Fernie - Old Stumpy Trail

Great little hike with the fan-jam yesterday. Old stumpy trail in Fernie. It's a nice little 1 1/2hr (with kids) hike that doesn't ever really leave the corporate limits of Fernie. I'm amazed at the beauty that surrounds this place. Everywhere you turn is another view that makes you just stop for a minute and take it in. A photo-bomb:

 We decided to finish up the hike with a little London 2012 100M sprint.

 What an awesome view for the kids who practice track at this school.

 And finally back at our van.

I (heart) food

I eat very well. And for that, I have my sweet wife to thank. She is an amazing cook and loves to do it. Rarely do I eat the same thing twice, and more often than not, our bread, pasta and pastries are scratch-made by my wife. In the small town of Strathmore where we live, we find that it's not even worth eating out anymore, because it takes an incredible restaurant to impress. We have better food at home. I'm a lucky man.

Ice Fishing

Yesterday's forecast was supposed to be +2C(36F) and sunny. Earlier in week my buddy emailed to see if I wanted to head out ice fishing with the kids, and seeing as yesterday was the day it was supposed to warm up, I thought it would have been a great idea.

Weather forecasters are often wrong as was the case yesterday. I think the warmest it got was -12C (10F) but we dressed for it and had fun. We also never caught any fish (we were going for Pike) but that didn't really matter either. Just good fun on a frozen lake in the winter. For northerner's it's just par for the course.

I brought along my Canon EOS 3 and shot off a roll of Kodak Ektar 100.

My favourite mountain hide away

I'm enjoying a little chill time with the family in Fernie right now. I so love this place. Quiet, peaceful, amazing food, and lots to do. This trip though, we're committing to rest and relaxation. Lot's of lounging, games, TV and hot tubbing.

This was the view I woke up to this morning and felt so grateful to be in a beautiful, warm and cozy condo. Think it's time for a fire and some coffee...

bring it back to life

Well, seeing as my other blog isn't shaping up to be what I'd hoped it would (mostly just because I seem to be short on time to create the type of content that I've wanted to) I think I'll fire up this old bad boy again.

I've been thinking a lot about when I started this blog back in 2006, it was just a random posting mostly about bicycles. It kind of turned into a whatever type of blog, and that was when I enjoyed it the most. I have a soft spot in my heart for this blog. It's introduced me to some great people and blogs. I've met, in person, other bloggers, and have made some great friends. Both via the interwebs and in person.

So, here goes another kick at the cat. I'll keep this a loose blog, posting anything that I might find interesting and some of the goings-on in my life. I'm going to play with layout a bit, and hopefully I can sort out a better way to upload photos. Thanks for sticking around, and I hope all'yall continue to enjoy it. Life is good:)

This blog is done. But....

...another has been born.

I've started a new personal blog. One more suited to how I want to blog, and what I want to blog. Make Life Well.

I'm really excited about my new blog, and I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Snowmobiling

I suppose I'll keep the odd post coming. I've resolved that it might not be very frequent, and I've removed the pressure I'd put on myself to "make sure this makes it to the blog" that was keeping me from enjoying activities I was doing, and blogging about them. But, if I happen to have a camera around, and happen to snap a few frames, I'll probably get to posting it here. More low key, and enjoyable. That's the whole point of sharing via a blog isn't it? It's supposed to be fun? And it is.

This past Friday, 3 of my good friends and I were lucky enough to all schedule a day off, and head out on our snowmobiles. Our sweet wives thought it would be good for us to have a day off, absolved of our fatherly duties and just hang out and be guys for a while. We've got amazing wives! And, when guys are being guys, it often leads to a bit of craziness and in my case, stupidity.

Case in point: When I get behind the throttle of anything fast, I like to let caution flee from my mind. I love the feeling of being scared. It's a rush that has gotten me in trouble more than a time or two. I'd written off my sport bike 3 times, and was hospitalized once. But after I got to the point where I could wheelie for over 2 miles, shift through all 6 gears and top out at 140 miles per hour (not kph, MPH) all without letting the front tire touch the ground, that is a true reward.

Back to the snowmobiling. We're planning a weekend trip to the mountains to sled, and we viewed this day as a "test" ride. Kind of a chance to ride together and familiarize ourselves with each others riding style. We were just cruising the priairies, riding in the irrigation canals and blazing across the frozen lakes. We'd stop whenever we found a piece of terrain that offered a chance to play around. Once such piece was a nice snowdrift on a frozen lake.

