Category Archives: Year

Germany 12: Lovely Berlin, Part 1

Posted on January 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

A Boat Tour, The Brandenburg Gate and The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Berlin is a city in which I can easily imagine living – or, more accurately, where I imagine that I would have liked to have lived at one time: not so much now, when my days are filled with people here in Canada (including a lovely bunch of grandchildren) and places of which I am so fond. But when I was just starting out, if I had known about Berlin as anything more than a city in Germany that was frequently mentioned in my history classes, I might well have considered it.

From what I’ve read and seen in movies, I know that Berlin would have been an interesting place to live before World War II, especially during the “Golden Twenties.” Of course, I hadn’t been born at that point. I think I’d also have liked to have lived there in the 1980s, during the period when Nick Cave made Berlin his home. (Although Nick Cave himself did issue a warning about the dire fate that befell young women who wasted their youths hanging out in Berlin nightclubs.*) At that time, of course, the city was divided into East and West Berlin, so it would not have been the same as the reunified Berlin of today. So my fantasies regarding a life in Berlin are complicated and impossible. However, I am very happy that we had three days to enjoy some of its sights, sounds and flavours (if not its bars and music halls) in 2022. If there weren’t so many other places I still want to see, I’d put it back on the list for a more extended visit.

Our first day in the city, September 2, began with a stroll from our hotel (the Best Western am Spittlemarkt) to a dock on the Spree, where we would board a tour boat. On our way, we passed some scenic things and some interesting things.

Hooded crow
Where they wash the fish?
A gathering of electric cars and their drivers

Landwehr Canal

The boarding area for the tour boat was at one end of the Landwehrkanal, which runs parallel to the Spree River and is 10.7 km long. “It was built between 1845 and 1850 …. [and] connects the upper part of the Spree at the eastern harbour in [the district of] Friedrichshain with its lower part in Charlottenburg, flowing through Kreuzberg and Tiergarten.” (Wikipedia) Today the canal is primarily the domain of tour boats – and the approximately two-hour trips are a lovely way to begin to learn about the city. The boat passes through the famous Tiergarten, a park that was originally a hunting ground for nobility who stocked it with exotic animals, and which was badly damaged during World War II. It also goes past Museum Island, which we would visit another day.

One problem with taking photos when you’re seated at a table on a boat is that the same stranger appears right in front of you in almost all of them. I cropped him out of a lot of photos but the image below in which I covered over his face will give you a sense of how difficult it was at times to capture what I wanted without capturing him as well. The advantages of sitting at a table on a boat, on the other hand, include getting to know a bit about people from other places, such as an interesting young family that had just moved to Berlin from India via the USA.

The architecture and the scenery we passed on the tour were fabulous but since I didn’t take notes, I can’t remember what several of the buildings were. Maybe you know. If not, just enjoy the view, as we did. (Click on any of the photos to get a better view.)

“Hotel nhow Berlin” — A music hotel!
Deutsches Technikmuseum
Cube Berlin: “A smart office building”
German Chancellery
Bundestag
Bode Museum
Berlin Cathedral
A government building

Brandenburg Gate

After the tour, we walked a couple of kilometres to the Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor), stopping along the way for an ice cream cone. We passed a remnant of the Berlin Wall and a lovely statue of Heinrich Zille (1858-1929), a famous German illustrator and photographer of whom I had never heard until the statue caught my eye. On Unter den Linden (Under the Lindens. I love the name of that long avenue) which leads from Schlossbrucke (Castle Bridge) on the Spree to the Gate itself, we came across signs and installations protesting Russia’s war, and honouring Ukraine.

A remnant of the Berlin Wall
Zille

Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial

Before returning to have dinner in a restaurant near our hotel (German food this time!), we spent an hour or so at the beautiful and very moving Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

“Designed by architect Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold, [the Memorial] consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or ‘stelae,’ arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. [….] The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 9 1/2 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 1/2 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (8 in to 15 ft 5 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north-south, and 87 heading east-west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground ‘Place of Information’ holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.” Wikipedia (The history of how the site was designed and developed, which can be found at that Wikipedia link, is very interesting. So is the museum’s website, which tells us that “Following an amendment on 3 July 2009, the Federal Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is now also responsible for the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime and the Memorial to the Murdered Sinti and Roma of Europe.” Only a block or so from the Brandenburg Gate, the memorial is definitely worth a visit, for artistic as well as historical reasons.

