Folk Fest this weekend!

Now, despite the exclamation point at the end of that title, I'm not actually that excited about Folk Fest, but so many people I know are it just seemed a shame to downplay it. In theory, I should be a Folk Fest person, but it must be the same missing hippie gene that has me loving cars that has me not to fussed about Folk Fest.

I suppose first and foremost, I find music to be an overwhelming experience.  I mean, there is SO much of it in the world, how do I find what I like best? I have discovered that I like a little bit of almost everything, save but perhaps death metal and rap music that refers to motherf*ckers and killing the police. I went to Folk Fest a few years ago, to see Scruj MacDuhk, a band I had always heard good things about but had not had the chance to hear.

I've discovered that although I don't hate it, I am not generally a fan of soulful acoustic type music or anything with a slow tempo - I want to dance in my head if nothing else. I know Folk Fest has both the soulful and the dancing types of music, but still generally just not my thing.

Next, Folk Fest seems to either be unseasonably cold or delightfully too hot. But Winnipeg Girl, I thought you loved the heat? Oh, I do. However, it is my understanding that the shower facilities at Folk Fest are lacking at best and since I've been told that camping in the "loud" campground is half of the experience I don't think I'd fit in if I went home every day for a nice hot soapy scrub.

Some things that I know (or have at least think I know) about Folk Fest that I love? Paying a deposit for your plate when you get food and then they wash it when you bring it back. I don't understand why every food court doesn't do this.  Think about it - a tiny little hole in the wall in the Polo Park food court where you bring your plate back and a giant dishwasher in the back where they all get washed instead of bags and bags of waste.  That was one thing I really liked about Denmark/Sweden - deposits for all the pop bottle, and in Copenhagen they have an entertainment park smack dab in the city centre and the cups you get drinks from int he park take a deposit - they have automated machines throughout the park where you can get your deposit back.

The legend of the "Castle Boys" and their remarkable campsite that they set up every year. I haven't heard yet what it will be for this year, but I'm sure it will be fantastic!

Some past creations

So what wild and exciting thing am I doing this weekend if not going to Folk Fest? Well, if all goes well, I'll be cleaning the eavestroughs, and shoveling dirt into my new flowerbeds. Here's crossing my fingers that the amazing weather will continue for the rest of the summer just in case I decided to take a beach day instead. If you are going to Folk Fest, have fun and drink lots of water!

Damn memory, RIP Souris Swinging Bridge

As is usually the case, I had some brilliant ideas for posts - when I was nowhere near a computer to even get them started. Thinking that they were so great how could I possibly forget them, I of course, promptly forgot them.

So instead, lest you think I've dropped out of the blogosphere, I will do a (rare) short little post. I was away from Winnipeg for the last week, and I'm always a little sad to be away for Canada Day, never mind all the fantastic weather that I missed. I'm a stereotypical freezing cold female - it's next to impossible for it to be too warm for me. That being said, I don't do manual labour for a living, so that's probably part of it... My travel blog will hopefully be updated soon - a little snippit of my visit to Sweden and Denmark.

While I was gone The Wolseley Project seems to have remained intact, although there are weeds amongst the flowers like crazy. I've checked the various news archives and it doesn't appear as though there were any major incidents (well, major enough to make any sort of news story) in and around my place so that's good; perhaps it was too warm for the criminals in my neighbourhood.

The cities I visited on my trip reminded me why unfortunately Winnipeg will never truly have a huge cycling network. Both Malmö and Copenhagen have dedicated bike lanes all over the city, with their own traffic lights and all.  Bike parking was plentiful and since apparently over half of the people in those cities commute by bicycle, car traffic was nothing like what you would expect for a large city. They also don't average getting colder than -2, which probably helps as well. I know there are die-hard cyclists who go all year long here in Winnipeg, but the majority of folks are unlikely to give up their command start to bike to work in -25.  Which means that in order to have a greener transportation plan we need rapid bus transit for winter, with heated bus shelters, or at the very least, more actual clean bus shelters and then a system for bikes in summer. Now, I know that diamond lanes are for buses and cyclists, but I don't imagine that cyclists like choking back on diesel fumes or trying to pass a bus by going into one of the busier lanes of traffic!

Image from Flickr

 On a completely unrelated note, I was sad to hear this morning that the Souris Swinging Bridge has been sacrificed in the flooding. I thankfully have visited it before so it's not something that I will miss out on but I sure hope they will rebuild it when the water levels come down.