My friend Brad said, "hey, I'm gonna try a superman!" I thought it was a great idea. Only problem: you need some serious airtime to pull of a full extension superman and land it. I tried a few times, couldn't quite get the full extension I wanted and then decided I'd just let it all hang out. Full extension, try and pull the landing, but mostly worry about full extension. I got the full extension I wanted, and the landing, well, there just wasn't time. The good news: we had video rolling. The bad news, I fractured my elbow. But, in the end, the pain was worth the split second of glory.

Check out the video:

Cheers,

Jeremy

On it's last leg?

Not sure what to make of this blog anymore. Maybe it's the winter months keeping me off the bike? At the same time, there's lots of other stuff going on I could be blogging about. Skiing, running, my search for new hiking/camping gear. The thing is, I have no desire to post here anymore. That desire has been gone for over a year now.

I remember back in the early days of this blog. I kept posting and posting. I had no stat-counter widgets installed and had no idea if anyone ever even read this thing. Then, I got a comment. Hoky smokes a comment! Someone has read this at least once! The early days of bike blogging were exciting. I started to feel connected to a community of cycling bloggers and really, I still do.

I remember always thinking about whatever I happened to be doing at the time. Is this a good blog post? Should I be taking some pictures? I'd even start drafting up the post in my head. Setting the flavour of the post and working on the wording. Serious? Humorous? Educational? I was really excited to blog here and thought about it all the time. Then I started a few other blogs. A blog for my house renovation in Rockyford, which I deleted about 2years ago. A blog dedicated to bicycle maintenance which only lived for about 6 months even through it did have a bit of readership. There's the 12hrs blog which I still find interesting and enjoy. The thing I like about that blog is that others contribute from different parts of the world. It makes it interesting.

I've met some great people and made some really good friends both in person and 'online' via this blog. Smudgemo in Berkley and I met up for Pints during a business trip I took to Oakland. He's a great guy, and I consider him a friend. I've met up with Vik for lunch a few times when he lived in Calgary, we got together for a few rides (recumbent cruise in the prairie and a fixie ramble through downtown Calgary) and I even bought a bike from him. Another great person I've met in real life thanks to this blog. The Drumheller Mail found my blog somehow and offered me a spot to blog for them. I didn't take it, but all this is to say that blogging has been a great experience for me.

Then I started photo-blogging. Now, there is a big difference between the photo-blog world and the bike-blog world. Photo bloggers typically share a few snaps from their recent shoots and are geared more towards impressing their clients and aimed at attracting new ones. They seem to serve more a business/advertising function and that's fine, it's what they're for. Bike blogs seems to have more of an honest approach to them. It's not 'uncool' to leave comments and congratulations for the interesting things going on in the blog posts of other bike bloggers. Photo-blogs typically don't have this. There seems to be a feeling that it's uncool for one photographer to comment "excellent images, those are great" on another photographers blog post. Does leaving that kind of comment somehow make the commenting photographer 'less good' than the photographer who is posting? It not true, but seems to be the case. And I think it's a shame. The sense of camaraderie and friendship is far greater in the bicycle blogging world than the photo blogging world. I'd like to see that change.

Recently I've discovered the tumbler blog, which is all the rage right now. I really like the simplicity of it. It's far less involved than blogger and typically tumblr blog posts are very short and sweet. Many are simply one picture. My tumblr blog is for the most part random snap shots taken with my iPhone. Again, there's no real interaction with other folks reading, but there's also very little effort put into a post. My tumblr posts are published on my facebook and twitter feeds. I get a lot of visits to my tumblr blog (an average of 60-100 unique visitors per day) but again, not interaction. It's more of a one-way conversation. Thinking of it, I kind of wonder if the whole facebook thing has caused me to come to this place of not taking the interest in my bike blog the way I used to.

There have been some great bike bloggers I've followed who have thought about shutting down their blogs and some who have. I flirt with the idea all the time. The interface with blogger is really bugging me. I'm not sure if there's a way around it, but I find that only being able to upload 5 photos at a time is a real PITA. Blogger inserts my images and mixes up the order that I want them to appear all the time. It drives me nuts. Maybe there's a better way to upload to a blogger blog, but I don't know if it.

All this to say that I'm going to be leaving this blog alone for a while. I've already started, but this is more of an official notice. While I still can't come to a place to kill it completely, I'm going to resolve that I wont' be posting much here anymore. Maybe later on in time I'll get re-inspired to blog here more often, and I'm sure that the odd post will pop up once and a while, but all this is just short of pulling the plug completely. I'll still leave this blog here, and I'm keeping my blogger account mostly just so I can continue to comment on the other bicycle blogs that I enjoy. They all show up in my google reader and I enjoy reading them as much as I always have. It's just the feed from this blog wont' be showing up in other's RSS feeds nearly as much.

