Run update – ready to ramp up, and a request
Posted: 31 July 2011 Filed under: Running | Tags: bike shopping, injury, postaweek2011, training, triathlon 1 Comment »July has been a so-so month in the running sphere. While I’ve been running three times a week , and going on a hot-yoga blitz, it’s the times when I’m not running that concern me. My ankle’s been bothering me most of this month, but primarily when I’m at work. I figured the poor support of the dress shoes I wear are contributing to it, so I’ve taken to wearing a brace around my ankle during the day. The discomfort has been alleviated somewhat, but it’s still there.
Now that my latest work contract has ended, I will see if it was indeed my dress shoes that contributed to the ankle discomfort. I will wear the brace less and continue my transition back to neutral trainers. In the middle of August, I will begin training for a fall race, likely the Fall Classic (last year’s race report), although the distance I want to run (10k or half marathon) is still up in the air.
And I’ve been making race plans for the next year. One of the goals is to complete a triathlon during 2012. It will likely be a local short or sprint course that uses a pool for the swim leg. But as part of this, I’m also looking to buy a bike. And I’m seeking suggestions as to where to buy said bike. At the moment, I have a budget of around $1000 (including basic accessories). It obviously should be suitable for sprint-triathlon purposes, but I want to use it to get around town too. I’ve compiled a long list of bike shops around Vancouver and want to whittle it down to 3-4. (I mainly used Google Maps, based on my recollection of where the shops are located, and noticed a lot of mixed reviews when I click on a shop’s entry.) Write a comment, or communicate with me through twitter, dailymile, or google+. Any suggestions will be very helpful. Thanks!
White flag, sort of
Posted: 28 July 2011 Filed under: Blogging, Rickie Personal | Tags: postaweek2011 3 Comments »I have officially reached the point where I can’t sustain writing sub-decent posts in the middle of the week just to make my postaweek quota. The Thursday scheduling has not worked, especially since it coincided with the period I’ve taken up contract work.
This very brief post fulfills postaweek, but I want to move my schedule back to the weekend, where I’ve usually posted most of my entries this year. And since it’s a long weekend coming up, I should have time to compose something.
Books on film: the backlog
Posted: 21 July 2011 Filed under: Random | Tags: books, movies, postaweek2011 Leave a comment »Last weekend, I watched a film adaptation of a book, and it did not involve a boy wizard. I was at home and in the PVR was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker, based on the novel of the same name by John Grisham.
When I was growing up, I read a lot of books. Some of them were novels whose adaptations were recently released in theatres. I wasn’t that much of a film buff, and I was at an age when going to a movie theatre by yourself literally singled you out. Since I didn’t have anyone to go with me, I went for the next best thing, which was the novel on which the film is based. That’s how I got started with the work of John Grisham. And at the time I read it, I thought his Rainmaker was a change of pace simply because it was narrated in the first person.
As time went on, there became an inverse relationship between the speed of my internet access and the amount of books I read: as the former increased, the latter decreased. It’s kind of sad, really, as I feel I’m really missing out on new books to read. I still have magazines and web articles to go through, but finding the time to escape into a good novel is really hard to come by these days.
And it’s not just The Rainmaker; there are so many films adapted from novels that I have yet to watch. A couple are already in the PVR: The Chamber (another from Grisham) and Timeline (Michael Crichton). There are others that are relatively recent, and so might not be making the rounds on TV just yet. These are books going back to my childhood, including the three released so far in The Chronicles of Narnia, and even Ramona and Beezus. One (or three, depending on who you talk to) notable exception to the trend was The Lord of the Rings; I watched all three films within a week of their theatrical release.
I don’t know why I wait so long to watch these films, or watch movies generally, and yet I’m always keen whenever the Vancouver International Film Festival happens every year. It’s an interesting dichotomy, to be sure. And hopefully I can get around to watching those films in my PVR, but first, it’s time to catch up on some reading.
I Love Transit, in T-shirt form!
Posted: 14 July 2011 Filed under: Transit | Tags: buzzer, i love transit, i love transit week, postaweek2011 Leave a comment »
I Love Transit shirt for 2011. Design by Chris von Szombathy.
I Love Transit week has returned to Vancouver, and I feel that it’s gaining momentum. The shirt that I won as a door prize during the meetup is one sign of that. The enthusiasm of meetup participants, young, old and everywhere in between, during the bingo and bus-boarding events (and I’m sure in the trivia contest too, but I had to leave before that) is another sign. Buzzer blogger Robert might even be considering having the blog’s readers determine the next city that will hold next year’s meetup.
It’s lucky that I won the shirt, but I likely would have bought it anyway, had TransLink offered it for sale. Buttons and pins have been a mainstay of the event (and I got a full collection of them with the shirt), but a shirt is a much bigger canvas to display one’s love for public transport. And trust me, I will be wearing this shirt as much as I can!
The car-free experiment – a year long, and counting
Posted: 7 July 2011 Filed under: Rickie Personal | Tags: car insurance, car-free, follow-up, personal finance, postaweek2011, unemployment, walking Leave a comment »A year ago, financial considerations forced me to park my car. It was initially for three months. But three months became six, then 12. A year without a car; it really isn’t as frustrating as it sounds, considering my main mode of transportation is public transit, even when my car was insured.
During the year, I ignored my parked car at my peril, as I’ve learned the hard way what happens when a car sits idle for a long period of time; not just the dust that’s gathered while in the parkade, but a dead battery. Once the battery is replaced, I hope to find a buyer for the car, then use the proceeds to buy a bike, and join a car co-op. Even when I find permanent employment again, I will certainly resist the urge to re-insure my car, or acquire a new one. If nothing else, I want to make going car-free a legacy of my extended un(der)employment.