And that was Berlin, Day 1!

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* To hear Nick Cave’s comments about the young women who have wasted the best part of their lives in Berlin’s nightclubs, check out this video (it’s at about minute 28). If you want a more accessible, albeit almost equally ancient (1990), documentary about Nick Cave, try this one instead.

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Germany 9: Side-trip to Prague Part 3 – Prague Castle, Or Kafka on the Hill

Posted on December 17, 2022 | 3 comments

One does not need to be a fan of Franz Kafka to get the full impact of visiting Prague Castle, but being one does add a dollop of spine-tingling interest to the experience.

I’ve recently reread Kafka’s unfinished novel The Castle, and am currently listening to The Trial (also unfinished) on Audible, and although he is not an author I would recommend to others (I think, like a taste for olives, you need to discover him on your own), I find Franz Kafka’s work intriguing – and he has inspired many of my other favourite writers, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Haruki Murakami (e.g., see Kafka on the Shore). Throughout our time in Prague I was always aware of the castle on the far side of the river that seemed to loom over the city just as The Castle does over the town in Kafka’s novel.

It would not of course have been a truly Kafkaesque experience if we had not become lost on our way up to visit the castle, but we did. Several times. Our first big mistake was that we somehow got on the wrong bridge across the river (there are way too many bridges) so our first order of business after we’d reached the other side was to locate the west end of the bridge we should have come across (and which we later successfully took back again) – the famous medieval pedestrian-only Charles Bridge (Karlov Most).

From there, we started up the winding cobbled streets toward the castle, but soon our ultimate destination disappeared behind the buildings that were closer to us, which inevitably led to wrong turn after wrong turn. The signs were not too helpful. But the homes and businesses we passed were endlessly interesting. We walked past the Slivovitz Museum (Slivovitz being a European-made plum brandy) and, part way up the hill, a bookstore named “Shakespeare and Sons.” To my mind, being lost is rarely a problem unless you’re pressed for time or your feet are threatening to wear out: you just see more stuff that way. (You can click on the photos for a better look.)

The right bridge as seen from the wrong bridge

The Castle and The Cathedral

We finally reached the top of the hill where the Prague Castle is located, and when we emerged on the crest, the first thing we saw was a Starbucks! (We resisted the temptation.)

Within the walls of Prague Castle, which is a UNESCO site, stand a palace, a basilica, a cathedral, the cathedral’s Great South Tower, and the Golden Lane. St. Vitus Cathedral, which gives the complex its distinctive silhouette, is the third church to have been built on the same site since Prince Wenceslas founded a Romanesque rotunda there in 925. Following the initial construction of a chancel and chapels in the Gothic style, which occurred in 1344 during the reign of Charles IV – St. Vitus remained a work in progress until a final push, named “the Union for the Completion of the Cathedral,” led to its actual completion in 1929.

The cathedral is a huge, breathtaking complex that measures 124 m × 60 m (407 ft × 197 ft). The main tower is 102.8 m (337 ft) high, and front towers 82 m (269 ft) (Wikipedia). The Royal Mausoleum contained within it accommodates the tombs of Bohemian kings, Roman emperors, and patron saints (including St. Wenceslas), and “[t]he door in the south-western corner of the chapel leads to the Crown Chamber in which the Bohemian Coronation Jewels are kept” (St. Vitus website). St. Vitus just feels like the kind of place where a country would want to keep its kings, emperors, saints and crown jewels.

Part of our tour of the castle included a view out of the first window ever known to have been the location of a defenestration (a punishment much favoured by the Russian government in recent years). Here two royal governors and a scribe were thrown from the window during the Uprising of the Bohemian Estates against the Hapsburgs in 1618. All three survived – unlike most targets of modern defenestration initiatives. Their survival was later deemed to have been a miracle.

