The garage sale on Saturday was a success. We have lots more room in the house and garage, and had a few hundred bucks in my pocket. "Had" because we spent it all on Sunday (and a lot more), on a new bike for Cathy, a bike rack for the Outback, and helmets because of the Whitehorse bike bylaw (some people just can't mind their own business ). I replaced both tires and tubes on my bike that hadn't been ridden in about 5 years, but about 50 feet into the first ride, my derailer snapped. So today I have to decide how to deal with that – repair my old bike or buy a new one. Repairs will be costly and will take quite a while because the bike shop is buried in work. If the derailer snapped because of neglect-corrosion (likely), what else is wrong – would I just be putting good money into a bad project?

Yesterday, we loaded Monty and Kayla into the car and headed down to the White Pass on a bear-hunting expedition. We saw fresh bear scat on the highway along Tutshi Lake, so the bears are out of bed, but there was a lot of traffic (by South Klondike Highway standards) so we saw nothing furry. On Dail Peak there is still too much Indian snow to pick out the Dall sheep and mountain goats (Indian snow – a patchy here and a patchy there ).

Carcross is still the demarkation line between Spring and Winter – south of the village it got pretty ugly, with lots of snow squalls, and the temperature fell from 4°C to 1° (from 40 to 34° F). The picture to the right was shot at the Bove Island viewpoint on the way north (click to enlarge it). Yes, the lake is still totally frozen.

We went as far south as the new Yukon Suspension Bridge project, to see how it's coming along. They have a long way to go before the doors can open (there are no doors yet – or walls). We had a good look at the layout from the road. If the rumours are true about admission being around $20, they'll have a very hard time attracting anyone driving by – the market will be cruise ship passengers who don't know what they're getting, and where the price is buried in a package price. I noticed in the Yukon News that they've changed their "help wanted" ads to include mileage as well as wages. With accommodations virtually unavailable within 90 miles, that may not help much; finding help at any price may be their biggest problem of all.

For visitors, know who you're booking with. For lodging owners, be aware of how the booking transaction is being handled – if it looks odd in any way, proceed only with caution. A Yukon B&B owner was targetted by this scam in recent days: http://www.pillowsandpancakes.com/scam-warning.htm

You've probably all received at least one of these in recent weeks – another brilliant idea about how to force the oil companies to their knees so they lower gas prices. Here's the most recent to land in my Inbox:

GAS WAR – an idea that WILL work This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It' s worth your consideration.Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $1.15 a litre by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $0.85 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.05 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre of gas is CHEAP at $1.05 to 1.15, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace….. not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.Here's the idea:
For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), Esso and Shell. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and Shell gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out at this point…. keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people.

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to at least ten more (30 x 10 =3D 300) … and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 =3D 3,000)…and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE >>>>HUNDRED MILLION >>>>PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people…. Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am, so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you? Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from ESSO & SHELL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $0.85 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK!!

Yeah, this could work – about as well as the hot stock tips, free software deals and penis enlargers I get emails about.

The oil companies know that nothing will change the way we drive, so they keep jacking up prices – we haven't seen anything yet. SUVs are the "in" thing – then people whine that they use a lot of gas (they didn't think about that when they were in the showroom?????) Only when riding buses or bicycles and driving tiny hybrid vehicles are the norm will they care even a tiny bit what we think (yeah, like that could happen!!). Notice that no such suggestion is ever made in these emails. In January I parked my big gas-guzzling Ford pickup and bought a Subaru Outback which gets 3 times the mileage (and is much more fun to drive), but now I spend more time behind the wheel, so it isn't as big a saving as it might have been.

The picture to the right (click on it to enlarge it) was taken around Jasper, Alberta, as Cathy & I were driving to Kelowna, BC, to spend Christmas with my folks. The return trip was over 5,200 km – most people in Europe don't drive that far in a year, but we do it on a 10-day holiday because that's the way North Americans live. There is already a fair bit of talk online about how gas prices will affect Yukon-Alaska tourism this summer. I have no doubt that many RVers will stay much closer to home. Others will make up for higher gas prices by parking at Wal*Marts along the way rather than in RV parks. The question is not whether gas prices will hurt tourism, but how much.

Hi – welcome to my new blog! Since blogs are the way to communicate nowadays, it’s time I joined in. The ExploreNorth Blog will be the more casual, more-often-written version of Explorenorth’s email newsletter, with much more than just notes about Web site updates. With Spring just now arriving in a serious way, there's a whole lot going on in my world, and this will be where you can read about it if such things interest you. To some degree this is also a training exercise for me, as my writing has suffered over the past couple of years due to having too much happening that distracts me.

This past weekend, I took a judo club down to Prince George, BC, in the charter bus that I've been driving for the past few years. I love traveling, but it's become too disruptive, so I'm retiring from bus driving in August. The Prince George trip was the last sports charter I'll be doing (the people were great, though). There isn't a whole lot to do in Prince George in the Spring, but we got lucky and had fabulous weather, so after a short visit to the beautiful art gallery on Saturday, I walked several miles around downtown, the railyards and Cottonwood Park. A new Lions charity program is resulting in 7-foot-high fiberglass "Spirit Bears," each decorated by a different local artist, being installed in several communities around BC – see SpiritBearsintheCity.com for information. I found 6 of the 7 installed in Prince George so far (there will be 14 in Prince George within the next few weeks). I really enjoy trains, and the highway bridge to Cottonwood Park offered a great bird's eye view (click on the photo to enlarge it).