Biking the Kananaskis Valley

I managed to pick up a case of Runner's Knee (patellofemoral syndrome) on my descent of Heart Mountain last week, so have been trying to take it easy. What could be easier than taking our trusty steeds out for a ride on the paved pathway in the Kananaskis Valley, known as the Bill Milne Trail?

Our trusty steeds. Mt. Kidd in the distance

Looking up Evan-Thomas Creek

I have always said the downside with biking is the lack of photo opportunities that you get when hiking.


The paved path stops at Wedge Pond, and so did we.

The Wedge on the left, Limestone Mtn on the right

The Fortress peeks over the ridge on the left; Mt. Kidd on the right

We took the Wedge Connector and the Evan-Thomas fire road to get home.

Looking west at incoming storms

The whole route we rode today had bear warnings on it, and Wedge Connector in particular had lots of bear scat and tracks on it. We made lots of noise, at one point scaring off a deer.


In fact, we saw a fair amount of wildlife today. There were a number of Columbian Ground Squirrels around Wedge Pond.

Watched from the grass 

Yelling from the trees

We saw some mountain bluebirds, and in addition to the deer we spooked, here was one we didn't.

Mr. Fuzzy Antlers

He let me get pretty close.

Not much zoom used here

And here's why

The deer was scared away by a group of Harley-Davidson motorcycles who stopped to try and take his picture.

Deer and ground squirrels weren't the only animals out today. Someone on a trip from Stampede came out for a picnic in their stretch SUV limo.

Bigger than the MINI SUV from Amsterdam

Amsterdam Leftovers Part 4: Art and more

I'm reaching the end of my leftover bits, so here's a bunch of unrelated material.


Part A: Art on the Street


Our crank didn't get too turned by the Dutch old school painters, but as you can tell by my extensive post on Escher, some Dutch art is quite compelling to me. On of the things I personally find interesting is the normal "art on the street" in which cities invest. In Amsterdam, my personal fave was the sea of iguanas in a small park.

Dozens of the little critters

There were about 50, 2' long brass iguanas on the walls, in the grass, and even on the sidewalk. Loved it.


Then there was the chameleon.

Stylish

I think, in fact, he was for sale from the store he was parked in front of. He's not small, being about 3' long. Very cool.


Part B: Cleanliness is next to Godliness


The Dutch clean their cities. A lot. We saw them cleaning our street most days, including Sundays, from as early as 8 AM to as late as 8 PM. Sometimes a crew of 5-7 people with brooms and garbage bags would walk our street and pick up the trash. Street and sidewalk cleaners would come by almost daily.

Squirt it off the sidewalk and into the oncoming street sweeper 

There wasn't a city we were in in Holland in which we didn't see crews cleaning the place. Trash is put out on the street for collection, and they always spray cleaned on garbage collection day.


Directly across the canal from us was a glass recycling location. It took us a while to figure out it was here, and in fact, at the beginning of our trip, we couldn't see that they recycled in Amsterdam at all. But it was there, just hiding. This glass recycling station was merely a 12" square box sticking out of ground with round holes for bottle, and it wasn't really marked in any way. But we watched people use it, so we started to use it, too, not sure where the bottles went. Then we saw it being emptied by the coolest picker truck.

The picker grabs the drop slot revealing the underground box 

The glass drops into his truck

Part C: Wildlife and Critters


You know I like critters, especially wild ones. I really like Great Blue Herons. We have them, but they're not that common here. There's certainly lots of them in Holland. We saw them everywhere.

Fishing in Vondlepark

In Canmore, near where I live, we have a feral rabbit problem. People let domestic rabbits go, and they have taken over the town. Rabbits being rabbits, we have lots of rabbits, and now the town has to fix the problem. Well, someone in Amsterdam let a bunch of ring necked parakeets go in 1976, and now some 3,500 of them live in town, mostly in Vondelpark.

Very cute, but out of place

Repeated polls say the people of Amsterdam like them, so they stay. On the bright side, at least they don't attract coyotes like the rabbits do.


Traveling around Greece you see a LOT of cats. Amsterdam isn't cat mad, but I saw my fair share of them, especially in store windows.

One real one, asleep in the chair, among the fakes 

In a furniture store window

Hanging outside

Part D: When is a Mini not a Mini?


My first car was a 1976 Mini. KC owns a 2004 MINI. I know Minis well. A Mini is a small car where I live, but kinda normally sized in Holland. But when is a Mini not a Mini? When it's an SUV.

Somehow the antithesis of the word "Mini"

Here's hoping these never make it to Canada.


