Cats vs nascent Christmas tree

So here we are at Christmas. Once again. Well, technically these first photos are Christmas Eve. This year we took a big risk and put the tree up in the main part of the house, exposed to cat depredations. The idea was we'd use the ornaments that were essentially nonbreakable. Wood, cloth, metal, plastic. At first we were a bit nervous. Curtis was watchful, yet we persisted.

Then we got it up and Celina was right there, exploring, trying to swing from the branches.

In the end it looks nice. There were some finishing touches added later. Like presents. I think there's a cat under there as well. They love being under it, peering out, wondering if now is the time to leap out and bring down their dinner.

We were off to a perfectly delightful dinner with friends, their children, and grandchildren. We've known the children since they were small children, and it's been interesting to see them grow. One of the grandchildren is no longer small by any standard. It was fun.

There are various Christmas related memes about pets and trees. "Thank heavens you're home, the tree fainted!" is just one of them. I'm sure you've seen more than I have. I was wondering if I should start a betting pool on what the cats had done to the tree in our absence, but just as well. They're over it now. Done. Boring. Unless an ornament slips off and makes an interesting rustling noise on the way down.

My buddy Sean was doing white on white during our photowalk the other day. You can see his results here. From that I was minded to take these two on Christmas. I'm not sure what circumstance of snow falling and quality of light that delivered that wavy line, but I'm not about to go wading through a bunch of snow to find out.

I'd thought I was standing on Fish Creek for this, but one never knows. Maybe there's a bit of a sandbar there. This one is dedicated to Sean.

There are more shots from that snowshoe photo ramble, but I'm not done editing yet. Snow is tricky.

It's Boxing Day as I'm writing this. Early, but not by the standards of the bargain hunters. They're probably out there in line already, freezing their tail off. Only once have we got up early to get a bargain, way back in 2002. You can read various slices of the story along with lots of other stuff, here, here, here, and here. Order is not important, though that last link actually tells the Boxing Day sale story, or part of it anyways. Linda didn't believe people actually lined up for stuff.

The Camera Store often gives out gift certs to the first people in line. It's tempting, but I currently have all the camera toys I need. I see one lens where there is almost $1500 off the price. Yes, that's the right number of zeros. I'm not going to ever buy that one.

If you're not a photography person you might not have heard about their adventure over the last couple of weeks. Someone broke in and stole a few items. A few very expensive items, to the tune of nearly $35K, and few enough you could carry it all in your hands without much difficulty.

In a story that a novelist could not make up because the editors and readers insist on plausibility, the thieves put some of the items on Kijiji. Yes, a camera and lenses worth lots of thousands of dollars, on Kijiji. The mind boggles. It validates my theory about conspiracies, that 3 people can keep a secret only if 2 of them are dead. The police nabbed the sellers, and got part of it back, and of course they rolled over on their buddy with the other camera.

The stolen Leica (photographers start drooling almost by reflex) is an extremely expensive camera. North of 5 figures expensive. Stolen I understand. And it got scuffed. Really? Say what? It will make a great story for the buyer of that camera, making it even more rare. Hmmm, I wonder if the price when up because of the scuff, rather than down like you'd expect at the Sears scratch and dent.

Which could lead me to another pension rant. Stay tuned. (Don't you love my segues into rants?)

Missed my own bloggy-versary

How could that happen? Ten years is a long time in the blog universe. Just a few days and 10 years ago I started this fitness blog. Oct 27, 2007. 2530 or so blog posts later, one every 1.44 days on average, here we are. Much has changed.

We won't get into how much I've changed, other than saying I'm way, WAY more healthy now.

The blog started as a way for my fitness coach to keep track of what I was doing. One of his other clients was already a friend, and several others have become good friends. Some of the readers that started with me way back then are still reading, at least some of the time. (Hello!) Some have drifted off to other activities and don't do triathlon anymore.

Lots don't blog anymore. Blogging doesn't seem to be as popular, both reading and writing, OR commenting, as it once was. Maybe they've migrated to Facebook or other platforms, but those other platforms piss me off, what with fickle article ordering and (gag) advertising. My readership has stayed fairly constant, maybe slowly growing over the years. I've gained some readers and lost others.

I enjoy writing it. I figure if you didn't enjoy reading it for whatever reason, you wouldn't be here. Thank you for coming. Essentially, I plan to keep on writing it. What you have seen is what you will continue to get. A bit of fitness, lots of photos of various things, some wine, a bit of news, a rant every now and then, but no dancing girls or click bait. This is a quality blog.

To celebrate here's one of the first photos with the good camera that I really liked. I can do better now.

And more blog fitness related, one of the very first photos to go on the blog, my bike Estela. She is just coming up on 10 years as well, and has been a great bike for me. Pity I'm not out on her more often this summer, but maybe next. I am being encouraged to do an Oly next year, perhaps Chinook. I haven't had such good luck with their half, maybe the Oly will be the trick.

Oh, and don't bother going back to the beginning and reading the first posts. They're pretty dreadful.

Now it's your turn. Who are you? Leave a comment, or or a Facebook reply if that's where you saw the link. I'd love to know what you like about the blog, or what makes you cringe.

Odds and ends

Half marathon recovery has gone well enough that I ran today. I achieved a big goal at work and I rewarded myself with a mid morning run. The only problem is that I somehow turned on auto-pause for almost the entire run, or my phone lost track of the satellites. I figure it was 4 k, 26 minutes, feeling pretty good. Downtown must have got quite a bit of hail and rain. There were leaves and little branches all over the path near Stampede grounds, and technically, the path under Macleod Trail was closed because of high water. I ran there anyways. It was only a little damp.

I don't spend a lot of time concerned about my readership stats. This blog is to amuse me, and if it amuses others that's a nice bonus for them. I'm still surprised at what gets the readership. Sometimes I know. The NIMBYISM post got lots of retweets, and the issue hit the news. The followup had some retweets but didn't do anywhere near as well. The children of the canola got ONE, count'em ONE retweet, but that was enough to power it into 4th place for overall readership, and slowly inching towards third.

Stock at Large is by far the earliest post in the top 10, and I'm pleased to see it holding it's own. I know why, but I suspect many of you don't. Any guesses?

Once upon a time, "Boobs, a rant" was proudly the second most read post. Lately it's fallen out of the top 10 where it's harder to see readership. I'd mentioned it to one of my buddies, who was in shock they hadn't read it. There you go, happy early birthday.

I could wish Blogger was better about stats. I see page views for individual posts, and an overall page view number, but the latter is usually far bigger. Lately I think I've been hit on by bots that artificially inflate the count. I tried Google stats, or whatever it's called, but there's something I don't get about it.

