And when you fly too high you get…Grounded :(

Oh, I was riding a high. Having a blast volunteering at Victoria Beer Week (so fun, highly recommend both volunteering and attending) and then when my husband and I were walking home from the afterparty on Saturday, I tripped over a small parking barrier as we cut across the park going to our house and seriously injured my leg and ankle. DAMN DAMN DAMN.

We had such a fun time with the volunteering- we did Beer and Pizza night as servers, something Ian and I were very bad at (I dropped a slice of pizza on the ground, and spilled beer by bumping into the wall, haha) but you know? It was still super fun! The vibe was good and man, we were so busy! I prefer that when we volunteer- keep me busy. I don’t want to hang around, you know?

All the volunteers were invited to the afterparty at 10:30 pm, and also we scored free tickets to the final event ‘Touchdown’ so we went there a little bit later, enjoyed some beers, seltzers and ciders (Saltspring was outstanding, so good!) and then stayed later for the afterparty. All good right? Right….Except we drank too much, unfortunately. In an effort to curb the weight gain I experienced over the months in Mexico, I have not really been drinking for a few weeks- a beer or two once a week is it. I felt so good, so into it that I didn’t realize how inebriated I had gotten.

We enjoyed free food and beers, and then left our car at the venue and walked the 4km home. A bit of a hike but safety first! All was good (basically, we were staggering around so time flew)…And then I didn’t even see the small wooden barrier that rings the park across from our house, hooked my foot under it, and fell on my arm. I twisted my right leg so badly I couldn’t move. It hurt incredibly, so horrible. I scraped my hand a little bit but my leg…So excruciating. Ian helped me get up and I couldn’t weight bear at all. It was so painful I threw up.

The next day I was in a world of hurt. My leg and ankle were non-weight bearing. I had to crawl up and down the stairs. Officially…fucked.

Day 2

Day 1

My ankle and foot are swollen still, and my fibula is giving me a LOT of grief. But, I am sort of weight bearing (carefully), so I am hopeful that I will recover…if not quickly, I hope to recover in time. In the meantime, I am bored out of my mind and cursing out, in the following order:

A) beer

B) myself

C) the park barrier

D) the world, in general

God, what a stupid mistake!

Wow, what happened to the summer?

After I left my last blog entry, it basically fell off a cliff!

Things were very busy, and lots of opportunity to blog but I just didn’t have the desire I suppose?

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We went on a really nice summer holiday to visit my family in the Interior of BC, where we enjoyed camping at Christina Lake, kayaking, hiking, running, horseback riding, and biking/running the Myra Canyon Trestles, a trip to the Kangaroo Farm and then…COVID when we were in Vancouver.

We also enjoyed a fantastic dinner and wine tasting at Mission Hill, courtesy of my parents. It was divine!

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Yep, the big Covid hit us, pretty hard. Not unexpected, as my sister was sick when she had dinner/visited with us in Kelowna but I was still fairly surprised and thought it was just terrible allergies when we were in Vancouver (running the sea wall, going out for drinks, out for dinner…greeeat…). Nope, COVID.

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That knocked us on our butts for a while, and when I was feeling better I was working from home, and then back to work, where work proceeded to knock me on my butt again too!

Man, sometimes you can’t win!?

I luv the valley, oh!

Finally I had a fun weekend!! After the hassle, stress, drama and fear of last weekend I had one that I truly deserved. It was an extremely challenging week- health issues, a snow storm with ice, plunging temperatures, family drama, and oh, we can’t forget work, now can we?

And then I drifted happily into a lovely weekend, I am happy to say! I had a ride on Friday night (it was FREEZING), and then a lesson on Saturday morning (went well! funny enough we were working on ‘wide hands’ because I was bracing my chicken-wing elbows against his neck, and my shoulders hurt the next day!), and then shopping and dinner at Fiamo for ‘Dine Around Victoria’ celebrations.

