Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The smell of spring in Calgary

I wish this could be about birds, and flowers, and La-La-La!

I really do.

But I can't, because spring is months away. What we have now is a temporary thaw. Which means we don't get any of the nice spring smells, like moist warm earth, growing and budding things, and the aforementioned birds.

What we have is the smell of thawing dog poop, and lots of it. I was running back and forth on the 37th street path between the crossing at Anderson, and the turn around at 130 Ave, and it smelled of dog poop practically every step of the way. There is an off leash area between the path and the highway, and I'd be afraid to walk up there. At least the path was clear of it. Though right by the entrance to the path the ice and snow was yellow. Come on dog owners! Have some consideration.

It turns out that loop is almost exactly 3K, which is why I was doing it. I wanted to out for a nice run, letting my legs and lungs do whatever they thought was comfortable. That turned out to be 7K, 49 minutes. I'm pretty pleased with that. The run pace graph is all over the place, but that's ok. It took a while to settle in, and I could feel whatever muscles are on the front of the thigh, just above the knee cap. They didn't hurt, but I could feel them working. I was trying to run nice and soft.

No photos today. Thanks for the kind words about the changes to the blog template.

4 comments:

  1. Like the new lay out :) And ah, the lovely aroma of dog poop. Our neighbour has three dogs and cleans up the poop in their yard maybe every 3-4 weeks. It's poop bomb city back there! And if you want to go to a smelly town, take a visit to Hamilton, Ontario

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    1. Thanks! Three dogs, gah. That would be bad, especially if you are downwind. Been to Hamilton, but worst smelling city I was ever in was Kamloops. Something about pulp and paper nearly had me spewing.

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  2. Grew up in a pulp and paper town (Northern SK), all the men in the family worked there. As my dad said when I'd complain - that's what's paying your bills, Missy!

    As a responsible dog owner than wanders around with plastic bags in every pocket and tied to said dog's leash, I get irate when I see other dog owners NOT picking up! I'd love to be so bold as to pick it up for them, follow them home and then leave it on their doorstep (every time) - but then, poor Leigh, they may not pick it up there, either!

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    1. Ew! I see many dog owners picking up after their dogs, and good for them. I've even seen one owner handing a plastic bag to another, and standing there till she picked up. But it's the ones that don't that ruin it for everyone. What will they do when plastic bags are hard to come by? (I can just picture the aliens sorting through the ruins of our civilization many years from now, wondering why we went to the trouble of putting small quantites of poop in bags that would last nearly forever, carefully burying them to protect them from the elements.)
      "The smell of money" is what they say downwind of Brooks, where there is a huge slaughterhouse.

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