We have decided to go on vacation. We are joining some friends and going to Keystone, Colorado to enjoy the mountains. The plan is to go hiking, bicycling, maybe some whitewater rafting. Actually, the plan is very vague. We are on vacation and will do what we feel like it on each day. We have a condo we have rented in a resort so we aren’t pressed to do anything.
Now, the activities we have nominally “planned” are pretty active. My biggest fear is that it will interfere with my running streak. Hopefully that is unwarranted. But I also worry about my wife; she isn’t as active as I am, so I don’t know if she can keep up. In my defense, this vacation was her idea with her friends, so I’m not at fault for how active it is.
The journey here was hard. But our flight wasn’t. This is my first time flying Southwest and it felt like a throwback to days gone past: two pieces of checked luggage; good legroom in the seats; friendly staff. The only difference was that it was first-come-first-serve seating, which actually wasn’t bad. You get to avoid the crying baby section and if you are on the ball, you can get a good seat. I would definitely recommend flying with them again.
Anyway, the hard journey. Our flight left Houston at 8:30 and arrived in Denver at around 10:30. We picked up our checked luggage and then waited for a bus to take us to our rental car. Once we got the car, it was an hour and a half drive to Keystone. Then trying to get access to our rental in the middle of the night. I think we crossed the threshold at about 1:30 in the morning. We all wanted to clean up after the ordeal. And use the bathroom; there were questions about our fast-food meal in Houston.
But bedtime was elusive. None of us got a good night’s sleep. Half of our party was put out by the high altitude headaches they had gotten. I am complaining about the bad bed we slept in; no head support and very wobbly. It felt like we each got only a couple hours of sleep.
On the first day we did try and sleep in a bit. I’m not used to it; for the past few months I have to get up very early to do my run before it gets hot. But here I can run at 10:30 and it is still cool. After the run, the group of us rented bicycles and went around the paved trails. However, I never got a breakfast so I was not capable of making decisions until we stopped for lunch in Silverthorne. We had empanadas. We luckily avoided a brief rainstorm. After that I was much better, but the group got a little too ambitious. My wife’s energy level dropped precipitously 5km from the end. I had to help her through it, but we got back to the rental place successfully. A bit after the deadline but they were understanding.
I slept better that night because I abandoned sleeping in the bed. I laid claim to the sofa in the living room; it is much more supportive. In theory it turns into an actual bed, but that mattress looks terrible. The regular sofa is long enough and comfortable enough that I slept quite well.
Today, we were wary of the threatened rain. (Around here it seems to consistently rain in the afternoon.) We got up earlier and then went the Ptarmigan trail and hiked that. It was nice and not too strenuous. And at only 8km, we were able to finish before the rain really hit. After a nice lunch, and grocery shopping, we went back to the condo. I rested a bit, and then set out on a run. Unfortunately I left just as the rain was hitting.
I did the run, but I was slow. I am not used to the altitude. I went the same way as the bike ride yesterday, so I didn’t have to risk getting lost. Rain made me soaking wet. The worst part was that by the time I got back, I discovered my key to the place was missing. I’ve never lost a key while running before! I guess my running belt is not good at securing closed with Velcro in the rain. I was able to call for someone to let me in. But it looks like my run tomorrow will be the exact same route and hopefully I can find my missing key.
I don’t want to lose another key, but I’m trying to figure out the best place to keep it while I run. Ideally I could keep it in the same place as my phone, but I’ve had phones erase key cards before, so I don’t think that is an option. Hopefully I will figure something out.
2022-7-24 22:37 CDT

For the third year in a row I have joined the virtual race across Tennessee. I am, once again, only trying to run across one time. I don’t even think I will extend it to the 1000 mile version. Just doing the 1000km should be good enough. (Since it tracks in imperial, that is 639 miles.)
That means I have four months to do that distance. But at the end of two months I am at 588 miles (92%), so I’m clearly going to make it. That does not stop me from being competitive. There is live tracking of how people are doing, and I’ve started focusing on being in the top 100. As I type this I’m in 86th place, but that can change at any time as people all over the world are running while I may be sleeping.
Actually, let me correct that; people around the world are walking while I may be sleeping. When I look at the pace of people in the top 100, most of them seem to be going at a walking pace. or slower I count just nine people who are going under 10 minutes/kilometre. There are people who are at about my distance in the race who have a clock time of 200 hours. I’m just over 85 hours on the clock. I suppose that is one way to make the distance while not being too hard on your body.
I, however, have started to be hard on my body. Since the end is in sight, people are going further each day. (And there may be some people who have a longer daily run/walk but I’m only ahead of them because they didn’t start on the first day.) I’ve been going a bit longer for the past few days. It started with doing 10 miles one day, 11 miles the next. Today I did nearly 12 miles. My usual daily run used to be around nine miles. Normally I track in kilometres, where I try to do a minimum of 13.
I am taking advantage of the longer distances. My first inclination was to just do my city coverage faster, but that is a bad use of the distance. I have given myself some nominal borders that I don’t run past to contain my coverage to a reasonable area. But if I am going further, why don’t I push that boundary and make things look better.
For instance, I live nearby the community of Copperfield, and it is partially within my zone. That means there is a limit to how much I can cover it. But if I can now break out of the zone, I can increase my percentage of coverage.

I have once again gone to Canada to see my family. It was a shorter trip this time, but I am taking advantage of some holidays that my company has given me.
I was not as productive this time in helping my family clean up; we got most of it done last time. I did some basic chores: there is always some computer help that is needed. Plus the fire alarm needed changing and a tall person is helpful for that.
The big reason to visit is to see my father. He is still old, and mentally he has declined. He seems to be in a good place now, an actual rest home. Last time I was here, he was in a fairly run down place that I learned later was actually a halfway house. So the facility is nicer, and definitely easier to get to, but there were some features of the old place that were better. Mostly that it had a few younger people and they seemed friendlier. I think my father made friends there even if he was a bit anti-social. It is weird for me to say that because for most of my life, we couldn’t leave him unattended alone for too long in public or else he would make a new friend out of some stranger.
The highlight of the trip was going to a restaurant with the family. We got my father dressed up and then wheeled him out in his wheelchair and down the road. Cross one major street and then we are at a nice steakhouse. He loves a steak sandwich and we got him that. He also misses ice cream so we got him an entire mud pie for dessert. He eats a lot slower now so I have to pace myself to not inhale my own food; it’s hard because I am always hungry. The wheeling back was a little harder because the wheelchair doesn’t always go over bumps well, so we blocked traffic on the major road as we took too long getting off the sidewalk. But he had a good meal and was very happy.
A nice touch with this trip was that my mother gave me permission to leave the family and go visit friends in Edmonton. I drove up on Friday afternoon, early enough that I could also do my daily run in Edmonton. As soon as I got out of the car and breathed, I recognized the smell of that city. I wasn’t aware it had a smell, but it felt so familiar. After a nice run I saw my friends, borrowed their shower and took them out to dinner. Gourmet ice cream after.
The next day I ran out to see the Bob and Doug McKenzie statue (creepy) and part of Millcreek ravine. Then I took my friends out to brunch and saw another friend there too. But soon I returned back to my family, stopping off to visit my father alone for a bit. It was nice enough that I could take him outside and he could get the sun in his face.
It has been a good trip. I wish there is more that I could do for my family, but right now the best I can do is contribute financially to them. They spend a lot of time taking care of my father, but my options to help are limited when I am so far away.

