Ever heard of Duesseldorf?

Vancouver used to be the #1 city to live in when I moved here – or tied with Sydney, Australia, can’t remember for sure. Having been to both cities I could not agree more. This morning I heard on the radio that “we” dropped to fifth place – which is still not bad out of 220 cities. BUT we are tied with Duesseldorf, Germany. I couldn’t believe my ears. I can’t think of anything special about Duesseldorf, except that it is the middle of the most industrial area of Germany (old coal mining town). And even more surprising – Frankfurt comes right after. I have been there multiple times and would never want to live there. It does have a much better infrastructure though than Vancouver. For an outdoors person like me though that counts less than having an ocean and mountains right on my door steps – I don’t think though that aspect was part of the study:-). By the way, the first US city listed was Honolulu in 29th place.

The top 10 cities (overall quality of life):

 1) Vienna, Austria

 2) Zurich, Switzerland

 3) Auckland, New Zealand

 4) Munich, Germany

 5) Duesseldorf, Germany

 5) Vancouver, Canada

 7) Frankfurt, Germany

 8) Geneva, Switzerland

 9) Bern, Switzerland

 10) Copenhagen, Denmark

 

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/315297#ixzz1fGH0wVWE

 

Some other notables of today:

• I got home BEFORE Jeff which hasn’t happened in months.
• I managed to even get an erg workout in before dinner.
• Between dinner and bed Jeff and I spent most of the evening waxing skis or packing clothes for the weekend:-)

Paddling location

My friend Jacquie just sent me a picture of her new boat she just got. Guess where she lives 🙂 Lately, I have been looking at my thousands of pictures from our trip Downunder 2 years ago a lot and wished I’d be there right now!!

3-day weekends are still too short …

And another weekend gone by… not looking forward to go back to the mess at work tomorrow. But at least I spent my day well today. Sleeping in till almost 9am. Go for a relatively easy 1500m swim – my shoulder is still bugging me from Friday so I took it easy and alternated between 250m breast stroke and 250m front crawl. Then I met Jody at Burnaby Lake for a K1 paddle. We did technique drills over 12km – felt okay even though my shoulder wasn’t fully into it (neither was my butt). Jodi is getting so strong!! It will be good to have her as a double partner but I am scared racing against her in K1 🙂 The sun also made an appearance while we were on the lake. It was an excellent day to be out on the water. Wish I had my camera.

Jeff and I were arguing in the morning who is more silly between the two of us – him for going for a second ski this weekend in the rain (although it didn’t rain much he said) or me going for a paddle in late November – but hey it warmed up to 12C. I let my reader(s) be the judge of that.

To top it all off, we won another curling match tonight – it was close though. And the team we played against was a lot of fun. Not like last week were we played the “semi-pros” in their uniforms who had to discuss each shot for 10min. Sure at the end they beat us but only because we were frozen solid from standing around waiting for them to make the shots….

Frozen fingers

Yuck – I should have gone skiing yesterday. As predicted it was pouring rain down in Vancouver this morning but I was hoping that up in the mountains this would still be snow. Well it almost was for the first of two hours of skiing. Well it rained in the parking lot but by the time you got up to the lodge it was almost snow – at least for a little bit. Jeff and I did a waxing clinic on Tuesday evening and Jeff waxed my skis last night – I felt like I had super grip (well not a surprise with crowns in soft snow) and great glide (thanks to Jeff’s waxing job) but after the first lap the excitement of having “fast” skis and good grip quickly subsides into a feeling of being wet and miserable. The hills were no problem today and I already felt much stronger than last weekend – sure I’ll be just as sore though. Unfortunately , the tracks weren’t really set for classic skiing. The skaters had nicely groomed trails but I had to work my way through deep snow and climb some hills outside the tracks – felt like I “skated” more than did parallel stride on all of the few “almost” flat sections up at Cypress.  And after 1.5hrs my hands started to get really cold really quick and I decided to “quickly” finished my last lap to get of this stupid mountain and onto my couch. Jeff and I had agreed to meet after 2hrs but I was rather sitting in the car for another 15-30min than stay out in the rain longer than I had to. But to my surprise he was already down and changed into dry clothes. My fingers were so cold I almost couldn’t undo my shoe laces. I quickly – as quickly as the frozen fingers allowed me to – took of most of my wet clothes and huddled into the car in my fleece blanket – how smart of me bringing that – and turned on the seat heater onto full blast. I didn’t stop shivering until we got home.

