The Cool Bloggers Walking Club

Elisabeth asked everyone to join her on an October challenge: to walk at least 10 minutes every day in October. Obviously, I am on board with that, and surprisingly, it is sometimes hard to get any walking in when I am on the bike all day. I often do walk to the grocery store, and usually that is at least a half a mile each way, so I do get some steps in, but my average per day is a lot lower than it was when I was at home, that is for sure! My goal was to get 10,000 steps on a non biking day, and do at least 10 minutes on a biking day. 

So as not to bore you with a bunch of photos of me walking to the grocery store, I tried to get out to a few more places, and thought I would post a few of my favorites here. Huge thanks to Elisabeth for not only keeping us accountable, but for hosting me in October, and showing me a lot of her favorite walking places, some of which you will see below! 

October 1st - October 9th: Laval and Montreal, Quebec

1. The Croissant (Crescent), where I walked the dog that I was sitting
2. Streets of Montreal; as always, I loved wandering
3. Nature Center Laval
4. Rachel Street, Montreal; great bike lanes and fun murals
5. Old town, Montreal
6. L'eau! I used to "collect" photos of water/storm drains;
there are some really fun old ones in San Francisco and New Orleans.

October 10th - October 13th: Quebec, including Quebec City

1. Church - Champlain
2. Rue St. Louis - Quebec City
3. Rue St. Louis - Quebec City
4. Jacques-Cartier Beach Park - Quebec City
5. St. Lawrence River
6. The Umbrella Street - Quebec City

October 14th - October 23rd: Nova Scotia

1. Peggy's Cove
2. Grand-Pré
3. Cape Split
4. Reservoir
5. Annapolis Valley Trail
6. Walking the kids to school

October 24th: Vancouver

No photos but I did walk about two miles to get groceries and pho with a friend! 

October 25th - October 26th: Bellingham, WA

1. Whatcom Museum
2. Sacred Heart, Fairhaven
3. Puget Sound
4. South Bay Trail
5. Fairhaven Village
6. Bellingham sign (the small print says: Olde City of Subdued Excitement)

October 27th - October 31st: Burlington, WA

1. Fairhaven St.
2. Walking around town
3. Fairhaven St.
4. Welcome!
5. Train Wreck Bar and Grill
6. Welcome sign

I know you are wondering if I achieved my goal of 10,000 steps (about five miles) or 10 minutes every day (about a half mile). I was on the bike 11 days out of 31, which would mean I would need to get about 105 miles, or an average of about 3.4 miles per day in October to reach my goal. 

Well, I did achieve it! Some days, it was surprisingly easy, like in Montreal or Bellingham, where I sometimes walked 8-10 miles (of course, on these days my destination was often food related, so I may be a net positive when it comes to calories) or when I had a buddy like Elisabeth to keep me moving. However, some days it was surprisingly hard, like on travel days, rainy days, or on long cycling days when I just wanted to rest!

Here are the stats: 

Total walking/hiking activities: 46
Total distance: 112.69 miles
Total elevation gain: 9,703 feet
Average per day (31): 3.63 miles / 313 feet of gain

I call that a win! 

Did you participate in the walking challenge? Either way, what was the most interesting place you walked in October?

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

The Social Introvert

As I have traveled across the US and Canada this year, I have seen a lot of beautiful places, challenged myself physically, have seen some parts of North America that I have been to before, and many others that were new to me. This has all been great, and I have loved every minute of it (unless it was raining!) but what I will probably look back to the most is the time I have spent with people. These people are sometimes strangers, men I talk to at Tim Horton's, or women who stop me in the middle of the road to ask me where I am headed or if I need water. They are sometimes people I have met before and am visiting again. They are sometimes people who I didn't know would be important in my life, such as some of my fellow racers at the Tour Divide. 

Mr. Coffee; he kept me going during the race!
(this photo is about 30 miles from the finish)

However, the bulk of people I have met up with have been people I have met on the internet! This would have seemed weird to me twenty years ago, and I have never done internet dating, but now it just seems normal to be sleeping in the bed of a person who you have never before seen face to face! This is the beauty of the interwebs. 

The first internet people I met along the way were Warm Showers hosts. Warm Showers is a network of cyclists and hosts, where you can either stay at someone's house on your route, or you can host cyclists at your house. This is all free, and usually the hosts are cyclists, but I have stayed with people who are just nice people willing to help out and host and feed stinky tired people! So far, I have stayed with Warm Showers hosts in Washington, Alberta, Michigan and Ontario and they were all wonderful. 

My next host was a couple on Vancouver Island who found me through my blog because of my post on hiking in Slovenia. At first we ended up being pen pals, where I answered some questions they had about Slovenia and we swapped hiking stories and travel stories. They told me that if I was ever in their area I should stop by, and I did, and it was great! 

I also met up with several blog friends; you can read posts from Lisa (who I have met before, but was happy to meet up with again!), NGS, Kae and Birchie on their sites. All of them were great; everyone was exactly like I thought they would be, and I had an excellent time finally putting a 3D person to the 2D photos and written words. 

My theme: same shirt, different day!

Last, but not least, I finally made it across the country and ended up in beautiful Nova Scotia, where I met Elisabeth! Although we had never met in person before, it felt like we were fast friends already and we TWO INTROVERTS had no issues whatsoever keeping the conversation going. I had once asked her what the itinerary would be if I came to visit for three days and she provided a great list, and we definitely knocked many of these things off the list! We had perfect weather and there were no big crowds at the popular places, which was just how I like it! However, there was too much to do and not enough time, so I guess I will have to go back someday soon. 

Here are the highlights of the last week with Elisabeth! 

*Meeting her family! Everyone was so sweet and fun and so charismatic! I went to church with them on Sunday, got to walk the kids to school, and we had a blast playing games (I even threw the football around with Indy!) 

Walking the kids to school

*Peggy's Cove. I was going to ride there with Bob, but the road is small and windy and there is no shoulder! Luckily we moved the schedule around and ended up going all together, including the kids, which is probably more fun anyway, as I would have likely just done a quick drive through if I was on the bike. It was as beautiful as the photos show and we had fun jumping around on the rocks together. 

*Cape Split. This feels like the end of the earth, although you can see parts of Nova Scotia across the way. It was so windy I thought that I was going to fall of the edge! We had a great hike (I think it was almost 9 miles), a nice picnic and had a nice heart to heart along the way. 

My mouth is open because it is so windy!

*Medford/Blomidon. The cliffs and rocks were so red! The tides in these areas are crazy. Influenced by the Bay of Fundy, they can go down over 50 feet vertically and 3 miles horizontally. I think that the area we were walking on would have had roughly 25 of 30 feet of water on it when the tides were up, and the mud flats went for miles. We also saw two bald eagles! 

It's like being on Mars.

*Home cooked meals. I have been eating way too much cheese and crackers, oatmeal and processed meats. It was so nice to sit down at the table with the family and to eat real food! Plus there is just something special about something that someone else made, no matter what it is. Being at Elisabeth's house was like being with family; the house awakens little by little and eventually culminates with the walk to school, which was my favorite part of the day. 

*36 questions. Elisabeth is reading Super Communicators, which I already listened to on audiobook. The bonus is that she is reading the real book, and in the appendix there is a list of 36 questions that you can ask a person in order to get closer to each other faster. We went down this list and answered them and some of them are pretty personal, but it is fun to get these insights into another person! I liked it so much that I asked my family one of them in our weekly video call and may ask another next time. You can find them here under section 5. If you feel comfortable, feel free to answer one of them in the comments!! 

*Good weather. Like I said, the weather could not have been better. It was in the high 60s/low 70s during the day, the sun was shining and the fall colors were very pretty. We did wear a jacket from time to time, but mostly in the mornings or due to there being a bit of wind. However, it was really very nice and I even wore a tank top on our hike at Cape Split. In October! In Canada! 

I also got to meet John and Joy, had a handmade welcome sign waiting for me when I arrived, had lunch at Cumin, one of Elisabeth's favorite places, met the neighbors and much, much more. There were so many more highlights, but I am not going to steal all of Elisabeth's thunder!  You can go over to her site, where she will regale you with all of the details in a three part post this week, which I am sure will be much more detailed than mine! 

The only lowlight was that we did not have more time! I am sure Elisabeth was ready to get back to normal life, but I could have stayed longer! However, garbage and guests start to go bad after three days I had to get moving and Elisabeth had stuff to do! 

Have you ever met up with someone from the internet? Or stayed at the home of someone that you did not know in real life?