works of wanderlust

  • un-synced

    I have been particularly terrible at updating this blog over the summer.

    I mean, look. I’ve been doing a crapload of writing… just not here.

    Over the summer I ramped up my niche blog count to three “daily” blogs, including A Blog from Nowhere which has been live for going on a little over 9 months and is my new outlet for creative indulgence writing, kicking my ass into writing more fiction and learning the piano. I’ve also been doing a load of writing on AI over at Of Poets & Processors which is about to hit the one hundred post mark next week. And then in August I added a dedicated running blog called Head Over Feets which is, like the other two, getting fed with a new post every weekday. It’s chewing into a lot of my time.

    Running those three blogs has meant I’ve had to spend a bunch of time on the connective tissue of it all, including building some promotional systems and, too, just last week I launched a storefront to sell ebook anthologies of a bunch of the stuff I write over there, well, because what’s the point of locking it all away in a blog, huh?

    And if you’ve been checking in here wondering why I haven’t written, alas, it’s mostly because I’ve been doing work on those sites AND writing short fiction AND trying to keep my head above water with all the other little projects I’ve got going on.

    The whole fifty walks thing? Yeah, it fell off a cliff when I injured my foot over the summer. We did a big hike in the mountains and I could barely walk for a couple weeks afterwards and by the time I got up the guile to give long walks a try I was so far behind there was no getting to fifty by my deadline. Wind gone from sails, as it were.

    I’ve not abandoned this site, but it’s taken me some time to get into the rhythm needed to keep everything else afloat. Sigh.

    Stay tuned, I suppose.

    I’ll be back with something trivial to write about soon.

  • fifty walks, eleven twelve thirteen

    I haven’t been hitting a good cadence with my walks and I’ve been hitting an even worse cadence reporting on them.

    So far in June I’ve only done three of my 10k strolls, numbers eleven, twelve and thirteen.

    So. A quick recap to catch up and maybe not feel so much of the weight of this effort that is the parts dragging me into the mud.

    Eleven: I set out east from the house with the goal of crossing a stretch of Whitemud Creek trail I’ve never before attempted. I walked through the neighbourhood, over Rabbit Hill to overlook the city, down into the crossing and the new(ish) foot bridge, and then north.  North is a stretch of wilderness between the road at 23rd and the asphalt footpath in the utility corridor. We have never gone this way because there is no clear trail (at least not one that doesn’t emerge into the neighbourhood and cheat on some paved roads). There is a trail, it turns out, but it involved some serious scrambling and a lot of adventuring. I made it, and looped back towards home.

    Twelve: I made the destination on this walk the “something new” as I trekked across the river on the path towards the little neighbourhood across the river. We’ve run by a little shopping complex a hundred times but have never stopped. There was a cute little bakery over there that I figured would be my destination, and it turned out to not only be the perfect distance away for an out and back adventure, but I scored a poppyseed roll to boot.

    Thirteen: It has been raining something fierce this past week. The downpour was so bad they issued a drainage advisory, asking people to limit water usage for showers and laundry to avoid overtaxing the sewers. In a calmer moment I set off in a drizzle from the parking lot of a park across town. The Kid had her first day of summer job orientation at Rundle Park and while I’ve run around that area before I’d never traversed the area around it much. I set off north and did a huge loop up to Hermitage Lake and back along the gravel paths. I got soaked and muddy, but took some interesting pictures.

    All this walking brings me up to thirteen walks and over 144km total… and the realization I need to step it up a little more as summer hits.

  • weekender, ten

    I had done a long walk on Friday midday (see my fifty walks posts) so I was content to crash and watch some television that evening.

    But the weekend got a bit busier. 

    The Kid and I followed Karin over to South Common. She was doing a fitness class over in that part of town, so we killed an hour checking out some of the shopping nearby, wandering through the bookstore and Best Buy before landing at Bulk Barn to buy some baking supplies.

    I spent a chunk of time in the afternoon noodling on the keyboard trying to learn a particular song—it’s going pretty well, but slow for a new learner—while the Kid baked.

    We took the dog for a long walk, too. She needed it. We needed it. It’s been rainy a lot recently.

    That evening Karin and I were out at the symphony. For Christmas (yeah, like six months ago) she had got me tix to the Music of Final Fantasy. The full Symphony Orchestra had brought it to life to a crowd of folks who were probably more comfortable at a comic convention than a concert hall, but it was interesting and complex music and well done.

