Running in British Columbia!

  Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
-Mark Twain

Where's Digger? At Englishman River Falls.

   Portage and I have been too busy taking care of business and setting up house to notice that it rains here. A lot. But only in the winter, which apparently, on Vancouver Island, is just about over. We have daffodils coming up in our front garden already, and people start wearing shorts in February. I kid you not.
   Last summer, on the other hand, they went 3 months without rain. B-E-A-utiful.
We have been running almost every day. Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday.....
But seriously, we made it out a few times before my high risk lifestyle finally caught up to me and I came down with a raging attack of gout, the likes of which I have never experienced. All I have have to do is avoid alcohol, seafood and red meat for a week or two. Thou art a cruel God.
  Here are a few pitchers of the 'hood we took on some runs before my flare-up. We have had some cool adventures, most of them involving drinking beer and eating copious amounts of seafood and red meat.We had a great visit with the kids, who were home for the Christmas break.Pitchers to follow.

Some technical stuff. A steep downhill of rocks covered in leaves. Around here, if you aren't going up, you're going down. Nothing is flat.

Things grow large out here. That's a big maple leaf.

We got a good deal on the house because there's a missile testing range next door(Just joshing, Captain). Portage made me stick out my gut as far as I could for this shot.  Hmmmm, looks like I grabbed "The Boys" shorts by mistake too.....

I think that I shall never see, a roadblock lovely as a tree.....

'Tage found her own tree...

I got us very lost on a 3 hour trail run, but look what we found....

And this.....

Ran all the way from the ocean to the top of Nanoose, then hugged the ground.

You know you live in a retirement community when.....

Can't make this stuff up....

Lucky it's not a stop sign, but it is a real sign.

Oh Deer!

The view from Dave's Lookout. It was called that before I got here. Anyhow, it is part of my regular 10k loop, from the ocean, up to Dave's, back down.

Deer are like squirrels out here.

Me and Cousin Rob check out some big trees.

One of the reasons we moved here was to get away from this stuff. Our first weekend, we had a snowstorm,and it stayed for 3 days!

   We did manage to get a few trail runs in, and I should be good to go again in a couple of days. I am currently self-medicating with some good stuff I had leftover from my rotator cuff injuries.  I don't like to brag but I'm pretty good at it.
  I hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to an exciting 2013.We don't have any races scheduled yet, I really have to get my bearings first and see what's what. Nice to be so close to all the action in Washington,Oregon (pronounced "Or-a-gen" around here) and California!
 I almost forgot, there's a Burger Challenge up for 2013, from the same guys who did the beer challenge last year. As soon as I'm cured, I'm all over it. Be sure to Czech it out.

Sunset at the Marina

So here's to 2013, Cheers! (he says, with a glass of cherry juice and Perrier). DOH.