Wednesday's Ride

On Wednesday morning we had to take Cathy back to the airport.  She was heading back home to Ontario, after being out here for a week to visit with our mother in the hospital.

We took our bikes along, and after dumping her out on the curb in the front of the departure terminal, we headed back over to Lulu Island, which is better known as Richmond.  This time we decided to start our ride in a different spot, so we were just across the river channel from Vancouver International Airport.

We were riding along the top of the dyke.  Richmond is on island in the Fraser River Delta.  To keep all that expensive real estate dry, there is a dyke around it. We hadn't been cycling long before we rode by the Olympic speed skating oval.  It has now been turned into a gigantic fitness center. 

The first part of the ride was heading straight into the wind.  When we got to the point, we stopped and watched three planes take off, about the time that Cathy's flight was due to depart.  She didn't stick her arm out of the window and wave, so we weren't sure which was her's.

It was right about this time that the camera batteries went dead, and of course I had forgotten to bring extras with me.  After we turned the corner, and were heading south, the wind was blowing at us from the side, which was much better than head on.  The map had made it look like we would be riding right along the ocean, but there was a wide expanse of salt marsh or something, a lot of green grass of some sort between us and the sea.  

We made it into Steveston, which is a real fishing village.  The little town is all cutesy and touristy.  Even the McDonald's was made to blend in with all the other little shops.  I splurged and spent $1.49 on four AA batteries, so managed to get a few more pictures before the camera started to tell me again that the batteries were low.  You get what you pay for.  I did manage to squeeze a few more shots out of the camera, but it was a bit frustrating.

The point by the village is a park, with what they call a kite field.  It was fascinating watching two guys on three wheeled carts racing back and forth across the field, using the power of the wind on their 'kite's, which were like mini parachutes.

Garry Point kite field

It was really interesting looking at all the houses built just inside the dyke.  In other spots where the slough wasn't so tame looking, people had used all the available space and made really interesting gardens on the bank going down to the water.

I had never seen so many turtles in one spot.  There were a few of these platforms for them to get out and sun themselves.

On the first half of the ride, Larry pointed out that we were riding past a barb wire fence.  Up to that point it had been just open to the grass and driftwood.   Way out near the water we saw a herd of cattle.  On the ride back, they were all running towards the dyke.  There was a little hanky panky going on.  These cattle are Belted Galloways.  Apparently they do really well on this type of grazing.

The wind was still howling, so near the end we took the option of riding through the Terra Nova conservation area.  It was nice and sheltered in the trees.  When we turned the corner at the point, the wind was actually at our back, which sure made the last part of the ride kind of nice.

We rode about 13 miles.  It was all flat, which sounds good, but most of it was gravel, and it was all buffeted by a strong wind.  While 'flat' sounds good, the only downfall is that you have to pedal ALL the time.  No resting the legs on the downhill parts.  Here's the map.

The orange line is what we rode this week, and the red line is what we rode last week.

Next week I think we are going to pick something closer to home.

More Bike Riding

When I was in Walmart, like I mentioned in the last post, I just happened to pass by the bike section.  I had thought about getting a bigger, more padded seat.  So I was checking out all the options, and me being me, had to weigh the cheaper options against the more expensive ones.  Anyway, I bit the bullet and went for the most expensive option.  You probably can't read that oval label.  It says 'With ergonomic relief channel for advanced comfort'.  So I got to thinking.....what exactly does that mean?  The more I thought about it, the funnier it got.  So I've decided that you can pee while you are riding along, and it will just flow through the seat and be left behind.  You've gotta be riding fast enough so that your feet don't get splashed though.  Isn't that what they mean by relief?

On Wednesday we had to pick my sister up from the airport in Vancouver, well actually it's in Richmond.  Richmond is flat, built on a river delta, and has some good bike trails.  So since I was going that way to pick up Cathy, why not take our bikes along and make it our weekly bike trip.  Her plane arrived at 1:40, so if we left home at 10 am, that would give us an hour to get there, two and a half hours to ride or sit or whatever, and time to get to the airport.  Well mostly because of me, we left half an hour late. I had rolled up some pants that I wanted to take along just in case the sun didn't come out, and then I couldn't figure out where I had left them/put them down, whatever.  Come to think of it, I still haven't seen them.  They are here at home somewhere.

