Yes, it is November

The weather has been quite remarkable over the last week, of course we have had some rain, but hey, it cannot be green without that liquid sunshine.

A few deer down at the golf club, on our walk into Sooke.

Lest We Forget

Another year has passed most of us by, and on Monday, 11th November Karen and myself walked into town and attended the remembrance day activities at the Sooke Legion. It was very well attended by the town, young and old alike.

The Legion has been so well attended in the last two years, and is so full after the ceremony, that we have to walk the hundred yards to Sooke Brewery, as usual, friends and service people also attended, and as usual, it was a quiet, thoughtful, yet happy time at the brewery.

We raised a toast to them all.

The Gauntlet

These Sea Lions at Whiffin Spit are one major reason why a large amount of the salmon don't even make it to Sooke river.

Dead Fish Don't Swim Home

It's that time of the year again, the salmon struggle through the bay area, up the Sooke River and unfortunately, quite a large number of them never make it. These four, for some reason, had been placed in a pattern on the shore line.

Lochside Trail, Friday Part Two

It was a welcome break at the McDonalds around waypoint 034, some fluids and a banana.

It was then back on track and we shrugged the extra three kilometres off and set on our way, and the next two hours walking were not that bad at all, lovely countryside, farmers fields, cows, horses, enormous pigs. I'm not making light of it however, that second ten kilometres was definitely more difficult than the first.

It was the final stretch that became increasingly difficult, when we reached the "Swing Bridge" which was the point the Lochside intersected with the already completed Galloping Goose trail, we were both spent, nothing left whatsoever. I would say that the last four kilometres, including an annoying diversion because of the Swan Lake Trestle being repaired, were torturous, both physically and mentally.

It was done, and so were we. It's an achievement, and certainly one that we will never attempt to exceed.

Statistics :

On the Thursday we walked 10.8 kilometres total including the afternoon and evening, on the Friday, a ludicrous 35.3 kilometres on the day, 29.7 kilometres on the Lochside and the remainder, painfully, and comically on an unenthusiastic pub crawl in Victoria.

That's if you count two pubs as a pub crawl....

Lochside Trail, Friday Part One

I'll post the waypoints first, and then describe the experience :

It was around 8.30am when we set off, a spring in our step to celebrate the twelth anniversary of our first official day off work and for the first two hours, ten kilometres, we enjoyed the experience and had a food and water break in a lovely park with a few dogs running around. The wasps were annoying, which they are at this time of the year.

At waypoint 029 we took a left, which seemed the way to go, unfortunately it was a bad assumption that provided a three kilometre round trip back to where we had been, this really took the wind out of our sales, so when we rejoined the Lochside trail, we stopped for another break.

So at that point, we had walked twelve kilometres, but only completed nine of the Lochside.

Lochside Trail, Thursday

We left the house early in the morning and took the bus into Victoria and then the second bus took us all the way to Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal. It was the 19th September 2019 and twelve years from our last day at work. The walk into Sidney took a little over an hour and was around six kilometres, we enjoyed a lovely break in the weather of the last week (torrential rain) and arrived fresh and enthusiastic at the hotel with perfect timing for check in (after a pint).

These are the waypoints along the way (numbers 001 to 015) :

Touching Base

"Everything will always be exactly how it's gonna be though I seem to worry every single day"

The 12 year Plan

We have a cunning plan to celebrate our 12 years of retirement, and that is to walk the Lochside Trail, when we first moved to Sooke on Vancouver Island, we set off to walk the "Goose" and did that, and more, in the first year, and that left the 29km Lochside Trail to conquer, so we do that next week.

Living on the Edge

In May of 1983, the album "Reach the Beach" by the Fixx came out, and over the following four years the title track became an anthem for me, something that resonated within me, a task that I felt I must complete.

I know everyone cannot do this, but living on the edge, on the coast and "by the seaside" is something that we all should consider, or strive to achieve, or dream about, because reaching the beach, and staying there, is truly all that I need, and to share that with my beautiful wife, Karen, is more joy than I could ever have dreamed.

If you're going to do something life changing, make sure you share it with someone.

Salmon, coming back to Sooke

It's that time of the year when just outside the Sooke Bay, various types of salmon are returning to await the right temperatures, and water levels, to come back up the rivers to spawn.

The local fishermen in Sooke go out to meet the fish, welcome them back, catch them and subsequently eat them, here are a few at the wharf, plus a harbour seal, waiting patiently for fish guts.

Left to right, pinks, coho and chinook.