This has been a bad month for bicycling. I don’t have a lot of good memories of bicycling because things go wrong fairly often. Since I have gotten my bike, I’ve done about 1060km.
The last time I went bicycling, I think I over pressured the tires. They were fine for the ride, but the next day it looks like my front tire had gotten ripped apart.
So a few weeks ago, we went to a specialty bike and purchased a new tire and inner tube. It was a good quality tire and we paid for the place to install it. We then took the bike to some friends. From there we went on a nice bike ride through the bayou valley. We stopped about ten kilometers in and took a break to talk. It was then they I noticed my front tire was looking dangerously flat. It was decided that everyone else would ride back and I would wait for them to rescue me.
I did walk a bit, going to a water fountain. There was also a bicycle repair station where a bunch of tools were available to people who needed help. It, of course, had been vandalized and all the tools were gone.
I was able to walk to another bike shop, which of course was closed on a Sunday. I waited there, and called my original bike store and found out that they would be able to repair the bike if I brought it in. I was eventually rescued, but too late to go back to the bike shop. This puts my statistics at three flats and a broken derailleur in the time I’ve had my bike. So I’m averaging 265km between issues that decommission my bike.
The next week, we went back to the original bike store and got them to fix it. They found a hole in the inner tube and gave me a new one. We then went on another bike ride. This time five kilometers in, I noticed that my front tire was getting flat again. Fortunately it was earlier in the day, and I was only 2.5km away from the bike shop. Unfortunately I was wearing clipped shoes, so I was not especially mobile. I figured it would be easier to walk barefoot than to damage my shoes. The walk wasn’t too bad, but the pavement was hot in some spots, especially the railroad tracks. There was only one area with broken glass that I think I navigated well enough.
When I arrived, my feet were black from dirt. They looked over my bike tire and found three holes in it. One guy was saying that someone else came in earlier with the same issue; I pointed out that that was me.
Last Sunday we decided to ride again. This time I was going to bring a repair kit and a pump. That should prevent any issues, right?
Actually that Sunday was what I consider my triathlon day. I ran to downtown Houston, where my bike is located at our friend’s place. From there we went on a bike ride, with a stop off for lunch. Afterwards we reconvened at out house to swim in the pool. Run, bike, swim: triathlon. Wrong order, but still good.

My wife is trying to discover what makes her happy. It is an ongoing project, but the latest hypothesis was that working appliances make her happy. Thankfully we got a new laundry machine a few weeks ago, so that has made both of us happier; we no longer have to trek to the in-laws to do laundry. But let me tell you about the refrigerator.
At the end of last year, we purchased a new refrigerator. The tenants stole the last one. I’m honestly wondering how they lived here without it because it was missing for at least a month before they got kicked out.
We looked on Costco and picked the simplest one we could; our needs our pretty basic and we did not need fancy accessories. So there is no ice/water dispenser or glass doors. It keeps the food cold or frozen. Fairly basic. Less things that can break.
The delivery went very well. The guys were nice and professional and did a good setup for us. They made sure the door was aligned and everything.
But earlier this month, we noticed that the fridge part wasn’t actually that cold. Food was starting to go bad. We called Costco, which has a fairly good concierge system. They were able to get a repairman out, but not for a few days.
In the meantime we went to a grocery store and filled my small cooler with ice. We did an express trip out to the house in Sugarland to take back a mini-fridge that my wife had there still. By the way, refrigerators are not supposed to be on their side, and certainly not for a long time. We tried to fit it upright in the car, but it was not going to happen. So we put it on its side and drove as fast as possible; about half an hour on its side. Then we let the mini-fridge sit upright for 24 hours to get itself together again.
The repairman was not able to fix it, because it was working too well. Let me explain: the freezer was still doing great, but it was not defrosting. So there was a massive buildup of ice at the bottom, that prevented him from accessing the place where it might be broken. The ice was also blocking the circulation, which is why the fridge part wasn’t working. So for him to fix it, we would need to defrost the fridge and freezer for 24 hours. That would probably get it working again, temporarily. We would probably have to do it again when the parts that he thought we would need come in.
This presented a problem, because we did not have a way to keep the stuff in our freezer frozen outside it. The solution we came up with was to buy a chest freezer. We had been thinking about it for awhile, but never seriously. A spare freezer would allow us to not be dependant on one appliance. Costco again was where we went. Oddly, there were two chest freezers of sufficient size that were the same price; we purchased the bigger one and had it delivered.
When the chest freezer arrived, it looked big enough to easily store a dead body. Possibly two. It was probably targeted towards big game hunters.
However, by this time, we decided, on the advice of friends and family, to just return the old refrigerator and buy a new one; the exact same model, but it had been discounted in price. Since we had the chest freezer, we just emptied everything out.
We were able to arrange it so that the old fridge was returned on the same day as the new one arrived. The delivery people were not as good this time. One guy kept talking about how he would give ten star service. And then asked us to rate them highly so that they could get more deliveries; the number of deliveries each team gets is dependant on how well they are rated. However, they didn’t do nearly as much setup as every other delivery we’ve had. Don’t trust people who say they give a service rated in stars.
We’ve watched the new fridge carefully. So far it is not icing up; at least not as badly as the last one. I think we might have working appliances now.

When we left Vancouver, we decided that we wouldn’t need my bed anymore. It was a queen size mattress with a boxspring. It wasn’t the best, ten years old, and we figured we would get something better in Texas. We planned to take it to a recycling centre when we were driving out of Vancouver for the last time. However the people loading up our moving truck convinced us to use them as padding in the truck while we moved. So, the mattress took a lot of abuse as we used it to protect more fragile things from banging into the back of the truck.
The mattress and the boxsprings made it all the way to Texas, and when we finally moved into Catalina’s house in Houston, we decided to use them for the time being.
Then her mother gave us an offer of a king size mattress. It was stashed in Sugar Land, having previously been used in a house the family owned in California. So the first problem was how to get it to our home. We borrowed Catalina’s uncle’s truck and made our way to the pickup. It was a higher end mattress with a strange grid of flexible gel holding it together so it was heavy. There were problems loading it (we couldn’t get the tailgate to go down without unscrewing the back panel) but we finally got it aboard.
We took the slow route back and then unloaded it. The next day we took some time to get it set up. It was clearly a used mattress because the cover had actual blood stains on it. We figured we could take it off and clean it, but at the moment we are between washing machines so it isn’t as easy just putting it in a machine. (Presently we go to Sugar Land to borrow their machines to do laundry.)
The extra sleeping real estate was nice. It took a few days to get used to it, but eventually I got a good night’s sleep in it.
But the first day after sleeping on the mattress we were told that the mattress wasn’t actually Catalina’s mother’s to give. We know it was owned by her aunt, and now she wanted it back. Maybe we could have paid her for it, but it felt like too much trouble and she would probably never be satisfied with what we offered. And if we are going to pay for a mattress, we want one that wasn’t involved in a crime scene. So after three nights of sleeping on it, we packed it up.
On Sunday we borrowed the truck again and took it back.
It was nice while it lasted. But it has taken up our attention for two weekends in a row and now we need some recovery time with a day where we don’t have to do anything. That is not a good attitude for a Monday.