I'll still be blogging my regular old goings-on on my tumbr blog, and of course my photo blogs here and here, and for the most part, that's where you'll find me.

For the past 5 years it's been a great ride, I've enjoyed it, and appreciate all who have read, commented, taught and encouraged me via Jerome's bikes. Thank you, take care and God bless.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Winter

It's been a hard winter this year. All of those "bad parts of winter" seem to have happened to me this year.

• I was stranded in a small town I was shooting a wedding in with now way to get home, had to spend the night. I was only 30kms from my house.
• A few days later I hit black ice while driving and wound up in the ditch.
• And this week, the furnace in our Rockyford house quit. The pipes burst. And we had some flooding.

Seriously, what's up?! Most winters are so-so, some cold, some snow but nothing major. This year it's been intense. I've got 7 feet of snow piled up on the front lawn.

There is a part of me that loves this weather though. Some years we'll get a little snow, but mostly just brown dead grass and muddy roads to stare at. This year has been white. And white is nice to look at. We seem to get a nasty cold front bringing temps in the minus twenties, followed by a few days of above freezing. Cycled on and off, over and over.

Right now I'm spending my days driving out to Rockyford, checking on how the dehumidifier is doing it's job, driving back and going about my typical business. Rockyford is a house that we used to live in, and then rented out as when we bought our new house in Strathmore. We haven't had tenants in it since August, and as such, no one noticed the temperature going down inside as the furnace was dying. And, snap. There goes a water line.

On the upside though, this winter has been one that I've been outside more than any other. With my new found interest in nordic skiing, some warm days for cycling and running, I've been outside in the beautiful winter a lot. And by beautiful, I mean gorgeous. This year has brought more picturesque scenes of perfectly smooth snow covered fields and tress that are all white with snow than any winter in recent memory. It's amazing. It's funny how a winter can bring the worst and the best of it's season all at the same time.

My direction: forget about the minor inconveniences of winter and focus on the awesomeness of this season. Winter, I'll take it!

Downhill Skiing

Last Thursday, a buddy Brad and I took the day off for some downhill skiing. We met a bunch of other friends at the hill, Mt. Norquay, and ripped hard all day long. It was a busy day at the hill, so we skied most of the day on the North American Chair. It services double black diamond runs, which were amazing. Not very busy, super steep and lots of powder. We rode hard all day long, and by the end of the day, our legs were mush. A good day on the slopes indeed.

I've only downhill skied once in the last 17 years prior to this trip. I started skiing when I was 4 and switched to snowboarding when I was 14. I decided to go back to the skis because teaching kids to ski when you're on a board is way more difficult than when you're on skis. Oddly though, I haven't skied with the kids yet (other than watch them while they're in lessons). After my 15 year hiatus, the old grove of skiing comes back fairly quickly.

I feel so lucky living 1.5 hrs from this

Brad and I were bush-whacking, and all of a sudden he disappeared. He didn't see this 25' drop in time. no injuries though:) (he right below my ski tips - 25' down)

view from the top of the North American Chair

here's a little video of a few of my attempts at jumping

More XC Skiing in Fernie

After only a few weeks away, we couldn't resist another chance to head back to Fernie for a weekend away. Being as I'm living the freelance lifestyle, we opted let our oldest miss a day of school, and turn this into a long weekend. Freelance is risky and downright scary at times, but it also has it's perks.

Last time we were skiing in Fernie, the temp was -17C (1F). This time, temps are just above freezing. Quite a nice treat considering the intense winter that we've had so far. This was also the first time that we set out for any considerable distance with the whole family in tow. I am amazed at how well my sons are picking this up. They are moving well enough that actually do cover some ground. And my little girl, she's loving the chariot with the XC ski attachment. Usually it only takes about 10 minutes and she's out catching up on her beauty rest. Between yesterday and the day before, we had over 5 hrs of skiing. Not back considering we're doing it all with 3 kids 6 and under. Just shows that if you want to do things outside and be active, children aren't a hinderance to most activities. You just need to adapt a bit, and use the right gear.

Here's some pics and video of the last two days.

I'm amazed at how kids can contort themselves to get upright again. It's almost easier for them to get up after a fall than us.

My oldest going on his first 'downhill'

My youngest son is getting it well. If you look at the video, he's actually gliding on his skis.