I bought a bunch of stuff from the GAP that is closing out downtown, and then my friend Jess and I enjoyed an excellent seafood-based menu at Fiamo. We chose the $30 menu, and had a warm ‘salad’ that was more of a soup based meal that had char-grilled

Seafood antipasti platter

squid, kale, feta and olives in broth, and a seafood antipasti consisting of grilled octopus, salmon, tuna tataki and vegetables. It was delicious! I had a glass of prosecco, and for dessert we had the chocolate ‘salami’ which was unusual but very tasty.

Dessert: Chocolate salami

The next day I got up and went for a quick jog, because it was time for Sea Cider’s annual Wassail event! They did not have it last year, but I’m glad they brought it back for this year. The ticket prices did go up- $3, from $2, but you don’t pay for entrance fees (which are a TOTAL MONEY GRAB and I HATE THEM). So, it’s a win!

Raise a glass!

We enjoyed a new cider- the Cherry!! I loved it! And the food was excellent. I had the chicken/cashew curry, the cornmeal-spiced apple cake/muffin thing with whipped cream topping, and the maple bread pudding with whip cream. Delicious! A great day with good company.

Cornmeal muffin things. Good!

I then rode Oats, and headed home (at like 4:30. Whoops long day!).

Sausage rolls- I didn’t try these but I heard they were good!

And best of all- good times with good friends, and the weather improved! It was like close to 10 deg yesterday! We’re back, baby!

Celebrating Apple Day

My favourite day of fall- Sea Cider’s Apple Day!

The whole gang mostly came! 

We gathered up the gang and went to enjoy ourselves on Sunday. And we had a great time! The ciders were great (I prefer the Witch’s Broom, Ruby Rose, and Bramble Bubbly!) and the food selections, while limited, were tasty. Standouts included the apple shortcake with caramel and whipped cream- I had TWO portions and they sold out!! As well as the pork pot pie *so good! And as well the cream puff stuffed with apple whipping cream and covered in white chocolate, and the mini chicken sausage in a bun with sauerkraut.

Isn’t it lovely? 

YUM! My favourite time of fall. I hope they do a winter one again too! I missed it last year.

A great time with my horse girls. 🙂

A Deeper Understanding: Thanksgiving!

I feel like a broken record when I say this, but wow my weekends are busy! Riding lesson on Friday night (and after feeling like total crap last week, I had to shoe-horn myself into my breeches and go anyways. Thank you buttons for your structural integrity!). I still felt pretty miserable…

But the lesson went well! We worked on introducing Oats to counter-canter signals, which was difficult but he was really trying, like a good boy. 🙂 Saturday more riding (we were in the field goofing off, it was soooo nice out) and then off to Victoria Beer Week’s Fresh to Death beer fest for the afternoon. It was great, and the weather was fantastic.

Fresh to Death- see our friend the Skeleton! 

After the beer, we zipped off to The Flying Pig for some happy hour food (and I dropped my wallet on the floor and lost it there…) before heading home for quick R&R before going out to my friend’s birthday party. We were downtown at her party and didn’t get home until 1am! I was wiped! But it was an awesome day/night.

Sunday we got up and I tore the house apart trying to find my freaking wallet…Luckily the fine folks at The Flying Pig had found it, and messaged me on Facebook to tell me they had it! YESS!! We picked it up, went to the stables where I rode Oaty, and then we were off to the farm for Thanksgiving #1. Though it was pretty miserable weather, we had a super nice time with great food!

Home in the late evening, and I was up early-ish for an equine counselling session on Oats at the barn. It went well too, and then home again for lunch and preparing for Thanksgiving #2, at my parents. That went fine too, though felt quite long. The food was excellent!

And now, I am back at work. Can I get a weekend from my weekends?!!

How did I get through the day? Weekend recap!

Wow, things were busy this weekend, and yet it felt like a pretty quiet weekend because we didn’t have any races, or horse shows, or concerts or music festivals! What we did have was…

I was moving jumps around on Saturday and Oats had to help inspect.

Dressage lesson on Friday night: Very nice lesson, quite positive and we worked over walk and trot poles, focusing on the transition canter- trot through the poles, to keep the horses from dragging us downward in the transition. I quite enjoyed that and felt like it kept Oats focused too.

