Climbing rocks and swimming

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A few weeks ago, Baron and I went rock climbing at Joe Rockheads. This marks only the 4th time I’ve attempted this sport. Good friends of ours are hardcore rock climbers and haven recently opened up a gym in Kitchener (www.grandriverrocks.com – check them out, they are awesome). The benefits of the sport are easy to see. It’s an amazing physical work out disguised as fun, which is exactly what I require. It’s also a very supportive community and going at your own pace is highly encouraged.

Like every other sport/physical activity I have tried, I’m not very good at it. I don’t usually have a fear of hieghts when I feel safe (ie. on a balcony, or a roller coaster), but hiking down a mountain, hill or even slight incline can really send me into vertigo. This seems to be fairly new, and rather disappointing. When I was climbing up the walls, I felt this fear, but it made no sense. I was strapped into a harness with a competent person belaying me. Even if I were to fall, I’d just dangle there. In fact, that has happened… and I LIVED! Then why am I so scared? I can’t quite figure it out. It could be the adrenaline going into overdrive.

Whatever it is, I am determined to find out. This is a change of pace for me as I normally shy away from something I find difficult or scary. In my ongoing quest to better myself I’ve decided to take this challenge on. I rock-climbed once in my early 20′s. I loved it like a child. I want to get that back.

This new found desire to attack a problem is a major skill in bouldering, so at the very least I feel I can try to improve in that area.

Something that is helping me stay motivated and positive is my ongoing experience with swimming. I briefly mentioned it a while ago, but to refresh: I had a life-long fear of water that I finally decided to overcome in the fall of 2011 by taking adult swimming lessons. That was a great experience but just the beginning as there was still so much to go. With the help of an amazing friends I am getting there. One of them is Jenn K who used to be an instructor (who taught and enjoyed teaching adults), and the other is Steph M who suggested Jenn teach me swimming an exchange for me teaching her manual photography. It was a brilliant idea, one that I hadn’t pondered on my own. Near the end of December, Jenn would come to my pool every other Monday, with Steph and I aiming to swim every Monday. With holidays and life plans we had to stop before Xmas and resumed near the end of January. I’ve made it about 8 times in total, with about 4 lessons with Jenn and I have made so much progress. I can now complete a lap doing backstroke. I’m improving my front crawl by a lot and hope to be able to complete a lap within the next months. Swimming is the best physical exercise for my asthma. The warmth and humidity of the pool means my lungs never get strained, so I can push myself to my limit. In other exercises I had attempted I found that my asthma was the thing that stopped me, not necessarily my muscles.

It’s so great to overcome a fear, but also great to discover that I can be good at something physical. I wouldn’t say I’m good at swimming yet, but every week I feel a bit better and that confidence helps me continue. I am applying that to other areas of my life and it feels great. I guess this is why kids participate in sports when they are younger. Hrm.

I hope to keep improving my physical abilities, and it feels really good!

Goodnight, Sweet Chomps.

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Our Lionhead rabbit Chompy died on Saturday. She was 7 years old, which seems to be in the upper years for a house rabbit. It came as a shock to us because she was healthy her whole life. In fact just a few months prior our wonderful Vet (Dr. Munn) deemed her to be ultra healthy, so it was very shocking. She and Huey weren’t eating properly and this is not good for rabbits. Their conditions could devolve very quickly. We fed them both critical care (like ensure or boost for rabbits), and Huey got better. Chompy didn’t. We don’t know what she died of… it could have been a heart attack or something massive.

She was unlike herself, not annoyed at being touched. I even brought her to the couch and napped and cuddled with her for quite some time. In hindsight, that should have set off bigger alarm bells than it did. Hindsight is a horrible beast, though. It’s not a great road to let my thoughts go down. We both feel rather guilty… but dwelling won’t make anything better.

I’m surprised by how much I can miss her, especially considering that she wasn’t very affectionate. She didn’t like to cuddle, or be petted. Rabbits are not as interactive as cats and dogs. But we loved her. And we miss her terribly.

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This is from the day we brought her home, back in May of 2006. :)

Of Montreal and winter photography (and Dunnville, too).