Part E: More Hoists In Action


I liked seeing a building hoist in action, so was happy when one across the street from me was used most of the day for moving.

On it's way up 

Nearly there 

Rotate and it's done 

In she goes

I also liked the hoists that were in use, but not for hoisting, like this one.

Three hanging ladies

Part F: Our Uninvited Guest


Halfway through our stay, we were joined by a houseguest. Here he is helping himself to some food.

Blurry, but you get the picture

He didn't bother us on his nightly visits, so we didn't bother him, though we did our best to discourage him.


Part G: What can you get in markets?


Turns out everything...

Wait for the joke...

...including the kitchen sink.


Part H: Strictly random


I can offer no comment on this. Its just something I never see at home.

Taking it for a walk, I assume

I'm nearly finished; I have but 2 Amsterdam posts left. Stay tuned, blog fan(s).

Heart Pounding Heart Mountain Horseshoe

One of the most popular early season scrambles in my neighbourhood is the loop of Heart Mountain & Mt. Grant MacEwan, known as the Heart Mountain Horseshoe. It's always free of snow earlier than other hikes, and it's a genuine scramble with two short 3 meter pitches up obvious cracks in vertical rockfaces. Now, don't let that for one minute belittle the challenges that await. You get to climb 850 m (2,775') straight up, then saunter an undulating ridge, then descend over 900 m (3,000') straight down. Here's the ridge you climb:

From the bottom. You get to climb the ridge on the right of the Heart

The climb up is relentlessly steep, and the trail has been braided like crazy by all the people who think they can find an easier way than straight up.

A reasonably consistent 30° slope

What makes this all worthwhile is that the higher you go, the better the views.

Yamnuska on the left, the prairies in the middle 

From the same point, looking up the valley past Lac Des Arcs

We took 2½ hours to reach the first summit. Some people go up to here and then turn around. This strikes me as being insane. This section is the section with the two scrambles, which I wouldn't want to down climb, plus the trail is braided and not in great shape, making it slippery as all get out on the way down.


There's actually 4 mountain summits on this loop. Once past the first summit, the trail goes up and down in 100 m increments over them. However, in most cases, you're hiking on a knife edge ridge with 1,000' drops on one or both sides.

Looking back to summit #1. Note the the vertical cliff. 

Looking back along the ridge between #1 & #2.  

The ridge to Summit #2 you get to climb. Cross the grass to #3

Looking south from the middle of the ridge above. 1,500' down. 

Summit #2 is Mt. Grant MacEwen. There's a summit register you can sign. Trick was, it had practically no paper in it. So people had put in everything from grocery receipts to used downhill ski tickets to sign. From this summit, you can see Barrier Lake and the fire lookout we hiked to a couple of weeks ago.

Barrier Lake on the right. The fire lookout through the trees

From this point, you can actually see the city of Calgary.

The city in the distance

The meadows up here are very pretty, and the trail to summits #3 and #4 quite pleasant.

Nice, but no sign of animal life

Summit 4 is the last chance for world class views.

Towards Exshaw 

Yamnuska and the prairie 

The route up, more or less, plus Lac Des Arcs

Alas, from here it is down. Straight down.

Looking back up the descent route 

A detail of the route, which is in the slot at the top left

The descent is tough, unstable, slippery and very, very slow; it took us 2 hours from the top of Peak #4. Fortunately, there is the odd flattish spot with some grass to break the brutal 30° grade.

A brief respite in the descent.

From here the trail descends steeply in a dense forest with no views for about another hour back to the parking lot.


There's a lot of similarities between this trail and Tent Ridge, that we did a few years back. There's technical sections, though Heart is more technical. There's great views, though most of the climbs in my area feature those. There's knife edge ridge walks with 1,000+' drops. I'd call them very similar in difficulty, with Heart Mountain a little tougher. Maybe that was because it was windy as stink today, with a pretty consistent 50 km/hr wind, with gusts up to 90 km/hr. That certainly made walking the knife edge ridges interesting today.

The Bekkerings go back to Holland

Just heard word on Facebook that my friends Ross and Henry Bekkering both signed to play for Nijmegen Magixx this fall in the Dutch basketball league. Henry played there two years ago before playing for Groningen, and he seems happy to be going back, and especially happy to be playing with his brother again. They make a formidable duo.


Congrats to them both!

Moving, and lessons on a consumer society

As many are aware, I am preparing to move, and to put my house in Calgary up for sale (which explains the lack of hiking posts). Moving, I think you will agree, is no fun. There are, however, life lessons in moving, and I wanted to share one.


