Now it's our turn to be stressed

Some of you may know that Curtis had to go in for some dental work on Friday. There was a huge chunk of tartar on several of his teeth, well beyond brushing or dental crunchies. They were worried about what else was under all that, besides teeth. There were several icky medical words used I don't even like to think about.

Here are the before and after shots. He spent the ride over trying to convince us, rationally and politely, that it was all a big misunderstanding, and that he was fine.

Here he is home after, looking his normal distinguished self. In fact, the teeth covered in tartar were fine, but they discovered one of his little teeth up front was cracked, so they had that out sooner than talking about it, easy as pie. Everything else was good.

The vet staff all loved him, and were drawing straws to see who could take him home if we were a few minutes late picking him up. As if. Then they tried to offer him a job working there, saying he would be a valued addition to the office staff, able to talk to the incoming cats and calming them down. He told them he already had a job, keeping two humans and another cat in line.

Now we, and by we I mean me, get to squirt one medication into him every 24 hours for a few days, plus another 2 medications every 12 hours for the next 10 days. It's a good thing he's a good natured cat. I'd rather do pills. I'm also glad they gave him a kitty pawdicure while he was under. Just in case, you know.

Other than that, Friday was eminently forgettable. Today was wonderful, starting with OEB with buddies. No selfies, though, can't imagine how we missed that, considering how many other selfies we've done. Nor did we take any photos of the food. You guys will just have to go to OEB and find out for yourselves. No, we just had a great chat, ate great food, and loved the oldies soundtrack. The music, guys, not us talking. Sheesh. Then down to Millarville Market via Road to Nepal, looking wistfully at all the people on their bikes. Then a lovely  peaceful afternoon. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Whirr, not Grrr, for real this time

Still no workouts, unless you count riding .41 Km as a workout. That was after working on Estela. This time I remembered the secret for cleaning gucky chain lube. The secret is not to get it on your hands in the first place. I found the rubber gloves and wore them. Much better.

You may remember this post, where I used a brutal tool on poor Estela to get the chain off. Now I've got the right tool. It looks like this and works perfectly.

I was more thorough this time. I started playing with the little gear wheels in the rear shifter, and found the problem. The middle gear wheel didn't want to turn hardly at all. I found the right allan key and took it all apart. Somewhere along the way I managed to get a rock up in there, and there was a huge gouge in the bearing cover. Plus it was all gucked up, which wouldn't help. Once it was all apart I cleaned it and smoothed out the scrapes and gouges. When I put it back together it spun freely. Nice!

Then I did the other one, since I thought it had been spinning ok, but now I could see it needed work too. It was gucked up as well. I took a toothbrush to the chain and scrubbed hard. Once it was all back together and lightly lubed I went around the block. I couldn't believe the difference! So much nicer.

Even that little ride I could still feel the twinges in my leg, so it's not as if this will make the difference in me being able to charge down and back the Road to Nepal in record time. Only a few days till the appointment.

Well, Stampede, again

Today was Stampede day for me. For some people, this is a week long series of events, one after the other. Exhaustion is the most benign outcome. Other less desirable outcomes include divorce, social diseases of various kinds, and a liver that is deeply unhappy with you.

For me, being a staid old stick, I'm not sure I even know how to go about getting into trouble at Stampede, or any other time. So today I hit my Stampede quota for breakfasts and lunches. One of each. Both put on by the companies I'm currently contracting through, or have contracted through in the past. Both well attended, both with the expected foods, though the lunch was much better than expected. It wasn't BBQ beef on a bun, much to my surprise. Of course the music was too loud, but that's to be expected.

My boss that had recently been fired showed up to both, and it was nice chatting and getting caught up. She is well along in the process of landing on her feet. Us worker bees are still in limbo, but it isn't really bothering any of us. We all know what to expect, and are making our plans. This is part of contracting life.

The workout life has been nonexistent since the Sunday not-ride. No swim. Too busy or too hot to run. And, well, my leg is giving me hell since then. I think trying to run would be a bad idea. Yes, I have an appointment made with Dr. D for next week. Can't wait. Unless he pulls out some voodoo out of my butt and it's good as new, I've come to the reluctant conclusion I'm not going to be running the MEC marathon in the fall. 4 months of training is not enough, starting where I am. I've no need to suffer through it to say I've done it. I'd much rather be properly trained. If he gets me fixed up I might be ready to go for next year's Stampede Road race.

The link splitter thingie tool I bought the other day works like a charm. I hadn't quite meant to actually take the chain off right then, but I'm washing it again anyways. I think this time I'll clean the whole bike, properly, rather than just a swipe and dab at the chain.

I love lilies. They are such happy colours. This is the first lily to bloom. This one is such a pretty yellow. I'm looking forward to the orange ones.

Slow, one-legged, granny-gear attempt to ride

Many of you missed yesterday's post, with the photo of the completely inappropriate tool used on poor Estela.

