If, hypothetically speaking, your bike broke down (chain fell off) 10 km from your house, what would you do?

a) call your husband, who is 40 km away playing disc golf and force him to come pick you up
b) walk your bike home
c) call a cab
d) take public transit
e) phone a friend

If you are as stubborn as me, you probably chose ‘b’ like I did. I just left work yesterday and I’m trying to bike all week as part of the University of Calgary’s commuter challenge. Turned one corner and the chain just snapped. I called Jeff but I didn’t have a chain tool, so there wasn’t much I could do. Next thing I know, a dude pulls over and pulls a sign out of his car “bike race in progress”. I ask him if he knows of a bike shop around and he tells me he’s a bike mechanic, but unfortunately doesn’t have his chain tool. He tells me ther are 70 bikers showing up for a race sot he chances are that somebody will have one. I head down the street to the race and another very friendly guy spends about 20 minutes trying to fix my chain but now dice. it is screwed. I weigh my options and decide to start walking and come up with a plan en route. Finally I just decide it’s easiest to just walk my bike home. Took me about an hour but I managed to get home just in time for my soccer game (no goals scored as I was pretty whipped form my 10km walk). It was a really nice walk actually as the weather was amazing and I stopped along the way for a Gatorade and a chocolate bar. My only complaint was there wasn’t enough downhill sections to coast along. Also, would have been nice to have my orthodics as my bike shoes aren’t the best for long distance walking.

After travelling for 15 hours yesterday, we finally made it to Raleigh. The trip so far:

-we got our bags! Nice teamwork Air Canada and United. That is twice in a row that Air Canada has impressed me (lost our luggage on way to Quebec City in February but they made up for it with a $200 cheque after writing them a nasty letter).

-Got to see Phoenix and Chicago by plane. Layovers in both cities. Chicago makes sense. Phoenix did not make sense: why travel west when you want to go east? Started off in mountain time zone, then to pacific, central and finally eastern. We covered them all yesterday.

-Tyler Hansbrough from the UNC Tar Heels was on our flight. He is tall!

-Was in the air for 8 hours. Left a bit of a larger carbon footprint than expected.

Just had a breakfast meeting and now Jeff and I are off to enjoy our day in Raleigh. Going to hit up the UNC disc golf course this morning in Chapel Hill. Might have to bring along a sweater as it’s a chilly day here 22 degrees and overcast

Spent the entire long weekend digging trenches. It was definitely worth it. We now have very shwanky underground sprinklers installed. I huge thanks to the entire Kowalchuk-Dron family for the advise, and hours upon hours of manual labour.

The layout and engineering that goes into sprinklers is pretty cool and Jeff and I learned a lot. Especially with 5 different zones installed.

Luckily the weather held out. We got gorgeous weather on Saturday and Sunday. The weather was freakishly hot for the weekend (crap before and crap after). We have had a combo of freezing rain/ice/snow/wind/rain since. This (winter) weather is making putting the yard back together difficult. I’m sure our neighbours love what we’ve done to the place. It doesn’t quite this bad, but here are some pictures of the work in progress:

Foreman Paul

Trench along side of house

We were afraid that the pipes might freeze, so we have lightly laid sod over the pipes but still have to some of the trenches with dirt and sod. We hope to get it done before heading off to North Carolina next week. We are off to NC for a work conference and then heading to SC to Myrtle Beach for a weekend of sun and surf. The absolute highlight is that we managed to get hockey playoff tickets so are seeing game 4 of Pens (Sidney Crosby!) vs. Hurricanes!

Busy week coming up with a 30th bday party planned for Friday and the arrival of my mom and grandma on Saturday.

In other news, scored 2 goals last night in soccer. Then played goal for the second half and let in 4, so had a deficit of 2 goals at the end of the night.

