Under Updation

Fellow Coop'ers, you may notice that this blog looks slightly different.  I spent a bit of time yesterday reloading the html template used for this blog because there have been some problems with posting and commenting among some members.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong, so when in doubt, reload! 

I also took the opportunity to clean things up a bit as is periodically necessary.  Nothing major; slight aesthetic change, deleted a few dead links and blog listings that haven't been active for 6 months or more, and made things a little friendlier for browsing on mobile devices and Apple products that don't use Flash. 

Oh, and I added a column to the right that includes our blogger profiles, so feel free to change or update yours if you wish now that it's more prominent. 

Bike Safety Video

Great. Now I'm scared to go ride my bike...

Should Usain Bolt have received a 2nd chance?

Well this is interesting...for those who didn't catch it on the weekend, Usain Bolt was disqualified from the 100m final World Championship race for false starting.  Some dude in the video below insists that Bolt was actually drawn off the line by Yohan Blake who was beside him and flinched while in the set position.

Do you see a flinch?  If so, do you think it's responsible for Bolt's false start?  I can't say I'm convinced there's anything particularly startling here, and I don't think the vlogger is helping himself with his enthusiasm and clear bias towards Bolt, but I'm willing to grant that there's some room for debate.  Any thoughts Dean?  Or anyone else?

Oh, and for the record the rule in questions doesn't refer to "flinching' per se, it reads as follows:

"After the command 'On your marks' or 'Set,' if an athlete disturbs other athletes in the race through sound or otherwise, the Starter shall abort the start."

So I suppose the real question is whether or not Blake "disturbed" Bolt.

Full posting containing video here.

Well we didn't find the wind we were after when we took the surf ski to the Beach on Tuesday evening (though we returned home to 50 km/h gusts all night) but it was still a good evening to do a bit of paddling, so we filmed a bit of it anyway.

Dogtooth Lake Canoe Trip

Well.....we didn't accomplish all of our goals this year but our family canoe trip was not going to be missed. Just like my fellow Coop member we also had issues with our destination due to backcountry restrictions in Nopiming Provincial Park.

Undaunted, we kept looking for an alternate route and found one at Rushing River Provincial Park in Ontario. Dogtooth Lake was the setting for for a perfect 5 day canoe trip with family and friends. My college roomate, Paul and his wife, Basia came out from Calgary just for the trip. Not only were Paul and Basia great fun on the trip but they took some amazing pictures.

We had a bit of a late start on our first day and ended up camping in a blueberry patch.....when the sun starts going down.....you need to find a place to camp....especially with a 4 and a 5 year old. But that site gave us the beautiful sunset above. So, all in all, not so bad! Our second day started with our declaration that we were going to find a nice level camp site for that night. When we came upon the island camp site we were waiting for, we were sad to see that site was already taken. But as we were scouting out another blueberry patch a pair of fellow paddlers caught up to us an offered to share their site with us. We took them up on their offer and had a wonderful evening with a father son team from Manitoba.

We were lucky enough to have this site for two nights. On the third day we found a nice beach to have a shore lunch (tough to find in the Canadian Shield).

Long story short.....

No rain, very few bugs, warm weather, clear skies, refreshing water, great company and a load of memories.

On our drive back home Kara and I were talkig about trying to get other Coop'ers out for our next trip. So...expect an e-mail or phone call! I will end with a few more pics. Enjoy.....we did!

More pics after the jump...

Paddling tonight, sorta, not kinda really like this...

GoPro HD: Kayak Kiss with Ben Brown - TV Commercial - You in HD from GoPro on Vimeo.

It's supposed to be 30+ C well into the evening with winds 30km/h and gusting from the west tonight, so it looks like it's time to get wet at the beach. I'm picking Deanna up after work and we're heading out from there. Hope to get some footage for the next workout video.

I've never tried to adapt paddling footage to a workout video before, but hopefully there will be some waves and we can make it a little bit exciting. Not as exciting as what you see above, but still...

