Adventuring with Herbert Putkey

Chris and I had a great time at the 2009 Ride to Conquer Cancer.

At the end of day 1, Chris and I had this to say:

On day 2, we were caught in a horrid, freak hail storm:

View our pictures!

As one of our training rides, we went to Fort Langley and cycled to Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and back. (Map)

You’d think that the cycling would be a highlight, but Brad wanted to take pictures of roadkill.

As we made our way through the farmland, we were told to “Geeett ‘Eeerrr Dooone!”, saw a lot of Sunday morning church services, had ice cream and picked a fight with a driver (well, I, Theresa, picked a fight - he was too close to my beloved!).

See our entire bike ride, including Brad floating on air (watch for it!).

Chris and I have lived in the South Slope of Burnaby for six years. I decided I wanted to live on one of two streets: Clinton or Portland. And on those two streets, I only wanted to live on two specific blocks. Why? Because they were pretty and they were still a 10 minute walk to the skytrain. As for the names, I liked Clinton because I thought he was a good president and I’m all for Hillary. Portland because my best friend grew up in Portland, OR. I figured both streets had good juju for me.

We looked around at houses casually for several years, stepping up our efforts to “a bit more than casual” in the last six months. Our townhouse landscaping was so nice in the spring and our interior was well done, so it was easy to continue to live there and difficult to buy a fixer-upper.

We had a specific price range, specific two blocks, wanted a south facing back yard. Good luck finding it! In our price range we saw a lot of junk, stuff that made me so made that someone else wanted me to give them how-much-money-for-that-piece-of-sh**? As a consumer, I felt disrespected (yeah, it was a tough search). Chris made me stay focused on the 10 minute walk to the skytrain because we have one car and don’t want another. He drives to work, but I’m a regular transit user.

We finally found a house on the street we wanted with a south facing backyard. The upstairs had been nicely renovated and the downstairs was still unfinished. An unfinished basement was good because we had seen a lot of finished ones with terrible workmanship and we didn’t want to pay for that only to have to tear it out later. When I walked into the house, I knew I wanted to buy it. I kept my mouth shut until we left and I said to Chris and the realtor in a whisper, “I think we should buy this house.”

We made an offer and they countered at what we thought was too high, so we didn’t counter. We waited two weeks, made the same offer, their counter was better, so we countered and they countered and we accepted. After that ensued one of the busiest work and personal times for both me and Chris.

Since we were soooo busy, we had to put Chris’ parents to work. We enslaved them at very little cost to ourselves, barely fed and watered them, and forced them to do back-to-back late night and early morning shifts. I comfort myself with the fact that they liked it.

In the end, we managed to move.

From tofino

For Theresa’s birthday, I booked a room at the Clayoquot Field Station near Tofino. I had read about it in a magazine as a place where researchers stayed. It was in the Tofino Botanical gardens, but was essentially a hostel. We had the “Teacher’s Room”, which was quite nice, although the walls were quite thin. They had the shorebird festival, so we went birding at 7am, and again at 4pm. We also went to a slide show by an expert birder. It was cold and wet, but still interesting.

From tofino

Back to NY for another 2 week trip. This one straddled the Easter weekend, which I wasn’t too happy about. Our company keeps a bike at the hotel we stay at, so I managed to get in a couple of rides on the Bethpage Park bike path  The path is quite nice through a forest and around a couple of small lakes, and is entirely separated from the road. On the second day, I did the same path, but biked from the hotel instead of driving there, which added about half an hour each way.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/873605/best_bike_trails_around_long_island.html

From new_york_april_09

I also went in to Manhattan on the Saturday. Unfortunately the weather was cold and wet. I went in to the Natural History Museum, which was interesting, but packed with people.

First bike ride of the year for Sharon and Dad. We went over the Lions Gate bridge and into Stanley park. It was a bit cold, but nice and sunny for most of the ride. The dark clouds came in and it actually started snowing right at the end. Fortunately we were inside with our hot chocolate when the heavy snow started falling.

From bikeRide_march8_2009

Theresa and I had our first “long” ride. We had to go to Granville Island, so we biked there on Saturday. The weather was cold, but dry and even a bit sunny. The ride was 40km, and took about 2.5 hours (of riding time). It’s quite a bit slower going through the city with all the stopping and starting, but we were both pretty tired by the time we got home.
I mapped out the route on bikely:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Round-trip-to-Granville-Island

Well now I’ve done it. Just signed up today to raise $2500 and ride from Vancouver to Seattle (over 200km). So, that’s about $2400 more than I’ve ever raised before, and about 150km further than I’ve ever ridden in a weekend. Shouldn’t be a problem!

So far I’ve created my personal web page on their site - I think the rest should take care of itself.

Theresa is doing the ride as well, and a couple of friends from Ultimate (Brad and Kalan). We’re trying to get organized to raise our money and do a bit of training together, so hopefully we can all come up with our minimum donation by June.

We went to visit our friends Brian and Marie in Sechelt for some good times. They met us at the ferry on Friday night at Gibson’s, and took us for a good dinner…except Theresa had already gone for dinner.

Saturday started with what will forever be known as the epic pancake duel of 2009 between Brian and Marie - i think we all know who won. (One batch was thrown away, another one should have been). With fuel in our bellies we set out to see the Skookumchuck rapids caused by the tide. We drove up to Egmont and hiked in the 4km. Unfortunately it was only a medium tide, which wasn’t much to see. The hike was still good, though. At night Brian and I started a fire using tried and true boy scout methods.

On Sunday Brian gave Theresa and I a tour of the area in the boat, before our ferry ride home. We’re looking forward to going back in the summer, and maybe doing some kayaking and camping in the inlets.

See the pictures here.

Theresa had a Conference in Palm Springs, so I tagged along. The hotel hosting the conference was pretty fancy (valet parking only!) so i tried to take advantage of that. I arrived on Thursday, and went to see The Living Desert. It’s basically a zoo dedicated to the flora and fauna of the deserts of the world. They had animals such as Giraffes and Zebras. It also had a 5 mile hiking trail, which I did part of.

See the pictures on picasa.