Went to see the Killers concert two Sundays ago in Calgary. They were fantastic and I recommend seeing them if you get the chance. I forced Jeff into going with me since we were getting off a plane from Vancouver and had to bust down to the Saddledome after landing. It would have been way more complicated to bring someone else so he came along against his will. He ended up really liking the show and was so glad he came. Our seats were super crappy but it was funny since we were 7 seats away from Mauri and 17 seats away from Scott…what are the chances with 11, 000 people in the Saddledome that we would all be in the same row? The sound in the Saddledome was brutal at the start but got better as it went on. How unfortunate since they were bang on with pitch and the only reason it wasn’t perfect was the acoustics. It was an all ages show and it’s interesting to see how the times have changed. On the slow songs all the young ones pull out their cell phones and wave them around. Cellphones, the new lighter.

In other news, life is slowly returning to normal. Funding proposal at work got submitted on time (with an hour to spare even!). Now I’m just playing catch up from all the work that got tossed by the weigh-side for the last two weeks (at work and at home). How convenient that a) our dishwasher decided to break b) inlaws are coming for the weekend and I can’t really see the spare bed because of the laundry. I guess they should just be lucky that we haven’t had to resort to piling dishes up in their room yet. Yet….. c) I don’t give a crap about all the stuff I have to do. I’m taking Friday afternoon off to go golfing!!!

Jeff and I got a golf gift certificate to a really nice course in Kananaskis for our wedding and plan to use it this summer now that we have all this spare time not spent playing ultimate. We are booked for August 14th so we have till then to get decent (by we, I mean me). We got out golfing last weekend at Highland Park (really cheap – $12 but you get what you pay for…greens? I’ve played on smoother ultimate fields) and my ball was drawn to every fairway but the one I should be using. We’re off to Cochrane this week to give it another shot, literally. Might as well get out and enjoy the spring rates!

I decided to reduce the ultimate load this summer to enjoy some other activities. I joined a women’s soccer league in my community and we had our first game tonight. I’ve dabbled in soccer before so know a little bit about the game, but I’m definitely not used to using my feet instead of my hands.

Got off to a bit of shaky start. Showed up late-ish since the second period was wrapping up on the Canuck’s game…(plus ulti always starts late so surely all sports must do the same…apparently not the case)–YEAH CANUCKS. Got home just in time to see them win in OT and sweep the Blues in 4!!! Got to the game, threw on my shin pads, socks and cleats and kicked the ball around for a minute or so. Felt pretty good, until I got on the field. I must have had at least 3 kicks where I completely missed the ball….how embarrassing. Swung my leg and zero contact with nothing but air!

Second half was much better. I managed to play almost every position on the field but keeper. With 5 minutes left (scoreless so far), I was playing left forward, got around the D and passed for an assist!!!! Luckily the person that I passed to was more competent with the ball and her legs than myself and kicked it perfectly in. Was pretty stoked and am excited for the next game. Maybe I’ll show up a bit earlier and do a better job of warming up.

Having some issues with soccer, coming from ultimate. Find there’s a lot of standing around so I chase the ball and catch myself out of position. Just doesn’t make sense to me to stand around waiting. I guess me swarming the ball along with everyone else is not very helpful but at least I was getting some exercise!

Finally now that Spring has decided to arrive here in Calgary, we managed to get out for our first bike ride of the season. For the most part it was clear but there were some snow covered areas. 1-2 inches of snow is doable on a bike but over 5 is slightly more challenging and boarding on dangerous (ask Jeff). Biking in snow is a lot like sand, for all of you who that have gone biking in Moab.

Should be a great biking season. Bikes are tuned up and ready to go. They say it’s like riding a bike but I really have forgotten everything since last year. Can’t wait till the city cleans the gravel so we can start biking to work. I guess I’ll cut them some slack though since they are busy delivering recycling bins.

Happy Easter!

Yes, you read this correctly. Christmas in January? We had our staff Christmas party on Friday afternoon. Our original party was scheduled for December but was snowed out so we postponed until now. We spent Friday playing mini-Olympics at Shank’s North. We broke into teams and played bowling, mini-golf, Daytona racing and pool. Super fun times. I would recommend this for a stag or stagette. Perfect for a little healthy competition among friends.

