Yamnuska

Went out to yamnuska alone. Noone to go with me, but with it being a saturday, I knew I wasn't really going "alone". Couldn't even get parked in the parking lot or side of the road.

Lots of girls wearing skirts near the beginning, don't see that on many hikes. I guess it was a church group, and without any backpacks, I'm sure they weren't going far. Quickly left them in the dust. Was leaving most people in the dust actually, I was marching along quite quickly. Got stuck at a school group going the other way, and a hardcore guy caught and passed me.

Through the chimney, then it seemed to keep going and going. To some kind of peak, then keep going. Climb over a ridge, keep going. Eventually reached the metal cable. Felt a little scared, but made it past. Then a bit more. Then halt. so much more to go, but it was time for my little freak-out. Seems to be a regular thing for me now on hikes. What kind of a pansy have I become. Sat down and waited until some strangers caught up, and requested to join them. Then, things were okay again.

Did pretty much the rest of the hike with them. And guess what nationality they were. Seriously, am I bound every time I go off by myself to join onto the chinese group. It's not even a joke anymore.

At the summit, another group caught up. And one of them had carried a chess board all the way up there for some reason! So we played chess on the top of a mountain, someone said something about bringing the game to new heights. Was kindof silly actually, but fun that I got to do it without having to do the work of carrying it :) I was jokingly thinking later I should have told the chinese to carry a game of MJ to the top of a mountain.

On the way down to them, said goodbye to them at the top of the super scree slope. I was going to go straight down, though neither of those groups of three were going to. So I went, and it was awesome. And a minute later, looking back, I saw other people doing it. After seeing me do it, both groups decided to do it as well! I felt good... like, I was an inspiration, that because of me they got to do something fun (plus saving time on the descent).

waited for chinatown and chatted with them the rest of the way down. Found a pair of sunglasses on the trail. Figured I'd leave them at the trailhead. But once there, I was convinced to keep them. Realistically, noone was likely to come back and look for them, they weren't very expensive or prescription or anything. They fit me exactly, and I needed a pair for dragonboat starting the next day. And so, they became my dragonboat sunglasses.

Exchanged email addresses, maybe we will hike together again someday.

Burn

"Is it just me, or is the sky a bit brown above that mountain?"
A little bit later, the air smelled quite different.
A little bit later, visibility was quite low, could barely see yamnuska from the highway. Though it was mid afternoon, the sun on the ground had the orange glow of sunset.
A while later, started to get a bit clearer.
Checked online in the evening, found there was a prescribed burn near canmore that day.
Was neat to see the progression.

Escort

On my way out of town yesterday, had to pull to the side of the road as a couple dozen police motorbikes went by, then a few black SUVs and a couple more police cars. I didn't see the flag. But nonetheless it annoys me... If you're in some danger for some reason, get your own protection, don't waste our police force escorting you around, and don't be disrupting traffic. Can't drive on the road with the rest of us around, fine, go drive in the middle of the night or something.

Paddling

There are few things I love more than dragonboat. So why did I skip first practice? What a fool.

At least I got out on an outrigger today. It was very windy with wavey whitecaps which is actually fun. Though sometimes you'd make a couple strokes that took you zero distance. Overall I seemed a bit slow, need more practice I guess. And should be more careful, got in too shallow at one point, felt a bit of scraping, had to jump out and wade/push the boat back into deeper water and jump back in to paddle away.

Exercise

I think it was on "Daily Planet" I saw it... We know that running a marathon is tough on the body, but now some researchers used MRI to check out a runner's heart before and after a marathon. After running those 42.2km, the runners heart was all bloated and deformed, it was kindof scary to see really (especially for the runner I'm sure!). The good news of the situation was that when scanned again a week later, the heart had returned to a regular form. Nonetheless, I don't think I want to put my heart through that (not that I think I ever actually _could_).

