I watched Back to the Future today for the first time in many years, and it still holds up well. The cast, anchored by the amazingly weird Crispin Glover, is terrific, and the story puts all the pieces together surprisingly well for a time travel plot. It helps that it’s a comedy and the science fiction stuff can be hand-waved as needed (more so than normal).
The cutest part, of course, is how quaint the present-day setting of 1985 looks now. Michael J. Fox wears suspenders without irony. The women have hair that towers like skyscrapers. Music is played on cassettes!
Definitely worth catching again if it happens to be on TV.
Today’s hike started around mid-morning and though we didn’t keep accurate track of the time it took approximately three hours in total.
With the destination chosen just minutes before leaving, we headed out to Brothers Creek on the North Shore. Following a hiker’s directions printed off from trailpeak.com we made our way to the entrance, already a fair way up the mountain. With a million dollar home sitting just below where the truck was parked, we headed past a giant sign erected by British Pacific Properties Ltd that essentially said “If you go past this gate and something bad happens to you, you promise never to sue us. If it’s clearly our fault, it’s still your fault. No suing allowed!”
The million dollar home had a thin layer of snow across its luxuriously-appointed patio, so our plans to avoid all snow on hikes seemed less than promising. The weather, on the other hand, was spectacular, with clear skies and temperatures hovering just below freezing.
The trail starts out as an emergency access road and as it continues upward through a number of switchbacks it narrows and becomes more of a regular hiking trail. The walking stick was definitely seeing some use here. The snow was thin and in patches to start and in some spots it was easier to actually walk on it rather than navigate across the icier bits of the path. As we continued to ascend the ratio of snow to exposed ground grew until we were up to our knees and in a few spots even deeper.
It is telling that the first four people we met (all on the way back, as there was not a soul up ahead of us) had snowshoes.
When we reached Brothers Creek itself the snow was piled up on the bridge above the railings. We elected to not continue on the loop that may or may not have taken us back to where the truck was parked and instead chose to take the 1.67 km detour off to a lake up yonder. It was here that we noticed the only real tracks in the snow were from snowshoes. We pressed on, the trail completely covered under deep snow, with only occasional markers on the trees serving as reliable guides. We came to a bridge of sorts. It was difficult to tell what it might have looked like in warmer months but now it was a tall and very narrow snow-covered line, with a cone-shaped hole in the snow leading down to icy water on one side and, well, just plain old icy water on the other. I talked Jeff into going first.
A little farther on we came to a point where it looked like our snowshoeing adventurer had some trouble determining where the trail was. Rather than crossing at the actual bridge over the creek here he had chosen to make his way on a loop along the edge of the creek and then cross through some brambles at a point where the creek narrowed. We spotted the bridge a ways to the southeast. It was very low and nearly obliterated under what was at least two meters of snow. Like the previous snow bridge, this one was very narrow but with the added bonus of not reaching all the way across, necessitating a small jump. Again, I volunteered Jeff to go first. I followed after, opting to use an extended walking stick from him to help complete the last step.
After making our way across the creek we found the snowshoe tracks came to an end. The actual trail, probably 10 meters or so away, was buried under virgin snow. We looked at our snowshoe-less feet and decided to turn back.
On the way back I totally psyched myself on the jump by spending way too much time thinking about it. I eventually made it, as the detour around it was too long. Convenience conquers fear!
We stopped at Lost Lake to have a stand-up lunch (nowhere to sit in those huge drifts of snow). Lost Lake was truly lost — completely buried under a thick blanket of snow. I forgot to take a picture. Oh well.
The return trip had us pass by three couples — a young man and woman with snowshoes, a couple of older men also with snowshoes and a pair of Australians, one of whom was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He asked if there would be any ‘bairs’. We assured him that they were all too smart to come out in all this silly snow like us humans. The final group we met back at the entrance, a young threesome. One woman excitedly asked us if there was much snow up higher. When we replied that there was indeed snow aplenty she seemed positively delighted. Could not have been a local.
While it was a bit disappointing that we couldn’t complete the loop or get to the lake up top, it was still a great hike, with nearly perfect weather, some majestic old growth forest and a beautiful blanket of snow covering it all.
For reference, here’s the bridge at Brother’s Creek as seen in the summer:
It was also a very brief run, only 2.5 km after a three week layoff. It was about 7ºC, overcast with some light rain. I wore a jacket and long-sleeve t-shirt and may have been okay with just the t-shirt as the wind died down just prior to the run.