The Golden Lane

After we had toured the cathedral, we made our way to the Golden Lane, a fascinating alleyway still within the castle walls with access to dozens of small dwellings. Built in the 16th century, the row-housing-type arrangement is “now the last remainder of the small-scale architecture of Prague Castle. [The homes] were inhabited by defenders of the Castle, servants or for example goldsmiths and the Castle marksmen. The tiny houses were occupied until World War II, but already during the period of the First Republic, care was taken to ensure that the picturesque character of the Lane was not changed in the course of modifications. From 1916 to 1917 house No. 22 was inhabited by the writer Franz Kafka.” (!!)

Several of the dwellings are open to the public, and are either furnished to look the way they might have been when occupied, or serve as locations for relevant displays – from the artifacts of a torture chamber to the collection of amateur film historian, Josef Kazda, who saved thousands of films and documentaries from the Nazis during World War II. .

Golden Lane (from Maros, Wikipedia)
View from the Castle
On the (correct) bridge

After walking back down the hill to the river, across Charles Bridge, and back to our hotel, we were almost too tired to go out again. But for reasons I can no longer recall, I had procured tickets to a Baroque concert at the Klementinum Mirror Chapel which was only a few blocks from our hotel. We managed to get there without getting lost!

The Concert

The “Four Seasons” concert we attended included works by Charpentier, Pachelbel, Verdi, Dvorak, Smetana, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Vivaldi, and it featured members of the Royal Czech Orchestra as well as Marie Fajtová (soprano from the National Theatre), Robert Hugo (titular organist for the St. Salvator Church), and Viktor Mazaček (violin soloist from the Czech Philharmonic). The program and artistic lineup were as magnificent as they sound. And the “high baroque” setting was an extraordinary backdrop.

The Royal Czech Orchestra was established during the reign of Leopold I, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, and was reestablished after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The chapel itself, its website tells us, “was built in 1725 most likely by František Maxmilián Kaňka. The impressive installations of Baroque mirrors on the ceiling make the chapel unparalleled worldwide. Together with gilded stuccos of Bernardo Spinetti, marble panelling and ceiling frescoes by Jan Hiebl, these mirrors create great artistic value of the interior.”

To sit and listen to that magnificent chamber music in that magnificent chamber was an unparalleled experience, and I was beyond grateful for whatever impulse had led me to buy tickets.

The concert began at 6 and was over by 7, which gave us time to enjoy another dinner under the stars on the plaza near our hotel, thereby perfectly closing out our final night in Prague.

I’d be happy to go back anytime.

I will leave you with two very brief samples of the glorious music we were privileged to hear that evening.

Excuse the guy in front of me (as the guy behind me is probably saying about me in his blog post)

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My First Sleep Test, Part 2: Thoughts on Sleep Apnea and Other Stuff

Posted on November 16, 2020 | 2 comments

I’ve learned a bunch of things from the responses I received when I posted about my first experience with a sleep test.

First, I learned that I should have explained what a sleep test is — not everyone knew. A “polysomnography” or sleep study is primarily intended to determine whether or not the subject has sleep apnea. “Obstructive sleep apnea” occurs when your throat muscles relax when you are sleeping, obstructing your airways, causing your breathing to stop and start while you are asleep. It is usually associated with snoring – those who have heard someone with sleep apnea will recognize the silence in the middle of a snoring session followed by a huge intake of breath in an extended snort.

Sleep apnea can lead to all kinds of cardiovascular problems and other health issues, as well as daytime sleepiness. Researchers have recently identified a link between sleep apnea and an increased risk of dementia. (As I told my son, who pointed this study out to me, nothing is more likely to get seniors to comply with a health recommendation than the threat of dementia.) The major snoring associated with the condition also causes distress to those who have to sleep next to it (or, in really bad cases, anywhere in the same house).

A CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine corrects the problem: it involves a face mask and a steady stream of air. A friend of mine has pointed out that APAP (automatic positive air pressure) machines are now available. These adjust to the particular sleeper’s breathing patterns rather than releasing a continuous stream of air. An internet search reveals that there are also BPAP machines (!. They will eventually take over the whole alphabet!) that increase air pressure when you inhale, and reduce it when you exhale.

