Time Flies By
Sitting here writing this post and we are already one day past Groundhog Day and to be honest this may sound strange, although my days have flown by it seems that January just slowly disappeared. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but after my first month on long term leave from work the month just kinda felt like a constant state of Groundhog Day and HOLY I forgot how much more snow and cold we get here in Mitchell, it’s quite the contrast to where we spent the last 17 of 18 years in Brantford, where many winters I didn’t even have to get out the snow shovel. It’s been a bit of a battle to keep on the habits that I’ve been trying to incorporate into my new lifestyle and although I’ve done an okay job, there’s still lots of room for improvement. This first month on permanent leave has been an eye opener and trying to stay focused on the tasks I have set out for myself is proving difficult to do, mind you when it’s -25 degrees Celsius getting out for a jog isn’t very appealing, but I’ve still managed about 3 days per week and finding different routes in the winter in a new town isn’t easy either, but still not an excuse. Moving and getting settled has helped combat what could be maybe a little winter boredom from settling in, I’m not really a guy to sit still for very long, so being in a smaller place can take some getting used too.
So what do I do to keep myself away from the TV all day? Well, I try to brainstorm for content I want to publish on this blog site, sounds easy right? Some days I have lots of ideas, then it seems to dry up, going from job where the work was delivered to me and I would work on it like a was trained to, what, wait, that doesn’t sound right? I would have a job to complete and use skills and experience(training) to complete to the project and almost always that job completed on time and if I may say so, well done. Now I consider writing as a hobby / job I guess now, but I have to come up with the content / project to work on, and before all this believe me I’m not the most creative guy, but as my blogs have come along I do notice a difference, like in anything in life, practice makes…well….I’ll say it makes it better, far from perfect. Now I spend a lot of time trying to educate myself on how to reach more people and therefore get more views and more visitors on this site, which is extremely difficult given there are probably millions of blogs and get people drawn to mine is a rabbit hole I continually go down, trying to get more information, it’s seriously time consuming. To reiterate though I only gauge my success to the fact that I actually sat down and wrote something for the world to see, and I very happy with the response I have received so far. Being competitive in nature is what drives me a little harder to make this as successful as possible, and if a guy like me can eventually one day create a successful blog, then what’s to stop me from challenging and defeating an “incurable” cancer diagnosis. The odds may not be in my favour, but one thing I’m not is a quitter….
Creating some Video Content
Banff National Park
Click the pictures to start videos
Now I’ve talked about creating some YouTube videos and I will do so in the future (Tracy and I) have lots of content to go through and I have created some full videos, but for this post here these are some clips of our trip to Banff National Park. This was the first time I attempted to use a gimbal DJI 3, so the clips aren’t always the smoothest as it took some getting used to.
These are videos of a hike I did up to the Big Beehive Trail in Lake Louise, Banff, Tracy made it to the halfway point to the Tea House at Lake Angus. You can probably hear me breathing pretty heavy in the clip, the trail starts off heading to the right as you go around beautiful Lake Louise, where everyone stops for their Instagram pic. It’s a pretty slow incline as you had to Mirror Lake, first stop, where the water is crystal clear. Then its a little steeper incline for a while until you come to a waterfall and a set of stairs that leads you up to the Tea House and Lake Angus, which is about a 3.8 km hike. This is where Tracy and I parted ways, I continued on rounding Lake Angus about 3/4 the way around until the trail leads you up the final ascent, which is a series of steep switchbacks for 1.5 km I think.
Once at the top of the summit it’s quite the view, now I’ve spent a lot of time in my canoe and portaging form lake to lake throughout the summer and hiking to viewpoints throughout Ontario, but there’s nothing like a view out in the Rocky Mountains, breathtaking!
The elevation gain in 2270m, now it’s also a very busy hike and we visited in late September and the traffic wasn’t that bad, during the final ascent up be prepared for people stopped sucking wind, and although there’s room enough to pass by you need to keep your wits about you cause ya don’t want to slip.

Now the round trip is just over 10 km and with a break at the tea house and taking in the sites from atop the mountain for about half an hour, it took me about 4hours to complete the round trip. This was a great hike that I would recommend to anyone, however the next time I head back out west my craving to explore will take me further off the beaten trail and into the real backcountry out there, maybe Grizzly country….we’ll have to see???

Help me out
Thanks once again for reading, please like, comment and or subscribe at the bottom of blog or head back to the Home page and say Hi. At the top of the post you can also rate the content I’m giving so please go ahead and do so, I’d very much appreciate it. Any other topics you’d like to know about my cancer feel free to go ahead and ask. Love to all. Cheers
Great videos!
We were out West a couple of years ago – it was such an amazing time! Looking forward to your next blog entry. 🙂
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Thanks Vanessa, love the support. Cheers
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I had to watch the videos again – so beautiful!
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Yep, beautiful place, definitely have to return there again
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Beautiful place thank you for sharing. You are doing great keep it up.
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Thanks Captain, appreciate you taking the time to read
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