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Last updateSat, 21 Sep 2024 12pm

Dinosaur Valley Express wins Dino Den*



    From restaurants to safety consulting, the Drumheller Dino Den heard the applicants and made its decision.
    In the end, Dinosaur Valley Express won the Dino Den grand prize.
    Dinosaur Valley Express is a unique bus service to be introduced this year by Shelley Rymal and Karel Stojan of Sage Valley Marketing. This will be a hop-on, hop-off guided bus service that will run during the summer season to major attractions throughout the valley. They will be using a unique cable car bus.
    This was just one of a variety of ideas presented to the Dino Den adjudicators. In all, there were seven applications made and five made presentations last Wednesday night.
    “I like that all of these are starting with or without our help,” said adjudicator Stacey Stewart.
    The grand prize includes $1,000 from the town of Drumheller as well as a business license for a year, $1,000 each also from Community Futures and the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce, There is also an enhanced banking package from Chinook Credit Union and an advertising package from Drum FM.
    Vicki Myers, who presented to expand the Melting Pot Art studio, felt it was a valuable exercise.
    “It was a cool idea, really out of the box,” she said.


Tipple work underway*



    Work is being done on the Atlas Coal Mine’s tipple to make sure it remains in place for generations to enjoy.
    This spring, crews began work on phase 1 of an approximately $600,000 project to shore up the icon of the valley.
    “The first phase involves a lot of stabilization work,” said Robin Digby of the Atlas Coal Mine. “They are putting support members in, so when the guys come to do the replacement, the building is secure.”
    He explains they are also replacing some whalers, horizontal timbers that tie the building together. This includes some of the whalers that are attached to the guy-wires.
    “With those whalers that are old and rotten, they compromise the guy-line’s ability to do their work,” explains Digby.
    He says they are also putting in new guy-line anchors.
    The work is being done by Macdonald and Lawrence, which specializes in timber framed structures. This same company completed an assessment of the structure last season. The company did some work on the conveyor a couple years ago. Digby has great confidence in the company and in fact, Macdonald and Lawrence  also looked at the Hanna Roundhouse last week.
    The first phase should be competed this season and while construction is underway, staff has been able to continue to utilize the tipple for tours.

Resident Red Planet-bound*



    A man living in Drumheller is one step closer to going where no man has gone before.
    Graham Christensen, 29, is spending his summer working at the Dinosaur Trail RV Resort. He is a finalist in the Mars One project. This is a project to colonize Mars and he underwent an international selection process to pick a group of dedicated individuals to take a one-way ticket to Mars to set up a colony. Mars One announced its list of finalists, and out of more than 200,000 entries, Christensen was one of 705 selected.
    For Christensen, he has always been fascinated by exploration and space.
    “I don’t remember this, but my mom tells this story that when I was four years old she was reading nursery rhymes, I told her ‘I don’t want to hear nursery rhymes, I want you to read to me about planets,’” he chuckles.
    Christensen grew up in Vegreville, but his passion for exploration was fostered by the Drumheller Valley.
    “When I was five I came with my parents and found my first dinosaur bone bed, and we have basically been here every year since,” he said.
Christensen does have some electrical engineering training but he feels his natural interest in science and his ability to learn independently are some of his strengths. He said the Mars One project isn’t about finding the most educated, but the best fit to make a colony.
    “They opened this up to everyone, all nationalities and education levels. They knew there was many people who didn’t have the money or opportunity to get an education but they could be really intelligent people,” said Christensen. “So they are looking for people who have an aptitude for science and exploration, who may not have an education."
    He also says an important component is the ability to understand and communicate during this project.
    “I have strong science literacy as well as the ability to explain things to people,” he said.
    “Most of the funding for Mars One is coming from the sale of broadcasting rights because they figure millions of people are going to want to watch people go to mars and settle it… they need to have people who are able to relate to the public and explain what we are discovering.”
    Already he has been actively communicating about the project. Last week he did a presentation in Banff on his selection and also was a featured speaker at Nerd Nite in Calgary on May 8.
    Christensen is committed to the project. Mars One has the goal, according to its website, to begin colonizing Mars in 2024.   He is realistic in his expectation of being selected as a crew member.
    He also understands that if selected it will take years of training and a large sacrifice. He has discussed the endeavour with his girlfriend and she is supportive.
    “She is absolutely thrilled about it and knows she has me for about 10 years until the first launch. We have talked about it and it's going to be tough,” he said.
    To get to this point he passed the first cut down to about 1,000 last December. Since then he had to submitt a medical statement of health and was also required to open his online profile to the public. He is one of the 705 finalists who are now selected to have a personal interview.
    From there, the fields will be narrowed down to international teams of two women and two men. These teams will be going into full time training.


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