Since those who have sleep apnea don’t get enough restful sleep, they are often tired the next day. If you have a sleep test and are diagnosed with sleep apnea, you may not be legally allowed to drive unless you are using a CPAP machine, because of the danger that you might fall asleep at the wheel. Therefore, if you have sleep apnea, by using a CPAP machine you may be avoiding a ticket, saving your own life, preserving your brain, and reducing the risk of running your vehicle into other people and objects. Up to nine percent of adults have been diagnosed with sleep apnea but it is likely that many more have it and are undiagnosed. Therefore, having a sleep test when indicated is a Very Good Idea and my whining post should not discourage you. End of Public Service Announcement, but here’s more if you want it: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obstructive-sleep-apnea/symptoms-causes/syc-20352090

Here are other (related) things I have learned in recent days:

  1. In the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, several of my Facebook friends have had “remote” sleep tests where they attach monitors to themselves at home and these are tracked remotely from the sleep lab at the hospital (or wherever it is located). At least those sleep-study subjects get to sleep in their own beds. I don’t know why they don’t do this in Ontario.
  2. People in the United Kingdom don’t seem to be sent for this test as often as people in North America. Several Facebook friends in the U.K. had never heard of a sleep test, while most of those who responded from North America had.
  3. A lot of people I know have had the test, and a lot of people have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and are now using CPAP machines. After they got used to them, most users love them because they sleep so much better with them, and they feel more rested during the day. I’m guessing that many of their sleep partners also love them: in addition to eliminating snoring, CPAP machines are great “white-noise” makers, as I can personally attest.
  4. I wish I had stock in a CPAP company and, now that William Shatner is promoting them, CPAP Machine Sanitizing Systems might be a good investment too. (Not the sanitizing machines themselves: they’re too expensive and likely not covered by insurance. I mean stock in the company that makes them.)

Finally, here is a video of Phyllis Diller — to whom I referred in my previous post — sharing some early-1970s humour and looking sort of the way I did on Monday night hair wise, except that she has no wires.

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Posted in 2020, Health, Year

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My First Sleep Test: Hope It’s my Last

Posted on November 10, 2020 | 6 comments

I’m sure a lot of readers have had sleep tests. I am far more sympathetic to you today than I was yesterday. I don’t know how long it will be before I get the results, but I hope I never need another “polysomnography” again.

I got to the hospital at 8 p.m. last night and checked in to the sleep lab. They attached wires everywhere, including to a fingertip, my neck, my legs, my chest, below my nostrils, and a bunch of places on my head, using both goop and tape. There were also a couple of devices to wear for a study some students were doing (about sleep tests! They are hoping to create a system you can use at home. Good plan.) They gave me three long questionnaires to complete (seriously. About 15 pages total). Then at about 10:45 p.m., the technician, Steven, a gentle and patient man originally from Ghana, said “Do you have to go to the bathroom before sleeping?” So I walked to the bathroom trailing all my wires. I must have looked like an overfull colander of spaghetti walking down the hall. Managing in the bathroom was quite a trick, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Back in my room, I told Steven that the room was freezing, and he kindly brought me three more sheets, but I was still not warm enough. So in addition to the equipment, I had four sheets, socks and a bathrobe plus my sleep wear, and my hair stood up like Phyllis Diller’s. (Look it up, kidlets.) I felt like a car wired for a boost, and I was a sight for sore eyes, I tell you. Should have taken a selfie.

At 11 p.m., Steven hooked the wires up to the monitoring system and turned out the lights. Despite a sleeping pill, I tossed and turned. I tossed. I turned. I tried listening to podcasts but they were too interesting, and I couldn’t get Spotify (where I sometimes listen to the sounds of rain or ocean waves). So I gave up on that. I tried meditating. It didn’t put me to sleep, and I wasn’t feeling too zen so I probably didn’t do a very effective job of it. In fact, I was about ready to rip off all the wires and tell poor Steven to F*** the test: I was going to sleep without them. At about 2 a.m. I had to go to the bathroom again, so Steven came back in and disconnected me and then when I returned he reattached all the wires I’d disconnected with my tossing and turning and bathrooming.

