Of Thieves and other Lowlifes

My bike got stolen. My trusted Norco commuter bike, complete with rear view mirror, fenders, bell, bottle holder, rear rack (for my panniers, which by sheer coincident for the first time in years were not on my bike), kick stand, attachment for a lamp and my helmet disappeared from my children's school yard.

My stupid fault for leaving - or rather forgetting - it there. Unlocked, left overnight...who wouldn't feel invited to take it for a spin? Oh, wait! This was not a fancy, expensive new bike unattended in a crummy neighborhood. We are talking about a 10 year old, dark green ladies bike that served as my transportation for buying groceries and getting the library books home left in supposedly one of the best neighborhoods (the Elementary School ranks as one of the best in the country) in Vancouver. Which leaves me to think that whoever took my bike did not need it. No more than they needed my nerdy helmet that I found the next morning smashed into a million little pieces.

No, whoever took my bike took it for the sheer thrill of it, maybe went on a joy ride and then tossed it into the bushes. Or worse, as happened to my little boys bike a few years back, vandalized it for the sheer thrill of destruction. Alas, I have not found any trace of my bike, despite constantly being on the lookout and having searched in all the local parks.

Now, this bike was a replacement for one stolen 10 years ago, when our apartment in Kitsilano was burglarized. I have gotten somewhat used (if you can call it that) to loosing property through theft. The police calls it minor property crime and it taught me not to get too attached to my material things.

What bugs me is not so much that my bike is gone...what bugs me is that there are people - probably young ones - out there who see a bike in the courtyard of a school and feel invited to take it. Apologies to all the honest, upstanding young citizens that I am sure must be out there somewhere. Just haven't noticed you lately.

The same night my bike was taken from the school, the school experienced - once again - vandalism. It's been about a month that my bike disappeared. A month of several incidents of vandalism and most recently, two accounts of arson. The week before Halloween the staff room at school got torched and Halloween night a store in the neighboring "village" was gutted by a fire. In both incidences it was sheer luck that the fires were relatively contained.

I finally found a second hand bike at a reasonable price to replace my commuter bike. It's a newer model mountain bike and came with a bottle holder and rear rack. I still need to replace the helmet, bell, rear view mirror (I am so used to navigate traffic with it) and kick stand (a must for parking my bike when the pannier are full).

What's the morale of the story? Is there one? Don't leave your stuff unattended (statistically, it's going to happen again - I am using my bike a lot, never forgot it anywhere and the one time I did it disappeared). I do feel the urge to find the people who are vandalizing our neighborhood, so do my neighbors. Eventually, they will get caught and the crimes will catch up to them...or so we all hope!

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

Harrison Lake Camping Trip

2006-10-09 Harrison Lake Camping Trip 099, originally uploaded by Turtlepace.

Can anybody tell me why anybody would travel to a beautiful wilderness area and leave their trash on the beach, in the water and in the woods? Are humans in general disrespectful of nature. Why do people who disrespect nature seem to have the urge to come to a beautiful wilderness spot. Why not add some trash to the pile under Burrard Street Bridge (not that I think people should litter there either!).

During our recent trip to a wilderness campsite on Harrison Lake we collected countless beer and pop cans and bottles, oil cans, plastic packaging and other junk left behind by people who probably drove in with a much bigger car than we used to haul the stuff out.

We like to go wilderness camping. Because of the age of our children we have been restricted to “close to the car camping”. Which means we are frequenting unmaintained, unsupervised sites accessible by car. I guess, yahoos who leave their junk pick the same kind of spots not because of their remoteness, beauty and serenity, but because there is nobody supervising their actions. They can let it all hang out, be rude to nature and other campers, be loud and obnoxious, be unaccountable, be irresponsible.

We are looking forward to resume our hiking/kayaking/cycling camping routine as our children are growing bigger and strong enough to carry their packs. In the meantime, we visit these “party” spots during the week, off season and always come prepared with ample supplies of garbage bags, a rake and work gloves.

Black Tusk

2006-08-27 Garibaldi Lake Hike 021, originally uploaded by Turtlepace.

Ever since abandoning a hike up from Cheakamus Lake to Helm Creek BC (before children) for reasons I no longer remember, I have wanted to hike in Garibaldi Provincial Park. On the last weekend in August I got a “Out of Jail Free Pass” and the weather and friends schedules lined up perfectly to attempt an overnight hike. In fact, this would be the first overnight hike for me in a number of years.
My suggestion to hike to Garibaldi Lake was accepted by my partners in crime, Pat and Michele. Nobody objected when I favoured the Helm Creek approach over the much shorter climb up Rubble Creek. I had read that the Rubble Creek ascent was one of the most popular hikes in southern BC and attracted hordes of hikers on weekends. That was enough for me to push for the 18km hike from Cheakamus Lake. 18km didn’t sound to bad. After all, we run this routinely (well maybe less routinely this past summer) before breakfast. Little did I remember that carrying your overnight gear puts a damper on your speed and endurance, especially, when I (not my husband) was the one carrying the tent and other heavy gear.

I volunteered to organize the food for everybody, to avoid doubling up. Well, we did end up doubling up a bit, I guess neither Michele and Pat wanted to get stuck without chocolate and I didn’t want to be the one to blame for not bringing enough nourishments. Needless to say, that we carried way to many supplies.

The morning dawned clear and mild and the weekend promised to be all sunshine. We left Vancouver shortly after 6:00am. Pat volunteered to drive the Sea to Sky Highway and the 9km of gravel road to the trailhead.

It took us a while to get our ducks in a row, food distributed, bug spray and sun tan lotion applied, shoes tied and retied, outhouse break… but finally we were off on the well groomed trail that meandered to the first junction before heading steeply down to the Cheakamus River. Pat had a rough time with her pack. She had never carried an overnight pack before and to make matters worse, the pack she had lent from a friend was a large frame. Pat is petite. We stopped a few times to adjust her pack, but Pat continued to be in pain and uncomfortable. Not that Michele and me were comfortable. I had not carried a big pack in years and even back then, my husband carried the tent and other heavy stuff.

After crossing the Cheakamus River on a nice bridge (there used to be a rickety cable car) the trail started to ascend. The grade was not very steep and I kept hoping it would remain that way. Progress was slow. We waited for Pat who took it one step at a time and stopped frequently to eat and drink.

I was starting to get worried that we would not reach Garibaldi Lake before nightfall.

Abundant Chili Peppers

Abundant Chili Peppers, originally uploaded by Turtlepace.

This years crop of chili peppers is going to be amazing. I planted about 6 plants. The "Super Chili" in the photo is the winner with lots and lots of fruit.

Zucchini Loaf

• 250g butter or unsalted margerine


• 150g sugar (original recipe calls for 350g)


• a few drops vanilla extract or vanilla sugar


• 3 eggs


• 1 small level tsp salt


• 1.5 tsp cinnamon


• 50g ground nuts (almonds or hazelnuts)


• 320-350g shredded zucchini


• 500g whole wheat flour


• 2 tsp baking powder

Mix everything well with electric mixer. Fill into 2 small loaf pans. Bake at 175C for 1 hour (165C for 45min in convection oven) Cool down in loaf pan.