Be it ever so humble

This is my final entry for the big trek blog.

I’ve just scrubbed the Costa Rican mud off my hiking boots - no point in accidently transplanting mutant rhubarb seeds or giant caterpillar eggs into Banff National Park to become the next ox-eyed daisy that takes over the place. The hiking poles and platypus for my big backpack have likewise been cleaned and are waiting to be put away. Did a quickie-trip up to Edmonton on the weekend to give my kids their small souvenirs. And it’s back to work, and reality, tomorrow for me.

I’m feeling guilty for not holding up my end of the deal with the length of the hikes. 40K is NOT 100K plus. Could I have pushed it and did the redesigned 60K? I’m not sure, with the poorly built/maintained trails, the rain, and the guide’s break-less and break-neck speed. There was no way to know about all of that ahead of time so I could train for it. I didn’t have a whole lot of input from the Alta JIM coordinator, and in fact was given wrong info about some of the trails from him. There’s a big difference between an 800 m elevation gain (yep, that’s hard) and a 1200 m elevation gain (you’re freakin’ kiddin’ me!). But I’m making excuses, and I hope donors forgive me for not hiking what I promised to hike. I really do feel bad about it.

However, I did accomplish a lot of what I set out to do in the first place. I challenged myself by becoming a fund-raiser, which I found very difficult. It’s not easy asking people for money, even if it’s for an excellent cause, and I have a new respect for those who do it all the time. Did I mention that the funds raised in Alberta stay in Alberta? Both Calgary’s U of C, and Edmonton’s U of A, research hospitals receive funds raised through Joints in Motion for various initiatives (for fund disbursement details, see: http://www.arthritis.ca/look%20at%20research/default.asp?s=1&province=ab). I honored those who suffer/have suffered with arthritis by doing this in the first place (hey Mom, I did it!). I trained, and lost a ton of weight - OK, not a ton, but almost 50 lbs! - and became much fitter than I have been for a very long time. And that goes a long way towards keeping my own RA manageable and having better health in general.

The highlights of this whole process have nothing do with Costa Rica at all. Mostly, I’m astounded by your (and other donors who aren’t reading this) generosity, making a donation just because I asked you to. Wow. It has restored my faith in humanity and I now know we all can’t possibly be going to hell-in-a-hand basket when we help out each other for the greater good like that. It’s a shame that government can’t make our tax dollars fund research and education like this fully, but it’s so very heart-warming to know that people can and will pick up the pace when governments fall short.

I’ve also found that it’s true - the journey, and not the destination, is the thing. My most favorite part of this whole ordeal has been finally hiking my own back yard! Making myself hike every weekend before hand even when I didn’t want to was hard, but seeing more of the mountains is why I moved here in the first place, and it took this to make me do it rather than saying 'some day'. Visiting other countries makes you realize that Canada is wonderful place to call home. We’re all very lucky to have places like Banff National Park and it’s well developed trail system, and I’m especially lucky to be able to live here. I’ve now got tons of gear to enjoy hiking more of the place (no excuses now!), and will find ways to get out in the great outdoors this winter. There really is no place like home.

In closing, I really want to thank all of you again for your generous contributions. You have helped many others with arthritis, but mostly you’ve helped me grow, in more ways than one. And I really, really appreciate it.

Costa Rica pictures

I've finally put my images together from the trek. Warning - there's 100 plus of them! And the Smilebox interface is awkward to edit so pardon the excessive typos. If you don't like The Commitments, I suggest you turn down your sound. I hid my camera from the rain a lot, so there's not many rain pics. I did steal a few images from our groups photo site to round out the story, so I can't take credit for them all. Enjoy, and be glad that you're probably dry!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

And the fat lady sings...

Back home again, just, after 24 hrs of travelling, mostly because The Joints in Motion people routed everyone through Toronto. Pics to come later....

I've mixed feelings about the whole trip. The hike schedule fell apart completely and was constantly reworked. A combination of too much rain, overly ambitious planning on The Arthritis Societies part, and a Nazi-like guide who believed we could trek all day without any rest/food/pee breaks as he was told to make it difficult.

The planned hikes got knocked down to around 60 k as nobody wanted to 12 - 16 hours through the rain and without a break. That very first miserable 16 hike (was supposed to 22K, see pic to the left), where it rained the whole time - I was completely soaked through, right down to both my undies and wool socks and walked with water squishing between my toes in my waterproof boots - really turned everyone off. This picture is from the 'jungle' part of the road. Nobody was prepared for that kind of rain. It wasn't even on a trail, but on impossibly rocky roads through farmland/jungle. And then we had to travel 3 hrs to the next hotel soaked to the skin while the driver had to keep the air conditioning on to keep his windows clear. Brutally cold trip, that was.

