Neighborhood Activity

I was sitting at my desk when I heard crows making a fuss outside. I looked out in time to see a large bird landing in the tree across the street. At first I thought it was the neighborhood Great Blue Heron which visits that tree. But a mob of crows was harrassing it, and they don't usually make much fuss over the herons. I got the binoculars and realized it was a juvenile Bald Eagle. (They don't get a fully white head till they are four years old.) And there were actually two Bald Eagles in the tree.

You don't realize how big the eagles are until you see them beside something like this crow for comparison.

The eagles didn't seem too worried about the crows, but they still ducked and flinched when the crows dive bombed them.

The eagles left after a few minutes, but then one of them returned and seemed to settle in, so I grabbed my camera, put on the long lens, and went out in the yard. It was quite far away, and the light wasn't great, but I managed to get a few shots.

These are the first Bald Eagles I've seen in the neighborhood.

Coffee Tools

I'm a minor coffee geek. I'm not super serious about it but I like to have a decent machine and buy good beans. I recently bought a shiny new coffee machine. (A Quick Mill Pippa from Espresso Dolce in Vancouver)

I really like the machine but it came with a cheap plastic tamper. How does that fit with selling quality and craftsmanship?

Victoria has a strong coffee culture, with numerous roasters and coffee shops. But I hadn't seen anyone selling tampers. I thought about ordering one but looking at them reminded me of the custom shaving brushes made by Scott Bungay, our neighborhood bike repair / machine shop. (He'd already serviced our bicycles and fixed a metal wine rack for us.) I sent him an email describing what I wanted. It turned out he was a fellow coffee geek and knew exactly what I was talking about. (Coincidentally, he had the same brand of Italian coffee machine as me, although a higher end one.)

I thought the Damascus steel he used for some of his shaving brushes would make a nice tamper. And he happened to have a stainless steel tamper end that would fit well. We had a chat and worked out a design. I thought with the non-standard materials, a classic handle shape would be a good fit.

Scott sent me some photos as the project progressed, starting with the raw cylinder of steel.

It's interesting that the Damascus pattern is hardly visible until it goes in an acid bath, to reveal the final pattern. We decided to add the grooves to give a little texture to the piece.

As a solid chunk of steel it definitely has some weight to it. As Scott said, "you can let the tool do the job" [of tamping]. It's pretty much the opposite extreme from the plastic tamper. It wasn't cheap, but it's beautiful and unique, and I got to support a local artisan and fellow bicycle and coffee lover.

PS. Of course, a good grinder is the other essential coffee tool. I've got a St. Anthony's Millwright hand grinder that is both attractive and functional.

Reflections

A late afternoon walk along the water led me to indulge in a few reflection photos.

And a final shot that isn't reflections but has a similar feel.

Photos of the Week

To someone from Saskatchewan, the idea that spring flowers start in January is very bizarre. Of course, here (in Victoria) there are some flowers that bloom all winter.

They're not the prairie crocus (Pasqua flowers) that emerge from the snow on the prairies, but spring crocuses are still a nice splash of color. Of course, neither the snowdrops or the spring crocuses are native like the prairie crocus.

There were two varieties of Witch Hazel with their unusual flowers.

These seeds (Stinking Iris?) reminded me of The Hidden Beauty of Seeds & Fruits book I've been reading. Their bright color caught my eye.

I liked this unusual fungus. I think it's Hairy Curtain Crust (who comes up with these names?)

See also my sister Penny's blog post

See all 13 photos in this batch

Photos of the Week

I haven't been getting out taking photographs much lately. Here's a few from a recent outing.

There are three types of Mergansers (diving ducks) here - Common, Hooded, and Red-breasted like this one.

There are also Buffleheads, another diving duck.

And of course, reflections.

I like all the moss and lichen.

There were quite dramatic clouds over the Olympic mountains (in Washington state, across the water)

See all 26 photos in this batch

Mountains of Books

I was looking for a bookmark and came across this one. It brought back lots of memories.

The Banff Book and Art Den was a fixture in Banff for 43 years, opening in 1965. My family made our first visit to Banff a few years after they opened. I wonder if we visited the book store? I wouldn't be surprised since my family are book lovers. Over decades of climbing in the Rockies, I made hundreds of visits and bought countless books.

After many years at the Clock Tower Mall they moved to their final location at 94 Banff Avenue, where the Patagonia store now is. They closed in 2009. It's always sad to lose a good bookstore. Amazon isn't quite the same.

Running

I finished up 2021 with my mileage for the last few months of 240, 250, 260, and in December 300 km. That progression was a bit of a surprise. I wasn't particularly trying to increase my mileage. And in December, it was in spite of record rain, record cold, and record wind, not to mention snow and ice. I haven't managed a run longer than 15 km in the last few weeks due to the weather. On the other hand, it wasn't -40 like Saskatoon! My total mileage for 2021 was 2900 km and I'll likely hit 3000 for a 12 month period before too long.

