Brrrrrrrrrrrr, Serious Snowstorm outside

I ran out of luck this morning.  I've bike every morning, and I was grateful each time that I woke up to no snow!  Well, not today.  It actually was ok to bike this morning as it wasn't snowing yet, so I biked to work even though there was a strong wind.  But it soon became a serious blizzard with heavier winds.  I tried to bike home, on the sidewalk, but even that was impossible.  The Northern Winds were very strong at times, and with a snowstorm at the same time, it was much too challenging to attempt riding on a bicycle without the fear of being blown off the bike by the wind or slipping on the ice. I suppose I was pushing my luck today as a blizzard warning was in the forecast!

Geocaching on Sunday, no snow!

Snow on my bike!  Had to walk her home today.

Compounding the problems, my back V-Brake didn't grip on back wheel properly and my chain links froze up!  Seriously, does anyone else have a frozen chain link problem when it's very cold outside?  I ended up walking the bike home.  That's not too bad for me as I'm only a 20 min walk away from home!  How do people cope with riding in the winter?  Is it just because of the bitterly cold wind and snowstorm that make things cease up? Does having the chain enclosed prevent the chain links from freezing?  This is my second chain/cassette on bike and I still have the frozen links problem like I did last winter.  I will be walking to work for a bit now, till it's more rideable outside.  I am hoping January, like last year, but I've heard the Winter will be worse this year, whereas Winter last year was almost non-existent.

Regarding Geocaching, I'm going to disable my hidden geocache for the Winter now.  I thought it would be good till December, but if there's snow in town, there's tons more in the country!  I am going to get a friend who is working out that to fetch it for me this weekend.  I got some geocaching done this weekend so I could drop off 3 trackables that I had.

Jungle Bird.

Sometimes Wembley does things that are so cute, but yet so bad.  Here he is being a Jungle bird, because he wants to chomp on the leaves.  No way!  But before I shoo him away, I take this pic.

Time to shoo him away from plants  Sneaky little bugger!

Snow's a falling..

Yep, Winter has arrived here.  But has that stopped me from being on my bike?  Nope.  I took off the Axiom bags that I am borrowing from a friend and put on my 'Superstore special' basket onto the back rack.  I didn't want to get the bags dirty.

And despite needing Winter gloves for the last bit, today was actually quite warm.  I could use my Autumn gloves which gave me enough warmth.  I was actually too warm biking up to mall with my down jacket on.

I completed my Christmas shopping, then I biked to grocery store.  I didn't feel like biking home to drop stuff off and then bike back to grocery store in the strong headwinds coming from the South, so I carried my gifts with me while grocery shopping.  I had to show the clerk when I paid that the gifts were from another store(s), but that was totally understandable.

I also snuck some geocaching in as I wanted to drop off 2 geocoins that I picked up at the Ancient Forest Travel Bug Hotel  What a great day to be on a bike, the sun was shining, it was fairly warm, and I got to do a few things today while being out of the house.  And I've just went over the 4600 km mark now..and heading to 4700.  I got a few scratches on top of the diamond, not sure where those came from.  Got my 'black' stickers standing by if I ever should need them.

Speaking of geocaching, 6 days after I hid it, and 4 days after it was published, someone found my Grand Canyon of the Fraser cache today!  I was worried that I got the coordinates wrong, even though I came there twice that day to double check readings on my GPS.  I had originally left a note about that on my listings page for the geocache, but decided to remove it and see if anyone had troubles finding it.  Then I would go back out the 70 kms to get another reading.  Whew!  But the fact that someone found it without troubles means I don't have to do that.  I suppose that being a newbie at this has it's moments.  I am glad that I can confirm that I know how to use a GPS. 

Life...is.....good.

Caching and helping out.

This past Sunday, I decided to help work on the Ancient Forest Boardwalk.  I restacked lumber so it won't rot during winter and I nailed some railings. Can you believe that the boardwalk has received over $24,000 in donations this year so far?  The support from the community has been unbelievable!  This is our profile at Canadahelps where one can donate towards it.

It was a rainy start to the day.  We didn't leave till 8am, but even with the time change I woke up at 5 am! Before I realized my mistake I had brewed a nice pot of coffee and I stayed up because it seemed such a shame to waste it.  I lots of time to relax before heading out.  I was actually reconsidering going out and had phoned once to cancel going, but then I changed my mind and phoned back.  What else could I do that day anyways?  Might as well help out!

I get to hammer away.

My big reason for wanting to go was I wanted to move a few travel bugs into a Geocache at the Ancient Forest.  It took a little bit to find, but eventually I did!  My friend who put it there did a nice job at hiding it.

Before and after helping with the boardwalk, I got my ride to stop at this particular place 32km from the Ancient Forest.  I really wanted to lay my first geocache there.  I went there first to lay it and get a reading, then I returned to get another reading so I could get fairly accurate coordinates for the cache listing.  It showed up as close when I wrote up the cache listing, but when it was posted this morning, I noticed that it had moved a bit on the google maps.

I am a bit worried that the readings will lead geocachers astray in the forest.  I do know that gps coordinates are never spot on, intentionally, but I do want to lead the cachers somewhat near the cache.  Hopefully Google maps are wrong!  It's weird though, how it shifted positions from when I submitted the listing to when it was published.

The cache on the left is what I just hid this weekend. 

Fall Geocaching

It was a nice warm sunny day to go do some geocaching in the country.

Well, I'm afraid it's been a long time since I did some geocaching.  In fact I haven't done it since I did it in Regina this Summer.  But this past weekend, my geocaching friends called up and invited me on a geocache trip.  We drove around small towns just outside the city.

I was mopey before being invited, but that soon disappeared when I started finding cache after cache.  It was so much fun!

Here's some photos of the day

Willow River 'temporary' bridge.

I actually went under the bridge.  Though, this is is not me.

Popular rock climbing area near Giscome, BC

Guess who I found climbing the rocks?

I found my first Turtle Travel Bug at a Purden Lake geocache.

Purden Lake

I'm now prepping a geocache of my own to hide.  I have a great place in the country to hide it, and I will be going out that way to help out at the Ancient forest this weekend, so I can place it on the way.  I also can deposit the travel bug I found at Purden at my friend's Travel Bug Hotel at the Ancient Forest.

Two geocaches that I have created- Left one is a small, and right one is a micro.