North Ontario is a subjective term. To Ontarians it means anything north of Toronto, which to the rest of Canada is below the 49th parallel and quite far south. North Ontario just means the northern part of the inhabitated bit of the province. If you look at a map of Ontario the exploration mining camp I'm at is geographic north-south middle of the province but quite close to the Quebec border which is an important influence on the regional cuisine. Every year, I'm spending less time in 'the field' so even a week of hauling core boxes and bagging samples is good fun. This is not the glamerous field work I like to brag about and neither is the location. The Canadian shield is heavily forested rolling hills covered in lakes, muskeg, swamps, beaver dams, mosquitos, black flies and black bears. Over 1.5 meters of snow has melted in the last week so neither the bugs or bears have gotten too active. The snow has melted, but it hasn't stopped falling. It has been COLD until today. Today I only wore one pair of gloves.
There are 4 of these rows of core sheds and foundations are being poured for another 2 rows. Plus all the historic drill core archieved on the core library (aka graveyard). Lots of rock. Lots of $$ to drill and explore for metals. I am always amazed at how little metal costs when you look at the expense of finding a deposit, developing the prospect, defining the ore body, designing the mine, protecting the bugs and bunnies and fish and water and air, operating the mine, getting the concentrate to the smelter, smelting and then sending the metal to some manufacturing plant to make some dumbass disposable electronic device. If it can't be grown it's got to be mined and we don't (yet) pay the true price of for any goods. 
I either need a raise so I can buy new rain pants or just need to duck tape these so they last one more field season.
I'm getting back to Vancouver tomorrow and straight onto the road bike and then eating a HUGE leafy green salad with spinach and drinking some beer! I bet my bikes have been lonely this week.
Bring on the castigation. The goal of the blog is to hold myself accountable for BCBR training and I didn't get on any of my four bikes this weekend. No excuse but laziness and maybe a little sloth.
April has been unusually cold. It snowed (again!!!) on Friday. There was still snow on the streets Saturday morning and the high was only 5 degrees C. A friend made an unexpected weekend stop in Vancouver after working in Whistler for the week so we did 'city things' and sat in a cozy pub having pints and conversation. There was no snow Sunday and we exceeded the forecast high of 5 degrees to an impressive 6 degrees. I'm tired of wearing neoprene booties, two layers of gloves, full length tights with knee warmers underneath. Call me a fair-weather rider.
Consolation was found in crepes with strawberries, bananas, bittersweet chocolate sauce and whip cream.
I sometimes feel embarassed or a little guilty about how easy my life is right now. Work is very slow and there is a lot of time for riding.Saturday was the warmest day of the year so far. K really wanted to have one last ski for the year and we went to the Elfin Lakes hut. It's about a 24 km round trip in Garabaldi Provencial Park. There can be good skiing, but temps were at or just above freezing all night and you could almost see puddles in the skin track. We didn't even bother to yo-yo any slopes. The trail is very popular with snowshoes and novice skiers as you can get to the hut without crossing any real avalanche terrain and there are bright orange trail markers every 5 -10 meters for the low visibility days. The high traffic load has beat down the last 4-5 kms into a luge track. Kind of fun.View back to Howe Sound
Mt. Garabaldi (it's a volcano. Part of the same chain as Baker and Rainer and Meager)
We got back to the car and joined another friend for a short XC ride on some of the lower Squamish trails. The BCBR training guide said Saturday should have been 3-5 hour road ride. We only rode for about 2 hours, but I have admit that my legs were 'a bit fatigued' and I wasn't too sad to have a short ride. Anyway, the shorter ride meant a shorter time to beer!Howe Sound Brew Pub in Squamish has their spring Rasberry Wheat beer on tap for the season.