So far it hasn't rained today. There's been a lot of that lately. My lawn is turning into a jungle, but it's still too wet to cut. The garden has had a little more hail, but seems to be doing ok. Here's a lily leaf hanging in there.

I like this contrast between the plant and two pots.

There's a tonne of photos I'm working on processing. Even though I knew the RAW format size was huge, I'm surprised how quickly it ate my laptop hard drive. This is the first time ever I've had to think about hard drive space. Some photos have already been shuffled off to an external drive. I need to figure out if I want to keep any significant number of the photos I take, or just the ones that have been tweaked in Lightroom. Still thinking. The latest batch of photos are 25 to 30 MB each. EACH. I took nearly 1000 in one weekend. That's 25 to 30 GB, which is a good sized chunk even on a TB sized drive. Good thing they aren't expensive. Also thinking about just how big a dedicated photo drive and backup needs to be. Lots of fun. Still lens shopping. Any advice?

The bike ride of my dreams

Some days are just perfect! This was one of them.

I'd still been feeling a bit creaky but when offered the chance to have company on a bike ride, my route, my pace, it was hard to say no. Especially since it's so nice out.

Michelle joined me just after 9, and we were off a few minutes later, on a warm, nearly cloudless day. We headed down to Fish Creek to cut through, and keep going south down 24th Street. A fairly stiff breeze came up out of nowhere, but it was good for keeping us cool.

We kept going down 24th, past 22x, though it was called something else now, riding at an easy pace. The part of the country has lots of rolling hills, some working semi-ranches (the real ranches are larger than some small countries), some beautiful estate homes that look like they grew out of the ground, and some butt ugly Mcmansions that looked like they escaped the land of the rich and tasteless. Lots of horses.

Hay was being cut. The hill top views ranged from gorgeous to stunning, and that's without a really good view of the mountains. Even the view of downtown was surprisingly good. There wasn't much car or bike traffic, but lots of pickup trucks. Some of them even looked like working trucks, as opposed to the compensation machines seen so often in downtown.

Almost all the pavement was much better than expected, even at my top speed of 72 kph. I think Michelle hit 65 (67!), even though there weren't any really steep hills to let loose on. She bombed down one while I cruised along munching my banana, thinking of the time I got slapped in the face by a banana peel in Black Diamond, and eating a banana at 60 kph after dealing with cows on the road. (In case you haven't noticed, I've started putting in more links to previous posts, just as a service to my newer readers so they get a sense of context. I'm so good to you guys. Not that the cows post needs more readers, it happens to be the single most read post ever on my blog. Can you guess why?)

We even stopped a few times to enjoy the view and discuss how we were feeling and how much further we wanted to go. Remember, Michelle biked and ran a half iron last weekend, and though she said she was feeling fine,  you don't really know these things till you try a work out again. My legs had settled in surprisingly nicely. I was happy.

We kept going south, into the wind, heading towards Okotoks, then both of us realized the effort was beginning to get to us. We had a snack, and headed north. Once we got over the top of a small hill I coasted for a long time, several k at least, pushed along by the wind. I figure it was 20 to 25 kph.

We worked our way back north, coming out near Spruce Meadows, then up 24th again. Even riding with the wind, up some hills, it never got warmer than nicely warm. I can't get over what a beautiful day it was, and don't understand why there weren't a zillion other bikes out there.

This is the sort of day I have in mind when I say I want to get out and enjoy my bike and the scenery. The ride felt really good. I think my back is settling into the bike fit. My feet love the inserts in my shoes. This is the longest ride this year, and one of the nicest ever! Gotta love it. I am so pleased that I can get out for such a nice bike ride, basically on the spur of the moment. It wasn't fast, though coming back was, but that wasn't the point. Enjoying the ride and the company was the point.

Here's the map.

Places I remember living

Cultis Lake

We start at kindergarten, or so. I have hazy memories of previous places, but here is the first place I actually remember well enough that I found that same house decades later. I'm not sure it's there now. Cultis Lake has turned into jet boat heaven. The biggest thing I ever put in the lake was some wind up pontoon airplanes. During my childhood we sometimes went out to a beach at the lake when visiting grandparents. My cousin and I once spent part of an afternoon diving off a dock into the very deep water, trying to find the bottom. Not.

East Mall

The plane flight from BC to Toronto was lovely. My brother and I thought it was an amusement ride arranged for us. One side of the plane had sunshine, and the other was pitch black. Lots of people barfed. Airports have sure changed. This flight ended at Terminal 1, which is no longer there. You got off the plane (it was a DC-8, high tech then) walked down the stairs to the tarmac, outside, and there was a bin for umbrellas.

The apartment at East Mall is still there, though the surrounding area has changed a bit. There used to be a creek at the bottom of a big ditch One day there was a small bridge over it and I ran down the hill to jump on the bridge as I had done many times before. Except that someone turned it upside down, and there were a bunch of nails poking up. Ouch. This is the first medical issue I recall, though getting my front teeth removed at the dentist happened about the same time. I somehow ripped much of my thumbnail off once, and the doctor had to finish the job. He dipped my thumb into something that hurt even more than the original incident.

The house that burned down

This was out in the country about an hour's drive north, south and a bit west of Orangeville. This was a small old farmhouse. I loved exploring the barn, and it's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves. We had 75 acres of land which included a small bush, a pond, and lots of fields. I first drove a tractor there, and that's how we found out I was terribly short sighted with one eye so lazy it was essentially not used. At least it was a tricycle destroyed, and not a car or the house.

Getting glasses was a blinding flash of illumination to me, and I mean that literally. Now I could read, and I loved it. There was a Grade 3 reader with a yellow cover, filled with science fiction, fantasy, and real life stories. There was an Arthur C Clarke, and one about the real nuclear submarine the Nautilis. I became a voracious reader. I learned who the Jetson's were.

The major medical adventure here was stepping on a wasp's nest, and getting stung half to death. There was a fast trip into town and getting hustled into the doctor's office.

I was going into grade 5, on vacation at our Grandparent's when we were told about the house burning down. I saw it later before it was bulldozed. Nothing but a hole in the ground with the chimney my dad built left standing.

Grandma and Grandad's

We spent part of that school year in Chilliwack. My cousin Ron in 6th grade, me in 5th, and my brother in 4th. We walked to school together, but for some reason I don't remember any of my other cousins with us. Ron's two sisters would have been grade 7 and grade 3. Maybe they went to a different school. We tormented the soccer coach because he referred to people by their last name, and there were 3 of us Cartmell's.