So we get about half an hour from home, and it suddenly dawns on my that I've forgotten to bring along a set of keys for my mum's car.  We were going to pick Cathy up and then take her to my mum's place.  She was going to use my mum's car to go see her at the hospital, drive out to our place later, etc.  So I phoned home, where David was.  He's been fighting a bad bout of mono and strep throat since last week.  Anyway, he felt well enough to drive, so he found the keys where I had left them on the dining room table, and met us partway.  So now we had just lost another 45 minutes of riding time.

We get to Richmond, and exit the freeway right after the Massey Tunnel, at the tourist info.  We park there, and head off on a little side road that crosses the freeway and we work our way down to the river and ride along the roads and pathways, heading to the village of Steveston.   It was 12:25 when we got on our bikes.

When we were about halfway through our time, we stopped for a drink and a bite to eat.  The weather was perfect, sunny, but a nice breeze.  Okay, maybe the breeze was too nice.  Seemed like we were battling a wind both coming and going.  

Why does it always seem like that?  We were sure the wind would be at our backs on the return journey.

We rode through two really nice dog off leash areas.

See that guy just to the right of Larry's shoulder.  It was an older fellow, sat on his walker, 'chucking' a ball for his german short haired pointer.

There were some funny looking dogs there. 

Kind of blurry, but that's what you get when you are cycling along at a decent speed on gravel, and are facing sideways with the camera, trying to get a photo and not fall off.

It could quite easily have been a photo of the grass coming up to meet me.

Here's another off-leash park.  The guy in front is wearing a fluorescent vest that says 'Please Recycle' on the back, and has bags of bottles.

There's a narrow slough not far from the start, that has the most fascinating group of shacks, shanties and boats.

Needless to say, the plane landed early, and we were late getting to the airport as it was.

Since we are taking Cathy back to the airport next Wednesday, we might take our bikes again and go for a longer ride AFTER we've been to the airport.

The jury's still out as to whether that seat was $33 more comfortable.

And no, I didn't try out the relief channel.

Elated and then Deflated

The other day I was in Walmart.  It's not a place I go in regularly, but they have (and now it's 'had') a small fabric department. They used to sell this heat reflective liner stuff that I put in the tea cosies I make.  Their price was really good, even better than when my regular fabric store has a half price sale.  Lo and behold, the fabric department, where there had to actually be a real live person to cut the fabric for you, has now become a pre-packaged, serve yourself department.  There wasn't a package of the stuff I was looking for to be found.

Among other things, what I did bring home was a big kid's ball for Luna.  One of those large beach balls.  Since the plants take a beating when she gets charging around with her soccer ball, I thought maybe a beachball, which was much lighter than the soccer ball, might fit the bill for the summer.

Luna thought it was pretty great, and started pushing it around right away.  My theory about it being easier on the plants went out of the window pretty quickly.  That light beach ball ended up in places the soccer ball never got to, and the damage was worse.

Elated!

And now deflated:(

One tired dog though!

Spring Runoff

We took the dogs down to the dyke the other evening.   The creek is really high.  It runs into the Fraser River, and I guess the Fraser is running high also, and is backing up into the creek. We went to our usual waterhole, but the whole creek really is a water hole now.  The creek here is probably at least 5 feet higher than normal, and the water really isn't flowing.  Great swimming conditions for the dogs though:)

Th ducks weren't too happy with us being there. 

The sunset was pretty nice though.

Updates

Exercise - My walking program is going great.  Have missed the odd morning, but usually I walk at speed, 2 to 4 miles.  Even the four miles is seeming much easier now.  I usually throw a little bit of running in there, but it's mostly walking as fast as I can go.  I look forward to going, and so do Jake and Luna.  Bonus, I've lost a pound or two, even though my eating habits right now are pretty bad.

My mum - Unfortunately she is not showing much sign of improvement.  On Wednesday she was transferred to a different hospital wing where they really concentrate on the physiotherapy aspect.  Right now they are mostly working on her good side, trying to bring that back up to strength.  Laying in bed for two weeks, especially for the elderly, doesn't do much to keep up your muscle tone.  I'm hoping that the physio will also bring some strength and movement back to her left side.  It would be nice if she had enough control of that left side to at least get around with the use of a walker.  The visiting is hard.  It's a 1 1/2 hour round trip from here to her room and back.  A couple of hours visit and then a quick stop at her house,  and four hours have passed.  I've been going Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, and Sun.  I'm not going out Wed. and Meredith has gone the last couple of Saturdays.  Just a really busy time of the year right now.  My sister is coming out next Wed for a week.  I'll let her take over most of the visiting for that week.  Maybe I can get a bit caught up with the planting and weeding.