For the past week I have been in southern Alberta visiting my family. I didn’t come at Christmas, so I am coming at this time when it is a lot cheaper. The weather has also been quite nice too. However, the big reason to come is my father. His health has gone down a lot lately. He is now living in a facility as the family can no longer take care of him.
He was initially in a nicer place, but he kept falling and was not able to take care of himself enough for them to handle. He ended up in the hospital for several weeks due to one of the falls. Now he is in a transition house until we can find a place that can really handle him. The building is very old, and feels decrepit, but everyone there seems to be nice and helpful. We think we might have a new place for him at the start of February.
Seeing my father this way is hard. He has good days and bad. His imagination is also working well as he seems to think he is in a different place every time. He was in Northern Africa at one point, and Cuba another. But he was always happy to see us. It is sad to see his deterioration. He is much quieter and he has trouble finding his words. I find it better to just talk about happy memories we have had in the past. The trouble is that I’m finding I don’t have as many memories of time spent with my father as I would like; we didn’t do that much together when growing up. I’ve tried in the past few years to work on a project together with him, but he never seemed to find the time to do his part.
Another reason I am here is to help clear out my father’s stuff. He was a bit of a hoarder and didn’t throw things away. I was put in charge of getting rid of his old computer. I downloaded all the data I could find to an external hard drive and then wiped everything. His computer was old, so no one wants it, but he had a lot of his life on there.
Then there are the books and notes he had; a lot of them. Some are easy to get rid of as they are recent books that no one wants to read. It was a great discovery to find that the magazines and journals he had were all available online; into the recycle bin with all of those. It is the old books that are hardest; some are over a century old and look like they might be valuable. We don’t want money for them, but we would like them to go to a place that would appreciate them. A university would probably be the best place for them.
I flew here on WestJet and it was a good experience. A direct flight that was not very full, so I had my entire row to myself. I am having a similar experience on the trip back because I keep selecting the window seat in the last row. On flights that are not full, the stewardesses want that row, so they keep moving me and I keep demanding that I if they move me I get the row to myself. They are accommodating to that request.
I also got to use my American passport for the first time. Unfortunately I have not got it working with my NEXUS card, which means I still had to go through the long line for security. I was there for over half an hour, and was talking to the CBP for only a minute.

My wife has a house of her own in Houston. But we have been staying at her family’s home in Sugar Land. This is because she has been renting it out to a tenant for the past while. However, he recently became a terrible tenant. Chiefly because he hasn’t paid the rent in three months. Well, he tried to pay, but he used a counterfeit money-order, so that didn’t go so well.
At one point we went to check on it and discovered a river flowing from the backyard out to the street. Their dogs had chewed a water pipe and it was gushing water. It was difficult to discuss with the tenant because they hide in the house. Fortunately, they had neglected to change the combination on the door code, so we used that to check if they were okay due to the water issue. That brought them out of hiding and we were able to effect repairs.
We eventually were able to get them out legally. My wife got a court order, but they seemed agreeable to leaving beforehand so the police were not needed to be involved. My wife is a professional and kept a cordial relationship with the tenant and never sounded angry, so thankfully he didn’t do any deliberate damage. He does look very sketchy with plated teeth and many rings.
The non-deliberate damage was still traumatic. They let the dogs defecate on the carpets and had made no effort to clean it. They let their child use markers on the wall. Air conditioning filters were never replaced. Cheap security cameras were installed with screws that had become stripped.
The pool was a swampy mess. Apparently the pool cleaner had decided to move away several months ago and had told the tenant, but the information was never passed along. We also think the tenant was messing with the filters.
The tenant left on the first of the month, and we witnessed the departure as my wife’s family wanted the locks changed immediately. I saw them pack some of their belongings (the girlfriend was wearing an ankle monitor) but they left a lot of stuff behind. We used their contact information to try to arrange for them to take it, but they have never responded.
Over the last month we have been trying to clean the place up. All of old furniture was placed in the garage. While going through the drawers of a dresser, there was a semi-secret drawer that held a lot of (presumably) fake identification. There was also a notebook with names, address and social security numbers of multiple people. My first instinct was that this should go to the police, but my wife has more experience in this matter and had been proven that the police will not do anything.
In the meantime we have replaced all the carpets, and even put some nice new flooring in the master bedroom. It is almost looking livable.
Apparently the garbage collection here is very good because they actually will take large pieces of furniture, but only two at a time. So when we go to the property to do some cleaning, we try and go the day before garbage collection so we can slowly get rid of stuff. We did keep some of the smaller stuff to take to goodwill, but the larger stuff would cost too much money to transport.
One day, we left out an office chair in the morning, and then noticed it was gone an hour later. In this neighbourhood, people will take things before garbage can collect them. So, we put out a small chest of drawers to replace the chair. Soon a couple came in the car and asked if they could take it. Great! Did they want the two bigger chest of drawers? They did! They did several trips to collect them all, but soon the biggest pieces in the garage were gone.
Since then I’ve seen a clearly broken (grass cracked) flat-screen TV disappear. An old monitor soon followed. The garage got cleared up quickly with that.
Then a friend of my wife had some relationship difficulty and wanted something to occupy his mind, and he offered to help us move. We rented a U-Haul and were able to completely empty the storage lockers and bring them to the new place in under four hours. We just dumped everything in the garage, so we still need to place things inside, but the house is starting to look habitable.
My wife has a new pool guy (actually her original pool guy from awhile ago) and we saw him taking care of the pool. It is looking much better. However, my wife was trying to impress him with her Vancouver knowledge of cannabis. Note: Do not argue with your pool guy about cannabis.
I think the biggest barrier to moving in right now is internet access so that we can do our jobs. That should be happening early next week.

Health in the U.S. is complicated. And stressful. I knew before I moved here that health benefits are insanely important. So I was extremely anxious to get signed up for them.
Well, things did not go well on that front. My company sent me forms, via email, right after I left Vancouver. I was not able to check email for about three weeks, and then they got piled under by a massive volume of other emails, mostly junk. Those forms should have been filled out before I even started. Although parts were impossible to sign up quickly because they required a U.S. bank account.
When I started my job, I was told I would get a health benefits sign up email within a week. Two weeks later, I still did not have it. I was also not paid either. So I started talking to people to see what was going on. That is when I discovered the old forms that needed filling out. It was also hard to talk to HR, because they are on the complete other side of the world, so time zone issues start to read their ugly head.
That done, I found that there are several tentacles to my company, and one part didn’t know about the other part. So my forms didn’t get entered in. And then when they were found, the financial system was locked for several days. They finally got entered in on Friday. My deadline for getting signed up for health benefits is Wednesday. After talking to HR, I will not get access to the health benefits signup until Wednesday morning.
So, now I had to get my manager involved to hurry things up. She succeeded in getting things going and I’m finally signed up.
My wife is very angry over the whole affair. I do not blame her.