…same shot this weekend

Last weekend…

Since then, I have been sitting on the couch for at least 4 hrs, drinking hot drinks and hide underneath a blanket. But I finally found the strength to type up a couple blogs 🙂

Another workout day – Nov 25

It was one of those rare sunny days we haven’t seen a lot of lately and what did I do on my day off? I should have gone skiing but no, my schedule said – swim in the morning. So I did my 1500m which still takes forever (40min) even though I am trying to throw in some 1 min intervals as my friend Jodi told me to do. Then I went over to the North Shore to meet up with Jodi and consorts in her gym for a weight workout. I should have known better – she posted this video as being something cool a week ago:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMlj7ehq10A&feature=share . So all we did was throw 50lb sandbags through the gym. Hell I can’t lift my arms above my shoulder today. Luckily the soreness didn’t start right away and I still got my paddle in Deep Cove in that same afternoon. It wasn’t quite as sunny anymore but it was still nice!!!

Feeling sorry for myself …

What a week – yet again. It all started with this nasty freezing-cold hail I had to bike through on Monday morning to get to work. I have been commuting to work on my bike for a long time. I hardly missed a day even back then when I had to make it all the way up this nasty hill to get to work and even less now that I only have a flat easy ride. Sore muscles, runny nose – nothing usually stops me. But on Monday I really thought this is the last time I ride in the rain/hail. Luckily the hail stopped by the time I got into work and I was a happy camper again riding for the rest of the week – rain or no rain 🙂

Nevertheless the hail set the tone of the week – everything at work went wrong and nothing got accomplished. Next week will have to be spent with damage control. Not good if you are responsible for managing projects to come in on time and budget. Needless to say I spent long hours at work, didn’t get any of my workouts in the gym in all week and dinners usually happened around 10pm because of other commitments I had to rush to right after work for most evenings. BUT I am enjoying my day off today. My boss offered that we could go back to full-time rather than the “work-9-in-10-days” work schedule. Hell no! He even tried to make us feel guilty by saying he would cancel his. Good for him, not for me. I am thinking how I can extent it into next year. To tell the truth I don’t think he ever expected that we would cancel ours anyhow 🙂

One of those things I had to rush to after work was our paddling club’s AGM – I used to be on the executive spending endless hours trying to get programs going only to find out that I was alone in my fight – or at least it felt like that too many times. There are 4 executives and about 30 members in the club… Okay, a few individuals did try to help a lot in their own ways and I am very grateful to them but unfortunately that wasn’t enough. Everyone expected me to stand again for an exec position but I just had enough of feeling like a lone ranger. On the other hand I do feel bad about it because I really do care about this club and I hate giving up a fight (which this kinda feels like a bit). But maybe I can do just as much or more as a member. And off course Jeff threatening with “divorce” if I spend another year on the executive helped to tighten my resolve in not standing again 🙂 Poor him had to live through my cursing-swearing-frustration all year.

Time to get going so I can get my 3 workouts in today …. sun is shining today 🙂

Too sore…

Jeff went up the mountain again for another ski but my legs are way to sore. I have trouble lifting them in the car operating the clutch. Luckily my friend Jodi is easy to convince that a day like today (almost sunny with a thin cloud cover, +2C) is a great day for a paddle. So after my swim this morning (1800m steady) we met in Deep Cove for a 75min spin around Jug & Racoon. What a great day to be out there. Changing out of the wet clothes after the paddle we got cold pretty quickly and had to go for a Chai Latte and London something tea to warm up.

Moon jellies – the water is soo clear in the winter

Looking up Indian Arm

Jodi and I

Me

Jodi

Looking up the arm – lots of snow up in the mountains

Gotta love it ..

A beautiful day in Vancouver: +3C in the city and blue skies. Jeff and I went up to Cypress  for our first cross-country ski trip of the season today (they opened the trails yesterday). Beautiful fresh snow! Skiing was much harder than I remembered though and I was pretty tired after 2hrs not even going hard. Saw lots of fellow paddlers up there.

Since the weather was so nice I postponed the nap on the sofa in the afternoon and went for a K1 paddle on Burnaby Lake instead. Even though it was cold, the lake was beautiful and the sun warmed me up enough for a good 11km paddle.

Half way through the ski

Sunny trails

Cypress covered in fresh snow

First snow…

When I left work yesterday night at about 7:30PM it was SNOWING! I don’t want snow in the city – the white stuff should stay up on the mountain where it belongs. Okay, it was really wet snow and it didn’t last long but it totally screwed up my bike – the chain links froze and started skipping. Took me forever to get home.

A great day for a paddle on the lake

Overcast but dry, calm and about 8C – perfect for a K1 paddle on the lake (after a 35min swim at the pool). Dan and Jodi came out and we did technical pieces up and down the lake for 12km. Felt really good!

And we lost out curling match this evening by only 1 point again playing a pretty good team.