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On Family Day weekend I embarked on a road trip with Baron, my good friend (and bridesmaid) Steph, and her boyfriend Chris to Montreal. We got up early on Saturday and hit the road eastbound! It was a good trip. I hadn’t been to Montreal since 2006, and Steph since she was a child. We stayed in a hotel in Old Montreal called LHotel. Chris had been there recently and recommended it.

The dude who created Guess, Georges Marciano, opened this boutique hotel and stashed his private pop art collection. There were tons of Warhols and Litchensteins and more. It was pretty neat to see that in the halls of a hotel.

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We ate poutine, shopped at Simon’s and marvelled at their highly advanced Metro system. I’m not sure how advanced their system actually is, but compared to the TTC it seems much better. There are more than two lines and they have easy to use smart card technology. The future!

One thing that we did that I hadn’t done before was climb Mont Royal. Ok, ‘climb’ isn’t the right term – it’s just a very low incline that we casually walked up for 2 hours. According to The Weather Network it “felt like” -28! Again, compared to Toronto this is vastly different. Though Baron, Steph and I (who all grew up in the Greater Hamilton Area) all recalled the winters of our youths to easily reach those temperatures. We just hadn’t experienced anything like this in recent years.

MY NOSE IS COLD

It was a beautiful walk. I love snow and winter scenery. It was great to see people cross country skiing, mountain biking, walking their dogs and even unicycling down the mountain! I tried to take a few pictures but it was so cold that I didn’t last long. Still, I got a few shots. I tried to take pictures of icicles as they are my favourite thing – but it’s so challenging! Winter in general is challenging what with the large expanses of whiteness.

Here are some shots that I liked.

well she had help

the mountain

ice

Last weekend the Hubs and I went to Dunnville for his brother’s birthday. As usual, visiting the country was very fun. We went to the beach and I was able to get a few more snow shots. It was cloudy so that challenged me even more, but I managed to get a few.

On the road to Myrnam Beach, Dunnville.

Icicle

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One of my favourite images to look at are photographs of the snow. Specifically of the poles. BBC Earth’s Frozen Planet series was my favourite, and I dream of taking exotic snow vacations. I’d like to take more snow pictures for practice, and hopefully I can do so before the winter ends. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to afford the tens of thousands of dollars it would require to go to Churchill, Manitoba, the Arctic Circle, or Antarctica, and I’m going to need some damn fine winter photography skills for that!

You can seem more of my photos at my FLICKR

As a last thought, while we were out for dinner in Montreal, Steph had asked Baron and I what our ‘near future’ travel plans were. Where we would like to go in the next 3 years, roughly. I actually had no real answer, because I hadn’t thought about it! I had been so preoccupied with the big India trip, and now planning for my UK trip, that I couldn’t even imagine anything beyond that. I’ll have used up all my vacation days after UK, and they don’t turn over until September so I have nothing planned for the rest of the summer… and that’s fine since my bank account is going to need the rest as much as my body will. Come September, however, I have no idea! I have my Dream Vacation List, but which one of those do I randomly pick? A lot of our travel choices are based on friends we have in other places and visiting them. There was also this huge itch to travel and I realize in the past few years I’ve been to A LOT of places. So many that the Dream Vacation list seems to be more within reach instead of pure fantasy. Of course most things on that list are huge… but perhaps it’s time to revisit and add a few new locations.

And the rest of India…

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Due to some wonkyness with my web hosting I’ve had great difficulty accessing my blog, which is why I haven’t been updating. Not because I didn’t want to! I’ve also been pretty busy with enjoying myself so I haven’t been trying that hard.

In the last 10 days we have gone to Bangalore to visit family, and to Ooty – a hill station to relax and sight-see. We took train to both destinations and it was great!

Well, minus the cockroaches on the train which totally freaked me out. Even though I shouldn’t be afraid of them, they give me a full case of the heebie jeebies and I’m a huge baby about bugs. That seems to be the theme of India for me. I’ll be rather grossed out by some things like the bugs or the pollution or garbage, and then utterly amazed by things like the tree lined roads of Bangalore or the beautiful hills of Ooty.

