At least that’s what Susan, Sarah, and I decided on day 3 of our 4-day canoe trip into Algonquin Park after a particularly long, buggy portage.
A younger guy travelling with young kids looked at us carrying the canoe and hauling backpacks and paddles and PFDs and asked us if we were having type 1 or type 2 fun.
Sarah replied, We’re getting old. It’s all type 2 fun for us.
But then Susan and I discussed it and decided it averages out to 1.5 fun.
You know the distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 fun?
“First, let’s break down the differences. “Type 1” fun is pure, uncomplicated enjoyment in the moment. Think eating ice cream, watching a movie, or lounging on a beach. It’s casual, low-effort, and comes with an immediate reward.
Type 2” fun shifts the dynamic. It’s an activity that requires effort—and maybe even a little discomfort—in the moment. Think backpacking deep in the woods, downhill mountain biking, or learning a physically and mentally demanding new skill. Sure, you might feel a little miserable while you’re in the thick of it, but once you’ve accomplished it, the experience can feel downright glorious.”
Here’s our breakdown:
What’s Type 2 fun? Portages! Paddling into the wind! Hanging the food so bears won’t get it!
What’s Type 1 fun? Swimming, basking on rocks, paddling on a flat lake, naps in hammocks, eating any food cooked over the camp stove, coffee in the morning…
Here’s some photos from our trip:
Magnetawan to Hambone to Ralph Bice to Little Trout and back
What we did: Three days and two nights on East Arm, Joe Lake in Algonquin. It was a trip planned by a friend to do with kids but when that didn’t work out he asked Alex, Sarah and I to join instead. So it was on a busier lake than we normally book and pretty easy in terms of paddling and portaging. In the end the friend couldn’t come either so it was Alex, Sarah and me.
🛶 On our way out I was amused and happy to see a group of Amish young women setting off in canoe in long dresses and bonnets. A gentleman pushed them off and away they went.
🛶 Late August camping is just perfect. No black flies but the water is still warm.
🛶 The aeropress is worth its weight for excellent coffee while camping.
🛶 Canoe Lake might be too busy for my taste and not as rugged as I might like but I loved seeing so many kids out there with camps and with their families.
🛶 The loons! I even read up on loon gatherings after this trip. Turns out it’s complicated. But I loved all the flying and swimming and the loon calls.
🛶 There’s so much everyday exercise. Yes paddling and portaging but also setting up tents and hanging the food. I discovered you get a lot of steps in the day when your toilet/thunderbox is 200 m back in the woods. There is also just a lot of getting down and back up from the ground.
🛶 On our way out we saw my daughter and occasional blogger Mallory on her way into Joe Lake with her Trails campers on a week long trip.
🛶 Alex taught us some great paddling songs from his days as a camp counselor leading canoe trips.
🛶 The waterproof map costs more but is worth it.
Map propped against my back for better navigating.
🛶 One of the good things about starting a trip on Canoe Lake is that your exit point has ice cream and hot showers. But that means there’s also a gift shop and I bought some fridge magnets, a Christmas tree ornament, and a new hat (featured in the photos below).
Fridge magnets
What we thought after it was all over: When can we go again? Big trips that require lots of planning are wonderful but it’s also fun just to pack a few bags, load the canoe and head into the lakes and the woods with a friend or two. Thanks Alex! You’re a great tripping companion.
I seem to be at the age when friends start making pronouncements related to their age. Like, now I’m sixty I’m not doing that any more! Fill in the blank for “that.”
Some of the things being cut out are beauty regime related and they come with a feeling of PHEW. Like no more shaving one’s legs, or no more lipstick, or no wearing underwire bras. (We all gave up the last one during the pandemic, right?)
Sixty
And okay, in some cases, they sound like rich people things to say. What are some examples? Like, never flying economy on a flight over 3 hours or some such thing. Which is fine, if you’ve got the money and that’s how you want to spend it, you do you. But don’t make it sound like a moral commitment. You’re just wealthy and treating yourself well and that’s fine. It’s not a major life insight to declare that it’s more comfortable having more leg room on a flight.
