CaptainOrange

Stats Completion Distance: 67 km Steps: 92,000 Walkers at Departure: Mike, David, Bri, Liz, Anthony, Shannon Support Team: Leora, Eric, Gary, Vin, Jodi, Dillon, James, Appa Walkers at Finish Line: Mike, Liz Departure was textbook this year. Everyone arrived at Bri and David’s and we were outside within a minute of our exit time. I have to give a huge shout out to their espresso machine (and whoever oversaw it’s machinations). There was a large and beautiful latte waiting for me as I stepped through the door. Not leaving from my house was a bit of a sacrifice, but the coffee made it an easy pill to swallow. As it so often is, 4:30-6 am is strikingly beautiful at this time of year. Spirits were high and we all enjoyed the joyous, silent, glow of the morning sun as it nudged aside night’s clouds to the east.* *Note to Wendy: I would say the clouds were most definitely NOT scudding. Much more of a lazy drift. Fate, it seemed, was waiting around every corner wit...

Here we are again. The universe is bigger than ever and that includes Saskatoon—both because of the expansion of space-time and due to the more pedestrian fact of population growth. We must make some plans. The Plan: Saturday, July 14th, 4:15 am at David and Bri’s house (if you don’t know, ask someone). 4:30 am departure. It is my plan to walk counter clockwise. This means no wet river crossing*. Leaving from a new location means that I don’t quite know where the lunch should happen, but I suspect somewhere out past the Shaw Center in the early afternoon. *Stay tuned for late breaking news about direction and/or river activity. I expect you fall into one of the categories below: Accidental Tourist : Google brought me here by mistake... <cough> Observer : You think the Hopefuls are idiots, but you love us anyway. In other circumstances you would consider being on the Support Team but it won’t work this year. You will observe from a safe distance in case our crazy is ...

Anwyn with an awesome Spread Eagle (working on knees and toe pointing) Leo's are better than mine. Happy/Sad at the same time. Just a quick note. I'm pretty excited this morning. My family has had the use of Liz's trampoline (in exchange for our swings) for the last 3 weeks. This coincided very nicely with the enthusiasm I have for exercise when the Olympics are on and lead to many hours of getting over my adult onset dizziness :( I remembered with a certain fondness performing crazy teenage antics on David Rabuka's trampoline when I was in high-school, back in P.A. Some tricks --the ones involving serious core strength-- have given me some trouble, but back and forward tucks, pikes and layouts came back to me very easily... except for wanting to violently eject my breakfast after 5 minutes. Back handsprings, on the other hand, have given me a lot of difficulty for 18 years --ever since I spent a week loading box-cars up with 100lb bags of lentils. Back inju...

Day 1 - Aug 12 I had an early morning. My flight ($157) to Calgary was scheduled for 8:30am. I got to the airport in plenty of time. I was only somewhat put out when my army boots beeped and I was searched (Wen scores points for her foretelling of this event). Army boots? Hello? I thought Harper was all "support the troops". Sheesh. My enthusiasm remained high seeing as how I got to use my iPhone as boarding pass for the first time. Thats right. Got an email confirmation the day before after which I checked in from home. Then I was texted a QR Code that I flashed on my screen at the security station and the departure gate. Practically geek nirvana. I was seated in Row 8 :) The flight was over all too soon -- a little less than an hour. Dave at the trail-head Dave and Suzanne were right there to pick me up from the airport and we hopped in their car for the 1.5 hrs to Athebasca Lake. We did stop briefly for a supply of dark chocolate and chewy things. The hik...

Winter's Icy Grip Crushes Goose Vanguard I've been struggling a bit with this weather. It's a bit of an understatement (we may talk of that another time). Cold and lack of sunlight have me a bit down. I've been grouching at the girls, sighing a lot, and projecting gloom around the house in the evenings. Wendy gave me a kick in the pants last night and told me to take today off. I didn't have any work with the library scheduled, but I would have spent the morning making and canning chutney out of the beautifully ripe mangoes that I got on monday. Instead I went to Don's Photo and found an awesome deal. A used Sigma 70-210mm f/4-5.6 auto-focus lense for $40! It's twin was sitting next to it for $100 (they were both on consignment and the price on one had just been dropped). OK, so Sigma is a bargain brand, but it's my first telephoto--I'm excited. Naturally, I had to go take some pictures. 1st set, 0-0 I went to campus and fooled around a bi...