At about 3 (I think) I finally fell asleep and at 6 a.m., Steven came in and said cheerfully, “Time to get up!” He pulled all the wires off, ripping off a thin layer of skin on my face, neck, chest along with the tape (“Sorry, Sorry, Sorry”), and gave me another questionnaire. There was goop all over me because of how they attach the things that hold the wires, but they can’t let people have showers because of COVID so I left the hospital goopy. Arnie (my guardian angel) was waiting outside at the appointed hour (7) and he drove me to McDonalds for breakfast (we ate in the car), then we came home and I went to bed and slept for three hours. It was a night to remember.

The last question on the last questionnaire was “Do you have any comments?” I said, “The room was too cold.” I figured the rest of the problems came with the territory, but I had to complain about something.

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Posted in 2020, Humor, Humour, Year

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Thanks, but…

Posted on August 17, 2020 | 3 comments

I think I’ll have to bail

I really do mean the “Thanks” part. I’m grateful to everyone who sent me messages of support. I wouldn’t have covered nearly as much ground as I had if you hadn’t been cheering me on. Also thanks to you, if intentions had been actions, I’d have covered a lot more territory.

But with two weeks ahead of me before my foot surgery, and a week of swimming and canoeing but no jogging behind me, I am giving up my running aspirations for the nonce. (Nonce = maybe just for six months, and maybe for longer. Time will tell.)

I’m not stopping because of my age: I know (because I have several friends who are doing it) that being over seventy is no reason not to run, unless there are actual physical restrictions. Which fortunately, I do not have. Essentially, in my case, given my appointment with the foot surgeon, I should have started this program in the spring.

On the positive side, my appreciation for walking has increased. 🤓 When you walk, you can take pictures more easily – like the ones I took (below) last week in Muskoka. So that’s what I’ll be doing for a while. Except when I’m sitting on the couch with my foot up.

Special thanks to Dan, for the words of support, and the running chart. At this point, I’m optimistically filing it for next year.

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Posted in 2020, running, Senior Running, walking, Year

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Slog Slog Slog

Posted on August 9, 2020 | 6 comments

Week Two, Day Seven

Just a quick update tonight because we are out of town on a mini-holiday and it’s hard to focus on writing a blog post when you’re sitting on your hotel balcony looking out at a Muskoka Lake. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have grown used to the change of scenery but after four months (!) of being mostly at home, it is a sweet break.

During Week Two (which ends today), running continued to be a challenge. I promised myself part way through it that if it doesn’t get easier within another week or two, I will switch to (fast) walking. My sister is doing that — five to eight km a day! – and has been since the pandemic began. I am so impressed with her. Mind you, she is a LOT younger than I am (not really. Just 18 months) but obviously she is staying in great shape and keeping her spirits up by striding all over the west coast, while I drag my sorry butt around a few city blocks in Toronto.

It wasn’t all bad. I did notice a bit of improvement: for a couple of minutes on my second and third running days, I did manage to find that elusive “zone” where I find it as easy to run as to walk. But it has been much harder to reach that zone this time around than on any of my previous attempts to re-start my running program. I am hoping that Week Three is the turning point where I finally start looking forward to going out.

In the meantime, for a few days I can swim! I love being in the water, and I have always preferred a lake over a pool. I grew up in London, Ontario and when I was a kid, many summers we came up to Muskoka for camp or to visit friends and relatives who had cottages. After spending decades in Alberta, where they don’t have what I think of as “real” lakes, I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to revisit Muskoka since I moved back to Ontario. It’s just the perfect place for me: evoking long-lost memories as well as making new ones.

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Posted in 2020, quarantine body, running, Senior Running, walking

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The First Week Is the Hardest, Baby. (Or maybe not.)

Posted on August 4, 2020 | 3 comments

Week 2, Day 1

As Week 2 began, I was hoping that I would be able to announce how much easier the second week was than the first. The start was promising: it was a lot easier getting up early than it was last Monday. In fact, I set my alarm for eight (since it was a holiday and all) but I woke up at 7, so I got up. In spite of that, it was almost noon before I prodded myself out the door for my run, and it was warmer and muggier out there than I had anticipated.

