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Showing posts from January, 2022

Learning to Live With(out) Plastic - 51°05' 03" N 115° 22' 07" W

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After seeing the amount of plastic floating the seas during our sailing adventures through Asia, we made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of plastic in our day-to-day lives.  Moving into our new home in Canmore in June 2018 was when we started to get serious.  We endeavour to make purchases based on packaging: avoid clam shells for produce and bakery items, when we can; eat English cucumbers that are not plastic wrapped like their European cousins and search out different products to replace single-use plastic.  So how are we doing?  Rather well in some areas and very poorly in others.   These are some of the things we do: Reusable grocery bags - very normalised to take your own bag these days but sadly, not everyone does.  Taking our produce loose or in reusable bags.   Using a travel mug - if we have one then we can reward ourselves with a coffee/hot chocolate.  If we don't, then it is just bad planning and we have to forgo that caffeine hit. Wax wraps, snack bags and T

Canmore in Omicron Lockdown - 51° 05' 03" N 115° 22' 07" W

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Are you a bit surprised that you haven't read about us out adventuring for the past few months? Life, for us, isn’t always climbing mountains, repelling down vertical cliffs or watching 3 metre waves break over the bow of a sailboat. Sometimes we are doing our best to avoid catching/transmitting COVID or experiencing the little pleasures of our gilded cage in Canmore. As ordinary as it might seem to us, I thought I’d share (and thus, make a record) of what we are doing these days. Kayaking on the Bow River – Friends of ours in town had bought kayaks and had yet to use them. At the start of the summer, they had offered the kayaks to us to use whenever we wanted. So, when we asked Gord and Jenny to take us on an easy, flat paddle, a stretch of the Bow River just south and east of Calgary was suggested on a late day in September. The day started cloudy, but brightened up as morning meandered down the river into afternoon. Floating with the current is the best way to go … well