Saturday: Ian had a climbing competition, so I rode in the morning, went for a run in the afternoon and we went together to watch the pros compete in the Highball bouldering competition. It was very impressive! They also had $2 beer/cider, which I appreciated very much 😉

Sunday: Had the best of intentions to get up and run before my Sea Cider outing and that…Didn’t happen. I was dragging ass all week and generally feeling run down, so I slept in and when I woke up I thought it was about 8 a.m.- NOPE! It was 9:50 a.m.! Yikes and I was meeting the girls at the barn for Sea Cider at 11 a.m. Time to hustle!

Gidget came to work today after my dentist appointment. She’s the boss!

We had a lovely time at Sea Cider- great food, awesome company and some delicious cider samples. What’s not to like?!

Afterwards I decided that even though I was stuffed full of good food and cider, I would not let it take over my whole Sunday. Oats and I went for a ride indoors and worked on some canter- leg yields, with moderate success. I decided to also try moving from leg yield to shoulder-fore in case he wanted to get ‘clever’ and start anticipating the movements…Good ride!

Home time and a run later, gagg was feeling full!

Monday: Chiropractic appointment after work and a ride on ol’ Oaty.

This time I wanted to ride outside but it was just too wet and sloppy. Sighhh, back to the indoors. We worked on the canter transitions- big canter- little canter- in the style that our new dressage trainer showed us (by using trot transitions to train the horse to anticipate a ‘lessening’ in the canter rather than you having to make the transition happen, you let them ‘learn it’ instead. It works by cantering, 1 step trot, back to canter, 1 step trot, back to canter…And then canter, think about trot, your body makes some of the same motions, but you don’t go to trot. Just… a smaller canter, and then back to bigger canter. Thinking TROT but not cuing for it really helps!

It was great but man Oats was steaming after! Clip time already? It has been very warm this fall.

The Interior for a holiday

Featuring…lots of haze and smoky skies, courtesy of the wildfire situation happening all over B.C. at the moment. In Victoria right now, it’s crazy smoky and the air quality is really poor. I am happy to say it wasn’t that bad in Kelowna- some high haze but still fairly warm and sunny. It got a lot worse when we left actually- they had to shut down the airports! Yikes…

Dirty Laundry winery.

Anyways we went to the interior for a bit of sun and summer warmth (that was only partially thwarted by the wilfires). We visited wineries, went on a run to the 12 trestles trail at the Kettle Valley Railway,. ate at restaurants, bought wine by the case (me), went to breweries and cideries, did some short hikes with Gidget and swimming! (pool, Similkimeen River and Okanagan Lake).

Hot dog! At Dirty Laundry winery.

All in all, it felt really good to get away.

Swimming in the Similkimeen. COLD! 

Really smoky in Keremeos. View from a winery.

Finished the run at the Kettle Valley Railway. Hot but good! 

Vice & Virtue Brewery art- Kelowna.

Yes we did a lot of this!!

Apple Day at Sea Cider

Despite the absolute horror that was the end of the week with Oat’s near-death experience, I managed to have a pretty nice weekend.

Saturday, Oats and I had a very low-key dressage lesson. This was also when I noticed his cough was pretty terrible, so I tried to keep it very light and not hard for him. I was very pleased with his work though, he likes having a job (mostly).

We then zipped up island to my in-laws farm, to pick pears and plums! It was great, and there were SOOO many. 100’s of lbs of plums and pears! Overwhelming! They also showed me the lovely plaque they made for Buster Bunny, to mark his final resting place at their farm. It made me feel sad, but also very appreciative of them as a part of my family.

Sunday was another busy day- I had every intention of running before meeting the girls at the barn for the Apple Day event at Sea Cider, except I ….didn’t get up and slept in. Ha. We had a fabulous time and really enjoyed ourselves. The cider was great, we even got to try fresh-pressed apple juice!! Food was phenomenal- standouts were the squash risotto, pork belly with potato/cauliflower gratin, apple toffee bread pudding, and octopus on bannock. YUM.