After yesterday's wonderful run and the great bike out to Chestermere the day before, I was keen to get out for my first road ride this year. Let me count the ways it failed.

• Only my left leg was working, really.
• The right knee was being pissy and weenie, not doing any of the work.
• Flats and downhill are ok, but there is no strength for uphill. Even the left leg isn't feeling strong.
• I was in granny gear most of the ride. For today's route, I'd normally be in the big ring and the second biggest cog at the least. Not even close.
• I'd been hoping for 50 K, and thought I might turn around at 22 and 22X, which would be about 40K or so. I actually turned around at the Red Deer Community Church. As regular riders in that area know people parking at 22X and 37 St are just getting up to speed when they pass the church. I decided going any further would be risking actual injury to my knee. Been there, done that. Hope I haven't done it again. 
• 17.5 K in 48 minutes. (Hides face in hands.)

Today is the last day of vacation. It's gone by pretty quickly. I'm going to miss sitting out on the patio, drinking an iced coffee at lunchtime. Any time, really. The rest of the day will be puttering around doing house things. Maybe some gentle stretching for my knee.

The tool that horrifies the Velominati and Estela

So there I was yesterday, on a wonderful ride with buddies, coping with a bit of chain Grrrr. I think this was Estela's way of telling me I'd been neglecting her too long. I was pretty sure the problem was sticky chain, old broken down lube caked with dust and other noxious substances.

After another layer of stain in the lodge I set Estela up on the bike rack and started working on the chain. I remembered the chain as coming apart very easily. Push the right two links together and it pops apart. Not today. I don't have the right plier thingies that would do this, so I had to improvise.

Are you afraid yet? This is not even remotely the right tool, but I got'er done. That's what being a guy is all about. Red Green would be proud of me, even if he would think Estela is a bit of a sissy bike. I say she's a classy bike who has never let me down.

Chain off, cleaned, I didn't even lose the two little link pieces I needed to put it back together. Cleaned the gears and gear changer thingie. My spelling is the first thing to go and I'm not even going to try to spell derailers. Put it all back together, then spent a while looking for chain lube. Eventually I found some, but it's not what I wanted to use. Better than nothing. A quick ride around the cul-de-sac had the gears going whir instead of Grrrrr. So who's up for a ~ 50 K (hopefully more than 25K, and for sure  less than 100 K) ride our 22X?

Then came the fun part. Getting the remnants of stain and chain lube out of my hands. It's still not all gone.

But no, the fun part was getting sunscreened up and heading out for a run in the heat of the day. I was in the mood to run. My knees have been feeling pretty good even with all the kneeling for the stain. I started easy, then headed up towards the reservoir and back. I was hoping to go for an hour, and in this heat, that's excellent for me. I ended up going an hour exactly, 8.4 K, working just a bit harder than chatchatchat pace, but not so much I was gasping and working. It was one of the best solo runs in a very long time. Why?
-It was short enough that I felt pretty strong throughout.
-It was long enough that I got a great workout, and had to talk to myself a little bit to keep going the last few minutes.
-It was the right level of exertion; I could feel my legs working, but no complaints.
-It was a hot sweaty affair, which was exactly what I wanted.

After some stretching and a shower I fired up the BBQ. I haven't done rack of lamb for a while, but my touch has not deserted me. It was awesome, even by my standards. Rack of lamb is just about my best thing to BBQ. Needless to say, we ate out on the patio. The weather was perfect.

So now I'm finishing off the glass of wine, and letting my meal digest in peace as I write this blog. I know there is Stampede chaos and people out there trying to get drunk and/or laid, but I am serene. It's almost bedtime, though I'll write a little longer. Writing on the patio is so peaceful. Good thing the wine is done, or I'd be pouring more.

If you want to ride, tweet me or email me, that's the best way to reach me. I suppose you could comment here too. I don't have a departure time yet, but it's not likely before 9am. Normally on these I try to leave after cool, and before baking hot.

A fun bike with buddies, and stuff

I'd forgotten how much fun it was to get out on a bike with buddies and just enjoy the ride. No pace, no time requirements, no distance goals, other than getting to where we wanted to go. Chat along the way. Explore a detour or two.

Michelle organized this ride to Lake Chestermere. Earlier this year she ran it as part of her training for the 50 K run. She wanted to see it in summer, but didn't want to run it again. Now she's working on bike distance, so it was easy.

I took Estela, even though she is too much bike for the bike paths, and I was pretty sure we'd be on a gravel road for a detour. My hybrid needs some work. We met up, and drove to where the path and canal cross Glenmore trail. A bit of getting sorted out, and we were off. Turns out Estela needs some work too, I think the chain needs cleaning. Tomorrow.

