Update

While I haven't gone on any trips or adventures since my Ha Ling climb a few weeks ago, these past couple weeks have still brought some excitement with them. Firstly, as of a couple weeks ago I am now good and healthy again, and back to training full time, which I am very happy about. I had a 4 hour rollerski the other day and it was lots of fun. I skied most of it with my teammates Joey, Terrell, Bob and Lucas, and we explored some of the trails in Canmore that I have never seen before, so that was quite fun. And we located a playground which I intend on revisiting before the snow arrives, as it looked like a very enjoyable playground :).

And the big news of these past couple weeks would be that my roommate Bob and I have finally found a new place to live in town! So we will be moving into a 2 bedroom second floor apartment on Oct. 2nd, and we are thrilled. No more biking up mountains with groceries!! It also means that I will be no more than a 10 minute walk from my work, and probably about a 15 minute walk from the grocery store. Big thanks to Gord and Rhonda Jewett for offering this place to us, as it was beginning to look like we might be spending the winter in CODA!

In other news, I will be headed to Lake Louise this Sunday to begin my next training camp with the team. While this camp is a shorter one, only lasting 5 days, assuming my training plan doesn't change, I will be completing almost 22 hours of training in those 5 days, so I am very excited about it. And the cool thing about this camp is that we will not be driving to or from Lake Louise. Instead, we will be training. So on Sunday, we will get up in the morning here in Canmore, jump on our road bikes and ride to Lake Louise (we plan on it taking 3 hours). And then we'll have a little break, and then do a 2 hour rollerski in the afternoon once we are there. So 5 hours in day 1, always a great start to a training camp!

After this camp, I will arrive back in Canmore sometime Thursday afternoon, and then all day Friday will be spent moving into our new place, as well as packing what I need for my trip home. And the next day, the team is doing a running race in Calgary, so while I know I will be completely exhausted, I am still very excited about that. Then Saturday night it looks like both Bob and I will stay in Calgary, and then I'll be flying home on that Sunday night. It's going to be a very busy week! And I can't wait!

That's all for now! Cheers!

Ha Ling Descent video is finally up!!!

After lots of trying and failing to get our video up somewhere online for everyone to see, Bob has finally managed to load it on youtube! Follow this link to check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m86zXusj5qk

My Canmore Map

So it was brought to my attention that the last picture from my Ha Ling Climb album doesn't make a lot of sense without a bit of legend, so here it is...

Red arrow - Safeway, where I do all my grocery shopping

Blue arrow - Black Rock, my work

Brown arrow - Canmore Nordic Centre

Green arrow - My house

And that is my map of Canmore. I figured this would help everyone get a feel for where I live (although it all looks flat, so that part's a little deceiving).

Ha Ling Climb

So as I mentioned in my last post, yesterday morning Bob and I decided to go for a hike up the Mountain in front of my house called Ha Ling. We weren't really sure what to expect, as we had never been up there before, but we knew it was going to be quite the adventure. And it did not disappoint.

We left the house around 7:45am to begin the hike to up to the start of the trail which we were told led straight to the top. After probably a little under an hour, we broke out of the tree line after doing switchback after switchback, and we could see the top (it was still very far away, but we could see it). And as much fun as walking up a cleared trail was, we figured it would be way more exciting to make our own trail and just hike straight up instead of winding our way on the trail. And with the combination of the loose rocks and incredible steepness, it was quite the adrenaline rush to say the least.

After about 30 minutes of climbing through the loose rocks on our hands and feet, we reached the top. It was so sudden, neither of us could believe it. I just walked up to a big rock and peeked over to see what I thought would be a flat surface before the cliff. But to my surprise, that rock was actually the start of the cliff. I can't begin to describe how beautiful and "unreal" if you will, the view is from up there. I was firing pictures left, right and centre, trying to get as many as I could to hopefully help everyone reading this to get a feel for just how incredible it was. From the top we could see all of Canmore just sitting right in front of us, to our left we could see the snow covered mountains on the other side of Banff, and if we looked towards Calgary, we could actually see some of the towers from the city. Being 110km away, that was truly spectacular.

After taking pretty much all the pictures we could from Ha Ling, we decided it was still early enough that we had time to hike back down a little bit and then back up the peak next to it. I'm not sure what this one is called, but it was very cool, and definately tested my fear of heights (I won't get into details). So we sat down at the top of that one and ate lunch, then began our journey back down the mountain. We definately had some fun with this, taking videos of ourselves attempting to run as fast as we could down the mountain, while still being in control of course. Bob has those videos, and we're currently working on editting them and they should be up on our facebook pages in the next few days.

So that was our Ha Ling climb experience in a nutshell, another one of Bob and Jordan's great adventures. I have put most of my pictures up in a new album on picasa, so if you're interested feel free to follow the link below. Take care everyone!

Ha Ling Hike

27 Days!

I couldn't think of a title for this one, as it is just an update of the past week. The 27 days is in reference to the number of days before I come home for my Thanksgiving visit, which I am very excited about.

So anyway, this past week has definately had it's ups and downs. It started off last Monday when I woke up and realized that I was sick. It's just a cold, but it has still prohibited me from training all week, which was very upsetting. However, looking on the bright side, it allowed me to take some time to relax a little bit early in the week, and it also allowed me to work 40 hours in 6 days. While this might not have been a big help to my sickness, it means a nice pay cheque :) . And it also took my mind off the fact that I was sick, so that was a little extra bonus. And I seem to be getting better, slowly but surely, as now my only real symptoms are congestion and my senses of taste and smell are coming and going. And my energy levels seem to be getting back to normal, so I plan on doing my first bit of training tonight, that being an easy strength workout. So we'll see how that goes.

While being sick was the definate down side to last week, Jeremy, a good friend from back home, spent all last week driving across the country to go to his new school. And with Canmore being right on the way, he was able to stop in for a little visit on Sunday to recharge before starting the last long drive to his new school. Jeremy showed up at my house around 9:30am on Sunday morning, and unfortunately I had to work 10am-5pm, but he managed to keep himself occupied for the day by going for what was, by the sounds of things, quite the hike. So Sunday night we kind of just roamed around town looking for something to do, and after spending a bit of time at the HOE (Canmore Hotel) playing pool and waiting for the band to start, we decided to just come back to my place and go to bed, as we were all pretty tired. Jeremy left the next morning around 9am to finish off his long journey to BC.

I don't know if it was just the fact that he brought me some of my own stuff from back home (just kidding), but despite the fact that we didn't do anything overly exciting, it was really good to see him again (more so than I thought it would be that is). I got to hear all about the adventures that he had had over the past week with all of his travels, and I don't know, I guess just the fact that we both new what the other was going through/had gone through with leaving home for the first time and going to a new place... I have no idea, kinda just making stuff up now, but I had a great time hanging out with him again and look forward to his return in a couple weeks. All the best in BC Jeremy!!!

So, that's about all that really happened last week. Got sick, worked a lot, saw Jeremy, getting better now... yep I think that's it. Bob (my roommate) and I are planning to hike up to the top of the mountain in front of my house on Friday, so if that actually works out I should hopefully get some good shots of the whole area and I'll post them when we get back down. That's all for now, thanks for reading!!