Nationals - A few people wondered why I wasn't going to the Agility Nationals, considering Jake's top placing in his division.  Mostly because it isn't important enough to me, and I don't take it seriously enough.  I really love doing agility, but when it comes down to it, I don't love it enough to travel all that way.  I wouldn't fly with Jake.  He'd find that extremely traumatic.  I'd want to make a holiday of it.  That would mean taking the truck and trailer and all three dogs and Larry too:)  That would mean missing three weekends of farmers markets.  That loss of income, plus the cost of gas and other expenses, I figure it would cost us about $5000.  Sorry, there are a lot nicer places than Ontario that I'd chose to go for that amount of money:)  Three weeks away from here, and the flowers and vegetables would be in one heck of a mess, and that would be more money lost.  I'll just settle for taking one weekend off and running both dogs in our club's regular trial.
Next year though, Nationals are apparently on Vancouver Island.  That's just a hop, skip and a jump across the Salish Sea from here (and a healthy dose of ferry fares).  Lets hope the dogs qualify next year!

Bike Riding

I'd suggested that we take this afternoon off.  Thinking that I'd get the two marmalades and a jelly that I'd planned on making today, done by lunch time.  Yeah right, it was nearly three o'clock by the time we left.  Because at that time I'm feeling a bit guilty because we aren't taking the dogs for a walk, but are leaving them at home, I end up taking them up to the old riding ring and playing ball to get them all tired out, so they'd be quite happy to go in the house and do nothing until we got back.

Maybe it was just as well we were late leaving, because it did actually rain, (really, rain, who'd a thought...?) just after lunch. 

We drove into Abbotsford and were going to ride the Discovery Trail.  We rode the first part of it a year or two ago, but this time we were going to ride the next section that hadn't yet been built the first time we rode it.  So we parked on Gladwin Rd, under the transmission lines, and set off.  The first part was all down hill, with some interesting little switch backs so that you couldn't get going too fast.  If you got going too fast and couldn't brake enough to make the tight corner, well it would have got real interesting and real ugly, real fast.  The trail is all paved (hmm, is that an oxymoron?), except for where it crosses a swampy area, and is a boardwalk.

After crossing the Abbotsford Mission Hwy, the trail starts uphill.  In a few places the trail  dumped you back out at the road, with no indication of where to pick it up again.  We just kept riding in the right direction, and always found it.  I managed to embarrass myself in front of the motoring public.  We had ridden across the road, and I decided to go up over a curb to the raised pavement behind it.  Figured I could just sort of jump the bike onto it.  Being old and well, being old, my timing wasn't quite right.  I pulled up on the handlebars an instant too soon, and the bike was coming back down as I hit the curb.  I managed to not totally fall off, but there was a bit of scrambling to keep my nose off the pavement.  Maybe one or two drivers had a funny story to tell at the supper table last night.

We passed the most interesting looking garden.  I'm guessing it is a community garden, but I'd like to check it out more sometime.

Once the uphill started, it didn't take long to start shedding layers.  Larry got rid of his jacket.

We were under the transmission lines the whole time.  

Maybe we were getting a free electrical boost to get up the hill. 

Nice fencing.  Yep, our tax dollars paid for all that.

Here we are at our end spot.  The trail continued on, and was heading quickly downhill, following Whatcom Rd down the mountain.  We decided we didn't want to go downhill, and then have to turn around and come right back up again.

Lots of uphill riding had got us really warmed up.

On a clear day, Mt. Baker would be in the distance.  That flat land is Sumas Prairie.  It used to be a lake.

It was pretty peaceful riding through this part.

The boardwalk.  The start of the last hill back up to the truck.

Just on the other side of that low part between the two hills in the distance is where the photo of the two of us was taken.

It was fun.  Hope we aren't suffering for it tomorrow.

Regional Wrap-up

Funny, I went into last weekend with no real thoughts about how I wanted to do with Jake and Luna, other than us not making fools of ourselves.  At the end of Saturday,  I knew Jake was in a decent position, after having three clean runs, but didn't bother to check what his score was at the end of the day.  I did happen to walk past the table displaying the aggregate results on Sunday morning, so thought I'd take a look.

Holy Cow, he was in first place in his group!

Here's Jake's Jumpers run on Saturday.  He had one little spin when he thought I was going a different direction.

  Dogs are broken down into groups according to their height.  You do have the option of dropping a dog down a height level from what they would regularly jump. Jake measures just a hair over the cut off for the 22" jump height. That means he has to jump 26", which is 5" over  the 21" plus that he measures at the top of his shoulders.  I did compete him at that height for the first three years, and then to make it easier on his body, I dropped him from 26" Regular to what is called 22" Specials.  (Just in case anyone is wondering what the 'Specials' meant on his trophy).