Visiting my family in Bangalore is one of my favourite things to do. Since they are a 5-6 hour train ride away from Chennai, I don’t get to see much of them. It never feels like I’ve had enough time. Meeting my cousins wife whom I’d only talked to on the phone was great. Seeing their adorable 6 month old baby was great too. I have a large family but I don’t get to see much of them, so when I do, it’s awesome.

Also, introducing Aaron to my extended family is pretty exciting. I’ll admit that I was a bit nervous at how it would go. Not because of my family or Aaron – they’re all pretty great and accepting people, but it’s still a bit nerve-wracking. It must be overwhelming to be constantly meeting so any new and let’s admit it, important people in a small window of time. He was cool though. He got along swimmingly with everyone.

For those who don’t know Bangalore is kind of the Silicon Valley of India. It’s where all the IT companies have set up off shore, and where many of the call centres are. You can really see this effect on the city. There’s a larger western/metropolitan feel to it. But it’s still very much India. It’s also cooler than Chennai, temperature wise. It’s about as hot, but way less humid and I love that! Getting away to cooler climes helped my stupid heat-rash prone skin immensely.

Immediately after that trip we embarked on another train voyage, this time to Ooty. Ooty is a hill station, which is to say it is a city/area that is on top of a hill. After a night train we had 2 hour car ride up hills that had a whole bunch (between 15 -30, I can’t recall) hair pin bends. The fact that I didn’t vomit all over the place is pretty much a miracle.

All along these hills are beautiful lush forest. And in these beautiful lush forests are monkeys. Millions and millions of monkeys. They hang out near the road because people throw away food scraps and garbage which they love to eat. They are so cute.

Perhaps more than monkeys, Ooty is actually known for its tea plantations. The area is perfect for growing tea and they have many different estates. I got to try some cardamom tea at once factory and it was amazing. I mean, the tea in the rest of India is already amazing, but this was even better. As an aside: to those of you who enjoy drinking “chai lattes” from Starbucks, you should be ashamed of yourselves. ;) .

We enjoyed a few days in Ooty seeing the beautiful sights. It’s also considerably cooler there since it’s high in the hills. This is why I am wearing a hoody in my pictures. I loved that!

We went through a wildlife sanctuary, but unfortunately I didn’t see much. The jeep driver was much too fast, but I did see:

  1. deer
  2. some big deer called a sambar
  3. peacock
  4. wild boar
  5. mongoose

I did see Elephants in the beginning of the area. They were trained elephants. The villagers who live in the sanctuary (yes, for some reason, people live inside of a wild life sanctuary. or a wildlife sanctuary was created including a village. I don’t even understand) train these elephants to keep the other actually wild elephants away from the village. Seems like an interesting tactic. There are tigers and other cats in the sanctuary but I didn’t see them. Still, it was my goal to ensure I saw an elephant before I left, and I saw two. I was even willing to go to a temple that has an elephant to see one.

And yes, some temples have elephants. People train the elephants to ‘bless’ the patrons. You give the elephant an offering of either money or food, and the elephant gently bops you on the head. As you know we have an elephant god and many animals are revered.

After returning from beautiful, delicious and cool Ooty, we spent a few more days in Chennai. My cousins took us to a beach resort for a night and we just took it easy. We ate KFC’s Curry Crunch chicken. It just had curry leaves in the spice mix.

I’ve been back home for a few weeks and I’ve settled into my routine. My trip was fabulous. My husband loved it, and that makes me happy. One thing I’ve been able to keep with me is perspective. Being away from all of life’s perceived stresses and being with my family – immediate, new an old was the kind of stress-reliever I couldn’t buy. Actually, that’s false because I paid $1800 to get there. It was more than worth it.

I’m trying to keep this sense of love, calm and happiness with me daily. It’s working so far.

I have a bunch of plans for continued happiness and fulfillment. I’m taking swimming lessons with a friend. I’m going to be doing more travelling – to the UK to see two amazing friends get married, and also to visit one of my besties from high school. I’m going to Montreal to shove poutine into my face-hole. I’ve signed up for George Brown’s Intro to Cooking course with a co-worker. Things are looking great :)