But some of the proclamations and pronouncements are fitness activity related and they make me just a little uneasy. On the upside, it’s good to recognize the ways our bodies change with age and adjust our expectations accordingly. On the downside, I wonder if we do that too soon and limit our lives unnecessarily.
The first set that I’ve encountered among friends concern camping. In the last year I’ve heard friends say that they’ve decided they’re too old to sleep in a tent so no more tent camping again. But that rules out any back country camping. Others say now they’ve reached sixty, there’ll be no more portages. That seriously limits your canoe routes.
Others say they’ll ride bikes and run or swim but definitely no more races.
Now I get it if you always hated sleeping in a tent, portaging your canoe, or racing your bike. You shouldn’t do things you don’t like at any age. But if you still like it, why stop? Or maybe you’ve changed your mind, and don’t like it any more, but don’t make it about age. You don’t need an excuse to stop doing a thing you no longer like.
From radicallysunny
My gut feeling is that very little of it is really about age. Other friends say we’re not doing some things because we’re old now. But in many cases they’re things they’ve never done and didn’t want to do in the first place.
It’s kind of like knee replacement surgery. Some friends who have had knees replaced attribute not doing certain activities to knee replacement. But they didn’t do these activities before knee replacement. Further, I suspect they never really wanted to do these things.
I worry we shouldn’t stop doing things we love because we think they’re not possible as we age. The truth is we just don’t know what we’ll be capable of.
The piece begins by noting that our understanding of aging might be radically mistaken because so few older adults get any exercise at all.
“Exercise among middle-aged and older adults in the Western world is rare. By most estimates, only about 10 percent of people past the age of 65 work out regularly. So, our expectations about what is normal during aging are based on how growing older affects sedentary people.”
Of course if you don’t like doing a thing– whether it’s wearing lipstick, sleeping in a tent, racing your bike, or whatever– don’t do it. That’s true at 20, 30, 40 etc. But don’t stop doing it just because you don’t like it or don’t like it anymore, and blame it on age.
I’m hoping to expand my range of activities with age. I want to try new things, not shrink my life down.
Sarah and I met an older woman a couple of years ago paddling and back country canoe camping solo. She said her husband used to come with her but with age it became too difficult for him. Now he drives her up there and drops her off. I love that she loves back country camping so much she does it solo now. That’s brave and it’s expanded her options.
I mean, who knows. Maybe she didn’t ever like camping with her husband but it didn’t sound that way.
So it does happen, things can become too difficult with age and injury. I no longer run. But I am hoping to dance, bike, and camp my way into my senior years. It looks as though it might be a struggle to find people to do it with. That’s okay. I like hanging out with younger people. But I am also hoping to lure some friends my own age out onto their bikes for long rides, into the woods and lakes for some camping trips, and out on the dance floor to shake a few moves.
How about you? How are your activities adjusting to aging? How are you feeling about it?
There are lots of things I could write about today. I’ve spent a fair bit of time pondering my choice of topics.
I was going to write about my annual thyroid cancer check up. It’s today. And if all goes well it’s my last annual check up. (Fingers crossed.) After today they’re every five years. My birthday last week was also mammogram day. It’s as if September weren’t a busy enough month for an academic. It’s also cancer screening season for me.
I thought about writing whether Tracy and I want to write a turning 60 book, to follow up our turning 50 project, Fit at Midlife: A Feminist Fitness Journey. We’re having dinner together tonight and no doubt the subject will come up
Let’s see. It’s also blog birthday season. As Tracy posted, happy 9th birthday blog! We’re nearly at 5000 posts too. That’s hard to believe. This post is 4990!
And the blog’s birthday and my birthday, not surprisingly given how the blog got started, are pretty close together. Another possible topic, what does 57 mean anyway?
