So my last 3 fortune cookies over the last year have been frighteningly accurate. My most recent one (while dining in Victoria) said that I was gonna make new friends soon. I disregarded it because I rarely make new friends and certainly aren't expecting to make some anytime soon. So yesterday Lenaia and Andrew came up from Vic to hang out for a few hours, so I took them to Englishman River Falls. Shot a whole roll of film, so I'll get those up ASAP. The falls were pretty sweet. We chilled by the river for a while talking about life, the cosmos, evolution, and all sorts of crazy cool shit. We also discussed how social we are. I'm pretty anti-social, whereas Andrew is the opposite. They gave me the push I needed to start being more open to strangers. I'm always nice and try to be warm and friendly, but I usually write people off so fast that I never really try to get to know them at all. We spotted some excellent cliffs for jumping off of during the summer right near a waterfall into deep, calm water. Work last night went quite well and I managed to strike up conversation with two people there. One girl I'd totally written off the night before actually had some useful info to share with me about another local spot for cliff-jumping. So last night's shift went well, which was good cuz today's the gap between last night's shift and this morning's shift was only 9 hours. So I was in a good mood this morning, and I started my first day training for prep cook. I got to talking to the guy and got pretty stoked. He's quitting soon to bike across Canada alone, he's already backpacked in New Zealand, and he's going to Nepal next winter. And he's the same age as me. So I picked his brain about the area around here, which led to him telling me about a crevasse on Little Mountain that you can climb around in and he offered to show me, so after work, we went up there. He tied a rope to a tree up top, and we took a trail down to the bottom. I've been to the cliff there many times, but being at the bottom is radically different and almost cooler in a way. The rock formations around the crevasse are really wild and I woulda taken pictures but I didn't have a new roll of film with me, so I'll do that another day. So from the bottom, we made out way into the crevasse which was pretty sweet. Picture a really tight cave, with no roof. My shoes have horrible grip though, so I wasn't super-confident and stayed perched on one ledge for a while once we got kind've high up. So he made his way over to me to find a route and I asked him what the squeeking sound was. He exclaims something along the lines of "HOLY SHIT" and books it over to the ledge I was trying to get too. After I'd safely retreated, he told me he'd been within a foot of a bat, and I was like 5 feet from it (but not in line of sight with it). It was really stubborn and didn't seem to care how much shit we threw at it, it wouldn't leave, so we finally swatted it with his pack, stunned it and it floated way down to the bottom. So I wedged myself between a ledger and the wall, and eventually we were 'outside' again, beside where he'd dangled the rope. We were no more than 50 feet up, but it was still pretty sketchy, and I sketchily (he's far more competent than I) made my way up the side of the cliff. He let me lead for the final ascent back to the top, but it required me once again supporting my own body weight on the rope. We're now about 80 feet up and just as I'm climbing the final pitch, I put my whole weight on the rope and the rope slips. I can't really get to technical, but basically the rope suddenly gave an extra foot of slack, and had I not held on for dear life, I'd more than likely be dead. It happened so fast I didn't even think, but the other guy was scared shitless cuz he prolly thought I'd let go and was about to fall on him. I got some nasty rope burn from it, which is pretty crazy considering my hands slid less than half a foot. So with my second rush of adrenaline, I reached the top, surveyed my wounds and cuts, and laid down catching my breath. As the adrenaline went away, my hands really started to hurt. By the way, it was raining too. So after some nervous chuckling, we went back down to the bottom, to get his rope unstuck and retrieve the rope bag he'd dropped. He climbed up to get the rope unstuck at one spot, and the bat had returned to it's original position where it had scared us in the first place. So yeah, exciting stuff. He's definitely got lots of knowledge of the area around here, so I've got a bunch of places to check out. Might go check out those caves at Horne Lake tomorrow. Anyways, I'm justifiably tired and my hands were sore to begin with, so I think I've had enough of this typing stuff. But yeah, looks like the fortune cookie was right again.....