View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Cloudy and cooler.
The weather promised a high of 18C and mostly sunny, but the reality was clouds, the possibility of a shower and a temperature of 12C when I set out for my run. In other words, it was actually better for running.
I opted to go clockwise, continuing my alternating pattern. Lately I’ve been developing an affinity for the clockwise route, even if it means crossing through the marshy bits at the west end of the lake where water is now streaming across the path in at least five places. Hopefully something is done about this before boat rentals are needed to complete passage.
I didn’t have any plan for the run, but started out a bit slow. I picked up the pace on the second km and was slightly less slow. After this I got my footing and established a faster pace, ending with an overall of 5:43/km and a BPM of 146, a fair bit lower than Friday. The cooler temperatures really do seem to treat me better.
Hangdog was out, but no other regular runners. I got to see the four goslings and their parents post-run, which was fun. No hissing, even!
I didn’t experience any issues, though I encountered an issue deep into the third km. Specifically, there was a parks vehicle puttering along the trail ahead of me. The driver seemed to be going at a respectable pace and I didn’t think there’d be an issue, but it soon became obvious that I was catching up and this would become a problem at some point. I definitely did not want to pass. I began to slow my pace a little to establish more distance when the vehicle suddenly stopped and the driver stuck out one of those pickers for grabbing litter out the left side, as if signalling…something.
I could not interpret what it meant. Did he mean me to stop? Was he signalling a left turn (into the bushes?) I did not know. This seemed to be a good time top just plain pause the run, so I did. Once I deemed him sufficiently ahead, I resumed running, only to see there was an intersection in the trail ahead and he was, indeed, turning left.
I encountered no further putt-putt cars and the rest of the run was fine and dandy.
In all, a good start to the week.
Still Creek, post-run. Gloomy but green.
Stats:
Run 1,031 Average pace: 5:43/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:47 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:45 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 12°C Humidity: 75-72% Wind: light BPM: 146 Weight: 169.5 pounds Total distance to date: 6,980 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (250/433/683)
The weather was once again fabulous. I once again got sunburn. I even had my sunblock, I just didn’t put it on. I’ll learn by the next outing, I swear.
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
This is the main pond, reflecting the general absence of birds.
This was my second trip back to Reifel after the Barge and Bridge Incident™, with all trails save the North Dyke Trail now re-opened, though a few are still in pretty rough shape.
Three things stood out this day:
There was a lot of bird drama (here and elsewhere) and it wasn’t just mad geese, though they figured prominently, as always.
Most of the birds were absent, either nesting, hiding or visiting their pocket dimensions due to the unseasonably warm weather, perhaps.
Poop.
Let me start with the poop. We had just entered and had barely made it past the entrance when some birds flew overhead, one depositing a load on both my left and right wrists. I was wearing a long-sleeved light hoodie, so it could have been worse. It could also have been a heron pooping, which would have been much worse. Still, it was an annoying way to start the day and despite being reassured by Nic and Jeff that getting pooped on by a bird is good luck, I was not convinced. I didn’t win the lottery later that evening, so there.
After cleaning up in the washroom, we got to touring the open trails and as mentioned, many of the ponds were strangely bereft of birds Even the sparrows seem to be reduced in numbers. It was odd and a wee bit disappointing.
We saw three Sandhill Cranes, one by itself, the other two (a couple) strolling around together. At one point it seemed one of the pair may have landed on a small island possibly already occupied with a goose nest. And goose. Drama ensued and the other half of the crane couple called out in its weird, loud trilling croak for quite a while after.
The Killdeer family was nowhere to be seen, alas.
The geese were strategically placed all over the sanctuary, asserting their dominance, one even perching itself magnificently on the railing of the platform with the sign that assures you if you are very quiet, you might see a Virginia Rail. Sure, that could happen, if you didn’t have a Canada Goose literally standing there, lording over the area, ready to start blatting out its war cry on a moment’s notice.
