Training Log Archive: Bash

Paddled around Island Lake with 'Bent and Mrs. L-D, my teammate for Storm The Ten. The water is really low, so we had to be careful not to fling weeds at each other with our kayak paddles! Mrs. L-D and I traded back and forth between canoe and solo kayak, since we'll be using that kayak in the race. The rudder was finicky, but all went well otherwise. 'Bent was glad to be outside doing something that didn't bother his knee.

Biked to Albion Hills with Mrs. L-D, who was heading home to Bolton. We took a detour for a Tour de Feu behind our place. I did a bit of single and double track at Albion before heading home. It was eerily quiet after the crowds of summer.

'Bent decided that the Hard Core DVD should be possible with his knee injury. It's been gathering dust for the last few months while we've been playing outdoors, and we knew it was going to hurt when we started up our fall training again. Since I'd gone biking and paddling today, I figured that the first 15 minutes would be plenty - so as a result, I only exercised 2 of my 186 core muscles. That's OK - Caron's classes start up this week, so I can't avoid the pain for much longer.

I went cross-country, scouting all the burnt/unburnt boundaries I could find in forested areas, carrying 10L of water in case I needed to douse more embers. It looks like yesterday's heavy rain did the trick. I didn't find anything smoking or glowing anywhere, even in the farthest nooks and crannies of the conservation area.

It's really cool to see the grasslands starting to regenerate already. There are 10 cm blades of pale green grass growing a few cm apart. A few days ago, the fields were one big, black expanse, and now they look greenish.

The woods will take longer to come around. The forest that burned was mostly managed red pine, and much of it had been logged recently. With the undergrowth burned off, the charred trees on the Oak Ridges Moraine look like they're sitting in a huge sand box. It's hard to imagine how anything ever grew on that soil.

We've come to the conclusion that the worst thing to be is a snail. We've found countless burnt shells on the ground. For some reason, snails aren't good at outrunning wildfires.

I don't think I'll need my big water container anymore, but I'll bring a garbage bag on my next trip into the forest. Understandably, firefighters don't have time to pick up their drinking water bottles, face masks, burnt hoses, etc.

'Bent is supposed to keep his injured knee mobile, but he's not supposed to run or do technical biking. So to keep him from going stir-crazy, we drove around to Neumanns', then rode the rail trail to Caledon East for frozen yoghurt. Nice!

We met an interesting family who had biked there with young children all the way from Cheltenham. The father was the president of Ace Bakery, and they were customers of Bullfrog Power, both of which led to all kinds of good conversation.

Went for a trail run with BulletDog immediately after our bike ride - Short Bruce Loop in Palgrave West. No smoking embers and no big kitty cats, so it was a good day all round.

'Bent and I are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary today with a little firefighting, a dental emergency on 'Bent's day off, sports chiropractic appointments together, progress on several writing assignments of mine, and volunteer work for different committees. Fun! If all goes well, we should be able to get out for a nice dinner tonight anyway. :-)

Leanimal and I moved our Gurlz Run to Thursday for this week only, since Tuesday was busy with fire-related stuff. It was 31C with a smog advisory, but we're no princesses, so we headed out just before high noon. It was like running in a convection oven. Hot weather is my kryptonite (too bad I don't have any superpowers to compensate), and any energy I might have had at the start melted away in the first 10 minutes. We had a good time rehashing our rogaine anyway. After the run, we immediately went for ice cold cranberry gingerales. I snuck to DQ later for a hot fudge milkshake too (tsk, tsk).

By mid-afternoon, there was a hot, gusty wind, and I knew that the risk of embers flaring up would be high. But - I didn't want to go on my own into the midst of all those charred trees, some of which are precariously balanced on spindly, blackened trunks, just waiting to crash to the ground in a good breeze. So I waited until things calmed down after dinner, then did a quick fire patrol of several private properties, but didn't go into the conservation area. For the first time, I found no glowing embers or smoking stumps. I'll do a larger sweep tomorrow.

Finally registered for a couple of events that I've been planning to do!

- Adventure Sports Games - solo - Sunday Adventure Stage Race only (10K Georgian Bay Paddle, 25K MTB orienteering, 18K adventure run)

- Storm The Ten - Female Tag Team with Sian, aka Mrs. Smash

Preliminary news coverage of the fire with a couple of my photos. The Enterprise's deadline came up before the Fire Department had issued a press release, so there should be more details in the next edition.

I went out with my camera today, expecting to take photos of the fire totally out after the heavy rain last night. I imagined the wet, black burnt area with the sun shining on it, and thought that the images might be powerful. However, I didn't get away from home for the first few hours. At the back corner of our property, I noticed orange flames under a small log, and I used the 10L water jug that I now carry everywhere to try to put it out. Then I noticed a 2-meter circle of hot white ash by the log, where tree roots were burning below. Then I looked up and saw that a huge old maple tree had smouldering coals inside it up to a height of 4 meters or more. OK, time to dial 911. We ended up with 4 fire trucks here for 2.5 hrs. They used a chainsaw to take down the large tree, and they dug up the roots and flooded everything with water. Ladies, I now have enough firefighter photos to make an excellent calendar for 2008. :-)

Later in the day, I headed out with my water jug and hiked all over the burnt area. Compared to yesterday (pre-rain), there weren't many seriously smoking stumps, but there were still a few to pour water on. I ran into an MNR truck that was patrolling the woods too, but only from double track trails. The guy was worried about the fire staying down in the tree roots for days on end. Since he was from the MNR, I mentioned our cougar in the same forest. He said that there have been cougars sighted all over the place this year.

