Run 1,014: I do not like my shorts

View of Brunette River, pre-run: Chilly, a bit breezy–but no rain!

After sussing out the weather this morning, I altered my running plan from the lake to the river, to better avoid potential showers. It worked! It was chillier than it has been lately at 4C, but didn’t feel too bad. I wore three layers, but the middle was just a t-shirt.

The river trail was pretty quiet, probably due to the rain earlier in the morning, and one young owner (her eyes glued to her phone) had a dog off leash, but the dog looked old and was moving slowly, so no issue there, other than being neglected by its owner.

My pace was a bit slower than my previous run at 4:47/km, but it’s fine. I didn’t have any issues and my BPM was quite low at 142, so apparently I put myself into EZ Mode without being consciously aware of it.

If the forecast is accurate, Wednesday is looking extremely soggy, but I’ll just have to endure, knowing March gets a spike in precipitation as depicted by this snippet from the Windows weather app showing historical trends for annual rainfall:

March showers, not April showers

As for the short mentioned in the title, let me provide a list because I like lists:

  • Last year I finally got new running shorts, sticking to the same brand as before–Nike Dri-Fit
  • As expected, they had tweaked a few things in the years since I’d last bought a pair
  • The drawstring moved from inside to outside, which is a negative for me
  • The waistband is thinner and has less cushioning–a regression, IMO
  • The side pockets have room for my phone, but the phone will always turn sideways because the pockets are cut differently. WHY? (My phone goes into a belt when I’m actually running.)
  • The zippered pocket has been moved to the back from the side. This is better for most people, it makes no difference to me.
  • They somehow changed the cut in the crotch area. Or maybe my crotch area changed. In either case, the shorts start to ride up on the inner part of my legs now, which causes the fabric to rub against itself and is annoying as all get-out. I have to keep tugging the shorts down, but they always start riding up again.

Due to the last item, I am now actively looking for new shorts again. The previous Nike shorts were fine, and I’d happily buy them again forever, but retail being what it is, they have to constantly change things up to keep them “fresh” and just as often make things worse. Alas.

Still, even with the crotch riding issues, this was a decent if unspectacular start to the week.

The river, post-run: Looking a bit full at the moment.

Stats:

Run 1,014
Average pace: 5:47/km
Training status: Strained
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 11:18 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:05
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 4°C
Humidity: 75%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 142
Weight: 171.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,895 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (165/245/410)

Music: Face the Music, ELO

I got on a bike. And rode it!

Today, for the first time in several years, I got on a bike and rode it. And I did not forget how to ride, just like they say. I did feel a tad wobbly at first. Biking muscles are very different from running muscles.

And it wasn’t actually my own bike, it was an e-bike that Jeff got for cheap. It’s pretty tall, which was my biggest issue, but I quickly adapted to using the motor in conjunction with using my legs. It definitely made the last stretch coming home, up a fairly steep hill (hello, New Westminster) quite a bit easier when I switched to Turbo mode. And yes, it is literally called that.

I was a bit conservative on roads, because, you know, drivers in big vehicles made out of metal, but it wasn’t bad. We rode mostly down industrial streets, bike paths and trails before reaching our destination of Home Depot (Jeff needed paint).

On the way we stopped at a little place along the river called Don Roberts Park. I have no idea who Don Roberts is, but this is the view of the Fraser from the main lookout point:

It was fun to get out on a bike again and nice that my first e-bike ride didn’t end with me popping a wheelie and flipping over or something. I look forward to more.

But tomorrow, back to moving with my own two legs.

Birding, March 7, 2026: Capering coots

Where: Burnaby Lake, Deer Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Cloudy, some light rain, 11°C

In which we learn a battery charged is better in the hand than in the charger.

Burnaby Lake

The gulls were unperturbed by the drizzly conditions on the lake.