At the viewing platform, we saw two wasps doing something. I’ve looked at my photos and I’m still not sure. Were they making out? Was one eating the other? They eventually separated and one flew off, so I guess it was mutual something or other. Still not as strange as dragonflies copulating.
A number of swallows were in a nest-building mood, and were gathering bits of straw, down and other nest-building material. Soon, the babbies, with their giant mouths and endless cries of, “FEED ME! FEEEEEED ME!”
By early afternoon, we completed our circuit and freshly sunburnt, headed off to our next stop: Centennial Beach.
Centennial Beach
Very low tide, with Mt. Baker in the background.
We started at the entrance near to the pump station and saw some herons stalking about, spied some gulls way out with the extremely low tide and got shots of Mt. Baker, which was standing against a bright blue sky.
And there were shorebirds! Specifically, Least and Western Sandpipers. We watched them scamper along the shoreline, take off in brief bursts of flight and repeat until they decided to fly off.
We saw our only shovelers here, what was likely a mated pair, in the small pond near the other entrance to the beach.
And the Raptor Trail delivered, with what turned out to be a fight or exchange between a male and female Northern Harrier. The male had caught a bird and made it an ex-bird. The female showed up, the male dropped it and the female apparently made off with it. I have no idea if this was planned or just one harrier shaking down another.
Back out on the bay, a young Bald Eagle was standing on a distant sandbar and would occasionally fly off to another. At one, he appeared to be noshing on something that turned out to be a large crab. He got the crab to go, and flew off. The eagle, not the crab. Well, the crab flew off too, but was in the talons of the eagle and was an ex-crab at that point.
Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake
Look at all the birds that might be here, but aren’t!
Still sunburnt, we went to our last stop: The Piper Spit Bird Hangout and Illegal Seed Sharing Site. Here we saw a lot of Wood Duck drama, for some reason, with males flapping, chasing and flaring out their mullets. Cowbirds and pigeons were both looking unsuccessfully for love and there were shorebirds here, too.
Most of the winter migrants have departed–we saw no Scaups, Buffleheads or Ring-necked Ducks (a single pair of the latter were at Reifel), but we still have coots.
The butterfly garden proved to have no butterflies or fancy spiders this time, but at least we didn’t have to wait for a train to pass before leaving.
In all, a decent day of birding, though I was a bit disappointed by the lack of birds and also the overall quality of my shots. I got some good ones, but there were a lot of misses, too. And I wasn’t even trying to shoot flying swallows.
But at least the weather was again faboo.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto. Some scenery shots taken on a Samsung Galaxy S26.
A few shots, gallery pending:
A Sandhill Crane, sitting on the grass near the Reifel entrance.Watching and waiting…I don’t know what this Wood Duck was reacting to. They were all a bit weird.
Caveat: Time and a lot of patience were sacrificed, but not in a ritualistic manner.
Early optimism
I got Linux Mint working on my 2019 PC alongside Windows 11 without much fuss a few years ago, each OS on its own SSD. I figured it would be pretty straightforward to do the same on my new PC.
I was wrong.
The fix and its various parts
First, Mint would refuse to even see Windows 11. I fixed this through some major overkill: I installed an entirely different Linux distro that did (in this case, KDE Neon).
Next, after recognizing that Windows 11 existed, Mint would only offer a dual boot option if I partitioned the drive I had Windows 11 on, which I did not want to do. (The next major update of Mint, coming around December 2026, promises to use a more modern installer that will likely address my woes detailed here.)
I did the next best thing, telling Mint to erase the SSD that KDE Neon was on, and then install to that. I’d have my dual boot system, woo.
Except Mint did this and never set up the Grub dual boot config at all. It would only boot into Mint unless I mashed F8 at startup and then chose the SSD with Windows.
I fixed this by using a Windows program called Grub2Win, which adds an absolutely hideous graphical UI (seriously, it looks like a CGA monitor threw up on it) to the Grub boot menu. I added Mint as the second boot-up option, pointing to its correct location on its SSD.