Overnight, we stayed in the small town of Memphis. It was a very small town, because it only took me ten minutes to run clear across it this morning. The far side, away from the highway, had no streetlights at all, so it was utterly dark. I had a headlamp, and I used my phone as a flashlight. It actually felt a bit like I was doing an ultramarathon again.
The town is slightly scary beyond being very dark. There are a lot of bible verses quoted around. We saw bible verses on roadside billboards. We went to eat at the Rock Inn Cafe and the menus there had bible quotes on the bottom. We also heard more coughing than I was comfortable with. Unfortunately, the mask I had brought with me decided to break so I did not have enough protection.
After the morning run, I had intended to grab a quick bite at McDonalds. However, the restaurant was drive-thru only. Since we are in an 11 foot tall truck, we couldn’t do that, and with no other options, we couldn’t go in. So I did not have a good breakfast. That meant only eating the breakfast bars and fruit we had in the cab.
Of course this meant lunch was very important. I would have no energy to go for a run while Catalina was picking up lunch, as we had done in the previous two days. But that is probably a good thing. We have been seeing signs around here saying “Hitchhikers might be escaped convicts”. I don’t think it would have been safe to go careering down the side of the road with little to no I.D. on me. And with the heat, I couldn’t even guarantee wearing a shirt.
In any case, we had a lunch at an In-n-Out Burger. The ingredients were fresh, and the fries actually tasted like potatoes. The Neapolitan milkshake was very pleasant. I would recommend, except because they only cook when you order, it felt like it took fifteen minutes for our food to come. I think people using the Drive-Thru got priority.
After that we pushed through and drove to Sugar Land. We passed through Houston during rush hour, which was not pleasant. But we got to Catalina’s family home at around 6:30. We were done.
2021-10-6 23:13

We didn’t intend to go through Oklahoma. Last night we had done planning of where to go, and our route would have taken us through New Mexico. However, that was last night. When we started off this morning, we asked for the best route to go, and it was now through the Oklahoma panhandle. This was because traffic in downtown Denver was backed up, so our GPSs were saying going around Denver was better, and if you are going down the east side of Denver, you might as well keep going east.
Oklahoma looked pretty desolate. Maybe the corn has already been harvested, but the fields were covered in dead plants.
I timed our trip across. 1:39:27. However, we stopped for lunch in Boise City. Well, Catalina did. I took off like an escaped prisoner down the road. I got 10.5km before she caught up to me. (She had a relaxing lunch and filled the truck with gas.) My run was very boring with the aforementioned desolation. Very flat land. But I did encounter some grasshoppers that were bigger than any I had ever seen. I will call them “locusts”.
Annoyingly, five minutes of driving after being rescued, there were interesting canyons along the side of the road.
2021-10-5 16:01

This state is rather flat. I expected it to be mountainous, but clearly that is on the western part of the state. Flatness is actually quite nice when you are driving a U-Haul.
We overnighted in the town of Thornton, which is effectively Denver. We ate a dinner at Applebee’s; not the best choice for Catalina’s birthday, but it was really simple and easy. Afterwards I went for a run to get to my daily mileage goal. It was not a fast run with food in my belly, but it was nice and cool.
This morning I did a quick run to grab some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a McDonald’s breakfast. Our hotel provides a breakfast, but it is a bag containing a water bottle, a muffin, and sometimes a clementine. It is not the most filling for my stomach when I still need running calories.
We have also discovered that the benefit of driving south, into the sun, is that any food on the dashboard gets heated nicely by the sun. So even hours later, those doughnuts are tasty.
We have hit more construction in Colorado than in all of Montana and Wyoming. It isn’t too bad; I don’t mind the slow downs because we can’t go that fast anyway. But occasionally the single lane highway becomes one way and we have to stop for about five minutes for traffic the other way to get through. Mind you, we are on a smaller interstate, so it is single lane and a lot of speed-trap towns in the way.
There have also been a lot of windmills. It’s nice to see them. I do not think they ruin the view.
2021-10-5 12:52

Today we completely crossed Wyoming. It was a long slog. But this state was at least more interesting than the last one. There is more rugged terrain whereas Montana was very much like the prairie provinces: flat.
The highlight was lunch. While Catalina picked up lunch, and ate it in the U-Haul, I made a break for it and started running down the highway. But the time she finished eating and caught up with me, I had gotten six kilometers away.
Another cool feature of Wyoming was the “statues” they put on bluffs near the highway. Well, they are more flat silhouettes, sort of like from a diorama. The first one we say was of a large Jakalope. The second was a man on a horse with a dog. Then there was the buffalo. It was a nice way to perk up an otherwise long drive.
2021-10-4 22:33

We crossed the border into Montana yesterday. I had a lot of anxiety leading up to it; if they didn’t let me cross, what were our options? Best case scenario was that Catalina drives across and I fly to Billings and meet there. When we actually got there, it was surprisingly easy, even with a 15 foot U-Haul. They didn’t make any motion to searching the truck. They asked if we had weapons, or houseplants and that was it. No mention of cannabis at all. After less than five minutes it was “Safe travels” and then we were off.
Things we saw while driving: In Great Falls, there were a large number of people demonstrating on the main road. They were anti-abortionists, probably a church group. They were mostly older men and women; the only young person was a man.
An antelope jumped across the road right in front of us. We think it was an antelope because it was certainly not a deer. We nearly hit it, but thankfully didn’t.
No one is really wearing masks here. Maybe a few token people were, but those that were seemed to be half-hearted at best. There were signs saying “We request that you wear masks”, but inside no one, not even the clerk was wearing.
Billings was very pleasant to look at; you come down a high winding road and it is all before you. It looked promising for running, but my actual route was something I planned in under five minutes that mostly took me through an industrial park and a big box store complex.
It is really warm here. The high today will be 29°C. That is hot summer weather for me, despite being autumn. It does look like an American Western film here. The land is arid and dry with rolling hills, but it seems to be more green in the south east. At one point, off in the distance, we saw a perfect plateau rising up off the plains.
2021-10-4 10:02

The last few days have been rough. Actually the last week has been rough. Moving is hard. All of the last weekend was spent packing. The Monday too. Then on Tuesday the hammer dropped.
I got up early and then ran clear across town to pick up a U-Haul truck. I had hoped to pick it up from a place a few blocks away in downtown Vancouver, but the day before they informed me that I would need to instead go as far south as I can, while still being in Vancouver. I had hoped my last run in Vancouver would be somewhat more epic, but instead it was a run to pick up a truck.
I drove it home, horked down a breakfast, and took a shower. I only had half an hour before movers showed up to start taking my apartment apart and reassembling in the truck.
I’m not sure I got good movers though. I had hired two, but three showed up. I later found out that one was a supervisor who had a hernia. So we got the feeling the other two were new to being movers and just letting the supervisor tell them how to Tetris. They were also slow, and only seemed to speed up after we told them we only had the elevator for two hours. Still, it worked out for them; I had to pay for an extra hour of them to get everything into the truck. I also suspect that they did not treat the one item that we marked with fragile with due care. I believe we will discover that my three dimensional map of Mont-Blanc will be crushed when we take it out at our destination.
There were a couple of extra chores we had to do before we could leave town, let cleaners in, walkthrough of apartment, returning internet modem and picking up some honey from the Granville Market. Then the drive began. The U-Haul was sucking back a lot of gas and wasn’t completely filled, so we stopped for gas fairly early on. That was somewhat good, because before the stop I was getting very sleepy. The break perked me up.
We arrived in Kamloops fairly late, and cranky. Catalina had a bad headache, believed due to stress and lack of caffeine. I tried to make her as comfortable as possible and then went out for some food. Then we fell asleep.
The next day, I tried to get up at a reasonable hour to go for my run. I had not run in Kamloops before so I had a route where I thought I would get a good view. And I did, but it involved a 350 metre elevation gain. The neighborhood of Rose Hill is high on the hill, and every street begins with the word “High”. I then took a trail to another neighborhood to get back down to the hotel. The entire time there were beautiful views of Kamloops. It is a very pretty place with all the sandy hills that have eroded into ravines. I enjoy looking at it every time I pass through and it was nice to get a higher perspective.
The drive on Wednesday was better because we weren’t as stressed. But we didn’t get off that early (the morning run didn’t help) and there was also a time zone change. What really hurt our timing was that east of Golden, the Trans Canada Highway was closed. I believe due to construction. So we had to detour south to Radium Hot Springs. That added time, but it was a nice drive through an area I had never been to before.
We got into my parent’s place at around 9:40. The rest of the family was fast asleep. They even slept through the dog barking her head off. Dallas was still happy to see us once we let her out. We, effectively, snuck in and then went to bed.
Today, we did a lot of repacking. I had previously left household items here because they wouldn’t fit in Vancouver. Now they are in the back of the truck, ready to go with us to Houston. Although my mother is trying to convince us to take more; she is taking the opportunity to purge her stuff.