It’s cooler this week than it was last week, but it’s still warm when the sun is out. Between the heat and the humidity, plus the fact that the running time on my training schedule had increased from 2 minutes run/3 minutes walk (times six) to 3 minutes run/ 2 minutes walk (times six), it was a huge struggle to complete my assignment for the day.

But I did it. (My musical accompaniment was Pink.) And today I went for my walk, dodging raindrops. So I’m still on track.

Tomorrow I’ll go out when I get up. Difficult as it is, it’s really the only way, at least as long as the summer heat is on us.

I found an article in The Guardian last week that certainly might help get me out the door if my brain were functional enough at 6:30 in the morning to think about scientific evidence of any kind, which normally it is not. It concerns a report from the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention and care in the UK that reviewed a lot of existing literature and added some new studies of its own on the subject of dementia. The Commission determined that by addressing certain lifestyle factors, “up to 40% of dementia cases worldwide could be delayed or prevented.” Physical inactivity is only one of twelve risk factors mentioned in the report, but it’s one of the ones that individuals can do something about — unlike, say, pollution. (Note to younger readers: exercise is particularly beneficial in this regard when practised starting in middle age.) Since the report points out that depression is also associated with dementia, and since exercise definitely helps to lift the spirits, physical activity may thwart dementia on two fronts.

I am very grateful to my friends and followers for the positive feedback I’ve been getting on this undertaking. It helps a lot.

Photos from my walk today include an unidentified flowering tree and a snail – both enjoying the rain.

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Posted in 2020, running, Senior Running

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Week One, Day Four

Posted on July 30, 2020 | 4 comments

Run a Day, Walk a Day

My goal at the outset of this new regimen is to get out there every other day for a total of three runs a week. I have read that muscles need an opportunity to recover, and for that reason running every day is not recommended. (Those who offer such advice are probably talking to people who run five k in half an hour, which isn’t me. But I figure I might as well keep the wear and tear on my aging joints to a minimum.)

However, running only three days a week creates a problem. I know that if I don’t get up at the same time on the other days as I do on my running days, I will never develop the getting-up-early habit, and rolling out of bed will continue to be a battle. So I’ve decided to try to get up at the same time on the other days as well and instead of going for a run, go out for a walk.

Guess what? Going for a walk turns out to be far less onerous than going for a run. You have more time to check out cloud formations and you can smell the trees. You can even give yourself permission to stop to take pictures of interesting things, which you can’t do when you’re running. Take this chair set in the back of someone’s yard, looking out on Sheppard Ave. It’s the kind of chair I’d love to sit in: it’s far from human activity on three sides, well shaded, and looks out on the traffic going by on a pretty busy street (albeit somewhat less busy during a pandemic than usual).

I also found a path heading off into the woods from that busy street, and I was very tempted to see where it led.

So far this week, I’ve done two runs and two walks. This is a definite improvement over last week, and the week before that, and the one before that, etc. Many steps in the right direction. I am grateful to all those people who I imagine are reading this blog, because you’re the ones who got me out there! Onwards.

Just fyi, my first week’s schedule is 2 minutes of running plus 2 minutes of walking, repeated six times, plus a warmup and cool down at five minutes each. The first day out I was accompanied by Queen, and the second time by Chris Isaak.

This little guy has been the highlight of my outings so far. I paused on the path when I saw him and asked if he’d stay where he was if I moved a bit closer to take a picture. Keeping his eyes on me, he sat still until I’d snapped this photo.

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Posted in 2020, running, Senior Running, walking

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Well, That Was Dumb

Posted on July 27, 2020 | 2 comments

or maybe not….

Your overheated scribe, post-run. Note steam rising from head.

So the alarm went off at 7 o’clock this morning, and I did what I always do: I turned it off and I went back to sleep.

When I woke up for real at 8, my immediate thought – of course – was that I had promised myself and the small corner of the universe that reads my blog that I would get up and go for a run, and I had failed to do that. Guilt set in immediately. My one hope was that no one had read the blog post yet… maybe I could take it down and repost it today and everyone would think tomorrow (Tuesday) was the day I had promised myself to start this new regimen.