I've been very excited about my new camera. Leading up to QNY, I spent quite a few hours on and about campus testing it out. Here is what I learned: Only attempt to do one thing at a time while airborne. In the above picture I had just jumped off of the window sill and was... doing a spread eagle trying to look manly in the spread eagle position (just as tough as it sounds) toggling the remote shutter switch for the camera attempting to land gracefully on the stairs I'll let you be the judge of my success on #'s 1-3. I seem to have failed miserably at #4. No, I did not fall down the stairs. I simply realized that the landing was a bit more jarring than I would have liked. At no time in this process did I feel "hurt". Upon waking the next morning, however, I discovered that I might as well have fallen down the stairs. I pulled a muscle in my back and popped a rib-head behind my shoulder. One of these may have caused the other--I don't know. It hurts. Oh, and th...

I did my campus-tower-home run in my Vibram 5-fingers for the first time about a month ago (and several times since). Let me tell you, I was nervous. My last major run in them, the 10km with Jaime last month, resulted in 3 days of serious stiffness in my calves and not a little whining. I recognize that (re)training my lower legs and feet is a process of undoing 37 years of unwitting damage. Atrophied muscles aren't going to strengthen and flourish in a month or two. However, I do feel that I am well on my way. I have started to think of running barefoot as a type of physiotherapy class taught to me by my own feet. I have found three distinct running styles while I am barefoot. When on grass, I jog with a typical "heel strike" method. Such as you would do all the time in running shoes. On harder surfaces, I run landing on the padding between the arch and my toes. This is what really gets the calf muscles working. When my muscles are feeling sore, or I am at a slower than ...

This last QNY Dave off-handedly invited me out to Calgary to climb a mountain with him. I said that it sounded like a summit would be a great place to have a celebratory game of chess. Dave insinuated that should I bring the necessary gear to play chess, the act of carrying it up any mountain he chose for me would make it likely that I would leave the board and pieces on the mountainside out of sheer exhaustion. I didn't take a chessboard, but after five months (and very near the end of my summer holiday) I managed to make it out on a tight schedule (if there is any other kind) to spend a fantastic day with a very old friend. Dave drove out from Canmore to meet me at the Lac des Arcs campground at 7:15am. I was prepared to leave earlier, but Dave assured me he had not planned an overly ambitious hike. I pressed a quick bodum of coffee and we headed into the national park. This is Bow Peak. I had to take this picture the next day after a lengthy debate with Dave over where th...

Several weeks ago, I posted on Facebook (via Twitter which now ends up at the bottom of this blog) that I have managed to beat the first of the records I am pursuing vis this year's Quest goals . I've been actively seeking the push-up goal, working on the plan posted at hundredpushups (which I have a few issues with). I came to the conclusion that I was not going to dedicate the time (right now) to making the hundred push-up goal. So, after eight weeks, I bailed out during "week 4" of the program. Anyway, I managed to eke out fifty consecutive push-ups. I am very excited by the success and am now looking forward to trying to get my right elbow back in shape from the injury I suffered a couple of months back. I am only posting this now for historical purposes. I actually typed this post weeks ago, but forgot to publish it. Sorry that you have to suffer. Old data. Pay it no mind.

FAMILY There has been a constant flurry of activity around the house, now that school is over. My usual slow paced serentity has been replaced by a frenzy. It's mostly good, but always takes some adjusting. Wendy comes home in full battle-school mode. Leora and Anwyn come home forgetting that the whole world doesn't celebrate summer holidays like elementary school children. Parents, see below... Anwyn - "I thought summer was for totally relaxing and doing what you want." Father - "Right. But between you and your sister being home, that's eleven extra hours of home and yard messing that happen every day." Leora and Anwyn - "Daaaaad!" Father - "I'm only giving you an extra hour of chores per day. compared to your share of five and a half hours of messing, that's a pretty sweet deal." We have now all signed up for a summer chore schedule which takes a lot off of my plate. This is good, because I am taking a lot more ...

