Nov 2015 Pakenham visit and MEC Indoor Triathlon

I spent some time with my nieces in Packenham, near Ottawa. Quite a shock to the system - the alarm goes off at 5:45am! Two large dogs need to be walked. Homework supervised.
Aside from the early morning (its dark!!) we had lots of fun.

Seeing way to many of these.

So much walking that Caesar is exhausted. (and totally uninhibited)

Buddy, who likes to go out in the screened room, no matter how cold. I was unable to get a picture
of the other cat, Cloe, too fast.

Monty did some sulking as I wouldn't let him sleep on my bed. These are large dogs!
I wouldn't have been able to roll over. They also have access to two couches and two
large chairs along with a dog bed that they never sleep on (the cat does)

After walking the girls to the bus I would then walk one or both of the dogs up the hill for about an hour. I was lucky with the weather; cold and crisp but little rain and often sunny.

"The first pond", where Monty, Caesar and I watched a beaver break through the thin ice one morning.

"The second pond". I only got this far 3 times during the week but its a lovely spot.
The woods are bare of leaves and in one direction you can see through them to
glimpses of the valley. Chicadees, wood peckers and lots of squirrels keep you company.

Every morning I created a different hairstyle for each of the girls. They did a lot of research on Pinterest and found me tutorial videos and step by step instructions.

I think this was called a reverse french braid.

This was a feather braid as you leave feathers of hair hanging below it. With another layer
added it becomes ....

a ladder braid.

My favourite was this one. The hair is taken up into a pony tail and then strands
pulled down into a french braid. This results in a basket like structure around
the head.

After leaving Ottawa I went to Toronto and competed, with Christine and Jason's sister, Meg, in the MEC Indoor Triathlon.

It was held at the sports complex built for the Pan Am Games held last summer.

It is an absolutely beautiful facility.

Chris and I swam in lanes 5 and 6.

As many lengths of the 25 metre section of the pool as we could complete
in 15 minutes. The water was warm and, after lake swimming, it was lovely
having no waves or gritty sand and a line on the bottom of the pool to keep you straight.

Watched over by the signage I saw so frequently on the TV.

We had 5 minutes to change (we took longer) and then 15 minutes on the stationary bikes. That was the worst part for me as the tension was set as if biking up hill. I had a hard time even getting the pedals to move.

Then 5 minutes to get to the track upstairs. The 15 minutes on the track went fast as there were volleyball
matches in the gymnasium below to watch. I ran the first 4 laps and then alternated walking and
running half laps. I haven't done any running in the last 2 years so didn't want to overdo it.

It wasn't as much fun as the outdoor tri-tri I did a couple of years ago on Toronto Island but it was a good experience and certainly a good workout.
I'm going to close with a couple of photos of Rasta as he hasn't been in evidence in the past few posts. These were taken when I gave him some catnip.

Can't get enough of this stuff.

Think I'll just sleep now.