Some notes:
• I was recovering from the effects of some bug (felt kind of like the flu, sucked all my energy away for a couple days like some kind of sparkly vampire in germ form)
• the conditions were the worst I’ve ever seen. Many stretches of the trail were little more than mire and multiple times I felt my foot twisting on the uneven surface. A lot of exposed roots, too, as the continued heavy rains strip away the surface.
• annoying jogger duo. A pair of women were jogging ahead of me and stopped at the playground. They were apparently doing a start-stop thing. A little ways after passing them they resumed running and kept pace a modest distance behind me. No big deal. Except one of them would not stop yakking.It made me crazy. On the one hand, if you can carry on an (incessant) conversation while jogging, you aren’t trying hard enough. On the other hand, if I was in better condition I could have easily outpaced them and gotten out of hearing range, so I also suck. I am hoping to remedy this by running again on Friday with a ‘run as far as I feel comfortable’ plan (up to 10K). We’ll see how it goes.
No official™ chart for this run because it was such a quickie but here are the relevant stats:
The other morning I was in the food court near where I work and, as is usually the case at this time of day, there weren’t many people milling about. Then I espied a line-up that was not merely long, but downright lengthy in extreme.
It turned out it was for McDonald’s, as they had just introduced new buttermilk biscuits as part of their breakfast menu and for two days they were offering them for free.
Free, as it turns out, is a popular price.
Here’s some of what these people got for free by opting for the Sausage ‘n Egg Biscuit Sandwich:
48% of your daily sodium (1140 mg)
57% of your daily fat (37 g)
590 calories
240 mg cholesterol
19 grams protein
30% of your daily iron
So you’ll simultaneously get fat, clog your arteries, increase your blood pressure but also gain a tiny bit of muscle (under the fat). Seems like a good deal. It’s hard to figure out why so many people are obese. Really!
(Disclaimer: Occasional fast food is a welcome indulgence for those who like it. I am eating whole grain tortilla chips and fresh salsa as I type this.)
The forecast for today was for rain and rain it did. Regardless, a little damp weather was not going to stop us from spending the afternoon hiking around the entirety of Buntzen Lake.
Because of high water some trails were closed and numerous signs warned us to add 2-3 hours to our trek. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. and the gate to the park is locked at 5 p.m. so we were confident that with the 5-7 hour total estimate we’d be out long before we got locked in with the squirrels and monsters (for the record, I didn’t actually see any squirrels or monsters, though someone was walking a toy dog dressed in a pink raincoat bright enough to serve as a beacon.
We parked in the northern-most parking lot and started north along the east side of the lake, heading up a service road as the first section of trail on this side was closed due to the high water. We then hit the cleverly-named Buntzen Lake Trail proper (it just occurred to me that the acronym is BLT — mmm, BLT) and stayed on it to the suspension bridge at the north end of the lake (less than a meter above the water at this time of year). A short way past the bridge the trail turns back south and splits, with delicious BLT on the left and Lakeview Trail heading up and to the right. As you can see in the close-up shot below, our decision at this junction was easy as the Buntzen Lake Trail was completely submerged. Up the ridge we went!
There were a few steep sections on the Lakeview Trail but I didn’t regret passing on the walking stick this time. We reached the one official lookout about halfway through our trek and stopped for a snack and some water. This gave us the best view of the lake, with low cloud scudding through the valley as the rain continued to pour steadily. Speaking of the rain, we passed someone carrying an umbrella. That seems a bit silly, especially considering how steep the climb gets in a few spots, not to mention that it’s very difficult to escape getting your feet covered in muck and mire, so it’s not like an umbrella is going to keep you clean and dry out here. As proof, I planted my foot in one especially juicy section of mud and it was rather intent on keeping the boot for itself. I managed to wiggle the boot free, cherishing my triumph over nature as I did so.
We eventually reached what would have been near to the end of the hike at the floating bridge, but it too was closed due to that whole being-completely-underwater thing. This forced us to extend our hike around the southern tip of the lake, around and up to Academy Trail before we eventually reconnected to the parking lot we started from.
Our total time ended up being a fairly brisk 3 hours and 10 minutes. I spent the time saved soaking in the tub back at the condo.
Overall it was a good hike. There were a few more people out braving the rain than I had expected and a few times we caught up to others ahead of us and I felt that ol’ ‘gotta pass’ thing kick in. I swear I am not a competitive person by nature!
Clothing-wise, the two weak points for me were my baseball cap, which was okay at keeping my head dry but didn’t fit snugly, forcing me to constantly re-adjust it. This led to a slight rash on my forehead. Nothing major, but annoying. I need a hiking hat. My gloves became soaked about 2/3 of the way through, leaving my fingers a bit cold for the last hour or thereabouts, so I’m definitely going to look for a water-resistant/inner layer glove system for future treks.
