June is such a crazy month for people with school age kids. However, Dan and I have been having fun too. We had our own field trips. For Dan's birthday I arranged that we could actually spend a night in S'toon sans kids (thanks Mom and Dad!) and take in the annual Harley test ride. So that was fun. This video was of Dan taking off on the last of 5 half hour rides on 5 different Harleys. I wish we could just buy one but I think Harleys are reserved for retirees or the independently wealthy. I went on two rides with him, one of which was comfortable. The other one was on a sportster and had no backrest so I was hanging on for dear life and didn't enjoy the acceleration as much as I would have if I couldn't vividly imagine myself being left behind on the highway.
Two weekends later it was my turn and I got to experience a City Chase in Calgary with Dan's little sister Juanita, who is into that sort of thing. She was more prepared than I was but boy, it was fun! I am hoping that this becomes a yearly tradition for us. It was kind of like what I try to set up for the kids I treat - sort of a combination scavenger hunt, obstacle course, orienteering challenge, and code-breaking treasure hunt. Not to mention running miles and miles in order to have the privilege of doing feats of strength and agility (not so much in my case) in order to get "Chase Points."
So, in the six hours we were racing, we did the following:
1. used a lacrosse thingy to throw and catch a ball three times. Harder than it looks.
2. climbed a climbing wall about 30 feet and rappelled down. Too sweaty and time-challenged to get as scared as this deserved - we had run about 3 miles to find this one which other chasers kept saying was "just over there!" Ha!
3. completed a batch of weird gymnastic/bootcamp sort of tasks such as flipping a tractor tire, vaulting over a bench 5 times, doing leaping somersaults, and some sort of scaffold climb.
4. filled a bucket to about 3" with a "holey pole" - a PVC pipe with lots of holes drilled in. Very refreshing.
5. got hooked around our waist to a rope that was tangled in a playground web maze monkey bar thing and had to follow the rope from one corner to the other and then have our partner follow it back. Nice way to meet new people as several teams were doing this simultaneously.
6. frisbee golf - 3 "holes" or trees in this case. I suck at frisbee. The volunteer was bored of leading and did this with us which was fun as he even did the penalty burpees for all the throws above par we did (only 8!)
7. yoga poses in front of Lulu lemon. Pretty easy and at this point nothing is embarrassing anymore.
8. climbed all 800 steps of the Calgary tower. Wanted to die around step 320. If we had known there really was 800 steps we probably would have. We were hoping for closer to 500.
9. some orienteering challenge in a big park that involved lots of climbing and running. And cute rabbits hopping around.
10. the best one at the end - kayaking in a large loop on the river in a two person inflatable kayak that was mostly full of water. That's why we're all wet in the picture.
11. We got one more point for raising money for the charity the race sponsored - Right to Play.
Anyway, there's no race like this in SK because I guess they tried it in Regina and there was next to no interest. I can't imagine why because this was so much fun. There were tons of chase points we just didn't find or didn't have time to find but which would have been great. Oh well, next year. Thanks again, Juanita!
The rest of my life is involved with the usual end of school year chaos. I am off to the school for most of the day tomorrow cooking for grad as my son is in Gr. 7 and that grade does the honours I guess. Work is incredibly busy and that's good. It's so much easier to plan adventures when it's not snowing or pouring rain. (It still is pouring rain a lot but at least the sun comes out in between for a while now). I managed to plant the rest of my garden last week but I have no idea how it will actually do. It's pretty late now.
As it has just finished raining for the day (I hope) I could go outside now and do something useful, or I could chart. Sigh! Probably I should chart. Oh well, summer is here.
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