Chris and Paula's World

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Crash

On the way home from work yesterday, all hopped up on after work excitement - I jump on my bicycle, most of you know it, barrel down Richmond St. with lighter than usual 4:20pm traffic, head up Spadina to the intersection of Spadina and Queen, where I start my daily weave amongst street cars, peoples and cars on to my home, 6.9km away. I pretty much always have to wait for a light here, the advance green turning left that I usually share with 2 cars, is very quick. Today, there is a green light waiting for me, so I drop it into 11th and step on it...

Now on the best of days this can be a bit dangerous!. Spadina and Queen is one of the busiest intersections in this part of town - streetcars in 4 directions, and lots of lanes, people crossing and general activity. As well, the tracks for the streetcars, embedded in the street, go every which way but loose and are just wide enough for my bicycle wheel to fit into.




Heading into the intersection, excited about my advance green, I'm now facing west, almost through, and then I feel it. The feeling you associate with this event for ever after - your front wheel is now going in a different direction than you are - it has slid into a TTC Streetcar track.

If you ride a bike, you know what happens next when this sort of thing occurs. The inertia of 110kg + advance green bicycle excitement is enough to easily send you over the handlbars when your front wheel chooses a new course vector.....

So, 4:25pm, and I'm lying in the middle of Spadina and Queen feeling Dazed and Confused. Within seconds there are at least 10 pedestrians on the scene to assist the extraction of me from my bicycle wreckage - which I seem to be firmly melded into. After a few minutes and some torn clothing I am removed and on my feet. Little did I know at that moment that that the "good feeling" I had was only adrenalin getting me off of the street.

I said thank you and goodbye to all my new friends and traffic continued where it left off and all returned to normal - except me. After feeling quite satisfied that I was relatively OK, I hobbled up the street a bit to see if I could find a cab to take me and my pile of bike home. Within minutes pain started erupting from multiple locations on my body. Scrapes started to fill with blood under the surface, several "sore spots" began to grow into eggs, I realized that both my hands had sprains in them (no doubt from trying to break the fall caused the pivot action of me going forward and then deciding to go down to the ground at the same speed). But the killer was my foot. It was brutal, it throbbed like a Thumper and felt very hot and wet inside my running sneaker. I hobbled over to the side of of Tortilla Flats Restaurant and crumpled over trying to get weight off my foot and keep from puking up the Champagne & SunnyD I had consumed before leaving work in celebration of the launch of a new site www.shoppersstop.com.

With no hope that ANY CABBIE IN TORONTO would give me the time of day with a bicycle in tow that needed transport, even though I genuinely looked in serious distress at this point, I decided to call Paula. She was on her way.

20 minutes or so later I am in the 2007 Toyota Matrix official YummyStuff delivery vehicle that Paula borrowed from her friend Morag and heading home. At this point I decide to check out my foot, but taking off my shoe with two sprained hands was a bitch. Anyhow, I finally got it off - no blood, thank goodness, only a toe about 8 times it's normal size and purple. The main joint seems ok, but the swelling all around seemed to indicate some sort of small fracture, but that is a relief from what I thought might be going on under that shoe.

Home sweet home, on the couch with TLC provided by my most excellent girl Paula - which is where I remain, foot jacked up in the air, toe throbbing and feeling generally crumpled all over.




In a very odd way Crashing is kind of fun.....

My Games 2005?

Canucks games on my 1/2 season tickets this coming year.

Sun.Sep.24 Anaheim
Sat.Sep.30 Edmonton
Fri.Oct.13 San Jose
Tue.Oct.31 Nashville
Thu.Nov.09 Anaheim
Tue.Nov.14 Detroit
Fri.Nov.17 St. Louis
Tue.Nov.28 Columbus
Mon.Dec.04 Edmonton
Tue.Dec.12 Phoenix
Wed.Dec.27 Calgary
Wed.Jan.03 Dallas
Sun.Jan.07 Florida
Sun.Jan.28 San Jose
Thu.Feb.01 Edmonton
Wed.Feb.07 Chicago
Sun.Feb.18 Colorado
Sun.Mar.04 Minnesota
Tue.Mar.06 Tampa Bay
Tue.Mar.13 Minnesota
Sun.Mar.25 Colorado
Tue.Apr.03 Los Angeles

Elfin Lakes / Opal Cone - Labour Day Weekend, 2006

Elfin Lakes / Opal Cone - Labour Day Weekend, 2006


This weekend, my friend Kelly and I hiked in Garibaldi Park, about 1 hour North of Vancouver.

Elfin Lakes was a 11km hike up from the parking lot. We stayed in the overloaded campground and managed to have ourselves an official campsite on Sunday, night #2. Good fresh water in a stream about a 5 minute walk from our site.

Opal Cone is an extinct volcanic crater at the very southern tip of the Garibaldi Neve, which is a 35 square km icefield. Right beside it is the more famous Diamond Head mountain. On Sunday, we woke up and hiked out to the cone and back. 13km round trip.

Here are the photos......

I'll be back there again.

I am Iron Man

I've started running this past week. Work is busy and I need someway to throw it all out the window quickly and easily. My route is very convenient, I live close to the lakeshore and have lots of paths around. I'm staring with just over 5km and I will build up from there.

This is my route. We'll see how I do.


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Travelling Website URL

There it is. The design is pretty stock so far, and the content is very low. But this is our travel news website for the impending trip of 2007. Comments of course welcome.

http://www.chrisandpaulasworld.com/

Part 8

After close to 7 years in Vancouver, here it goes again. I'm probaly 2 years late actually, but this is my story, so that does not matter. (Poke at my own 5 year theory of myself.) I gave notice at my job the last week. End of February means DataWave becomes a previous experience. It's a different feeling then I am recently used to, responsibilities are dwindling off and possibilities are busting wide open. Hopefully I am able to capture even a few of them during this wormhole into another chapter.

The next 13 months will see my resume of visited countries increase by a factor of 10. I don't even know how to prepare, other than having clean underwear and a raincoat for the journey. My empty packsack is in front of me right now. Soon, all my STUFF will be able to fit in that bag, and that is an exciting thought.

I feel some sort of increased sense of balance. I think it is freedom on the horizon.

!

sundays

my day has lined up perfectly to finale with episode 10x7 of Stargate. these are the good days.