Took a couple of long walks through the fire-blackened countryside today. Firefighters remained on the scene overnight until around noon today, keeping an eye out for places where flames would suddenly arise from tree roots or peat. I was doing the same thing on my walks, and I'm getting pretty good at snuffing out embers. I've heard that 500 acres burned, but it looks a lot closer to 100 acres to me. Regardless, it sure looked scary in the helicopter footage on Global TV news. There was another TV news station around here today, and I was interviewed for tomorrow's Caledon Enterprise. (Hope they leave out the part where I mentioned our fire-starting neighbour!) They're also going to publish a few of my close-up fire photos.

One firefighter mentioned that the people responsible for starting the fire must pay the firefighting costs - $385 per truck per hour. At the height of the fire, there were close to 30 trucks, and there were still several involved as of this morning. Do the math! ($11,550/hr)

The air stinks, and my lungs feel filthy. I've been fighting a headache all day. Every once in awhile, I see smoke wafting through our yard, and I race out to make sure that nothing new is happening. In spite of that, all of us are just very lucky to be OK and not to have lost our homes. This fire has been another reminder of what fantastic, resourceful neighbours we (mostly) have.

It's raining now. Absolutely beautiful weather!!! :-)

Today's plan was some relaxing yoga while 'Bent went biking in Albion Hills. Less than an hour after he'd left, I heard a vehicle in our driveway and peeked out to see a fire truck with lights flashing. I don't deal well with this sort of thing ever since police cars came up the driveway to inform us that a family member had been killed by an impaired driver. I thought that 'Bent had been hit by a car while biking.

As I walked toward the truck, the firefighter wouldn't meet my eye. I spoke to him, then realized why he wasn't looking at me. "We've got a fire here, Ma'am." Huge clouds of reddish-brown smoke were billowing from our neighbour's back yard, about 125 meters away. My first thought was, "Oh good, it's nothing to do with 'Bent." Then... "Oh my God - should we leave?" "How many people are in the house?" "Just me and the dogs." "Well, it's not a bad idea."

It's one of those things you see on the news... people have to evacuate their homes quickly and only have time to take along a few possessions. Inevitably, in their panic, they grab something silly like a Disneyland tea towel and leave their passport behind. So now it was my turn, and here's what I put into the van - in this order:
1) Dogs
2) Laptop computers
3) 'Bent's wallet and my purse
4) Wedding photos and video
5) A bunch of other photos, but didn't have time for all of them
6) My nicest jewellery
7) A couple of good-sized, uncashed cheques.

And yes, I forgot our passports.

In the middle of this, I phoned 'Bent to advise him to come home, but NOT through the forest, since it was burning. In his haste to return, he slid out on his bike in some gravel and twisted his knee. He met our neighbour, VO2Max Sr., enroute, and dropped his bike to take a ride the rest of the way home. By that time, there were two trucks sitting on our lawn, and the wind had blown the fire along the back of our property, so it looked like our house was in the clear - but now we were worried about Crash and the Neumanns. With our pooches and other main valuables stashed in the back of the van, we headed around to Duffy's Lane to see if we could help. No cars at Crash's place, and no signs of dogs around. Good. Over to Neumanns' place where we could see smoke moving over the forest, and it seemed to be staying further north. We went back to Crash's place, which had been established as the latest forest fighting HQ, with trucks lined up along the narrow road. VO2Max Sr. and Mr. Wheelie were conscripted to give firefighters rides into the forest on their ATVs. If the wind direction stayed the same, it wasn't looking good for Crash's house. She wasn't answering her cell phone.

A firefighter casually commented that our next door neighbours had been "having a little fire". We'd heard some construction project going on earlier in the day, so perhaps they were burning some debris. Given that it was a breezy, 30C, sunny day in an area where there's been a drought this summer, some very bad judgment was involved - assuming that the firefighter's version of the story was correct. These are the same new neighbours who blasted booming loud party music across the area till 1 a.m. a few weeks ago, which made me feel that they didn't respect the countryside. If the story turns out to be true, then my gut feeling was accurate, and I will be crossing them off my Christmas card list.

We eventually ended up in the woods with the firefighters as 1-meter orange flames burned across 'Bent's commute trail, just 15 meters from our property. The wind had changed, so the fire was coming toward our place again. Following their instructions, we hauled in big containers of water and went along the perimeter of the fire-blackened area, putting out mini-fires and throwing logs with live embers down to the blackened former grassland, where nothing was left to burn.

They eventually got a mini-pumper truck into the back of Belusas' property, and the water quenched the flames. I have to admit that I now see the value of having a swimming pool out in the country where there are no fire hydrants. For these firefighters, it's all about whether they can get water to these remote forest areas.

The firefighters said that there were other pockets of fire in different places, including in the Palgrave Forest & Wildlife Area. I asked about Crash's house, and they said that no houses had burned - phew!! The new Palgrave West orienteering map might need some updating though. It was around that time that I cracked a stupid joke about our poison ivy problem being solved in the area where we were standing - and then I realized that some of the smoke around us had come from poison ivy, which can lead to throat and lung inflammation. Crap! It usually takes me at least 48 hrs to respond to poison ivy, but I'm going to be taking lots of deep breaths for the next few days, and - knowing me - imagining that things are tightening up.

We are supposed to go out there each day and keep checking for embers, and call them if anything is too big. The ground is smoking, and they can't get it out completely. We love that forest, and we're heartbroken to think of what might have happened in there. I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight... NOT.