If I could leap anywhere right now...

Thur-Tee

This past weekend, I entered the next 3rd of my life. Yes, I am now 30 years old. Then I promptly got sick. The weather has been beautiful and we got some new snow, but I haven't been able to get out for a ski and enjoy it. But the days are getting longer, and soon enough I'll be out biking on singletrack on mountains blanketed in green. The trail network right out my front door is one of the reasons why I love living in Whitehorse.

This is the view from the top of Grey Mountain, where I do most of my mountain biking. An access road can be seen on the very right hand side of the photo which leads to our community of Riverdale. The grey-brown bluffs above the road are where downtown starts. In the valley are the Hidden Lakes, Chadburn Lake, and the Yukon River. At the very left hand side of the photo, you can see the ski runs on Mount Sima. The brown patches just left and right of center are the gravel pits and the old copper mine.

This is a shot further to the right from the above photo and shows almost all of Whitehorse (the population is only 24,000). The Yukon River flows left to right through the city, and downtown is set right on the river. The airport is on the terrace at the top of the bluffs at the left hand side of the picture. Jenny and I live in Riverdale -- the area in the lower left hand corner. The access road from the first photo can be seen starting at the brown bluff near the bottom of the photo.

And this is my impersonation of an Inukshuk on top of Grey Mountain. Temperatures hovered around zero for much of last week, and I even saw a guy walking around town in shorts. I am not quite that hardcore, and will wait until it is at least 7 or 8 degrees before I wear my shorts outside.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy!

Some of our Whitehorse friends who moved from Vancouver told us about the celebration of Gung Haggis Fat Choy (GHFC) -- a way to combine Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year. Snowy Owl rented the Brownie Cabin (think Girl Guides) for said weekend, where we were going to ski a loppet (10 or 20 km fun race), then celebrate GHFC. It got this cold...

Actually, it got to -45, but I don't have a picture. Skiing was cancelled. We still went to the cabin. Good thing we had the wood burning stove and space boots.



Evan made a great Chinese meal. Bernice supplied the haggis. Matt supplied the Scotch. Evan stabbed the haggis and sprayed haggis juice all over Bernice. Matt drank the Scotch.



Then we acted like it was warm out and had some Cuban cigars.


Snowy Owl says, "They're only little cigars!"


Nice one, Jenny!


And that was how we celebrated GHFC in the dead of a Yukon winter in a cabin in the woods. The End.

Iwuana Iguana and Fish Lady

This sexy lady is Iwuana the Iguana. She lives at the back of Jenny's science class. She enjoys long stretches under the heat lamp and gets excited about a good spring greens mix, but won't hesitate to whip you with her tail if you even think to break her heart.

I think that Iwuana would get along well with Bob, a rather huge iguana that lives at the pet store by our condo. Nobody seems to know what the store is called -- they just call it by the owner's name, "Fish Lady." The store is rather unassuming. We passed by it almost daily for 6 months before realizing that the brick building with the metal covered doors had a pet store between the two daycares. Walk inside and a tropical paradise awaits, complete with a myriad of lizards, snakes and turtles and a plethora of fresh and saltwater fish.

Jenny and I were there on Saturday, so I asked Fish Lady some advice about transporting my turtle, Popeye, from Edmonton to Whitehorse. She said that as long as I fly Air North, I would have no problems bringing Popeye as a carry-on. Air Canada, however, is not so welcoming. Fish Lady then proceeded to tell us how she smuggled a bearded dragon on board an AC flight by putting it down her pants. When we walked around the front counter and saw a couple of bearded dragons in a terrarium, Jenny exclaimed, "You put THAT down your PANTS?!"

I laughed, but Fish Lady didn't seem quite as impressed.

Shine!

Deflated

From my years of bike commuting and mountain biking, I have found that flat tires usually come in threes. Yesterday, I had my third (and final?) flat tire of the week as my rear tire slowly deflated while riding to the library.

I would suggest to anybody who gets a flat tire on their bike to find out what caused the flat. Otherwise, you may replace the tube without noticing the staple stuck in the tire, waiting to puncture the nice, new fresh tube. Or in my case, the thorns stuck in my tire from riding in the mountains of Mexico 2 years ago. The irony of Mexican thorns grown in +40°C deflating my tires at -40°C was not lost on me. Nor was it lost on me when the same thorns deflated my front tire on my Kaskawulsh glacier trip. Stupid thorns.

Most of my riding is done alone, so I have very few pictures of me on my bike. And there are certain limitations to taking action-shot self portraits. The above shot is one that worked out quite well, considering that I had 10 seconds to get on my bike and look like I was flying down the trail before the timer went off. It was taken on the Balojaqui Trail, the origin of the tire thorns.

This trail is thousands of years old and was already established when the Tarahumara natives arrived a few hundred years ago. The trail is so well built that it looks like it was carved out of the dirt and rock by tiny bulldozers. The upper section is so smooth and flowy that I would giggle to myself while riding it. The lower section was steep, loose and heinous, requiring much more concentration and energy, but still fun regardless.

And I was the very first person to ever ride their bike down this trail. To access it, I had to strap my bike to my backpack, hike up a ridge for an hour until it levelled off a little, then rode another hour and a half while traversing and gradually climbing up the mountain. After 2.5 hours, it was time to turn the bike around and ride one of the funnest 45 minutes downhilll singletrack trails that I have ever been on.

It is strange to think that so much hard work and fun could literally be so deflating a couple of years down the road.