How does the Olympic flame stay lit on a plane?

The Olympic flame is coming to Canada from Greece for the Winter Olympics & Paralympics in February. The plane carrying the flame is going to land on Friday in Victoria, BC and then the flame does a tour of Canada before the games start.

So in the era of having airport security confiscate those ever dangerous nail clippers and shampoo bottles that are too big... how does the Olympic flame stay lit on a plane?

According to Wikipedia, the Olympic Flame is preserved in a back-up lantern overnight and for when it goes on airplanes.

So someone has convinced airline security forces that a lit lantern (or several of them - apparently there are always many backups to make sure the flame came from Greece) on a plane is OK. Just how many security personnel travel with this flame to make that safe?

According to the Vancouver Sun newspaper, the fuel tank portions of the torches - 675 of them that were used in Greece - are also coming back in the plane. It's good to hear that they will be fully emptied then recycled properly, but isn't that lots of incendiary material on a plane - fuel that isn't running the plane, so not in the tanks designed to carry fuel on a plane?

The engineering and security considerations around these torches must be truly significant.

OK everybody, enjoy that flame. It's taken a huge amount of human effort to get it here, and not just by the people running with it.

Did they yell "Timber"?

We had a bit of excitement on the weekend. There was a fire outside in the alley. Close to the top of a wooden power line pole, there were flames licking up around one of the bobbly attachments that the power line sits on. (Bobbly attachments, that's a technical term :)

Today there are about a dozen people working outside. They've replaced the pole. I wasn't here when they took the old one down, so now I'll never know if they yell "Timber" when they take an old pole down. Bummer. I kinda doubt it. It looks like they may have cut it in half before removing it, thus reducing the chance of it falling on someone, so they didn't really need to yell.

They are doing a great deal of work up the new pole now. They attached some wooden cross braces at the top. Now they are attaching the wires and some new bobbly attachments to it.

It's quite the pole actually. There are 6 poles over there. One pole has 3 round drum-like things hanging close to the top. Two poles have a platform strung between them close to the top and 4 square mechanical boxes sitting on it. The pole that had a fire only has wires and bobbly attachments on it. There is another pole with only bobbly attachments. And there is one pole with only one wire between it and the one next to it that looks like it's there to keep the other ones stable.

What an enormous amount of equipment to be hanging in the air over there. It didn't look like anyone lost power when the one pole caught fire, so it's not obvious what the wires are doing... makes you wonder.

Does this make me a Cougar?

One of the "hottest" new things seems to be dating services that match up older women (35 and up) with younger men (in their 20s). These women are called "cougars" in the local vernacular. One of the most prominent dating services actually has "cougar" in the name.

It's not meant as an offensive term, but some women seem to find the term "cougar" offensive. I just don't get that. Being called a strong, mature woman who knows what she wants and is willing to go out and get it herself is what I would consider the ultimate compliment.

I'm not single, and I'm not looking for younger men to date... my question stems from the fact that I have recently changed hair stylist, and my new stylist is only 25 and male. This is new for me.

I had to leave my old hairstylist because she was having a mid-life crisis and I couldn't deal with her mood swings anymore. She's 35, recently divorced, and has decided "trashy and stupid" is her sweet-spot for attracting new males. And the men she is attracting are what I would consider "pond scum". It strains the discussion when you frequently want to slap some sense into the woman, and it does nothing good for your hairstyle.

So I'm enjoying having this 25 year old male hairstylist. His life isn't complicated. There is no deep trauma going on anywhere. He's finding it weird that he feels like cleaning his apartment when his roommate is gone for the day and he has the place to himself. He finds it annoying that he has adult-type decisions to make now, and his parents won't give him the answers. It's such a refreshingly uncomplicated existence to hear about.

Does this mean I'm being a cougar? I'm enjoying this non-romantic type contact with a young male. It's not the dating thing, but it's nice.

Did that sign say Reality Advisor?

It was before coffee... that's what I thought the sign said.

It really said Realty Advisor - someone who advises on purchasing real estate for investment purposes. But I think a reality advisor sounds like much more fun.

So what would a reality advisor do?

• Tell you that you look like an overstuffed teddy bear in that sweater.
• Advise that it will rain today. (Repeat every day until April.)
• Let you know it's not your metabolism, it's the high-fat high-sugar stuff you keep putting in your mouth.
• Advise reality show participants that being real will have them off the show in record time, they should go for melodramatic fiction instead.
• Tell you the sky is green. (OK, that was from a bored reality advisor - maybe he got into the wine.)
• Let you know that housework is never done.
• Burst that lottery-winning dream bubble. (This advisor is really getting me down.)
• Remind you that you have a dentist appointment. (That was just mean.)
• Let you know that you can't change the person you are dating, you can just waste a lot of time trying. (Awww.)
• Tell you no one will do your work if you don't....

OK, scrap that idea. That reality advisor is fired. No wonder you don't see signs for reality advisors... they would really bum you out, and people can do that by themselves, we don't need advisors for that.

Can I have one of those elevator keys?