Here’s a photo from my birthday bike ride!
Jeff, Dhurin, me, Kim, Ellen and Sarah on the birthday bike ride
At this time of year I often write about back to school and trying to stay physically active as work gets busier and busier. This year, unlike last, I’m back in my office. I’m not yet back at the gym.
I’m having big busy days filled with work and people. So many people! I gave a lecture to O-Week students (photo on the right) and hung out with incoming College of Arts students at our Food Truck lunch meet and greet (photo on the left.)
I also biked around meeting parents and students on move-in day. (Round photo at the bottom.)
Sam’s pink Bromption outside Zavitz Hall at the University of Guelph
I’m back in the office now, wearing (mostly) real clothes. I looked at my clothes the other day and wondered why there were so many pairs of yoga pants. Who needs five pairs of yoga pants? Oh right, work from home and the pandemic. I could write about wearing clothes again. I’m working my way back to real shoes but I am not there yet.
In recent years I’ve been suffering a bit from seasonal sadness and trying to tell myself new stories about fall and winter, leaning into the time of cold and dark. I’ve been trying to extend outdoor activities into the fall. We’re going canoe camping again one more time this fall. And we are also looking at more fall gravel riding plans. So there’s that.
I’m a bit nervous that the no travel thing is continuing and it looks like this will be another year in which I don’t get to go somewhere warm with my bike for the winter. I miss the southern US! I miss Florida and Arizona for winter cycling.
In the end, I just want to let you know how much we’ve been enjoying our time in Prince Edward County and likely will continue that into the autumn too.
How’s your September starting out as we move into the fall?
Sam paddling in a canoe wearing a salmon coloured hat and a grey shirt, lilypads to the right
I’ve been worried about the sun and skin cancer for awhile now and I’ve written on the blog a fair bit about it. See here and here and here, for example. But I’ve also struggled with the push to have women dress more modestly, especially the idea that older women, and larger women, should just cover up our bodies and hide.
I’m a fan of bikinis and bike shorts and here on the blog I’ve worried about swim dresses and running skirts. But this year I hit a turning point. Another friend had a skin cancer scare. It’s also been a hotter than usual summer with blazing sun a lot of the time. There’s only so much sunscreen an active, outdoorsy person can wear.
I’ve decided I don’t care why people think I’m wearing them. I’m not ashamed of my body. I’m not trying to hide it from view. I just would like not die any earlier than I have to. Even aside from death, skin cancer isn’t much fun.
I broke down and bought two super, lightweight (very cool) outdoor active shirts and long pants for paddling. I’m wearing them in the pictures above on our recent family canoe trip. They also helped with the mosquito issue. Bonus!
I also bought a swim skirt and long sleeved rash guard shirt (spf 50) for hanging about in and around the outdoor swimming pool. They’re actually great for swimming in and for hanging around the pool having super soaker battles with a 7 year old.
I’m calling both purchases a success.
I’m also getting a mammogram on my birthday so I’m doing my bit for cancer prevention this month.
My word of the year is flow. It’s a good thing. My July vacation was very planned, down to the last detail, in the way that long canoe trips need to be. Thanks Sarah, trip planner extraordinaire. It was going to be our longest canoe trip yet, 8 days in the woods, moving and traveling every day, but the world had other plans.
In the end our 8 day canoe trip turned into three mini vacations not one long canoe trip, but it all felt suitably vacation-like and restful once we got creative and went with the flow.
Part 1: Algonquin
Our trip began with a massive thunder and lightning storm so bad that we spent the first night sleeping on our inflatable mattress pad in the back of Sarah’s Subaru. We had a site on the first lake so it would be easy to get to but I hated the idea of starting with everything soaking wet.