The original forecast was looking quite damp, so we opted for a later start of 11 am and headed to Piper Spit. Even though there was a light drizzle, the parking lot there was strangely full, so perhaps some event was taking place. The pier itself was mostly left to just us for the majority of time we were there and the weather ranged from cloudy to a steady light rain with drizzle in-between. Not ideal, but workable. You can see the raindrops in some of our shots, which is a nice effect.

I didn’t notice any dowitchers, but the water around Piper Spit might be a bit too high from recent rains. Most of the others were present, with random coots basically everywhere. There was Gull Town and Pigeon Place, but Crowville was underrepresented (we later found them on the sports fields). The weather may make for challenging shooting, but we didn’t get any snow this winter, so I’m willing to tolerate some drizzle.

I once again tried to shoot some gulls in flight, with mostly mediocre results. I can usually nail at least one butt shot, though.

And it’s that that time of year, because one pigeon was macking on another big time. The other pigeon was, as usual, utterly unimpressed.

In all, a better than expected start.

Deer Lake

Various ducks and some human paddlers on Deer Lake, Metrotown in the background.

After lunch, the weather improved to merely cloudy, so we remained dry going forward and the light got a bit better.

Deer Lake was better than expected, with copious coots cavorting and cackling up close on the main beach. Several small children were present and I thought they might chase the coots, as little kids are wont to do, but the coots chased them like the aquatic terror chickens they are. One had some weird feather business going on with a wing but didn’t seem particularly fussed by it.

There were also a few geese present and remember me saying it’s that time of year? Perhaps this is why the geese were going berserk and doing the cobra thing with their necks and showing off their hideous giant, barbed tongues. It’s just love. There was a lot of love on display.

And we saw a rare Ruddy Duck. I checked and I’ve logged it twice before in Merlin, but it’s been long enough that I don’t recall the last time I saw one. They have a mottled brown texture with slightly big honkers. It was just close enough to get decent shots.

There were also buffleheads, mergansers and others on the lake, but most were generally too far out to get good shots. We also saw one canoe being paddled about (by people, not birds).

The wind would pick up on occasion (though it was very mild) and this afforded some great bad hair day shots of a Great Blue Heron.

And of course, the lake itself provided some scenery, though maybe due to its compact size, it doesn’t shoot as well as Burnaby Lake (IMO).

And speaking of, we ended by returning to the western end of Burnaby Lake, and travelled from the bridge at Still Creek to the rowing pavilion and back. While we technically saw a lot of birds, this was mainly due to one of them being a very large group of Cackling Geese that flew in and landed on the sports fields to nom on the grass. Even though I took a lot of shots, I wasn’t really happy with any of them. It was also apparently “Bring Your Bike” day at Burnaby Lake (bikes are not allowed) because I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bikes in such a short span. Curse them all (but gently, some were little kids).

We also saw some Common Mergansers at the rowing pavilion, but they were a little too far out, especially for Nic’s Pixel phone.

Yes, at this point Nic was using his phone because after the battery in his camera died, he went to swap it out with a fresh one, but the fresh one turned out to be sitting safely nuzzled in its charger back at his apartment. I think the lesson here is for Nic to just hide away secret caches of charged batteries everywhere he goes to shoot birds.

Overall, a better outing than expected, given the potential for The Rains. Next week: Reifel! Haha, just kidding. I give it a 50/50 chance it will be open by the end of the month, and that’s assuming they don’t accidentally sink the bridge during the repairs. We shall see.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A gallery to come, perhaps, but here’s a sampler for now.

Coot close-up.
A ruffly Rock Pigeon.
“Hey baby, check me out. Hey…where are you going? Baby…”
A rare Ruddy Duck spotted at Deer Lake. We did not see any deer.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American Robin
  • Anna’s Hummingbird
  • Black-capped Chickadee (heard)
  • Song Sparrow

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American Coot
  • American Wigeon
  • Bufflehead
  • Cackling Goose
  • Canada Goose
  • Common Merganser
  • Great Blue Heron
  • Green-winged Teal
  • Hooded Merganser
  • Mallard
  • Northern Pintail
  • Ruddy Duck
  • Scaup
  • Wood Duck

Common:

  • American Crow
  • Rock pigeon
  • Seagulls aplenty

Raptors:

  • None!