The act of prepping one's house for sale reveals that no matter how disciplined we are, we are all packrats by nature, and over time fill our houses with crap. I free admit to keeping somethings longer than I should (today I dropped off my complete collection of original Ikea catelogs dating back to 1981 to Ikea. Some of the younger staff found them entertaining).


But I am astounded as to what kinds of things have absolutly NO value whatsoever. We all laugh that when you drive a car off the lot, you lose 25% of the value. Well, with these items, the moment you buy them they are worthless and eventually destined for the Goodwill or 1-800-Got Junk. Some examples I have run across in this move prep:

1. Men's suits. There is no men's consignment store in Calgary. Those in the consignment biz tell me men don't buy used clothes (though a trip to northeast Calgary might suggest otherwise). There is no agency you can donate them to help, say, recovering men move back into the workforce. No, you can give them to the Goodwill, and I have been told that unless they are in 100% perfect on the rack new shape with tags, they are torn up and sold by the pound as rags. Think of that next time you visit Harry Rosen and drop $2,000 on a suit.
2. Books: There are several used bookstores in town. They want at best 1 in 5 of the books you have. The rest are junk or donation fodder. There are two big book donation drives each year (Benny the Bookworm and the Herald's book drive); both in March. But that's giveaway stuff. No, books are not a good investment, and are being bought to be thrown away or recycled. Think about that when you're spending $70 on a hardback of mass fiction or non-fiction, or dropping yet another $100 at Chapters (yes, Scott, I'm thinking of you).
3. Fitness & excercise equipment. No one wants it (Women in Need Society takes some, but generally, it's just trash). The two sports consignment stores in town do not have space for fitness equipment, so you can't consign it. The place where we bought our rowing machine told us that fitness equipment has no value at all if it's 4 years old or older. Think about this when you drop $2,000 on that treadmill.
4. LP records. These have no value even though there has been a resurgence in vinyl lovers. There's a few niche products (Beatles, Michael Jackson), but generally, the more popular an album was, the less it's worth. And ANY wear and tear makes it worthless. So don't wander into Hot Wax and come out thinking your collection's worth thousands.
5. Vintage Hi Fi: Unless you (a) have all tubes, no solid state, and (b) have more than 200 w per channel, it's basically worthless. The funny part is there is a weak market on e-Bay, but the shipping costs are outrageous, so it costs $60 to ship something worth $50. And remember, kids, we spent thousands on our steros back then.
6. Winemaking stuff: I have no room in my new place to make wine. It's a good job glass is recyclable, because no one wants the hardware, even Goodwill. There's 40 listings for winemaking hardware on Kijiji in Calgary as I write this. Supply >> demand. Worthless.
7. Ladies business wear. There are several ladies consignment stores in town, and they are all busting at the rafters -- but only one takes business clothes (and summer stuff is taken in January and winter stuff in July. And if it doesn't sell after 3 months, with the price being reduced each month, you get it back). At least here there's Walk In Closet who will take ladies clothes and give them to women entering the workforce.

Don't talk to me about Kijiji. If you get 10¢ on the dollar for anything you're selling there, you're doing very well, and my experience with buyers on Kijiji is they aren't reliable.

So for me this has meant spending almost $1,000 on 1-800-Got Junk. At least they sort and treat my trash with the deliberation it should, extracting and recycling the metal and electronics, recycling the paper, and the like. Good company. I should buy shares.

The key message in all this for me is that so much of our society is geared to acquiring objects that will in the end just get trashed. Some (like fitness and exercise equipment) is expensive. And it's a waste. Shame, that.

Amsterdam Leftovers Part 3: Weird bike antics

I posted several times about how the Dutch have a love affair with bikes. Everyone, of every age, ride bikes. While riding into Naarden, an 80 year old lady stopped on her bike to give us directions, and we followed her into town. The chances of finding an 80 year old Calgarian on a bike is close to zero, much less an 80 year old Calgarian women, much less a guy in a tuxedo...

The only people in tuxes on Calgary streets are symphony musicians

...a girl in a short skirt...

Not the shortest skirt I saw, nor the highest heels

...a guy on a cell phone...

Probably texting

...or any of the other people you regularly see on bikes.


The bikes themselves are also a kick. My fave was the 3 seater.

Room for dad, kid 1 in the front, kid 2 in the middle facing back

I wish I had more photos of the sheer wacky variety of bikes we saw. Bikes with wheelbarrows on the front. Bikes with big trailers. Bikes that sat 4 (2 is so passé). And since so many Amsterdam granny bikes look the same (black, rusted, ugly), some people (mostly women) decorate their bikes with plastic flowers to help them find it in the 1,200 bike parking lot. When it comes to their bikes, the Dutch show their most creative side.


