Out and About in Elkford

Elkford advertises that it is in the centre of the wilderness, and you know, I think it might be true considering the wildlife we saw while we were out there. First of all there was some woman on a bike cycling up one of the steepest hills in the area (you might want to look on Cath’s blog at www.cathliversidge.com for more information there. We saw bald eagles, an osprey’s nest, mountain sheep, elk, whitetail and mule deer, and bears! Bears! You heard me. We see them so infrequently that we almost forget they are knocking around. Ironically Colin was only asking 15 minutes beforehand if they were up and about yet. I think the gallery on this post proves that they are!

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Cath’s New Triathlon Website

Well Cath has a new website at www.catherineliversidge.com for her triathlon work. She’s been fortunate enough to get a second sponsor, so she’s decided to give something back and update it from time to time with information she’s found inspirational, and how she’s been getting on with her training on her road to the world championships in Budapest, Hungary. Even though it’s new, there are already a lot of photos up there of what she’s been up to, so take a look!

Spring

Spring is here with a vengeance now. The snow line is rising up the mountains, and the ski hill is not the place it was only a month ago. Cath is out in Elkford, “centre of the wilderness” climbing a huge hill on her road bike. We were there looking at it a couple of weeks ago. The road (to Fording Bridge Mine) is about 25km long, and rises something like 600 metres along it’s length, most of that rise is in only 4 or 5 km, so you can imagine, it’s very steep in places. Once you get to the top you really feel like you have gained height as you go from huge pines and firs in Elkford to high alpine at the top – small trees and alpine meadows full of deer and huge herds of elk (it’s not called Elkford for nothing)!

Hopefully (cougars notwithstanding) Cath’ll be back about 3pm so that we can go to a friend’s party in town – Cath’s already baked the cakes for it, so it’ll just be a case of getting changed.

Myself, I’ve been off the running for about three weeks. It started with a bad knee, so I got on the bike instead, then Ian came over, and we wanted to dedicate our time to him, Alex and Kate. Then it was my birthday, and I managed to get a dose of food poisoning that lasted nearly a week (keeling over, that sort of thing), and finally I did my back in – *lying down*!!!! How exactly does that happen?? How many excuses do you need? Well the good news for me is that after a rather marvellous massage from Cath, I’m now sorted. On my actual birthday day I wandered into a running shop and bought a pair of trail shoes (try running with stomach cramps!) so yesterday was the first chance I’ve had to put them on and do some damage with them. Surprisingly I felt really good, and even better, so did they, so looks like I’m up and running again, as it were.

What else? Well  (my bro) Ben’s coming over in about four weeks time, so we’re really looking forward to that, and if he keeps his nose clean and doesn’t get a criminal record before the end of the month we’ll take him over the border into Merca for a sloppy burger. I’ve also warned him that he needs to buy hiking boots as there’s every chance his  shoes won’t be able to take the pace at the places we’ll be taking him to!

“Breakfast smelled so good it woke my wife up”

The title of the latest review on Trip Advisor from one of our guests – they only stayed one night, a great couple – as you can, they had a sense of humour too! So that’s 8 reviews – 5 out of 5 – woo hoo!

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g182167-d1492227-r62259925-Cinnamon_Bear_Lodge-Fernie_British_Columbia.html#CHECK_RATES_CONT

Cheers

Thanks everyone that wished me a happy birthday by text, email and Facebook (good job I can remember the password!). I was ready for you this year and turned my cell phone off until I woke up! Those pesky time zones! The messages were very much appreciated, especially when you consider I don’t see you all as much as I used to.

I had a great weekend up there in that Calgary. Unfortunately I managed to get food poisoning on Friday night – thar’ll teach me to eat junk food!, but I was valiant to the end. I certainly didn’t let it interfere with a trip to the Chinese that I’ve been looking forward to revisiting after being there in 2005! Biggest one in Calgary/Canada/North America (choose one) don’t you know.

Anyway, thanks Colin for putting us up, Keith for providing tea, and Julie for providing coffee, and like I say, everyone else for the messages.