Still, I've been trying to exercise, though last week's dismal weather put a damper on that. On the weekend I went for a bike ride, first through price's island to check out the people enjoying the summer day, then up to edworthy. Ran around the hillside trails there, since being there reminded me of the SoF days. Cant believe that was 3 yrs ago already. Kindof miss it, but can't really go back. And of course memories make things seem nicer than they were at the time. :) The sad thought that comes from it is that with that and all the other activities I did that summer, for four straight months I averaged over 2hr physical activity per day, yet did not noticeably get fitter. If that couldn't do it, what would it take? A bit discouraging.

Nonetheless, today I still went running, along mchugh bluff and doing the stairs above prince's island. Bad timing, it was lunch time and crowded with people. Good timing, some of those people were hot. See I'm trying to be positive. Ran around a bit more and did some other exercises.

And yesterday was a hike. Just a short one but a nice one. Though I feel bad to have spent much more time driving than hiking.

Heart Mountain

Wanted to go hiking, chose heart mountain, remembering that it's "not too bad." At least, I remember telling friends that a few years back. And I remember them disagreeing after actually doing it. Anyways, did it again, with a different friend. Man it was worse than I remember. Even had myself a little freak-out after the climbing part on the way up, though it was surprisingly no prob on the way down. The distance elevation is not bad, just the terrain is tough, especially on the way down, using your hands a lot and constantly figuring out where would be best to step, on and on and on relentlessly. Yeah, way worse than I remember, must be getting old.

Sun in Calgary

Forgot how intense the sun is here compared to other places. Already got sunburned!

Blinds

When I moved into my condo, I had the brilliant idea that there should be blinds that not only pull up from the bottom, but pull down from the top. That way, I could leave the top open to get light, without having the bottom open to let people look into my place. I searched many places and only found one not-so-good solution, so forgot about it.

Was at home depot today, saw blinds and with just a quick glance around, there were no less than three very prominent dual-opening blinds! I guess it was a good idea finally catching on afterall. Now to make some measurements and see how expensive it is.

Linux

Ok already complained about linux in the past (defaulting a super low resolution such that the ability to change the resolution was off the screen and impossible to access, and instructions to use a command line argument that is not recognized). But it has come up again. And not just cause it was crashing the entertainment system on a recent flight.

Wanted to play with some software that only worked in linux. Ok, I have some time, lets play with this. Try ubuntu since it's supposedly simple. Download an image, find a batch to install it to a USB disk to boot/run directly from there without screwing my regular hard disk. No problem doing all that in windows. So, I can now boot into ubuntu. First things first, lets connect to the internet.

Windows:
*Plug in ethernet cable.
*Observe indicator connecting to internet.
*Open firefox and browse the web.

Ubuntu:
*Plug in ethernet cable.
*Observe indicator connecting to internet.
*Open firefox and find you can't browse the web.
*Check the network thing and confirm that it says you are indeed connected.
*Try and again fail to browse the web.
*Use a windows machine to read the Ubuntu help.
*Follow the troubleshooting which tells you to ping something. Try pinging something and watch it fail because as you already knew, you're not connected.
*Continue reading the Ubuntu internet connection troubleshooting, only to find it says nothing beyond "if you can't connect, there is a problem." Absolutely brilliant troubleshooting, I think my friend's 1 yr old could have helped me more.
*Continue using a windows machine to search for ideas.
*Try another suggested solution of editing a certain file.
*Discover that file doesn't exist.
*After reading more about how simple Ubuntu is, follow suggestion to enter the perfectly obvious command "sudo lshw -C network". Again, I think I heard my friend's 1 yr old muttering something like this, though he was hitting his forehead with a plastic firetruck at the time. I think I understand why. Nothing about how to interpret the information displayed by this command or what actions to take.
*Finally give up, it's not worth it even as a "project", go back to windows.

A decade behind

I was on a United flight for 13 hours from Sydney to Los Angeles. Big mistake, and I feel ashamed to have supported that airline. The seats didn't even have screens in them! I was on a cathay flight almost a decade ago which had those installed. I think essentially all major airlines based outside of north america not only have screens in seats, but have video on demand. Can't believe how behind USA is. The flight attendants weren't even friendly. Of course the food wasn't as good as on asian airlines, but that's just my preference maybe. Normally I go to the galley and help myself to snacks if I want any. Can even have noodles if you want. This time, I was told to wait till they came by later. Ugh. Gonna try hard to avoid them next time.

