The Planet Is Saved!

Saturday night the whole world came together in a huge show of support for what's becoming their favorite planet. For an hour, all of us shut down all the points in our house that drew power from the grid. We burned candles. We talked about the environment. Some even fondue-d!

For one whole hour.

Sixty minutes.

I really enjoyed it. The house was so quiet. The neighborhood was filled with people out walking as families, taking in that suddenly-brighter starlit sky. My family got into it too. My son commented that he liked the silence, and he grudgingly passed on watching the Habs/Leafs game (which, as it turned out, wasn't the result we'd wanted anyway). My wife said it made her much more aware of the "phantom power" draws around our house.

In the midst of Earth Hour, my sister called from Arizona. I asked her what they'd be doing when their turn came in an hour and she said: "what is it?" She said there hadn't been a word spoken in their rural corner of the state. I had to tell her the concept, to which she commented that it was "a great idea." Yet she was unsure as to why Earth Hour wasn't being promoted on any of their local media.

And that's where my cynical brain starts to get fired up. In Sydney Australia, Paris, Toronto, Kingston, Seattle or any other modern, post-industrial centre, we already get it! The people in charge (the Dick Cheneys, and the Stephen Harpers) privately have to admit that we need to change some things before all is lost, but they won't in public for fear that we'll suffer dire economic consequences, and worse...they'll fall from power. The public though, is showing that more and more, we really do get it.

But in the other world... In the parts of our planet where people have for too long suffered in poverty and oppression, and where in just the past decade they've begun to taste the possibility of a better, modern, more convenient way of life...in India, China, Brazil, wherever. In those places, all the awareness in the world about climate change, won't keep the population or their leaders from the status quo. In places where the media is used for little more than just a pr service of the government, the public will know only what the government wants them to know. Perhaps rural Arizona could be lumped in there, along with rural Alberta and a lot more places that are closer to home than we'd ever imagine.

Earth Hour is a great way to get the message out to ourselves. It's a really important exercise we should partake in on a regular basis to keep us on-task, to fix what we can with global warming.

But we've got to get the other world to buy in too.

Al Gore is making trips to India now to preach environmentalism. He's teaching small classes of local folks to get the message out to the masses, in hopes that the billion citizens of that country will be there with us. He thinks he can do the same in China (if he can turn that regime around in their thinking, he deserves a second Nobel). Perhaps he could take some shorter trips to Yuma, Cold Lake, and Tamworth to make sure we're all on the same page.

I laughed on Saturday night when I saw it. We'd already overloaded the grid for the few hours before "lights-out" by charging up our cell phones, Psps, laptops...whatever. Now here in the middle of our our of self-congratulatory hour of darkness, I saw who the true benefactors of this Earth Hour were. It was written in clear, easy-to-read font right on the package of tea light candles we were all burning: "Product of China."

Time to Commit

About a year ago my good friend Chuck the Cop talked me into joining his Ironcops For Cancer team. This was a group of motivated individuals who've decided to help raise cash for the Canadian Cancer Society by fundraising, and to draw attention to this, they compete in an Ironman triathlon.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

I talk to quite a few people every day on the radio, and my family has been deeply touched by cancer, and I like to train with motivated people. So I had to say "yes."

Yes to long gruelling bike rides. Yes to swimming until my eye sockets puff out like an iguana. Yes to running long, slow, solitary runs. Yes to stinky, sweaty, filthy running/biking/swimming gear in piles near the washing machine. Yes to eating even more than I already do. Yes to constantly feeling tired. Yes to every joint in my old beat up body screaming at me to stop.

Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to what Chuck the Cop was saying to me, was that I was saying "yes" to actually RACING in the Ironman triathlon too!

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

After that finally sunk in, I started to slowly freak myself out. I've raced three 1/2 Ironmans in my short career, and none of them went well. I'm getting older, slower and no smarter, so how the hell was I supposed to turn it all around and finish one of the most challenging outdoor pursuits going?

Oh, and I've also gone on record as saying I thought Ironman "was a ridiculous distance." Oh, and that "friends don't let friends race marathons." I've never run longer than 30km at one time, and that was just last year, and it was long, and it was tough, and I swore I'd never go that distance again.

I used to ride at a respectable speed. Last year that all got away from me, and I found myself getting dropped by the other riders earlier and more often than ever.

