Good for Us!

A Wonderful Weekend in San Francisco!

Last weekend I went to San Francisco with some of my favorite people in the whole world. We made a list of things that we wanted to do on the night we arrived, and we did it all!

Here's the list:

Go out to eat on Castro

Eat a BIG burrito in the Mission

Go to an old Speakeasy

Eat sushi

Go hiking near Paris' house

Stroll around Golden Gate Park

Visit with Toby and Loral (Paris' dog and mom, respectively)

Take the Ferry

Go to Pier 39 to see the seals

Cross the bridge

Go to the beach

Drive through the Tenderloin (don't ask)

Koi on a Castro sidewalk

I want this in my window!

This store had the goofiest shirts. We all got photos with our favorites.

The four of us in front of the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog

Paris and I at a sweet bar whose name I can't remember

Thai Clip the beagle at Paris' lovely home

Stupefied (not stoned, though I may look it) by the size and weight of this burrito

A walk in the park...Golden Gate Park

There really is nothing like good friends. I love you ladies!

Big Plans for 2011

I have to say, 2011 is off to a fantastic start and I've got big plans. They say the key to realizing your goals is sharing them, so here it goes. I'm trying to keep goals to a minimum this year because I always make too many and then only 1/2 accomplish most of them. This year I am dreaming big, but keeping it a little realistic too. Being vague helps.

11 Goals for 2011

Goal 1: Complete a couple of triathlons

A few sprint distance

A few olympic distance

How I will do this: I've started slowly working my way into a training schedule. I want to start the season svelte and in good cardiovascular health. Once spring rolls around I will start working on getting in time on the bike and doing longer runs. I also want to become more comfortable in open water this summer. I may have to purchase a triathlon wet suit. My fancy dancy new GPS watch with heart rate monitor will be an awesome addition to my training and keeping track of it!

Goal 2: Run a half marathon

This has been on my goal list for the past four years and I've always failed to sign-up. In training last summer I was up to 18km runs which are just 3 km short of a half marathon. I was so close! 2011 is the year.

Goal 3: Do more yoga

What does 'more' mean? Who knows? What I do know is that yoga makes me feel good and I should do it more. In addition, yoga increases flexibility, strength, cardiovascular ability and more. Why is this even a goal? It should just be instinct.

Goal 4: Read at least 30 Books

Last year I made a similar goal and only made it to 20-some books. I read a lot of non- fiction and those count as double, right? I'm off to a good start. I've finished one and am almost finished with 2 more and I've started another.

Goal 5: Make 2 quilts

I'm almost finished with the top sheet of one, but I've been working on it for a long time--a very long time. I already have some beautiful fabric picked out for the second, but can't bring myself to start until the first is finished. And then there's the fabric I bought in Africa four years ago...the intention was to make a quilt out of that too. Maybe purchasing a sewing machine is in the cards this year. That was seriously speed things up.

Goal 6: Save a chunk of money

I just spent the last year trying to rebuild my bank account after travelling. Apparently being a ski instructor isn't the way to do it--neither is buying a new road bike and a car. Becoming an adult is expensive!

Goal 7: Cook a totally new dish every week

To avoid falling into the void of culinary boredom, I have decided to cook something new every week. I am the WORST at following recipes, so the other purpose of this goal is to improve my recipe following abilities. Plus, Gareth and I like cooking new things together so it will be fun for both of us!

Goal 8: Read the News

The cover of our weekly newspaper almost always has a picture of a skier or a hockey player on the cover. Enough said. Don't get me wrong, I love reading the local news but need to go out of my way to find more enlightening news stories.

Goal 9: Call Friends and Family More Often

I miss my friends and family and don't call them enough. I have a good long distance plan and am ready to talk. Gareth thinks I am afraid of the phone, so really this goal entails conquering a fear too.

Goal 10: Be More Ecological Friendly

This is hard when your daily commute racks up 100 km worth of carbon emissions. I bought a super fuel efficient, used car which will help a bit. I have also decided to completely boycott paper coffee cups. If I have forgotten my mug, no coffee. Living where we do we hardly ever go out to eat and eat very little processed food, we rarely go shopping because we don't have much money and our house is largely off the grid. I am also going to get a worm compost. Gareth is opposed because he thinks it will attract mice, I am phobic about worms and the smell of compost makes me gag. This could be interesting.

