Fall semester 23

 Hello everyone, my blogging activity has seriously dropped off recently. It may partially be because I am not doing as exciting things. i.e. studying for finals, or because I am just super busy. (I hope it's not the first one). Hopefully, this blog can accurately represent the past semester, but I doubt it will. I know I will forget important parts of it, and probably people too. Also, my lack of photo-taking will definitely be detrimental. I think i only took about 5 or 10 % of all the photos in this blog, so thank god my friends take and share photos. 

The timeline of this semester is pretty jumbeled up in my head, so idk if I can recount this semester in chronological order Instead, I will divide my life into important parts like, trips, school, moc. And then, continue to subdivide those important parts into bite-sized pieces of information. I was so confused and hazy coming out of this semester that I made a brain board to help me try to remember everything  that has happened in the past couple of months. 

feast your eyes! 

Now that everything is laid out I think ill start with climbing. It is hard to forget the climbing trips, not because of the excitement of hanging onto a bunch of rocks, not because you get to escape the city, not because of the amazing people you climb with but because everyone takes so many god dam photos.(it's actually awesome that people take photos)

I stole so many photos from my friend Blaise, not just because he takes photos but because he dutifully shares his pictures by setting up some awesome shared albums. Ben Parsonage also is the GOATED photographer, all his phots are bomb.  

Ben on the left taking a shot, then blaise on the right just j chillin. 

So since I'm starting with climbing ill start with a random trip. Me and some friends crashed a intro to rock course hosted by the MOC, because why not. It was an epic start after a late night courtyard party. I was "muy" impressed because Jess snatched a spot in the car to climbing after someone bailed at around 7am! But Jess was gtg within 5 minutes. We proceeded to climb on Montagne d'artgent with an epic approach in some bushes because we wanted to avoid paying to climb. 

still life on the left i guess, then some toes on the right (plus sophie, me and jess)

This next trip was an epic, we now hold the unofficial world record for the largest amount of people simultaniously climbing the spire in New Hampshire, (Live Free or Die). 

The climbing was pretty chill, it was a three pitch climb to the top, but to logistics were pretty tough, good thing guide troy and blaise figured that out. I barely even remember what they did but they were stressing over this climb for a while, I just really enjoyed playing with troys fancy walkie talkies, but before long I had to give up the privilage of communication to antother climber.

Guide troy took the lead, and was basically king of ropes, cams and commanding. Blaise, idk, what blaise did, just supervise the absurd amount of climbers (12?!). Daisy was the crusher (maybe guinea pig? first to rappel) brought along to crush any pitch that was in front of her, ben was the lowkey designated photographer. I was, of course, the pack mule and LVM (least valuable member). I carried up a backpack and also cleaned up some cams coming up last of the pack. ( I couldn't get out one camso troy got it, "muy" embarrassing) 

Some folk at the top of the climb

an epic 60m, two rope tied together rappel. 

I've never seen so many clove hitches in my life

guide troy being very sick and tired 

The end of the climb, and end of the night (except some grub from micky Ds)

The next little climbing trip was the hallo weekend costume climb, we climbed at trois champ ( I think). It held a trois star climb, one of the best, longest single pitch face climb. But alas, it was too difficult for me, but I did enjoy the other climbs and enjoyed the first couple meters of the famous climb. 

Me leading a wet lil sept huit ou neuf, then on the right Reina as a ninja turtle. 

La fin de la climb, but not the end of the night. 

Later that night, we all of course, ended up at the MOC house. Monica impressively restarted the annual halloween party. Overcoming regulations like number of people allowed in the house, fire in the backyard and rekindling relationships with the neighbors. As well as organizing fun contests and events, this was definetly a party to (try to) remember.

Isey as princess moninake and Blaise as pirate 2

eating a delicious supper

Another unrelated eating of good food for the end of winter MOC execs

Nadia won the costume contest as wallace in Wallace and gromet 

Halloweekend was definitely a blur, but here is a photo from another halloween party of me viciously licking ben strol, sorry ani :/

ben wasn't super happy with the lick :(

Ok, ok. Good thing I have the mind map, quickly rewind to the start of the semester, the photo above is at the club fair wayyyyy at the start of the semester. Ben is demonstrating his exquisite knot tying knowledge on me. I also rember getting elliot in a kayak and shaking him upside down to show the advances in kayaking technolgy, muchas gracais elliot!

I really spent lots of time running around with the MOC last semester. Every single Wednesday I would participate in the Exec meetings because I was the Whitewater exec, but I would always stay for the general meetings after, I even organized one general meeting that hosted the watermelon eating contest. This is something I am proud of. I think 30 plus people participated. And to be honest, eating a quarter of a melon without your hands took longer then I expected. This event will go down in the history books.

Only half the participates, good thing there isnt a video, the sounds are not pleasing 

We also had lots of meetings in warmer temps on the field, this particular meeting was pumpkin carving

during one apres, apres meeting blaise set up a slack line. This was an awesome time with lots of happy faces around. However, blood was spilled, blaise brought out two pool noodles for some slackline jousting. There are no friends on the battle field, I got absolutely domed by blaise and isey on the slackline.  

jamie on line, isey on standby

Blaise vs. Daisy

Me on line, Reina on strings i guess

Ok ok, so another weekly event was the kayaking sessions. This is a pretty awesome event to run because you always have an excuse not to go out on thursday nights, you get some good exercise in and if you're lucky you successfully teach some newbies how to roll a kayak. Everyone is always ecstatic when they roll a kayak for the first time.  

just a bit of kayak polo.

As much as i love the chlorinated water of the mcgill pool I much prefer to kayak with a little bit of current. I am not kayaking nearly as much as I do when I am working in the summer, but im always happy to get out and yak while i am in the city.  

