The groove is in sight again

I am still savouring THAT meal. I hope to remember that evening the rest of my life. The rest of the time out in Banff wasn't too shabby either.

Saturday was another beautiful day here, so I headed out before it got too hot. My feet wanted to run, and I let them go. This is what it looked like

This looks and felt very much like my runs before my legs got cranky. A slow start, then a gradual increase in pace. The hump in the middle is going up a bit of hill, bigger than it looks on the graph, and the next one was dodging some cars at a busy intersection. It felt great! For me, a sub 6 minute K is a strong pace, so I'm pleased to see it happen there. By the 3.5 K mark I could start to feel my hams tighten up, so I called it at 4 K. Lots of stretching after. Even though I suck at gradual builds, I want to be careful building up milage.

Sunday I was on the bike for almost an hour, and I'm pretty pleased there too. There are still a few twinges while standing up, but nothing compared to what it was. After a good warmup I spent some short intervals up above 200 watts. Before all the crankiness, I was just getting to the point of spending regular time up there and feeling strong. After 3 minutes I can feel my hams again, and the tiniest of knee twinges. After a bit of easy spin I'm ready to go again. Again, a good cooldown and lots of stretching after.

I've still got a physio appointment next week, and I hope that's the last one. A couple of my buddies are feet injured now, (hello Deb and Tiffa) and I hope they get better soon. I came very late to running, and I've missed it over the last month. So far I haven't broken anything running (unlike biking) and I hope that stays true.

I thought you would all be amused by this photo.

I should make you guess what it is, but not many would know. Making wine isn't all fun and games and drinking. That's the view of the bottom of a carboy after racking off the good stuff. There's some oak cubes in there and the dead yeast, along with a bit of the dregs of wine. The carboy needs to be rinsed out, cleaned, and santitized. You'll note I don't say sterilized. That's not practically possible in a home environment. I just try to keep things clean. Really clean, but don't get fussed about it.

One has to be careful when cleaning these out. That residue will stain clothing and never come out if you splash too much. Adding hot water and then sloshing about heats up the air, and then it wants to escape. If you have your hand over the mouth to keep the liquid in, you are also keeping the air in too. Which builds pressure to an astonishing degree. I've sprayed water all over me and much of the nearby basement.

The fun part is this. Drinking it. This Barolo was bottled in August 2008 so it's coming up on 5 years. This is what 5 years of dust looks like. Dust and wine bottles go together. When it was only a couple years old it was very much an up in your face wine. There was a big bold taste that went with the spiciest of marinades. So today I paired it up with some barbecued Beef Tenderloin in a marinade with a bunch of Mama Africa spice. It went very well. The wine has mellowed a bit, being merely strong and assertive, with some of the ruffty tuffty corners knocked off. There's a bit of black currants (which I hate) and other dark fruit (blackberries, plums, blueberries, prunes) here, and a hint of raspberry sweetness. This was a Mondial kit, meaning all juice. It takes these a long time to come into their own. If you can't stand seeing a bit of sediment on the side, and don't have the patience to wait years for it to ripen, don't get this kit.

The best meal ever, details

I've hinted a bit, but yesterday we ate our most expensive free meal ever, which was also one of the very best meals I've ever had in my life. The story is that our financial advisor loves us. I've sent her some very good clients over the years, to say nothing a case of wine every now and then, and every once in a while she treats us. This time was to Le Beaujolais in Banff. She was there for a week on vacation, and invited us out to dine.

At first I thought, the only night that really works is Thursday, and that will be a bit of a zoom to drive out to Banff, eat, think about how much wine I've drunk, think about how long the meal is taking, then drive back to Calgary, and go into the office the next morning. Bleah.

Then I thought, what am I thinking? Play hookey from the office for one day. Book a hotel room, drive out after work, WALK to the restaurant, have a third glass of wine if that happens, WALK back to the hotel, then spend some of Friday in Banff doing the tourist thing, since I haven't seen Banff in a great many years. Plus, a buddy of mine lives there now, and I hadn't seen her in about 5 years or so.

So we did. The expensive part of the free meal was the hotel, which offered free wi-fi in the room, please note Toronto Airport Hotel! Plus foregone wages for a day off work, but it was only a part of the day off, since I worked a bit extra the rest of the week. Plus half a tank of gas. A trifling cost for one of the best mini-vacations ever.

We strolled around town, and what do you know? In the middle of Banff Ave, I'm thinking that woman looks awfully familiar. It turned out to be Lee, in town for a pipeline safety conference. I worked her with at IMS and Talisman. It was a perfect evening, warm and sunny. The strollers were out in force. I don't often stroll, but I did then.