Final week of Adelaide

Still nothing too remarkable happening in the last week there. Weather was mediocre, but still went for a couple nice long walks. Everyone left on sunday and monday morning, but I stayed till tuesday morning so I could ship some things and other minor tasks on the monday (weekday). But most of the day was free, and it was a beautiful final day. Bike rental guy was back so I went along the river for a few hours. Walked around the botanic garden again. Had a nice dinner. Was sad to leave. Especially tuesday morning. But, had to happen I guess.

Calgary is cold, and a bit empty. Should pick up after a few days.

A mystery solved

Ok, I was super excited about this, way more than is warranted, but I don't care. First a little background. Japanese writing has Kanji, Romanji, Hirigana and Katakana. Hirigana and Katakana are alphabets, with the same sets of sounds, but Katakana is used for imported words, while Hirigana is used for japanese words. So, "genki" could be in hirigana, but "konpyuta" would be katakana. I've noticed before, at Japanese restaurants, Ramen is written in katakana, suggesting it's imported. But to me, it seems like a very japanese thing, and besides, there's nothing in western languages that sounds quite like that is there? Somehow, today, I suddenly realized... Chinese! Mein! (egg) noodles! of course. Can even be Ra Mien, though often the katakana is just written as "men" (with no "ra" which confused me). Anyways, like I said, was filled with unwarranted excitement!

And another week

Another week (actually more) has passed. And what have I done? I'm not sure actually. While those other weeks were pretty eventful, this one I honestly have trouble remembering what I did. The weather has been poor for aquisition, so I wasn't busy with flights. But also the weather has been poor on the ground, so it hasn't been too pleasant to go out trying to hike, the bike guy is closed for winter, etc. And I guess there's been little nuissancey work things happening preventing any major activity. Hmmm. Went for a drive to a nature area one day, it was nice, but had trouble finding another place, and with cloud and wind and a bit of rain, headed home early. One evening I watched the new X-men movie, I liked it, except for the australian $16.50 price tag, everything's expensive in the land down under. Went to the Cleland wildlife sanctuary for a couple hours one afternoon, it's kindof like a zoo, there were areas where you can walk around with the wallabies and kangaroos and emus (yeah emus are too much like ostriches and scare me), and get to pet a koala after lining up for a long time. Of course you know I like zoos, so I liked that place. Hmm otherwise not much to report for that week, but the time went away.

This final week started fairly well, I went kayaking in a dolphin sanctuary! Just one other person out. The dolphins generally didn't come too close and you're not allowed to approach them, but was cool to see. And at one point one actually did sneak up behind me while I was watching some farther away. Just spun around in time to see him disappear. Then watched, waiting, and suddenly heard him back on the other side again! Went down a mangrove lined stream which semed to go on forever, but it was so nice I decided to use up my time following it to the end rather than return to the main area to see some shipwrecks. Some of the branches were so low I had to do some yoga back bend in my kayak (or would saying do a Neo dodging bullets move sound cooler) to make it under them. At one point I made some mistake though, in a slightly more open area I started going too fast and didn't slow down in time or turn sharply enough, and got up close and personal with some mangrove branches. Almost swamped the kayak, like within a few degrees, and my hand met with a barnacle covered branch and got fairly torn up. But, I was okay, and blood rinses off kayaks and paddles easily. The stream became impassable shortly after that, so I headed back. Had considered staying out an extra hour, but was getting tired anyways. Overall it was awesome, so glad I got a chance to do that finally.

Otherwise, not sure what I'm up to for the rest of the week. Preparing to move out I guess. Still don't know what I'll do or where I'll go. Stresses me... Since I don't much enjoy doing many things by myself, but I feel like it's such a waste if I don't do something with this opportunity.