2009 Report Card

Now that time has passed on allowing us time to remember and reflect/ forget and move on.. whatever the case may be.... but never the less time ticks on and 2010 approaches rapidly.

I myself like to remember and reflect; Elfin Lakes was one of our best trips yet! in all sections we scored relatively high.
Planning: B
Execution: C+
Food: A
Trip Cost balancing: C
Distance/time ration: B
Equipment: B

Planning: B
I do feel we had a pretty decent Plan for 2009, which in fact went off without to much of a hitch..
Never the less there is always room for a little improvement
* Every year we pick a spot and go for it..... and 1/2 of the time there seems to be a bloody Forest fire either blocking a route, threatening the area we are going to... there is always something..... either way..... 2009 opened my eyes a bit.... and i ask the Group What would we have done if Garabaldi Park was closed when we got there? where would we have gone? would we have even went on some sort of hike? we will never know the answers to these questions. the past is the past and we can't change that; granted it worked out, but perhaps we might want to make a contingency plan for next year. We do not have to actually make a full on plan with maps and blah blah blah, but at least being aware of other parks or other mountains nearby if something does go wrong.....

Execution: C+
There is two parts to this section, Personal and group execution

As far as personal execution goes, you can give yourself whatever grade you feel adequate, I can't say anything for sure about anybody else; But I got a D- .... lets face it i was packing the morning of, and shopping the night before. that is unacceptable.... granted i mean i have been hiking for years....... i have all my equip. always together ready to go for a spur of the moment hike/wife kicks me out... j/k... either way my personal faults effected the group as a whole, which is why i scored so low. I made the group wait outside of my house while i smoked my travel doobie.... i forgot about some of my clothes, which made the group have to wait while i shopped in squamish.... either way these are my personal faults.... we all know where we ourselves can improve in this area....

Group execution: as a whole we did okay..... but again room for improvement...... it is hard for me to remember exactly what went wrong with this area. This is in part because the group is obviously a group built from individuals..... the only thing i can say is it took us WAY to long to get out of dodge.....

Food: A
Well Done, I really have nothing on this category to critique.
well a couple things; Jonothan thank-you, the bed of fresh potatoes, and fresh broccoli with the stoginoff.... mmmmmmm, that was so f'n good......
there was something about the rice that did not work.... Jon, you might be able to enlighten me on that.

Trip costs balancing: C
Unfortunately this doesn't "really" happen. I do believe that in a sense things did balance out a bit..... but not equal i think. I don't really have much for suggestions on this..... we came close this year, but i still have not seen any receipts for gas Ainsley..... perhaps for all the time we took to get out of West Side, we really could of all stoped and got cash out of the machine... we should maybe anti up at the pump.... Either way i think group input would nice on where to go on this topic. It gets complicated with somethings, like picking up Morty at the ferry, how much gas to charge him? if at all...... I would not like it if some one ended up stop coming on theses trips because they felt they got the short stick one to many times..... that is all

Distance/Time Ratio:B
I don't remember our times and all that.... it does not really mater; it's not a competition after all.
Great job everyone for completion, we all should be proud of ourselves!
one thing maybe to suggest, when and if you a training for the next one... Remember it is a round trip.... last year wasn't 11 or 12 KM's it was 36 KM's +/-... bit of a difference eh?

Equipment: B

Last time i checked, Rob still has not won the lottery yet, so we are not all rich or have a lot of spare money....(If the first point is untrue please inform me...... for accuracy of the blog... yeah.. thats it) I mean it was Morty's second time participating, the first time being well, the first time. it is not expected that we all are outfitted with top of the line shit and what not.
this is a category that each person has to evaluate for themselves.... usually sooner after the trip.
We know where we can improve.

tid bit: Me and Jon would have been Fucked if it rained the slightest....

In Review and Overall Score: B-
We definitely have some areas to improve... but we get better every year consistently.... well starting from Lucifer....... anyways the glitches we had were minor and in the end i felt it was an excellent trip! It was to bad that Jeremy B could not make it this year, but that is the cards that were dealt isn't it? after writing all this i am geared up more than ever! i can't wait to see where this takes us next, i truly love exploring this Beautiful Province with each of you every year! (I count the Rockies as a whole as BC... the rest is bullshit politics i am sure! ;) )

thanks for taking time to read me dribble on... i would love this to open up discussion for next year, maybe stimulate some thoughts in this "busy" time.

In past years it was hard to describe our group... many phrases were descriptive..... out of shape, Near Death, City Slickers, Drunks, one word was always present; Unique......
2009 Dare i say it, we looked like a group of hikers

Thank-You
Joel