The Hair-Raising Adventures of Foxy Foxington

Meet Foxy Foxington. Foxy was a $12.95 impulse purchase at Chapters that has resulted in a few minutes of delightful diversion at work each day.

Handsome but hairless,  Foxy was on a quest to grow one magnificient head of hair.

First, his head needed to be soaked in water.

 Foxy Foxington

Next, in the most morbid of steps, his head needed to be covered with a plastic bag for 4-5 days. One might think that putting a plastic bag over his head would be a bad, bad idea... But the bag provided a trap for humidity to get his luscious head of hair sprouting.

  

Foxy inside his own personal sauna (aka plastic bag).

And what do you know? By the fourth day, Foxy's hair was taking root!

  

Foxy's first sprouts.

At this point, my work time diversion was rudely interrupted by the weekend. I filled up his water supply to the maximum, and hoped for the best over my two day absence. When I arrived at work on Monday morning, I was pleased to see that Foxy's hair had gone wild!

One week of Foxy's growing.

Foxy required a little bit of foxscaping. He had a few errant face and eyeball sprouts that needed to be plucked. And he also had a serious bald-spot in the middle of his head. So I filled up his water supply and let him grow.

By the next day, Foxy's bald spot was filling in, and he was ready for his first hait cut!

 Foxy's first hair cut.

And two days later...

 Foxy feeling pretty.

With the long weekend approaching, I filled up Foxy's water, and gave him a buzz cut. One of the best parts of giving Foxy a haircut is that it fills my office with the smell of fresh cut grass. For a moment, I feel like I'm outside somewhere... Instead of chained to my desk!

Foxy sporting his new buzz cut.

God, I love Foxy Foxington! He sucks down water quite quickly, so I hope he makes it through the four-day weekend!

Ptarmigan Cirque

Last weekend, Tom and I did a short hike on Sunday afternoon. We drove out to Kananaskis Country near the Highwood Pass to hike Ptarmigan Cirque. This is a family friendly hike-- about 700ft of elevation gain (mostly at the beginning), and only 4.5km round-trip.

The short hike was in effort to toughen up my blister-prone feet before our annual backpacking trip in August. That hike will span 54km over 4 days in the North Cascades National Park in Washington State.

During the first 20 minutes or so, it rained a little. But they were short showers, and we were mostly sheltered by the trees.

When we emerged from the treeline, there was an open meadow filled with wildflowers and a bubbling brook. The trail was very busy with Sunday-afternoon hikers, so we didn't have to worry too much about bears.

We were treated to blue skies for the rest of the hike, and the chattering of gophers all around us.

Tom and I hiked up a little higher to check out the cirque. A cirque is a bowl-like or ampthitheatre-like valley that is formed at the head of a valley glacier by erosion. The cirque was full of loose scree, with a bit of snow that hasn't had the opportunity to melt yet.

 

Overall the hike took about 1.5 hours. It was a nice afternoon outing to end the weekend.

I am hoping to get two more hikes in before out North Cascades hike. Hopefully one more next weekend on the August long weekend, followed by a third attempt to hike Crypt Lake in Waterton National Park the following weekend.

West Coast Weekend

I don't have a lot of holidays planned this summer, and I can hardly believe that it is already mid-July. It seems like the winter and spring flew by, and suddenly the summer is half gone already too!

My first mini-trip of the summer was to Vancouver for Tom's grandma's joint birthday party. Tom's grandma, Ethel, is turning 94 in August. Her older sister, Auntie V is turning 97. Her youngest sister, Marg, will be 82, and Uncle Walter is turning an undetermined age in September (somewhere between 82 and 94). Yes-- this family has some amazing longevity.

Auntie V, Ethel and Uncle Walter.

We celebrated their birthdays at the River Rock Casino by stuffing ours to the point of uncomfortableness at the buffet brunch. There was everything you could imagine. Omelet, corn dogs, cabbage rolls, steamed pork buns, perogies, soft serve ice cream... You name it, they had it. I feel bloated just thinking about it.

And just when we couldn't possibly imagine eating any more food... We cut the cake!

Birthday cake. Blerg.

Following the ritual birthday stuffing, Andrew, Ashley, Tom and I decided we would attempt the Grouse Grind on Grouse Mountain. The Grouse Grind is a 2.9km trail up the face of Grouse Mountain that covers approximately 2800ft of elevation gain. This is the equivalent of about 2830 stairs, and takes the average hiker between 1.5-2 hours to complete.

It was smokin' hot in Vancouver on the weekend. And as we changed out of our fancy birthday clothes in the parking lot, the asphalt felt steamy, and waves of heat could be seen coming off it. But thankfully, the trail itself was not too bad. It was under tree cover and was relatively cool-- at least compared to the soaring temperatures in the parking lot.

