food talk and talk talk.

i typed out the following draft on valentines day:

i'm on the second evening of (water only) fasting, and the two days before i ate nothing but apples. i really didn't even know if i would make it through a day of apples only, but so far so good. if nothing else, the experience has given me a new appreciation of food and the whole ordeal of eating. but combined with saunas every second day i'm sure it has been pretty detoxifying.
oli and finn are in on this too, so today we picked up a few tropical treats to break the fast with gradually; avocados, mangos, pineapple. i am so stoked.

in other semi-exciting news, we decided to take our fridge out of the house, at least for the winter, but i actually hope it's for forever.
apparently you can put blocks of ice in your root cellar, cover them with straw or sawdust and they will stay frozen all summer. if we had some more seriously cold weather we could give that a try.


and an update from today, today:

i ended up doing a one day fast yesterday with paul. i think a few one day fasts a month during the winter are a pretty good thing. helps break up the routine and gives a chance to think about your relationship with food.


starting to get ready for spring; we cleaned out the greenhouse and started some onions in the kitchen.

a few of us from the farm are taking a Secwepemc language class at this amazing school, and i'm really enjoying it. Secwepemctsín is the language of the Shushwap people of this area. last night we started telling (really simple) stories ourselves and it was great.

here are a few words i know and like:
st̓cétkwe - broth
xqweltálkweten - telephone (thing for communicating)
ts̓kméke7 - beak of a bird (like they use their hands for)

alrightttttt

it's sunday, 9:30 a.m.
we got as far as the nellie's in kensington before an equipment malfunction (fucking water bottle holder!) and a double back.
all spare the dirty details but the last few days have been pretty intense with packing and moving and getting out of my place and trying to decide what to bring, and finishing all the projects needed for the trip. ok, the one detail i will include is that i have been waiting on paul.
awe've ridden like 10 blocks in the westerly direction before we stopped for breakfast and got a chance to actually talk and think in a neutral setting about some of the stuff we have packed. he ended up going back to our friends' place where we are storing stuff (our homebase for the last 2 days) to grab his messenger bag and hopefully ditch some other shit. i was dreading making another "goodbye" a false one by going back and facing our hosts again, so i stayed back and decided to blog.

kind of a shaky start so far. paul's handmade panniers and cheap-ish aluminum rack are slightly worrisome. we're far far behind schedule. it's supposed to rain tonight. i can't wait to experience putting kms behind us though.

so so so...

today we made a decision! we are leaving on april 20th!

been riding the sojourn, trying to break 'er in. it's fucking sweet! so many gears, which get more and more amazing as i slowly learn how to utilize them more and more.

been planning and thinking about our gear and budget a lot, although we still have a LOT to do, including calling some wwoof hosts and asking if we can stay on their farms! whhhhhich i am going to start as soon as i finish this blog post. paul is working on making some panniers out of leather. yea... ambitious. need to switch this desktop computer for a laptop we can take with us. plus a gazillion other things i won't bother typing out, because i already have some serious "TO DO" lists going.

alright, that's it for now. to the PHONE! wish me luck - calling people is pretty much my least favorite activity.

polo

i finally got to use the polo mallet we made in the summer!

paul is presenting me with a crazy supper! i must go! there are mini eggs on the plate! okbye!

two thousand and ten

heyyylo,
i'm feeling pretty fine right now with some extra time, so i thought i'd drop into the blog zone ya'll.

had some pretty good holidays. paul came with me to vermilion with me for 5 days and hung out with my parents, grandparents, and caylie. nice to be back though with books to read and hammocks to lay in. i'm reading a ton of books right now, all of them are really good. i have going:
The End of Money & the Future of Civilization by Thomas Greco
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Change your brain by Tim Leary
No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guerin


new years eve, resolutions blah blah. apparently i didn't put any down in the blog last new year, which is disappointing. i'd like to look back and see what my priorities were.

anyway, here are my 2010 resolutions:


1. be more connected with people. my friends who i suck at keeping in touch with. new friends who i will never meet if i keep this shit up. my family even. ways i will do this: more hanging out, letter writing, getting more out of time spent, being a better listener, cultivating hobbies, creating circles of people. ways i will probably not do this: facebooking, phone talking, making plans in advance.

2. learn to knit. for fuckin' realz.

3. keep learning, reading, and getting smarter. improve on communicating ideas. open mindedness and peace. get better with bikes.

4. write more letters to politicians.

feelin' weird today. bad soup maybe?

so i'm heading home for christmas and i'm actually quite happy about it. i haven't been there for a couple of years already. i used to kind of dread it. seeing everybody and catching up can be exhausting and then i run out of stuff to do and end up sitting in my parents house watching the seinfeld.
this trip should be good though. i hope so. paul is coming, my bro-dur will be home, and we won't be there too long. yea, should be good. it will be nice to see family, and the town. if i run into people from high school it will be ok and i won't be awkward. right?