That house is still there, though another of my cousin's owns it now. At one time my family owned 4 houses in a row along there. There is now an extra one that didn't use to be there. Back in the day it was active dairy farm, when milk was put into large metal jugs, and left on a wooden stand by the road, to be collected by truck. My uncle owns the original house, looking much upgraded on Google earth. It used to be that plaster with the glass chips blasted into it.

I loved living in BC, the stint in grade 5 and summer vacations. I helped with hay and tried not to get in the way of farm machinery. As long as we showed up for lunch and supper, we could do what we wanted. Once, much later, I was ferrying my granny around Chilliwack for a variety of errands on the occasion of my Grandpas death. We were going into a bank for her to shuffle money around, and I introduced myself to the bank official as her grandson. Her attention was arrested. "What is your name again? Are you related to the local Cartmell's?" I told her, and it turns out her and my dad had dated in high school. Granny did a slow burn as she reminisced.

The house with the pool

We moved back to Ontario as dad built the house on the hill. It wasn't complete yet, but either our grandparents were sick of us, or they wanted us back in our regular school. Our neighbour across the road lent us (rented? I don't know) their house for a while. He had a big family, and there were lots of bedrooms. For some reason my brother and I shared. Technically, we were still going to the wrong school, as it was across the county line. My first ever crush was a girl from this family, we shared the exact same birthday. I have often wondered where life has taken her.

The house on the hill

This house is still here. It was recently sold, and my mom and brother toured it. They said it seemed a lot smaller than they remembered. It was a big house to me, with stunning views. I had seen the plans for it, though they didn't mean much to me. I liked the elevation drawings. I instantly realized this was a representation of the house, and how it would look. Turns out they built a wall wrong, and my bedroom ended up a fraction smaller than planned. This was just enough that my bed prevented the door closing. That room is a laundry room now, I'm told.

There was another really small room too, the kitchen. Unworkably small, taking the term galley kitchen to new depths. I watched the first moon landing in that house. We had huge Christmas trees because there was a place for a circular stairway that never got installed. I once saw a cat more than 10 feet off the floor in the tree.

The house in Orangeville

I don't know what prompted the move here. My brother and I shared a big bedroom throughout part of grade 8 and all high school for me. We got cars, and in the winter I struggled with a cantankerous snowblower. It's a wonder I didn't lose any body parts in it, and if I'd been wearing a ring I would have lost a finger to a snowmobile clutch. I got into my first fight, though it was more of a scuffle. The other boy was pissed at me for something, but he was much smaller, and I didn't want to pound on him.

Not much later, when I started drinking in the local bar, (way underage) my size was a good thing. Just standing up ended some truculent discussions, even though I was a skinny drink of water. High school was not a fun time for me. I'd never liked school at the best of times, and much of this was a brutal experience. Drafting and English were about the only classes I liked. Somewhere I have the litany of shame that passes for a high school transcript. I was incredulous when I was nearly 30, and the University I wanted to go to as an adult student, wanted to see it.

The apartment in Streetsville

I wasn't there long. I lived in apartment 508, and drove a Pontiac LeMans license NOP 632. I parked on the top level of the parkade, and it made my year when I terrified my dad driving into it one day. I knew exactly where that pillar was, and he didn't.

Vic and I met working nearby on a light manufacturing assembly line. I suppose it's the first real job I had, and it sandwiched flunking out of Air Traffic Control school. From there I learned I have a trick memory. I swotted up airport names, mnemonics, numbered routes, and it stood me in good stead when I memorized the Nova Gas Transmission lines in no time flat. Pity I didn't grasp meteorology, but then maybe I'd have ended up a burned out drunk stress case.

I met some of my cousins that lived nearby. One of them started at the plant I worked in, and she made a big impact on the guys there. I was really popular for a while, once people realized I was her cousin, and could introduce them.

Living in Streetsville was fun. It was the first time I'd lived on my own, and could keep my own hours. I played hockey with work buddies, went for a beer after work sometimes. Back then it was still a nice little town, but now it's been absorbed into Mississauga. I discovered Pink FLoyd. I saw Supertramp in concert. I got half way through Being There before I realized it was funny and nearly peed myself laughing. Me and one other person got it, and nobody else. I learned I had to trim the mustache regularly or it was very difficult to eat a big sandwich. Don't ask.

The shared apartment in Calgary

Vic moved to Calgary, and convinced me to go halves on a two bedroom place, and I got a job at the same place he worked. The job was fixing forklift and truck tires. To this day there is a patch of bald skin on my right wrist where it got shaved daily by tire beads. I came THAT close to getting killed by an exploding tire. I have always regretted that they decided at the last minute I couldn't go along as a swamper on a big convoy to Tuktoyaktuk.

I drove out with the car full of everything I owned, and totally completely loved the trip. LOVED IT! Ontario was boring, but I loved the prairies. The wide open sky was calling me home. I sang along to cheesy music on scratchy cassette tapes and drove forever. I discovered Pense, Saskatchewan.

The apartment was 806, quite new. I met up with the SCA and science fiction fandom. One of the guys I first met lived in apartment 608, and I thought the computer generated list was wrong. This was back when a computer generated name and address list was hot stuff. I met my first really serious girlfriend in that building. Her family didn't like me and we broke it off about the time we were thinking of renting a house together.

Since then the building has gone condo at exorbitant prices. I was really involved with the SCA for a long time, and science fiction for less time. It was a surprise to run into some of those same people again at the When Words Collide writer's conference.

The basement dungeon

The less said the better. It was an illegal basement suite at a time when the vacancy rate was a negative number. I learned you can't fill a water bed with cold water and sleep on it that night. Or the next one. I had the best nightmares ever there, when I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed. Good drugs.

The flooded apartment

Once I could get a real place I settled in, until the heating system broke and soaked the rugs. I lost some furniture and a few books. It had smelled musty before, and was worse after. About then I started working shiftwork for the city. To get my bedroom dark I carefully taped tinfoil to the windows. Later, I heard they had to replace the windows because the stick from duct tape doesn't come out of glass very easily after it's been baked in the sun.

Linda was horrified at the state of my fridge and cupboards. I think that's why she took pity on me and decided I was a lifetime project. I had no say in the matter. She executed a classic BDD maneuver.

The townhouse

Linda wouldn't stay at the flooded apartment, barely even to visit, so I started spending more time at her place. She had a really nice apartment, but there wasn't room for the two of us. We somehow ended up in a townhouse just down the street, and stayed there a year or so. Sebastian the best cat ever came into our lives, along with a succession of other cats who are just as much the best cat ever. Moving is fun when you can't get the car into third gear.