I sold my car today. I’ve had it since April 14, 1999. It was old enough to vote. Old enough to drink in most U.S. states. Although I would not recommend having a car that is also an alcoholic. When I was first looking to buy a car, my boss kept recommending a Honda Civic because of their reliability. And, my car certainly did have that. It would have kept going until it rusted out from under me, but I can’t bring it with me to Texas.
The buyer was an 80 year old man from Vancouver Island. For him it was an upgrade over this 1994 Honda hatchback. He also really knew what he was doing. He had a lot of research, and he was mechanically inclined.
He came over on the ferry with his friend and I met him in Horseshoe Bay. There he went over the car thoroughly. He was not too happy with the rust on the hood, but that was the only place he found significant rust. The fluid levels were also low, or looked like they had never been replaced. I was upfront and honest to him; I had never done anything to the car except take it for servicing on a regular basis. I am somewhat concerned that they never changed the fluids.
After we took it for a test drive, he made an offer that we accepted. Then we drove to the nearest insurance broker where we made the insurance transfer.
So after about 197,000km together, my car belonged to someone else. I think he will give it a good home. He knows how to take care of it better than I could.
I did negotiate one other thing; he gave Catalina a ride back to the ferry dock. There she could catch the express bus back to downtown Vancouver. That let me run home by myself; I was in an area I had never been so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to run new streets. I did feel self-conscious that I was carrying a lot of cash on me while I was doing the 17km run home.
West Vancouver is a very pretty place, built on the side of a mountain. But it is also indicative of the problem of living in the lower mainland; it was just mansions. There was very low density, showing that NIMBY behaviour is preventing lower housing prices. But I digress.
After going through the winding hilly part, I got to be against the sea. I’ve done the Seawall on the north shore only once before, but it was nice to do it in the evening when the sun is setting. A bit of a different perspective. Although, the Lionsgate bridge reminds me of the Edmonton High Level bridge; both can be seen from a far-off distance and never seem to get closer as you run to them.
I do wish I had left ten minutes earlier, because I think I would have gotten slightly better pictures from on top of the bridge with the setting sun. It was disappearing over the horizon while I was crossing.

Catalina has come back to Canada. We waited until the need to quarantine was over, and she did all the testing necessary. So we could go right back to living like a husband and wife.
She will leave in October to go back to Texas, but then, so will I. My company is opening a branch in Dallas that is going to be taking over the next generation of development, which is what we’ve been doing in Vancouver. Now, my job wasn’t going to disappear, but I requested a transfer to there which was quickly approved. As long as she is in Texas, my wife will be able to do her job.
So initially, we will live with her family in the Houston area. With the pandemic they are allowing remote work for now, as long as it is in the correct country. (For tax purposes.) I’ve asked that when the want people back in the office to allow me a few months of warning before so that I can find accommodations.
In the meantime we have to plan a move here. Fortunately it isn’t rushed. We are planning to leave the apartment at the end of September and then drive a U-Haul across the continental United States. Since I have time, I am doing my best to do a good job of purging. It is still hard though. We did look at professional movers, but they are three times the price of renting a U-Haul.
As an aside, U-Haul has been very good at being helpful. Especially if you call them. There is a convenient place to pick up the truck that is within walking distance of my apartment. It is easy to add days, so I can actually stop off at my parent’s place and grab leftover stuff from my last move. They list movers that will help you load or unload the truck and they are competitive rates. So far I don’t feel like I am being scammed or forced to spend too much money. They are just making things easy.
In the meantime, I will have to do everything I can in Vancouver that I’ve ever wanted to do. I have an advantage in that I can honestly say that I have appreciated Vancouver to the full extent. I have seen all of it. My runs have taken me everywhere. I have not wasted my time here. But there are some hiking trails I would still like to check out.

Three weeks ago I had a discussion with the heart specialist. After all the tests I’ve taken, he is 100% certain I have atrial fibrillation. That said, I’m in very good shape. In fact, I killed it on the stress test. In other words, I have a runner’s heart.
He said I could continue to run. I was very upfront about my exercise habits; it is in my best interest to not hide anything from the doctor in this case. Surprisingly, he also encouraged me to push myself if I want to. With the caveat that I should listen to my body. Usually I say my body is a big crybaby and I’m better off not listening to it, but in this case, I am going to pay close attention to my chest. In my defence, it has not been in pain or discomfort lately, but I do notice that I don’t have as much energy to push. In fact, for the first five minutes of any run, I am feeling out-of-breath.
I am going to get an ultrasound of my heart in a couple of weeks (an Echo test). He is going to give the hospital warning that I will have very thick heart muscles.
After that, there are two ways this can go to get my heart back to normal. I will either takes some medication and then try to wean myself off of it. Or they will sedate me and jolt my heart. (CLEAR!) Honestly, the second option sounds exciting and cinematic, but the first one is probably safer.
I’ll just do what my doctor recommends.

I used to notice that all of my blog entries were about running. I don’t think I’ve done a proper run post in awhile. I’m not talking about epic runs, but the more standard ones.
Yesterday’s run was part of a scavenger hunt. You could get a maximum of 100 points, and there were lots of ways to get that. By the end of my attempt I had 410 points.
It started out well since you could get one point for each push-up you could do in a row. I’ve been training for that for years! A few months ago, I could have gotten all my points with that alone. However, I’ve been taking it easier since my heart has been acting weird. I’ve been trying to build up again, but 65 push-ups put me well on the way.
English Bay Beach has been closed to swimming due to fecal contamination. I don’t think it was humans though; the beach was covered with birds. I think I’ve seen more birds in the past, but there were still over one hundred birds when I ran it. Each bird is worth one point.
I could also get 50 points for finding every letter of the alphabet in order. I stopped off at a map (3 points) in Stanley Park and was able to spot every letter except the last three. But a license plate with X, a StanleY park sign, and a sign about what is haZardous and I was done.
I did look for a babbling brook, but the usual creeks were silent. The heat dome of last week has dried the place up so that water isn’t really running.
With all the points I had, I didn’t need to “Jump in the water with your legs (5)” or “Full submersion jumping in water (20)”, but I’ve done it often enough lately that I feel it would be disingenuous to myself if I didn’t do it again.
Today’s run was also a little special. I’ve been keeping my runs to under 17km because of my heart, but I decided to change that. I had plotted a 27km course from before the Sun Run that I wanted to do to get some missing parts of streets. It has been sitting on my desk, taunting me. Now it shall trouble me no more.
Since it was longer, I tried to do it earlier in the day than usual. I probably could have gone earlier because it was still getting hot towards the end. I was getting thirsty over time and thinking of the nice drinks I would have at the end.
The end was “Juke” a very good fried chicken place. (Today’s daily challenge was to get food.) I picked up three pieces and started walking home. I took a little detour and got myself a Slurpee. It was finished before I got home.
There, I drank a tall glass of lemonade as well. It was great. After that though, it was not great. I had put too much sugar-water in my system; my stomach was feeling queasy. It was actually hard to eat the chicken.
I drank a lot of water and took a nap. Things were better after that.

