Featuring Eric, Eowyn, a coyote, a bear, and a jaguar.

I just took Eowyn for a bike ride on the Porter Creek Bench using the Kangaroo center-mounted bike seat (a great device that Elias also enjoyed when he was younger). As Luna gets tired, she starts to lag behind. Once when I looked back, I saw a coyote behind her on the path. I watched, and it lay down and stayed there watching us. I approach it, and it walked to the forest, stopping to look at us provocatively before entering. I went forward a bit more, and it came out again. This time I approached closer, it went into the forest, and we watched each other through the trees. We followed parallel paths for a time, and as it disappeared and reappeared among the trees, I had a strong sense of the jungle hunting scenes from Apocalypto.

I watched Apocalypto yesterday, only because I read it had beautiful cinematography of some jungles in Central America (and Mexico), where we’ll soon be living. I’m not scared of coyotes, and though I’ve heard of female wolves luring male dogs for dinner, that did not seem relevant. But as I went on my way, I suddenly remembered I heard a female bear with two cubs was spotted in the exact area I was biking a day or two prior—do you recall the jaguar scene?

We still had a good full ride, but on account of Eowyn, I did stick to larger paths and made more noise than usual. Watching Apocalypto was enough—I didn’t want to become part of the cast.

With the political events in Honduras, combined with some other considerations, we revisited our primary living destination of northern Nicaragua. After some research, asking some direct questions to a few people living in the region, and, dare I say it, a significant dream, we are perfectly content with our original decision.

We decided on the laptop we need to continue our businesses, a Lenovo ThinkPad SL500 at an excellent price—a clear choice, particularly given the rarer but in my opinion necessary matte screen (it shipped as of today). We’ve narrowed our dates and will soon buy our tickets. We’ve made the difficult decisions about the kids’ immunizations and begin them next week (joy). We’ve drafted our packing list and I pulled out the suitcases. We found a home for our cat. We found someone to live in our house. So we’re quickly moving forward, as we had better given that there’s less than 2 months to our departure and no shortage of other work in the interim.

My wonderful students gave me a Chapters gift card after each semester. I’m a deliberate spender, content to wait until I “need” something to accomplish some goal or another before buying. So I finally found the perfect use for these cards:

1. Lonely Planet Nicaragua
   (released as of today)
2. Collins Gem Pocket Spanish Dictionary
   (our full-size one is huge and will stay in Whitehorse, I think)
3. Spike Light Book Light
   (it’s been taking me an hour some nights to put Eowyn to sleep, lying beside her, and she’s getting old enough I can begin using some of that time more productively)
4. Complete French Grammar Review
   (this is an anticipatory purchase, as I know we’ll live in a French region one day to become fluent, I previously bought the Spanish version for this trip and really like it, I wanted to use up the gift cards, and I wanted to reach the “free shipping” quota)

All that, and I have $0.17 left on my cards. Thanks, class of 2008-2009!

With a newborn and two sick children, Grey Mountain was as far as I could get, and I was fortunate to make it that far only because my parents were visiting and assisting at home.

I’ve hiked, ATV’d, and driven up the mountain, and now can add “biked” to the list. The smoke has cleared, and Luna, my most-trusty hiking companion of eight years, could enjoy the view with me easily from Marsh Lake…

to Lake Laberge:

We even found her the perfect pre-filled water bowl:

It was refreshing to have a short break from being a 24-hour-a-day nurse. Mount Decoeli will just have to wait for another day.

I went up, up, up
onto the ridge of fire

I saw smoke, smoke, smoke
as I climbed up higher

The Sunday before last, I biked to the mining camp below Red Ridge, stashed my bike, and climbed/traversed the ridge, for a total of 29km.

I had such a good trip to Tally-Ho Mountain last year that I was looking forward to another trip in the area. I’m sure the smoke was a major contributor, but Tally-Ho is still my favourite.

Doing some light bushwacking in damp brush with shoes is never fun, but the creek crossing was no problem.

Looks like I’ll be making this trip again, with hope for less fire and more view.