So we had an earthquake on Friday. It was 6.4, which would make it a fairly significant event. The kind of earthquake that will shake the clock off the mantle, result in the breaking a lot of glassware, store aisles full of canned goods, and scaring the heck out of the cats, not to mention any friends or relatives that live elsewhere. It was centred just off the West Coast of the island near Tofino and was felt on the island, buildings swayed in Vancouver, and reports came of people feeling it as far south as Seattle. I just want to tell everyone to relax. We’re OK. For us it wasn’t anything.

I mean that literally.

We felt nothing. We did not even know there had been an earthquake until my mom called me from Carson City Nevada. She’d seen a report on the news down there and was worried about us. The funny thing is if you draw a line from where the earthquake happened to Vancouver, it will go right through Lantzville and Nanaimo. Yet we felt nothing. The clock is on the mantle. The cats are sleeping peacefully. Nothing is broken, from the quake that is. Moving always results in a certain amount of breakage, but that is a different issue.

So I don’t know what the heck that was all about. Though, this does show one of the advantages of living where we do. These earthquakes happen off the West Coast where North America is running over the Juan de Fuca plate. However, unlike Japan, we have a big heavy island between us and where that’s happening. That damps out a lot of the shaking, tsunami’s and such. I guess it’s like when a car drives by with a loud stereo. You can hear the Thumpa Thumpa of the base but the screaming guitar is absorbed by the windows (which I consider to be a good thing actually). In our case the high frequency shaking that’s so hard on the glassware was absorbed by the mass of the island (also a good thing). All that reached Nanaimo was low frequency waves that people often didn’t even notice. Mostly it was just those in tall buildings and people that were looking at water that noticed the swaying.

Because the earthquake was such a non-event for people around here they even went ahead and had Lantzville Minetown Days on Saturday. This is an annual event celebrating Lantzville’s history as a coal mining town. You may not realize it but Lantzville was a big coal mining and shipping centre in the late 1800’s. Those days are long gone but they remember their history in Lantzville. Plus it’s a good excuse for a party at the beginning of September. They have a pancake breakfast, crafts, a carnival and a parade. It was a lot of fun.

In previous years they have also Chicken Bingo. This is a lottery where people buy squares on a grid. The grid is put under a cage containing a live chicken. The chicken then drops a…leaves a…, lets just say the chicken choses one of the squares at random. The person who owns the square gets the pot, and then they get to make a deposit of their own. At the bank that is.

Worst lottery idea ever. Here’s some pix of last years Minetown days featuring Chicken Bingo.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=126770497347355

Now back to unpacking. By the way, now that we’re in the, {final, permanent, I swear by all I hold dear I’m never going to move again, they’ll have to carry me out  of here feet first, they’ll pry the keys from my cold dead hands}, house, we probably should give you our new address. We now live at

Doug & Marsha Aalseth
7332 Harby Rd.
Lantzville, BC V0R 2H0
Canada

PIX: A late summer day at the beach in Lantzville.