Yesterday:
So since yesterday was my blogiversary and thus my blog post had to be dedicated to that, here’s what else went on yesterday that I didn’t mention:
I did my virtual Bloomsday run!
I typically run seven miles out and seven back to get my 14, but I decided to just tack on the extra 0.46 for Bloomsday on the end of the seven miles out. That took me to the end of Bowness Park. It looks like they’re either rebuilding the Stoney Trail bridge or are making a new one so that there is a bridge for each direction of traffic.
Either way, I love this bridge. It’s so tall and almost surreal.
Sir +
Bro, you can buy surplus shit from the CITY OF CALGARY?
This is in the “Court Seizures” section, OH MY GOD
Hahahaha, where the hell does half of this stuff come from? A whole subsection is titled “Helicopter Parts.”
Like…what?
WHERE DID THE KAYAK COME FROM
Edit: IT’S A SIGNED KENNY G SAXOPHONE WHY IN THE HELL IS THIS IN A SURPLUS SALE IN CALGARY???
I love this so much.
Explore Disaster!
Apparently “this data is shared in order for individuals (Calgarians and visitors), businesses, and organizations to understand and prepare for potential disaster risks in the city.”
All cities should have something like this publicly available, really. It’s super interesting and informative. Also:
A nice little summary. I’m surprised the risk for critical infrastructure failure/disruption isn’t higher in the winter than the summer. I guess we’re more prepared for winter. Or maybe this is based heavily on last summer’s heat dome when our power grid was about to fail due to all the electricity used for cooling.
Nenshi No More
So for the first time since I moved up here, the mayor of Calgary is not Naheed Nenshi.
The mayor is now Jyoti Gondek.
I don’t really no too much about her (I’m not allowed to vote up here as a Permanent Resident), but hopefully she’ll be good.
It’d be great if Nenshi ran for Premier, but I don’t know if non-city areas in Alberta would ever vote for him.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
Calgary is a beautiful city.
I recognize a lot of these places thanks to walking everywhere, haha. I think my favorite thing about this video is how it shows just how many walking/biking paths Calgary has. Did you know that Calgary has the most extensive network of urban paths/bike paths in North America?
(I’m glad I picked Calgary over Ottawa)
The one place I don’t recognize at all is at 1:36. That path looks fantastic; I’ll have to figure out where this is and go walk/run it.
END!
Half
Completed my second (virtual) Calgary half marathon today! Not a very fast time, but it’s done.
Edit: look at this beautiful medal!
One thing can be said about Calgary’s weather:
It’s never a half-assed attempt.
Is it winter? A WHOLE WEEK OF -30 DEGREE TEMPS!
Is it a snowstorm? A WHOLE FOOT OF SNOW PLUS SNOW DRIFTS!
Is it a windstorm? JUST KIDDING, TORNADO, BITCHES!
So today it rained, which means it rained like this:
The video doesn’t really capture the intensity. This also went on for like half an hour. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it rain so much for so long.
I don’t mind rain if I don’t have to be out in it. I didn’t have to be out in this, so HOORAY RAIN!
This heat wave can already go die now, k?
Our condo was approximately 200 degrees this evening, so once the sun was mostly down we just went out and sat on the balcony and played Jeopardy! on the iPad.
Check out how creepy the cancer center looks.
I Love Calgary
So because I felt like death after my shot the other day, I forgot to post some pics I took of downtown. So here ya go!
ARCHWAY
Dudes, check out this super sharp Chinook arch we’ve got going right now.
I’m surprised I don’t have a headache from it.
Yay!
SKYPUNCH
So this is ominous looking, eh?
This sort of phenomenon is called a fallstreak hole (or cavum, hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, cloud canal, or cloud hole…and I can’t tell you which of those names is the coolest ‘cause they all are). It occurs when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water is in a supercooled state (being below freezing but not yet a solid). When the ice crystals do form, the droplets around the crystals evaporate, leaving the hole.