Everything now works as intended.
A list but please, don’t try this at home
So, in order:
Install an unrelated Linux distro, like KDE Neon, on a secondary SSD, leaving Windows 11 as is on the primary SSD.
Use the “Erase partition/disk” option in the Linux Mint installer to replace the above distro.
Use a 3rd party program (in my case, Grub2Win, though others would presumably work) to add Linux Mint to the boot menu.
Vow to never do this again. (I’ll probably do it again.)
Easy!
I’m sure I missed twirling a few virtual knobs to make the process easier, but in the end, much like Grade 8 Algebra, I finally got to the solution no matter how painful it was to get there.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm, sunny, other than some errant clouds.
Despite a last-minute shoelace incident (specifically, my hack job of temporarily fixing a snapped lace coming undone just as I was heading out), I still managed to get out just past 9 a.m., with the intended goal of getting in my run before the temperature started getting above normal.
In the end, I achieved this, as it was 14C and the high for today is forecast as 18C. Humidity was much lower than Wednesday, but still high enough to prevent dry mouth, which was nice.
My watch was advising a recovery run–shorter time/slower pace. I opted for the slower pace, though by the second km, where I came in at 5:54/km, I felt it was maybe too slow. I picked up for the last km and had an average pace of 5:48/km, with a slightly higher BPM of 151, a minor increase from Wednesday, but fine.
Despite a lot of walking yesterday and the harder workout on Wednesday, I didn’t experience any issues. The trail was not too busy, mostly just dog walkers and other joggers (no regulars, though).
It was sunny, though it was strangely more theoretical than actual, because despite a mostly clear sky, there was one cloud that managed to park itself in front of the sun for most of the run. This isn’t a bad thing, but it did feel a bit weird. It made for a few dramatic post-run shots, though.
And this concludes the first week in a while where I managed to run all three days. Woo. Go me.
Sun and shadow looking toward the rowling pavilion, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,030 Average pace: 5:48/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 9:49 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:10 Weather: Sunny (except for the cloud that persistently blotted out the sun) Temp: 14°C Humidity: 63% Wind: light BPM: 151 Weight: 170.6 pounds Total distance to date: 6,975 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (245/420/665)
For a long time, I resisted using Gutenberg with WordPress. It’s the default block-based editor used for crafting your artisanal posts about kittens and retrocomputing.
Reducing every paragraph to a block that could be shuffled about was not very useful to me, since my site is an old-timey blog that is just lots of text and some photos and drawings. I don’t need sexy layout options and the need to move content around in convenient blocks has only ever happened a few times over many years.
I also disliked that Gutenberg turned paragraphs into monolithic structures, where only basic formatting could be applied. Sure, I could make things bold or italicized. But what if I wanted to make my text redbecause I had something alarming to say? Gutenberg doesn’t allow that.
So I’m trying the Classic Editor plugin. I’ll see how it feels to be doing WordPress again, pre-2018 style.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Cloudy and cool, just the way I like it (for running).
I thought it might be breezy today, so I wore my long-sleeved Echo hoodie (which is pretty much a light shirt with a light hood attached). This turned out to be unnecessary, as there was little wind, but it was fine all the same.
Compared to Monday, it was six degrees cooler (12C vs. 18C) and humidity was about twice as high (87 vs 44). This made for significantly better running conditions. The only downside was increased slug-dodging, due to showers earlier in the morning (the trail was dry by the time I started my run).
I did start a little slower for some reason, maybe out of a sense of caution. I also walked the first few steps instead of running, as if I’d suddenly forgotten why I was there. But it really clicked in when I came across a couple running ahead of me. They were running a bit slower, but I wasn’t sure if I had the pep to advance past them. It turned out I not only did, but I maintained that faster pace going forward, coming in under the 5:40 mark for the rest of the run.
My BPM was also down to 149, again reflecting the more favourable conditions. The clouds and earlier showers were probably the reasons why the trail was sparsely populated today, though a decent number of joggers were out, including Hangdog again.
