Tag: adventure

challenge · eating · fitness · habits · Happy New Year! · motivation

Resolution, challenge, or adventure?

Sam B3 Comments

Happy New Year!

Did you make any resolutions, set yourself some new challenges, or plan some adventures?

What’s in a word? I’ve been thinking lots about adventures lately and how much the word, adventure, resonates with me. It’s my Word of the Year even.

But there’s also the contrast between the language of resolution, challenge, and adventure.

The pasta quest post above certainly hit a nerve with our fit feminist community on Facebook. I shared it there, and nearly 500 people liked it. Many reshared it. One of those people was my friend Todd Tyrtle.

On his own Facebook page Todd wrote, “Last week I listened to Lee Craigie and Jenny Graham talking on a podcast and they said something I really liked. They talked about the how calling something an “adventure” can have a totally different feel to calling it a “challenge”. A challenge implies investment in an outcome. A pushup challenge likely means a total number, or the ability to do so many at a time. People do weightloss challenges, writing challenges. And the thing about doing a challenge means there’s a chance of failure. You don’t do enough pushups, ride far enough, or finish a novel in November. An adventure is something different entirely. An adventure can be a long walk, a new recipe, a bicycle tour or learning a new language. You may or may not have the outcome you expect. Instead you’re expecting interesting things to happen.

My challenge to you in 2024…

Wait…

The *adventure* I suggest for you as we approach the new year is to consider taking on more adventures and fewer challenges and resolution. Like Pasta Quest!”

Here is the link to the podcast: https://www.spindrift-podcast.co.uk/episodes/adventure-syndicate-sourcetosea

At about 15:55 is where they start talking about adventures, and about 17:15 in is where they talk about the difference between an adventure and a challenge.

I find I’m often thinking in more adventure terms these days.

I like the idea of trying one new fitness thing a month for 2024. That resonates because during my knee surgery recovery I was so focused on physiotherapy and personal training, everything else dropped away. I feel ready to broaden my fitness horizons again.

Or taking Cheddar to a new park every week for a dog hike. The larger goal there is getting to know the surrounding area better.

A friend, maybe it was the blog’s Diane?, mentioned reading a book each month from a different country.

I also like food adventures. Maybe not pasta quest but something that would get me trying new fruits and vegetables. Perhaps trying a new fruit or veggie every time I get groceries. Or trying a recipe from a different country every week.

I’ve got a friend who has the goal of camping in all of Ontario’s provincial parks. That might be fun, too.

And then there are the people making art with Strava maps of their bike rides. I like this one.

Strava map of Santa

How about you? I’m curious to know if thinking in terms of challenges, resolutions, or adventures makes a difference in your mindset. I’m also curious if there are any adventures in your future. Let us know in the comments below.

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camping · cycling · fitness · Guest Post · traveling

Riding Solo, Part 2: Baggage (Guest Post)

Sam B1 Comment

by Julia Creet

I wrote in my first post that every material aspect of touring by bike seems to have a metaphorical one as well. How you pack your bags might be the most obvious.

Baggage. It’s a loaded word that translates directly to a loaded bike.

The multiple decisions of what to take and leave tell you so much about your need for comfort, the things you think you can’t live without, the fear that you might need something and not have it, or suffer for not having it, or feel foolish for not having it, or feel equally foolish for having pushed it and hauled it and never used it.

The novice bike adventurer, that is me, has to rely on other peoples’ lists, what experience has taught them is necessary—or extraneous. The first decision, and one with the biggest consequences for your route and weight is whether or not to camp.

Cruising from bed to bed is delightful—and much lighter—but a tent and sleeping bag and a little mattress and a tiny stove and pot and an areopress gives you ultimate freedom and coffee in bed in the most delicious places. It’s a paradoxical combination of baggage and freedom. Camping will easily add ten lbs to the bike but will allow you to pull off the road wherever you can. Everything else is a question of comfort and fear.

Like most riders, I performed the ritual of unloading, sending home a package of heavy and accumulated light things—each light thing feels like nothing on its own—after riding for just a few days. Some of my protection and comfort and cleanliness went with those things, but hauling them around just wasn’t worth the weight. You see the obvious psychic metaphor here.

