Or to be more precise, the air quality currently stinks, due to smoke.
This morning, the Air Quality Index (AQI) was 3, which is a bit higher than normal. It is now 9, and shows thusly on my iPhone:
High Health Risk! Yikes. Also, it was very warm and muggy, which is probably contributing. The AQ map looks very angry:
I do not live in a Magic 8 ball, despite appearances.
I went for a walk and it smelled just like that map:
The smoke is coming from wildfires, so in a way, we’re lucky that it didn’t get here until relatively late in the season. It’s likely to persist until we see a significant change in the weather (showers, etc.) All part of the magic of climate change!
Where: Maplewood Flats (North Vancouver), Blakeburn Lagoons Park (Port Coquitlam), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Sunny, 21-24°C
Maplewood Flats
View looking east over Burrard Inlet.
It was birding all over the place today. The only thing missing was the birbs. We heard a few and eventually saw a few, but it was mostly waterfowl and the like as songbirds seemed to prefer hiding away on what was a very humid day.
We began at Maplewood Flats and saw and heard a few chickadees, spotted some cormorants offshore, and a few gulls, but a promised sandpiper remained elusive. The scenery is always nice here, though.
Blakeburn Lagoons Park
One of the two lagoons. They were replete with ducks, some herons (none green) and a single goose.
We went to Blakeburn Lagoons to search for the elusive green heron. It remained elusive. We did see several great blue herons as compensation.
Otherwise, it was ducks and plenty of them, along with a solitary Canada goose, the only one we saw today (I think).
Tlahutum Regional Park
Coquitlam River, looking rather full on this day.
There were ducks in the main pond at Tlahutum and a couple of bald eagles flapping high overhead, but very few other birds were making themselves visible, so we made do with shooting flowers and the many pollinators tending to them.
Piper Spit
Oddly, I forgot to take any scenery shots at Piper Spot, so enjoy this wood duck stretching instead.
The land mass at Piper Spit is not only back, but fairly massive. A few small shorebirds were darting about on it, but most birds preferred the water. In the water, we saw the usual mix of mallards and wood ducks, along with a pair of hooded mergansers, but no geese. And lo, there was the first coot of the season, swimming about by itself and looking glorious and weird. It’s as much a sign of fall coming as the proliferation of pumpkin spice in everything from muffins to school supplies (probably).
Several people were stupidly feeding the birds again. Having recently seen bears up close and personal here, I feel comfortable in calling their actions stupid.
But we also saw a song sparrow. Just one, but it stopped hopping just long enough to let us get some decent shots. A few wood duck males were also back to near-full, resplendent mullets.
In all, a fine day of birding, even with the scarcity of birbs.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
A few shots:
A bee loving its job.The first coot of the season. Coming soon: more coots and coot drama.
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Bewick’s wren (heard, not seen)
Black-capped chickadee
Purple martin
Song sparrow
Spotted towhee (heard, not seen)
White-crowned sparrow (heard, not seen)
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
American coot (one!)
Canada goose
Common merganser
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Hooded merganser
Long-billed dowitcher
Mallard
Northern pintail
Pied-billed grebe
Western sandpiper
Wood duck
Common:
American crow
Rock pigeon
Various gulls
Raptors:
Red-tailed hawk
Non-birds:
Copious pollinators
Raccoons (actually after birding, and in my neighbourhood. I think they were having a meeting over lunch)
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. Cloudy, cooler and himid to the max (as the kids say).
Today was a good run day.
Normally, I would have been a wee bit concerned about traffic on the trail, given that today is a statutory holiday–Labour Day. But thanks probably largely to cloudy skies, the crowds were smaller than they might have been. One small dog off-leash did smoosh its cold snout into my calf post-run, though.
I opted to go clockwise and got a strong start–and just kept going. The second km dip was small, then I improved each lap after, for an overall pace of 5:42/km, my best in a few weeks, and a BPM of 147, reflecting the more favourable conditions. Even the humidity, which started at an absurdly high 85%, didn’t slow me down, though sweating was constant and ongoing.
The right shin was almost back to normal, and I didn’t experience any other issues.
Overall, a very nice start to the week.
Clouds over the lake, looking to the east.
Stats:
Run 960 Average pace: 5:42/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:53 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:40 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 19-20°C Humidity: 85-82% Wind: light BPM: 147 Weight: 165.5 Total distance to date: 6,630 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (225/502/727)
Yes, I was actually kind of good this month, food-wise! I was also very active, running and walking all hither and yon.
I may have sweated off some weight due to the humidity, too. In any event, I am down 1.8 pounds for the month, and the same amount for the year, too, which looks worse that way, but I’m down, so it’s a win as per me.
Onward from here!
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 165.0 pounds Year to date: Down 1.8 pounds
August 1: 166.8 pounds August 31: 165.0 pounds (down 1.8 pounds)
Body fat: August 1: 25.1% August 31: 24.8% (down 0.3%)
Skeletal muscle mass: August 1: 29.7 kg August 31: 29.5 kg (down 0.2 kg)
Or what happens when you get more carbon into the atmosphere than the Earth can handle, as outlined in this Guardian article, in which it describes periods of volcano activity so intense they wipe out most life on the planet and turned it into a noxious, lifeless hell for pretty much everything. Fun stuff!