So we were heading out on day 1–putting in at Magnetewan and paddling and portaging our way through Hambone, Ralph Bice, and staying the night on Little Trout. But en route we broke one of the canoe’s thwarts that provide stability to the boat. Given the rain and how wet everything was, our duct tape fix wasn’t going to hold. We talked about options but there was no good one other than coming out of the park and repairing the canoe. We couldn’t rely on meeting up with other paddlers with duct tape. Leaving the park was sad but it really felt there weren’t good options. Leaving was the adult, responsible thing to do.
It actually was strangely liberating to know we could sleep in the Subaru in a pinch. But in the course of doing that we punctured the mattress pad and so we ended up heading out with only a single sleeping pad purchased at the last minute from Algonquin Base Camp outfitters in Kearney. It was all they had.
We tried to rebook the trip so we could fix the canoe and the pad and go back in but there weren’t any available reservations. The good news was that we were heading back in with a tail wind. Sarah said it was a sign we were going the right way. We made it down the length of Ralph Bice Lake in a record 45 minutes. That’s a trip that can take hours going into the wind.
We had a lovely couple of days of paddling. And we learned that we can pack and carry enough food for an eight day trip. Next year, friends, next year.
Magnetawan
The canoe and all of our gear
Waiting out a thunderstorm
We hit under the canoe to stay dry-ish
Our campsite
The canoe at rest
Paddling out we came across large hopping tadpoles, or bull frogs that still had tails
Portaging
Smiling, despite it all
Part 2: Massassauga Provincial Park
So once we knew we couldn’t get back into Algonquin, we headed home to Guelph to execute canoe repairs. But we were also still fully packed for canoe camping and viewed more canoe camping as the best possible Plan B. We bought a replacement inflatable lightweight mattress pad. This time we went high end and got the one that matches our Big Agnes Fly Creek tent.
Enter The Massassauga Provincial Park which had a couple of free nights available, on two different locations. There’s very little portaging at Massassauga. Our trip had none. It did have a very active beaver, excellent yoga rocks, terrific swimming, and a great spot for the hammock.
Pink sky at morning means pancakes for paddlers. That’s the saying, right?
Sunset
Swimming
Rocks
Yoga rocks
View from the hammock
Sam in hammock
Big Agnes and matching sleeping pad
Our Massassauga Provincial Park home
Part 3 Biking to Port Dover
We arrived home on Saturday with some holidays still to spare. I’ve always wanted to bike from Brantford to Port Dover on the trail and so we did, staying over at the Erie Beach Hotel in the middle of the 100 km round trip. Great trails, some paved sections, some chip and some packed gravel. All easily ridable on the gravel bikes. Sarah got to try out her new large under-the-seat bag and I put panniers on my bike. We left the Bob trailer behind this time. Next time I do it though, I hope there isn’t a heat wave.
Sarah and I have a big canoe trip planned for the end of July, our longest back country canoe camping trip yet. You know that if you read last Monday’s blog post.
Blog readers also know settler Canadians are grappling with the discovery of unmarked graves and unearthing the bodies of Indigenous children who were killed at residential schools across the country. You can read Cate’s post on cancelling Canada Day for more. We didn’t celebrate Canada Day in my house and we’ve been thinking a lot about what’s ethically required of us as settlers on this land.
Since I’ve also been thinking about our canoe trip–that very Canadian activity–I’ve been thinking about the connection between recreational canoeing and camping, and land ownership and decolonization.
I guess I started to think about recreational wilderness, protected lands, parks and what that means when I attended a talk at the University of Waterloo the year before the pandemic–checks calendar–that’s 2019. The speaker was Kyle Whyte and his talk was called “Not Done Critiquing Wilderness Areas, National Parks & Public Lands.” He’s a professor at the University of Michigan and more recently also a member of the Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the White House. Whyte is Potawatomi and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
After listening to Whyte’s talk I began to wonder about the ways I enjoy the land and the water while back country canoe camping. Aside from the very obvious and glaring issues of whose land the parks are on, that talk made me think about the way settler paddlers treat parks as pristine nature museums. We don’t see ourselves as part of nature. Instead we’re visiting it with the ideal of leaving it exactly as we found it. There’s no cutting trees, no fishing, no hunting. Instead we carry in dehydrated meal packages and carry out our garbage.