Once we got to the restaurant, there wasn't any debate. We didn't even see a menu. There is a Chef's Surprise, and that's what Colleen ordered for us. The only debate was if we wanted the paired wines or not. Turns out there is a paired wine for every course. It's not often I drink 6 glasses of wine in an evening, so I was thinking about that, but then figured our hotel was just across the road, and this is why we walked.

Are we ever glad we did that. The pairings were perfect, and complimented the food in a way I don't often experience. Here's the main course. It was all melt in your mouth. You can read what it is on the menu below.

Dessert. The little spun sugar confection on top of the ice cream was actually springy. I was so eager to eat I forgot to take photos of the other courses.

Read the menu and drool. It wasn't just good. It wasn't just excellent. It was superb! Everything was perfectly done. We got this after the dinner, so each course was a surprise. The owner came out and chatted with us. The waiter was perfect, telling us about each course and the wine, and why they were paired. Service was attentive and unobtrusive. It was just the right amount of food, spread out just right.

Turns out 4 of the wines are full size, and the two dessert wines were half size. All were excellent! So five glasses of excellent wine, on top of just the right amount of excellent food. I might, maybe, have passed the police breath test, but there is no way I would have attempted driving. I'm not a big fan of port, but after that one, I might have to start.

It was a delightful evening chatting and savouring the amazing food. We were there for 3 hours, slowly watching dusk fall over the mountains. Watching people from the second story dining room. Pity it had to end. All I can say is that before you die, you have to eat here, and that's if you like nice meals. If you're a fan of French or Continental cooking, you MUST plan to eat here.  We took the scenic route back to the hotel. What am I saying? ALL the routes in Banff are scenic. As you'll see. There are very few people who regret visiting Banff.

Next morning we met up again at Melissa's for breakfast. Other than ordinary coffee the rest of breakfast was excellent! Best French Toast ever! We strolled around town a bit more. Another perfect day.

I had never been up the Tunnel mountain road, so we did that. This is just one of the views.

Then we went out to Lake Minnewanka. I have lived in Calgary 30 some years, and I've never been there. Ever. Here's the view from the top of the boat launch. It was a long way down. The lake is very low right now.

You can see the normal water line on the rocks off to the right. Yes, that's snow. It was snowing there last week.

Here's another view of the lake. It isn't quite as green as Emerald Lake, but almost.

We strolled up the path to a bridge over one of the creeks feeding the lake. 

On the way back to town there was a small herd of bighorn sheep strolling down the road. They had not the least fear of us, and one even posed.

Back in town we strolled the path along the river. There is a new pedestrian bridge going in. It's very graceful.

Last photo, arguably the most famous, most photographed building in all of Canada.

After the stroll we met up with my buddy Amanda to get caught up on our lives. So much has changed for her. Hope we see her again before her baby boy is driving. I had a Grumpy Grizzly Honey Brown which was very nice, along with a donair pizza. They brought out some honey and chili oil to go with the pizza, and that was excellent too. An easy drive home via Bragg Creek to avoid Friday rush hour traffic and we are off to an excellent start for the weekend.

The 2 teased photos

Last night I was so tired I went to bed after teasing you with the promise of a couple photos. The first is the sunset from our place last night. I was just coming in after chatting with a neighbour for a few minutes after yoga.

Remember the other day when I talked about driving right into the sun? A few seconds before this shot, the sun was right between the vertical and horizontal traffic lights. Just above where it is now, and slightly left. Good thing I was wearing sunglasses.

I found my yoga stillness

We were doing some pose with the heel of one foot on the arch of the other, looking up, trying to find our stillness. I did. I was so still I fell asleep in Savasana, and snored through legs up the wall. I'm still so still I can barely get my fingers to move. I think there is a nice picture of the sunset. Next time.

Maybe it's just as well I didn't run

The plan had been to run this evening, but we ended up having someone come over to give us an estimate of some work that needs doing. Then a couple things. Then realized I didn't really want to run after all, but did want to go stretch and core.

Holy moly my left inner thigh just above my knee had a tender spot such as I have never had there, and I never noticed till I rolled the stick over it by accident. Some more cautious prodding found a fairly large spot, and massaging it sent tingles up into my back, and down into my calf. There were a bunch of other tight muscles that didn't mind being massaged.

Then a bit of core, including squats, plank, pushups, and even a few cautious one leg squats. My left leg doesn't want to bend that far on it's own, but half weight seems to be ok. Mostly. A few times.

In other news the red sunburn across my tailbone is getting itchy. It was difficult to not walk around work scratching my butt. It's also been difficult to breathe. Someone burned something very badly in the microwave that is just down the hall from me. Very badly, as in we think someone meant 1 minute, and somehow got 10, then forgot about it. The dish in the sink was black, and the inside of the microwave was brown all over. It stank badly. I was using the nice tea to mask the odour. Won't be using that microwave ever again.

