Ice

We have been having an unusually warm January, and that has meant that for the past couple of days temperatures have risen above freezing. It would seem that this would be a cause for celebration, except that it dips back below freezing at different points during the day, and melting + refreezing = slippery slippery ice.

This weekend has been all about ice for a couple of reasons. First, I had the opportunity to try out an adaptive form of cross-country skiing called kneeling sit ski. I first learned about this through a chain of clicked links after searching for something related to learning to ski when you have balance problems. As it turns out, Saskatchewan is the place to be if you want to use adaptive technology for cross-country skiing. I was put in touch with a woman named Colette Bourgonje, who has been a long time member of the Canadian Paralympic ski team. After a number of conversations and email exchanges, we set up a time for me to try a brand-new type of sit ski called a kneeler. It is basically a sort of chair that you kneel in, that hooks into the bindings of regular cross-country skis, and you propel yourself with your arms. She came down from Saskatoon with her sit ski set up and the kneeler, and on Saturday morning we skied at a park that is about a half-mile from our house.

It was super fun, and a really cool thing to be able to try. And, it turned out that the weather was excellent because ice makes everything a little slipperier and makes gliding on a sit ski set up that much easier. It sounds like I will be able to have access to this equipment by joining the Regina Ski Club and a wheelchair sports club. I'm pretty excited, as I think this will be an awesome way to get outdoors in the winter.

When we got back to the car after about forty-five minutes of skiing, everything was extremely icy as there had been some freezing rain. As Jeff started driving he said he hoped I didn't mind if our top speed on the way home was 15 km/h. Of course I said I was glad he was being cautious. So as we were inching along, we had to make a slight right onto a neighborhood street, and Jeff lost control of the car. We were headed ever so slowly toward a parked truck, and no matter what he did Jeff could not change our trajectory. So we slid at about 10 km/h into this parked truck, and the passenger side headlight and body above the front wheel well got completely smashed in. No one was injured, but the car is not drivable, and now we have to wait for an insurance adjuster to look at the damage and tell us where we are supposed to go to get it fixed. In the meantime, after everything melted later in the afternoon we got a rental car.

There is still so much ice around that I can't really go places by myself because I need someone there to give me a hand to get across patches of ice. The weather is supposed to be this way for the next several days. It sounds a little bit crazy, but we are all waiting for the temperatures to get back to the usual -20°C, so things aren't so slippery and I can get back to normal!

Happy Belated New Year!

I can't believe that my last blog post was three weeks ago. That time has gone by extremely quickly, and yet lots has happened. I went to Eugene and back, the semester started, and everything around here is in full swing. However, first things first:

Jeff had a follow-up doctor's appointment on Thursday, and the news was good. The doctor cleared him to do any activity he feels like, including running and shoveling snow. Jeff says he feels completely back to normal, and yesterday he went for a short run. He had absolutely no problems with breathing, but having been away from running for a while, his knee started acting up a bit. He will need to ease back into activity slowly, but more because the rest of his body will need to adjust and not so much because his lungs need to adjust. It is a huge relief to hear that he is out of danger, and although he will need to continue the blood thinners for another five months and then get some tests done to see if a cause for this event can be determined, it feels good to have things pretty well back to normal.

So, my trip to Oregon was great – I got to visit with friends and family, got a break from the cold weather, and generally had a good time. The only exception to this was the part about getting there and back. I ended up spending hours and hours in the Denver airport on the way there, not getting in until something like 2 AM. Then on the way back my flight from Denver to Regina ended up getting canceled, and I spent the night in a hotel that was neither close to the airport nor to the city of Denver, with none of my luggage (no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no clean underwear, and no pajamas). I ended up buying an XXL T-shirt from the hotel gift shop to sleep in, and washing my clothes in the sink so they wouldn't be unwearable the next day. I got home about eighteen hours later than I was supposed to, and apparently I was lucky because there were eighteen people on standby for that flight (who presumably were also supposed to be on my canceled flight) and only one got on (I was fortunate to get a confirmed seat). I think we have dealt with delays or flight cancellations on every single flight we have taken in the past year. I could complain about the specific airline, but when I think about it it hasn't mattered much which airline we are flying. They are all terrible.

The semester has started with a bang, and in some ways it feels like I have been teaching my classes forever, and yet it also seems like they've barely started. I am teaching two undergraduate classes, and both are full to their maximum of fifty students. I was asked if I would be willing to increase the enrollment limits, but the way I have the classes set up is for this maximum, and it would take some reworking (so that my TA and I are not overwhelmed with grading of assignments, exams, and final papers) so I said no. I am not sure what forces have led my classes to be completely full (with students on the wait list) when this has never happened before (and I have been teaching these classes since I started here), so I am not ready to change the format of either class for what might end up being a passing bump in enrollment.

We have been quite busy jumping into this semester, though when I look at my to do list, it seems quite a bit smaller than it was last semester. I am hoping that things settle down soon, and I think they will!