Behold, my beautiful, lush garden.
The green sugar snap peas, purple moon cauliflowers, and bush green beans are well underway. The green lettuce, kale and butter lettuce are ready to be harvested. The Hungarian peppers are struggling, and the cherry tomatoes are taking their sweet time. The arugula has already bolted and were ripped out this morning, as were the radishes. In the previous two years, we grew the Cherriette variety of radishes, but this year we planted the Easter Egg II blend, named for its range of colours from white to burgundy. They went from seed to R.O.U.S. (radishes of unusual size) in just six weeks:
This is the largest intact radish from this morning’s harvest. There were larger ones, but they’d cracked, and bugs had worked their way into the crannies, so I discarded them in the compost bin. Even after getting rid of all those fissured radishes, the bounty is too large to be divided among two people, especially when just one radish is the size of an apple.
I’ve tried my hand at pickling:
With new seeds in the soil, I’ll have three weeks to discover new ways to prepare radishes. Candied radishes? Caramel radish? Radish ice cream?*
*I’ve had wasabi soft serve ice cream at a wasabi farm in Japan. It was the most touristy snack I’ve ever had. While not offensive, I would be okay if I never got to taste it again.
I’ve moved up in the Garmin Cult hierarchy. As a longtime cult buff, I’ve long known that one’s ticket to moving up the ranks of any cult is by spending money. As my Starfrit scale crapped out (the battery would drain after a week), the temptation to replace it with a Garmin smart scale became irresistible when I saw it was available through the bike shop’s supplier.
Within two days, I performed my first body composition analysis with the scale. Then, I was hit with buyer’s remorse, afraid that I’d gone too far with my obsession with tracking my body metrics. I repackaged the scale and tucked it away in my bedroom, rather than in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, where my simple Starfrit scale had lived.
As long as I don’t step on it after every ride, run, or poop, this device should be beneficial to my health, right? To think it all started with a bike computer to track my distance and speed. Now with my Garmin collection, I have access to esoteric data such as my body water percentage and how many breaths I take per minute.
Earlier in the week, new riding buddy, Gabby, let our 4-person chat group know there would be an evening race at the Westshore Velodrome on Wednesday. The entry fee was $20 for three races. Of the four of us, only Gabby raced that evening. I watched her get beaten by a senior citizen in the first race; however, she redeemed herself in the second race and whizzed past all but one racer. The real star of the race, though, was the red e-bike the race organizer was using to pace the Keirin races. Gabby could hear the little kids who were standing outside the velodrome yell, “Go, Red!”
I couldn’t participate because I didn’t purchase a cycling license this year, which is required for racing. To be honest, I probably would have opted out anyway. Racers are supposed to yell “STICK!” when they pass, something I cannot do nor hear others do.
I was content sitting on the fake grass, doodling on one of Gabby’s bananas, and taking sweet action shots of Gabby and her partner, Dan. The following picture is of Gabby and a racer who’s not Dan, unless this vintage speedster is also named Dan:
Last weekend, I was on the mainland to attend the second gathering of the Garmin Girls. A few hours before Marianne, Shannon, and I got together to pitter-patter along the seawall, Marianne shared a screenshot of her HRV data, which had plummeted, in our group chat. What I didn’t know until I arrived at her place was that she’d actually flown in from Ottawa that very morning. It was an impromptu trip that ended with a nasty migraine attack that prompted her to postpone her flight home.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
Marianne stayed alert enough that evening to play a round of Scrabble with me. I have now extended my winning streak to… two.
In the morning, I got treated to a bagel, freshly flown in from Ottawa in Marianne’s luggage. Montréal bagels are known to be the benchmark, with an infamous rivalry between two top bagelries: St-Viateur and Fairmount.
For Ottawa-raised Marianne, Kettlemans is the holy grail of bagelries. To this mostly impartial enjoyer of bagels, I was unable to discern a difference between Kettlemans and my taste memory of Montréal bagels from 7+ years ago.
Zoée, formerly of the Apple Cult, hosted me the following night. Since that night, Zoée has seen the light and now sports Garmin regalia on their wrist.
The readalong of Frank Herbert’s Dune that we started earlier in the month kind of fell apart because I ended up so far ahead in the story that anything I wanted to discuss had the potential of being a spoiler. Except that Zoée had already seen the first and second movies. I hadn’t watched either. The solution to our suspended discussion of the book was to watch the first film together, spending a good chunk of the two and a half hours pointing out the differences and similarities between the book and the film.
It was the best movie I’ve seen in the last year. Then again, I’ve watched fewer than 10 movies in the last year. My opinion on films probably carries even less weight than my thoughts on bagelries.
I’d flown into Vancouver on the seaplane on Thursday morning. My upper crustiness was felt even harder when I found another person shampooing my hair just an hour after my seaplane touched down in Coal Harbour.
My air of aristocracy had waned by Saturday, when I ended up taking two buses and the Skytrain to get to Opa’s place for a 40-minute visit, before getting back on the Skytrain and three more buses to travel the 30km from Surrey to the ferry terminal. The day before, I made the mistake of mentioning the details of my public transit odyssey in an email to Opa, who responded a few hours later, telling me to postpone our visit until the next time I was on the mainland, so that my uncle could drive me to the ferries. When one is 100 years old, there is a high possibility that there won’t be a next time.
I travelled to the mainland in luxury and departed as a peasant, but with a full heart. And because cult members take care of each other, Amanda of the Vivoactive echelon gave me a lift back into town from Swartz Bay. Then, she took Greg Minnaar from my place to hers in Esquimalt, where he was soon installed in Amanda’s shower while her husband was out for a run.
Now, Mr. Minnaar, who a friend of Amanda’s referred to as “an absolute shredlord” is looking for a new shower to hang out in.