The current house

During our relationship we were looking at all the wealthy (looking) people in Calgary. They were buying big houses, big cars, boats, RV's, all the toys. Then the market crashed in the wake of the NEP, and we found out all those people had been borrowing the money. Houses got cheap. We discovered we could afford (just barely) to have one built. We did. For a while we had no money at all after paying the bills, but that gradually changed.

The house is more than 30 years old now, looking better than ever. We still look good too, or so we think. I periodically muse about moving around a lot as a kid, then spending most of my life in one place. I never would have guessed that would happen.

The squirrel paparazzi

There was a minor flurry of traffic on Twitter this morning about the run today and #coffeechat. There's a bit more of an overlap than I thought; several people were planning to head out for their run after coffee. 

I was running with two buddies on a super beautiful day. We got met up ok, and headed down toward Fish Creek. Michelle and I have done this route several times, usually when it's minus WTF out, but today was warm and sunny, starting about 5 C (41 F). I wore shorts, as you'll see. 

Both Michelle and I took photos, but I'm too lazy to arrange them in order. So you'll have to put the story together yourselves. Some of you may have seen this. Last year the floods washed away part of the path. There is a well worn detour off to the right side of the photo. It wasn't even terribly mucky on my new shoes.

This is on the way back, M and S running ahead.

And there she is in action! The squirrel paparazzi! It was so much fun to see M having fun on the run today. She stopped to take photos, and skipped along in places. The pace graph has these huge spikes in it for our pauses, BUT WHO CARES! (Channeling Ruby Rhod)

This is Sophia just finishing up her 16 K run. Look at that happy smile! She is going to totally rock her race!

This is one of M's. She was trying to get a reflection shot of us, but I think we're too far away.

We stopped about K 12 or so to play with some photos trying to get one of each of us running with both feet off the ground at the same time. I don't here, of course. Almost. At least my back is straight and my butt isn't poking out.

M is so talented, she took this actually running at the same time. That smile says it all about our day!

We were still playing with the position of the phone here. What do you think, is that an actual muscle in my left leg?

Two shots just as we met up at Anderson and 37th, me showing off my pasty white legs. (Yes, I know, you were hoping it was one of the others showing off their legs. Such is life.)

I like this shot of us. It's typical for me, in that I've got a drink in my hand, you can't see my eyes, and I'm leaning to the right, but this time it's me and not the camera person. You can speculate what Sophia is doing with her hand. It looks like we're holding hands, but we're not. Anyone else I'd suspect she was trying to pinch my butt so I'd have a funny expression on camera. But Sophia would never do such a thing.

This certainly one of the best runs so far this year! Did I say it was warm and sunny? We ran, and chatted, and did photos, and waved to a big Running Room group out of Shawnessy,  and generally had a really good time. We weren't in a rush, nobody was fussed about a particular pace. My new shoes felt great. I put the graphs down below for those that like such things.

My legs felt pretty good throughout, with a few minor squeaks towards the end. Lots of stretching after, and as I'm writing this I've got a wine bag of cold water on my lap, while sitting on the vibrating heating pad. Drinking coffee. That will please the #coffeechat crowd. I may pay for this in a sleepless night and if so I will be back on twitter in the wee hours.

Wonderful chicken dinner after the run! And cookies. And banana bread. Then another trip to IKEA, where we saved yet more money. I figure between the two trips we have saved $16,000! Can't complain about that. We made out like bandits, with a harried manager approving a sale price on things that (technically) were not included in the sale.

Even walking a bit creaky because of the run today, I'm still walking faster than most of the people in the store. It's good I was still in a good mood. There's a path through the maze painted on the floor. Some people don't understand that this path is for motion. Either way is good, though keep right still applies. There is a ton of space to stand off to the side to consider how some item will clutter up your life. But NO! They have to stand at natural choke points. I don't know why.

I watched one couple squabbling at the delivery counter, giving the guy a hard time about the delivery costs for some big packages. Duh! The price is right up there on the wall. First it was reverse the purchase. Then it was rearrange plans to take the stuff home themselves. Even as they were doing that, one of the guys was saying it was better to pay the delivery fee. I'm not sure how it ended up. We got our stuff added into the existing delivery, for only a little extra.

I made a point out of being really nice to the guy arranging delivery, to balance out the jerk. I do not understand why people are so unpleasant to people that could be helpful. Mostly they want to be helpful, and will do so given half a chance. It's not like you have to kiss their ass or anything. Say hello, please, and thank you. Smile. Give them a moment to get that last experience put away and have a chance to focus on you. Have the paperwork handy. State what they need to know without going around the mulberry bush three times on non-essentials. Let them go through the computer or paperwork without yapping at them. Understand they have many rules to follow, and they don't know why something is a certain price.

Here's the data from Runkeeper. I'm a bit surprised, it seems to have kept track of the stopped time. The spikes in pace are mostly where we stopped for photos. When we ran we were really consistent. Such a great run for all involved!

You have questions, I have answers

I've done various of these question and answer things, and they're lots of fun. (Finishes a glass of wine, pours another.) If I was really ambitious, I'd go back and provide my readers links to those posts. Oh all right, there's one to get you started, the rest are an exercise for the reader. Sheesh, the things I do for my readers. (pours a bigger glass of wine.)

So my run buddy Michelle got given questions from another blogger and answered them. Now I get a set for me. Except it's a Pinterest image, which I can do nothing with. (Pours another glass of wine.)

My buddy Sophia did one too, and it's much more inspiring than what I will come up with. Here goes. (Sips wine for encouragement and inspiration.)

1. What is something you are very proud of? Why?
Not just proud, but very proud. Hmmm. Finishing Ironman without needing medical attention (which was the primary goal) is one of the more recent ones. Being in good enough health (at the moment) to plausibly (I hope) sign up for a marathon at my advanced age is another. Both of which are part of changing my life to go from being a fat pudge, to being fit and active. Married for almost 30 years, though that isn't really my doing. I'm just lucky I haven't been traded in on a younger model.

2. When and why did you start blogging?
The first post was Oct 27, 2007. I link because this explains the why, and rather than type it all over again, I can work on this glass of wine. (Or pet a cat.) It will be interesting to see if anyone clicks on the link. Blogger thinks only 15 people have viewed that post. (If you believe anything Blogger says.) For the record, this post will be number 1670. The idea was to have my (then) coach track what I was doing, and a few other of his athletes. Other than the first post, many of the immediately following ones are very boring. It's only later I started ranting, and widening the topic base, and including photos more often.

