Happy Summer Solstice and hurrah for the longest day(light) of the year! Today marks the start of my 57th summer. We had our first heat warning for 06/07 and 06/08 with new record temperatures above 32C (90F) both days. Nova Scotia’s third wave of COVID-19 gave us our highest active case count and hospitalizations of the pandemic but we are currently in the early phases of easing restrictions. A summer with open borders to the other three Atlantic provinces is in sight.
And Happy Father’s Day! My family missed celebrating The Dad’s birthday in person in April due to the restrictions but we were able to enjoy a sunny afternoon together today.
I have been doing more biking than hiking lately. After a few longer rides in April with friends, I questioned how much I really enjoyed time on the bike. Then I had a hike where I got covered in ticks* (more than 10 and you get to say covered). After that, my mind was more open to biking and I realized what would make a difference was something I knew well: training. I wasn’t going to enjoy long rides if I only went out once a week. I needed to get in a few shorter training rides regularly to build up the quads and stamina. That training, along with learning to use all the gears and with proper seat height, has me handling the hills much better and enjoying the rides much more. This week, I did a ~108KM trail ride (no hills) which must be my longest ride ever.
Since May, I have been on fire getting things done. How have I overcome procrastination? I can’t point my finger to any one thing. Perhaps frustrated that I was not getting to important things on my to-do list and not willing to give up my hiking/biking to make more time, the eject function on the sofa started activating more frequently and hasn’t stopped. One item on that to-do list was to make a curtain for the tiny house. Last year I bought a fun fabric with woodland animals and I had all winter to sew the curtain before returning to the tiny house in the spring. When I finally got around to it a few weeks ago, it took longer to find the paper I’d written the window dimensions on than the one-hour it took to sew the curtain (note: in the 1990’s, one of my jobs was sewing curtains). I’d like to say some lesson was learned.
When I was looking at my summer post from last year, I thought Aww! Remember when I used to measure the pandemic in weeks. By now we’ve had five complete seasons and this is the start of our second pan-summer. Summer 2021, we get 13.5 weeks, 13 weekends, 94 days. As the skilled trainer for the Mountain Conditioning fitness class I sweated through out west liked to say, get after it.
* FYI that ticks can easily survive a ride or two in a front-loading washing machine.
Related links:
- the dad (post #90)
- the cat bed (post #142)
- summer #55 (post #117)
- summer at last (post #94)
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