Dance class nearly killed me

My legs were feeling good today. So good I was thinking of canceling my next physio appointment, or putting it off till next week. I was looking forward to a nice run on Tuesday evening.

Now all that is in doubt. I went into dance class feeling tired and sleepy. I've forgotten all I ever knew, and worse, what little I did remember surfaced at the wrong time. Some of you know that it's really easy to dance Cha Cha Cha and East Coast Swing to the same music, more a matter of style than anything. So there I was trying to lead Linda through a swing pattern while the class is going through a Cha Cha Cha pattern. There are some subtle differences.

And technique in waltz. That's what did my legs in tonight. Ouch. With any luck I'll get a good night's sleep and they will feel better tomorrow. I want to run. I'll do some stretching downstairs, then hit the sack.

A news rant

First, the important news. I had a normal run today! Short, but normal. Plus it was actually hot out, probably just over 20 C.

Even though just a few people showed up, we had a wonderful book club meeting, talking about life, the universe, and everything. Afterward I zoomed over to look at the picked over shelves at Yum, and got us a couple of lemon tarts. The little cheesecake thingies we wanted were all gone. But that's the story of going late to Yum, what you want will be gone, because this is a seriously popular bakery, with seriously popular stuff. You know, now that I think of it, I don't know why I'm telling you this. I'm so lazy and slow, and sleep in so much you will be ahead of me in the line, and then I won't get what I want.

Lots of limbering up for the run, with some mobility stretches, and walking briskly about 5 minutes. I was thinking I'd let my legs do what they wanted, for as long as they wanted, and stop before they overdid it.

The first rise is a quick stretch at the 37 St intersection to adjust my shoes. From there it came together and I ran easily and naturally down the path to 132 nd Ave. This felt great! I don't think it was the mythical runners high I keep hearing about, but my legs felt strong and stable. About the 2.5 K pace I could feel things start to tighten up a bit and my breathing getting a bit behind the heat, so I walked for just a bit, shaking out my legs, then ran easy a bit more.

Total was 3.5 K in 23:20 with one walk break. My legs felt better after today's run, than they did before  Friday's run. It was about a 10 minute walk back to the house, enjoying the warmth. Good stretch session after.

For the people that know me, and know I've been recovering from cranky leg syndrome, this is good news. I've been thinking about information lately, and how it gets delivered to us.  I use Zite, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter as my main means of learning about the world because I can control what shows up, at least to some extent. Not control, as in living in an echo chamber. I mean control to weed out stuff that is not news. I used to read paper newspapers, and listen to radio news, and do so very little now. It's a crap shoot if the radio crash reporter will tell me anything that Twitter hasn't already.

The problem is that so much of what is available to us is not news. For me, anything about a celebrity is not news. Their entire lives are a script, not just the latest movie, or TV show, or art project. Everything. Marriage. Divorce. Children. All of it designed to enhance what is called a career. I don't care about any of them. There might be a real person under the image, but I doubt it., and for the ordinary person, how could you tell?

Let me explain. If I go for coffee with a buddy, that's what we do. It's nice. Generally I can tell if buddy is upset, or happy, or worried about something. Maybe they don't talk about it, maybe they do. But in any case, it's a natural state of feeling. With an actor, how could you tell? For all you know, they are practicing a role in their head. Their professional lives are devoted to fooling people. How could you ever trust anything they say? Why would you ever want to hang out with a person like that? Why is the media so interested in feeding such fake stories to us? What could they be trying to distract us from?

Professional sports are not news, unless you know an athlete in that sport personally. No, I mean, personally, that you were buddies before they hit the big leagues, and still are now. How they do is legitimate news to you, but really, what you want to know is how your buddy did. What the score happened to end up being isn't particularly important. It's a distraction, along almost exactly the same lines as the Roman Circus. We already have thugs beating each other up with essentially no rules for the blood lust of the mob. It's only a matter of time till weapons more deadly than fists come into it.

So one buddy gas a son who plays in the NHL. She is passionately interested, and understandably so. I know one professional triathlete well enough for her to recognize me in a restaurant and remember my name. I'm certainly interested in how she does during races. (She was 7th in her division today, so I hope that's a bit of prize money and points toward Kona.)

A blog buddy I've never met, but would like to someday, was at an autograph session that featured Craig (Crowie) Alexander. He is arguably the most famous male triathlete currently active. I'm not an autograph collector, but if I happened to be there, I'd be trying to hang out with my blog buddy, and any of the several other blog buddies that live in that area. His autograph would be meaningless to me, and any conversation with him there would be banal.

