I was perusing the Whitehorse Craigslist real estate listings the other day and came across a real gem in the housing for rent section.

I must first caution that younger readers or those with a sensitive disposition may wish to skip the following paragraph.

CAD400 whitehorse is a (whitehorse)

“whithehorse is a shit hole , i was up there for a couple of months, how can you people live in such a hell hole… wasteland…and the people wow what a bunch of inbreeds, dumb fucks,,,,, clean up what u people call a city…really thats not a city…..dirty little town …fuck u dont even have a kfc….hahahaha,,,sad bunch of indians walking around thinking there something speicial…….. cheers from vancouver island , the best place on earth.”

Leaving aside the matter that this listing omits many of the details one would expect to find in a rental classified — location, size, appliances — the brusque and grammatically-liberated language is unlikely to invite many inquiries.

I do agree with the poster in a least one respect: the lack of a functioning KFC is distressing. Doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting housing prices though.

Not everyone loves our little city in the valley. Personally, I would prefer bigger trees, more precipitation, and the death penalty for ATV drivers. Come to think of it, Vancouver Island can claim at least two out of those three. Maybe that listing writer was onto something.

I’ve given up playing along with the majority consensus: sunny and warm do not a beautiful day make. As far as I’m concerned, you can all take your sun and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

Fortunately, if I can just survive until the middle of this coming week, it’ll be my turn to mindlessly blather about what wonderful weather we’re having. See how you like it.

CBC's forecast for the week.

And to confirm the good news:

The Weather Network's concurring forecast

I’m not going to explain my meteorological preferences other than to say, yet once more, that you’re wrong and I’m right.

Carole just got back from racing in yesterday’s 18th annual Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay. No results are posted yet (she rode leg 8 for team enDURANce enDURANce — complete with 80s apparel), but she was curious just how long the full course is from Haines Junction, Yukon, to Haines, Alaska. Both common sense and the relay website will tell you it’s about 240km all told, but I typed it into a search bar and Google Maps responded with this astounding figure:

That seemed a little longer than I remembered. A glance at the suggested route explained the discrepancy:

What Google Maps missed was a little highway called the Haines Road that leads almost directly from point A to point B. A minor detail, really. Hardly worth bothering about.

The question is: is this the “one more,” or is the “one more” yet to come?

…but I’m not, and unfortunately, “Occidental-oriented” is an ornamented accident.

Put much more simply, Carole and I took the Yukon Orienteering Association‘s “Learn to ‘O’ Clinic” yesterday, ostensibly so that we could devote even more of our time to being lost in the woods.

The day was spent learning to read the highly-detailed orienteering topographical maps, and then scrambling about out back of the College with said maps. Learning to find bearings with the compass was also helpful, but at our level the maps are far more useful.

The YOA holds meets every second Wednesday, and we’re planning to attempt the more casual routes: the ones with fewer crossed contour lines, and with controls (checkpoints) conveniently located near trails.