with all due respect ... let's settle down.

Apologies in advance for a longish post. Your forbearance if you can. It’s the weekend, I’m worn out, and this is what life is saying to me right now.

I think we're all chomping at the bit. This company very nearly died two years ago - amazing that it ever escaped zombie status and made it back from the nearly-dead. Survived by a ___-hair. The more I learn (thanks you know who you are), the more I get it that this fine enterprise was ransacked. More than $30 million spent exploring and no resource is usually a dead company, forgive me being frank. A lesser venture with lesser people at the top (the ever-calm Richardsons with 7.5 million shares - never sold a one, the dedicated, natural-ability and utterly-earnest geologists, a dyed-in-the-wool mining guy - Brian - fully at the helm now, no-B.S. great professionals in our jerseys overall - VP, CFO, IR, tech, board, front desk, camp - the whole crew) - a lesser venture would simply have fallen into the mud and never came back up, sorry to say.

One of those close calls when you realize that you should have died (I’m positive we’ve all had them - a really close brush with death), and you know somebody else, somewhere, did die, and you wonder at how you made it and you’ll never know exactly why. There were those on this board who saw that with clear eyes two years ago (credit to Portee, Gamblor et al) back then and, mea culpa for not getting it at the time, except maybe I needed not to lookiloo at the train wreck and needed to just keep going. If you’re seasick, look at the horizon. Dear blessings on my old and departed friend Terry Deline who taught me to ride a motorcycle and handed me the golden survival rule - don’t glance at the ditch - look towards where you want to go - that’s the only way you’ll go there.

A lesser venture would have been de-listed by now, claims sold off. Pardon the sober candor. I didn't know even remotely as much as I should have at the beginning days I was in KXL - I was so ignorant (still pretty ignorant now) - but I get it now that we saw the "white light" and maybe we should have passed on, forgive the allusion. We would have been a dead horse in the mud (my maternal grandfather was in the first big war a brave cavalry Colonel on horseback with a saber in hand - got in an amoured vehicle PDQ and later survived as a prisoner in the concentration camps, I am proud to say), ergo the equestrian allusion).

Credit to Brian for putting Humpty back together, and getting a rock-solid team in. He has carried a yeoman’s load, and I admit sometimes I worry after him - Atlas was a god and all, you know, not a mere mortal. After tending to the wounded and sick in 2009, 2010 is for putting the plan into action with heat and vigour, finally. We're drilling - hurrah! and we wish we had news already, i.e. like yesterday (reality check - hello! - earth calling to all of us here - drilling starts the 27th of January, so just a bit impossible to have news already).

I think sled dogs start biting each others' ankles when the sled hasn't covered great distances for a long time. Rotten snow, time for a clean white fresh fall. None of us are being paid here - I'm positive about that. We have shares and we care about having invested our very-very-hard-earned-real-money (I lost very nearly my life savings, and I know from hearing other's stories first-hand that many are in the same boat - and there is no hierarchy of suffering in life). I put everything I have deep in hock to get solidly back in. We do, if I may so say before the god(s), deserve a success after hanging in here for a bloody long time, h_ll and high water.

We nearly died, dried up and blew away, but somehow we made it, and probably we deserved to. This is the team (on Agoracom and including all the shareholders - the ones that held on) that followed through. We had a gut feeling about some gold properties we believed in, and some peoples’ character, bottom line. I am extremely grateful to all of you who stuck through it all, in part just because as we cross over Donner Pass as I trust and hope, and descend into green valleys, I don't want to be the only one, da_mit. I have a very strong hunch that we're in for real $$ rewards in less than three quarters of year, no hype, fie on me if I’m wrong (once we're eating steak, I may even generously throw Radboaster on the other board a well-chewed steak bone, after the dog is through with it, I'm that generous).

I put the picture out there a while ago about the teenager who flipped the car in the ditch, but who's in medical school nonetheless. That's KXL, the corporate entity. No point in pulling his or her rent allowance 5 months before he or she graduates and becomes a soon-to-be-high-earner M.D. The doctor offspring will be the envy of the neighbourhood - our faith finally paid off (never mind the medical school bills - soon to be history).