    Sunday morning, in mixed weather, I started my climb up towards a half marathon. We made the small jump up to a twelve klick run. It rained and it shone and we got some clouds and sun and a rainbow to boot. Twelve feels hard right now tho, so ten weeks until a half marathon is starting to feel the pinch. A few years ago I was running halves for funzies, but it’s been a few, ugh.

    That afternoon I had to finish my potluck contribution. I had hoped just to buy a dip for my bread but that didn’t pan out so I was ingredient shopping instead and then later doing some rushed prep to get a dip made that should have rightly stood overnight. Again, ugh.

    The dish was for our orchestra potluck. One of our members has a huge country barn made up for big events so about thirty of us trekked forty-five minutes out of the city for a quiet party and dinner. We chatted, ate, even played a game, and did the one thing we don’t get to do much while were sitting in our chairs playing instruments every Monday evening: mingle and talk.

  • fifty walks, walk ten

    I really wanted a curry. 

    Thus was the basis of my tenth walk.

    There are a lot of Indian restaurants in town but to do a simple takeaway lunch meal without much fuss I knew I had to head downtown to the place where I used to frequent, oh probably, weekly back when I worked downtown.

    Tacking on a ten klick walk around that was the trickiest part.

    The Route

    I parked at the rec centre just across the river from the downtown core. It’s not busy during the day and I am, after all, an annual pass-holder so I figure I have some claim to be able to use the parking lot for a couple hours. I set off along the riverside paths, down to the (newish) footbridge, over and up into downtown (stopping for my lunch of course) and then wove through the core back over to the legislature grounds and back across the High Level bridge.

    The Effort

    The forecast had been threatening a thunderstorm so I was hoofing it with an eye on the western sky, but it never actually materialized until I was almost back home and safe inside a dry vehicle.

    There was a respectable amount of hill climbing, but nothing horrible, and hey—no hill was going to set me back from a downtown casual stroll.

    In the end I walked 10.8km in 2 hours and 27 minutes, bringing my total up to 110.9km and a little over 28 hours in all.

    The Highlight

    Back when I was working downtown but just as I was exiting that job they had announced a big park project. They were going to turn an eyesore parking lot into a city-block-sized public park. I think it opened recently, and I timing aside it was sorely needed and open enough for me to wander through.

  • fifty walks, walk nine

    I will admit that the Kid seems more eager that I complete this fifty walks challenge than I do these days. I am still pushing forward of course, but she’s been the one to nudge me out the door for the last couple adventures.

    The Route

    On Wednesday she suggested we walk to the bakery.

    It’s not a terrible idea, though out of the context of needed to do loooooooong walks on the regular, the six and half klick distance to get to the bakery would likely discourage many.

    At first I was a little hesitant though not because of the distance. I’ve been trying to do a variety of routes and not, say, just walk the same ten klick lap fifty times. My goal has been that they should all be fairly unique, but due to the limited number of ways to cross the freeway in this part of town walking to the bakery meant walking a fairly similar route my walk number three a few weeks back.

    It was different enough though, so I relented and we set out.

    The Effort

    It is proper late-spring, nearly summer and it’s been unseasonably hot.

    I would tell you that’s due to climate change but you either already know that and probably don’t need reminding—or your head is trapped in some misinformation engine and why the heck are you reading this blog?

    It’s been hot. It was hot when we walked, and the route taking us as it does out across the interchange bridge over the freeway it was a bit noisy for a while too. Not exactly a relaxing stroll for the first three or four klicks.

    But we visited the bakery and then tucked into the neighbourhood and found our way back under the semi-secret under-the-bridge connection across the freeway that the Kid didn’t know existed but now will probably have her exploring the river valley with her friends this summer.

    The poor planning (of a destination rather than a route) left us with a 14.5km total distance in 3 hours and 2 minutes. Yikes. No wonder I was sore the next day. 

    The big news is that all this means that after nine walks I’ve now passed one hundred kms and a little over twenty five hours: a day and a dollar.

    The Highlight

    Again, at the risk of getting all sappy and fatherly, the highlight is walking with the Kid on these. How many dads get to spend the better part of a day with their eighteen year old daughter, and willingly so? Huh?

about

Welcome. I’m one of those weirdos who still writes a personal blog. In fact, I’ve been writing meandering drivel online for decades, and here you’ll find all my recent posts on writing, technology, art, food, adventure, running, travel, and overthinking just about anything and everything …since early 2021.

I write regularly from here in the Canadian Prairies about just about anything that interest me. Enjoy!

There are currently 473,862 words in 614 posts.

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