Geocaching

Today, I had a meeting on the outskirts of the city. In the case of Ottawa this means a heavily wooded area. I decided to pack my GPS and to do some geocaching after the meeting. Over the course of a couple of hours I found five geocaches. The forth find was the most memorable. I had hiked down to the end of the trail to find my third cache and noticed that the next one was 1,500 meters away in a southerly direction. This is where the fun begins! I set a reference point for the next cache and started walking through the woods. Along my trek south I spotted a couple of cotton-tail deer, I navigated around a beaver bog, hiked through a couple of (cedar) deer-feeding yards, spotted a couple of deer hunting platforms and finally forded a couple of streams by walking across downed trees. It was a fun afternoon.

Fiddleheads and swing

While out geocaching on the weekend I spotted another sign of Spring, fiddleheads. They are one of the first ferns to appear in the Spring and grow very quickly before disappearing. They are a delicacy and have a unique taste when prepared properly.

Last night I had a really fun time swing dancing. It was great for a couple of reasons, a live 20-piece jazz band, a new venue with a dance floor that has a new bounce, dancing a record number of dances in an evening (15) and dancing with many of the folks that I dance with regularly on Friday night. One of the organizer, swing dynamite, showcased their latest dance troupe submission to the upcoming Canadian Swing Championship in Montreal in May. I think that they will win an award as their dancing rocked. I am hoping to check out their dance lessons in the future.

The Maze in the Grass

In one of my blogs last week I presented a couple of mysterious pictures (one, two, three) taken in the grass near where I live. I had first seen the phenomena when I was growing up and this was the first time I had seen it in Ottawa. The picture is of mouse trails and tunnels in the grass and dirt. When a thick crust of snow forms mice burrow and hibernate underneath it eating the grass, weed and worms. Rather than stay in once place they dig through the grass and soil to form a maze that they can run through to keep warm and to expand their feeding ground.

Ottawa Spring Mystery

Today, I was heading along a trail that I take to the train and noticed something that made me stop. It is a spring-like phenomena common in Ottawa. I came back later in the day and took two more pictures (2, 3). The challenge is to try and figure out what want the pictures represents.

Time...time...what time is it?

Tonight (Friday) while running south along the Rideau Canal I had an
interesting experience. A runner was coming towards me from the
opposite direction as I fumbling with my GPS watch. He started
pointing at his wrist and shouted time, time, what time is it? I wasn't
sure what time he was interested in as my watch was showing that I was
18 minutes and 34 seconds into my workout as well as being 6:45pm. I
shouted back that it was 18:34 which seemed to satisfy him. On the way
back, I bumped into the speedsters that I run with on Wednesday night
who were doing their warmup. I sped up considerable and they responded
allow us to do the next two miles at a pace very close to slowest km
interval pace of 4:20. It felt good to burn off a day's worth of
stress. At the same time my legs were nicely limbered up for swing
dancing.

Last night, I had my first of six lindy swing dance lessons. We
reviewed some of the basic moves and spent much of the evening doing
slow step, slow step, followed by step - triple step - step, with the
s-ts-s being done on a eight count. They mentioned that it would be
frustrating at first but if we were patient the prize was out there
waiting.

Ice flows on the Ottawa River..but not for long...

I work in a tall building near the Ottawa River. Today, I was looking out the window and noticed another sign of spring, ice flows making there way down the river. In the winter the river freezes thick enough that you can snowshoe across to the province of Quebec. The chunks of ice are getting smaller so the water temperature is getting warmer. Further up the river a few brave soles are kayaking the rapids while protected by a thick wetsuit. Doing an Eskimo role in the frigid conditions could be a fatal paddle/outing if you don't recover quickly. I'll see if I can post pictures in a couple of days.

In the afternoon, I found myself in a bit of an emergency situation as the mercury had started to climb to an Ottawa warm 21C/70F. I was starting to cook but not for long as two zips later I was comfortably wearing shorts.

The 5-6-7 dancing mystery...

While darting across the uOttawa campus today I spotted a dance troupe doing their routine. As with swing dancing they counted off 5,6,7 and started their dance moves. The question I pose is why don't we say start off with 1,2,3 or 4,5,6. I also wonder what the origin of the of starting off with 5 as it seems that many other dances in addition to swing dancing use this protocol. Hmm...