works of wanderlust

  • weekender, nine

    Here we are in the last week of May already and summer seems to have arrived.

    The Kid got all four of her wisdom teeth removed on Friday, so that little bit of fun shaped the bulk of our weekend. There’s nothing like mouth surgery to put a damper on the first good weekend of barbecue season.

    I got up early on Saturday to make my way out to Parkrun. I am not exactly a model participant in the weekly free race. This was my sixteenth outing, one of which was at a Tokyo Parkrun last year. They keep meticulous count of participation numbers, and one of the big deals is hitting milestones so that everyone can celebrate.  The first milestone is twenty five races, so at my current rate I should hit that in 2028. Guh. On the other hand, Leon checked off his one hundredth run on Saturday so a bunch of us went out to be there.

    That afternoon the Kid, still sore but medicated, wanted to take the dog for a walk. It was a great day. The sun was up, the sky was clear, and it was shorts weather. We took the pup to the dog park and did one of the side loops out of the neighbourhood entrance, slow and easy because (a) it was warm and (b) she was still only twenty-four hours post surgery. Yeah, it’s dental surgery, but still… four teeth!

    That evening we went for sushi. She was still struggling with getting food down, but picking apart some rolls and a hot bowl of miso soup was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe. We didn’t specifically ask him.

    Sunday morning we did the regular long run. One of the reasons I often bail on Parkrun is that running a race-ish run like Parkrun and then going out for our long main training run of the week less than twenty-four hours later is tough.  We did ten klicks, lots of it trails, and yeah… it was tough.

    I spent most of the afternoon puttering around the yard.  The garden is doing well, and of course  I decided to tackle a big ol project in ripping out a bunch of dog-peed dead grass and replacing the sod. I’m going to post this and go buy the sod, but the old grass is removed and ready for new lawn.

    I chilled in the sun for a while and enjoyed a few minutes of relaxing time, but then we were true to the weather and fired up the barbecue for steaks. Can’t pass up those opportunities when they arise, can we?

  • fifty walks, walk eight

    I was so tired after my week up north that I struggled through the first week at home, napping daily, going to bed early, and fighting to get in my regularly scheduled runs without slumping into a ditch somewhere. Little doubt that I never made it out for a long walk.

    The Route

    The Kid remedied that and, knowing that I’ve been working on this challenge, suggested we go—and she come with me.  We drove down to the parking lot of Fort Edmonton, an historical attraction in the river valley and not-yet-open for the season… so it’s parking lot was basically empty.  It’s a common staging area for a lot of river valley walks because it in this convenient location next to the freeway and is a kind of intersection for a lot of south-west valley trails. In other words, there were a lot of other cars there doing the same thing as us.

    We walked along the south shore of the river, up in the direction of the University, took a bunch of photos of the view and then dropped back down towards the big newly-re-opened park. Around here I calculated we were going to be about klick short if we kept along our looping path so I suggested we stroll up along the park’s perimeter path for a bit to both check out the renovations that have had the park closed for three years and also tack on some distance.

    We looped back and crossed the footbridge and strolled for a couple klicks through the dog park—of great joy to the dog, who yes, was tagging along for the full ten klicks like a trooper.

    Then it was up and back across the traffic bridge and back to the fort. 

    The Effort

    The route had some hills and some stairs but I think what really kicked in was the heat. It wasn’t hot, per se, but I left the house with a jacket and was carrying it within ten minutes. A bit of a shame and I’m gonna need to plan to tough out the early chill in upcoming walks and assume I’ll be warm enough—better than carrying a coat the whole way.

    All in all we tracked 10.2km in 2:30 precisely. This brings me up to 86.6km total in about twenty-two hours of effort.  This is getting serious.

    The Highlight

    I don’t know why the big park is a particularly snaky place, but I frequently have seen garter snakes slithering off the path when I run or walk there. This walk quickly became a bit of a snake-seeing tour. Even the dog jumped a foot in the air when the stick she thought she was investigating turned out to be a two-foot long garter snake and zipped out from under her nose.

    Garter snakes are pretty harmless, be maybe a little bit of a risk for a small, tired puppy, but the snake wasn’t interested in even a more balanced fight.  

    That said, we’re not much of a snake place, so while were used to seeing lots of birds and beavers and chittering squirrels, to this point in the year I’d seen more moose than snakes—so its modestly memorable that way.

    Oh, and having the Kid pushing me to meet my goals is starting to make me feel like turning fifty might be more than a milestone, too. Sigh.

  • fifty walks, walk seven

    I’ve been working some long days up in the Peace Country doing census work.  I have been out on the road for as much as twelve hours each day, lots of driving, and then coming back to the hotel to do paperwork. It’ll be some good honest money when I’m done, but man am I tired.

    Except on Friday I finished early. 

    I wasn’t done, but I had hit this natural stopping point and only had enough work that I would be definitely done in one more day, but not done Friday night if I kept going. It makes sense, but it also was a kind of “tonight would be a good night for an evening off” kind of opportunity.

