2011

Ah what a time of year, I definitely love the festive period.

Well I'm back in Canada, beautiful and snowy here and have enjoyed a lot of great family time over the past 7 weeks. Since last week I've been in Whistler at my family home and enjoyed a great new year with my girlfriend and her family.

I have taken a few relaxed weeks training wise, all in or around the 20 hour mark. 30km of running though in 2 days Monday/Tuesday of this week so still making the most of my time.

After a bike/run at the gym this morning and a 3 hour epic snow trek with my parents I headed into Whistler village for a quick bite to eat. I was sitting in one of my favourite places to eat reading the "2010" edition of the Whistler Question magazine and really enjoyed Whistler local and regular columnist Paul Ruiterman's 2010 summary piece.

"...the year started out with a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed an estimated 230,000 people and from which to this day Haiti has not recovered.

The next month an 8.8 quake hit Chile, but the country seems to have taken it in stride — even though 2010 was not yet done with it.

Meanwhile, here in Whistler, we had a few people over for a visit back in February and March. They came, they partied and they watched a good show — several shows, actually. The whole thing had an ugly start when Georgian luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in a serious accident, skidding off course doing approximately 140 kilometres an hour. But organizers where able to keep the Games on track and Canada was on its way to bag 14 gold medals.

Meanwhile the world kept turning and North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, pissed with the joint anti-submarine warfare exercises organized by the U.S. and South Korea Navies, decided that this was a good time to sink a South Korean corvette. His navy boys selected the ROKS Cheonan for the honour, striking it with a torpedo fired from a North Korean sub. Later in the year North Korea would shell a South Korean island with the result that the two Koreas are still walking a dangerous tightrope as the new year rolls in.

Further north, Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull blew a hole in European civic flight schedules while a few days later the Deepwater Horizon blew a hole in BP’s public image. Eleven crewmembers where killed that day and the worst ecological disaster in American history was about to unfold.

On April 27 Greece’s sovereign credit rating was downgraded to junk, precipitating the Euro crises that would later envelop Ireland and may still do Portugal and Spain as well.

During the Soccer World Cup in South Africa, played between June 11 and July 11, the world was introduced to the vuvuzela — something I could have done without.

Later on in the year Chile received its second shock of the year when 33 miners got trapped 700 metres underground in a mining accident in San José. The world watched as all 33 were brought back to the surface after surviving underground for a record 69 days.

Finally in November researchers at CERN trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, which, in a world where computers do calculations in nanoseconds, is a long time. The creation of antimatter did not cause a black hole to appear, blowing yet another End of Times prediction out of the water.

Since I did promise some names as well as events at the beginning of this column how about a few from the 2010 Hall of Shame? Try Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods or Conan. Meanwhile, our own Leslie Nielsen, no Hall of Shamer, passed away on Nov. 28.

No, I did not forget. We had some local experiences as well.

To wit: an asphalt plant, paid parking, budget overruns, the WB sale, anti-HST simpletons, old growth cutting, and probably some stuff I missed.

But you know what? Been there, done that and meanwhile another year went down the drain while I wasn’t looking."

Great summary of the past years events. Some terrible natural disasters, the winter Olympics, the summer football World Cup, instability in North Korea, serious financial instability in Europe, the historic trapping of anti-matter at CERN, the rise and fall of many a sports, Hollywood and political star but of course a lot of other great and not so great things happened as well, all the while another year passed us all by.

I hope everyone has a great 2011, I'm loving being out in the snow right now training hard and doing what I love. And lest I forget, my big sister's boyfriend asked her to marry her yesterday ... she said yes, congratulations guys you two are an awesome couple.

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks,

Happy 2011

The river Dee back home in Scotland

Crathes castle very near my parents house back home
My awesome dog Basil!
Taking some pictures out at the Banchory Lodge Hotel in Deeside

The Peterculter Heritage centre
Scottish sunset from my bedroom window
Christmas tree!
Parent's Christmas party
Christmas day
Christmas dinner pictures with little sister
Mum and Dad
Callaghan Valley, BC
-15 snow shoeing!
Morning sunrise at the Callaghan Valley backcountry lodge
Snow shoeing :)
Some beautiful snow meadows in the distance past the trees and across the creek

Nicole and I at Callaghan lake
Black tusk in the distance