I was in an office building with a lot of medical offices and only 2 elevators yesterday. And yes, you guessed it, one of the elevators was on service.

So when I drove my wheelchair into the one working elevator - I was the third person in, and expected other people would walk in, but not as many as would fit if we were all standing... boy was I disappointed. As many people as could jam themselves into the elevator squished into the tiny little box. They got to know each other very well.

Hey, aren't some of you sick if this is a medical building? No one breathe.

I was only going to the 2nd floor. We see death and dismemberment imminently approaching. If only the chair could levitate, I would have taken the stairs! Why didn't some of the others take the stairs... I guess those working legs are only for show (grump, grump, grump).

I did finally manage to back out of the elevator (I still need to work on the backward movements), but man... there was chaos. I can turn on a dime, but not in a full elevator, bits do stick out.

When I was on my way back down, one of the elevators was skulking darkly on the floor I was on... with still obviously only one elevator working I figured I would be waiting for a reasonably empty elevator for hours.

Then a man got out of the other elevator, which was full and going up, and said "Are you going down?" I was a bit confused, but said yes. He closed the right hand side of the elevator door on the dark elevator by hand (I didn't know those moved separately), and put a large metal key into a hole high up on the elevator door. The lights came on and he invited me into the elevator. I drove in and immediately turned the chair around. Once the door was closed the elevator started going up. He said "No, I want to go down." and put the key into a maintenance keyhole on the floor selection panel inside the elevator and pushed the lobby button. We started going down.

I like that key. I want one too!

I never knew those little holes in elevator doors had a purpose! I will look for them on other elevator doors now!

The man with the key commented on how much he liked being in total control of the elevator. I told him I had never seen anyone with so much power over the elevator as he had and that he should "use the force wisely, Luke".

Where did everybody go?

I'm not saying that Vancouver is now a ghost town - although, with Halloween approaching it would be topical - but where did everybody go?

I was in my local coffee shop enjoying coffee yesterday, and I almost had the whole place to myself! Other than a couple at a table over there, and a woman and her dog at a table out there, about 3 people who came in and got their coffee to go, and 3 people who worked there... the place was empty. How very odd.

The streets aren't exactly bustling either. I was off doing errands before I stopped for coffee, and I ran into very few people (and bounced off most of them knuck, knuck, knuck... tee, yes I know that's a bad joke, humour me, I need more people about for something more stimulating).

I'm sure during the Olympics this will all change for a few weeks, but Vancouver in the winter is really quite empty. Without the tourists it's very quiet, you can just hear the rain coming down...

What are sits bones?

In Yoga you are often encouraged to sit yourself down "on your sits bones". A quick google gives you back "did you mean sitz bones"? (I love it when google goes "are you silly, or did you just type that wrong?") Google does come up with definitions for "sit bones" which are correct, and at least one of them does say yoga instructors often call them "sits bones". My yoga instructors have used the term many times. A good definition I've found is:

Anatomically part of your pelvis (the ischial tuberosity, to be exact), the sit bones are quite literally the bones under the flesh of the butt that you sit on.

So you can understand why I felt a bit odd yesterday having an Occupational Therapist, a wheelchair saleswoman, and my husband all putting their hands under my "sits bones" while I sat in my new wheelchairs. One at a time, they each put their hands under my "sits bones" to test the inflation level of my seat cushion while I was sitting on each chair - that's 6 times, for those of you wondering.

I do like my air filled Roho cushion, it does work well for me on both my power and manual wheelchairs, but it does come with an initial feeling of discomfort due to all the hands that have ended up under my butt testing the inflation level!

I am sooooo glad that this wheelchair purchasing process is finished. It is exhausting and can be very uncomfortable.

Do you really want me to test this?

After the disastrous start to my power chair wheelchair ownership (where the chair came to a sudden, jarring stop at the bottom of a hill) the dealer wanted to know if everything had been fixed by their mechanic and if it was working properly now.

That's an invitation to do a bit of testing, now isn't it? And it wouldn't do to just take it out on a short run to ensure it works... I would have to try to break it, that's what testing is really about, finding where something breaks, not where it works.

So armed with my spouse for support in case the chair did fail, yesterday I took the chair for a reasonably easy ride down to Coal Harbour to check out some new artwork displayed by the water. That worked well.

So then we headed over to Stanley Park. It's more of a very well kept garden, rather than a wilderness area, but not all of the paths are paved. Around Lost Lagoon for instance, it's a gravel path with the occasional puddle, rocky bits, some hills, and many birds and squirrels. So of course that's where we went.

The chair did very well. I was happy. I was freezing cold in the early morning (you don't generate any heat while sitting in a chair pushing a joy stick) but the chair kept moving!

I reported back to the dealer that the chair survived the test. She was out so I just left a voice mail message with the details of the testing. I think she may listen to it more than once. She thought she should probably put me in their files as a "heavy user" for expectations of maintenance needs in the future. (This doesn't mean weight, it means the chair will be used a lot.) I think she's probably right.

She did want me to test it didn't she?

This is a picture I took of the fountain yesterday morning. Nature's Pride Flag flying high!