rickohikes

Ha Ling: It’s Time for More Hiking!

There’s a part of me that’s a bit disappointed with the amount of hiking I’ve done this year. I guess it’s because I always want to head out to the mountains and sometimes life events happen that prevent this. For example, vertigo… vacations… road trips… gatherings… or just plain laziness, like today. It’s not that I don’t enjoy those things, because I definitely do, but there’s a yearning for the mountains that never goes away.

This is why it was so awesome to head to Ha Ling with Robbie and Jess yesterday and conquer this short climb. The weather was sunny and cloudy but perfect for a hike. We had all been itching to test our legs on the mountain. Now that the summer has started with the completion of Ha Ling, we can look forward to a summer ahead of many more mountain summits. And so today I proclaim: there will be many more summits to come! And my goal this year is to avoid, as best as possible, repeats of hikes. Why? Because there are just so many amazing ones out there!

One important thing we realized? “It’s not worth it if you’re going to die.” I suppose this is common sense. If there’s an activity where certain death is the outcome, it’s probably not worth it. Taking smart risks, on the other hand… well, those usually turn into quite the adventures!

Stats (according to Runkeeper):

Distance: 6.32 km
Duration: 3:53:49, starting at 2:10 pm
Pace: 36:59 min/km
Elevation: 756 m

A Little Vertigo Can’t Stop Me!

After the Booty Hunt on June 1st, I decided to go hard core… again… with P90X. It seems like my body is getting tired of it, though, since it decided to revolt! After day 3, I developed a nasty rash on my forearms and torso, followed by a horrible occurrence of positional vertigo that made me crazy dizzy. Okay, so I can’t say for sure that it’s the P90X that caused that, but what I do believe is that my body is unwinding from stress, unbeknownst to me, and manifesting in interesting ways. As everything has gone in the last few months, I was a bit derailed and needed to rest. But this has not stopped me from having a busy first half of the month!

The day the vertigo started, Adriane, Sarah, and Adriane’s friend Jo and I decided we’d hike Prairie Mountain. Yes, I’ve done this several times now, but for an early season after-work hike, it’s always a good one. And what a great group- so many stories being told, and so much laughter! It really did feel like the quickest ascent of Prairie in a long time. I do enjoy hiking on my own, but the time does pass faster when sharing the experience with friends.

Once the hike was done, I rested for a few days on Robbie’s orders. I tried to get lots of sleep and watched a bunch of TV (HIMYM is so good!). By Saturday, I finally decided to call Healthlink and a nurse advised me to see a physician, who diagnosed it as a bit of positional vertigo before sending me for a bunch of lab tests and an EKG. What a fun way to spend the weekend! But following this restful period, I did slowly get better throughout the week. On Wednesday, I walked over to the UofC to see Paul and Rob graduate. Congrats to Paul on his PhD and Rob on his MSc in Community Health Sciences. I still assert that my Certificate in Relational Databases trumps those :).

By Friday, I was stir crazy. I got in my car and decided to drive to Banff. Even though it was rainy, there’s always something new to see, so I stopped by the recently opened Cave and Basin National Historic Site, the birthplace of Canada’s national parks. It’s always fun to learn something new: The first national park in Canada was Banff in 1885. The underground cave contains bubbling thermal waters that smell of hydrogen sulphide gas. Translation: it smelled a lot like rotten eggs. I also learned that there’s a Banff Springs Snail, which is only found in the springs of Sulphur Mountain. A visit to Banff would not be complete without some random perusing of stores. So I did that too. The next day I would finally get to hike again by conquering Ha Ling, but more on that later…

June would not be complete without a few birthday celebrations. It was a fun dinner at The King and I for Samir’s 31st, and a great evening with lots of catching up and laughter for Selina’s 40th. So all in all, despite the vertigo, it’s been a pretty awesome first half of June!

Stats (for Prairie Mountain):

Start time: 5:20 pm
Summit: 6:45 pm
End time: 8:30 pm

The Underwear Affair’s Booty Hunt

Yesterday was a fun day in the city. A few months back, Robin came up with the idea to register a team for The Underwear Affair’s Booty Hunt race. The Undewear Affair (www.uncoverthecure.org) in Calgary is sponsored by the Alberta Cancer Foundation. The purpose of the event? To fight cancers below the waist, such as testicular, prostate, colon and ovarian. And the most fun about it? You get to complete the events in your underwear! In addition to the usual 5K Walk and 10K run, the Booty Hunt was added this year, which is described as a “challenging scavenger quest through the city”. Fast-forward to yesterday where, dressed in Cookie Monster underwear, we ran past unsuspecting citizens of the city in our skivvies to complete a bunch of tasks.

The team, consisting of team captain Robin and fellow members Rachna, Samir and Shari, arrived at the Max Bell Centre early and ready to race. It was amazing to see the level of comfort some people had with their bodies. Many were pretty much wearing nothing but tight underpants and running shoes. But whether ripped or not, everyone was there to participate in a fun event and raise money for a great cause.