No such luck, of course. My WordPress dashboard indicated that quite a few people had clicked on the post during the night (in addition to those who get the post whether they want it or not because they are subscribers). Someone had even commented already.

Although my first instinct was to throw myself off a very high escarpment somewhere, that seemed a bit dramatic even to me. My more realistic choices were: a) to confess in my post today that I had failed to get up and go for a run, and to say I would try again tomorrow (we’re all human, blah blah blah); or b) to go for a run today at some later hour than 7 a.m., and then to confess in today’s post that I might have failed to get up, but at least I had gone for a run.

The Don River was high and fast today due to the heavy rains, but it didn’t cool the air much.

There was, obviously, only one option available to me, and that was Option B. But the problems associated with Option B were almost enough for me to seriously contemplate settling for Option A. The first problem was that I could not go out until an hour after I’d eaten breakfast (because I don’t like running on a full stomach. I am such a delicate flower) and the temperature was already nearly 30° (that’s 86°F). By the time my oatmeal had settled, it would be several degrees higher. I was going to bake out there. Sunstroke. Ambulances. I visualized them all.

Don’t be a wuss, I told myself.

The next problem arose just after the oatmeal had found its happy place. This one took the form of a Severe Thunderstorm Watch that had now appeared on the Environment Canada website. I could see the clouds moving in. I weighed the heroics of having been killed by lightning because of my determination to get some exercise against the horror of having to admit defeat (see Option A).

Sure enough, we got a huge downpour — and then it was time for lunch.

And so it went all afternoon — heat and stormy weather. But by five p.m., I could delay no longer. It was still more than 30° and the Thunderstorm Watch was still in effect (as it is even as I write this post at 9 p.m.), but by now I knew I could not face this blog tonight if I had not gone for a run.

Not too many people were out on the trails today.

So off I went. I went down into the ravine by the Don River, where it was marginally cooler than on the paved streets above, and most of the trail was shaded. But it was still the hottest run I can remember doing in about ten years – and that one was in Edmonton, which is in a much drier climate. I was drenched with sweat when I got back. But I did manage to attain my tiny beginner goal for Week 1, Day 1: run (or “wog.” Thanks for that term, Lee. That is in fact what I did) for two minutes, walk for two minutes, six times. With a five minute warmup (hah!) at the beginning and a five-minute cool-down (hah!) at the end.

As I was dragging the weary puddle I’d turned into back up from the ravine, it occurred to me that given the heat and the weather warnings, I would never have gone out today — never never never — if it hadn’t been for this blog, and the people I knew had read it. So the trap I set for myself has worked, at least for today. I just hope that I have enough sense to avoid putting myself into such a hot, humid and embarrassing position again. Tomorrow is a walk day, rather than a run day, and I swear I am going out at 7, when it is still cool.

I do have an extra nudge to get me up and moving tomorrow. The first comment I received on last night’s post was from my son Dan, who does a hit on Radio 1010 about science and technology every morning at 6:50 a.m. He suggested I listen to the hit live (instead of tracking down the recording online once I am awake, as I usually do), and then head out the door. Thanks, Dan. If you can get up in time to do the segment, I can get up in time to hear it.

I think I can.

I hope I can.

P.S. Thanks to Lee and Ruth for their very supportive comments, too. Your feedback helped so much!!

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Posted in 2020, running, Senior Running

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Bright and early, the adventure begins

Posted on January 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

We got to sleep at 11 which meant we hoped for a 3.25-hour nap before our departure for the airport. But our airline (Sunwing) decided it would be a GREAT idea to send me a text message at 1 a.m. to let me know that the flight was on time. So that woke me up and I’m still awake.

Life isn’t so bad in this part of Pearson airport, however. There are iPad lounges everywhere, where you can waste time online for free while you wait for your flight to leave. I am reading a newspaper in hard copy instead (yesterday’s Globe and Mail) but I’m appreciating the comfortable seats and the fact that if I suddenly get the urge to buy something at Victoria’s Secret, I can: even if it is only 4:50 a.m

image.

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Posted in Cuba, Cuba: Preparation, My Trip to Cuba, Year

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