Blog 5 – Conner Kazema

August 21, 2018 9:23 am Published by Leave your thoughts

Well hello again! I think I need to come up with a better way of opening these than “hello again”… so I suppose this time I’m opening with myself pondering about better openings. That may seem strange, but it gets the job done.

I’ve had a couple of fun weeks. As promised in the last blog, I will talk about my trip to Calgary and show some pictures of my hike through Banff. I was also taken on an awesome ride on the Weyerhaeuser rail line delivering bundles and learning about how that all works.

I’ll start with the Weyerhaeuser train ride. I have to say I had an awesome time learning and seeing everything on the trip. Apparently Weyerhaeuser purchased this particular train because it was taking CN too long to deliver our bundles and we needed a faster solution. On days when we are shipping bundles our train runs for the entire day so the need for our own independent train is pretty clear.

As you can see from the video I attached, I was on a yellow train car. I had to climb on and off the train car via a ladder and I had my own seat next to the operator. She ran the train, honking the horn at intersections and answering radio calls (and my various questions). It was quite interesting to see how everything works. She told me how in the winter when the snow piles up they would sometimes have to clear the tracks by sending just the train car before going back for the bundles. The summer is apparently a lot more pleasant a time for a ride on the train. We passed by the old Plywood Mill and the Forestlands as well as various houses and eventually through the bush.

I hopped off the train just west of Hudson Bay and from there I boarded a truck. We drove around and made sure all the rail lines were as they should be for the train to move to its destination. Most of this can all be seen in the video, but context is nice.

Finally, I’ll talk about my trip to Calgary. I took a week off work, and on August 7th I drove 3 hours from Hudson Bay to Saskatoon to hang out with some friends at the Saskatoon Exhibition. It was a great time, I rode some rides, ate some food, listened to some live music and caught up with some old friends. I spent the night and some of the next day in Saskatoon at the mall before taking off to Prince Albert on the evening of the 8th. There I had dinner and stayed at my Uncle’s house before my brother picked me up and we drove almost 8 hours to Calgary on the 9th.

We spent the next couple days hanging out at our campsite and visiting with various family members.

My parents and I then took off for Banff on the 12th to get some hiking in. We had a picnic lunch of sandwiches, soup, and sushi before we began our hike. We started at the bottom of Tunnel Mountain and we spent a few hours climbing to the top. We took some breaks, and spent a lot longer climbing than we maybe should have (not pointing any fingers, mom)

We took in some amazing views. The mountain overlooked the town of Banff and beyond. I’ll attach pictures but they really don’t do it justice.

Now I’m down to my last few weeks at Weyerhaeuser, so I’ll be sure to make the most of it. Until then, signing out!

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