Grouse Grind Trail (basically, straight up).

Considering our full bellies, we made pretty good time-- arriving at the top in under an hour and a half. I couldn't believe how busy the trail was!

I also couldn't believe how unprepared some people were for the trail. Dresses, jeans, open toes shoes! I cringe to think of it!

The Greig's at the top of the Grind.

Much to my surprise, the view from the top of Grouse Mountain is beautiful! It seems silly to be surprised, but the last time I was up Grouse Mountain it was wet and rainy, and there was fog and clouds as far as the eye could see. During that first visit, I didn't even realize what a view of the city we could have had. 

View from the top of Grouse Mountain.

 Downhill travel on the Grouse Grind is prohibited, so we forked up our $10 a piece to take the gondola back to the base.

Then we headed to Tom and Andrew's cousin's house so we could stuff ourselves with chicken wings and homemade lasagna. As you can tell, the theme of this weekend was eating.

On our last day in Vancouver, Monday, we decided to enjoy the sun by heading out to Lynn Canyon for some swimming.

Having experienced the joys of squat toilets in China, I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this sign in the Lynn Canyon washroom:

No squatting on the flush toilets!

While squat toilets were bizarre for me in Asia, flush toilets are apparently equally confounding to foreign tourists visiting Canada. I guess there are so many tourists who try to use flush toilets as squat toilets (how does that even work!?), they had to post signs!

 If any of you have been to Lynn Canyon before, then you know that the water is cold. COLD. C-O-L-D.

I've never been good at swimming in cold water. My mom used to make me wear a t-shirt over my swimsuit when I was in swimming lessons because my lips would turn purple from the cold water. It probably took me 15-20 minutes to ease myself into the water in Lynn Canyon. And even then, the water was so intensely cold, it made my wrists throb and ache-- like what I imagine carpal tunnel syndrome feels like!

Boulders in Lynn Canyon.

Waders in Lynn Canyon.

Andrew, Ashley and Tom were brave enough to swim up the canyon to check out the waterfall, but I stayed behind and watched some of the cliff jumpers working up the nerve to jump into the plunge pools.

The Greig's at Lynn Canyon.

In the late afternoon, we headed to the airport so we could catch our flights home. Overall, Vancouver and Richmond treated us well.

Mount Baker.

As we left Vancouver, we had a great view of Mount Baker from the airplane. We will be hiking in the North Cascades National Park in mid-August, and I fully expect that there will be more exceptional view of Mount Baker before the summer is done.

Color Me Rad

It was about 20 minutes to 9am when we arrived at Canada Olympic Park to run in the 9am start wave in the 2014 Color Me Rad 5km Race. It was cloudy, it was windy, and we were all freezing our asses off in shorts and t-shirts waiting for the race to start.

Brrrr!!!!

About five minutes to the start and the glorious, glorious sun came out. We followed the hoard of people up the hill to the start gate, so we could have our chance to run the most challenging 5km course I have ever encountered! Mind you, I've really only encountered ten or so race courses, so it's not like I am overflowing with experience, but even so it was challenging.

Race course.

If you are at all familiar with Canada Olympic Park, then you know it was created for the 1988 Winter Olympics and it is perched on a steep hill to accommodate ski jumps and a bobsled track. Us runners-- we got to run UP the hill! And since it had rained heavily the night before, we got to run through fresh, slick mud on our way UP the hill!

Over the course of the race there were color bomb stations. Orange, yellow, blue, purple and pink! The paint bombs were delivered via coloured cornstarch powder. Essentially there were people along the race course hurling handfuls of powder at you. You spent a lot of time trying to avert your face so it didn't get in your eyes, and trying to hold your breath so that you didn't breathe the powder in.

Running up the hill under (what now felt like) the burning sun was a slow slog, and ended up being more of a run/hike. I cramped up on the downhill portion which made the "easy" part considerably less enjoyable.  The last 1.5km were a bit of a torture because you could see the finish line, but the course kept winding back and forth away and towards it-- taunting you. But at the end you were greeted with a bottle of water, and your choice of color bomb packet.

Joel and Jasmine after crossing the finish line.

My paint-speckled self.

Jeff, Ashley and  I.

We made friends with some policemen that were on site, as well as with Simon the Safety bear. Ashley then threw some green paint at them (they were okay with it).

Ashley, Jeff, Julie and I with the Police.

RAD-ioactive Runners, post race.

Overall, it was a beautiful morning and a great way to spend some time with friends. I won't speculate for now as to whether we'll run again next year... That killer hill is still too fresh in my memory! :)

Hiking and Deer

Last weekend Tom and I drove out to Bragg Creek to do our first hike of the season. The weather was beautiful-- warm but cloudy, and we were full of pancakes and sausage from our community Stampede breakfast that morning.

