Neighbourhood Shred

With the new snow boards from Grandpa and Gran, waiting for two weeks until their first board lesson just didn't seam doable. So we crossed the street to the sledding hill and gave the new boards a whirl. Temps above freezing were an added bonus. And, it was a good excuse to snap a few pictures on my new (3rd time I've bought this camera) Fuji X100. Maybe I won't sell this one in a few months...

2013 Alberta Blizzard

Living in northern climates can really test your metal sometimes. We're just seeing the last of a winter blizzard that's kept me unable to drive to work, and kept me busy shoveling, snow blowing and pushing out stuck neighbors. Sometimes the snow from my blower was so thick and the wind blowing it right into my face making it so I couldn't even breathe. It was like being stuck under water, but with snow and -17C. Most of the work is done, highways still closed and the fireplace is on. Time to hunker down and enjoy it.

Spring time in Alberta

Ian Tyson isn't wrong. We've had a few glimpses of the seasonal change we've been looking forward to, and the bam! More snow. More cold. More ice covered roads on the early morning drive to work.

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...

First bike ride since my elbow fracture

Today was planned to be a busy day. Mostly cleaning up our rental house in Rockyford in preparation for new tenants moving in this coming week. Seeing as most of the day would be spent cleaning, fixing and doing tasks that generally are not that exciting, I figured I'd better get out for a nice early morning ride. Have something like this to go on can make the day much better.

This was the first time I'd tried riding since my little incident on the snowmobile. Oddly, I ended up having quite a bit of wrist pain after the ride, while my elbow was fine. Not enough to worry about though. With a mild(er) temp of -4C (25F) I'm really looking forward to spring coming on. Fought a strong headwind on the way back, but that just adds to workout. A great hour and a bit of snow-gravel goodness.

Right before taking this last shot, the large sheet of ice I was standing on broke free. Mad scramble, but just managed to get off without dipping my feet. That would have made for a miserable ride back home. I guess I need to be more mindful of these things this time of year.

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

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

"If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes"

This is a familiar phrase to those of us who live in Southern Alberta. It seems true all year long. Summer days can bring wild sweeps of temperature readings in just a few short hours as in winter. Maybe more noticeable in winter, and often more appreciated.

Last week on Thursday morning, I headed out for a quick gravel grinder before having a "photog-nerd-fest-lunch with a bunch of great Calgary photographers. It was 7C (44F) when I headed out. Then, on Friday, snow and cold blew in. Monday I went for a ski behind my house, and it was -27C (-16F) when I left the house mid afternoon. Now, today, we're expected to warm up to above freezing again. Crazy.

With the warm spell we had last week, XC skiing wasn't an option, as we had lost a lot of snow. A single speed 29er serves well to get you outside and seeing things. It was muddy and much like the riding of spring.

gravel slop

With a hearty dump of snow and cold temps over the weekend, back to skiing again. It makes for a fun change up for sure.

I still find I make the mistake of over-dressing when I'm out skiing in the extreme cold. I had a balaclava on, and ended up taking that off right away, unzipping my coat half way and opening up the arm-pit vents. Sweating at -30 can be dangerous, it's a delicate mix of not getting tingly cold, and not over-heating. Being outside for an hour and a half, I came in with sweat-drenched gear. Fine if I'm right behind my house, but I'd hate to end up like this while out on a ski trail somewhere. The dialling-in continues.

With the old ski tracks melted away, and 10" of new snow, I had to set some new tracks for myself. The first few laps were a slow slog, but now they're ready for some faster skiing. Here's a quick video of me setting some new tracks. Most of the time my ski tips remained hidden under the white stuff.

Chariot XC-ski attachment

Cross country skiing is where it's at right now. We were able to outfit the whole family with new gear, but finding a day warm enough to test it out was testing our patience. Today, we watched the thermometer outside of our kitchen window show that it was warming up. -15C. Yay! Still not warm, but we were getting sick of waiting so out the door we went.

It's so nice to have this open space right behind our house. If we got cold, we're only a 2 minute walk from the warmth of our home, and hot chocolate!

I had wondered about the performance of the XC-ski attachment for our Chariot X-Country (which BTW is an amazing stroller/bike trailer - one of the best "child accessories" we've ever bought and worth every penny) and I stumbled across a local (Alberta at least) blogger who uses one. Oddly enough I found her blog via twitter, and while I was in Fernie. Natalie posted about skiing in Fernie while we had just arrived there on our last trip. Small world. She highly recommended the ski attachment and said it worked very well. Her only complaint is that you can't ever find them for sale used. Good enough of a review for me! We picked one at Bow Cycle last week.

My first thoughts of the ski attachment...Excellent addition to the chariot. The skis are very simple to install, built very well (like the rest of the Chariot) and with just my 2 year old in it, it pulls amazingly well. Like really well. I had my six year old in it with my daughter for about 15 minutes, and while it's not as easy, it's certainly doable for several hours. I am amazed at how well this works!

The boys were petering-out, so they took turns riding with their sister. The brilliant design of the Chariot makes attaching their skis to the back when not being used a snap. Chariot products are so smart, and just work so well in real world conditions.

The additional skis leave an interesting trail for other skiers to scratch their heads over. The great thing is it doesn't affect the ski trials for others.

Out here on the prairies, we like to head for any trees we can find. Feels more "wildernessy" that way:)

Last time we were out in Fernie, my little girl ended up getting a mild case of frost-nip. Not quite frost bite, but enough to scare Steph and I and make us feel like terrible parents. We took extra precautions this time. It was noticeably warmer inside the Chariot (we had the covers all closed up) and when the boys were in there, they said it was nice and warm. So much so that our little girly fell asleep!
We're going to head out a few more times before our next trip to Fernie. The boys need a bit more practice at getting up by themselves, but they are doing incredibly well. This is such a fun family activity and it's so nice to have something we can all do to get out of the house in the winter.

Our yard is starting to look like a ski-lodge

Go outside and have some fun!

Late night nordic ski

As a great change up from running (and/or a nice compliment to it), cross country skiing in the dark is a blast. For some reason I thought it would be faster than running though. My average speed was 10:13 per mile skiing. I run between 8 and 9 min/mile, depending on the flavor of the day.

There is another nordic skier setting some nice tracks right behind my house on the canal, so I did 4 laps for a fun 6 miles.

I can't get over how fun this is! (I will be paying for it tomorrow though. I hurt in ways I never do after running).

Ski Fernie (nordic style)

We had an incredible time on the cross country trails at the Fernie Golf Course today. We weren't able to find any ski rentals for the kids, but we did pick up a set for my sweet wife to try. Good news, she loves it!

I guess we're now in the hunt for some kids nordic skis and a set for my wife. Also looking to pick up the cross country ski attachment for our Chariot so our youngest can come along too.

Being as we weren't able to find skis for the kids, Steph and I took turns between doing a few laps on the trails, and tobogganing with with the kids. Win/win!
For the last hour, Steph cruised on the skis, and I walked with the kids around the trails. They love getting out in winter and being able to just slowly toodle around at their own pace. After I gave each of the boys one of my ski poles, and they became "arctic explorers". Even started a dialog between each other to further the adventure. It was awesome to see.

Even my little girlie-girl lasted for 3 hours in the -17C (1.4F) temp. She had a blast.

It's days like today that make me so thankful to live in a country that affords adventures like this. There are some things about a cold nasty winter that I don't love; but then, there's days like this. Love the winter time!