Note: I found this post as a draft and retroactively published it on 18/11/2010

vancouver

was awesome. here is my trip:

we spent around 16 hours on the greyhound to get there, but it wasn't really that bad. it went pretty fast, despite greyhound being so ghetto. i took a bunch of stuff to keep myself entertained on the bus, like some knitting, some pants i wanted to patch up, and a book (in case i happened to be post-carsick), but they didn't have any lights on at all. not the low lit panel that goes along the side, and there were no overhead personal lights. we had to board in the dark and when we got off the bus i ended up seeing a brownish stain on my seat, eww! there was a lot more examples of the ghetto-ness, but oh well, it got us there and it was cheap.

when we got off the bus, we charged our phone at a coffee shop and for some reason Paul bought a china-man hat... you know the ones, right? then we walked directly though east hastings. fucking crazy and it was only 10 am!

we found our way out to Richmond, where we were staying. paul carried all my stuff, and even pushed me in a shopping cart for the last leg. we were staying at some calgary friend's of his, and they have a great apartment filled with bikes and a hammock.
we stayed out there for a few days, going for awesome bike rides and blazin' and having the usual stoner conversation about how the world is messed up.

all of us went on a mountain side ride that was nice. we got to share the path with a million longboarders in training, it was cute. we got off the path for a bit and watched some dragonfly sex and looked at trees. paul and i road in to granville island, stanley park, and downtown 'couver.

for a few days after that we stayed with my friend in the downtown east side and it was a nice change, and kind of funny, suddenly being so close to everything that we had just struggled to ride our bikes too the previous day. we had brought a "fun" chocolate bar along with us that we were sort of rationing. we finally ate the majority of that and hit up an awesome arcade downtown. i love pinball! it's my new favorite thing. i love the combination of digital and analog that makes up the machine. my favorite was the adam's family one. oh look, here is a picture of it that i googled.
we did some more bike rides and i attempted to find shoes because mine were on the verge, but it's impossible. i ended up getting some at a vintage clothing store in kitsilano pretty randomly on the last day.
we ended the trip with the nudie beach at UBC. it was wonderful - so hot and sunny, and being naked on the beach is GREAT.

we decided to fly back and we got a ride from paul's brother, straight from the beach to the airport with no time to spare.

i tend to not take great photos, but here are 5 sort of:

• a slug on the path. we were all kind of concerned he would get run over so we watched him cross for quite a while.
• paul in the only underwear he brought on the trip, on a beach downtown.
• me walking to wreck beach. i knew the nude portion was coming up, so i was half way there already.
• a night bike ride. i think i was actually from a boys' only ride. i was in the hammock sleeping already.
• bamboo in stanley park. paul climbed it, i watched.

soon.

• soon i will have the most organized desk ever. i took everything out, organized it into logical piles and now i'm putting it back in.

• my teeth hurt all the time. well not ALL the time. only when i eat really sugary stuff... which is ALMOST all the time. ow, it hurts. i will go to the dentist soon

• dan leahul is back in calgary for a month. we are hanging out as soon as he gets here.

• i'm taking a long long bus ride to vancouver with paul tomorrow. we just bought the tickets today. we didn't plan very much of anything and now the trip is very soon.

ps - i brought my new bike home today. it's still got a free wheel (single speed) on it, but you can probably guess when i will be changing that.... (SOON!)

RECAP PACER

alrighty, we saw somebody raking leaves today so i guess that's it... cusp of fall.

time to recap the summer, RIGHT??

well, i kicked it off by fixing up my first bike, planting some tomatoes and sunflowers in pots on my balcony, and volunteering to be in charge of the compost at the Looogie House (they have a garden and compost bins, other than that, not important).

the couple of jonathan and kelsey had really lost it's cohesion and we had been fighting ALL the time and i thought about escaping to B.C. and then Belgium. but he had lost his job and i finally convinced him the best thing would be if he just went back to quebec... so he did. phew. a chapter closed.

sometime in between breaking up with jp and him leaving, i met paullllo. paul. he likes cracking necks and backs and fingers and toes. he likes cold hands on his back. he is resourceful. he has rough hands and he feels like safety. his physical being is a marvel to me!
it's been a few months of coupleness and no complaints here. we've made every every day together a good, full, positive one. with the help/inspiration/guidance/company of him i have done a bunch of stuff from my LIFE TO DO LIST that i made a while back, mostly nature, nurture and fixing bikes. we both got really into the composting project and ended up with a slightly demanding daily route of other cafes providing compost material. basically summer 09 was a summer of compost for me.

in august i moved out of the cracked-out apartment and into a basement suite with a garage and a greenhouse in the back. paul's been hard at work setting up a whole hydroponic growing centre in there. it's so amazing! almost daily i check the plants, including peas, cucumbers and peppers, and the amount of growth is mind blowing to me. in a few weeks most of them have grown the craziest, longest roots ever. i'm not sure what's going to happen to the whole system once it gets colder.

lame giant blog post, i know. but whatever, that's been my summer.

a lot of blogs i've read lately are about clothes and fashion or music. i feel really disconnected from all of that. i don't really get into music the same way. i put on music just to have something playing, but i don't really care to look for new stuff.
i haven't bought new clothes for a long time, because i have no money.. ever. but now i'm even more consciously adamant about wearing out the ones i already have.

i kind of feel like i am really on to something as far as my lifestyle goes. i'm turning into such a bicycle zealot because i think that it's the easiest, most accessible step towards EVERYthing good. physical activity, sustainability, community. there are no draw backs from bikes (except for accidents i guess).
as far as the "lifestyle" thing.. or living life goes, there is still so much to learn and a zillion ways to improve, but i made some giant steps this summer and i'm hyped up for the next season.


here's a photo of us on a break from longboarding with some rum & lemons. i don't believe they get much better than this:

i found him.

i just emailed my potential au pair family in belgium and told them i am in.
now i just have to get them to ok me.. and then i have a million other things to do.

i had a really intense week with lots of talks about the future. but i also slept outside, rode a lot of bikes, laid in my hammock a ton, all with a crushy feeling.



for chris, here is a bad photo of my bike. it was the first photo i took with my fish eye camera and it didn't quite work out but bah.