Lots of people have been asking me how the chicken has been getting along. Well, to be honest, nobody has but I know one or two have been thinking it...

For those who don’t know what is going on, you can read about it here. My father is a retired Chiropractor who recently had a patient who owned a chicken that got injured. My Dad did an adjustment and put the Chickens spine back in alignment. Well the Chicken is doing great and is one of the best layin’ hens on the farm.

A little bit more to the story. I guess the chicken story is all the talk at the local farmer water coolers and word about the "miracle recovery" has spread around the Ottawa Valley so much the farmer got a call from the president of the local farmers association to get more info. I guess that's a big deal...

We live right downtown Toronto in a small condo building on the 5th floor. Living downtown is great as I can bike to work, visit several parks in my neighborhood with my kids and best of all, my boat is only a 10 minute bike ride away parked at Harbourfront Canoe & Kayak Centre.

For the most part, our life is fairly quiet.

That all changed yesterday when there was quite a bit of excitement in one of the shops on the main level of our building. Over the past 2 weeks the local news station (CP24) has reporting that King West Optical has been selling fake Oakley’s. Our trusty local reporter Silverman (who has been fighting for the common man forever) went to confront the store owner again about his business practices and things went a little crazy. After the owner freaked out and hit Silverman, he slammed the door and locked himself in refusing to come out.

The police came and he yelled at them so they called in the ATF (riot police) to break it up.

We were even more excited because Cheryl was walking the kids home from school and saw Silverman knocking on the shop door and thought she better get out of the way as there probably would be trouble.

Some people are scared the roving gangs but you really need to be scared of the downtown opticians!

You can read more about the whole story and even see some great video on CP24.

So what with the chicken? Well, my father is a retired Chiropractor. For 40 years he fixed people aches and pains. Throughout that time he also had a small but dedicated list of dogs that he adjusted. Purebreds (eg labs) often have hip problems due to inbreeding.

The basic principle of Chiropractic is that most pain is causes from a bone or spinal disc shifting and pinching a nerve. The idea is that a physical shift of these bones back in place will help relive the pain. Chiropractors work on backs a lot as pinched nerves in your back can manifest pain in your hand. That’s the 30 second pamphlet on Chiropractic; you can read more at Wikipedia.

Back to the story. From a Chiropractic perspective, dogs (and most animals) are no different then humans and my dad has enjoyed adjusting different animals including dogs, goats, and sheep.

Last week he got a call from a lady who raises goats. My dad has been helping out keeping her goats healthy and happy. She said that he had a hen that got injured and was no longer laying any eggs. Could she bring it into town and get my dad to look at it? My dad said that he hadn't adjusted a bird since the 60's and didn’t think it was still alive. She said that was OK since he had to come into town anyways to meet with he lawyer then take her new Smartcar to the dealership as the stereo was giving problems.

They show up at the door and take the chicken out of the box. It looks half dead. He checks out her lower back along the spine and finds the problem along with a problem in the chickens neck.

The hen goes back in the box and the lady gives the bird 24 hours to get better or she is going to have chicken for dinner. The box goes in the trunk of the car and she is off to the lawyer. During the 45 min she is in there the chicken starts to feel better and next thing the bird has busted out of the box and is now flying around in the little smartcar leaving a huge pile of feathers and poo everywhere. Remember the car is less then a month old.

She then decided to head over to the dealer to see if they would still look at the stereo as it was the real reason she came into town. As you can guess, they wouldn’t touch the car and told her that she needed to get the complete shampoo treatment before anybody would look at it.

Three hours later the car smelled somewhat better and music was coming out of the speakers again.

And the hen? She is better then ever running around squawking and doing what they do best; lay eggs.

If you haven't listened to Simon Willis's latest podcast you need to. It is a great interview on how to prepare for a BCU 5* course. I want to personally thank Simon for taking this project on. I wrote Simon way back in October (I think) to see if he could put me touch with an instructor who could help separate fact from fiction on what how to prepare for the 5*.

You see over the years, I have dreamed about taking a 5* course. Everybody I talked to told me stories about how it takes years and years and you need to be such and expert that you can't pass it if you don't also know how to fly the rescue helicopters that will come out and save you. Pretty much; you need to be the Jack Bauer of sea kayaking.

Simon said he would keep an eye out for somebody and send them my way. I kept doing my own research and to be honest, didn't expect to much. Then I got a nice little Christmas present. He said that he turned my idea into a podcast!

Listening to it, I got tons of really great information on what to prep for and what course is really like. Listen for yourself.

Also, let's talk about 24. If you haven't been watching so far, you still have time before the 24 train completely leaves the station.

Here is all you need to know. We are 4 hours into it, Jack is out saving US of A from the bad guys and there has been some mild violence.

Watching 24 has made me decide that I need to work on my fighting stamina. I don't do a lot of fighting and I haven't really been tortured but, I am pretty sure that if I was tortured with a hot knife, bamboo fingernail torture, or even the old knife if the thigh, I wouldn't be able to jump up and bust my way out the door then continue fighting for the rest of the show.

Yep, I am making it my new (old) year's resolution. Work on my fighting/torture stamina... Watch out.

Today I found two really interesting education websites for classrooms. The first website shows examples of wave erosion against a sea stack. The series of images shows the demise of Jump-off Joe, a sea stack at Nye Beach, near Newport, Oregon. Sea stacks begin as part of a headland or sea cliff. Relentless pounding by waves erodes the softer, weaker parts of the rock first, leaving harder, more resistant rock behind. It took over 100 years to erode this sea stack to sand.

The second interesting teaching site is a flash animation demonstration wave refraction against headlands. The reason why you find lots of erosion and cliffs along headlands is because the waves are refracted inwards concentrating the wave pressure on that particular area. I guess that also explains why you tend to get much rougher water near headlands. Makes sense.