After he got a clean round in Sunday's Standard run, I started to think about the possibilities of finishing near the top.  While he was running his Standard round, it was pouring rain.  I was a little worried about him slipping on the wet grass, so ran him cautiously, and probably called out 'easy' as many times as I called an obstacle name.  Not that it made a lot of difference to his time, but I just wanted to remind him to think about what he was doing and not to go hell bent for leather.  His safety was more important than a brilliant round.

It wasn't really raining when his Jumpers round came up, but the grass was still very wet.  Another clean round!  By this time word seemed to have got out to people that I knew that Jake was in contention for the top placing in his group.  They were coming up and telling me.  Jeff (Pippin's owner) was joking that I was so far ahead that I didn't even need to go in the last class.  I was starting to get a little excited:)  What I really wanted was to get the gamble in the last class, to make it 6 for 6 clean runs.  Despite getting 50 points in the opening, the gamble wasn't meant to be.  I didn't really handle that part properly at all.  (The Gamble is when you stand behind the line of tape and send your dog through a set of obstacles in the required order)  Completing the gamble would have given us an extra 35 points.  Despite that, overall Jake finished 53 points ahead of the next dog!  Of course I didn't know that at the time, but had to wait until the results were announced.

Jake's Gamblers run on Sunday.  Nice opening (he gets double points for doing some of the obstacles if I can stay behind the line).  I totally messed up after the buzzer went and we tried to the final gamble.

Anyone that read last years posts about Regionals and Nationals might recall that Jake had issues with the dogwalk.  He would start up the plank, and before he got to the top, he would jump off the side.  This went on repeatedly until I finally had to take a 'non completion' penalty and move on.  Both times it was a dogwalk made by a company in Armstrong.  This year we lucked out, and Jake's rings had a dogwalk made by the local manufacturer that supplies most of the equipment used in this area.  I've come to the conclusion that his equipment is sturdier.  I think the other manufacturer's dogwalk must get some sort of vibration going, which is Jake is sensitive to, and that is why he won't go any further on it.  (He doesn't like things that move under his feet).  

Thank goodness it wasn't an issue this year!

I was also thrilled with how Luna did.  She measures a hair under 21", so runs in the 22" Regular class, which had 49 dogs!

Here's Luna's first Jumpers run.  I got a bit lost as she ran through the straight tunnel the second time.  In fact as I ran past the judge I distinctly remember saying that I didn't know where the heck I was going.  I ended up between the tunnel and the first jump of the last little circle, instead of between the first and second jump.  Then I was sort of scrambling and let Luna go on to take the jump in the corner that wasn't part of the course.

She got the first Gamblers class, and then had a clean Jumpers run on the second day.  She had one refusal

(my fault) in the Standard round in the pouring rain.  I forget that I have to make my cues a bit more obvious with Luna, and hold them longer.  She is more sensitive to body movement, and if I move away too soon can pull her away from an obstacle.  

She finished 20th in her class.

The weather over the weekend was far from cooperative.  The only good thing was that we couldn't complain about it being too hot.  Quite a bit of rain both days.  Both Jake and Luna's Standard runs on Sunday were during a downpour.  By Sunday afternoon though, the sun had come out.

Larry was at the farmers market on Saturday, and then had other things to do part of Sunday, so not much got filmed.

Jake and Luna did not run in the same ring.  They ran the same course, but it was surprising how different the 'same' course could be from one ring to the other.  One jump at a slightly different angle could make quite a difference.

Here's Luna's last Gamblers run.  I was really pleased how she got that first weave, and then got back there to do it again.  Not so thrilled when she popped out though at the 11th pole.  After that it was a bit of a mess. She said that there was no way she was going to do those weaves for a third time. Oh well!

This homeless guy showed up and fell asleep in my chair!

Luna knows how to relax, just like Larry

And then looked kind of cute/weird while waiting for the results to be announced.

Here we are, the 22" Specials

We wanted to try for a better individual shot on the podium after it was all over, but everyone else had the same idea.  We gave up and just went out onto the field and took a photo there.

Jake finished with 537.54 points, and Luna had 426.47.  Of the over 300 dogs that were entered, the highest points earned were 619.84, and the lowest were down in the 100's.

Both Jake and Luna qualified to go to the Nationals, they needed 350 points.  The Nationals are being held in Ontario this year.  No, we are not going.

And then the dogs just had some fun, which is really what it's all about.

Fun!!