Let's not even talk about the pool. I'm not a good swimmer. I'm not a mediocre swimmer. At best, I'm a bad swimmer.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

By the end of last summer, I'd raced another 1/2 Ironman. My swim was so-so. My bike ride was dead-on what I was aiming for. My run blew big time. It was even slower than the last time I tried to do a half.

Another couple of races brought less than great results.

Then I got injured running.

Finally, I found every reason to not swim; not ride...just plain not do anything.

I went to a talk with Tony O'Keefe. Tony is a mutant. He races ultra-Ironmans. These take place over two days, and in them the athlete has to do basically double the Iron distance...which is ridiculous. And Tony is one of the best in the sport!

But I listened to what he said that night, and I listened very well. He told us all that we do this running and triathloning, because we want to be good at it. We want to beat our last time. We want to beat that person who finished in front of us before. We want to win in whatever way we can.

I thought about how I'd talked about the Ironman: Stupid distance. I'm not trained. There's no way I could pull it off. Don't have the time to commit to that. I've been injured. My bad friends made me enter. I realised what a load of crap that was. I wanted to do an Ironman race as badly as anyone, and I wanted to do it well.

I just didn't want to SEEM like that's what I wanted. I dreaded the thought of letting people down, so I was acting like it was something that was being foisted upon me. That way if things didn't go well, it wasn't my fault. And if I did really well, then I must be really special. What a crap attitude.

So, I went to the pool. The hated pool. The horrible, breath-stealing, humiliating pool. And I started swimming. 50 laps the first time. 50 laps that seemed like 500. Nice old ladies doing the breast stroke were passing me. I had to stop at the end of each lap and hold on to the pool deck to catch my breath. But I went.

And I stuck my bike on the trainer and rode. 1/2 Hour the first time. Didn't think I could get through another second, but I did, and I told myself that I 'd do the same thing at least twice more every week.

And I ran. I hurt, but I ran. It wasn't far, and it wasn't fast, but I ran. Funny thing is the injury went away, and I remembered why I do this silly sport: I love to run!

By the end of January, I was getting in the pool even on the days I didn't want to. I was riding the bike at a ridiculous time every morning (I work at 5am...you do the math), and I was saying "yes" to everyone who wanted to go for a little jog.

By the end of February, I was starting to see results in the pool. I was feeling better on the bike and my running was getting pretty smooth.

Now here I am about four months away from the race, and I feel like I'm on track. It's not just that I can train. I want to train. I'm having fun in the pool. The spins are giving me lots of time to catch up on my iPod and the runs wash away the stresses of the day.

4km swim...180km ride...42.2km run

It's not gonna be easy.

But it's what I want to do...and it's gonna be fun!

Shovel This!

In November my sister went to Arizona.

Her husband scored a sweet contract gig that would carry him through the colder months of Canadian winter, and they liked the idea of a paid vacation, so she went. Just before taking off, she asked my son if he'd look after shovelling their walks and driveway to make the house look "lived-in" for the winter, and of course he said "yes." She even offered him what we thought at the time was an unnecessary financial incentive, which thrilled him more as he's saving to buy a laptop.

Then she flew south.

Both my wife and I were concerned that she was overpaying our young guy, considering the four times we shovelled our own drive last winter, but a deal is a deal.

Then winter happened.

Though many respected meteorologists and climatologists have explained their theories of what's affecting our winter here in Kingston, none have made a lick of sense to me. It started snowing one day in November...and never stopped! Our driveway has narrowed to a fraction of it's size; my sister's walk is exactly one-shovel wide now, with little hope of widening soon thanks to ice accumulation, and the snowbanks are so high at the end of our driveways, that we're considering a traffic-control tower so we can safely egress into the street. Even the paper delivery people have had to quit tromping across the lawns between houses in our neighborhoods, as I believe some of them were lost in the deep snow (I shudder to think of what horrors will be revealed to us come the spring thaw).

I called my sister in Arizona to tell her this, but she seemed distracted by the extreme heat, and had to cut the call short.

My son is just one person. The dumps of snow, ice pellets and just plain ice are too much for any one, so he's recruited my wife and me to help him perform his duty. He barely has the energy left to clear the snow from our drive and walkway, let alone deliver his papers, do his schoolwork and play Wii! But now, even my wife and I are losing it. Her back is aching, and my arms have gone to jelly. It's so bad that I can barely last an entire swim workout...actually, I was never all that good at swimming, so I guess this is just a really good excuse for not improving this off-season.