I then rode Oats out in the field, to see if a non-dusty environment would improve his cough. Spoiler: It didn’t. His cough was TERRIBLE. 😦 I started getting quite concerned, so I called the vet on Monday and had him check out Oats. Good news was that all his vitals were fine, but to give him time off (the week) to recover and monitor him.

By the time I got home after Sea Cider and riding, it was after 4pm! Time to get ready for our first time out to Sult Pierogy Bar, where they were holding a special tasting event with Parkside Beer. ‘Dawn till Dusk’ event and it was SO GOOD. Not cheap- $45, but so much food, two full cans of beer?! Lots of samples pairing with some really outstanding dishes- trout with lemon buerre blanc, smoked tomato bisque with grilled cheese pierogy ‘sandwich’, cherry smoked duck breast on top of the hottest pierogy I have ever eaten…Oh man.

I am definitely going again. Thumbs up!!! 🙂

And now for this week, I am going out to the barn to monitor Oats,  handwalk/graze him (he loves it) and take his temperature. All lessons cancelled, horse show on Saturday cancelled. OH well!

Summer of high hopes

Weekend update, and as typical of my weekends- I did a LOT~ And really enjoyed myself for the most part.

Great day out with the girls!

Friday night was a quiet one in, I had a residual bitter-hangover from the week and it was freezing. I felt antisocial and kind of isolated. It was fine though, because I had a lot to look forward to- Saturday my in-laws came for a visit and we went for lunch after I was out riding  Oats. Oats was great, we had a lovely little ride (it was freezing out), and my lunch was good- mac’n’ cheese at The Bent Mast. It was a very chilly walk out though!

Later in the afternoon we had a bunch of errands to run (Old Navy, groceries, hardware store), and I invited a girlfriend over for wine in the evening. We caught up for hours! I missed her so much, I was really happy to share time with her. I truly love visiting with my buddies, and I feel so much happier when I can. 🙂

Wine until 11am sounds like a great idea, until…The alarm goes off at 7:30 am and we were up and out for our race at 9am. It was FREEZING. I felt horrible – not hungover at all, but just tired and frozen, and stiff.

Good food, good cider and great company.

My race recap is coming tomorrow, but let’s just say it was an extremely disappointing race.

But I did get the chance to see some more buddies at the race and they enjoyed their races, so whoop! Way to go! Afterwards I zipped home, showered at light speed, and put on my nicer clothes because we were off to Sea Cider for their annual Wassail party! I love it out there, it’s a great opportunity to try some ciders, sample some great snacks and just chill out and talk. I had a lovely time with my friends and time just flew by. The sample tix are $2/ea, and you can have 1 cider sample with 1 ticket, and many of the food varieties are 1/ea, some of the bigger options are 2/ea but I didn’t end up having those. So I had a great chance to try veggie curry, chicken curry, puff pastry with goat cheese X2, date-bread sticky pudding,  YUM!

We got back to the barn, and I changed clothes again and rode Oats. I realized I was very tired so our ride was quite short, but decent enough. Got home around 4-ish and was bone tired and chilled thoroughly. It was NOT warm out yesterday or the whole weekend.

That is about to change though- warming starting today! I already feel more hopeful. That being said, I hope this week doesn’t bash my good spirits into the ground…It might.

Sea Cider Wassail!

This Sunday, my friend and I decided to do something different- check out the local Wassail celebration at the local cidery, Sea Cider.

All photos courtesy of Sarah C.

I’ve been there once before, about 4 years ago I think? So it was long overdue for a visit. And it was lovely! Cider samples and food samples were $2/per, and we bought a whole bunch and tried everything. We also went on a brief cider tour, where the owners described the apples and the process for making cider.

She even got a nice one of me!

The weather held out, and we had a really nice time. And then I went home and had a nap, haha.

I liked this one. Actually, I liked all of them!

A sing-along. Did you know the ‘Feast of Stephen’ is Boxing Day?

Highly recommend if you’re looking to spend a lazy Sunday trying some tasty new food and their newest ciders as well.

Fermentation tanks.

We both got the mussels. Spicy and splashy but GOOD!