Goal 11: Learn a new skill every month

I'm off to a good start. This month I have learned how to drive standard and while there is still room for improvement, I've upgraded to driving around downtown Banff and downtown Canmore. Some other ideas include learning the basics of reading avalanche terrain, learning to appliqué and learning how to use Photoshop. It is going to be a good year!

Wish me luck!

Goodbye to a Good Year

2010 was a fantastic year; 2011 is going to have a hard time matching it, but it is off to a good start!

January: The year kicked off with an awesome New Year's party at a small, rustic hostel in the woods. It involved a sauna, fireworks, Fireball, an ice dragon and lots of singing. The rest of the month was full of skiing and too many drinks at Banff's too many bars with too many 18 year-old Brits.

February: Skiing. Skiing. More skiing. I went back-country skiing for the first time, tried tele-marking and went on a x-country skiing trip to another rustic cabin in the woods.

March: I went 'skiing' in Jasper, but the conditions were terrible so we got drunk in the chalet instead. I had the best skiing day of my life in Revelstoke, BC. It snowed all day, there were no lines and almost every run was fresh tracks. Amazing. At the end of the month, Gareth and I camperized the van and drove it to Vancouver. We had a lovely week there visiting friends, drinking good beer, playing board games, sitting on the beach and cleaning out our storage unit. Storage units are funny, we couldn't figure out why we kept any of it in the first place.

April: In April, the snow began to melt. We hiked. I skied some more. We went for our first car camping trip along the David Thompson Highway; it was one of my favorite trips of the year. We pulled the bikes out of storage and went on some fun springtime adventures.

May: Gareth got a new job running a hostel and we moved to our little log cabin. Excited about our new home and all the awesome trails surrounding it, I bought a mountain bike. By the end of the month I had a new job working at an outdoor retail/rental shop.

June: I spent the month of June learning about bikes and trying to mountain bike. After a few rough rides left me battered and broken I decided that I needed to step back a notch and save the single track for later in the year. For work, I learned how to tune and maintain bikes. Who knew bikes were so easy to understand?

July: For Canada Day, Gareth and I went to Vancouver. We went to a sake tasting, visited with old friends and played games on the beach. A quick, but worthwhile adventure. I bought a new road bike and it quickly became my favorite possession. I went for a quick trip home to Minnesota (i.e. 42 hours) and spent most of it at a friend's cabin up north. Then I flew to Montana for the Tiffany family reunion, which is always a blast. My family is a full cast of characters and I love them so much. Plus, the reunion was in Glacier National Park and I hiked and hitchhiked with my dad--a year's highlight for sure.

August: After Montana, my parents and brother came to visit us. It was a fast, but fun visit. Not much else happened this month except lots of training...the Banff triathlon was upon me. Gareth officially became a volunteer firefighter. I am proud of him.

September: The Banff triathlon was the highlight of the month. It took place on a freezing cold day and the water temperature of Two Jack Lake was 11 degrees C! Organizers were so worried about the water temperature that they cut the swim distance in half. I had a lot of fun and finished better than I expected. I'll be there next year and am shooting for an even better time! The rest of the month wound up being warm and dry, and I did more hiking in September and October than the rest of the year combined. I also went to Minnesota for a week to help out at my dad's work.

October: The weather was still great. We hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner (Canadian Thanksgiving that is) and it was warm enough to eat outside. What a feast! Later in the month Gareth and I spent a few nights at the Rampart Creek hostel an did an awesome scramble up Mount Wilcox. At the end of the month, I took an Advanced Wilderness First Aid course involving 10 long, intense days in a row. For those 10 days, I literally slept, ate, went to class and studied--nothing else. Worth it.

November: The shop closed for the month, so I had some serious time off. I went home for two weeks and spent some much needed time with old friends and family. We went to Madison for Thanksgiving...it is still my favorite day of the year. At the end of the month, Gareth's entire family flew down to Barbados for an early Christmas celebration. We ate tons of fish, swam everyday, relaxed and spent a day at sea. A perfect vacation.

December: Last month was filled with all kinds of new things. I got a new job working at an expedition company...I love it! I bought a 'new' car (thanks for the help Mom). Gareth worked really hard to make our house look amazing. Christmas was great, we had so many visitors and had so many good family meals together. As great as it was, next year I will spend it in Minnesota.

Playing Catch-Up Photo Style

It is more fun to show you my last month and a half than to tell you in my long-winded fashion.

