Waiting for the bread to be done.

So I decided to dig out the old bread-maker that has sat in the cupboard since we moved into the house five years ago. After a quick trip into town to buy yeast and shortening I was ready to measure out the ingredients into the baking pan, insert it into the bread maker and press the start bottom , I know the lazy way but at least it will be fresh !!!! I'm making an Italian herbed bread with basil, thyme and marjoram in it , it smells good but I still have to wait another hour before its ready, so I can't tell you how it tastes , no picture either !! I'll let you know in the next post how it turned out.


This was a week of recovering from a nasty cold , I almost didn't make it to work last Sunday and it took all my strength to finish the day, the rest of the week was a slow recovery and that recovery was mainly thanks to all the drugs Evelyn kept pumping into me !!!

And today was the first day back to the exercise regime as I did no skiing or spinning during the week. It snowed most of the morning so there was a thick carpet of fresh snow to break through and boy was that work !!! . We were out for about two hours going around the outer perimeter of the farm, it was fun , I managed to stay on my skis this time !!! and it was Evelyn's turn to take a couple of small tumbles !! 
By the time we got back I was soaked from the inside out with sweat, I'm going to have to learn to dress better !!!
Here are some pictures of our outing  

Out of control on the down hill !!!!

Oops !!!

Puppies to the rescue !!!

New Years Resolutions

Evelyn and I together with Monique and Jurgen brining in the New  Year ay Hogan's Inn

Funny how we govern so much of our lives by two symbolic dates, our birthday and the 1st of January, milestones they seem, suggestive of endings and beginnings, and in our mind we adhere to there power quite willingly even though truthfully they are just empty landmarks, just another day of the year !!! 

I have never been one to make resolutions on New Years, never saw a point to it but this year for a change I have made some, and I find it a bit hard to actually define what they are but here we go :

The easy one , and the one I have actually started is that I want to get back into biking, it’s just good for me , keeps my mind clear and body fit , so the ride on New Years Day was the first step, spin classes that I have started are a second step to prepare for spring riding, and the 3rd step is to find a tour to do this year, nothing like last year !! just a week long outing somewhere , the planing, preparation and training will definitely do me good !!! and give me some purpose , something quite lacking at the moment. 

The next resolution is more convoluted and kind of hard to put to words. It seems that over the years I have warped myself up in layers of camouflage to the extent that at times I am not really sure who I am. 

So my next resolution is to start to unwrap myself and see who I find . 

Together with that I want to return to living the simple life of enjoying life !!!, I got a taste of it last year and liked it, unfortunately the last two and a half months of the year were tough on me and I got lost, summers end, short days and working alone didn't help, my mind drifted my body fell apart and I found myself in a state of depression seeing just the negative in life instead of the positive. 

So little by little I’m going to get back to taking the time to smell the flowers, I am going to have to try and set my priorities right, find some purpose in being, set some goals, all of this without unbalancing the simple easy approach to living I am trying to embrace. Life is to short to waste it !!!, I was reminded of it’s frailty this last New Years by someone very dear to me who in a heartbeat was fighting the battle of her life and luckily won, there really is no rhyme or reason for the beginning and ending of our life's, both usually quite beyond our control, all the more reason for living to it’s outmost the best you can !!!. 

Stepping out of this state of limbo I find myself in will take time but it’s a great New Years Resolution I think !!!!

And in keeping with the intent of revitalizing myself and getting out of my self imposed winter hibernation , cross country skis have been bought !!! and used !!! 

Last Saturday Evelyn and I headed up to Barrie to the new MEC store and made the purchase. Late in the day we arrived home with shiny new Salomon skis , Rossignol boots and a bag full of waxes, scrapes, etc ...On the kitchen table I, very non-professionally proceeded to apply a coat of grip wax to the bottom of the skis, an interesting operation !!!, then we dawned ski pants and stuffed our feet into the new boots heading out to preform what seemed like a clumsy mating dance with our skis attempting to attach ourselves to them , finally with boots firmly planted in bindings we headed out to the race track as the sun started to set and had a wonderful three lap inaugural outing , Evelyn managing to stay on her feet for it all , me taking a small spill and surviving uninjured !!! Definitely going to have to meet up with Bob for some instruction on technique !!! and maintenance. 

Starting early this year !!!

Just 24 hours after yesterdays picture and see how much snow has melted !!!!