Everyone on this board (plus all the people who read this but aren't posting, there are many, I am coming to humbly realize - thanks to the readers - please post if you can) has a different talent. God forbid we all have the same virtues and failings. If we need get a bulldozer across a river with only old fencerails to build a bridge, we have Portee. Gamblor heads a wagon train, keeping us out of ruts. Eagle scouts tau and spiny ward off the wolves and other predators. Ganalane keeps us in wild meat. mz and red911 read the stars, wisely keeping our course, explorationguy “the pro” sees into the earth. We have the navigators, the blacksmiths, the hunter-foragers, the money people, the farmers, every talent to build any of the stronger and finally successful 49-er or Klondike communities (the West Coast and the North were successfully settled, after all) - every talent going, pardon me for pointing it out - forgive me if I don’t individually list every forte, every gift, every person (it’s late! I’m tired and forgetful!) - northvalue, jayview, drandes, bc4forest, dutchie2, keapman, sinbadsgold, m, firestarterm, konor, dmastercard, pollywog, grizfish, woozlecat, caseno_98, sammenard, Imthatguy, pillowspock, I_C_deadpeople, winnipeg, SanJosie, Kinghorn Greenhorn, christo59, Goldhaven, Chilbear, Bluehorseshoe, Montrose2, killick, Northerntour, bill40, Goldhaven, NevilleD, ron4n, dinoo, goose, slapshot, sisu, AliBlaba, KingJames, camino, GMan1, barzax, azuza, n00n, cr_king, etc. etc. - and all their spouses and significant others.

Coach247, who operates in the heavens above, correctly and ever so gently warned us way back then that we were Icarus melting before the sun at $2.50 plus (never mind $5.00) - I’m in touch with him and he has faith in this enterprise (wish I hadn't been the board youngun at the time, took his advice at $5.00 and I’d have 10x as many shares now, sigh). Evil-penguin-guy Protobaggins (sorely missed) casts his yarrow sticks and sends us good fortune, somewhere, somehow.

As Sun Tzu says in the Art of War - employ everyone. The intelligent are unendingly keen to please, the foolish know no fear, the brave open the way to glory, the avaricious make you gold while they pursue their own wealth. And as for the times we rub each other raw - as Eisenhower said about MacArthur - better he piss_s from inside the tent outwards, than outside the tent inwards.

No B.S., everything I've learned tells me this is a powerful year coming. Once the springtime-coming is predicted long enough, eventually it actually comes. The geos are pumped. The smaller players close to the action are buying shares, and that's as much as I can say about that. We have four to five really strong plays, and it's our turn to have at least a decent turn, or two at the very least, I figure, of luck.

Pardon me for the long long email - forgive me - but I’m dead exhausted from the mining conferences and writing and analysing and all. My departed and missed father (an actual geo) would have utterly loved the big meets and understood it many times better than me. I saw hundreds of companies and this is the one the family gold, so to speak, is still in, after all that, notwithstanding a lot of good stories out there. I was with my brother tonight for a pensive tipple and appraisal of life et al, and I realized that somehow recently I’d fallen into the belief that by dint of hard work somehow the stock price could be forced to recognize the value that’s being unlocked in our ground. Thank god the truth is it’s not on our shoulders alone. Reality check. You’re all out there, and Kodiak is making its way as we speak. Some driller is cold somewhere on our behalf.

I am thankful for everyone on this board, truthfully. I don’t know everyone, and please understand that I don't know even much at all - my ears are open and my life is still an education. Let's leave each others' ankles alone, have a month or three patience (in which we'll be surprised by news anyways). I was never serious about coming to Vegas before, but after such a long, long, hard road I'll probably really do it - we have honestly, truly earned it. Have a drink and enjoy the loved ones. I'll be da_ned if we're not over ninety cents at least some time this year. Bloody good luck to us all.