Merry Christmas and best wishes for a peaceful and prosperous holiday season. I haven’t got the time to write up a big post right away, but wanted to send out Season’s Greetings to all my virtual and real friends throughout the world. Here’s wishing you and yours a great Christmas. I’ll write more later. I promise. Till then, you can check out some of the pictures of my Christmas thus far, with more to come 😉
23/01/08
Whew! Well, another day in Wellington has blown by. Hee hee. Like the pun? Actually, the whether today was far better than yesterday, so I have no complaints. It was only a little windy, but apart from first thing in the morning, the day was very sunny, and as a result, there were much more people out milling about today. I essentially retraced my footsteps from yesterday, except that I went up a cable car as well, and didn’t go up Mount Victoria this time. Consequently, I didn’t bother with a GPS map, so you’ll just have to check out the pictures directly on flickr instead. Coincidentally, all of my pictures from the entire trip thus far have been put up now, so do feel free to check them all out. You can just click the link in the right column with the little pictures. It’s already quite late at night, so I’ll keep this post short so that I can post it, along with the remainder of my pictures before I head off tomorrow. Read on for a little more about today.
Howy folks. Nope, I don’t have a huge exciting blog post for you, but I just realized I’m only a week and a half away from the CN Cycle for CHEO Tour, and haven’t gotten off my butt and started fundraising yet 🙂 Each year, I try to do at least one charity race. Normally, that’s the 48hour Quest for a Cure adventure race supporting the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. Unfortunately, this year I’ll be in BC racing in another race at the same time, so I had to find an alternative. This year, I’ll be riding 70km in the CN Cycle for CHEO, in support of, obviously, CHEO, as well as Ronald McDonald House and the Candlelighters.
If you’d like to sponsor me (any amount would be greatly appreciated), just head on over to my personal donation page. Donations can be made in any amount, and you’ll obviously get a tax receipt (for amounts $10 and up). I know, it’s not exactly the same as suffering for 48 hours straight as I’ve done in the past, nor am I riding for days on end, but the cause is still an excellent one, and every penny counts. CHEO helps countless families every year, and they’re always looking for support. This idea was actually Jody’s, so I’ve let her get a jump on me in the fundraising, but she’s been mainly targeting the ladies, so fellas… why not sponsor me? 😉
Well, the over-nighter was okay. Popped a Robaxacet in hopes of sleeping soundly. Didn’t, though. Asked for beef, ran out, had chicken (Ice Cream made up for that though). Asked for Cranberry juice, they had none, settled for a bottle of White Wine. Oh well. Hoped for Nacho Libre 1st, got the Notebook. Oh well. At least ‘Deception Point’ by Dan Brown is good. Flight time: about 10.5 hours.
Sitting in airport. I can now say I’ve been to Chile. If you asked me whas I did there, I’d answer, Walked down a hall, through security up some stairs, down another hall, through the duty-free area, to end up here, sitting and waiting for re-boarding. On the plus side, it’s gorgeous outside. Scored prime seats on the plane, giving us awesome views of the Andes, including the very impressive 6,962m Aconagua (the highest mountain in the Americas).
So.. did everyone get outside and play this weekend? I made sure to get out and freeze my extremities a few times over the course of this weekend. First off was the finale for the Mad Trapper Snowshoe Race series held out at Mike Caldwells ‘Ark’. I had to go to it solo this time around, as Kev was otherwise tied up, and Jim was helping a friend carry out a last-minute move. The pending snow had me a little worried when I went to bed Friday night, but when I was leaving Saturday morning, the roads were still clear. I arrived about 30 minutes early, in time to weasel my way into scoring a set of Atlas DTSL snowshoes for the race. These are the ultra-light racing version of what I use. I’ll compare it to going from running in construction boots to slapping on a pair of running shoes! Not to mention that I didn’t whack my ankles repeatedly. As a result, I was able to boot it for most of the course. As my reward, I wound up finishing in 7th place(hmm..results actually have my in 8th, oh well)! Yay me. Funny thing is, my time was comparable to the other 2 races. I can only assume the course was a little slower than last race. Even better than that is the fact that I wound up in 4th place over the series for males. Yippee. Have a look at the full results.I still ended up pretty pooped, and soaked. I kind of blew up on the second lap (hilly course), since I went a bit too hard on the first lap (flat course). As usual however, it was a great time. I’ll have to return next year.