The take away lessons from Kyle White’s talk were more about policy and models of shared park management, less about individual behavior.
So I was happy to see some personal, rather than policy, advice on how to responsibly enjoy back country canoe camping as a settler Canadian.
Here’s the advice shared on Facebook by the Canadian Canoe Museum.
Learn the Indigenous language of the territory in which you’re paddling. What is the language? Learn some basic phrases. What are the names of the rivers and lakes you’re paddling on in those languages?
Know the treaty territory you’re paddling through. Print the text of the treaty, read it on your trip, and share it with other paddlers.
Build relationships.
Take action.
Learn the history and the stories
“The truth about stories is, that’s all we are.” ― Thomas King
“You have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.” ― Thomas King,
I shared this to my Facebook page the other day, mostly because I noticed that my upcoming canoe camping trip is the exact length of the ideal vacation!
I was amused at the heated debate that ensued among friends. You never know what’s going to bring out competing views and strong opinions!
There were the stereotypical American friends who claimed never to have taken a vacation that long. There were the Europeans who spoke up in favour of their two months off.
To be clear, I do take a month’s vacation each year. Eight days isn’t my only vacation. But I like to take time off throughout the year rather than in one big chunk.
For me, the ideal length of any one chunk of vacation really varies. If I am flying somewhere, especially somewhere with a time difference, I like to allow some time as part of the trip to recover when I get there and when I get home so it’s usually two weeks all told but not all of that is the vacation itself. I schedule time to decompress, do laundry, and get caught up on sleep when I get back. Getting sensible in my middle age!
My biking trips south are usually a week off work but bookended by weekends for travel.
My best bang for buck vacation time wise are my canoe camping trips. Even my four day back country canoe camping trips feel like real vacation. There are no phones, no email , lots of natural beauty, and lots of movement. I sleep very well! I come back rested and sometimes feel like I’ve been off for weeks.
This is my longest back country canoe camping trip yet. Sarah is carefully planning all the things so that we have food but not too much food and we’re being very weight conscious because of portages. A couple of years ago we invested in ultralight weight camping gear so we could keep doing this even with my knees in the state they’re in.
A friend posted asking about 2021 plans and then said, “Joking. It’s 2021. Do we even get to make plans?”
And I agree plans feel a lot more tentative this year. In the third week of January last year and the year before that, I was riding my bike in the Clermont area of Florida. This January there’ll be no travel.
It’s been a long blurry year of cancelled travel plans starting with, for me, the cancelled Pacific APA in San Francisco and attached vacation. Followed by a big trip to Melbourne cancelled. All of my summer bike holidays and charity rides were likewise cancelled. I did four charity rides, all either solo, with Sarah, or on Zwift. Two weddings, cancelled. You get the idea.
And in light of all the illness, unemployment, loneliness, overwhelmed hospitals, and death it feels a bit off to complain about not being able to make 2021 cycling plans.
I’m grateful for Zwift, don’t get me wrong. But still, I’m making some plans. They’re just more local and much more tentative. What makes them plans and not mere hopes? They involve things like registration forms and reservations, time booked off work.
We know there are vaccines, and that’s good, even if the timeline for things like races, group bike rides, and travel are still uncertain.
In January in addition to TFC team time trials and our Monday and Friday races I’ve agreed to take part in series hosted, on Zwift, by Team Vegan. You don’t need to be a vegan to take part. They’re hosting the series in the same way that TFC hosts a series. They’re the organizers.
Team Vegan racing
I’m also committed to Yoga With Adriene’s 30 day yoga journey Breath.