I did the thing I mused about months ago where I stretched my stride a little and picked up the pace especially for about the last half a km or so. It’s actually showing orange/red on the map for a change!
This is the 5th km. It starts near the bottom, just before Deer Lake Brook.
It was a good effort without any issues and I feel I actually gave my leg muscles a little bit of an actual workout, so woo.
Still Creek, post-run:. Going green.
Stats:
Run 1,029 Average pace: 5:41/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:25 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:33 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 12°C Humidity: 87% Wind: light BPM: 149 Weight: 170.0 pounds Total distance to date: 6,970 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (240/408/648)
I swear I have not gone full phone hipster, whatever that would look like.
Phone #1: My first cellphone, a Samsung M320, purchased for $40 in 2009. Yes, I still have it and yes, it still works (for a bit before the battery sputters out). Its main use today is to act like a communicator from the original Star Trek, so I can flip it open and say clever things, like, “One to beam up.”
Phone #2: My iPhone 12, purchased for a lot more than $40 in January 2021. It still works fine, though the Liquid Glass update kind of killed any desire I had to use it.
Phone #3: The replacement for Phone #2 and my newest phone, a Samsung Galaxy S26. It’s the base model and seems nice enough after I adjusted the settings to my liking.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Sun and summer-like conditions.
Yes, a run of contradictions (seemingly). Also, lots of coyote alert signs, but so far no coyotes.
My plan was pretty basic: Knowing it would be unusually warm today (and it was–18C for the run) I was going to go slow and steady. I achieved both, though the slow part was maybe a bit slower than expected, with an overall pace of 5:58/km. You’d think my BPM would be lower, too, but no, it was the same as Friday, when I had a pace of 5:43/km: 152.
The difference, of course, is that it was 7-8 degrees cooler on Friday.
Still, I’m not disappointed. It’s challenging to suddenly run in conditions your body isn’t used to and I didn’t experience any complications on today’s run, other than it just being a lot warmer than usual. Humidity was low at 44, but the lack of wind helped keep my mouth from drying out. I was licking my lips a lot, though, like a nervous suspect in a whodunit.
Near the start, some smartypants ran by shirtless, with a big grin on his face, like he knew how awesome his abs were. He didn’t even seem to be wearing proper running shorts, so maybe he just spontaneously decided to show off. And I did see one regular jogger, plus a bunch of other runners I didn’t recognize. All dogs encountered were good boys or girls.
The incipient snow I encountered around the 8 km mark, which was the first bit of “snow” starting to fall from the cottonwood trees. This feels early, but it tracks with the warmer weather.
In all, a decent start to the week.
Still Creek, with the green starting to overtak the yellow.
Stats:
Run 1,028 Average pace: 5:58/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:52 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:57 Weather: Sunny Temp: 18°C Humidity: 44% Wind: light BPM: 152 Weight: 169.0 pounds Total distance to date: 6,965 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (235/395/630)
Where: Blackie Spit/Crescent Beach, Serpentine Wildlife Management Area (Serpentine Fen), Green Timbers Lake (Surrey) Weather: Partly sunny, 16-18°C
We spent the day birding in the city where tomorrow lives. We did not encounter tomorrow, but we did see a Tufted Duck!
Blackie Spit
A small bay lacking most of its water at Blackie Spit.
It was unusually mild and as a bonus, there was almost no breeze at all at Blackie Spit, so it really did feel like 16C or warmer, thus making this our first shorts-wearing birding of 2026.
Despite the balmy weather, there weren’t as many people there as expected. The super low tide might have been a factor.
Walking the path to the end of the spit itself, we had copious opportunities to get snazzy shots of the equally snazzy Savannah Sparrows, some of which were singing their little hearts out, because spring has sprung, and you can’t mate with yourself.
At the end of the spit, we spotted some Long-billed Dowitchers, but they were rather far off, thanks to the aforementioned extreme low tide.