Non-birds:

  • Maybe a squirrel? Probably a squirrel.

Lafarge Lake, March 5, 2026

I meant to post these shots earlier, but then disabled my PC by accident. But here they are now, once again using FooGallery’s kitschy Polaroid theme, because it just feels right for these.

All shot on my iPhone 12, which may not work well as a phone anymore, but still takes perfectly cromulent photos.

For those unaware, Lafarge Lake was once a gravel pit.

Dual boot and double trouble

When I set up my new PC, I wanted to again do a dual boot Windows/Linux setup–and I did, putting Linux Mint on my external 2TB Samsung SSD.

I later decided that having dual boot with an external SSD was not the way to go, so yesterday I undid this, with the intent of going back to Windows-only temporarily, before getting an internal drive setup for a Linux distro (likely Mint again).

I knew in undoing the dual boot that I had to be careful to not mess up things like Windows’ MBR–Master Boot Record, which could prevent the system from booting up at all.

I messed up the MBR.

Ironically, my still functioning old PC (also a dual boot system) allowed me to make a bootable USB drive for Windows and after a number of false starts, the MBR was repaired and everything is working normally again on the new PC, minus Linux Mint (for now)

I have some quaint old-fashioned paper notes on what to do should this happen again.

And now that I’ve cleaned up the mess I made, I can get back to what I was doing before I rudely interrupted myself.

Run 1,013: Well-timed

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Cloudy and calm.

It’s my first regular follow-up run in about a hundred years, woo (meaning a run two days after the previous). The well-timed is in reference to carefully watching the forecast and heading out early in the afternoon after morning showers ended. Not only did I get to skip the rain, the trail was in pretty decent shape, other than the occasional easily navigated puddle.

I flipped the course today, doing another short loop, but going counter-clockwise this time. I shaved five seconds off my pace, which is not bad. BPM was a bit higher, but fine at 150. I definitely felt I was pushing harder than on Monday.

Likely because of the earlier rain, the trail was largely empty, though more people appeared toward the end of the run.

I didn’t experience any issues at all and a single layer would likely have sufficed, but I wanted two in case the showers came back while I was out and aboot.

In all, a fine mid-week effort. Friday is currently looking wet, so we’ll see if I can squeeze in another run between showers.

The view further west of the dam, post-run.

Stats:

Run 1,013
Average pace: 5:42/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 1:18 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:38
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 10°C
Humidity: 81-80%
Wind: light
BPM: 150
Weight: 169.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,890 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (160/241/401)

Music: Eat to the Beat, Blondie

It’s about time for good news (pun warning in title)

Yesterday the provincial government announced it would be switching to permanent Daylight Saving Time–henceforth to be known as Pacific Time and that moving clocks forward an hour this coming weekend will be the last time British Columbians will do so.

I am both surprised and happy about this. Surprised because the government had taken the position of waiting for the western states to switch first, so the whole Pacific coast could be in sync. After years of waiting and nothing happening, I just assumed this was another promise that would never be fulfilled.

But then the BC government decided, six years after a survey indicated overwhelming support for the time change, to lead by example and hope others would follow. We join the Yukon, which made the switch two years ago.

Unsurprisingly, some people are unhappy and pretty much any discussion of the change will have these people popping up grousing about how we should have switched to permanent standard time, not daylight time, because that means more light in the morning rather than the evening. I get it. But please, just let people be happy and enjoy the moment (I stopped reading any discussions related to this).

For me, it’s great. Changing the clocks twice a year has always been awkward and weird, with little benefit to modern living, so I’m glad to see we’re getting rid of it. I prefer more light in the latter part of the day, even as I understand the arguments for having more in the morning. I’m counting this as a rare win for common sense in a year and time (ho ho) that seems largely devoid of it.