Anyway, the top third of participants went on those 60k. Another third of us did shortened versions of those (including me) which worked out to about 40K over the 4 days. Not impressive, I know, but I was ill the last day and skipped the big hike. Another third just quit hiking altogether and turned the week into a holiday by booking horseback riding tours, etc., from the hotels. So, I did end up where I had hoped - in the middle of the pack.

Jimmy the guide had done what he was told, which was to make it challenging. He was originally from Germany and spoke with both a German and Spanish accent. We called him Jimminy Cricket, and coined a couple phrases after him - the first being 'Jimmy time'. He would say something like 'It's only another 45 minutes', which meant an hour and an half'. Another phrase was 'it's a Jimmy Buffet' referring to the way he pronounced the word 'buffet'. (meaning a dinner buffet). Which we ate the whole time and mostly sucked. Except for the one day at crunchy granola grow/farm-our own organics at Rancho Margot near Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano - I think EVERYONE wants to go back there to either volunteer in some capacity or just chill out for a while.

Met a lot of great people - 4 of whom we called 'the Newf troop' and you can guess where they were from. They were a totally hoot, too. The biggest chunk of people were from Ontario, 8 of 'em maybe, a couple from Manitoba, 3 from Saskatchewan including a woman whose first and middle name is also Diana Lynn (one of the Newf gals had the same b-day as me and another has the same arthritis as me too), 5 Albertans (the other 4 were all from Calgary) and one of whom is an announcer with CJAY radio in Calgary who blogged the whole schmoo and interviewed me and a few others for her listeners, and 1 from BC who turned out being my roommate. About half a dozen of those were my age. We plan to keep in touch, but we'll see how it goes.

After my 'how I got arthritis speech' I certainly was treated differently. Compassion from those who have or knew someone with RA. And on the opposite end of the coin I seemed to be seen as some sort of wimp (I've overheard people saying "Well, Diana can't do that part" when referring to hike, and even having the guide himself saying 'Diana, I'm experienced and know you can't do the top 2 kilos of a particular trip', so I didn't go. This was also after the Canopy Tour zipline (where, yes, I had a little meltddown/panic attack, but had STILL challanged myself to do the damn thing) . I was pretty ticked when the newf gal with RA went on that one - I'm in better shape/younger/and thinner than she - and though it was tough, she made it. Thanks for the encouragement Jimmy. And did I contribute to the tip??? Er, no.

Seems there was a bit of politics happening within the Joints in Motion group, too. A different hike has been previously planned but was nixed by the higher up in JIM as they felt it wasn't challenging enough. Sheesh! They have partipants in other events do as little as walk 5K as part of a marathon! And the provincial rep in Alberta wasn't not fond of the planning of the National rep who planned the trip and doesn't even hike.

I supposed the worst part of the trip was all the hotel hopping. We'd get to some niceish hotel and have no time at all to enjoy it's pool or anything, or even walk around the town for a few hours. We spent hours driving every day, and one entire 10 hour day on the bus trying to see/hike the highlights. They do survey us all after the fact, but I wanted to get it down here before I forget altogether.

Food left a lot to be desired (except at Rancho). Bananas (which I don't ear) fried/sliced/raw/dried, and rice and beans at every meal. Meatless breakfasts. Pineapple and Watermelon was awesome though.

So, a real experience in ways not expected. I saw lots of critters - macaws, parrots, hummingbirds, incredible butterflys. Also a couple of cockroaches, geckos, lizards, stingless honey bees, codamundi(???)(an odd racoon/monkey looking thing that's part of the bear family but is the size of a very large house cat, which scrounges food from tourists at national sites). Howler, spider, and some other kind of monkey, heard killer frogs (but never seem them), giant moths and butterflys, industrious leaf cutter ants... I'm sure there's more critters. Lots of plants.

I'll add one more post to this, when it's not so fresh in mind and all the good stuff stands out more, and post all of my pics, too. I'll also get a link to a photo site everyone is placing their pics on, so I can post that here, too. Right now, I need to throw some clothes in the wash as I'm leaving for Salmon Arm this afternoon.

I making this sound worse than it was (hey, 24 hrs of travel....). And I did challenge myself as planned, though it wasn't from hiking but by hanging and flying scared shitless on a damn zip line (which is absolutely totally and completely for sure crossed off my bucket list!) However, even if it's only for a few hours, I'm glad to be home, where the taps have HOT running water, where I can actually flush toilet paper, where I don't have to worry about a plethora of creepy crawlies in my bedroom, and where beans and rice will NOT be served three times a day!