What else isn't news? Anything in the real estate sections of the newspaper. Every bit of it is advertising designed to separate you from your money. Anything to do with the fashion industry. See celebrities, and separating you from your money.  The travel section is more not news. As is almost anything about technology (out of date by the time a newspaper notices and convinces an editor to let it print.)

The business section, disasters, and weather are almost news, though they can quickly veer into porn territory. Knowing if it's going to rain today is useful if you are wondering to take an umbrella because you'll be outside. Fine. Knowing what they say the weather will be for anything much beyond a few hours is useless.

Much of the business section is distraction, but there is important info there if you're willing to dig a bit, and read behind the headlines.

Some disasters are news, like a huge tidal wave affecting millions of people. Knowing what has happened allows you the option of directing money for assistance, or maybe going there yourself if you have relevant skills. Of course if you have friends or family involved, you will be passionately interested, and rightly so.

But, say, a building collapse that kills hundreds of garment workers? I'm sorry, but that isn't news, not particularly. (However it is, if you know someone who works in it, of course) Google the triangle shirtwaist factory fire. It happened more than 100 years ago, and led to changing the laws around industrial safety. All that happens now is essentially the same event in different locations, right down to the locked fire exits. It's the inevitable result of letting big corporations cut costs and escape responsibility for their supply chains. People become an expendable commodity. Not news, just tragic that it happens again and again. There are two drivers. The people demanding more and cheaper goods, That's YOU, Mr and Ms America-I-must-get-it-for-cheaper. Add corporate pressures to cut costs so they can pay senior managers and owners more, deserved or not, and you know the result.

Almost anything on TV and radio news isn't really news, it's what they want to tell you to hide the news from you. They have lots of hours to fill, and they don't want to make the advertisers unhappy.

So what IS news, in my humble opinion? Pithily, anything that any government or corporation doesn't want to you know. So for example, Stephen Harper, the self-vaunted economist and business manager has lost 3.1 BILLION dollars. Yes, with a B. Not lost, as in spent more on a venture than was returned. They would like you to believe lost, as in temporarily unaccounted for. No big deal, move along, move along. Look, a polar bear!  I have darker suspicions.

There are about 20 million tax papers these days. 3.1 billion dollars is $155 per person. I don't know about you, but I would notice a $150 hole in my bank account.

So where did it go? Nobody knows or so they say. To me, this is a major news story. We should be getting hourly reports of the search, audit results, places they are looking, a detailed list of the rocks they are turning over, along with anything else interesting they find. HOURLY!! Day and night. All hands on deck. There are lots of civil servants, how long could it take, if they really wanted the answer?

The reporters should be on Harper like the white on rice. The opposition parties should be all over him like the stink on shit. I have so little trust in Harper, I'm almost willing to believe that he and his buddies stole it and stashed the proceeds. I love me a good conspiracy theory, and with a bit of work I could probably construct one, but Harper is not a stupid man, not by any means. He knows there was a leak of names and nationalities from one of the secret banks, and where it could happen once, it could happen again.

And that's another thing, for a brief digression. The tax people chase ordinary Canadians for trivial amounts of money on taxes, sometimes from an honest error, sometimes from a misinterpretation of the rules. But these wealthy tax cheats? They get a deal. That's news too. Don't get me started on corporate subsidies.

Back to the ever loving 3.1 BILLION dollars. There are 166 Conservative members in Harper's government. Doing the math, that's just over 18 million each. I'm just saying, to save you the trouble of finding a calculator. Minus a bit for accounting fees (what they call money laundering when people who don't contribute to their campaigns do it) and you've got a very nice top up on an already very generous pension. I'm not saying I think they took it. But the longer it takes them to find it, and explain how it happened, and how they'll prevent it from happening again, and to roll the head of the minister(s) responsible, the more plausible an explanation it becomes.

In almost any scandal the rule is "follow the money". If the people in charge don't let the investigators do that, there are only two conclusions. They are incompetent, or the trail leads to them and they know it.

Anything that any level of government does that involves our taxes is news. They are our elected representatives, spending our money on projects that are supposed to benefit all of us, at least in abstract. In fact, building a highway, for example, really only affects the people nearby, though any of us could go there and drive on it. We should all be getting our fair share of highways.

But however it comes, all of us should be getting value for our tax dollar. The web makes it easier to learn what is being done in our name, or is being done to obstruct those efforts. But you still have to go look, and when necessary, help raise hell about it.

Stephen Harper is killing the Canada I grew up in. He is turning it into a Fascist state, and yes, I know exactly what that word means. Before you leave a comment based in ignorance, go look up Fascism. Here, I'll save you the trouble.  They don't all fully apply to Canada, not yet. But they apply a lot more under Harper's government, than any other previous government. And this process is news, with a capital N.

The more you watch not news and let yourself get distracted, the more the people in charge will do whatever will benefit themselves and their friends.