8r4d For all of last year I didn’t even take my #bike out once. I tell you why that is other than we spent a lot of time on vacation and busy with marathon training so in the end, I barely took the bike off the rack let alone actually getting it out into the trails. Literally I did not take it out even once. So in order to remedy that in 2024 I made sure to do a nice long trail ride even before April ended and got my bike tuned up and out and about in the neighbourhood for a 17 km ride this afternoon.

8r4d Our morning #walk was full of interesting shadows.

8r4d Mission Fail: My trip to the mall for #art supplies for my class which starts tomorrow hit a snag. I walked in to my trusty locale for inexpensive paints and behold the doors were shuttered and the bay dark. The cultural wasteland that is this city got another degree barren. Of course I spent an hour wandering in #westedmontonmall because y’know gas prices and why not. Tho for a Monday morning I don’t know what i was expecting. It’s dead as anything here.

8r4d It’s one of those things that often escapes or attention in a busy busy world, and tho you might feel that my life of quasi-middling retirement cannot possibly be busy busy, I do find myself needing to pause every once in a while and reflect on the good moments and #smallthings that warm up my still chilly days. Like when I walked over to starbucks for my two hours of morning writing today and was thankful that I wasn’t in this portapotty when the wind caught it, but also when I ordered a grande #coffee but they gave me a venti by accident so that my daily chapter was fuelled by discounted (but still overpriced) caffeine. Like I said, it’s the small things…

8r4d Around the park for some windy running play.

8r4d We did a trip to Canmore in March for spring break, tho the weather was decidedly still winterish. One of our hikes took us on a meandering stroll up and around the mountain trail past the golf course. #backposting

8r4d Spring-ish weather has arrived so the trails beckoned us on our morning #running adventure. It’s nice to be off the snow and asphalt again.

8r4d I was excited that the weather has finally improved enough for some long spring walks, but it seems like the second that happened they resumed road construction near our house again so our peaceful path is going to run adjacent to an active paving site for the foreseeable future.

8r4d Our #orchestra has been playing some challenging music this half of our season and I realized one of my biggest personal challenges with our music selection has been my lack of familiarity with the music itself. my approach to remedy this was to download the actual performances into my music playlist and to listen to them on repeat in hopes that have a little better sense of the sound so that when I see the notes on the page I can translate between the two. It did mean spending about $20 on, some new albums on iTunes but hopefully it’s worth it in the end.

8r4d They say dogs just kind of roll with the punches, but no one was more surprised than cricket when she woke up this morning to find a couple inches of fresh snow in a backyard that was clean and clear for spring just a few hours earlier.

8r4d #autumn trails

8r4d Sixteen-ish candles!?