Another 6 monthly update: This time at least 10 kg heavier.

After my knee surgery in November last year I thought that I would have oodles of time to write in-depth blog entries on a more frequent basis. Initially I had the time, but I was probably a bit too "down" to write. Charlie was enjoying many powder days and I had many days in our rainy Lynn Valley.

...No, it wasn't as bad as I make it sound. We had my parents, my bro and his wife visiting over Christmas and they were followed by a constant stream of visitors. It was great to show my whanau (maori: family) our new home, the forest, Vancouver, and to catch up over lots of good food of course!

 

This was not the food that made me gain 10 kg...no, apparently I am carrying around a little passenger who keeps on growing and growing. We are expecting a little girl (so they say at least) at the end September. Charlie and I are super excited! Life is about to change! We have become so used to living our life very independently with biking, running and spontaneous restaurant/café visits. I understand that things will change but I still want to bike and run (especially now when my knee is fixed with a new ACL) but it will need to be a bit more planned.

My rehab after surgery was slow and painful, mainly because I am super impatient and everyone around me seemed to have so much fun skiing or biking. I am sure that my recovery was pretty typical, but it felt slow. I wasn't aware how fast some leg muscles can disappear from not being used and how damn hard it is to get them back. Thankfully we have a good gym at work and I have been doing my physio exercises there several times a week. As soon as the snow disappeared I have been biking, first only on Seymour Trailway (free from traffic) and after 3 months I started biking to work.

I never felt any morning sickness during my pregnancy (2.5 months to go...so fingers crossed) and I have been able to live a pretty normal life. I certainly needed a few more nanna naps and I have been going to bed more like 10 pm rather than the previous 11 pm. 



Birthday cake frenzie at the Watershed after nice riding

There was a time in April when my knee was feeling pretty normal and when I still wasn't that big: a perfect time to squeeze in some mtb-rides. After a few local rides on exciting trails like Richard Juryn and the Bridal Track, I wanted to see more. I had a nice birthday weekend with riding in Squamish, and one in Bellingham, US, with Roz. The ride in the Whatcom forest in Bellingham was also super nice until we ran into a 2 m cougar (note I did not take he picture below..I was too busy shi***** my pants)!!! 

Cougars (also called pumas, mountain lions, panthers) are the greatest of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere (thanks Wikipedia). They are known as an excellent stalk-and-ambush predator, the cougar pursues a wide variety of prey (maybe also pregnant woman!).
Since I knew that cougars usually avoid people, I got a bit worried since we were in a relatively populated area in the middle of the day. Cougars are usually nocturnal. Apparently fatal attacks on humans are rare but it didn't make me feel safer.

So what happened? Roz was waiting for me to catch up while she waited with her bike on a 4WD road that we had just linked into. She looked back at me as I approached her and I when I looked beyond her up the road I saw a LARGE cat walking across the road about 50 m in-front of us. It was crossing the road (I thought it was an escaped lion from a zoo or something) . The cat headed into the single track which we had planned to take. I let out a big scream, the large cat looked at me but kept on walking. Roz saw the back half of the cat with its glorious long tail. I wanted to blow my whistle (reacting as if we had come across a bear), but Roz urged me to turn around  and bike back the single track I had just come up. -You go first, she said! -Why? I responded but started biking without arguing on the painfully slow and non-direct route to get to a connecting forestry trail and back to the car. I kept on looking behind to see if the large cat was stalking us. Luckily we were crossing a very open area where it would have had few places to hide and climb. We were meant to discover some cool flowy trails but I got pretty put-off by seeing the large wild terrestrial mammal who was most likely walking the neighbourhood. We aimed for a café instead and celebrated being alive.

Most people, even field biologists who spends much of their life in the woods, would never ever see a cougar. They are super rare to see and people say that when you see them, it is because they have stalked you and are about to attack. I as pleased that we got away with only a "nice memory". Although I had been very frightened, I was also very honoured to have seen it. Charlie was rather jealous to hear our story. I hope he is not wishing too hard to see one himself.

After growing a bit too big for mtbiking I am trying to find other things to focus on: We have been on a few little trips, I have been exploring a lot of trails on foot and we have been kayaking a few times. Here are a few photos from our recent exploratory trips:

Hiking in Bend with Julian and Jana. This was meant to be an overnight trip but turned into a 3 hr stroll in a very rainy and snowy forest. It was still a nice way to catch up since we had not seen J&J since our wedding on 2010. 

 Charlie's BIG birthday weekend in Roberts Creek, Sunshine Coast. I am not disclosing his age, but let's be honest..it wasn't his 21st!

 Margot showing off her non-alcoholic beer. Being pregnant is such a party!

I took Charlie to the Skookumchuck Rapids for an evening picnic in the glorious sunshine. There was so much to look at: skilled white water kayakers playing in the large standing wave, a family of otters chasing fish, several seals etc. A highly recommended place to get to when the conditions are right.


Happy birthday! Who needs a fancy restaurant when you can eat chocolate cake in the wilderness?

Sea kayaking on Charlie's birthday We could not have asked for a better day. We took a sea kayaking course in May. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to practise our new self-rescue skills on this day. We kayaked from Lamb Bay north of Sechelt and just got a taster of the coast line before we had to return back. We are planning a trip to go back on an overnight trip this coming weekend. There was so much more to see. 

Exploring our back yard with Jenny and Roz: we walked to the 600 year old Cedar tree. Pretty impressive!

 Urban exploring in Seattle. We visited the EMP museum (experience music project) designed by Frank Gehry.  This building is very impressive and I liked it even more since I saw a great documentary about the architect a few years ago: Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry.

EMP museum next to the space needle.

Ken's games day at Christina Lake. The kiwi team is getting amped and ready to beat the World team. It was an awesome weekend with sun, sun and food..and games of course!

 

So far the summer has been fantastic. July kicked off with sun and 20-30 degrees and we are now up to 3 weeks without rain. When Vancouver is on, IT's ON!!!