After a quick orientation, the teams were released into the city at 2:00 pm. We opened up our clue package (teehee) and read the clues. The goal: complete 10 of the 11 tasks and receive a charm for each task completed. Then race back to the Max Bell Centre for the finish. Sounded easy enough, but boy was it a lot of running and deciphering! The tasks were scattered all around the downtown core and included events like a World Health workout in Eau Claire Park, finding a man with a giant bag of nuts in a market, visiting a yoga studio to learn some moves, re-enacting the Lady and The Tramp noodle scene at a mediterranean restaurant, taking photos of different monuments around the city, and spraying colour into Robin’s hair at a salon. All in all, it was exhausting and took us 2 hours, but it was so much fun! We raced to the finish to discover we had come in third place, yay! Too bad we misread a clue and did much more than we needed to. I’m convinced we would have had a first place finish if we slowed down and read more carefully. Typical Amazing Race-style error.

We then stayed, celebrated, and accepted our third place medals. Thanks to Robin, Shari, Rachna and Samir for an awesome day; and to Robbie and Tushna for coming out and supporting us. What a great event for a great cause! And truth be told, it was kind of fun to run around the city in our unmentionables… 🙂

Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”

On my list of things to do: Experience a performance by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. A while back, I had bought tickets to see The Lord of The Rings at the CPO, where they would play the entire The Fellowship of the Ring, but all music would be performed live! However, a trip to Ireland derailed that, so I exchanged the tickets for one of my favourite symphonies, Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”.

Last night began with Rainbow Body (Theofandis) and Azul for Amplified Cello and Orchestra (Golijov). The latter was a great piece, especially when there was a dynamic play between Alisa Weilerstein on Cello and the percussionists and hyper-accordion. Definitely the best part of the composition. I need to find this!

Then after intermission, it was “The Planets”, accompanied by NASA images of the planets. I think some of the images were created for effect, but for the most part, the actual NASA images were pretty cool. “The Planets” is a great piece: its haunting and dramatic beginning with Mars, the Bringer of War, to the well-known melody of Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, and the other sections of Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. I love the orchestra! Aside from being a great evening with lovely company :), the night caused me to reflect. I remember analyzing the score for Mars during my grade 13 music class, and I remember playing Jupiter on flute while I played in the senior concert band during high school. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was able to read music and play the flute. Actually, I think it was 13 years ago. My goodness! But it’s never too late to get back into things, and watching the performance of “The Planets” reminds me that I still love music: many genres; the feelings one can experience while listening to it; and how a simple song or piece can bring you right back to another time.

Ireland: Farting Our Way Back to Canada

Well, we didn’t really, but that phrase came up at some point, which made us laugh. I think it was in reference to yet another full Irish breakfast that probably didn’t do wonders for our stomachs. I guess in colloquial terms, we could say that we farted around the rest of the trip, because after Killarney, we were exhausted. Just done. As much as we love vacationing, fatigue had set in at that point- from different hotels, to eating at restaurants, to driving, to seeing yet another town. We were zombie-walking. And we couldn’t wait to eat some home cooked meals once we got back to Canada. Alas, there were more sites to see, and we made sure to make a good attempt at finishing the trip strong! I think we did a good job. After Killarney, the next few days went like this:

Day 12: Left for Kilkenny with a stop in Cork for lunch. Checked into the Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel. Went for a walk, found a mediterranean restaurant and had a chicken kebab. Yum!

Day 13: Explored the grounds of Kilkenny castle and visited St. Mary’s Cathedral. Then it was off to see the Rock of Cashel, a medieval cathedral set upon rocks. We headed to Waterford, where we checked into the Faithlegg House Hotel outside of the city and napped. We ventured into Waterford and had a nice dinner at Emiliano’s (bruschetta for a starter, funghi pizza and pasta for mains with tiramisu and pistachio ice cream for dessert). I also ran through a red light! Oops.

Day 14: Not a great breakfast at the hotel. The atmosphere also reminded me of a scene out of the show The OC- a country golf club where everyone seemed to know everyone and there was an air of gossip. Weird. Sent a postcard or two, walked around the Parade Quay and city square in Waterford, then headed to Glendalough (a medieval monastic settlement) in the Wicklow mountains. Then it was off to Dublin to check into the Clarion Airport Hotel and return the car. We were super hungry that day as we didn’t eat for the majority of the day… and it felt like near death ;). We gorged on club sandwiches and scones at the airport, and finally tried Irish coffee, which is pretty much coffee and whiskey. It was strong! That night, we watched Denmark win Eurovision 2013. If I lived in Europe, I’d be hooked!… though I didn’t quite get Romania’s flamboyant entry.

Saying goodbye to our VW :( — Saying goodbye to our VW 😦

The next day, we had an early morning 6 am flight back to Calgary. We were quite tired, and we would be for the next many hours as we had two flights and a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam. As much as I was sad to see the vacation end, I was happy to be heading home. But what a great vacation it was! According to the odometer, we drove about 2255.3 km around Ireland! When coupled with my road trip across Canada, I have been in a car for almost 6000 kilometres in 3 weeks. Needless to say, it was good to take a bit of a rest this past week.

I can’t say that Ireland was at the top of my travel list, but I’m so glad that it was on Robbie’s list. As I began researching, Ireland began to grow on me. Travelling through the country, with it’s greenery, amazing history and wonderful people allowed me to experience Ireland in a way that I never imagined prior to this trip. The vacation was wonderful, and it was really special to share it with Robbie. So thank you, Robbie, for a great trip, and for experiencing Ireland with me! We have so many amazing memories and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.