I went to Minnesota for 38 hours and spent most of it on Pelican Lake with some of my favorite ladies.

My parents, my bro, Gareth and I all went to Montana's Glacier National Park for the infamous Tiffany Family Reunion where we...

Had Rubber Ducky races, (Me with Uncle Stan and my semi-finalist duck)

Ate, and ate, and ate,

went white water kayaking, (Dad being hardcore in an inflatable boat!)

took group photos,

went on perhaps the most entertaining hike of my life with my dad, Gareth and Uncle Scott to Siyeh Pass

and we hitchhiked back to camp from said hike because Eric left us without a vehicle. Luckily, it was the most beautiful day and we got to ride back on the Going-to-the-sun road in the back of a pick-up.

Then the family came to visit us in the Canadian Rockies! Dad and Eric and I went mountain biking in the rain and got a wee bit muddy.

Gareth and I had a pretty low-key August. In fact, I don't know where it went. We did, however, climb Mount Allen. This silly pic was taken at its summit.

I also picked a lot of wild strawberries last month! Most of them went straight into my mouth, but a few made it home for a photo.

And finally, we had Jake for most of the month. Here is his being his majestic self while on a picnic at Lower Kananaskis Lake on a lovely August evening. I want a Jake of my own!

The Great Bell Battle of 2010

Our old internet service required that I hold my computer above my head to get a weak and oh-so-sensitive signal.

As you may have noticed, I had temporarily given up on blogging. Our ridiculously slow internet made the experience unbearably frustrating and a number of times I lost everything I had been working on when my connection suddenly failed. My creative juices could only take so many blows before I had to give up. Now we have awesome internet! It only took Gareth upwards of 20 angry hours dealing with Bell Canada's annoyingly well-trained customer service department where typical conversations went as follows:

"I'm sorry sir, I understand your frustration, but Bell's policy clearly states that..."

or

"I'm sorry sir, I understand your frustration, but I cannot help you with that. Let me transfer you to the _______ department." Which they should have followed with "You'll have to sit on hold for 25 minutes and they won't be able to help you either, I hope that's ok."

Gareth reached his breaking point when a manager told him that he was just experiencing buyer's remorse for purchasing an expensive internet device and agreeing to a 2 year contract. What this manager did not seem to understand is that the device did not work, but he still wanted to charge us for 2 years of service. Hmm. Because we ordered the router and service online, we could not simply go to a store and get help from a real person, Gareth tried anyway to no avail.

Then one fine day, Gareth tried calling again to check-in with tech support who had said they would get back to us three weeks earlier. Gareth had been calling every couple of days for a progress report and everytime they were non-committal and unhelpful. But this time, this glorious time, someone actually listened to him and after an hour and a half of talking it out with two low-level customer service agents we had a promise of a new device within 3 days! They even credited our bill for the month where we did not have functioning service, something previous agents had told us was not possible and against Bell policy. Thank you Gareth for your persistence and thank you Claudio at Bell for helping him!

Then the Bears Ruined My Plans

It is the summer of inconsiderate bears.

The first incident was three weeks ago. I had intended to run my farthest distance yet; the route I planned was about 21 km (about 13 miles). Seven kilometers in, a large grizzly bear reared her dangerously, adorable head about 100 meters in front of me. She wasn't in the woods, but on MY trail. This was the first bear I had ever seen outside of my car, so naturally I got a little nervous. I raised my arms, pulled Jake behind me, and backed away as I repeated in an anxious voice, "That is a BEAR. THAT is a bear. That IS a bear. A BIG bear. A GRIZZLY bear." She went about her business, eating, walking, and generally ignoring me, but I still had to find a new route. So I bush-wacked out to the highway and ran back from there. The plan was to go home, call the conservations officers to report the bear, drop the dog off and continue my run in a different direction. The bears had a different plans for me.

I decided to take a 'short-cut' back to the house, which was my first mistake. Along the short-cut, there is a large rock that often looks like a bear from far away. I saw what I thought was the bear-rock and continued running. Then the bear-rock moved. Hmm. I got a closer look and realized that it was indeed moving and it was not a rock. He, too, took little interest in me and let me slowly circumnavigate around and through the woods to my house. Once I arrived home, I decided that the universe didn't want me to run 21 km that night and I made dinner instead.