Note for future hikes: Do not let Jeff carry the potato chips, as he apparently keeps them secured under rocks.
Our route below starts at the northern parking lot and follows the service road to where the first viewpoint is on #4 (Buntzen Lake Trail). We stayed on #4 past the suspension bridge before switching to #8 (Lakeview Trail). We stayed on #8 until we crossed the road south of the lake and headed back up #9 (Academy Trail). Here’s the full PDF map file on BC Hydro’s website and the page the map is linked from here.
Buntzen Lake Trail Tour 2011
Sponsored by Jack Johnson (well, he was playing on the iPod in the truck, anyway)
Seen at the corner of Pine St. and West 12th Avenue (image is courtesy of Google maps, as I didn’t have a camera handy as I went by it the other day):
I’m not sure why so many Vancouverites are fascinated by palm trees — though I confess I find them exotic and mysterious compared to the billion maple trees normally seen hereabouts — but this is my new favorite clump of palm trees in the city, nestled as they are around a sign proudly identifying the location as Pine Place.
And unlike many sequels, this one is actually better than the first!
Conditions for my second run after the long layoff were decent. The temperature was 7ºC with little wind and an overcast sky. I wore a long-sleeved t-shirt and shorts and probably would have been fine with a regular t-shirt. My hands did not feel like frozen blocks of ice this time.
There was a hard, steady rain yesterday and the trail at the park showed the effects — several large puddles to be dodged, the southern stretch particularly boggy in several places and more exposed roots poking through than I’ve ever seen. I did a walk around first to size things up before the run proper.
By the second km I was feeling a cramp but this time in my stomach. I maintained my pace and within another km or so it eased up, allowing me to better hold my pace. I was faster at each stage of the run than a week ago and finished by shaving seven seconds off last week’s run, bringing my pace down from 5:44 to 5:37. Not bad!
I could feel my left knee a bit during the run but it never hurt and didn’t slow me down. For a few moments there was a twinge around my ankle/lower left shin and that spooked me but it went away quickly and did not return.
Although my performance was better, the improved pace meant that by the time I hit 5K I was happy to stop and recover rather than feeling all, “Haha, whee! Let’s keep going!” That’s okay. In time my stamina will be back where it once was and I shall run not unlike the wind. Or at least a strong breeze.
Back in the 1980s — you know, that decade that started over 30 years ago — Berke Breathed via Bloom County commented on how the comics section of newspapers was steadily shrinking. He didn’t mean fewer comics were being run. If anything, even more were being showcased. You can only prop up the section with Blondie and Beetle Bailey for so long. No, what he meant was the physical space being devoted to them was shrinking, resulting in strips that were smaller and more difficult to read. The logical conclusion he reached was that the comics section would eventually disappear into a black dot of illegibility.
As it turns out, newspapers will probably vanish before this can happen. Thank you, Internet, for helping save us from unnecessary eyestrain!
But wait, for as the Internet giveth, so does it taketh away.
As per usual Facebook has done another one of its seemingly arbitrarily updates to its site, making it ‘better’ in ways that may elude common folk. The biggest change is apparently the profile page. I check mine so infrequently I’m not sure exactly what is different except it has a strip of photos slapped along the top of it now. I do not understand the purpose or value of this. The other more noticeable change for me is a universal shrinkage of the font size. This doesn’t make the site more readable, it goes against the demographic trend of an aging population and it doesn’t really allow for more information to be displayed. It just makes all the text a bit smaller. I can easily simulate the old look reasonably enough by using the old CTRL-mousewheel trick so it doesn’t particularly affect me. Sometimes I wonder if Zuckerberg dictates these changes just because of the irresistible power to affect 500 million accounts all at once (quibble to journalists: Facebook has 500 million accounts, not 500 million users. I could go out and create 100 new accounts if I wanted to, each one setting the default size of the font to something different using the nigh-amazing CTRL-mousewheel trick). You may be thinking to yourself, “Is this just a real roundabout way of saying I’m getting old and I would prefer sites on the web to not shrink their fonts so my eyes don’t need to squint so much to keep reading them?” and my answer would be “No, haha, of course not!” Because the font is just too damn small for no good reason. And I went jogging last week, anyway. And I didn’t fall down and break my hip. So there.
Also while I’m here, the Royal Bank cartoon businessman mascot they use (I think his name is Arby — get it? LOL!!) is creepy as all get-out. Tip: You do not make your monolithic, billions-in-record-revenue-generating banking enterprise more cuddly and personable by creating a mascot in a BUSINESS SUIT. Especially one with no neck. Creepy.