    So I drove back to Peace River from my delivery zone and slipped on my shoes and went for a walk.

    The Route

    Peace River is a town in a river valley. I am staying in a hotel at the top of the hill. Downtown (and the river, obviously) are in the valley. I set off with the plan of having my supper downtown.

    I found a little trail leading a winding path down to the bridge (which had a footbridge suspended underneath, luckily). There are three bridges in Peace River: one is a train bridge, one is under refurbishment and closed to everything and everyone, and one is a modern road bridge with a suspended pedestrian trail. They are lined up three side by side and if you want to cross the river in any other way you’re gonna need a boat.

    The Effort

    I walked 10.65km in 2:19. The hill down was nice. The climb back to my hotel after dinner was scenic, but exhausting. 

    If I’m counting right that puts me at 76.4 km in about nineteen and half hours of walking, right? I’ll double check that before I post, perhaps. It’s been a long week up here.

    The Highlight

    It’s an odd sort of coincidence that about a year ago the Peace Country tourism instagram account started following me. I followed back, doubting that I would have ever had a real excuse to drive six hours to get up here. In other words, I’ve been seeing pictures of this place in my feed for nearly a year now—and then suddenly I was here, and walking around in it.

    I’ve been out in the countryside handing out census cards all week, doing some work to help keep the wheels of our democracy turning. I’ve seen a lot of the place, logging literal thousands of klicks in my little rental car, much of it on backcountry roads and long stretches of open highway.

    I like walking through places, tho. It is not only grounding, but the pace of it makes it so much more real—particularly when all one really knows about it is from photos and social media feeds.

    Now it’s etched into my fifty walks list forever.

  • fifty walks, walk six

    I spent the whole week doing census work up North and about mid week my prescribed route landed me in a town I’d heard about but had never thought I would visit, let alone knock on every single door: Eaglesham.

    If you’re googling the name of your town and come across this post then yeah: I’m the guy who got a temporary government gig to earn some good cash  and it landed me in your town delivering census documents. 

    The Route

    Again, I didn’t really track this one as I normally would one of my walks (or runs) because, well, privacy. I was walking up and down every street, knocking on every door, trying to locate someone to whom I could hand a census paper.

    In the cities and larger towns the census came by mail. My mail comes to my house. My home specifically has a mailing address. If you send a letter addressed to my street address it will find me. But up north (and in a lot of rural communities) most folks it seems just have a PO box. And the difference is that the mail is then addressed to the person and not the home. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s different enough that it matters for the census. And guys like me need to go to each home and hand out those census cards by hand. 

    But it matters, and you were counted, and now the government can account for the things your little town needs.

    The Effort

    I walked through Eaglesham for about five hours all told, a lot slower than my walk through Watino a couple days earlier, and if my watch is telling me the truth—and I subtract the lunch break I took in my car—I can guess I probably traveled about 11km in that town in 4:30.

    This brings my walking total up to 65.75km in around seventeen hours on the roads and paths of my wanderings.

    The Highlight

    Karin’s aunt was a teacher in Eaglesham for years. Along the way I had a conversation with another (current) teacher just outside the elementary school and he knew of her—called her “an institution in this place”— and shook my hand. Small towns are tight knit communities, for better and for worse, and I experienced the gamut in that little place. I can never give you specifics, but my day in that little town delivering whatever little fragment of democracy that the census plays was definitely an adventure walk.

  • fifty walks, walk five

    Let’s call this one the Watino Waltz.

    I’ve had a lot of time behind the wheel of a car this week contemplating why I’m up in the nothern parts of the province, but it comes down to democracy. Every few years the government does some serious work that helps turn the wheels of our democracy, and lots of people are needed to help out. I raised my hand this time round and now I find myself five hundred klicks from home driving—and occasionally walking—as I hand out census cards on behalf of the federal government up north where mail delivery is not as robust.

    On my first day, the route had me starting in a little summer community of about twenty five homes.

    The Route

    I didn’t track my walk on GPS as I normally would another of these fifty walks but instead was relying on the data—which is respectably accurate—from the pedometer built into my watch.

    I didn’t track it because I was walking door to door, knocking and talking, and over the course of about three and a half hours had walked the entire village a few times and noted that my watch had crossed over the ten klick mark.

    The Effort

    Obviously it was not my fasted route, nor did it have but a few tiny slopes barely worth the mention, but I was working and wandering and stopping frequently to log my visits to each home.

    I’m calling it a 10.1km walk in 3:30 and every footstep of it was somewhere I’d never been before that day. If that doesn’t count as an adventure, I don’t know what would. 

    This brings my total up to 54.75km in about thirteen hours.

    The Highlight

    Of course, I met all variety of people out there in Watino. Maybe someday someone will get this post in a search and wonder why the heck someone is writing about their little community. I was the guy that brought you your census in 2026. I tried as hard as I could to find you and to count you for the census even though most of you were not there or were really hard to locate, and I enjoyed your little community for that cloudy morning in May as I walked and walked and walked through the streets.

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!

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