I suppose it is time I talked about my health. It has not been good lately.
After the Sun Run I did feel weak, but I assumed it was because I had exerted myself a lot. However, my iPhone, in concert with my Apple watch started giving me warnings about “atrial fibrillation”. Looking closer into it, I find that Apple has also been tracking my “Heart Rate Variability”. This is a nice chart that shows my heart having very little variability; until the day after the sun run, then it spikes up. And it has stayed spiked up ever since. If I check my pulse by feeling my carotid artery, I can clearly feel it; strong but not always even.
Interestingly, I went back through the history and there was another spike that lasted for a week at the end of November. I correlated that to my running, and the day before the spike I had done a run where I had gone quite a bit faster than usual.
So, I am going to have to go with the assumption that this heart weirdness was caused by running.
I think I have noticed the changes since, or I may just be hyperaware of my body now. I watch the heart rate on my watch. It goes fairly high at times if I am pushing myself at all on my runs; I don’t know if it did that previously as I was not paying attention. I do feel more tired lately and I don’t push myself anymore.
That last part is actually the worst part. If I can’t push myself to be better, the runs become more of a task than a challenge. I am very competitive, and I purposely manipulate myself knowing that. It is how I run everyday; to beat the me from yesterday. And so I want to be faster on each run. But I can’t do that anymore if I have to worry about any pain in my chest.
I’ve seen my doctor about this. He didn’t seem to think it was atrial fibrillation, but he wasn’t sure. At one point last month I was wearing a Holter monitor for 23 hours to see what my heart does throughout the day. I made sure to do a run while wearing it so that it got a complete picture of my health. Since I can’t shower with it on, I made sure to do that run right before it was going to be taken off.
I also went in for a treadmill test: hooked up to heart monitors while they make me go on a treadmill at ever increasing incline and speed. I was doing that without issue, but the operator did turn it off early because my heart rate was spiking. He did recommend I start taking baby aspirin regularly to prevent clots from forming from blood pooling.
The thing is, I do not feel bad most of the time. Only when I push myself on a run and then it is only a bit of pressure in the chest. And my heart rate, for the most part, is actually fairly low. It is just irregular.
In about a week I get to talk to a heart specialist. Hopefully I can get some feedback as to what is going on. I would like to be able to get my heart under control so I can stop worrying.
Aside from the heart, I’ve also had another issue. Under my left eye there has been a bump that has been slowly growing. It showed up early this year, and I wasn’t too concerned. But then it kept getting bigger. I had a video conference with my doctor and he wasn’t too concerned. His recommended treatment was a warm compress. I did that for several months and it still kept growing.
I was eventually sent to an ophthalmologist and she thought it was a cyst or a sty. In any case she made an appointment for me to see a surgeon to get it removed. However, it takes about a month and a half for that to take place.
The thing is, recently the warm compress has started to work. The sty is starting to leak fluids. It’s a little disgusting, but it is much smaller than it used to be. I feel I should cancel my appointment with the surgeon, but since it takes so long to get one of these appointments, I don’t want to just throw it away.
I think that is about it for my health. I will try and keep things posted about how they are doing.

I just got back from a trip to Alberta to see my family. I was there for two weeks. It wasn’t all relaxation; I was remote working there. I took a couple of days off, but otherwise I tried to be a productive member of society during the day.
Since the Alberta government has effectively collapsed, the pandemic is rampant there. My family lives outside of the city, and there was very little need to go in, so I was able to avoid other people. There were only two times when I interacted with the public. The first was a trip to Costco to buy a monitor to help me work. The second time I ran to an Apple store to pickup a nice keyboard for my iPad that I had ordered online; no PST makes it cheaper.
At the store, I double-masked, cleaned my hands and distanced from everyone. I followed all the rules; get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. When I left the store, a woman hanging out in front, who I had had no contact with, imperiously told me “You should have used curbside pick-up.” That had not been offered to me online. I told her “I don’t know how.” Her rebuttal: “You should learn!” I think this was my first interaction with a Karen. Good intentions concerning the pandemic, but try and save your energy for someone who isn’t making a good effort.
I will say this, if you are flying into Vancouver, try and be on the starboard side of the plane. There were amazing views of the mountains as we were coming in. They looked so close at times, you would almost think we were landing on them. Thankfully, we did not.
We continued flying right over the Fraser river into the landing strip. I was glued to the window looking over Vancouver. I recognized the places I had run, but what struck me was that I got a good look at how hilly the city is. When you are staring at a map, the hills aren’t there. When you are on the ground, a hill you are on effectively looks flat. When you are flying, the topography really pops out.
While waiting in the Calgary airport, I had briefly seen something about a shooting at the Vancouver airport. When I was leaving the airport, I saw that the entire departures road was blocked off by the police. Apparently there was a gang assassination in broad daylight there. For a time the bridges away from the airport were closed to try and catch the perpetrators. Fortunately the train was still operating, so I had no problem getting home.
Vancouver changed while I was gone. It had been warm for awhile, but dry. While I was gone, it rained a lot, and all the trees have greened up. A pleasant change from the snow I left in Alberta.

Today was the Vancouver Sun Run. The last time I did it, pre-pandemic, I had a time of 40:12. I really wanted to be able to beat 40 minutes. So I did everything I could think of to help: I used completely fresh new shoes; I had done easy runs for the previous week; I ate a gel before the run. Hindering me was that a few days ago, my lower back muscles had decided to get cranky. They felt okay this morning, but not perfect. But this is the day I had decided to do the run.
I had a choice of what day to do it, because this year the run is virtual. I have a two week period where I have to run 10km for it. Considering that I run 12.5km at a minimum every day, the distance wasn’t the problem.
I did a 3km warmup to the Inukshuk where I had decided to start. It felt appropriate, since it was on the finisher medal. I know this because I got the medal yesterday. It makes sense to have it part of the race package, but it feels wrong.
In any case, that is where I started. There were a few other people that had finished their run there, celebrating. They had done the reverse of my route plan along the Seawall, and agreed it was a good way to go. Staying at sea level the entire time would practically guarantee no hills.
I started off well, keeping under four minutes per kilometre. The path was generally clear, but I did yell “Passing!” if it looked like people would block me. (I’m talking to you, Dad who was chasing his daughters chaotically all over the place; keep it off the Seawall!) Generally people were understanding as I was wearing the race shirt. I also saw others walking in the race shirt, so I wasn’t alone.
At about the halfway mark though I could feel my legs getting tired. It was harder to keep up the pace I needed. By the end, I didn’t have the gas to keep pushing. I finished with a time of 40:24. So I missed my goal by 25 seconds. I like to believe I could have done better if there had been other competitors and a cheering crowd.
The end was actually depressing. After killing myself to finish, there was nothing waiting for me. No one was there to comfort me, or provide sustenance. I was alone on a quiet part of Coal Harbour. My legs were aching more than they have in a long time. I had a slow walk home, of about 2.5 km, up a hill. I did call my wife, who is stuck in Texas, but that isn’t the same.
Since I have a two week period to do this race, I wonder if I could attempt it again and try for a better time? I’m going to visit my parents in a week; I’ll admit I’ve been looking at Alberta topography maps to see if there is a 10km route that is all downhill from the mountains. Although Moose Mountain might be too steep with a drop of 500 metres.
I am feeling now that I should not do virtual speed races anymore; there is no solidarity, or cathartic release when you get to the end. Now excuse me while I go sign up for the virtual race across Tennessee. (Not a speed race! Just distance.)