In February, Sarah and I have booked yurts in a provincial park to go cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and fat biking. Some adult kids might come along and winter camp. We’ll see. I’ve committed to taking vacation even if I can’t travel very far away.
In later spring, we’ll be back out Snipe racing on Guelph Lake. Whee!
Come summer we’ve also committed to spending more time at Sarah’s farm in Prince Edward County. What’s perfect is that there are two houses on the property, loads of lovely biking nearby, and a swimming pool. Even if close up visits with friends are still restricted we can host people in the other house and socialize outside. BBQ time!
We’ll also book some Algonquin canoe camping trips. Again, they’ll likely go ahead even if travel in general isn’t recommended. We do back country camping and there aren’t too many other people around.
Jeff is also heading east on his new boat Escapade to Nova Scotia and there’s some talk of visiting there once he’s settled with the boat. That crosses the line from “plan” to “hope” for me since it relies on not having to self isolate after traveling east, assuming we’re even allowed into Atlantic Canada’s bubble. You can follow his boating adventures here.
Oh and for added uncertainty that’s not pandemic related, all of this is dependent on the date for my knee surgery. I’ll need recovery time after. I was hoping for December 2020 but that didn’t happen. With the hospital it was to take place in cutting back on non-essential surgeries due to covid, it might be awhile.
I’m trying to be flexible and not too nervous.
Wish me luck!
How about you? Are you making any fitness related plans for 2021? Plans in general still on hold?
Canoe filled with stuff in the foreground. Sam and Mallory swimming in the background.
My last time out in my canoe, Sarah and I had a big adventure. YMMV, of course, but it was plenty adventurous for me. Each day we packed up camp and paddled to a new location. We paddled down rivers, over beaver dams, and did some long (muddy, hilly) portages. It was extra challenging because Sarah carried most of the stuff and the canoe and I did it with my knee that’s now just waiting to be replaced. I carried the food for six days and five nights. We slept in a teeny tiny ultralight tent. It was fun but it wasn’t exactly restful.
Next year, now we know we can carry all that food, I’m lobbying for a rest day in the middle!
Luckily our next canoe trip, just two weeks later, was of the more low key variety.
Sarah, Sam, and Mallory
This past weekend Sarah, my daughter Mallory, and I paddled to just one place after a couple of short, reasonable portages. We made camp on Ralph Bice Lake where we paddled some more just because, played cards, read books, ate yummy food including the traditional s’mores for dessert, and because Mallory was along, swam lots. We took the big tent and actual camping dishes. No more using the pot lid as a plate and sharing a titanium spork! We even packed some books and our Kindles.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
It was the kind of trip that had room for basking on rocks and reading whole novels, I really enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Thanks Meg for recommending!
Here’s some more photos of our canoe and our tents.
Canoe in snug harbour
Our luxurious tent
Mallory’s hammock tent
Here’s the card playing. Mallory won, of course. She almost always does but we enjoy playing anyway.
Mallory playing cards on a rock
Wizard cards on a rock
And there was a lot of swimming!
Mother and daughter swimming
Happy swimming!
We’re talking lots these days about various ways of getting ready for the long hard winter we expect is ahead.
Cate wrote recently, “August is made for this kind of elastic time, this kind of intuitive listening, this moving for play and exploration, not repetition and discipline. Looking into the fall and winter we’re expecting, I ponder how to keep this elasticity alive. How to keep nurturing this kind of active emptiness. What about you? What are you finding restorative right now? How are you planning for fall?”
Time outdoors, with loved ones, swimming and reading and playing, is part of my answer. For me this year is a bad combo of empty nest and Covid-19. I had imagined more family dinners and visits but it isn’t always possible.
This weekend felt important. Martha wrote about finding her happy place. Salt Spring Island seems like it’s definitely Cate’s happy place. This is mine. I’m back at my desk today with a bit of sun on my face, some bug bites on my calves, new muscles from paddling, and feeling just a little bit better about what’s ahead this year.