Apparently they’re a fairly rare thing and have been (understandably) mistaken for UFOs.
Super cool!
Noooooooooo
They’re taking down the last of the four cranes at the Cancer Center.
I am FREAKING SAD.
As I mentioned in a blog earlier this year, those cranes had been over there since 2007. Three of them were disassembled in September, and now I guess it’s time for the fourth and last one to go.
I’ll miss you, son Crane #2.
The Joy of Lego + The Bow
Things I learned today:
There is a Lego-building group that focuses on constructing landmark Calgary buildings.
It took Roy Nelson five years and about 8,500 pieces of Lego to build my favorite Calgary building, The Bow.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison:
(Actual building pic from here, Lego building pic from the site linked above)
Isn’t that a beautiful building? The fact that he’s got a giant Lego head as that wire mesh head statue is pretty awesome.
If I had money to spare to buy this, I totally would. I dig this kind of stuff.
December?
It’s December in Calgary and I just went running in shorts and a tank top.
It’s like 50 degrees out there.
What.
I’ve actually kind of enjoyed running in the 30-40 degree range; I don’t get nearly as hot (running is like the only time I produce actual body heat) and so I feel like I can run longer and easier, at least most of the time. When it’s in the 20s it’s a little rougher because my legs start off being really cold and thus feel really heavy and slow, but I can still do it.
I haven’t run in anything below 19 degrees yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.
But yeah, it is unseasonably warm here and it’s weirding me out. It legit feels like September.
Um…
Calgary, u ok?
This is why I can never find my way anywhere. This is why I walk the same five routes all the time. Because the universe is ready to destroy me with this nonsense if I ever stray off the righteous path.
(The “righteous path” being the Bow River Pathway).
Edit: Nate, I know you were waiting for a hilarious blog on this sign. Instead you get mediocrity. It’s just like everything else I do, isn’t it???
??????
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(?)
It’s getting colder.
It’s inevitable.
Calgary winters are long, dark, and sometimes brutally cold. The only two things that make up for them are a) summer days that aren’t usually too hot and daylight that lasts from 5 AM to 11 PM, and b) the fact that Calgary is a very sunny city, meaning even on a lot of those butt-freezing cold days, the sun is out, which makes a big difference.
This winter is going to be especially hard because I usually make it through the winters at least in part by being able to look forward to going down to Moscow for a few weeks over Christmas break.
That’s obviously not happening this year.
And another challenge for this year (apart from, y’know, trying not to get COVID): I got super into running over the summer, as you all likely know if you’ve been reading my blogs. While I feel like I could get used to running in the cold, once there’s snow and ice on the ground, I’m not so sure. The last thing I want to do is bite it on a patch of ice and screw up my leg (or something else) and be out of commission for any period of time.
I mean, I’ve got my treadmill, of course, but I don’t think I could run 14 miles on a treadmill. It’s a slightly different set of muscles and the furthest I’ve ever gone without stopping is about 8 miles.
Plus, running outside is SO MUCH MORE FUN.
So that’s going to suck once winter really sets in and doesn’t leave until like the middle of May.
Uggggggggggggh.
Mets, oh my god, that was such a fitting end to a very rough season.
Anyway.
Look at how pretty Calgary is! Time to enjoy it for the next few days before everything dies and the temperature drops below zero. And stays like that until May.
S W A G
I got my stuff from the half marathon today! Check it out:
Shirt!
Bib!
Medal!
Super cool. The last official race I did was the Vancouver Sun Run back in 2011; we got a bib (obviously, since it was in person) and a t-shirt (which I gave to my mom), but we never got a super cool medal.
Let’s try the full marathon next year!
Virtual Calgary Half-Marathon = DONE!
This was the one I really wanted to do in person back in May, but ALAS…
This was not my best run. For whatever reason my legs felt like they weighed like 80 pounds each, so I didn’t end up with a super great time. But it’s probably faster than I would have been able to do it back in May, anyway, so yeah.