For the first time since the Tour I managed to put in back to back ridding days . Today once again mild 9 degrees by the bike thermometer and rain so I dawned may rain pants , they were the only piece of clothing I carried all the way across the country and did not use last year , happily they worked like a charm and I had dry legs throwout my ride !!!.
Today I headed into the Marsh looking for flatter ground and even with the rain it was a pleasant ride , they way back a bit chalanging against the wind. Unlike yesterday I saw no other bikers on the road but then again there was not much of anything on the road after a night of partying brining in the New Year .
42 km today , mostly flat stuff with a bit of climbing , legs were better then yesterday which is amazing considering we were dancing till around 1 AM bringing in the New Year and had only 5 hours of sleep !!!.
This will probably be it for ridding till March now as the weather returns to normal tomorrow with temperature below 0 and snow predicted for latter in the week , so spinning will have to do till then.

Unfortunately the work to move the canals continues unabated , I understand the why, but I still don't like it , by the end of the year there will be no more riding by the waters edge and I love seeing the water right there with it's wildlife , oh well , nothing stays the same !!

View of canal from the bridge on Graham Side Rd looking north along Pumphouse Road , this is still untouched

View of the canal from the same bridge looking south , trees cut and shredded in preparation to move the canal. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Way back in March with snow on the ground I started riding training for my across Canada trip, from that a amazing summer developed with many miles at my back, and after a bit of a hiatus over the fall I am once again itching to ride. So today taking advantage of the unseasonal 9 degrees out there I carried the bike back out of the basement and after about an hour of preparations mainly trying to find all my biking stuff I hit the road for a very pleasant 25 km ride over the hills of King City. I wanted to do more but my legs disagreed letting me know they had not peddled at all for the last two months . Tomorrow 11 degrees predicted , perhaps I'll ride again !!!

December 31st , last ride of the year !!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL, MAY 2011 BE A GREAT YEAR AND BRING HAPPINESS, HEALTH AND WEALTH TOGETHER WITH MANY ENJOYABLE MILES OF BIKING !!!!

Signing off till January

Well not much going on around here, no hiking this weekend or last as Evelyn's and my days off did not coincide, and now with X-mas season in full swing we may not get out that much .
Today I gave in to the fact that winter is here waking to a covering of snow outside, so I put the bikes away in the basement and the long wait till March starts , I'll probably start spin classes again as they helped immensely this spring.
So Merry Christmas to all and my 2011 bring happiness, good health, and nice biking weather !!! to you all.
I'll be back sometime in January

Pups attacked by coyotes !!!

Pups attacked by coyotes !!!

So a sensationalistic headline attracts the attention but is very misleading, it’s the way of our media now a days sadly. In this day and age of one line communication this is all that would be read and believed . The proper headline should be something like:

“Pups and coyotes tussle again”  

Ok so you are by now wondering what happened, well last Friday morning I left home at 7 AM for my short walk to work, the pups as usual noses to the ground were back and forth smelling all the past nights activities, heckles up and barking at nothingness, well to me nothing to them a whole other story !!!

As usual they stay outside busy in there reclaiming of the farm while I go into the barn, hang Biasca’s hay-net up and grab the two weanlings to turn them out, 10 minutes tops go by from walking into the barn, and just as I start towards the door the nuisance barking changes to very serious frantic howling followed quickly by horrible agonizing yelping. I can’t let the weanling go, no time to get them back into there stalls so I ask them to run out with me and they luckily do, and there right outside the barn door under the big pine tree their is commotion, yelping and barking, by then I am yelling at the top of my voice for the pups to come as I think they are in a fight with the neighbors dog. Much to my surprise two big beautiful coyotes pop out from under the tree and walk away from me, my heart sinks, more rustling, yelping and a third coyote pops out and then Brinks finally runs over to me , Montana by now over at the house barking like mad, me not very sure were the coyotes are as the tree is in the way and the weanlings not wanting to go any further, a very frustrating situation to be in !!! It takes a lot of coaxing to get Montana to come but she finally does and we all head to the paddock to turn the weanlings out so that I can get a handle on the situation as I can see blood on Brinx and I have no idea where the coyotes are, all the while the pups growling and barking running around wanting to go after the coyotes !!!! 

The end result is two holes in Brinx one on the shoulder and on between his shoulder blades, scrapes were the teeth did not puncture the skin on his butt and flank and the name tag on his collar almost bent in two obviously from a tooth, he was a very lucky dog !!!, Montana had not marks on her. 

As to how this all came about I can only speculate, it could be that the pups ran down to the river on smelling the coyotes and got chased back, or the coyotes were going by the barn as they often do and it was wrong time wrong place for the pups , who knows ??. I don’t think the coyotes were hunting the pups because being three of them it would have been no contest and they would have left with at least one of the pups. 