My grandiose exercise plans were brought to a screaming halt by a weird injury that I suffered in both elbows. I´m not exactly sure what precipitated the painful swelling. Could be over training... Could be an imminent battle with arthritis. I don´t really know, but it has been discouraging. After a month of nagging twinges and stabbing pain, I decided that my third round of Strep Throat was long overdue. I initially blamed my nephew, but further observation has indicated that it is ¨going around.¨ So far I have made sure that Wendy got her share. I am expectantly watching the girls. Naturally, in my pre-injured state, I was ambitious and the weather good. This overzealousness has lead to far too much time spent covering various plants in my yard to prevent freezing during this recent clinic of good old Saskatchewan weather. I have some pictures that I have been wanting to share and lots of good posting ideas, but my main computer -- the one I do all my major typing and graphic...

Stardate, blah, blah, etc, etc... O.K. I've included a spread sheet of my activities at the top of the blog now. Now you can all keep tabs on my attempts to break my records. I'm not going to record everything I do (not yet anyway), just the serious attempts to increase my current record. I intend to eventually add all the old "book" data and highlight the current records in each category. It will stay until I become embarrassed by it's presence. I hope to hear of everyone competing and logging your own personal bests at home. You will be glad of it. Saw a story on Oprah, (get over it, I sometimes watch) about calorie restriction (wikipedia). Looked fun. I'm always put off by how rabid (oprah.com) people are about these new heath fads, though. For now I'll just stick to whole foods and plenty of coffee. --edit-- And if you give a damn about twitter, but don't have it (probably not eh?) you can see my most recent tweets down at the bottom of t...

I was 24 years old . The previous year had seen me secure both my degree in English from the U of S and my wife. It would still be 2 1/2 years until Leora was born. In the most cliché sense, I had the whole world ahead of me. Of course I had just spent the last 4 months of 1995 living apart from Wen (as she tested out her first teaching job in Rosetown (wikipedia)). Shortly, I moved out of 518 Albert Ave. and into our first apartment. Small town life didn't agree really agree with me. Being an unconventional egg-head/vegetarian/freak from the big city, I felt watched and overtly judged wherever I went (but only because people were watching me). View Larger Map A perfect example is the cooking job that I got there at the Blue Baron -- a restaurant attached to a road-side motor inn. I was ´let go´ there after my 3 month probation. I challenged the owner (who was almost never in the kitchen) to tell me why I was being fired, and I was told that it was because the quality of the food ...

An early celebration was had last night. The core group of Questers was in attendance. As a first order of business we discussed last years quest books. A general favorite was "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," which, humourously, Dave hadn't. You could look up the less than favourable Guardian review, or you could take my word for it and have a good read (and a good laugh). From there we moved on to this years reading list which, I'm sad to say, I did not contribute to. It will be a light reading year (for must reads)... 2 Picks (Filthy Lucre/Heath/Starcat, Notes on Democracy/Mencken/rainswept) I will also attempt to read Dave's attempted pick (which is in 6 volumes and he hasn't quite finnished yet) entitled The Nature of Order - Christopher Alexander Follow this link for my pictures from the evening... QE19 I have set a few goals for the coming year: First I plan to beat the 24-year-old me. I'll explain that one another time. ...

My volleyball season is winding down. It has mostly been an enjoyable season. My team is in the "D" division of our co-ed league, and if you were to break "D" into pieces... we would be in the "D" part of it. In case you don't get the picture -- we suck sort of hard. I say 'sort of' because, on this team, we don't do anything all the way. I guess that's part of the problem. It's been good for me, really. I've helps me to focus on my game and not get frustrated with things beyond my control. For my part, service reception has been quite weak all year. I don't quite know how to shake off the nerves of making that first good pass. Aside from that, I am very happy with my game. My vertical has been coming back over the last 6 weeks as has my general bounciness. I had a bit of a knee issue all through the late fall and right up until the end of December. I was starting to feel age seeping in through the vulnerable places and sett...