It's a beautiful flat ride. The canal had lots of bird life on it, and there were always interesting swirls and ripples in the water. We just rode along, no rush at all. Michelle and Antje were on hybrids or mountain bikes so they had to work a little harder. You have to pay attention during the detour near 52nd St, but other than that, it's follow the path and enjoy the ride. I won't talk about how Michelle ended up in mud up to her ankles, that's a story for her blog.

Here's some photos, in whatever order blogger puts them.

This is from Michelle's phone, an obliging bystander took it for us.

If the photos don't make it clear, it was a perfect day. Warm and sunny, almost no wind. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day.

Even though I wasn't really paying attention to pace or anything, I did turn on run meter. I wanted to see what the map and pace lines actually looked like. Here you are for the number gurus of you. I can understand the pace line being all over the place. We sped up and slowed down quite a bit. But that elevation line is WHACKED. This is a seriously flat path. Just at the end I rode to the actual detour to see what work they were doing and to see if there really was a reason to close the path. There was. I rode back fairly briskly to catch up, well above 30 KPH for a while. But look what the elevation did; it dropped way off, and trust me, that path is flat. Maybe I should have had the other one going too, just to see what it said.

It felt pretty good. I could feel my legs talking to me a bit after the 5 K sprint at the end, but my butt was still fine. Maybe Sunday I'll go out for 50 K or so. Who's up for a ride out 22X from my place Sunday?

Once they dropped me off at home we had an iced coffee on the patio and chatted more. Lovely. No Stampede parade could be this enjoyable, and being in an office isn't even in the same universe.

Then I got to work. There were some spots where pressure washing the rocks had blasted out the sand and it needed to be filled in again. Lots of hands and knees, tamping bits of sand in, and spraying it with enough water to activate the polymer.

Then a nap, lying on the grass beside the lodge. More lovely. Then staining parts of the lodge. We've got a food grade clear stain for the inside, on the wear surfaces. I did the floor, benches, the food trays, bowls. Another layer tomorrow. Here's what it looks like empty. That white pipe is the air intake for the grill just above it.

I can't believe vacation is almost over, and there some things I really must get done before going back to work. For as long as that lasts, anyways. But it's too nice right now to worry about that.

Oh, the SQL joke in yesterdays blog? I'll try to explain. Usually a SQL statement starts with the word SELECT. This tells the query what data fields to get. Then there's a WHERE clause to tell the query what table the field is in. It usually looks like this:

SELECT fieldname1, fieldname2, fieldname_n
FROM tablename;

There can be much else, but this will work. However, if you're good, you can start a query like this:

WITH
a AS (SELECT blah blah blah FROM goo goo goo),
b AS (SELECT glug glug glug FROM gah gah gah)
SELECT field names
FROM a, b, maybe other tables
Where (explain join conditions)
maybe other stuff;

This lets you join together several queries as a sub-queries, and their results are like a temporary table that you can use in an overall query. But it's more complicated to write, and there's more things to go wrong.

Hello, are any of you still awake? Did I just cure your insomnia?

The big hot sweaty run

Sometimes I think that being on vacation is harder than working. At work I just stand there, and think of clever things to say in SQL, then even cleverer text to explain the whole thing. I even thought of a meme for the Most Interesting Man -- I don't always write SQL statements, but when I do, they begin with 'with'. (Yukyukyuk, yeah I know. I think two of my readers get the joke. If you do, please comment so I know who you are.) But on vacation who knows what I'll get up to?

Tuesday I should have turned on Runmeter for our Canada Day walk. It was a long one. Really long, in a fairly hot sunny day. Then a long wait for the fireworks, just about freezing my tail off. When we were planning the day, I forgot how cool it was likely to get. It was lots of fun. Here's the selfie, and some of the nice bikes parked at Village Ice Cream.

Wednesday we slept in, big surprise. I had some stuff downtown to do, doing the things that a spooked herd member needs to do. All that went very well.

Today Linda was setting up for some buddies to drop by, so after a short swim and a long water run with the champ Katie, we got all ready. It was smoking hot out, bright and sunny. While getting set up I decided I hadn't been out for a good hot run in a long time.

It used to be, once upon a time, that I could barely walk in the hot weather. Then I started doing this fitness thing, and got better at dealing with the heat. So today is high 20's, and I wanted to run. I wanted to get hot and sweaty. So I did. No expectations about time or pace, just out for a run. It ended up behind a bit more overcame and more humid than hot. Humid for Calgary guys, work with me here.

I felt comfortable and strong, running just sub 7 minute K's. That lasted till I started coming up out of Fish Creek. I'd sort of thought it would be cool and shady down there, but no. There were lots of hot and humid spots. I started slowing down a bit, and walked up part of the hill. Even after the top of the hill I wasn't settling down into a run again. I could feel the heat and my legs were starting to get a bit tired. Rather than push it, I took what I'd done, about 6.5 K in 45 minutes, and was really pleased.

Stretched after, and settled in on the patio to write and generally relax. This part of vacation is good.