3. If you could tell your 16 year old self something, what would it be?
Don't drink so much beer, wine is much better. High school really is a waste of time. Going through the waste of time hoops to get a degree will save a bunch of time job hunting later on. (But then again, maybe it would easier to get sucked into a job I didn't like.)

4. You run, bike, swim, make wine, write, and work. What do you like most and least about each of these activities?
(Pours a glass of wine in preparation.)

Activity	Like most	Like least
Swim	I've always liked swimming. People talk about runner's high, but I've never had it. But I've had a swimmer's high, where it was easier to keep going than to stop.	I don't get enough time to do it, and the skill goes away so quickly.
Bike	Getting out and seeing the scenery go by at a reasonable pace. The rush of downhill at better than 85 Kph.	Rain. Hail. Cold. Falling off. (Remember the teeth?) Search the blog for "graphic". Having my knee or low hurt while doing it. Or anything else.
Run	I was a slow convert to running, and I'm still slow. (But who cares! Channelling Ruby Rod.) I've come to love it, even without the runner's high. I miss it when I can't. Best place to run so far? Bermuda.	Sometimes my knees are cranky. By now you'd think I'd be faster.
Writing	There is work writing, and fiction writing. I did NaNoWriMo almost on a whim, and was really pleased I pounded out the words to win. (I'm still revising, that's much harder.) I love the process of putting words together to say what I want, in as few words as possible. Or in fiction, to create a mood, or characters, or a scene that will add to the book.	Ummm? Having to type with two hands, which takes away time to hold a wine glass? Voice recognition software that cannot cope with the way I talk.
Make wine	I'd always wanted to try it. Drinking wine was a rarity as a young adult. When I bought it I could never rememer what I liked last time, and never really remembered what it tasted like. Now I get choices. I can taste them in my mind, and compare them to the smell of whatever Linda is cooking.	Some people complain about cleaning the glass, but I find it a very soothing activity. There's nothing I don't like.
Work	I am very fortunate in my work. What I do is a bit of an obscure niche that is difficult to explain to people, since it doesn't fit any of the common slots. But I'm very good at it, and I've only evere met one other person that does it. I like diving into a new database and figuring out, then explaining it to people. I like listening to people tell me what's wrong with their database, and then I'll tell them how to fix it. I like drawing process diagrams. I like explaining things to people.	I'm still spending a bit more time than I'd like in the office, but I need to make hay while the sun shines, as the saying goes. There are retirement savings to be pumped up.

5. What is something you are afraid of? Why?
(Where is that darned glass of wine, it was here just a minute ago!) Dementia. We once visited Linda's dad in what used to be called the old age home. The lobby was bedlam. I could never work there. My fear is that those people are still themselves in there, unable to make sense of the world anymore, and that it might happen to me. However the odds are good. My one grandma was sharp as a tack till the very end. The other is still hanging in there, last I checked. The one grandfather died of old age, (talked to death, some said) and still with it. The other had a stroke, and never quite recovered, very sad. My mom isn't old enough that one would expect such things, though I guess it can happen at any age. (Which might explain some of the Harper Conservative caucus.)

6. What is my greatest joy in life?
I am a simple creature. Having some time to enjoy some peace and quiet, a glass of wine, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, fresh chocolate chip cookies, a purring cat.

7. What is your greatest challenge in life?
Having patience when those around me are not keeping up. Sometimes it's a case of them needing to walk faster. Sometimes it's thinking faster, or thinking period. (This does not apply to the handicapped, of course. They have their own challenges, and deserve all the patience they need.) Sometimes I'm the slow one, and appreciate the patience in others. This does not apply to activities where the plan is to do something slower for a reason. A long slow run. A trial run through a design where we are trying to think of all the applicable cases. Appreciating a glass of wine.

8. If you were stranded on a desert island with someone, who would it be? How would you occupy your time?
Some really smart engineer, or person with the skills to get our asses off the island and back to civilization when we were sick of the sand, or the wine ran out. Making preparations to get off the island.

9. Where is your favourite place on earth? Why?
Once upon a time, my father's family had 4 homes all in a row in Chilliwack, fronting a small farm. My aunt B (actually she was my grandfather's sister, I believe) had a big old fashioned home at one end of the row. She was a wonderful baker and did several birthday cakes for me in specified shapes. I remember an airplane (recognizably a DC-3) and a big ship. Her driveway had a loop at the back of the house. In that loop was half a dozen big fir trees, festooned with holly. I can remember the smell now. Not even a stone's throw away was a bit of a playground jungle gym thing, and a zip line. I had many happy childhood hours there playing with my cousins, roaming the farm and getting in all sorts of mischief.

Very seldom do we know we are doing something for the last time, or seeing someone for the last time. I clearly remember walking that area as an adult once, knowing it was the last time I would see it as it was. Of course it's all changed now.

Now my favourite place is at home.

10. What is something you would like the rest of the world to know?
I have a book for sale! Buy my book! Please! No, wait, that's not quite yet. Soon though, I hope. Stay tuned.

11. What is something you've never done, but would like to try?
I take it nobody wants to hear about the tall, twin, willing redheads, with some massage oil. Ahem. For a while I wanted to try skydiving. That has since been relegated to the list entailed "Damn fool things to try when there are no better alternatives." Probably top of the list now, is signing a publishing contract that pays me a lot of money.

In other news I water ran a half hour with Katie and stretched. The pool was empty. This is the week to swim every morning, but that isn't going to work out. I miss the year when I wasn't working, when I swam almost every morning. It's a great way to wake up.

My knee is feeling really cranky tonight. Downstairs in a little bit to stretch and roll.

Pensions, a rant

I never thought about pensions when I was young, which was just a month or two ago, or so it seems. If I had been given the choice of having the money deducted off my cheque for a future pension, or having it left for me to spend, I certainly would have chosen to take the money. And so would you. Don't lie to me, you would too.

Now I don't work for that company any more. I don't have a company pension. But Linda does. She's been with the City 30 some years and could retire real soon now. Naturally, her pension is a big concern to her, and me too. Something about buying groceries will do that.

But first, I want to tell a joke. Three guys meet, an investment banker, a trade union worker, and a white collar worker. While the other two of them are introducing themselves, the banker takes 11 of the dozen doughnuts provided for the meeting, and swills most of the coffee. When they sit down, the banker tells the white collar guy, "watch out for that trade union guy, he's going to steal your doughnut."

