I had my first attempt at cross-country skiing yesterday, making it now a total of 6 new sports in 4 weeks (kayaking, mountain-biking, windsurfing, go-karting, and racquetball being the others). We went up to Mount Adams where a friend had figured out a particularly scenic route past lava tube caves and natural rock arches. The fir trees were heavy with snow and the scenery was Christmas-card perfect.
I'd heard that cross-country skiing would be a tough workout, and it's true. It's a lot harder than it looks. I was wearing my heart rate monitor, and most of the time my pulse was up around 140-150. For three hours. Plus all the extra energy that I burned off trying to get back to my feet after falling on my backside/hip/hands and knees/face.
Yesterday we had to go up to altitude to find the snow, but today it came to us. We woke this morning to a world of white down here in the Gorge. A white Christmas has arrived early.
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'I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member,' Groucho Marx said. Well, I don't want to be a member of any club that DOESN'T want me as a member. Like the Leander Club of Henley, 'the world's oldest and most renowned rowing club.'
From a recent correspondence...
"At the last meeting of the Committee of Leander we again considered the nomination for Ordinary Membership of your candidate Miss REA Savage together with your letter of the 8 November 2006. Unfortunately the Committee is of the opinion that Miss Savage fails to meet the criteria we use in assessing 'proficiency pf oarsmanship', which is a measure of excellence rather than endurance.
However Miss Savage would be very welcome as an Associate Member, should she wish to pursue this option. Perhaps you could let me know.
Kind regards
etc etc"
So obviously my two half-blues for representing Oxford in the women's boat races against Cambridge aren't enough, even though their website blurb says, 'Many of our ordinary members have raced in the Boat Race [i.e. the men's Oxford/Cambridge race] or competed in a Henley Final or an event of similar standing.'
So go figure. The men's Boat Race counts. The women's races don't.
So they can take their trademark hippos and pink socks and, erm, keep them. Pah! :-)
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The history of the Thanksgiving seems rather a random excuse for a holiday, and it seems to me it might have been better to hold this big turkey-fest further away in the calendar from the Christmas turkey-fest, but hey, what do I know?
Despite that fact that the celebration is somewhat anti-English (the Pilgrim Fathers left England to escape religious persecution) I'm not one to turn down an invitation to party, so I joined some friends in Hood River for Thanksgiving Dinner last night. Great, high-calorie fun was had by all.
I went to work it all off on the racquetball court this morning. Yet another new sport - my fifth in four weeks. Sharla and I were about as hopeless as each other, especially both were feeling rather the worse for wear after last night's celebrations.
We ran around the court like lunatics, occasionally even hitting the ball. Sharla also scored a direct, eye-watering hit on my nose. 60 minutes later we were both exhausted, sweaty wrecks, but we'd had a great workout, and an hour's training never passed so quickly.
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One of the reasons I wanted to move to the Gorge was the outdoorsiness of the people here. Being a lazy oaf, I need either to set myself wild challenges (and then tell everyone I'm going to do them before I have a chance to change my mind) or to surround myself with people who will goad me into action.
It's working.
Since I moved here just over 3 weeks ago, I have attempted four new sports activities - mountain-biking, kayaking, windsurfing and now go-karting.
I have to say - go-karting was the most fun for the least effort. That's my lazy side speaking again. We went to the Sykart Indoor Racing Center in Portland and did two 10-minute circuit sessions. I seem to lack the kamikaze gene that had some of the guys tearing around the corners, but it was curiously addictive to see my split times for each lap gradually coming down.
I'm not sure it really counts as cross-training for my Pacific bid. My heart was certainly racing but it was adrenaline rather than a cardiovascular workout. But hey, it was fun, and I think expeditioners need to have their fair share of fun in the off-season. On the Atlantic I needed my happy memories so I could mind-travel out of the immediate, not-too-enjoyable, present.
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