My team made the podium, but didn’t come first. I found this strange as 3/5 of my teammates came first overall in one of the sports and one of the guys on my team finished as the top male overall. I guess with these sort of stats we must have shone at times and not so much at others. I really think pool was our downfall. I blame the lack of beer at this point. Who seriously plays pool sober? Afterwards a few of us headed back to our place for some fresh fruit maragarits and guitar hero.

On Saturday morning we had our second annual Garage Hack party. We started this tradition last year after we took up hacky sack after our fall league ultimate games. In the winter we missed it, so we had a hack party in our garage. Last year Jeff made omlets for everyone but this year we had waffles. Great work on breakfast Jeff thanks to the fun crew with the hack skillz:

The whole crew hacking

Nice focus Terri!

Weekend summary: guitar hero, Shank’s, hacky sack, disc golf, coffee, margaritas, squash, Superbowl party, Rock Band, ultimate. All the makings of a great (but a tad tiring) weekend!

If you recall from last year, it’s that time again for Ice Bowl! Ice Bowl is a disc golf tournament that goes on all across North America to raise money for various charities.

It starts at 10am on Saturday, Feb. 21 at the Parkland disc golf course (Park 96). You can get all the details and pre-register on the Alberta Disc Golf website. If you are a woman disc golfer in Calgary I recommend you come out. WOMEN PLAY FOR FREE! Also, I’m looking to defend my title and it’d be great to have some competition. It would be awkward engraving my name on a trophy if I played against myself and won. It also gives you a chance to play the private Calgary course if you haven’t already. Proceeds go to a great cause and they have some fantastic prizes.

Hope to see you there!

Went to the Best of Banff Film Fest (BFF, not to be confused with Best Friends Forever) last night. For the past 28 years in Calgary they’ve taken the best films from the BFF and made a couple of shortened programs. Each program is around 2.5 hours so with intermission and stories about the films it makes for a very nice evening. A big group of us went last night and then went for drinks after. I really didn’t realize how late it was when we got out of the films (11pm) and it started at 7:30. I saw program “A” and it was incredible.

The first film was done by Ryan Leetch (aka my boyfriend), and he was as amazing as always. He’s a trials mountain biker. You can check out his stuff here:

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The film featured 2 riders along with Ryan, and they were also quite good.

The next film was an animation on orgami. I’m not usually one for the short animations as they tend to be really off the wall and too strange for me. This is the first short animation I really enjoyed.

Film 3 was on base jumping. What crazy f’ers. Seriously who does that? It followed the life story of 3 base jumpers and their journey to the Heavenly Pit in China. I felt nauseate just watching them. It was a good flick but I think I enjoyed the base jumping movie about Karina Hollekim “20 seconds of joy” last year a bit more. Maybe it was because that was my first real introduction to it so it was novel.

There were some cool movies in the middle of the program (rock climbing, avalanche safety) but the best film was the last one. Twist ending….the travelers did not accomplish what they set out to do and it was still entertaining. Two brits attempting to climb Patagonia and they failed and spent 4 days in a snow cave. They were characters and full of personality making it a great flick.

Maybe one of these years I will make it out to Banff to see the full program. If it comes to a city near you, I highly recommend going.

I guess lots of people must care about us as we’ve been hearing non-stop lately about how bad it is that we haven’t put our winter tires on. Sure, we’ve had a ton of snow in Calgary this year (for Calgary that is), and it’s been icy but to be fair, Jeff and I managed to stay in and work from home and avoid the roads. There was a period a few weeks back where we literally didn’t step foot outside for 5 days.

My biggest worry in Calgary is not how our car will react (especially with Jeff driving and we have all season tires that are pretty good), but what the other morons are up to. I swear people get in their cars after work and turn their brains off. We are constantly avoiding getting hit and no matter how good our tires are, they will do very little if someone forgets to check their blind spot or rear-ends us while talking on their cell phone.

You’ll all be glad to know that we finally got our winter tires on yesterday. Even the guy who changed them lectured us. Now how long do we keep them on to make it worthwhile? I’m thinking till at least August