moms and (mom)ars

kylie's mom cherri was here to visit for a week and we had an excellent time together. we started things off with the now traditional hiking and berry picking.

a full container of end of the season blackberries... in october! crazy.

niko enjoyed having cherri around as well as vice versa.

the weather was a bit overcast, but that's ok b/c it gave us an excuse to stay at home and play with our new toy... a wii!

what i love most about the wii is how it levels the field between gamers and nongamers. in just 2 rounds cherri was playing tennis like a pro. i routinely beat kylie at mariokart, but i have yet to beat her at boxing... and cherri beat us both at bowling!


here is a video of kylie taking out her own mother... get UP girl!!

kylie and her mom took a day trip to bellingham and another to vancouver. unfortunately they dont have any pictures b/c i wasnt along to take them. ;-)
on our final night together, cherri took us out to our favourite restaurant, shandar hut, where we enjoyed a multicourse indian meal fit for a maharaja. thanks cherri! the leftovers were great too.

i also wanted to give you a little update about the MOMAR. it has been 2 weeks and i am basically back up to speed but with a different setpoint. i was pretty impressed that i wasnt too sore on the day after the race, but i guess my body wasnt done rebuilding... when we got back to chilliwack i went for a bike ride up vedder mountain. the whole thing took about 2.5 hours which is pretty normal for me, but i was SORE the next day. and not just my quads either... my abs and my left foot were also hurting. i then tried to do some chinups but couldnt even muster the energy for one rep! 2 weeks out and i am back to my normal biking and chinup strength, but i still havent gone for a run yet.

the race director put up some nice pictures on his blog so i thought i would show you a few more shots of what the course looked like.
above and below is the terrain we scrambled through for the orienteering course.

here is me coming to the finish line in a dead heat with the 3rd member of a 4 man team as detailed in my previous post.

here is me looking thrilled to be finished.


i was planning on going on a rant here about the current banking crisis but i just dont have the energy to write down all my thoughts and properly reference them. perhaps i can summarize my feelings:


when you have a financial system that is only successful when it is rapidly growing, and publicly owned companies and banks that are compelled to post ever increasing quarterly profits to keep their share prices high, the system is obviously unsustainable.

when you attempt to sustain that rate of growth by encouraging your citizens to overconsume (through mass marketing, consumer culture and even via direct advice from your head of state) you risk creating a nation of debtors who own a lot of plastic shit.

and finally, when banks are willing to give people more and more money, through loans, credit cards and mortgages to fuel this spending spree, regardless of their ability to pay it back, you will certainly create a financial crisis at some point in time.

this whole "lack of liquidity" line is really getting to me... the major banks, particularly in the US, have been making record profits in the last couple years loaning out more $$ than they have, and to people that will have no ability to pay them back. of course its going to come back to bite them!

maybe capitalism isnt the perfect god given economic system that james dobson thinks it is.

when this whole thing started making the news, i remember reading on the front page of the globe and mail about the fall of the first few US banks, then turning to somewhere around page 8 and reading about china's first space walk. apparently they plan a space station in the next few years. we are watching history happen, and it is happening fast.


that turned out a bit longer than i would have liked it. i will end on a much more positive note... if you enjoy music, or bathroom humour, or have previously or may in the future have an encounter with the medical system, you should watch this video: