Evening Ocean Swims

This summer I rekindled an old love. No, old Jackson has nothing to fear, this relationship is strictly platonic.

I always had a fascination with water.  As a child, I would jump into every puddle, no matter how cold.  Even now, I could not imagine a holiday away from water.  I need to dip in, often before everybody else is up and enjoy the coolness of the fresh water on my skin.

For years I have regretted living so close to the ocean, yet hardly ever going for swims.  Almost every summer, I hope to hit the water more often, but apart from going to the beach with the kids before they hit the teenage years, I never had or made the time.

This year was different. I can't remember if it was my friend Wendy or me who suggested it first, but either way, the other was an easy sell and we started going to Ambleside Beach for weekly evening swims sometime in early August.

We usually would be there just before the sun was setting, although once or twice it was pretty dark by the time we got out.  Because of the cold winter, spring and early summer, the water never reached comfortable summer temperatures, but remained more or less frigid, depending on the amount of waves and sunshine.  After a couple of times, we had our routine worked out.  Dressed in bathing suit, capris and shirt, we'd be at the water's edge in no time.  Wendy tended to take for ever to get in, while I jumped in and them froze to death waiting for her to get ready for our swim. Later in the summer, I smarted up and waited until Wendy was at least in to her waist, before getting wet.

Most evenings, we managed about 20-30 min of breaststroke.  Attempts to crawl were quickly abandoned because the freezing water would give us 'icecream' headaches.  Initially, we would swim out the the buoys, then east towards the Welcoming Statue and back again.  When the temperatures were almost unbearable and the buoys hauled in for the fall, we just swim along the shoreline over the 'the man" and back.  Only once did we bail after getting in the water and realizing that it was just too cold.

Swimming in the evening was a perfect zen ending to often stressfull days.  The sky would be pink and orange, the mountains of Vancouver Island looming purple in the distance.  The setting sun would bath the North Shore Mountains in a golden glow and more often then not we'd see seals poking their heads out of the waves nearby and fish jumping.

Icy Dreams

Spring break... a few days off work and unsuccessful in motivating the teens in the house to do something memorable. What better to do than abandon the teens and dig a snow cave on a nearby mountain!

Once the decision was made, we piled our gear haphazardly into the overnight backpacks hoping not to forget essential items. It's been a while that we backpacked and we left with the nagging feeling that we did leave something important behind. The kids, perhaps?

I kept my escape route wide open. My plan was to build the cave, have dinner and then assess the situation. My plan B was to hightail it back to the parking lot and drive home to a warm bed. Ean was determined to spent the night, no matter what.
We drove up to Mount Seymour and bundled up for the short hike to First Lake. Already the temperatures were much colder than we had expected. Instead of hovering around 0 degrees Celsius, as they had for the last few days, it was clearly below freezing and a deep layer of fresh, fluffy powder covered the hills. As we hiked the 20min in on the Dog Mountain trail, most other hikers were heading the other direction, back to the parking lot.
The spot we picked for our inaugural snow cave is a popular one for winter house builders. In previous years we had marvelled at some pretty amazing structures in the little glade just a few steps off the trail out of sight of the day trippers. This year, too, there was evidence of previous building activity. Ean started digging in the hope of finding the entrance to a prefab ice cave, but no luck.

Unlike Ean's dream of sleeping in a snow cave my igloo building ambitions started much earlier. As a little girl, every winter, I piled up all available snow in the effort to build a shelter. Unfortunately, with the exception of one memorable record snowfall in the 70s, we never had enough snow to succeed. The closest I came was building a little shelter, big enough for my dolls and a tea light ;-)

One long ago winter, just before starting a family, Ean expressed his wish to go winter camping. Now, I camped in all kind of adverse weather and can't say I enjoy fighting the elements when trying to sleep.

However, being pregnant with our first child, I figured, that if we do not get out to camp in the snow this winter, it won't happen for a long time. And right I was. The night in our little blue tent near the Red Heather shelter in Garibaldi Park and a frigid night in a tent with the kids on Dog Mountain a few years ago, were the last times we entertained notions of winter camping. Until now...

It took Ean about 3 hours of digging to build a cave big enough for the two of us and our gear. In the process, he did discover the remnants of an igloo built earlier in the winter. For those

unfamiliar with snow cave building, the idea is to sleep higher than your entrance tunnel, to

keep the warmer air in. Ean dug a creative version of this...first digging down, making a big enough area for him to stand and then dig up and in. My task was to move the snow piece he pushed to the entrance away and running around in circles to keep warm.

Around 6:00pm I decided it was time to cook dinner. Melting snow is a tedious effort and takes forever. Not having the stove sink into the melting snow is a whole different story altogether. By 8:00 we finally cozied up in

the cave with red wine, chicken noodle soup and mac'n cheese. I still was undecided if I should stay for the night or hightail it out. Needless to say that with a belly full of warm food and huddled in my sleeping bag, I opted to tough it out. We called our teens right from the cave, to let them know their parents were still alive and of course to check if they hadn't burnt the house down yet.

The night was not comfortable ;-) It was cold. The sleeping platform wasn't level and a tad too short for me. The thought of masses of snow above me unsettled my dreams. Ean snored. He

claims I snored. I had to pee... Definitely room

for improvement and with Ean planning to make this an annual adventure, we might just have a perfect night next year.

Emerging out of our hole around 8:30am the next morning we found a blizzard had blown in over night and dumped about 30cm of snow. Breaking camp only took a few minutes and after hiking through fresh, untouched powder back to the parking lot, we soon found ourselves in a cafe, enjoying a steaming mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun. Here's to next season's winter adventure.
Lessons learned:

• Make sure Jackson brings spare, dry clothes and gloves!
• Bring extra clothes for Jackson, just in case ;-)
• Bring light wooden board to cook on
• check the lighters, bring extra
• Wear jacket with hood
• Bring ear plugs

Beyond The Horizon - Expedition Canada

For the last two years I have been following the adventures of Colin Angus, Tim Harvey and Julie Wafaei who set out to circumnavigate the earth using human power. Last night, I attended their presentations at the Denman Theatre downtown. If you don’t have any plans for tonight yet, I highly recommend you attend their last engagement in Vancouver (then they are crossing Canada to present in different cities). You can find more info on their website at: http://www.expeditioncanada.com/index.html

The following is a brief excerpt from their site:

“On May 20th 2006, after 720 days, Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei completed Expedition Canada - the first human powered circumnavigation of our planet. Colin traveled 43,000 km by rowboat, bicycle, canoe, ski, and foot - a journey that voyaged across 3 continents, 2 oceans and 17 countries. Julie traveled with him for most of the expedition, including rowing 10,000 km unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean, making her the first woman to row across the Atlantic from mainland to mainland and the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean.

The team used zero-emissions travel to highlight issues with global warming and to inspire others to use non-motorized transportation.

Colin and Julie are currently traveling across Canada in speaking tour and film premiere. Colin’s book, Beyond the Horizon, will be released in March 2007 (for those of you that can’t wait he has two other books on previous adventures). An adventurer’s resource centre divulging hard-to-find information (cold weather travel, ocean rowing, etc.) and on-line store offering expedition films and books will soon be available on this website.”

Inspiration

I haven’t written in a while and don’t have much to report without going into whining about a nasty bout of bronchitis turned asthma that put a damper on my running since February. But before you feel pity for me, I thought I share a story with you that circulated on the Ontario Ultra Group today. Make sure you watch the video (link at the end of the story)

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.
Dick has also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyt’s weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.” Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self- described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two
weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!” And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving
Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. “No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?” How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzz kill to be a 25-year-old stud
getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time’? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.” And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
Here’s the video…. PLEASE watch it… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