CBC News story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-adopting-year-round-daylight-time-9.7111657

Run 1,012: Mild, not wild

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Mild and sunny.

I opted to revert to a 5K run after three days off, to allow myself to warm up a bit before trying 10K again, but I will do 10K again soon™.

In the meantime I ran a short loop at the lake and it was downright spring-like, with a temperature of 11C, little wind and lots of sun. My stats were decent, but not earth-shattering, as my running schedule has been a tad erratic lately. Besides, it’s probably better to not shatter the earth, anyway. Still, BPM of 148 and a pace of 5:47/km is perfectly fine.

I also experienced no issues, though midway through the run I felt a bit tired–perhaps related to my “non-restorative” sleep last night. In any case, I picked up in the last few km.

Overall, a decent start to the week. The weather forecast suggest The Rains are about to return, but hopefully I can find a few patches of dry(ish) conditions to run during the rest of the week.

Brunette River, post-run.

Stats:

Run 1,012
Average pace: 5:47/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop)
Start: 12:41 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:06
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 11°C
Humidity: 64-61%
Wind: light
BPM: 148
Weight: 170.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,885 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (155/233/388)

Music: Even in the Quietest Moments, Supertramp

Birding, February 28, 2026: Big, beautiful and watery

Where: Surrey Bend Regional Park (Surrey), Brydon Lagoon (Langley), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Sunny, 9-10°C

With Reifel still weeks/months/eons away from re-opening, we decided to revisit a few places we hadn’t been to in some time, with some very mixed results.

The weather was consistently sunny and mild all day, which was a nice way to wrap up February.

Surrey Bend Regional Park

A lone piling on the Fraser River (it’s watery!)

I remembered this place having nice views of the river, but not a lot of birds, at least not the kind willing to show themselves.

Both memories were accurate. We heard and fleetingly saw a few birds, but I did not catch any photos of them. The river scenery was indeed nice, but I think this particular park is best left to the dog walkers and families enjoying barbecues in the picnic area, as the birding is rather…minimalist.

The sign at the entrance includes the phrase that also doubles as the title of this post. There is no denying the Fraser River is watery. There was quite a bit of it.

Brydon Lagoon

Visible in the background: The lagoon and large NO FUN sign.

This was an unexpected jackpot, with not only virtually every waterfowl we normally see in the Lower Mainland represented, but also a decent supply of songbirds and a couple of raptors thrown in for good measure.

The waterfowl ranged from Buffleheads to Common Mergansers and Goldeneyes, to a plethora of Mallards and a pair of Canada Geese that were not afraid to let you know when you invaded their personal space via a sudden loud honk, followed by death stare.

A large gathering of gulls in the central area of the lagoon (which is not really a lagoon, it’s a small lake or perhaps a pond with grand ambitions) were occasionally spooked by the appearance of a juvenile bald eagle. But then the eagle would fly off and land in a tree nearby–only to then be harassed by the same seagulls. Such is the circle of life.

A single coot was on hand, but without others, there was no coot drama to be had.

Songbirds included a few we rarely see, like a Yellow-rumped Warbler (I did not get a shot), as well as roving gangs of American Bushtits. I managed a few decent shots, which always feels like a major triumph with these spazzy little things.

We walked up a trail away from the lagoon and pondered exploring on through Hi-Knoll Park, which we did on our last visit, but elected to head elsewhere after not seeing much else away from the lagoon. Overall, though, this seems like a good sport to return to.

Tlahutum Regional Park

Mountains looming over Tlahutum.

We rounded off the afternoon at Tlahutum, but after seeing copious birds on the last visit, they seemed fewer this time, and most were farther back in the main pond, boo.

Nic suggested we go down the other trail we usually don’t take and this yielded some nice views of the mountains, the moon and while we did see some mergansers and wigeons in the waterways, it was tricky to get good shots due to angle/foliage and such.