I’ve been lucky with some of my runs lately; huge waves.
The first time it happened this season was back on January 13th and it was a fluke. I went for an early morning run and there was a high tide and high winds. It caused beautiful waves to crash all along the Seawall. Such runs tend to be slower because I keep stopping to take pictures and videos of nature’s wrath.
Usually I’m running in the late afternoons these days. And then luck has less to do with it. In the morning, I check the weather, and if I see that there is a high wind warning, I try and figure out the time of high tide. Then I go and run along the Seawall at that particular time. On February 26th that happened again, on a sunny day, and it was while the sun was low on the horizon. I didn’t just stay on the Seawall, but went up on the cliffs to get a larger perspective on the waves.
Last Sunday, was another good day. My back was troubling me, so I had decided not to do a super-long Sunday run. And then I saw the severe wind warning, and high tide was around sunset. That made the choice to go around the Seawall an easy decision. The combination of all three factors made beautiful views.
But looking back at the three days, the first one was the most impressive. I think that is because the tide was the highest at that point. It seems to be able to get higher in the morning than in the evening.
I’ve posted some of the best pictures and video on social media, but I don’t think the quality survives that transition. I should probably try and make a web page with the best quality videos.

Last year I purchased a new desk through work. This was a fancy standing desk; it could be raised and lowered as appropriate. I’ve had one in the past and quite enjoyed it. Due to my trip around Christmas, I had to have its delivery delayed. And even when it was delivered, I wasn’t ready for it. My apartment is small, so I had to figure out how to rearrange furniture to accommodate it. So for a couple of weeks, my front entryway was smaller as I had to navigate around the big boxes.
Last week I made a concerted effort to construct it. It was not easy.
I did a bunch of measuring of the new desk, the existing desk, and the space. I had some chairs that were just taking up space and could go into storage: that helped. But would the old desk have to go as well? The new desk has a smaller footprint, and I do a lot of stuff on my existing desk. I eventually decided that there was a way to have both desks; that was my ultimate goal because I want Catalina to have a desk for herself when she comes. In the meantime, I will have a work desk, and a personal desk.
First though, construction.
The instructions could have been better; they didn’t do a great job on differentiating the various screws that would be used. I figured it out only after using the wrong ones in the first step. I got past that hurdle, and things went well from there. And at the end I had a well constructed desk that was upside down.
The desk, because of all the motors, was very heavy. And the instructions said that you should have two people do the flipping. Also, don’t grab the desk part; grab the frame part. This was a problem, because I am one person, and I don’t have anyone I feel I could call to come over, break social distancing, and flip a desk.
I also didn’t want to strain my back too much. I need it for too many other things to risk injury.
I pondered for several hours, and eventually came up with a convoluted solution.
I have a very sturdy coffee table. It was built in 1957 in the Ozarks with very dense trees. It can handle a lot. I covered it with some of the packing material from the new desk. Then I lifted one end of the new desk onto it, and then pushed the other side so that it was eventually upside-down on the coffee table. That was stage one.
I then put towels over my old desk. I moved the coffee table/new desk contraption next to the old desk and somewhat repeated the process to get the new desk sitting on top of the old desk. Stage two completed.
From there, I slid it down, back on to the coffee table, but this time on its side. Stage three completed.
I suppose I could have repeated myself and got it back onto the old desk, but on its side. Instead, I took the shortcut, that was probably safer. I gently tipped it over so that its legs were on the floor and then stood it upright. That may have been a bit of a strain on the frame, but it seems to have worked. I now have two desks.
Things are mostly successful now. The separation of personal and work is helping me focus better when I am working. I have a bit less space though. And I still have a rogue filing cabinet that I have to figure out what to do with; the standing desk has a warning not to store anything tall under it, and that small filing cabinet counts as tall. But overall, I think I’m ahead of the game here.

I flew back to Canada on Saturday.
I tried my best to be safe. Through the airport I wore a standard surgical mask. Just before getting on the plane, I put on an N95 mask. That stayed on my face the entire time I was on the plane. Unfortunately, that was for a bit longer than intended. My first flight was delayed. Initially it was a minor mechanical problem, then the captain started talking about filling out paperwork. Eventually, it escalated to “We need 22 people to get off this plane.” It’s United, so that is a scary statement. But they were offering $400 if you took a later flight that would get one into San Francisco at 7:00.
I was initially confused; I was wondering if I had misheard and that we would be changing planes. But no, it was just that a lot of people got up to take them on that offer. Once they had their 22 sacrifices, and all the stand-bys were booted, we got to take off.
We landed in San Francisco at around 6:20, so the $400 was a good deal. Unfortunately, I had a flight that was boarding at 6:30. That only gave me ten minutes. It took five minutes to walk to the new gate; thankfully I didn’t need to clear customs.
My mother-in-law had given me a wonderful packed dinner of Beijing duck that I had been looking forward to. By that time I was ravenous. I didn’t want to eat on the plane, and I couldn’t take the meat into Canada. So I wolfed it down at the side of the boarding area, away from other people. It probably tasted great, but I couldn’t enjoy it. In the end, I just got heartburn. Don’t eat so fast.
The next leg took me back to Vancouver. Customs was fairly easy. They asked if I had a quarantine plan and if I had any questions. I only asked if I was allowed to take public transportation to my self-isolation location: They discourage it, but I am allowed to. Oddly, they never once asked about declaring anything. It is almost a shame that I didn’t load myself up with alcohol, but then again, I did not have time to visit duty-free in my ten minutes in San Francisco.
I took the Skytrain home; on a Saturday evening it would be safer for others than if I was in a the close quarters of a taxi.
However, three stops in, a gang of teenagers boarded. They were extremely loud, and not all of them were wearing masks. That part actually felt unsafe. And they did look like a gang. People changed seats to get away from them. Apparently they also phoned to complain: the gang got off at the same stop I did, and I saw a worker going through the train afterwords; I overheard her on the radio say that “they” had already gotten off.
A quick walk home and my self-isolation begins.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see all my plants are still alive. I had purchased an automatic watering system, and it worked well enough that nothing died. It did damage my desk a bit; a pot that I thought was waterproof wasn’t and there is now water damage in the back corner. I can live with that.