Day tripping

Yesterday, I somehow talked myself into going on the zipline tour. HOLY CRAP. An adreniline junkie I'm not! I did 13 cables, only 4 of which with help because I'd had enough about 2/3s of the way thru and asked if I could walk out. One of those babies was a kilo LONG!! You kind of disappeaared into the clouds! I closed my eyes a lot on that one. So, I didn't crap myself but it took a couple of hours for my heart rate to slow. Never again! I was too afraid and mt wrist killed me.

Finally figured out the taps - cold if F and hot is C. But I'm having a hard remembering not to flush the toilet paper here!

We are at our last hotel and leave tommorow. Saw some more monkeys and a flock of macaws onour way here - those birds didn't look real, but I saw them fly en masse so they had to have been. Off to our last hike today. I'm doing a shortened version of 14 k. Some of us have quit hiking altogether and have elected to hang around the hotel. Others are adding ANOTHER HIKE.

Fighting with internet and rain

Just psent 15 minutes of my half hour of computer time in a hotel in Santa Elena, I think, trying to make the symbol characters on the keyboard work, grrrrr. Did some Facebook entries at the prior hotel this morning as it wouldnt load the blog site. Way cool place though - they are totally off the grid and create all their own electricity, water heating, grow their own food, and so on and are model of total sustainabilty that Canada can only dream of. Look up Rancho Margot. Id go back in a flash and recommend it highly. The all organic food is spectacular.



After touring the ranch, we hiked up to a view point where you could see the entire ranch at once, a lot of the 33 km long Arenal Lake, and the Arenal Volcano. No glowing lava like last night as you need to view at night. Ive given up trying to stay dry and have gone local by wearing sandals and synth fabrics and just waiting to dry off when the rain stops. Its what our guides seem to do. Have perfectly exfoliated feet though from all the mud squishing between my toes in my sandals. Much easier than putting all that gear on and off. Saw some leaf cutter ants, a howler monkey, and a lot more weird plants. Lost my prescript glasses in the mud and tall grass as I had to take them off because they kept steaming up, but my hero guide Carlos got a 20 buck tip for finding them a kilo or so back from where I hoticed them missing. Again, it was just a short hike as it was so wet. However, some folks are hiking even less than I, so I am OK with that.



Took a boat ride across the lake to meet our bus and travelled to the next hotel. Tomorrow is the canopy tour in Monteverde and Im still not sure I want to do that. The option is walking canopy bridges. Mercado por favour.....



Oops - computer time is running out and gotta go! Later.

Do you know the way to San Jose

OK, not that San Jose. Arrived here about 3 pm and had lunch. Had some time to kill so 11 of us hired a van cab and went to a mall. Same stores, over and over. Änd a surprising amount of sex paraphanilia stores. However, there was an Apple Store - one of 3 in this city - and I bought myself an iPod case. I´m using the hotel computer right now.

It´s raining and feels a lot like home, only a few degrees warmer. My talk has been posponed till tomorrow night as 4 people missed their connections and we´re hoping they catch up to us by then. There´s only 2 guys in our group, one of whom speaks fluent Spanish. He´s very popular!

Tomorrow is also our first hike, and we move hotels from the city to what´s been described as a ´Jurassic Park-like valley in the jungle´, with no phones, TVs, or internet connection. OK. So, it´ll be a few days till I´m back here again (unless I find wifi on top of a dormant volcano or something). Speaking of volcanos, part of our hike tomorrow has been shortened as one of the volcanos became very active 2 weeks ago - no molten rock, but lots of gas, and they want to keep us away from it just in case. Hope the clouds lift and we at least get to see the gases coming out.

Leaving on a jet plane. . .

Cool - the Calgary airport has free wi-fi so I can try out the keyboard. Um, it's small.

Nice Air Canada guy at check in - no really! Either that, or I'm still noyused to the newly slimmed down me and the attention it gets. Not that I´m complaining....

Hey, it's a travel blog!

Welcome to my big trek blog. I'll be adding updates mostly with my iPod and it's teensy weensy keyboard, so I'm asking in advance to excuse my more-than-usual typos. Hey, it's the payoff for free wi-fi!

My trip shopping is done (mostly) and all that's left is to enjoy Canmore's Folk Fest weekend, try to sneak another hike in somewhere, and figure out what NOT to pack before I leave Tuesday evening.

Oh, and I need to write a speech! I've been asked to do a 'from the heart' 10 minutes at our opening night Team Canada dinner on Wednesday about my experience with arthritis to bring home the message to team members who may not be personally affected by it and therefore rally the troops about the wonderful thing they are doing in personal way.

Public speaking? Scary!

Chance to warn everybody at once that I'm a gimp and plant some seeds of sympathy in case I'm wilting at the back of the pack? Priceless!