I went out this morning to try for a good time on a Strava segment and managed to set PR's for the kilometer and the mile. Despite getting soaked by the rain, and having to dodge around leftover snow and ice, I would have made top 3 for my age group (55-65) on the segment, but I messed up and didn't start in quite the right spot :-( Oh well, it's good motivation to try again.  (These "PR's" are since I got back into running in my 50's, I was faster when I was younger.) Getting competitive over a Strava segment is pretty meaningless, but on the positive side, it motivates me to do a little faster running to balance out all the longer slower runs.

With no travel because of Covid, and therefore no paragliding or scuba diving, I'm grateful that running is one of the things I can still continue to do.

As always, I am thankful that I am healthy and fit enough to run like this. I know not everyone is so lucky.

Best wishes to everyone for 2022.

Photos of the Day

Christmas Day turned out to be surprisingly nice out, considering the coming snow and cold. Shelley and I even got some sunshine on our walk.

Recently I discovered where a Great Blue Heron likes to sit. It's quite close to the path, but barely visible through the tree branches. However, you get a clear view from across the bay (with a telephoto lens). It seems to be there most days.

A chance shot of a gull taking off into the wind with the Empress Hotel in the background.

One of our local river otters on their favorite grassy spot right in front of some condos. (Despite living in the ocean, these are not "sea otters".)

Usually hummingbirds are skittish and will fly away if you get anywhere near. But this one seemed content to sit on his perch beside the busy path and let us take photos. It would fly off to one of the nearby condo balcony feeders and then return to this same branch. Their iridescence colors are structural rather than pigmented, formed by the reflection of light from microscopic layers of air bubbles in their feathers. Most of my photos didn't catch much color.

But an occasional lucky shot would show their brilliant colors.

It's amazing that hummingbirds can live here in the winter. Although there are a few flowers still around, they don't seem like enough to feed the fast metabolism of hummingbirds. These Anna's hummingbirds will also eat insects, but there's not a lot of them around either. It's only in the last 60 years that they have expanded from California to as far north as British Columbia - likely a combination of global warming and more urban flowers and hummingbird feeders.

The windy weather has been blowing the kelp onto the beach. I like the color and patterns it makes.

Often the Double-crested cormorants sit on these pilings with their wings outspread to dry. But it was too windy for that today. I caught this one just as it was getting ready to take off.

We're lucky we went for our walk on Christmas day. As I write this on Boxing day we're getting the predicted snow, wind, and cold temperatures. (Although -20 windchill doesn't sound "extreme" to someone recently from Saskatchewan.) I hope the hummingbirds are managing to survive in the snow.

These photos were all taken with my Olympus E-M1 m3 and Panasonic 100-400mm (200-800 equivalent) telephoto. Although its older, smaller (2x crop factor) sensor is not leading edge, I love the small size and versatility. I would say it's my favorite camera of the ones I've had so far.

See all 18 photos in this set.

Explorations

I recently joined Strava (to keep in touch with a friend) and one of the interesting features is "heatmaps" of your activities. It's fun to see where I've been on my running. I've covered quite a lot of ground in the three months I've been here in Victoria. One nice thing is that very little has been on the road. It's almost all on paths like the Galloping Goose and the E&N rail trail.

My running continues to go well. I just hit a 4 week record (for me) of 280 km. And my recovery was good from my recent 30 km long run (out to Royal Roads), so it seems the higher mileage is paying off.

I see that I haven't been to Mill Hill Regional Park yet. Maybe I'll try that on my next long run.

Photo of the Day

We took advantage of the lack of rain today to check out Mt. Douglas Park and do a short hike.

I love all the gnarly trees covered with moss and lichen.

85

Somewhat unintentionally, I ran 85 km in the last week. That's a record for me. My average for the last 12 months is just over 50 km per week. The last 6 months it's closer to 60 km. A few years ago when I was struggling with IT band and foot problems I was only managing 35 km a week. I would never have imagined I could run this much in a week (and feel good afterwards).

A couple of days ago I wondered why I was feeling a little sluggish on my run. When I noticed I was at 75 km for the previous 7 days that explained it.

Of course, 60 km or even 85 km per week isn't much by pro runner standards, but I'm not a pro runner, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Today I was thinking I'd do about 20 km. I wasn't really due for a long run, but it looked like the best weather opportunity for the next little while. (I find myself adjusting my running schedule to the weather a lot more here in Victoria than I did in Saskatoon.) I took it easy and felt pretty good so I ended up doing 26 km, including a loop of trails around Thetis Lake. The last few kilometers I was a bit tired but that wasn't surprising.

Although it's going well, I'm quite aware that could change at any time, and the more I do, the bigger the risk. Any of my past problems could reappear at any time (or new ones). With that in mind, it's probably time to take an easier week and give my body a chance to recover fully.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful

After our torrential rain storm, the next day was sunny and calm so we decided it was a good chance to get out in our new folding kayaks. We headed to Thetis Lake since it's close and sheltered.

As soon as we got in the water I saw the reflections from the patches of sun on the lingering fall colors and the deep shade between.

It was a lovely fall day, especially relative to the snow in Saskatoon.

See also: Shelley's blog post

See all 15 photos in this album

* The title is a quote from Darwin's Origin of Species