I am off to climb in the Calanques (and that region) with a good crew: Simon, Kate, Chantalle, France, Phil, Rachel (and 'Xander who will only be climbing if he escapes supervision for too long), and I think a couple of Phil's friends from England. It should be a good time.

That's a properly Ottawa-winter amount of snow out there. I don't feel like we've had a "real" winter in several years, now. A combination of warm temperatures and lack of snowfall and/or snow accumulation. But this winter has been pretty steadily below freezing for what feels like a month now, and we've gotten two foot-level dumps of snow in 5 days, so actual real accumulation.

Of course, this also means I'm moving a lot more snow around than I'm used to doing. I've got a little "electric snow shovel" to help, and so I don't become one of those 50s male heart-attack on first snow-storm of the year statistics.

For a number of years now I've been targeting a reading rate of (an average if) 1 book a week over the year, and recording what I read.

This year (2024), I read 55 books, which sounds like nicely exceeding my goal, until I compare to last year's 87 books.

Still mostly not Cis/Straigh/Whilte/Male authors.

List in first reply...

International arrivals at YOW was the busiest I've seen in ages, maybe ever. There was my Chicago flight, and 4 sun-destination flights all at the same time (Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Cancun, and Punta Cana all arriving at the same time.

Work trip this time. Unfortunate time for visiting Salt Lake City, though, as it is neither climbing nor skiing season there right now.

Fuckity-fuck fuck.

I'm heading home from two weeks of climbing vacation in B.C. I had a total of two weeks (16 days), of which 4 got burned in travel (Ottawa -> Squamish, Squamish -> Penticton, Penticton -> Vancouver, Vancouver -> Ottawa), leaving 12 potential climbing days. Of those 12 potential days, I climbed 10 days. So, pretty good.

Rather early this morning, for a 5:15am departure, but I did manage to get about 3 hours of sleep before my alarm went off at 03:10.

I pulled a big (probably weighed about as much as I do) chunk of rock off the wall at Mont Rigaud on Monday while leading a new (probably bolted in the last 2-3 years) route. Fell, of course, inverted and banged the back of my head into the wall. So glad to be wearing a helmet!

Nobody got hit by the falling rock, and everybody is ok!

I managed to knock a kitchen knife off the counter at the airBnB in Austria, and slice my finger open. I proceeded to bleed a lot. Probably bone-deep cut, but didn't catch anything important, as I could still wiggle my finger tip without pain. It may, though, affect my climbing and belaying for the rest of the weekend, as it is the index finger on my right hand.

The knife also nicked my toe on the way to the floor. But that was only a little bonus blood everywhere.