And... Wouldn't you know it? On our way out to the trailhead we hit a deer. It was a low-speed collision, so we were both okay. We had slowed down for a deer that was already crossing the road, and Tom had seen the second one indecisively standing in the ditch. He thought it had decided to cross behind our car, so he started to speed up. At the last minute, it changed it's mind and ran in front of us. The deer got up and ran away (hopefully it was okay), and there is some front-end damage to our car. But overall, it was not too bad. Clearly the situation could have been MUCH worse!

We continued on to do the hike, and were pretty disappointed with the Sulphur Springs Trail. We hiked for about 12km through the forest without seeing any real scenery (unless you count forest and more forest). The trail signage was also sadly lacking in legibility, and we took a wrong turn at one intersect and popped out on the highway.

It turned out this wrong turn lead to the ONLY scenery we saw on the trip, a nice view of the VERY muddy Elbow River. Waterways are high with runoff this year, so we steered clear of getting any closer.

We have a few more hikes on our radar this summer. We will (once again) attempt to hike Crypt Lake in Waterton in August. Followed by another multi-day backpacking trip with Ashley and Andrew in the North Cascades National Park in Washington State.

Stay tuned!

Sushi, Sushi, SU-SHI!

If I leave my modesty at the door, then I can tell you-- good God! Tom, Ashley, Andrew and I are good cooks!

In addition to Thai, Vietnamese and over-the-top crab bakes, we can also add homemade sushi to our repertoire.

Last weekend we started with a bowl of miso soup. Complete with silky tofu, green onion and seaweed.

Miso soup.

We sliced mangoes, avocados and cucumbers for filling, before mixing up a batch of spicy salmon poke. We also made a spicy tuna poke, not featured in pictures, to be combined into our rolls.

Spicy salmon poke.

For refreshments, we whipped up a container of Bobby Flay's Coconut Ice Tea, an iced concoction of Jasmine green tea, coconut milk and a dash of lime juice.

Coconut Ice Tea.

Tom decorated our wasabi with a flower of pickled ginger...

Wasabi and pickled ginger.

And voila! The final products! Mango salmon rolls, spicy tuna and mango rolls, avocado and spicy salmon rolls... Basically any combination you could imagine with our ingredients.

And when our rice started to run out, we finished of the plate with same tuna and salmon sashimi.

It was DELICIOUS!

Chicago: Part 2

Where did I leave off?

Ah yes! Navy Pier.

I'm not really sure I "get" what Navy Pier is. I *think* it's an amusement park? There was a Ferris wheel, there were rides, and there were food stalls, but not a lot of them were open yet. I assume that is because we weren't visiting during peak tourist season. Also, Navy Pier is currently undergoing a face-lift, or a "re-imaging", as the signs said.

What Navy Pier did boast was a lovely view of a slightly dilapidated lighthouse, and some sweeping views of the city.

A lighthouse.

Chicago Cityscape.

Walking back to our hotel after Navy Pier felt long the longest walk imaginable. By that point, we had probably walked somewhere around 15km total for the day. We rested for a little while back at our hotel before heading out for dinner. And after that? Well, we walked around some more.

We headed back to Millenium Park to take a second look at some of the public art displays. We went back to see the Cloud Gate at night, and were able to capture some of my favourite photos from the trip.

We finally managed to locate the Crown Fountain. This fountain is an interactive piece of public art by Juame Plensa. It has been in Chicago since July 2004, meaning it is coming up on it's ten year anniversary in the park. Although my photo is of the wrong side, the reverse side shows images of faces smiling, laughing, and occasionally blowing water out into the fountain.

Crown Fountain.

 Juame Plensa is also responsible for a public art installation closer to home-- what we fondly refer to as, "The Big Head" at the Bow.

On our last day in Chicago, we took (another) long walk to the Field Museum. We spent the day at the museum wandering from exhibit to exhibit. It was an excellent museum with lots to see.

On our way home, we passed some vibrant daffodils!

For our last night, we decided to try the highly, highly recommended Purple Pig, for dinner. Purple Pig is a known for cheese, swine and wine. We ate cornbread with a Mediterranean twist, marinated olives, a charcuterie platter, a mixed cheese platter, and finally... Tom convinced me to try roasted bone marrow with herbs.

Am I interested in trying bone marrow again? Sadly, no. Not at all. But I'm glad I tried it.

Before flying home the following afternoon, we made one last stroll past the bean before we boarded the train to head to the airport. Then we waited in the airport for an additional two hours while our flight was delayed... But overall, it was a great trip!

Thanks, Chicago!