Jonathan Neufeld Outdoor adventure photography and mountain life

You’re absolutely right, I admit it now, I have been neglecting this journal a lot while I am home. The essential key here I think is in the title: JourneyingJon, Journeying, and these days I’m not doing a whole lot of journeying. I am doing a lot of standing-on-the-edge-waiting-to-jump-off-and-go-journeying but that makes for far to long a title. We are still waiting for the final word so we can take off and go to CA, just to jog your memory I originally wasn’t coming home from ND because “CA starts May 1st” and here it is, May 20th and still at home. Not that I am griping mind you, I really do enjoy my time at home it just gets tiresome when we are told to “advise our status for near immediate departure.”

On the bright side I took Thursday and Friday off this week to give myself a five day weekend (c: Yea for that! Thursday is already spent and ended quite well with some Jazz in the evening. It was a touring group called The October Trio, they were really quite good. It was a standard trio with soprano/tenor sax, upright bass and drummer. They played a few good numbers, most of which I didn’t’ really recognize which the saxist explained later. After one of the songs he said “That was ‘Old Folks’ though you may not have recognized it cause I didn’t’ play the melody very much” Very nice sir! It was a good evening. I think Friday will be spent in the mountains/forest/area west of Calgary though the exact nature of it remains a mystery yet.

Saturday is a bachelor party for the first of my friends to get married. That promises to be an excellent time what with the golfing in the morning and then bar hopping in the evening. Sunday will be a day of hangovers and then monday I am leading a bike ride from Edworthy to Fish Creek Park and back again. Sort of a variation on the trip I did with work people. I hope you have a good long weekend.

From the Departement of Last-Minute News and This Just In, California is a go! We are go for CA people, lets get a move on here. What? Details!? Ha, I don’t think so cowboy!

Tonight I am so tired it is taking everything I have to type this out. I am tired in that grand way, that soul-filling I-did-something-awesome-today way that makes me smile, even though I barely have the energy for it. In November when I got back from being away for most of the summer I went out and got myself a mountain bike. A rather nice Specialized Rockhopper that I have been putting to good use. I must have gone for 20 rides before the snow finally slowed me down and even then when the weather was just barely nice enough or the snow had melted a little I would take my bike out and go for a spin.

This obsession, and some good natured though persistant pestering from coworkers lead me to bike-commuting. So now whenever I can, usually at least three days a week I have been riding to work and back rather than driving. My new bike computer tells me that this is a distance of 19km to work and another 19km back home in the evening with the majestic Nose Hill Park right in the middle of everything. Yup, 38km round trip at least three times a week and the added bonus that my commute now involves deer and birds and leg-straining pedal-pounding progress the whole way to work. There are some nuts that I work with (you know who you are!) that bring a whole new level to bike commuting, one of the guys even sold his car, in February! Last summer they embarked on the Tour de Fish Creek (personally I like the title Tour de Poisson but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it)

As you may have guessed this “tour” involves riding from work (by the airport) down to Fish Creek Provincial Park, through the park and then back home. This was not an opportunity I could miss out on, but sadly the first Tour was planned for May 13th and there is a decent chance I may not be around for it, which naturally lead to going today (c: Have a look at the crudely drawn and probably inaccurate map below, that shows our route.

Total Distance Travelled: 72.6 km (plus the 20 from this morning is a total of 92.6 km!!)
Total Time Elapsed: 3.5 hrs
Number of Powerbars Consumed: 2
Time spent on couch tonight: 4hrs
Time spent on the above map: 3min, tops!

So there you have it folks, quite possibly the furthest I have ever travelled under my own power in one day. And you know what? I think I’ll do it again next Friday too!