People all over our city are fed up. They've booked last-minute vacations; flocked to shopping malls and perhaps even tried drinking their way back to being able to deny this cruel season the pleasure of imprisoning us in it's icy grasp!

Every fall, I start gearing up. Literally. I get all my winter running/biking/existing clothing together; buy what I need to add a little more comfort to the dark days, and begin to prepare mentally for the lack of sunlight, the snow, the cold and the rest of what winter brings. It's usually pretty easy to predict what's coming.

If I do all these things correctly, I can usually make it to March Break with a sense of hope for the warm days ahead.

Unfortunately, to quote our city's snow-removal managers: "I just didn't budget for this!"

I wonder what they're talking about today in Arizona.

Evolution sucks!

It may be one of the hardest things to admit for a good red-blooded Canadian, but here goes: I suck as a hockey player!

For anyone who's played with me over the years, this revelation is on par with "gas prices are going up," "there are idiots driving amongst us in Kingston," and "gee, TV is really getting bad!" My dad had me read "Hockey, Here's Howe" cover to cover when I was a kid. Didn't help one bit. I played three years of outdoor shinny in my formative years in Kenora. Nothing. Later in life (my 20's) I got the hockey bug so bad that my wife had to do an intervention to pare things down to just 6 games per week.

And still, my hockey skills never seemed to rise to the level of the effort I put in to them.

Right from the beginning though, I learned that "other" way of making the score sheet: penalties! With the exception of spearing and fighting, I think I managed to spend time in the sin bin for every possible infraction. I still have the distinction of being the only Labatt's League player ever to be assessed 3 minutes in the box for hauling down my own player!

There's something haywire in most male minds that turns us into hacking, slashing, high-sticking morons as soon as we get a hockey stick in our hands. I am a proud member of this fraternity.

About ten years ago, I hung up my skates, and hid my stick away, deciding that I just didn't want to be that person anymore. I played one last tournament (got in a fight), and one ball-hockey tourney (earned the ire of every team for my stick work), but that was it.

But I got the bug again at the last Fronts game at the M Centre. All the good stuff about playing came back to me. Hauling the gear into a too-small change room...staking out a place. Taping my stick just right. Taping my skates just right. Taping my pads. Tape! Gawd how I miss hockey tape!!! Then there's the warm up, where you assess the other team, crank off some feeble slap shots to get your goalie into it and even try to figure out which officials showed up, so you know what you can and can't get away with. The up and down the ice action of the game...the penalties! Even after the game when you sit sweaty, stinking and sore trying to peel off the layers of wet gear, while talking a better game than the one you just played. I miss it so badly!

So I signed up to play in the ball hockey tournament put on by Startek last weekend. As soon as I showed up, I knew I was in trouble. This wasn't going to be a "fun" mixed-gender, no-skills bunch. No, these were the usual bunch of has-beens, would-have-beens, and never-coulda-beens out hacking away at the ball and more often, each other.

My first shift was great. I got my face right into it and scored a cheesy one. By my second one though, my stick was getting up, and I was grabbing, pushing, bumping and basically working my way into getting a well-deserved two-hander. But for once, it wasn't just me! This whole tournament was full of hackers. I'm so glad the Big Brothers (who were the benefactors of the day) didn't bring out any of their little Brothers to see it.

The older, slower and less-skilled the player was, the more apt he (never she) was at those nasty little slashes on the ankle, or the ever-popular awful slap shot into a crowd of unprotected and unsuspecting players.

We lost all three games, even though our goalie stood on his head. We played them all close, but just ran out of gas by the end of each game.

For the past ten years I've turned my attention to a completely different past time from hockey. Triathlon has taken over my spare time. I love the training, the racing, the challenging of what I used to think were my limits. With the exception of the swim, it's relatively no-contact. The only thing close to a penalty was the course marshall who cautioned me about drafting the bike in front of me (which I wasn't).

After a six hour plus tri, I'm usually pretty tired, kinda sore and starved.

Today, one day after my first hockey tournament in a decade, I'm sporting some interesting bruises, my muscles are so sore that I'm walking like a 90 year old, and my back has never felt so sore.

Think I'll stop into Canadian Tire on the way home today and see if they have a good price on that really good hockey tape!