Next year I’ll hopefully be able to do the actual factual marathon, and it would be super nice if I could do it in person rather than virtually.
I don’t have high hopes about that, though.
Hey so let’s do the Calgary Half Marathon
SO.
When I was talking to my dad the other day, he mentioned that he’d done (virtually, of course; thanks to COVID) Bloomsday before his surgery. He said he’d thought about calling me but ended up not doing it, which is a bit sad, ‘cause I could have totally pulled off a virtual…how many miles is Bloomsday?
*looks it up*
12 kilometers? Dafuq kind of weird distance is that?
Anyway, yeah. I can run that, no problem.
But that got me thinking about the Calgary Marathon, which, had this been a normal year, would have been held at the end of May (I think I mentioned it in my blogs way back then). So I looked it up to see if they’d had a virtual version and LO AND BEHOLD, you can actually participate in the virtual version up through September 27.
So I registered for the half-marathon!
I shall do it this week and hopefully will have a good finishing time. There are no prizes or anything for speed (not like I’d even have a chance, haha) because nothing is really “official” this year, but I’ll get a t-shirt and I’ll be able to cross off “run a half-marathon” from this year’s resolutions.
Cranefall
NOOOOOOOOOOO, the cranes surrounding the new cancer center are being dismantled! Those four cranes have been up since at least 2017 and provide so much extra light at night. I’m going to really miss them.
(“Cranefall” sounds like a good story title.)
Edit: only Crane #2 still stands.
LOOK AT THIS CLOUD AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
That is one seriously looming cloud. It’s supposed to storm later; wonder where it’s going to come from?
Edit: no storm at all, haha. Just a lot of wind.
HAHAHA THANKS WEATHER I TOTALLY WANTED TO GET ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED TODAY
So Nate’s down visiting his family but I’m still in Calgary ‘cause I’m a fart but at least karma got me back in the form of the BIGGEST TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR I’VE EVER WALKED IN.*
I decided to walk up to the northeast part of Calgary (mistake #1). Basically, I go up about 7.5 miles to the UPS/FedEx buildings past Deefoot Mall and then go back the same way I go up.
Simple, right?
It was pretty hot today, also, so by the time I was about a mile away from turning around, I was happy that it was starting to get cloudy. Then I happened to look behind me and saw that it was getting REALLY cloudy. Like, dark death clouds.
Like summer storm clouds.
I keep walking, though, because I don’t want to shelter in the mall (COVID, obviously) and figure if I get rained on, it won’t be too bad.
I WAS WRONG OH MY WAS I WRONG.
I got freaking DRENCHED. It was insanely rainy and windy for a good ten minutes and there was nowhere I could take shelter – that part of Calgary looks like this…
…and the sparse buildings up there are like “LOL what are eaves?”
I remember that the FedEx building has a small overhang in front of its main entrance, so I finally make it up there and take shelter for a bit.
(Not that it matters at this point; I am SUPER wet.)
Another ten minutes or so and the storm finally passes. And it’s sunny and warm out again.
Here’s a video of the dramatic change in sky as I pan from west to east (after those clouds in the east had tried to drown me).
And here’s a cool shot of the dark sky behind a sunlit field.
Adventures on the Canadian prairies, am I right?
*This was NOT, however, the wettest I’ve ever gotten on a walk. That honor goes to a walk I did a few years ago where I spent the whole 15 miles in a very steady downpour. Absolutely soaked. I hated it.
Hail Mary!
So a huge storm system moved through here a few days ago. All we got where we live was a little bit of wind and hail, but holy hell, look what other parts of the city (mainly the northwest quadrant) had to deal with:
Holy crapples. I’m glad I didn’t get stuck walking in that.
Edit: Apparently this is now the 4th most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history, beating out the 2013 Calgary floods. Wild.
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