Rogers Mobile Phones

Homage to Keith who we were lucky enough to see yesterday.

Don’t do it! Just don’t. I tell you, we used to think O2 were bad, but they’ve nothing on the cell phone shower over here. Not only do you have to pay $70 for a sim and to have it “set up”, pay for 911 calls on a monthly charge, and pay to find out who’s calling you, but we’ve just found that Rogers make it easier to leave them than to stay with them if you want to change your plan. When I first set up the phone last year I worked out what I did and didn’t want to pay for in monthly fees. This gave me a bare bones rate. The woman asked if I wanted a 1,2 or 3 year contract. I asked them how much cheaper my monthly payments would be on a 3 year contract – “oh, they are the same price” she said! Now why on earth would anyone want to lock in for 3 years with no gain?

Anyroad, we are looking at changing the plan now, and they’ve told us it would cost $50 in admin fees (not bad for 30 seconds work). Alternatively, ending the plan and going into a Rogers store and starting a new one would cost $35! Honestly, they’re really crap over here! Here is an idea of our “local calling zone” – it’s the tiny black rectangle around Fernie – so long as I’m inside it I can make a local call.

Vodafone, Carphonewarehouse, you might not be very good, but you’ll find a welcome here in Canada I’ll bet.

Rant over, carry on.

Update: Bell can’t do text messaging on paygo with smart phones. Apparently it’s too difficult. bah. Mind you Fido, a subsidiary of Rogers appears to be a bit more customer focused, so there’s every chance we may jump department if not company.

Finally: We have moved to Fido. I confused the hell out of the nice lady at Rogers. “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving, anything we can do?”, nope, “Do you mind me asking who you are going with?”, yes, you, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand”. Bless ‘er. Nice lady, poor plans.

Jason “freak lungs” Liversidge!

So, this is my new nickname for Jason!

Today I had to change my medicines for the asthma – the last lot didn’t really touch it so I have some now that have  a steroid to try and clear the mucus (niiiiice) from my airways as well!!  Anyhow, to enable me to track daily progress before i go back in a couple of weeks I get to take home a little contraption that measures your lung capacity.  Mine was around 450 (average for a 40 yr old female, but considering the training I do it should be way higher) – but Jase THE FREAK LUNGS gave it a go – it goes up to 800 – he nearly went off the scale he hit 750 one time and 770 the next – he’s my hero………imagine have lungs and airways THAT clear……:)

Also changed my anti histimines – last lot made me feel like being by a ten ton truck!  This lot will hopefully do the trick – must admit I do feel a bit like a hypochondriac at the mo

This you have to see!

You can’t get better than that!

New Summer Site

Well the new summer look is up and running over at http://www.cinnamonbearlodge.net. We haven’t done too much to the content – a few new recipes, a tweaking of the wording here and there, and a splitting of the activities to summer and winter have been the main changes. Other changes are mainly clarifications to the site to answer questions that have been asked over the winter season by some of our guests. Cath’s going to update the summer section soon so that people can see what they will be able to do it they come here “out of season”!

That’s about it then. In other news, we’ve found out why Cath’s been sleeping so much recently – it’s because she’s “allergic” to the antihistamines that we bought – the irony! Finally, been back to the butcher’s with a recipe for cumberland sausage, and British bacon – watch this space!

Nearly Over

Well, the skiing’s nearly over. It’s been, shall we say, a less than ideal snow year this year, so it was a huge surprise when it started snowing just before Ian, Kate and Alex turned up. They managed to get some great skiing in, and we joined them for some of the days. Alex did really well on some difficult runs that were steep and had wind blown snow on them – you couldn’t always tell what was ordinary snow and what was drift – at times we were skiing powder over a foot deep!

We’ll miss the ski crowd, but we’re definitely looking forward to summer now, with long hot nights, biking, hiking and running. The new website will be up next week, so I’ll let you know when on the day.

(p.s. Cath’s asleep on the sofa as I type this – it’s been a long winter!)