The one phrase sure to enrage almost anyone these days is "gold-plated pension". Let's talk about this. It's often used by politicians and wealthy corporate hacks to describe the pension that civil servants will get. People like my wife, to be up front about it. People like the firefighter that walks into burning buildings to drag out you or your children. People like cops that deal with scum the rest of us don't want to think about. People that drive the ambulance to take you to the hospital where conditions that would have killed you only a few decades ago are routinely managed. People that take away your garbage, plow and sand your streets, drive the buses, take care of the parks and green spaces, run the plants the provide drinking water and treat sewage. Various inspectors to ensure that safety codes are adhered to for public safety. People that sit in offices and do the paperwork essential to making our complicated society work. People that teach your children. Those and a 1001 other jobs done by people paid by a government with money coming from your taxes.

The wages for these people are often publicly discoverable, at least in broad ranges. One can look up the City of Calgary's union contracts on the internet, complete with wage scales. A quick look, and the highest wage I found was for a journeyman at $41 per hour, or just under 80 K a year. In a province where the oil and gas industry can pay such people much, much more.

I won't go look up the rates of pay for all those other civil servants, but it's pretty fair to say most of them don't get paid that much. Some could only dream of that kind of wage. That's a gross wage, of course, the net is considerably smaller. The pension earned after 30 years service is considerably smaller yet.

The presentation last night stated that the average pension paid to LAPP people is about $14,500 per year (before tax!), and isn't particularly well indexed now. There's many factors that go into pension calculations, and it's easy to make the average be what you want. But let's consider and compare.

The 85 factor. Your age and years of service, when they add to 85, gets you an unreduced pension. When you started, and how much you earned will determine your pension. Some people reach their 85 factor in their early 50's. Some never reach it. Technically, I suppose I could reach it, starting such a job now, and working for about 15 years. Not likely.

Think about someone in their mid to late 50's, for example, reaching their 85 factor and retiring to live on that $14.5 K per year, plus CPP. Some people retire, and die a few years later. Others live out to the average age, now in the low 80's for Canadians. Some will live to see 100 or more. It's a terrible thing to live longer than your money, or live long enough to see inflation ravage it.

So when a $#@! politician tells you that one of the ills of the world is the gold-plated pension of civil servants, you should punch him or her right in the throat, if you can find it underneath their piggy jowls from which the lies emerge. Look at THEIR pensions. Gold-plated is scarcely an adequate word. They work a mere 6 years to become eligible, and the amounts are a huge percent of their annual take.

I could go on about politicians, but that's not the issue. The issue is that the Redford government in Alberta has proposed plundering the modest pensions paid out to ordinary Albertans. They've finally clued in that many of their current work force can retire real soon now. The fiscal reality is that retiree's don't pay as much taxes as working people. They are desperate to keep people working, so they are planning to punish people that retire before 65.

The proposal we've seen takes effect the beginning of 2016, and any pension earned after that gets treated differently. Differently as in huge penalties accrue if you retire before 65. Linda ran the numbers for her, assuming she works only a few years past 2016. The per month numbers don't sound bad, but if she lives to 90, and they cut indexing the way they have proposed, it will cost Linda $100, 000. This was calculated using the Alberta Government calculator.

Say that slowly, one hundred thousand dollars. Is there anyone reading who thinks that's a trivial amount of money for a person's income? Oh, hello Bill, and Mark, I didn't know you read my blog. And this is for someone having only a few years of income exposed to the proposed rules. Now think about your kid, just starting out, happy to get a job with the City because it's more stable than an oil and gas job, even if it doesn't pay as much. 30 years from now, ALL of their so-called pension is exposed to those rules, and it will cost them their retirement, unless they do exceedingly well with other investments.

The LAPP is in a minor deficit at the moment, but they've had the plan analyzed by actuarial experts. They say the plan is on a sound footing, and that the Redford government has no basis for the proposed rule changes. Yesterday, even the government's Auditor General agreed. Many of the trained seals I mean backbenchers, don't know any different. They only eat the dog food given by the premier, and do what they are told in hopes of gaining a cabinet seat.

Well, to get that seat, you need to be elected. Raping hard working people of the pension they have paid for, and been promised, does not seem like a good way of getting elected. The people they are proposing to steal from are the very people most likely to vote. We have the communication tools. One of us, if we stand up, will provide the "Where's the beef?" meme that crumbled the Mulroney government's plan to cut retirement benefits, and will force the Redford government to back down.

Even people that don't have an LAPP or an Alberta pension have a dog in this fight. Why? Because once the governments see that they can gut the pensions for civil servants, they will move on to your plan. The CPP, which all working Canadians pay into. Maybe they'll change the plans that govern the pension at your company, and do you trust them to leave things as is, if changing the rules will save them money? I think we all know how that gets answered.

No matter that almost every cent that gets paid out from any pension gets recirculated back to the economy by people buying groceries and other real world items for daily life. It's far better for our economy to have 100 people circulating 100 dollars, than to have 1 person of of the 100 circulating some of the 100 dollars.

How do we stop it? We have to make a lot of noise. Contact your MLA and tell them in no uncertain terms that voting for this is a ticket to the unemployment line at the next election. Email them. Phone their office. Don't be rude, just tell them to find out the facts, not what Redford and her ilk are spewing. There is a big rally in Edmonton on March 2. Consider going. I guarantee you know people who will be affected by this, and they would be delighted to bring you onto the bus as a guest. Write about it on social media, and any other medium you have access to.

Why does the government want to do this? I don't know for sure, but it's all of a piece with the Harper government destroying Canada. In my more cynical moments, I think it's the rich people that pull Redford's strings that want to sidetrack the money to them, so they can buy a bigger yacht.

Are you or anyone you know living on a pension, or planning to retire on a government pension? What are you going to do about living in retirement?

Shorts. Tech Shirt. January! CALGARY!!

I really should have hit the pool on Friday but I didn't. Later I went downstairs for a really good stretch and core session. My legs felt much better after.

Today was supposed to get up to 13 C (55 F) today so I was bound and determined to break out the shorts and tech shirt. The plan was to get out while the ice was still thawing, but the air was warm. I timed it perfectly! Lots of people out walking their dogs, and if you went by what they were wearing you'd think it was Siberia.

This was to be an easy, easy run. I was thinking 10 K or so, and ended up doing 11. I've never, ever run such even splits, and I credit the run buddy I ran into while crossing Anderson Road. Michelle, take a bow! She was most of the way through her 42 K training run, and still going strong.

Look at these splits, and the pace line. The big spike was turning around, and holding still for a very nice man to take the photo of us. So, technically, I guess, they aren't a selfie, but I got one of those earlier, so I'm good.

My legs feel great after the run! This is as close to runner's high as I've ever been. Beautiful weather for a run. Some chatchatchat to keep the pace right. Stretched after. My lungs feel clean and refreshed. My legs could have gone further. This sort of thing is why I've come to love running.

