jacktheblob

aka Gender Identity Crisis Syndrome.

I think I have it.

Why else would I - a girl - be playing in a men's indoor hockey league?

To top it off, there are a total of two guys on my team who show up regularly (and another two sporadically). Otherwise, we's a team 'o gals playin' all dese guy teams.

Needless to say, most of these people have had many more years experience than I, and a lot of coaching and practice. Add those ingredients up and you get: Moi! Reliably the weakest player on the team. Which is usually just fine by me, I still have fun and I like to think I'm improving. I - a defender by trade but a forward by virtue of being low-'man'-on-the-totem - even almost scored a goal last week. And sometimes I'm even in the right place at the right time!

So.

After a crummy game tonight, I hereby console myself with a leisurely read of the following article, courtesy of my coworker:

Best Way To Pay Your Bills EVER

Read it. You won't regret it. And you'd better be giggling by the end.

Thus ends my first post in eons.

Well now that even American Thanksgiving is over, you'd think I would finally post about my own... here goes:

Day 1: Drive out and start with a hike after setting up camp.

There were some cool ice formations on the creek:

Then lochs back at camp and a frigid night huddled next to the fire. Let me assure you, I do not like changing into pj's in a frigid tent up in the mountains in October. The hot water bottle helped warm up the sleeping bag, which was on top of another sleeping bag on top of the thermarest, and under my down comforter, with my long johns, socks, sweats, second pair of sweats, long-sleeved shirt, fleece sweater, scarf, toque and kanga. After waking a few times during the night and readjusting the toque, scarf and kanga around my head, I woke up to a nice ring of ice around my head and a krinkly down comforter. After pulling my clothes into my bag, I got changed as quick as possible and ran out to the roaring fire Dad had built. Oh and the frozen wash basin (yep, rock solid). And the frozen drinking water (yep, rock solid). And there be Dad, setting the plastic milk jug over the fire to try to melt some water while the camp pump also yielded no running water. Oh and also trying to melt the washclothe. An hour or two later, the thermometre in the car tells us it has warmed up to a balmy -12 C. Gotta love it when the pancake batter freezes while you cook it.

With the sun promising to show its face, and the camp warden having determined we had survived the night in tents, we planned our big hike of the day - with the first portion on bikes, followed by however-many-kilometres hike up to a lake in the mountains. After parking the car, prepping the bikes and loading them with our lunch supplies, we headed onwards to the head of the trail. Which was locked, with yellow "Caution: Do Not Enter" tape across it. With a sign indicating which part of the trail was closed due to grizzlies having been spotted feeding on an elk carcass.

"No sweat," says Dad. "This was posted 3 weeks ago, and the part of the trail that's closed just barely touches briefly on the trail we're taking. Let's go. We'll be fine."

After several "Are you sure?"s, we headed down the trail. Not long later, voilà, the first river to be forded. Not very narrow, nor too shallow, nor very un-rocky. Silly Dad tries to ride across. Silly Dad gets maybe one-third of the way across before he ends up walking his bike across. Silly Dad keeps going across and does the same thing coming back the other way.

So. Thankfully, that meant not going on that hike. We turned back, went back to camp for some dry socks and shoes, and headed on a shorter bike-able trail (that seemed to go on forever, I must add) to another creek for our campfire lunch.

A fool's hen:

Building the fire for lunch:

View from our lunch spot:

And one can never forget the after-lunch nap. As the skies cloud over and the wind picks up. Yes.

Back at the camp, it was trying to rain, so we set up our tarp and settled down to a much warmer evening:

The next morning, it wasn't nearly as cold.

After packing up camp, we stopped for a short 2.7 km hike up to a small tarn in the mountains.

Fording the stream:

This is about half-way up - it was dead quiet:

We followed a coyote's tracks most of the way up the trail, whilst other tracks crissed and crossed the way. About 2.5 kms into the 2.7 hike, we lost the trail in the snow, so Dad went looking for it in the clearing we'd come into. Further up the slope, he calls me over to look at this:

So while he kept looking for the trail, I started following the tracks. And lo and behold, voilà - I found the trail:

Apparently our furry friend had also found it. So with only .2 kms left to the tarn (and our lunch!), we sighed and turned around, settling for trail mix until we could find a spot for lunch.

At the end of the trail:

So we ate our lunch at a rest stop at the foot of another mountain and ended the day at home after stopping at Safeway, with a scrumptious asparagus & brussel sprout Thanksgiving dinner.

The end.

If you are one of the sort who likes camping in the cold, you are just plain silly. Don't know if I'll do that again...