The second 'incident' took place on a lovely sunny morning. I walked out the front door, grabbed my bike from the porch and unlatched the front gate. That's when I heard a loud 'CRACK'

in the trees to the left of the house. I looked over and about 10 meters away was yet another grizzly bear. I re-latched the gate and whisper-yelled for Gareth to come out onto the porch. We stood there in silence as the griz walked right across our yard, not 5 meters from where we were standing. Needless to say, I wound up driving to work that morning.

The final incident occurred a few days ago. Gareth and I decided to get off our lazy bums and go for a run. The trail we wanted to take was closed due to bear activity, so we chose a different route. When we were about 5 minutes from home, I stopped dead in my tracks and said in an annoyed voice (I was/am getting sick and tired of these bears getting in the way!), "A bear." So we grabbed the dog and slowly backed away. The bear turned around and headed into the woods. Just then, another bear came out of the woods about 10 meters closer to us, stood on his hind legs, and snarled. We got the point and backed away much more quickly. After rounding a corner so that we were out of sight, we stopped to figure out our next move. If we went back the way we came, we would end up on a narrow, wooded path near the bears, but we couldn't go straight ahead. Because we had stopped moving, we suddenly realized how terrible the mosquitoes were and that we had forgotten to apply bug spray. Even poor Jake was covered in bugs and making frustrated snorting noises. Twenty minutes later we made it home, but not without seeing the bears again and getting eaten alive, by the bugs. Not to mention, they made Gareth late for work.

Thanks to the gaggle of bears running around, my favorite trails are closed, I can no longer run alone, I have been terribly eaten by bugs and I keep having to change my plans!

Dear bears,

Please stop ruining my plans.

Thanks,

Sara

Vancouver Tomfoolery

The stars aligned last month. Gareth and I had three days off together while one of my best friends was planning to be in Vancouver. As a general rule, we will look for any excuse to drive the 10+ hours to Vancouver, so this one was a no brainer. We took off early Wednesday morning, but not before stopping at the bottle depot to turn our hostel guests' drinking into free gas money for the trip. As per usual, I went crazy around Kamloops and started seeing sqarmots and turbits (translation squirrel-marmots and turtle-rabbits). We made it to town at 7:00 and immediately went to sushi with our friends Thea, Bob and Lawren. It was delicious as always, especially the yam tempura fries and the artichoke/cream cheese/pumpkin seed roll. How I miss Vancouver.

We opted to sleep near the water at the Jericho Beach HI, where we stayed for free...oh the perks of working for the hostel. I woke early the next morning as the frosty July air blasted through the windows, freezing me out of my bed. Refusing to let my hopes for a sunny summer day die, I put on a short skirt, a t-shirt, flip-flops and--sigh--a sweatshirt, and headed to Granville Island for a brewery tour. While I knew that it was Canada Day, I didn't expect such crazy crowds at one of the most popular places in Vancouver. Clearly, I wasn't connecting the dots because Granville Island is busy on an average day, much less a holiday. Wall to wall people, cancelled brewery tours, and ridiculous dog shows be damned, we had a great time. To replace our cancelled brewery tour, we went to a sake distillery where I learned that I really like sake. Who knew? Eventually we got to the Island's highlight, the market. We perused joyfully until we realized that our normal grocery store produce in the mountains is equally as expensive as the delicious, gourmet produce of the Granville Island Market. Chalk one up for moving back to Vancouver.

That night we met up with a bunch of my favorite people for a tasty Greek meal. You know you're with good friends when after a year and a half of not seeing each other the conversation revolves around things like squid feet and grape spoon sweets. After dinner we headed down to Jericho Beach for Canada Day fireworks and general tomfoolery. We quickly realized that we were not on the right beach for watching fireworks, but got to enjoy two different sets from really far away. Then we had a hilarious 'photo shoot' that had us all laughing until we cried.

Our second, and last, morning, Gareth and I cleaned out our storage unit once and for all. Within an hour it was empty and our van was full. The Goodwill happily took our 50 lb suitcase full of rejected stuff, my seriously broken guitar and a stack of 2 year-old, already outdated textbooks. I ended the trip with lunch at Stephos which was the perfect end-cap to a wonderful trip. Lovely friends, hilarious conversation, delicious Greek cuisine...nothing better. It was so sad to say goodbye, but I'm quite confident that Stephos will always we there.

Today's moral: Twenty hours of driving for 36 hours of visiting is 100% worth it.