One souvenir I wish I had brought home is a genuine Dutch bike lock. No, not the monster-mega huge fabric wrapped chain and industrial lock they all use. Just the simple "shopping lock" they have.

These locks are readily installed out of the way and are simple and generally safe to use.

Only problem is that some of these locks are/were not foolproof, as this YouTube video shows.


Since I got back home, I've noticed a lot of chatter in town about making Calgary more bicycle friendly. I'm certain there is no more cycle friendly place on earth than Holland, and probably no major city as cycle friendly as Amsterdam. Based on my month there, I draw but one conclusion:


Calgary has no hope.


Here's why:

• The Dutch ride their bikes from home to the train, then take the train to Amsterdam. Then they get their Amsterdam bike and ride to work. So they have two bikes, one of which lives in town, and one of which lives near home. No Calgarian will ever exist like this. They don't take trains like the Dutch do. Keep a bike at two LRT stations? For starters, the downtown stations don't have bike racks, nor will they any time soon.
• I doubt anyone in Amsterdam lives more than a 10 minute ride from anything they need. There's an Albert Hein grocery store on every 2nd block in every town, it seems. They don't work more than 10 minute ride from a train station, because every town has a train station and Amsterdam has 3 or 4. So their commutes on the bike are short, and businessmen can do it in their suits. That's only true of inner city folks in Calgary, and they walk. Commuting distance in Calgary are long. People who ride here are always dressed like goofball bicyclists in spandex. You never see that in Amsterdam.
• Holland is flat. As a pancake. Up in Drenthe, they kept talking about the hills around the town of Borger. I personally could not see them nor find them and we crossed them twice. Calgary is not flat. There's almost 300 vertical metres between downtown and Edgemont or Broadcast Hill. There's a river valley that's real and 100 m deep in spots. And people in business suits don't like working up a sweat climbing hills. No topography means Amsterdam city bikes have 1 or 3 speeds. No Calgarian would ride a bike without at least 10 speeds because of topography.
• As I mentioned, the Dutch put cyclists firsts. Cyclists have the right of way. North Americans put cars first, and Calgarians are no exception. Cars have the right of way. Biking Amsterdam works because aside from trams & busses, the bicyclists know they rule the road. And they act like it. Calgarians know cars rule the road. And they act like it.
• The Dutch don't mind that sidewalks are strewn with parked bicycles. Calgary pedestrians do.
• The Dutch have figured out that bikes and pedestrians need to be separated. The one section of the Bow River Pathway that was twinned to keep them separated was re-collapsed to a shared pathway. So there's still a view in Calgary that both can share the path, despite accidents and continued complaints about bikes speeding.
• Winter. -30°. 30 cm of snow. We have it. The Dutch don't.

No, Calgary will never be bicycle friendly. Yes, it can be better, but not by doing what they're doing.

And our bikes will never be as cool.

Attention Readers Who Happen To Be Dutch Basketball Fans

Last month, while in Amsterdam, I posted about two University of Calgary basketball players I know who are playing in the Dutch leagues, one for Leiden, one for Groningen. Amazingly, that post became my third most popular post on my whole blog's history -- in under 48 hours. Someone on a Groningen basketball fan site found my post, linked to it, and magically, I had a lot of hits. So for the few Dutch people who stuck around and continue to read my missives (and yes, I'm thinking of my friend Edwin, among others), here's an interesting one.


The University of Calgary just signed (as an import) one of the players who was on the Groningen team, Daan Weirsum, to play in the 2011-2012 season. Here's a write up on it. Daan's stats don't show he had a lot of court time in 2010-2011 with Groningen. Can anyone tell me about Daan? He's import #3 on a team that's only allowed 2 imports to be dressed per game -- an interesting position to be in.

6 degrees of separation from someone who is famous

I am the follower of an outstanding blog, "By Ken Levine", written by an Emmy winning TV producer/writer/director. Ken's blog was picked by Time magazine as one of the 10 best blogs of 2011. He writes about writing for TV shows, and he does two things that amaze me, given the popularity of his blog:

1. He reads every comment (and you can tell he actually does this because he comments on some and responds to comments on others). Many of his daily posts get 60+ comments on them, so this isn't a small commitment;
2. He hosts "Friday Question" day each week, where his post is dedicated to answering 2-5 questions posed by his readers.

Today, in this post, he responded to one of my questions! I am honoured.

If 60 people posted comments on my blog, I might have a heart attack.

Read Ken's blog. It's a fascinating look into the TV, movie and baseball business (Ken also calls the play by play of Seattle Mariner games on radio).