Just before running I rescued my swim suit from the mighty predator.

Here I am, showing off my favourite run shirt.

My accidental run buddy today.

Here's the view I have to put up with while running today. Your heart bleeds for me, I know.

The side streets are a mess. Here's a shot of how I get to the 37 St path. I could easily see a small car getting stuck or high centered.

The light is fading on the end of the day. The remaining task is to take the Christmas tree down and get our media room back again.

Oops, back again. More photos. The sunset got spectacular as my neighbour came by to get his keys. It's still T shirt weather outside. These are completely unretouched or manipulated in any way. Straight from the iPhone into the blog.

1500

This is published post 1500. There are couple drafts floating around, but they don't count. I hit 1000 (and of course my newer readers will want to read that one as an intro) on Sept 2, 2011, so that's just over 660 days for the 500 posts. About 2070 days for 1500 posts overall. Starting the beginning of this year I wrote a post a day until mid April, for 104 days in a row. Some of you do run streaks, I do writing streaks. Though lots of my writing energy is going into my novel.

That should be enough numbers for now. No cake for the blog this time. Things are all messed up here with the flood. Evidently during one of the news scrums today, it was noted that for all Calgarians who complained about the lack of stop light synchronization, now they really know what it's like without any, since at the moment all stoplights are on their own, and many aren't working at all. It's traffic chaos right now, and I'm glad I don't have to be out in it. Except I was, work called me in this morning, after I read on our info site that the office would be closed today.

So what have I been up to for 500 blog posts? Here's a selection of some that amuse me for one reason or another. If I'd written this last week, or next week the selection might be different. Is there one I missed that you think should be here? Feel free to comment. Think one of these is sub-par? There is a special form you can fill out at keith@bitemybutt.com.

Yes, feel free to leave comments. I like them, and sometimes respond to them. I read them all, usually several times. I don't have all that many readers, according to the lying Blogger stats, but I appreciate the ones I have. As you know, I have only the finest quality readers.

I've been working a bunch on my novel, and have posted periodic snippets. Work is chugging along well, thank you very much. I continue to try to balance my social life and fitness life, and it's been a bit of a struggle. The fitness is getting harder. I think this old age thing is getting closer.

Amelia snuck in a rant on me. Rotten humans.

My all time pool swim gross out. Not hair. Not band aids. Beyond even floating phlegm.

Versatile deep thoughts.

Boobs, a rant. One of the all time favourite posts, at the top of the reading heap for a long time. My mom even commented on it. I don't really believe the Blogger stats any more. I don't know what they measure, and they can't even put things in proper descending order. So I don't really know what my most popular posts are. But lots of readers liked this one.

I finally got pissed about training Skynet, and fixed my blog. I implore you to fix yours if you are still putting your reader through the text recognition hoops. I fixed my blog so that anonymous comments were not permitted. Since then I have deleted 1 (count 'em ONE) piece of spam, and I had to think about it.

I took a day and toured Calgary's +15 system, and taking photos. Note - DO NOT load this on a portable device over your phone line. Many photos in there.

After this rant I had to wash the froth off the screen.

A follow up of sorts, though one person emailed me to say I'd missed an obvious title of "a feel up of boobs". Poor me.

People wonder why we don't have a dog. Their dietary choices explain all.

Some of you probably don't want to read about this, since you know it will be happening soon.

I didn't blog about Amelia at the time. We were too upset. She had been slowly slipping, and then sort of fell over the ledge. We had rescued her from the SPCA, and I don't think she ever got over the experience. She was a nervous twitchy cat all her life with us, and even though we tried to give her a good home, there were several adventures along the way. See her rant above. We waited several months before we got new cat overlords. They have worked out very well, benignly ruling, and having their fur groomed. Curtis in particular has had his fur improve 100%. It was coarse and greasy, now it is soft and silky.

One of my trademarked lotsa stuff in a post. One of my inspirations finished a half ironman at 82.

Social media musings.

Long political rant with an amusing allegory.

I get asked how to go from fat to fit. Here's how.

I won a prize! And other stuff about me. Me! Yes, me!

A rant about the health care our health care system needs.

Zombies, a rant.

News. Or rather, what isn't news.

You can still leave a comment on any of these, though I have comment moderation turned on for older posts. This ensures I see them, and I'm always delighted by comments.

Art. +15. Cala-travesty

Today was the big day. For a while now I've wanted to wander the +15 system and see what's new. Some of the buildings have nice public art, and I wanted to see if the areas I hadn't been in had good art or not. I've seen most of the system over the years, but they're always adding to it or changing things.

But what, some of my readers are asking, is the +15 system? This winter was a mild powder puff weenie of a winter. I think the coldest it got was -30 C or so (-22 F) for maybe a week or two. Nothing really worth talking about. Sometimes the winters here are brutal. There was one, back in '84 or so when it was colder than -40 for 6 weeks straight. That -40 was the daytime high, it was colder at night, and part of my job involved spraying water on metal that was supposed to be moving. Once I froze myself to a railing. But I digress.

A guy named Harold Hanen had the brilliant idea of connecting the buildings with a bridge above street level. They are about 15 feet above street level, so it's called the +15 system. Over the years the system grew. Now there are double decker, and even triple decker bridges. (+30 and +45, duh!) and connecting spaces within the buildings. There is about 16 Km (10 miles) of the system now, in one very large network, and two smaller ones. Once the new Bow building is complete one of the smaller networks will join the big one.

Anybody that works downtown loves the system, especially in winter. Well, except for the ones that think it detracts from a "vibrant" street life. There are times it's shorter or quicker to go through the system than to take the streets. The system is full of businesses. Many of them are integrated into the network, and sometimes the network was patched into existing buildings. There are ramps and stairs. I couldn't say how many coffee shops and the like there are, certainly many dozens. Aside from the several malls of the usual stores, there are dentists, doctors, travel agents, copy shops, and probably almost everything else under the sun. I know people that have refused a job because the company was not in a  building on the network.

Much of this network is busy. There is a steady stream of people going back and forth, many carrying coffee, since everyone has their favourite place. It might be a block or two away, but so what? You don't have to go outside. You always see people chatting. With any luck they are out of the way of the herd. It is common to run into people you know; it happened to me today, which was nice. (Hi Sue!) When you're downtown it's much easier to stay in contact with people through coffee or lunch dates. When you work out in the boonies, as I have for years, lunch dates become a major ordeal.