 I am not one to shed blame on the coyotes, even though this is the second time there  has been an incident, the last one involving Montana was much more serious with a lot more injuries some life threatening and a $1,500 dollar vet bill. There is nothing premeditated or vicious about there attacks, they aren't even attacks, coyotes are coyotes, they hunt small animals for food, it’s just a survival thing for them and the pups happen to be small animals and that’s all there is to it. 

It would pain me immensely to loose a pup but it would also pain me to see harm come to the coyotes, therefore we exist in this not so wild wilderness each of us hanging on to our way of living for the most part avoiding conflict for the most part going on with our own lives letting the other be. 

Brinx is doing very well, the tooth holes are closed up, antibiotics and aspirin helping the healing and I have to give a special thanks to Jessica for coming up looking after him. 

Saturday we decided to forgo our hiking trip as we didn't know how much Brinx would want to do, instead we went for a drive around looking at houses, we have been thinking it’s time to take the leap and purchase a place of our own so we are starting to educate ourselves with what is out there. The drive was interesting taking us to all kinds of places we have never been within striking distance. I find it amazing that I have lived around here for over twenty years and I am still discovering new places.

After a couple of hours wanting to let the dogs out to do there business I made a short detour to what I call “ The Bradford Forest “ , Dave first took me there mountain biking years ago, lots of fast single track weaving its way through pine trees, lots of fun !!! the only negative is that it is a bit noisy since it’s right beside the 400. They also hold weekly  mountain bike races there during the summer on Wednesday nights. The pups were wanting to go so we headed of for a short hike, right away spotting a bunch of wild turkeys so we quickly leashed the pups and ended up having a nice ( cold ) hike. On leaving I spotted the sign with the forest’s proper name “ Hudson Tract “ of the Simcoe County Forests. Once home I looked up the Simcoe Forests and found a whole bunch of them scattered north west of us to north of Barrie, a lot of hiking and biking opportunities to be had in the future !!!!

Bummed out

I find myself bummed out , I had booked a trip to Cuba with Evelyn , Lisa and Max , a nice family vacation,  and had to cancel because of conflicts at work.

As a young man I had always thought that working hard and sacrificing to get ahead would reap rewards later in life , and while it has in some ways in other it has made me a slave of my work and it disturbs me.  

It was a good week till then , beautiful autumn weather all week and Saturday I finally got the road bike out !!!!, long overdue it was !!. It actually felt kind strange sitting on the 520 which is weird since I spent two and a half months sitting on it this summer . 

I waited for the frost to lift and around 10 I headed out towards the Marsh all bundled up as it was only 7 degrees !!!, I came to the first hill and my suspicions were confirmed , I am out of shape !!!, I was huffing buy the time I got to the top !!!!. Sadly at my age conditioning disappears quickly , my body has forgotten it rode across the country and it’s like I’m starting form scratch again , my own fault for not riding sooner !!!

It did turn out to be a very enjoyable ride , I mainly doodled around the Marsh checking out the work done on the South Canal that now no longer runs beside the road , instead there is a stretch of dirt that eventually will become a berm ( hopefully with grass and trees to replace the beautiful willows that once lined the canal ). 

And I discovered that the unusual building I watched go up this spring is a winery !!!, “ Holland Marsh Wineries “ reads the sign in front of it. Closed and deserted now , can’t wait till they open to go a savor some of there product as I ride by next year !!! , it has the potential to becoming a favorite stop !!!

My ride lasted for just over two hours and I covered 41.7 km , by the time I got home it had warmed to 12 degrees . Now I’m left with the want for more but it’s impossible to get out after work now with the time change as the sun is already setting around 5 PM. Oh well, maybe next Saturday and if not I’ll have to go back to the Gym for spin classes !!!!, at least I’ll be in shape once March rolls around and I can get back on the road. 

Self portrait on my ride 

The top of Pumphouse Rd, the last time I was here was with my fellow TdC riders way back in August. 

 

The Canal moved away from the road with the start of a berm.

The only part of the South Canal left untouched , I loved riding so close to the water !!!

The evolution of the Marsh, a winery , could be very interesting !!!!

 After getting home Evelyn and I continued on our goal of hiking all 17 Tracts of the York Regional Forest , after a stop at Tim Horton’s for a much needed coffee and donut we went to the Bendor & Graves Tract on Kennedy Rd just north of Davis Drive . We found it to be a very pleasant forest , the dogs loved it and except for the fact that I stepped in dog pop as I was leaving ( smelly ride home in the car ) it was a great hike.

Hiking on the Bendor & Graves Tract of the York Regional Forest

Big old pine 

Re comments :

Andy , great to hear from you !!!. It was a long way we rode!!!, and we did it km after km !!!, and like you I find some people that don’t understand it , but thats ok , we understand !!!.