I like the following quote. Lips = Large Igneous Provinces, which is a cute, understated way of describing periods of extreme volcanic activity that move massive amounts of lava below and then onto the Earth’s surface:
Lips are the Earth’s way of rudely reminding us that our thin rocky surface, and the gossamer glaze of green goo that coats it, sits atop a roiling, utterly indifferent planetary drama.
Anyway, just something different from the stories about Trump’s health (tip to readers in the future: It ain’t lookin’ good!)
I started the day by oversleeping a little–not much, really. But the rest of my usual morning routine seemed to play in slow motion, so by the time I headed out for my run, I was two hours behind where I’d normally be. It was still morning, but getting late–and hot.
Well, not so much hot as muggy. Or rather, both. Huggy.
On paper conditions look similar to Wednesday–temperature a degree or two higher, humidity about the same. But it felt a lot muggier and the air quality was clearly (!) worse today, with visible haze.
Additionally, my Baker’s cyst® behind my right knee had made its presence known again after my last run, so I was a bit concerned how this run would play out, even under ideal weather conditions..
It turned out…okay! The right shin was mostly fine and the knee didn’t seem to be an issue. Pot-run, it felt a little creaky to start but by the time I got home, it again felt okay. I am tentatively not worried.
But I was very thirsty.
One benefit of starting the run around 11 a.m. is the Cottonwood Trail was mostly in shade. And that was the one and only benefit.
The run was unusual in one other way: interruptions. The first was by choice: I stopped at the fountain by the Nature House to have a drink, then used the loo for good measure. This gave me Bonus Rest #1.
Bonus Rest #2 came shortly into the fifth km when I paused the run to take a phone call. This took a few minutes and again gave me a small chance to rest.
I don’t think either break really made much difference to my pace, but you can see the little blips in my BPM, and overall BPM was a pretty low 147. My pace was a bit slower at 5:55/km, but this was mostly due to a stellar finish of 5:34/km, because the first two km were actually over six minutes each. Yikes.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to running in, like, normal weather again. Soon. Maybe.
Haze visible in the distance, Still Creek in the foreground, post-run.
Stats:
Run 959 Average pace: 5:55/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 11:02 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:43 Weather: Sunny Temp: 23-24°C Humidity: 75-71% Wind: light BPM: 147 Weight: 164.4 Total distance to date: 6,625 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (220/489/709)
Today, the college is among many post-secondary schools being hit by declining enrolment, particularly from international students. Budget cuts and layoffs are happening and as you might imagine, it’s not great for morale.
I’m more glad now than ever that I left it all behind. I wish everyone there that I know and like the best, though!
I leave you with this photo of a snazzy new label maker we got shortly before I left.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Hazy, with humidity in the hizzy (as the kids say).
I contemplated various scenarios today, all of which involved avoiding bears. In the end, I decided to just stick to a regular counter-clockwise run around the lake, as a 5K run in this direction affords better lines-of-sight for bear sightings. I also paused my music when running through sections that were twistier, to better listen for a large shambling creature, be it a black bear, Bigfoot or just some really big hairy man.
Fortunatley, I only saw the signs.
The real danger turned out to be the humidity. It was a bit warmer at 22C, and the lake always feels more humid than the river trail, so I sweated like it was my life’s purpose. The combo of temperature and humidity also brought my pace way down to 5:54/km. OTOH, my BPM was only 148, because that’s the best I could muster in the conditions.
As for my body, the right shin continues to improve and provided nothing else falls apart, bursts or explodes, I may begin thinking about ramping back up to a 10K run again.
But we’ll see.
For now, I’ll just keep my eye open for bears, hope nothing breaks, and wait for the cooler temperatures of the fall to arrive.
View looking northeat across the lake, post-run.
Stats:
Run 958 Average pace: 5:54/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:18 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:41 Weather: Sun with high cloud Temp: 22°C Humidity: 76-73% Wind: light to nil BPM: 148 Weight: 164.8 Total distance to date: 6,620 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (215/476/691)
404 Media has a piece on AI slop videos that are all over Instagram and TikTok that not only evoke nostalgia for the 1980s, which has been a thing for a while, but goes further, with generated characters with feathered hair creepily inviting you to come back to 1985 and join them.
Tip: You can’t actually do that. You are stuck with 2025.
I especially like this paragraph from author Matthew Gault:
These videos are awful AI-generated slop, yes, but it’s more than that. Reactionary nostalgia, a desire to return to a fake past or a time when you were young and things were better, is part of why the world is so fucked right now. It is, literally, the basis of MAGA. Worse, these videos about the “past” tell us a lot about our present and future: one where AI encourages our worst impulses and allows users to escape from reality into a slopified world that narrowly targets whatever reality we’d like to burrow into without dealing with the problems of the present.
It’s like the Matrix, except stupid, horrible and about as cool as roadkill.