My wife’s aunt has a fairly successful business. One of her associates gave her a gift from a place called “Taste of Texas” Basically they sent her a styrofoam box, via FedEx, filled with dry ice and tenderloin steaks. It’s a nice thought. And the aunt was nice enough to let us have the steaks. I had conveniently brought my sous-vide machine with me so we were able to cook them very well.
However, I have some observations about “Taste of Texas” now.
The rub they provided wasn’t very flavorful; the steaks were… okay; the biggest thrill were the engraved steak knives. Frankly, I’ve gotten better tenderloin at Costco, and the Montreal steak spice there is very flavorful.
What I found most interesting was that a price list was also included in the package. Now we know how much everything cost, included the overpriced steak knives.
So my hypothesis is this: People use “Taste of Texas” to send corporate gifts where they subtlety want the recipient to know how much was paid. As such, the quality is not important.
[2020-12-25 20:28]

So for Christmas, I flew to Houston to visit my wife and her family. I am not proud of this; there is a global pandemic going on. This is dangerous behavior. But there are a few factors that made me decide to risk it.
First, I have a lot of vacation time, so quarantining was actually possible.
Second, their house is huge and it is possible to quarantine for the minimum number of days without interacting with people. And since they have a Covid test, I was able to get checked after five days.
Third, we have zero plans to go out. So we have minimal interactions with the natives.
Fourth, I am well aware of the dangers and am not afraid to mask up.
Things didn’t go perfectly. Too late I realized that I forgot hand-sanitizer, but I picked up an outrageously overpriced bottle from the gift shops (along with a bottle of water.) I was not able to get a direct flight from Vancouver to Houston. Airlines only seem to have short flights these days. So I ended up having a layover in San Francisco. (Unfortunately, I didn’t see the Golden Gate Bridge as it was foggy.) It was short enough to not be stressful and I was able to buy a lunch.
For the flights, I wore a KN95 mask almost the entire time. I also included goggles in case the virus found a way to land on my eyes. I only took my mask off, briefly, to drink, and I staggered the time so I had it well after drink service for everyone else. I was also lucky that my rows on both flights were empty of other people. I didn’t witness any acts of civil disobedience. Everyone was trying to be safe.
The airplanes smell of harsh cleaner. Which is a good sign.
I wasn’t really able to sleep on the plane. For the previous three nights I had had poor night’s sleep so I was hoping to catch up, but that eluded me. I rested, but not well. In the end, I watched the “Scoob!” movie, which was better than expected; it was a good homage to the source material.
[2020-12-24 16:10]

My life is an endless series of runs. Nothing really interesting happens to me unless it is run related. It doesn’t help that Catalina has gone back to Texas, so now I have less social engagements.
In this rut I have put myself into, I have further rutted. Most of my runs are the same run. I no longer have reachable goals of streets that are unrun. It is difficult to be consistently creative without a motivation, so I have a weekly pattern of runs.
On Monday I go to Jericho beach and try and run a small bit of trail there that I haven’t before.
On Tuesday I go out to Siwash rock and back.
On Wednesday I head south, go up the big hill to 41st street, then come back on another street.
On Thursday I do the Seawall around the east part of Stanley Park.
On Friday I do a Floop, (a False Creek Loop).
On Saturday I run up to Prospect Point.
Sundays are the day where I am allowed to be creative. These are the days when I do enough distance that I can reach streets that I have not run. In Vancouver there are a few faraway streets where I have only run the intersections. Or I can try and run in the University area which is technically a different city.
To spice things up, I have joined the Winter Scavenger Hunt. It has a series of different challenges that I have to attempt in a two month period. There is a Nog Jog, which is the Christmas equivalent of a Beer Mile. I’m going to attempt the relay challenge tomorrow; it is virtual so I’m signed up to follow someone I’ve never met.
The challenge I’m most dreading is the “X-Training” day; I haven’t done a non-run exercise in a very long time. And even if I do, I will still have to do a regular run that same day to maintain my running streak.
Hopefully this will get me a bit out of my rut.

It ended over a month ago, so I suppose I should talk about my virtual race across Tennessee. Now, the goal was to run across Tennessee, which would be about 1021km. Based on the time frame of May through to the end of August, I could do that without changing my running habits at all. But, there was a stretch goal of doing a there-and-back-again. To do that, I would need to increase my daily mileage to about 16km. That is a little higher, but doable. 1042km.
For three months I ran more than I have ever run before; each month I ran more than the last. So, yeah, a lot of running.
There were some benefits to this. (Health was not a benefit. Running this much can’t be good for you.) The one I noticed the most was that I had an opportunity to target further CityStrides streets on my runs. By June I had officially covered as much of Vancouver as was possible. (Certain streets are simply not accessible without MAJOR security clearance.) But, although I had “covered” Vancouver, that was only in a quantifiable metric of intersections. I then used the fact that I was doing longer runs on weekdays, to try and fill in some of the missing streets within 8km of home. That has helped clean up my map of Vancouver a lot. As of this date, I still have a lot of Vancouver to go, but the missing blocks are all far enough that I have to cover them when I am doing a long Sunday run.
I finished my first crossing well before the end of June, after 53 days. Unfortunately, I left town before I had a chance to respond to the organizer about my preferred reward. I was gone for a month and when I came back, I had received the belt buckle instead of a medal. It IS a nice belt buckle, but we all know I’m never going to wear it. (Honestly, I don’t even think I know how to attach one to a belt.) At the same time I got the t-shirt.
I did not initially wear the t-shirt after I received it. The first time I wore it was when I was going to do my last day of running to finish the return journey. Surprisingly, my t-shirt was recognized almost immediately by someone as I was getting ready to start my run. That felt special, and made that final run better.
The whole shebang took me 105 days. So technically I did a negative split. Although I could also say that the return trip was mostly downhill from the Appalachian mountains. I kept up my daily running after I finished, but I drastically reduced my distance; I made it a personal weekday goal to always keep my minimum of 12km, but not go over 13km. So August was no longer a record month for me.
Interestingly, I kept logging my mileage after I finished. A lot of other runners did not. This allowed me to continue to climb in the rankings. Since the race only really kept track of the day you finished, no one really cares about the overall placement. But it felt nice to see a metric rating me as better.
Towards the end, my runs were getting painful. I had to run slower so I didn’t injure myself, but the pain wasn’t going away. After suffering for awhile, I checked with a physical therapist. His diagnosis was that I was running too slowly; I needed to stress my body properly. He gave me some exercises and recommended I do some speed work. This helped enormously. And now I can tell people that the solution to my injury was to run more. Although I should mention that my massage therapist was also concerned about the stool I had been sitting on when working, and I upgraded to a proper chair soon after.
One day I should actually go to Tennessee to see what I “ran”. But I looked at it as I was crossing. There are a lot of small towns that all look the same. And after awhile I stopped checking so I never really saw if the Appalachian mountains looked that nice. But I’ve got mountains here that have been doing it for me.

Last Saturday, Catalina and I went for a kayak tour. Nominally it was to celebrate her birthday, but I’ve been wanting to give kayaking a try for awhile. Once a year, in spring, Costco will have a sale on kayaks, about $100 off, and I’ve always imagined that it would be a lot of fun to do that. Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed and I have never actually purchased a kayak. I mean, where would I put it?
The tour was a way to actually see what a kayak is like. We got a double-kayak (so that Catalina wasn’t stuck propelling herself) and a guide who took us on a two hour tour of False Creek.
It was nice. You get a different perspective of the place when you are on the water.
We got to learn a bit about the history of the inlet and some interesting landmarks. I found out the cement plant is not as much a blight as I thought it was; the fact that it is on False Creek means there is a lot less pollution when they can ship in the gravel they need by barge. One of the houses floating on the water has a “basement” with a window so you can see underwater; probably more useful if they could clean up the water there.
For me, the highlight was to actually seeing under Science World. (The place is technically now called “Telus World of Science”, but no native of Vancouver ever calls it that. The old name is still the standard.) I always thought the big globe was on land, with just the perimeter seawall being above the water, but the whole thing is actually above the water. There are stilts and piles supporting it, and, if you were so inclined, you could float quite far underneath it. There are some floating logs preventing that from being too easy, but there are times when I have seen them moved aside.
We did see a seal and some otters.
I will admit that towards the end, my seat was getting uncomfortable. So two hours was almost the perfect length of time for the tour. We both had a good time, but I am now more sure that I do not need a kayak for myself. My perspectives will now have to be confined to just running the Seawall.