Paddling La Salle

Well it turned out to be a great little paddling session, but not without its frustration leading up to launching the boats.  We originally planned to do a longer paddle from Patricia Beach to near the south basin on Lake Winnipeg where there's an almost untouched oasis of sandy beach.  Unfortunately due to extreme travel restrictions in parts of Manitoba right now related to forest fire conditions we were not allowed to paddle south of the Provincial Park.  Well, technically we could paddle to our destination but we couldn't set foot on the beach without risking a $500 fine (each), which I suppose is only reasonable considering the likelihood that upon reaching the beach we'd spontaneously combust into such an inferno that the sand itself would be engulfed in flames and....actually even if that were to happen I'm not sure what harm would come to the environment, but whatever.

So the next plan was to bring out my kayak / surf ski hybrid to get more comfortable using it with the thought that I might employ it during next year's Pain in the Assiniboine.  We thought that Fort Whyte Alive might be a nice, calm place to play with the boat so we packed things up and headed there, only to be told upon arrival that personal boats are only allowed on their water on Tues and Thurs evenings, and that we should have checked their website for details.  Evidently the previous times that I've taken my boat there I was ignorant of the rules, and as they say ignorance is bliss.  I can't figure out the purpose of the rule, and upon returning home and checking their website I'm not convinced that that is in fact a rule (the site talks about Tues and Thurs evening being 'open' paddles where retail outfitters bring their boats to try out, or you can bring your own boats to play with, but there's no mention that personal boats aren't allowed at other times).  If what we were told is indeed accurate we have almost no use for our membership because we've used it almost exclusively to paddle there, and only being allowed to bring our own boats (who wants to use rentals when you have your own?) two nights a week is too restrictive.  Big disappointment.

Anyway, the boats were on top of the Jeep by this point and we weren't going to take them off until we got to some water, so we headed to the La Salle River.  I know the La Salle is a common local paddling destination but I've never been there, in part because the Assiniboine is pretty much out our back door, but it was a great discovery.  Nice and calm, convenient launch, and other friendly paddlers to meet along the way.

Below is a brief (less than 2 minutes) video of the outing.  I've yet to figure out how to make flat water paddling videos interesting, so for now the solution is to keep them brief, and to add idiosyncratic music.

Falcon Trails video

Every month I put together a new video for the Manitoba Blue Cross fitness classes I lead.  I've experimented with a few formats and at the moment I'm splitting the class into 25 minutes of cardio using the video and 25 minutes of strength training done after we make it through the video.

This month I'm using footage taken from the 24 Hours of Falcon Trails so I figured I'd YouTube the video and post it here in case anyone wanted to reflect on a hot July weekend.  Enjoy.

Making it out of the deep end...

Maybe she can teach me how to swim 3 laps of the bulkhead well enough before I turn 62 that I'll be allowed to jump off the diving board in the deep end:

Diane Nyad attempts to swim 103 miles from Havana to Florida Keys

24 hours divided by 3 (and again by 2) / Paddling Trip

24 Hours of Falcon Trails

I never did get around to typing a recap of the 24 biking event a couple of weekends ago, so here's the super-abbreviated version:

Totally bonked on 1st lap (I'm assuming mostly because of the heat, though that's not really an excuse considering how many others did relatively well in spite of it), took a break, did another lap, took another break, x 5 over the span of 8 hours.  By that point saddle sores got the best of me and I was done.  Felt kinda like a failure, but still enjoyed my time and thought afterwards that if I wasn't targetting at least 12 laps I'd be happy with riding for 4 to 5 hours in the blazing hot on somewhat technical terrain.  Tom's accomodations and hospitality were excellent and so was the race organization.

Tomorrow's paddling trip:

Deanna and I made it a goal early in the year to paddle from home to Selkirk in the spring.  As it turned out the spring flooding prompted a boat ban on the water, but we're ready to go tomorrow.  Actually we're going to go as far as Lockport, about 15 km shy of Selkirk, because it's easier for my parent's to meet us there and help us get home (also, it means we can eat guilt free burgers at the Half Moon).  I did the trip from home to Patricia Beach (about double the distance) a couple of years back and Deanna wanted to join me someday, but frankly the 2nd half of the trip is pretty darn boring so we're essentially doing the 1st half.  We'll TwitPic as we paddle beginning early tomorrow.

Bike Lane Laws Enforced

I could paste the translation and backstory, but I think you'll get the message from the video without it. I had never before considered moving to Lithuania, but who knows?...