And, a week later, as I contemplate the mountains of Cape Breton, I’ve deemed another bag of stuff not worth the drag. The bike is still very heavy. I haven’t weighed it; I don’t want to know. I’ve climbed a few steep hills now and know that I can crawl up just about anything, but no question, I feel every ounce.

Have I missed anything I’ve let go? Can’t even remember what I packed off, except that most of it I bought last minute and because I was checking off other peoples’ lists. What’s the heaviest thing you cannot do without? Water. Unlike everything else, you need more of it than you think you do.

I think about weight and baggage with almost every pedal stroke. If even the minimum I have now feels too much, what about all the things I have left behind? The one object I keep excising and adding back in—and here my attachments as a recovering English Prof are most obvious—is a book.

Julia Creet is a recovering academic who just wants to ride her bike.

camping · cycling

Riding Solo, Part 1 (Guest Post)

Sam B5 Comments

by Julia Creet

I blame Cate Creede. She made it look so good, so easy. Just hop on your bike and go… wherever your legs will take you. No waiting for others, or trying to catch up. No discussions about decisions, where to go, when to stop, what to eat. Complete unstructured freedom.

That was the appeal. It seemed like a strange appeal after two years of more isolation than I could barely tolerate. Why chose then a trip on which I would mostly cycle alone?

I had an inkling that it would serve so many deep purposes for me. A chance for the wind to unravel the wired knots of my brain, cinched by two years of technology and teaching. Time to think through the decision to retire after twenty-five years of a full-on academic career.

And I needed new conversations. Riding alone would open my bubble to anyone who crossed my path. That felt exciting and random and the very opposite of my shrinking social circle and the rigid structures that were my scaffolding for surviving these strange last two years.

So here I am wandering around Nova Scotia, my home in my panniers, learning to crawl hills and stealth camp. I have some thoughts I’ll share along the way. Every material aspect of riding seems to have a metaphorical one as well. So thanks Cate. You said this to me early on in one of our chats about riding solo. “And for me there is something I really love about ending up in some random place with terrible food and knowing that I got there on my own.” You were right.

Julia Creet is a recovering academic who just wants to ride her bike.

fitness

Looking forward to a summer of micro-adventures

Sam B3 Comments

I love my work. And I work a lot. But I also love outdoor adventures of various sorts. As summer approaches, I’ve been thinking about how much I manage to fit in on weekends and weeknights, and how to fit in more.

This week I came across the idea of micro-adventures. The term comes from Alistair Humphreys who defines it this way: “A microadventure is an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing and rewarding.” It should be achievable by ordinary people leading regular lives.

Humphreys writes, “How can you fit adventure into the realities of a nine-to-five career? Simple—fit it into the five-to-nine. That’s the 16 hours of theoretical daily freedom we all tend to undervalue and fritter. When somebody asks me, “What is a microadventure?” I say, “Leave work at 5 P.M. Head out of town. Sleep on a hill. Wake up at sunrise. Get back to your desk for 9 A.M.” Simple, but you will remember it a year from now.”

So the night my daughter Mallory hiked to the top of a mountain to be there when the sun rose, and then hitchhiked to her 9 am class, that was a micro-adventure. I only heard about the hitchhiking part after but it was the south island of New Zealand where hitchhiking seems relatively safe and common. She was with other University of Otago students and they emerged sleepy but fine.

I’m too old for working the next day after that and never was much of a stay up late kind of person, but I do get lots of vacation-like adventures in on my weekends.

In my post about the best length for vacation I wrote, “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.”

Three canoes

But there are all only so many weekends during the summer.

Maybe I could do more in the evenings?

Weeknight bike rides to new locations feel pretty good. There’s also summer evening dinghy races.

We’ve been exploring lots of new places in Ontario during the pandemic and I’ve been making a list of places to go swimming.

I loved our Alpaca yoga experience.

Alpaca Yoga

What do you recommend for local, inexpensive micro-adventures?

Oh, here’s Humphrey’s 8 tips for leading a more adventurous life.