fan mail to:

Jennifer Thompson
Qikirtaq High School
PO BOX 117
Gjoa Haven, Nunavut
X0B 1J0