Pic Spocket

I was up early last Saturday morning and while I was waiting for the bike stores to open, I decided to take my photo gear and head down to the Ojibway Park, located 5 minutes from home. I thought I may be lucky and get some nice bird shots.

When I got there, the light was very nice: the sun was out and low providing a nice soft and gold light. While I was not so lucky with birds, there was a group of deers right in the open field (some people had set food for them). They are not too scared and for many shots, my 100-400 mm zoom was too narrow to capture them completely in the frame. They were 8 and I couldn’t get all of them in the shot without changing lens (and risking them to leave suddenly).

Here are a few pictures.

More in the album below. Enjoy!

Deers in morning light

Rather than making a dedicated post for each GPS tracklog of my rollerblade and biking outings, I decided to create a page where I will log each run. The page can be accessed by the menu at the top of the blog, or the following link:

http://www.tguertin.com/blog/fitnesslog

Some statistics will be posted, with speed graphs and maps when available.

Just bought my first bike in 15 years (or more!). I just hated mine so I never used it, and decided that the Gym in nice summer weather is no fun at all! So I hope to stay active and healthy this summer by adding biking to my activity list. I have a friend Craig that bikes a lot, he may even let me join him on one of his long rides, if I can keep up!

 I went for a Hybrid bike: mix of mountain and road bike. It’s got straight handle bar for comfort, some parts normally used on mountain bikes (deraillers) but it is light, and has road bike wheels and tires to be more efficient on the road.

I also really liked the idea of Disc Brakes, which I got with this package. What I bought is the TREK Valencia, pictured below. It does not have a suspension, but my friend Craig did not recommend it to me and I will not miss it since I never had one ;)  So I am very happy with what I got. Here it is:

Finally, we had some very nice weather the last couple days. It’s just what we needed to start rollerblading again. Thursday evening, we met with our good friends Craig, Tracy (and of course Trails!!) at the river. While the girls walked the hairy little monsters (our dogs), me and Craig went for a few laps on the bike track following the Detroit River in Downtown Windsor, something we did several times last summer.

Last year, I was overweight and out of shape so I was almost dying just trying to follow Craig (and sometimes I had to give up). I would end up all red and out of breath with a crazy heart rate (up to 175).

The situation was quite different this year. The training paid off, and the amount of weight I have to carry around is greatly reduced (I’ll make an update on my weight loss soon) so the situation was almost reversed. Craig was far from suffering as much as I did last year (he rides his bike a lot, so he never really is out of shape), but he was the one panting at the end of the path. That felt good =).

I had my GPS Tracker with me, so I recorded the stats of the session.

Speed Graphic :

(click on the graph for larger version)

The track is about 5 km in length, so the speed dips at 5 and 10 km marks are breaks at each ends of the path. The last dip is when we stopped meeting with the girls again after a total ride of 13.7 km.

UPDATE 4/18/09 - One more Outing

I went alone  for one round trip on the riverside park with my rollerblades Saturday afternoon. We were going to the restaurant and wanted to spend a few calories before. Here are stats:

Broke the 3o km/h limit, on flat land. However, the wind was much stronger in one direction than in the other. This is easy to see in the graphic view of the run. See how the wind affects the average speed below, when you compare the going against the return trip.

(click on the graph for larger version)

This article is the second part about our cruise in the Bahamas. The first part is found (here).

DAY 3

On the 3rd day, we woke up while we were pulling in the port of Nassau, along with 2 other cruise ships. After a good breakfast, we went on firm soil to wait for our boat shuttle.

We had booked a discovery tour of the Atlantis Paradise Island, which is a huge resort complex and water park.  There is also an aquarium with a lot of marine life and a beach. We did not do the water park because it felt kind of expensive (like a CAD$400 excursion for both of us for water slides!) and it was a good thing because it was too cold that day t for that purpose. I am sure that it must be fun though. They have a very high water slide and when you get to the bottom, you go in an underwater glass tube that passes through a pool of sharks… Cool!

The place is huge. Here are a few pictures of the complex.

There was a nice suspension bridge above water infested with sharks (aquarium). 

All around, we could see open pools of the aquarium, with the fish in them. If you look on some of the pictures, you can see the underwater glass tunnels, part of the aquarium path.

We also went to the beach but did not stay long because it was chillier that day.

(See all pictures from Atlantis)

Of course, we visited the aquarium section to see some of the marine life they had on display

They had the glass tubes underwater a little bit like we saw in Hawaii in Maui.

(See all pictures from the Aquarium)

Finally, we rejoined our boat.

DAY 4

The last stop of the cruise was on the Great Stirrup Key, which is basically a private uninhabited island owned by Norwegian Cruise line. This was actually much better than I thought: we had a fantastic beach day. The boat does not dock anywhere: they just drop the anchor in proximity of the island. They have shuttles carrying people (and all the other stuff such as food and drinks) continuously between the boat and the island all day long.

I decided to leave the big camera at on the boat that day (but should have brought it), but good thing Corinne had our pocket camera with her, so we do have some pictures from that day. We left early for the island, using the second shuttle so the island was almost empty when we got there. That gave us the chance to pick a good spot. The beach was like a crescent with a large rock at the end, so the beach had very calm water. The sand was almost white, and the water turquoise. A true Bahamas picture!

You could also take a 2 miles hike to a lighthouse, but we sticked with the beach. They had an awesome barbecue for lunch on the island, with enough choice for my strict diet (grilled chicken, vegetables, lots of fruits, etc). They also had a few bars open for the party people, and a live band playing. Weather was perfect. This was an awesome day. Just the water was a bit cooler than expected…

(See all pictures from the Private Island)

The complete album for this trip is linked below.

Bahamas Cruise

We had the “VIP” treatment when getting out of the boat in Miami: Corinne is always flagged by the US Immigration. The good thing about it (for once!) is that we bypassed the long waiting line, and just waited a short time, sitting comfortably while they checked our papers. No sweat

What’s funny is that we had no motion sickness at all during the cruise. The problem was after the cruise, on firm grounds. For several days, we felt weird and nauseous at times, especially in closed spaces.

As mentioned before, overall, we really liked our first experience of a cruise vacation, and I am sure we will do it again sometime in the future!