You might have to embiggen the Map image to see the small red circles. These are either outdoor patios, several of which are fenced off for kid's day care, or are under construction. I either didn't go there or couldn't. Essentially I went everywhere else there is a blue line. The map isn't quite exact, especially how it represents space within the buildings. For example, the Shell building shows you can walk around the outside edge of the building, and that isn't true. There is a gym on the north side. There are several examples where a path is shown inside a building that doesn't exist anymore, or is planned but not built yet.

There is no easy efficient route to see it all with a minimum of footsteps, or if there is, I don't know it. During the day I was musing about the race in the London Underground. There is a contest to ride all the lines as fast as possible. I was thinking it would be fun to have something similar here. Lots of dead ends to deal with. Although the system is about 16 K long, and I don't know how that is measured. I think I probably walked about 20 K today, maybe more.

The system isn't all retail hell shopping. There are quiet nooks with comfy chairs if you know where to look. Sometimes there are buskers. At least some of the building owners have public art on display. There are at least two building models I know of. Today I wanted pictures of art either in the +15 or easily visible from it, plus some shots of the system itself or the nicer lobby spaces. Readers are invited to guess where the pieces are, if they don't know. I kept notes. If you really want to know I can tell you where all of them are. The Calatrava bridge is a special case and it's at the end.

Some of the art is quite large, as the following example shows. Others are quite small. This one is actually a real airplane, not a model.

Here, in no particular order, are the rest of the shots. There are some comments along the way, just because.

This is one of a sequence of frosted glass murals. Since I was touring the +15 system I thought it was appropriate to include this shot.

The lights move, adding to the floating effect.

As I said, in some cases they carved the system out of other buildings that had never imagined such a thing happening. Here's a place where you can see the original stone wall. There's a reason Calgary's nickname was Sandstone City.

This is a bit more detail on the original buildings for this section of the system.

I just had to take this shot. Calgary sunrises and sunset light up downtown in strange and magical ways that fascinate photographers.

The other direction from the same place.

This explains why "Damn the CPR!" used to be a common Canadian curse. When the CPR was laying out towns across the prairies, they ran the railroad tracks down the middle and built the small towns on one side, and the larger ones on either side. Calgary has several tracks running right through downtown. It makes for interesting building and parked construction.

I took a bunch of shots trying to get this right. It's a series of glass panes hanging from the ceiling. Here it's almost invisible, yet it makes quite an impact in real life.

I love the garden features in some buildings. This is a nice one.

A huge bronze horse surprised me as I was going up the escalator and I had to hurry to get the shot.

I watched my Grandfather do this. One of my very favorite photos of all time is one of him doing just this. It was taken by an amateur photographer by accident. I'm told he won several prizes, and only years later did he discover who it was. My Granny had the original, and my favourite cousin made a print for me. Yes, this one looks like he's ploughing up the floor tiles.

I worked in the building with this artwork.

This is what a dead end in the +15 system looks like. I only assume they are join to hook it up to the buildings on either side.

This was near the elevator bank I used lots.

I nearly tripped over this one day when I wasn't awake.

Yup, this is a living wall.

When you say "Devonian Gardens" many Calgarians sigh with happiness, then say "When will they ever finish the renovations?" Here's a very small section under construction. It looks like they are working on some pools. These gardens were huge, taking up a big chunk of +45 space, and some of the outsides of +30 and +15 space. It was a great place to go and eat lunch during the winter. You could see people soaking up humidity and the general atmosphere. The City made out like bandits on charging for wedding photos. Now it will be integrated with the food court.

It's hard to see, but there is a herd of deer running across the open area.

I just loved these huge snowflakes.

Here's an outside view of a triple decker bridge. That's all retail space you see in there, with a food court on the top level. Technically, the bridge I'm standing in isn't open to the public yet, but nobody was standing guard, and there was just a bit of ribbon blocking it off... This is the same bridge that I noted was a dead end above. I had to walk the long way around to get there.

I loved the Udderly Art fundraiser. There are still a bunch of cows around if you know where to look. Hint, on either side of this poster. And I had to walk outside to get from the glass to this poster, the bridge was closed for construction.

I've always liked this big statue of a Native Chief outside the building.

Somehow this photo makes this look much smaller than it is.

I used to work in this building, and always loved to visit the turtles. I'm happy they are still there and the Koi are much larger now.

Taking pictures of things enclosed in plastic cases is really hard.

Several blocks of long straight space. They built this above the alley, and there are branches on either side leading to various office buildings or parkades. I think this is the longest straight space in the entire system. Kind of boring, actually. I used to walk down it a lot.

This is one of my favourite buildings downtown. It looks like two buildings were merged together in a transporter accident and somehow didn't blow up.

There is no standard design for the 59 bridges. Some are utilitarian structures, some are beautiful and match the nearby buildings. Some you hardly know you're in a bridge. I think I hit all the indoor bridges open to the public and one that wasn't. There are several bridges open to the outside.

Sculpture, not a painting.

This is only part of a much larger mural.

I used to work in this building, and always liked this water feature.

This is one of two huge, HUGE living walls. You can see the guy in the lower left for scale.

Another nice water feature, and more garden beside and underneath the escalator.

These three paintings make me happy, I'm not sure why.

 This is a really neat carving, not a painting.

Now for the Cala-travesty, as I call it. Normally I would like this bridge. It's a cheerful colour - a bright red that doesn't seem to show up in photos very well, an interesting design, and is wide enough to deal with bikes and pedestrians. But. It was chosen in a secretive process by a cabal of City Aldermen. It was very expensive. It was about a year and a half late. The entrance and exit are not graceful. The Memorial end is particularly brutal as you can see from the last photo. You make an abrupt left or right turn to get onto the path. If you want to actually cross Memorial Drive, which was the whole frakking point of the bridge in the first place, you have to walk 2 blocks to 10th Street or the LRT overpass, both of which are perfectly serviceable bridges for pedestrians and bikes. Cars go on one, and the train on the other. Without an integrated pedestrian crosswalk for Memorial Drive, the placement of this bridge is stupid. Already people are jaywalking. It's only a matter of time till someone gets run over.

This is the Memorial Drive end of the bridge.

And there you have it! I started about 6:45 in the morning. I stopped about 9 for a coffee and a muffin in a small isolated chunk of the system that I'm not sure I've ever been in, the one attached to the JJ Bowlen Building. I got some pizza for lunch and sat for a half hour watching the world go by and checking my email in Bow Valley Square. I finished up about 2pm, and hung out at Bankers Hall to meet up with a buddy, then walked to City Hall to get Linda.

All in all it was fun. I knew it would be a long walk, but my feet feel pretty good. This isn't all the art, not by a long shot. However, a few pieces I remember are not there anymore, and there isn't as much as I had expected in some of the newer sections.