Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Moving....somewhere!

Yes, sold the house, now we're bank account rich and home poor. Haven't decided on what to do next, but maybe after the weekend we'll have a clearer idea!

I'm not sure how I feel about moving, it's been a good house to us and we'll miss it, and the yard. It's the house we were married at, brought the kids home to... But onwards to a new adventure! No sense looking back now.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Solstice Bike Ride

I had it in my mind this year that I wanted to see how far I could ride my bike on the solstice. Originally I was hoping to choose a direction, leave at dawn and ride until I fell in a heap in the ditch, spending the night cramping under a space blanket covered in my own saliva.

Alas, common sense prevailed in the form of Ann-Marie (not usually a bastion of common sense when it comes to athletic pursuits I have to say...) and she suggested I ride to Mica and back. Sensing the lack of epic I wasn't so hot on this idea, but in the end it proved quite epic enough.

I left town at 6:30 with John, who joined me for the first 70km which was a lifesaver as that made the first (and hilliest) 3 hours go by quickly! He turned around at Downie loop and gave me his jacket which totally saved my bacon when it rained for the next 6 hours...

After a lot of ups and downs, some verbal abuse towards the heavens, and a couple of amusing bear encounters (you can really sneak up on them and scare the hell out of them on a bike!) I finally got to the CMH Monashee lodge at about 1:00 and poached a dryer, not so much to dry my clothes as just warm them up a bit. I spent about 45 minutes here drinking hot water, procrastinating and waiting to see if it would stop raining. It didn't.

Heading south in the pouring rain I fought with a headwind for about 3 hours, cursing and eating chocolate covered coffee beans like they were peanuts. Around this time I subconsciously started trying to remove the bag of nails I felt like someone had replaced my seat with. On the way back I struggled to go faster than 20km/h. Whenever I felt like I was getting into a groove I would hit a hill and grind back down to 11km/h. It was pretty demoralizing. Eventually I just stopped worrying about how fast I was going and plodded along.

The hardest part of this ride is the first 50km from town, the hills are relentless and some of them are STEEP! I was getting pretty pooped at km 240 and had to start switchbacking up some of the bigger hills! Here, I did a bit more cursing, this time at the road engineers who built this horrendous section. Once I got to the top of the dam I let out a whoop and pretty much coasted in to town. One lap around the greenbelt took me up to 288km and I was home just as it was getting dark. So 14.5 hours on the road (minus a bit of time futzing around CMH) and 288km. I felt great when I got home, but I deteriorated after about 45 minutes and pretty much slithered into bed...

Ann-Marie and the boys were so great, they came out and brought me food and water and visited. Tobin gave me his father's day present out there and we all had a little picnic and read a story on the side of the road. So in the end doing an out-and-back was the best way as it turned my solo suffer mission into a family event, which really made it that much more *fun*.

I'm not sure I'll do this again, but I'm sure one could ride much further in the same period of time, choosing a flatter route and having a group to ride with would make 400km pretty attainable. Maybe next year....

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Birding jobs...

It's not always about the birds:

close....


closer...


ta-da!