An unexpected visit to a Cidery

While on Salt Spring we took quite the walk along upper Ganges Road, and I was oblivious, but Karen had remembered from our recent trip to Sidney Thursday market and done her research about the "Wild" cidery on the island.  The initial hour there was a tasting flight of ten of their ciders, and then we bought a big bottle of one we liked.

Again, it was a marvellous time, lots of smiling faces, lovely ciders with all sorts of nuances, and then an equally wonderful walk back to town down country lanes, with music bingo at the Moby pub to round out the holiday, two of those smiling faces being our own.

The Skeena Queen

It was decided last year that we would take a trip to Salt Spring Island and it was all planned out in July, we took public transport the entire way and that involved two Vancouver Island buses, the Skeena Queen, and a local bus on Salt Spring Island from Fulford Harbour to Ganges.

From our front door, a short twenty minute walk to the bus stop and it was a surprise that we were on Salt Spring island within three hours of leaving the house.

It was three nights on the island and I must say it was an absolute blast, great long days, good food, lovely beers and scenery, eventful nights at the Moby Pub in Ganges, all in all a fantastic first taste of a place we will go back to again and again.

No dollar project

The local Home Hardware store have a scrap wood bin and I snagged some pallet strap pieces for a future project, the wood sat around for a few weeks while we finished the front bit, and after that, I was twiddling my thumbs and decided it was time to dust off the saw.

No dollars were harmed on this project, none.

The Left bit is almost done.

The project for the left bit of our front garden is nearing completion, of course it will never be fully complete as we will be enjoying it over the years (and not mowing useless lawn) but fundamentally, garden construction is over for this year and, of course, we have plans for another area in 2020.

Here are a couple of photos showing the results of our efforts :

Planning Ahead

After some online searching my latest pair of Doc Martens arrived this week, I tend to start the treasure hunt some time before I think my current shoes are past it.

The first in line are my current gardening shoes, they are probably eight years old, they are still comfy and do a great job, the next are my current shoes that walk, on average, about 8,000 paces a day and have done for two and a half years now.

The new arrivals, well, they are magnificent, the original UK version, very heavy full grain leather with a ton of life in them.

They will be in storage now until they are needed.

The cycle continues

If you travel back in the blog to May 2018 you will see this familiar compost heap, and a year on it is time for an update on the progress of what was a large patch of grass to the side of the house, which happily is well on it's way to being expunged.

Photo one shows new weeds and grass/sod and kitchen scraps on the right hand side, we had removed all the good soil from that side from 2018 (you'll see some of it in photo four) and today I removed the back left quadrant of soil and deposited it on turned over grass and a cardboard layer for a bed close to the road (photo two and three).

There is only a quarter of our 2018 soil left.

The first bed you see, planted and mulched, measures about 5' x 4' and the new one is closer to 7' x 4' and soil depth is about 8" and I expect our last bit of soil will stretch another 5'

Photo four shows the developing shrub garden, what was once mostly grass is now evolving into something lovely.

Back to photo one, the full side is now covered with a tarp, to keep moisture in and for the good old rot to begin, in a weeks time, the left hand side will be emptied of soil, to be filled with all those garden and household scraps, to make excellent (and free) soil for the 2020 season.

A Right Pair of Hillocks

After an exciting few months of broken wrists and passing out on toilets, we are hopefully back with new adventures, planting shrubs, building little mounds of stuff, ordering mulch, and so the new season begins....

First off, the original hillock, a couple of Berberis Rose Glow looking after a Cedrus Deodora, Feeling Blue plus some new growth on the Alberta Spruce that we planted last year.

There is an extra hillock and more shrubs in this photo, plus five cubic yards of fine Alder Mulch, delivered this morning.

Meanwhile Back in Sooke....

Winter arrived, after all of us thinking that here in Sooke we would escape the Polar Vortex, well, it has arrived, and it is vortexy.

The Sooke Bus down the ditch on the highway yesterday :

Smaller, yet, more powerful...

On the right, the already modified Lego box Raspberry Pi 2 900 MHz version, and introducing on the left, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. A fifty percent or so increase in performance. This one complete with a fancy layered case, heatsinks and fan. 

Midget computers, with all the power.  

Raspberries and Pie

The last post, a couple of pix about what I'm up to at the moment, and in my opinion, total and utter joy and fun, perhaps I am energized by some life force to break me out of what is a long vacation away from something that has been a passion in my life.

It's been about six years I suppose, honing our technical life towards media consumption, computers that run standard operating systems, the Roku, the Apple TV, and I think perhaps boring and I forgot what I love in technology, and that is the learning aspect of it all.

The Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer, running a strange, yet familiar operating system.

Welcome.

 

Lost, and then found.

Thing of Beauty (Mark One) :