Sunday dawned nicer than expected. I was lying in bed trying to decide whether to ride road or dirt. It's like trying to decide between having the chocolate croissant or the cinnamon bun. Tortuous decision. Sent my buddy M a text asking if he was headed to Seymour for some mountain biking. He had ridden on Saturday and his wife won't let him ride both days on the weekend until he finishes building their kayaks. M gave me some suggestions on which trails to ride that are within my skill level. But, it was sunny out and I have a new road bike.... so I put in a quick 75 km ride (quick relatively speaking as I couldn't hang onto the back wheel of the guy on the Cervelo near Point Grey) and then changed clothes, changed bikes and attempted to exchange the mountain bike spds for platform pedals. Since I would be riding alone and on new-to-me trails it seemed prudent to have platforms. But I couldn't get the right foot pedal off. Why isn't there a rent-a-man service?? The ride on Seymour was very nice. Went up Old Bucks, a wide non-technical climb. Traversed along the Baden Powell trail to the top of Severed Dick where the downhill starts. On went the leg and arm armor, down went the saddle and I set the pedal tension very very low. It was a fun trail, pretty old school riding with just a few man-mades for trail protection. There are a series of 6-7 bigger drops on the bottom 1/3 of the trail that I walked though I'm sure most north shore folks not only ride the drops, but huck them.In all, it was the best of all possible worlds this weekend! I was tired and hungry and happy by Sunday night.
My belly hurts. Some days it seems like I can't get enough food. I know the vending machine isn't full of actual "food" just fatty, salty, tastiness smothered in chocolate. Lunch was wonderful (buckwheat soba noodles with tempeh, steamed veggies and homemade peanut sauce) but I broke down and had a candy bar and feel like....like it is a really good thing today's scheduled ride is 3 hours! Lesson learned: stick to the dark chocolate covered espresso beans in my middle left hand desk drawer.
It doesn't seem like I've been riding a lot, but this is likely the most regimented program for me since the university swim team in Golden (= long time ago). As I've gotten older, and a lot more comfortable with myself and body, my diet has changed. A lot more protein, though still all veggie based, a lot more oils and fats and nuts and my body hasn't really changed. I've weighed the same (+/- 5 lbs) since grade 10. The point of this paragraph being I wonder if I could have been a faster university swimmer if I'd had a better diet with more protein and fat and had been less worried about gaining weight? Nevertheless, it's a good thing avocados are expensive and generally poor quality here in Canada. But it would be nice to get some chilies peppers and decent Mexican food. Don't even ask about the margaritas north of the 49th parallel...
I think that the riding has been good and relatively consistent recently. No long rides this past weekend as my mother was visiting, but still managed a couple 2-3 hour ski tours and 5 mile trail run together. Lots of fun. I had a short 2 hour hill session Sunday after dropping mom at the airport. Monday was an easy 38 km. Yesterday was commuting and a short 1 hour hill session. Though with the new road bike hills are very enjoyable!
The forecast for the weekend shows Saturday as partly sunny with a temp of 21C!!! Perhaps a ride with just knee warmers and not full tights? One of my downhill mtn biker co-workers has promised to ride Mt Seymour with me this weekend. Hopefully hit Pingu/Pangor and maybe Corkscrew??
Picture from gutsploder.com where I spend hours of nonchargable time daydreaming. Wonder if I'll ever have the courage to ride this?
So this is what a work/life balance is! That is assuming you're balancing only work life and cycling life :)
Work has slowed down for a little while and this will be a 40 hour work week with no evening or weekend emails, report editing or meeting preparation. This meant that Monday's (mostly) off day from training was just my normal commute and I still had time to mommy-ify the apartment and read a book at night. Tuesday was a 'high quality' commute with an extra 10 km tagged on and I still had time to vacumn the cats. OK, not really just the cat fur equivalent from the sofa cushions. Yesterday I took the long way into to work and got 30 km on the NEW road bike before making it to the office, rode another 40 km after work and even made it to a friend's 30th b-day party. Wow. There is a lot more time in the day when I leave the office before 6:30 pm!
There should be applications of this revalation to my nonexistent Vancouver dating life... but I have a suspicion that my bikes are a much more dependable source of joy and excitement than another round of bad first dates courtsey of match.ca.