But we got in a lot of steps, which will help boost our stamina for future birding. Yeah, that’s it.

In all, the birding was bad-great-meh, which is actually a perfectly cromulent average.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American Bushtit
  • Anna’s Hummingbird
  • Black-capped Chickadee
  • Chestnut-backed chickadee
  • Golden-crowned Kinglet
  • Golden-crowned Sparrow
  • Song Sparrow
  • Spotted Towhee
  • Yellow-rumped Warbler

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American Coot
  • American Wigeon
  • Bufflehead
  • Canada Goose
  • Common Goldeneye
  • Common Merganser
  • Great Blue Heron
  • Green-winged Teal
  • Hooded Merganser
  • Mallard
  • Ring-necked Duck
  • Scaup
  • Wood Duck

Common:

  • American Crow
  • Seagulls aplenty

Raptors:

  • Bald Eagle
  • Mystery Hawk

Non-birds:

  • A black squirrel
  • Western Painted Turtle

Windows 11: The road to insanity

Or death by a thousand cuts, if you prefer.

I have a new PC. It’s mere months old, and yet already Windows 11 is bugging out and acting weird. Some examples:

  • The context menu you get by right-clicking will randomly switch between the new Windows 11 style and the older version used in Windows 10.
  • Snipping Tool will sometimes fail to open, producing a dialog to find another app in the Microsoft Store (trying again usually works).
  • Other random applications will just stop working, needing to be ended via Task Manager. The main culprit remains File Explorer, which will occasionally stop responding, even when opening a window with as few as two files in it. Sometimes it eventually recovers, sometimes it just needs a full restart.
  • General snappiness is already eroding as Windows does whatever it does to make everything slower.
  • Even the usually sturdy PowerToys sometimes has its tools fail to work (like Preview) until you recite the proper incantation.

Anyway, rather than just complaining, this may finally inspire me to move the drives from the old PC into the new one, and get a proper dual boot system going again. That way I can install Windows XP, a stable operating system.

Just kidding.

(Although it wasn’t bad once you had all three service packs and patches installed.)

I’m going to install some Linux distro. My short list is:

  • Linux Mint (I’m most familiar with it)
  • Kubuntu (because I like KDE Plasma and this is one of the more mainstream distros to use it)
  • ??? A lot of others could go here. My bootable USB stick is ready.

Weight loss report, February 2026: Up 0.4 pounds

Yesterday, I was down one pound for the month, then overnight I miraculously gained 1.4 pounds, putting me 0.4 pounds over. Such are the vagaries of the body.

But despite a not-great month, my weight and related stats were basically unchanged.

Toward the end of the month I stopped logging my food in MyFitnessPal, ending a 4,767-day streak. I switched to Cronometer but only kept with it for four days.

I am currently not tracking my food at all, except in my head. I may go back to formally tracking it, in particular to see if I’m hitting some key goals–not weight loss specifically. One of the things Cronometer does is it clearly lists the nutrients from your food against your daily goal for each right by what you’ve had to eat for the day and this revealed a significant protein deficit. I was only getting about half of the protein I needed.

Since seeing this, I’ve begun to place priority on getting more protein, because right now there’s a good chance that when I’m losing weight, it’s probably pretty evenly split between fat and muscle.

After a few weeks I’ll probably track my food again part-time and see how things look.

And I promise, no donuts!

Stats:

January 1, 2026: 169.4 pounds

Current: 170.4 pounds
Year to date: Up one pound

February 1: 170.4 pounds
February 28: 170.8 pounds (up 0.4 pounds)

Body fat: 
February 1: 26%
February 28: 26% (up 0.3%)

Skeletal muscle mass:
February 1: 31.0 kg
February 28: 30.0 kg (down 0.1 kg)

BMI:
February 1: 24.4
February 28: 24.5 (up 0.1)

Historical: January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds