We shared the message above on the blog’s Facebook page. And wow. So many likes and so many shares. It really hit home.
Many of us it seems, want to learn new things as adults. For some people, they’re inspired watching their kids learn something. That looks fun! I think I could do that!
For others, it’s that they finally have time now kids have grown up. Or they’ve retired.
I think I got over my fear of learning new things early. I took university classes in weight lifting and dinghy sailing as a graduate student. Later, there was Aikido and soccer, with the kids. And for our fittest by fifty challenge, I learned to row.
I’m keen to learn to swim 🏊♂️ and to dance💃. They’re both in my future.
This morning blog post finds me in western New York state, at a place called the Chautauqua Institution. This place is, according to Wikipedia, “a summer resort and non-profit education center” in western NY state, about 1.5 hours from Buffalo. I’m here with my beloved aunt Cathy, who’s been here before. It’s on Chautauqua Lake, which is big (17 miles wide and 2 miles long) and fun for all kinds of recreation. The Institution itself, according to Google,
encourages and studies the arts and treats them as integral to all of learning. With symphony, opera, theater, dance, visual arts and a renowned music school, Chautauqua produces an “eclectic mix” of programming that can be found nowhere else.
Well, that sounds nice, doesn’t it? And they totally deliver. This week (week 4 of their 9-week summer programming) features opera, orchestral music, dance, gallery shows, and pop music (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons are playing here Friday night).
On the recreation front, they have guided kayak tours at all hours of the day, organized pickleball, tennis round robins, walking groups, English lawn bowling (I’m totally trying this, whatever it is), and goodness knows what else. Plus, of course, swimming in the lake. I brought my bike and am renting one for my aunt so we can toodle around.
Honestly, the array of options is astounding. They print out a weekly newspaper with the schedule. Take a look:
Can you read this fine print? Neither can I. More are circled than we can manage–an abundance of vacation riches.
One historical note: the term “chautauqua” might be familiar to some from the chautauqua movement; it is the self-same. Here’s some more info, courtesy of Google:
The Chautauqua movement was an organized series of educational and entertaining presentations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Speakers included teachers, religious preachers, actors, industrial figures, musicians, and specialists in a wide variety of fields.
Some of these places were more specifically Christian, while others maintained a secular identity. This place– the Chautauqua Institution where I am– is what they call interfaith: programming by all of the big three religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) is represented. But so far it the atmosphere seems more artsy and literary than anything else.
What I’m looking forward to is the combo of artsiness and gentle outdoorsiness that is the ambiance of this place. It’s cute in the extreme.
We’re not staying here. But look at the flowers!We aren’t staying here, either. But look at this paint job, and the hanging plants!
Our place for the week is a cozy condo with kitchen and balcony for eating and chilling out. Not that we’ll spend much time there. There are so many opportunities for activity and exploration and edification, we aren’t going to be lolling much. At least, I don’t think so. We’ll see…
My activity plans include kayaking with Cathy, biking, swimming, trying my hand at English lawn bowling, and maybe some pickleball. And lots and lots of walking. We parked our car in a far-away lot, as cars are mostly not allowed on the grounds. My step count was 7000+ yesterday, and we only arrived at 4:30pm.
You may be thinking to yourself, this seems familiar. Haven’t I seen a movie about such places? You’re thinking about Dirty Dancing, set at the fictional Kellerman’s resort in the 60s. Or Mrs. Maisel, the TV show.
Kellerman’s, which is a real resort in Virginia. They don’t have conga lessons here at Chautauqua, more’s the pity.
I think this place purports to meet a similar need– a beautiful place where every generation of the family can have fun and hang out together, experience nature in a gentle way, and feel like they’re learning sometime at the same time. This is a novel experience for me, and I’m looking forward to what the week will bring. I’ll report back in seven days’ time, and promise to document any conga lines that form.
July is my birthday month. That’s right….it falls right smack-dab in the middle of the month (16th), so why not celebrate for the entire month?
I’ve always thought of July as the Saturday of the summer. June is Friday, and August is the dreaded Sunday….it starts out great, but towards the end of the month, September looms. So July really is the best month of summer!
What have I done to celebrate so far? The first 9 days was easy, we were on vacation on Vancouver Island. I LOVE Vancouver Island. We drove up the eastern side, from the Crofton ferry terminal up to Campbell River. All along the way, we stopped at a number of local breweries and sampled some excellent beer!
Then we drove inland to Strathcona Provincial Park. This is one spectacular park, dotted with lakes that are surrounded by snow-capped mountains and big, big trees. There’s something about being surrounded by big big (yes, I have to say it twice!) trees that fills me with a sense of respect. We could all take lessons from trees….connect with the earth, let the breeze move your branches and leaves, and just chill for a few hundred years. That sounds good to me!
And the mountains are humbling. They’ve seen BILLIONS of years. If we’re lucky, we are just random arrangements of atoms that last for about 90 years. The realization of one’s insignificance can be incredibly liberating.
So staying in a stunning cabin in this beautiful park, cooking great food, drinking great beer, going on day hikes and returning for a swim in the VERY COLD (!) mountain lake….that’s an amazing way to celebrate my birthday month.
And then going to the beautiful city of Victoria, experiencing a spa boat (more cold plunges, saunas, hot tubs), more good beer, cocktails and ending with the Pride Parade and a concert by my favourite cowboy singer, Orville Peck!
And THAT was a GREAT start to my birthday month! Next up….my birthday swim! 59 X 50 m! Looking forward to it! And then celebrating my birthday with friends in my favourite pub.
Oh, one more thing….I got my hair coloured PURPLE! Just because!
Happy Birthday to all the Julys here! Does anyone else love their birthday and celebrates it for longer than just the day?
When you’re packing to go away for a weekend or a week, to the beach or the lake, think about this: you might want to pack more than one swimsuit. Why? Let me tell you.
5. Trying to put on a still-wet swimsuit is not fun. Having a second one means you can swim twice a day if you want, giving each one proper time to dry out on a hook in the bathroom, or slung over a deck chair.
4. Many of us own more than one swimsuit. Why not use them? Variety is the spice of life, which may well include swimwear.
3. Sometimes wardrobe malfunctions happen. If a strap breaks or a seam unravels, you don’t want to have to rush to the beachwear store to buy an overpriced two-piece with the face of a lion imprinted on it (unless you do, in which case great). To avoid such bathing suit emergencies, bring an extra.
2. Also a variety-based reason: some people like different swimsuit style for different purposes (e.g. one-piece tank for swimming, two-piece bikini or tankini for walking/sitting/lolling on the beach). Bringing more than one bathing suit provides us with choices.
Tatiana from RuPaul’s Drag Race offers her wisdom: Choices…
1. In case you happen to leave your swimsuit drying on aforementioned deck chair, forget it’s there when it starts to rain one night, and the rain turns onto a microburst windstorm and tempest, sending your bathing suit, the chair it was on, and the glass patio table flying across the street, it’s good to know you’ve got another suit in reserve.
Yes, 1. happened to me when I was at the beach with my sister and her kids. Seriously, it looked like a beach-item yard sale the next day: chairs and tables and towels and buckets and little shovels were strewn everywhere. I despaired of finding my new blue speedo tank suit. Luckily, my niece Gracie spied it in some bushes about 100 yards away. The glass table from our deck was about 30 yards away. That was some microburst.
Dear readers, I hope you will benefit from hard lessons learned by me: bring an extra swimsuit!
Do any of you have harrowing or ridiculous stories about swimsuit emergencies or mishaps on vacation? Share them in the comments and I promise to be extremely sympathetic.
I was organizing my thoughts for a semi-deep post about my upcoming “big” birthday when I noticed that today is National French Fry Day! Never one to let a good (and ridiculous) celebration go to waste, it felt like a more useful post on a hot July Friday. If you’re wondering about National French Fry Day, dipping sauces, or alternatives to traditional white potato fries you can find more information here.
I don’t want to challenge the weather goddesses by calling these temperatures peak, but here in the northern hemisphere it has been hot hot hot. Cooking feels completely unmanageable by dinner time most days. I have deep sympathy for anyone working in a commercial kitchen standing over a hot fry-o-lator in service to french fry celebrations.
It feels a little cliché, or maybe I’ve seen too much about “girl dinner” lately, but one of my favorite summer dinners is a salad with a side of tator tots. Not quite a french fry, but serving the same purpose for me. I think the frozen bag of tots is superior to frozen fries when you don’t have a deep fryer, and they cook up quickly in the toaster oven or air fryer, which avoids having to heat up the whole kitchen with the big oven.
My favorite salad changes by the day, but I think you can’t go wrong with a Caesar salad and tots/fries, especially if you need to replenish some of that salt you sweated out during the day.
What’s your favorite way to celebrate the french fry?
Back when I was in sixth grade, I had a babysitting job one weekend but started to feel sick so I called my mom. She took over from me while I went home and slept – for over 24 hours. Turns out I wasn’t sick at all, just exhausted. It happened every few years after that for my entire adult life. Did I learn from this? No, I did not.
But maybe I’m finally starting to absorb the lessons.
Last weekend I went camping with friends and barely left our little area. I washed lots of dishes and helped with meals, but mostly I sat around the fire and puttered while talking to people I love spending time with. I came home feeling mentally refreshed and not too physically tired.
This week, I’m ordering a “cottage”, more of a pre-fab shed for my lakeside property. I have owned the land for many years but didn’t go there at all for the first 15 because it was too much effort. More recently, I got myself set up so most of my camping gear stays there and I have a tent already up.
There’s still a fair bit of work involved in final set-up and take-down each visit, plus the worry about who will care for my cats while I’m away. Hence the cottage, where I can unlock the door and have a bed ready to go, and the cats can come with me.
In between those two events, I spent a weekend reading books and magazines, skipping a swim, not riding my bike, and reaching a level of rest that I actually felt the desire to do some house cleaning, a job I loathe (but I do it, to be clear).
Why don’t I do this more often? I have no idea. Work has been a giant constraint, especially as I pushed myself to be a physically active role model for my two kids. Plus I needed the intellectual stimulation of my hobbies.
I suspect I fell into the whole supermom fallacy, wanting to believe that I could have a fulfilling career, raise perfect kids, have a beautiful home, and look fabulous while doing it all. That belief started back in elementary school, when I was anxious to make friends and excel at all the things, while changing schools every couple of years.
Even in retirement, it’s hard to let go of all the activities. I track everything: workouts, chores, craft and research projects, blog posts written, recipes tried.
I have a goal of reading 52 magazines and 12 books this year. I’m well behind schedule, but my pile of back issues is starting to look a little more manageable after last weekend.
But genuinely taking a day off to do nothing in particular, and not worrying about whether I’m ticking off some box on a mental checklist? That is going to take a little more effort. Or less effort? I’m not sure how to describe working at doing nothing. All I know is that I need to work on building rest into my routine
I am amused by this image promoting rest and relaxation, from the Asian American Organizing Project. They sound as conflicted as me about how to rest.
Bring on the Bay, an annual open-water swimming event in Ottawa, has a unique feature to accommodate swimmers who might otherwise not be able to participate: swim angels.
The swim angels program has been running since 2016. I first learned about it when I had foot surgery but wanted to swim despite my lack of training and fears about foot cramps. My friend Nadine volunteered to be my angel. It was a huge comfort to know she was there, ready to call for help should I need it, or just keep me going when I wasn’t sure about my abilities.
You can read more about the swim angel program here, and its origins as a way to help one swimmer with epilepsy achieve her goals. Since then, angels have supported people with a variety of disabilities and medical conditions, but also those who are simply anxious about open water swimming.
Last year, I decided it was time to become an angel myself. I wrote about it here. It was so much fun that I’m back again and looking forward to swimming with Irene, the mum of my swimmer from last year.
This year’s swim angel crew, some 25 swimmers standing or sitting on a dock and holding their swim floats, with the Royal Lifesaving Society instructors who coached us on how to manage emergencies and keep ourselves and our swimmers safe.Swim angels show off their “wings” in the Ottawa River.
So I’m offering this list, not as a list of places I want to ride my bike before I die, but simply as a list of places I’d like to ride my bike. It’s unlikely I’ll get to ride even a couple of these in my lifetime but it’s fun to think about it.
I’ve been inspired by Cate’s latest adventures (see below) and by my recovery from knee surgery. I think I’m ready to get back on my bike for some adventures. This year it’s just my birthday ride and Pedaling for Parkinson’s. After that I’m taking my bike to New Zealand and after that, who knows!
You can also watch Munda Biddi Dreaming which documents Australian ultracyclist Jack Thomson’s record breaking ride of the trail in two days, 12 hours and 15 minutes. Whoosh! FWIW, I have no speed ambitions, just making it hut to hut for as long as it takes.
🚴 Cuba I’d like to ride in Western Cuba with Bicycle Breeze with my friends Beth and Lee Orphan.
🚴 Norway, the Lofoten Islands . From a company offering bike tours, “Nestled at the northern edge of the world, Lofoten, Norway is a pristine natural wonder that will steal your heart with its rugged beauty. This enchanting archipelago, renowned for its dramatic landscapes and awe-inspiring surroundings, is a destination like no other. As you cycle through the Lofoten Isles you will be surrounded by towering, jagged peaks rising dramatically from the deep, crystal-clear waters. This distinctive landscape makes for a perfect backdrop for your adventure. As you explore this unique haven, you`ll encounter a labyrinth of winding fjords and serene, sandy beaches. While Lofoten’ s natural splendor is undoubtedly its highlight, the charming fishing villages that dot the archipelago`s coastline offer a glimpse into authentic Norwegian culture.”
🚴I’ve blogged about this route before, the Vatternrundan. It’s 315 km. See A Long Bike Ride in my Future? Vätternrundan is the world’s largest recreational bike ride. Every year close to 23 000 participants from around the world ride around this lake in Sweden. Read more about it here.
Yeah, it makes me sort of want to scream, too– where has the time gone? Thanks Noah Buscher of Unsplash for the pic.
I’m taking this moment to check in to see how things are going with respect to my goals/plans/dreams/chores for 2024. Starting with the FB group, 224 Workouts in 2024, I’m a little behind, clocking in at 108 workouts. However, with two months of summer left and two fun active vacation trips left, I’m not too worried about finishing on time.
Then there is the matter of the 24 things to do in 2024 list I made back in Februrary. Okay. Well. Might as well go through it now… 🙂
re writing each day: yes, that’s working. I’ve ramped it up this summer, unsurprisingly, because I have more time. Yay! I’ve made it a bigger priority, and am really enjoying it.
What about those kitchen appliances lying fallow on my counter– the Insta-Pot, Kitchen Aid stand mixer, and bread machine? Have I started making use of them?
Sadly, no, no and no. I do have aspirations to start using the Instant Pot, but it’s not clear the others are going to play a big role in my kitchen life this year. I’m cooking more than I did last year, but am sticking to more simply prepared foods. Also, I’m eating less meat, which is one of the big uses of an Instant Pot (how was that for an excuse?) As for the others: they continue to languish…
However, I have better news for the next two items:
Learn to make more plant-based meals and make them for myself and friends
Make more progress on reducing my consumption of animals; I stopped eating pork last October, and am working this year on eliminating beef from my diet
Yes and yes! I’m eating much less beef, more tofu and plant products, and have also given up shrimp. It’s slow progress toward a vegetarian diet, but it feels steady and doable.
re travel; I’m executing my plan for go to the Chatauqua conference in upstate NY with my beloved aunt Cathy this July– next weekend. My next blog post will be from there where I’ll report on what it’s like to be a grown-up on a summer camp-like vacation.
re other travel plans: beach with family (check), August trip to Canada for Lake Huron fun and Samantha’s birthday party (planning to check this), celebrate my sister’s birthday somewhere fun (ditto), and go to a meditation retreat (deferred until Jan 2025). Not too bad.
I’ve been to some online academic conferences, but plans to go in person didn’t happen this year. Again, I’m deferring academic travel until next year.
Yes, I am meditating (almost) every day; I missed July 4th after an 85-day streak. Sigh. But it’s the one-day streak of today that counts…
Now we get to the not-yet done or even attempted items: I’ve not been swimming regularly at home (on vacations, yes, but…) I just haven’t committed to it. Nor have I been to weekly in-person yoga– I go from time to time and do it via zoom.I’ve cycled, but not yet once a week. This one I’m not giving up on– it’s just going to take a bit more planning, as I am wimpy about riding in the heat.
On to books: Yes, I’m reading a lot more, including books in my house, book club books, and recommendations from friends and the internet. Yay! And I’m doing some drawing and crafting, although there are only so many hours in the day. Amirite?
But, I’m saying yes to more social outings with friends and family, and also expressing gratitude to myself and others for the abundance of goodness in my life.
So, plans for the second half of 2024: make more time for cycling, some time for swimming, some time for yoga, and maybe find that bread machine a loving home in the country with a family who will use it.
This yummy loaf was made with love by these folks; machine is sitting happily in the back left corner.