The trail to the pump station yielded better results, with sparrows a-plenty in the trees, bushes and on the ground. A female blackbird sat proudly on a branch for a bit, holding a juicy ol’ caterpillar in her bill. Yum!
With low tide putting many waterfowl out of reach of even our telephoto lenses, we headed to Serpentine Fen, to see if our luck would change.
Serpentine Fen
One of the larger ponds at Serptentine Fen, with Mt. Baker in the background.
As it turned out, the Serpentine River was also probably the lowest we’ve ever seen and the overall number of birds was relatively small, though we did get some decent variety, with an eagle in a tree near the start, a few herons, a cormorant and a Canada Goose nesting on what would normally be a small island but is currently a hill surrounded by a lot of mud. I’m sure the future goose babbies will be safe, regardless.
An unexpected surprise came in the form of a few Greater Yellowlegs strutting around some of the ponds in the area, mingling with the shovelers and Mallards.
The view of Mt. Baker was quite nice, too, with a tuft of white cloud caught on the top of the peak and being pulled away by the wind like cotton candy. I took a photo using my phone’s 30x digital zoom. It looks like an impressionist painting. My camera yielded a less opinionated version of the mountain.
Green Timbers Lake
Green Timbers Lake, looking northeast.
And speaking of tufts…
We originally planned to go to Brydon Lagoon, but Nic had already driven a lot for reasons, so he suggested we go to the closer Green Timbers Lake instead, as a rare Tufted Duck has been seen there recently.
We arrived and I noted again how they have two signs over each other, one that says WELCOME and the other which says DANGER.
And lo, there in pretty much the middle of the lake (a bit far away, boo) was a Tufted Duck.
If you check the link, you’ll see the usual range of a Tufted Duck is Europe, Asia and Africa, none of which are North America, so he is a long way off course. He didn’t seem to mind.
Despite being a lifer, I felt strangely indifferent to seeing it, because they look almost exactly like a scaup, just with a little black mullet on the back. I like scaups, don’t get me wrong, but it’s…just not very different.
We ended our visit to the lake with a Douglas squirrel going big on a pile of sunflower seeds atop a fence post, giving us a nice cute-squirrel-pose before wrapping up.
In retrospect, the number of photos I took vs. the variety of birds we saw is probably among the most skewed ever–only 384 photos in total (and if that sounds like a lot, I regularly shoot over twice that and sometimes more than 1,000–without using burst mode, too!) The particular circumstances and locations meant a lot of the birds were far away or too fleeting to get shots of. But sometimes that’s the way it goes.
The weather for the third week of April was totally fabulous, though, apart from some increasing high cloud later on.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto. Some scenery shots taken on a Samsung Galaxy S26.
A few shots, gallery pending:
A Bald Eagle in very dull, dim lighting.A boat racing through one of the narrow strips of water at Crescent Beach.Singing Savannah Sparrow.White blossoms and a White-crowned Sparrow.Pondering which sunflower seed to gobble next.
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
American Bushtit
American Goldfinch
American Robin
Anna’s Hummingbird
Black-capped Chickadee
Dark-eyed Junco
Golden-crowned Sparrow
House Finch
Orange-crowned Warbler
Red-winged Blackbird
Rufous Hummingbird (heard)
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
White-crowned Sparrow
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
American Coot
American Wigeon
Bufflehead
Canada Goose
Common Loon (heard)
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Greater Yellowlegs
Green-winged Teal
Killdeer
Long-billed Dowitcher
Marsh Wren (heard)
Lesser Scaup
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Tufted Duck
Wood Duck
Common:
American Crow
Some gulls
Raptors:
Bald Eagle
Non-birds:
A single turtle sunning itself, probably a Western painted turtle
A Douglas Squirrel nomming away on sunflower seeds
I will have today’s birding adventure up tomorrow (Sunday), but in the meantime, enjoy this photo of a bald eagle I took today, with slightly enhanced sky. (Eagle photo with unenhanced sky coming tomorrow.)