I was also impressed by my friend Rory's commitment to learning how to kayak, he showed up to almost every single session and performed flawlessly when we went kayaking at Valleyfield, he flipped many times, but rolled every single time during his first time on some whitewater. 

Rory about to ferry the widow maker

photo by leo, 

photo taken before running colosseum on the Ottawa river, that hole is giant btw, much bigger then my thumb. I was not used to this kind of paddling, all the waves didn't look too big when you scouted them because they are proportional, but when you are in the waves you get tossed around like you're in a washing machine! I won't forget this run and hope to get out and paddle it soon! 

The first promo shot for Guyaki energy drinks.

Monica snagged a deal for so many free yerbs, i dare say it became a pandemic amongst the MOC , perhaps even worse then covid 19. However, boy is it nice to have some caffeine on hand weather you need to crush out an assignment or wake up early to hit the road 

Rory getting a sick promo pick for yerb inc. at jay peak. 

Touring earlier in the year at jay.(all fake snow btw)

Don't worry, life was still bumping inside and outside. To fulfill my drinking responsibilities as an engineer I participated in a bar crawl. 

My team for MERTw (McGill Engineers Rule the World)

For some reason we chose to do the running version. This was my longest, and hardest run of the year

 ( over 10k).

 

Phil Leblonde left, Jamie Depolla middle, together the heart of mac campus

Do become an engineer you also have to pass your classes, and not just drink beer. During my third year my classes finally seemed relevant to the real world. I took five classes, Bio materials, Bio env engineering, fluid mechanics and fundamentals of circuits 

I think my favorite class this year was bio env engineering, the whole class felt like a podcast. You would show up to class and learn pretty useful and interesting knowledge on how humans are affecting the larger systems and cycles of our planet and some solutions and some nice other tidbits. 

One assignment was to run a small lab/experiment to reduce CO2 emmissions during my daily life, i chose to eat dry legumes instead of canned, and calculate the carbon savings. According to me, I saved about 2 kg of CO2 per can equivalent of legumes.

Fluid mechanics is a notoriously hard engineering class, not as at mac campus i guess though. I didn't go to any of the classes but the field trips were interesting.  

My class/year visiting the beauhournois dam. Nice, big dam that makes lots of electricity. It diverts over 70% of the water running through the Saint laurence river to power lots of mtl. 

The second trip my fluids class went on was to visit a modeling/consulting company. 

On the left is a scaled down model of a channel that sends treated waste water back into the saint laurance, super cool seeing a model that big. On the right is a model of snow blowing over a section of highway, it was interesting to see flowing water used to model wind 

Below is a photo of the real, live, pumping saint Laurence river, my sister Solstice visited me and we tried river surfing on a wave called Habitat 67. A popular surf spot. 

Me and sol also got tattoos. 

Me and sol had a jam packed weekend full with good food, some questionable events and good times. I hope the apartment was almost up to sols standards. Me and Isey try to keep the place clean enough. 

Below is a photo of my full hearted attempt to cut his hair, not too shabby. 

Our apartment has been pretty good with us, isey got stuck with the small room but he made a pretty sweet lil loft bed. 

My room is pretty drab, however I do like my little gear wall. It has my skiing, climbing and some of my general outdoor gear stored in various backpacks, I just havn't figured out how to hang any of my paddling gear. Also check out my sweet ride I got from the bike flat (bike collective at mcgill). 

The highlight of our living room is proabably the dual wield dartboard. It gives us a good reason to invite people over to play darts, pass the time and even host full-on dart tournements.  Some highlights of the semester definitely include jasper clutching up a full tournament by hitting two doubles in a row, some very impressive work. 

However, with hard work and commitment me and isey put in we have shared some amazing games together.  isey finished a game with three bulls eyes and I hit all three bulls eyes again to stay in the game, wich was another impressive feat. However, maybe the most memorable was when I was spending thanksgiving holidays with Isey's family and friends. It was awesome to be constantly surrounded by friendly people. But, I had to be cut throat while playing darts,  while playing around the world I knocked out eight people in one turn with crazy combo darts. Scoring from 0 all the way to ten, and sealing everyone's fate with a bulls eye.   

Dart boards n the awesome speaker set up. 

Hmm wierd, I couldnt find any photos of the Canadian thanks giving with Isey's fam, probably because we were too busy having a good time.  But I do have some photos from american thanks giving. It was awesome, we spent american thanks giving in the true land of the free 'merica. Daisy was super generous and let us stay at her family's place in jay peak. She also organzied the amazing diner. Everyone who came made it such a chiller weekend because everyone was dying to help out, cook and clean for dinner. 

chilling in the main room 

troy likes cheap (good)  beer i guess

daisy prepping the bird, plus the majority of the delicious food prepared by the gang

Speaking of josh darn good food, i have been loving all of the dim sum i have been eating with Isey. I eat dim sum pretty often actually, whenever isey + fam have anything kinda special, and i will always tag along. I've already been to dim sum twice in Ottawa! 

Dim sum offence #2 in Ottawa

Actually, we ate this particular dim sum during a trip to ottawa, we crashed iseys cottage and made some finger licking good food. 

gab n Jamie on the boat at the cottage. 

We were busy in Ottawa, we also crashed romey's house for dinner, then went to a cool art performance/display/event thingy called Pique. With all types of creative stuff. 

Jamie number 2 infront of a live muse

ella and Liz in jail?

photo from rockstar party, NOT Ottawa

Simone, 

Nina, Sam

Ok folks. Thats about it,  not a great ending but its gotta end somewhere. Grades are pretty alright this semester so hopefully I keep it up for the whole year.  

Toodaloo.