From comedy to sad reality

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I first saw it as a joke on TikTok, African content creators making comedic posts about sponsoring needy children in America. I got the humour, Americans not being able to afford healthcare is a serious concern. After growing up seeing ‘sponsor a child’ ads on TV I can remember my parents putting a picture of a kid we sponsored, to help feed and educate her, on our fridge… to see this same sort of thing about a kid in America is clever satire.

Today that satire came to life. Sitting in a hotel room, watching an American movie television station with my wife, we saw an ad with a bald little boy being featured. A voiceover of his mom shared how hard it was to have her child diagnosed with cancer. Then the true purpose of this ad came to life, this was an American hospital asking for monthly pledges to change a young kid’s life. This is no longer comedy, it’s pure tragedy. An American hospital is asking for $19 a month to change the life of a young American child.

It’s no longer a comedic bit… This is the reality we live in today.

Downtown Escape

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Last night 6 of us went to see Moulin Rouge, and we made a weekend of it downtown. The show was wonderful, and the lead singer was absolutely sensational. There were no weak performances, and yet the lead outshined everyone. It’s just amazing to see someone passionately performing at the top of their game… and she was the player of the night.

On top of that we all stayed downtown for the weekend. A staycation in Vancouver, a little rest & relaxation in an otherwise busy month. Just had a hot tub with the boys, and we’ll all be heading to dinner in a couple hours.

A fun weekend escape… and there’s still more to come.

The moment I’ve been waiting for

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I wanted it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. Last February I wrote ‘Schoolyard rules’ and basically said that unlike in the movies, in the real world the bully usually wins.

I ended that post saying,

“If we want to see the feel good movie ending, it won’t be one hero protagonist saving the day. No it will be the band of brothers all standing up to the schoolyard bully. It will be all the kids in the schoolyard saying, ‘That’s enough!” It will be his own little gang deciding that he’s not worth supporting. It didn’t happen the first time around, maybe it will happen this time… but I’m not betting on it. I’m looking around the school yard and I just don’t see enough kids banding together, and I definitely don’t see enough adult supervision.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at The World Economic Summit in Davos was a call to action, an invite for a band of brothers to take action. The only question now is if we get the movie ending or if the moment is lost in cowardice… and the bully still wins.

I’m hopeful.

It’s 6am, let’s go!

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We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.

I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.

Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!

It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.

It’s a commitment to a friend.

We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.

99 Days

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Although I’m retiring at the end of the school year I really haven’t been tracking or counting down (yet). But I do have a colleague that is also retiring and he shared with me that yesterday marked 100 work days until we are done. So I’m heading into work today with just 99 work days left. That seems a bit surreal to me.

I know someone who started their retirement countdown with over 2 years left. It worked for him, but my mind doesn’t operate that way. I have always struggled with being excited through anticipation. I used to fake it for my kids, but they are grown up now. I get a tiny bit excited for a trip the night before, but only after my bag is packed. Even if I’m packing a bathing suit to go sit on a beach, the excitement level isn’t that high for me.

Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out by not getting excited in advance. I see excited anticipation in others and wonder what gene I’m missing that I don’t get the same feeling. I know that comparison is the thief of joy, but there is something ironic about joy being the thing you are lacking in your comparison.

99 days. Down to double digits. It seems short. There is still so much to do. And yet, I’m ready. Maybe not excitedly ready, but I’m ready.

Cardio time

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Last year I wanted to do one Max VO2 training session a week, but I really did it only every 2-3 weeks. This year I’m committed. My activity of choice right now is 8 one-minute sprint intervals. My interval timer is actually set to 1:15 high intensity followed by 1:10 low intensity. The reason for the additional time is that it takes about 13 seconds to get the treadmill from my low intensity walk, at a 3.4 pace, to my high intensity pace starting at 8.6 and progressing to 9.4 on the final one (I skip 8.7 for those that are math inclined).

I thought I’d share the stats from my watch for the last 3 runs, and then I can see how I compare closer to the end of the year.

January 11, 2025

January 14, 2025

January 20, 2025

I’m actually not trending well, with my average and overall heart rate going up, but fluctuations are to be expected and that’s why I decided to share the last 3. There are two big challenges ahead. The one I have control over is dedicating to doing this at least once a week. The one I have less control over is seeing how quickly I can get my heart rate to recover and if I can decrease my overall peak heart rate doing the same activity… this challenge should be achieved just from the commitment to do this weekly.

Time will tell, and the data doesn’t lie.

Maintaining balance

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I’ve written about finding balance many times before, and I think that in our busy lives finding balance of time is one of the most challenging things to figure out. Between work, family, leisure, and health, there is never enough time in the day. Today, I’m thinking about a different kind of balance, physical balance.

A few weeks ago on one of my Coquitlam Crunch walks I slipped on a small icy section. It was careless because it was my second trip past this area, and I had noticed the ice the first time, then walked right through that section blissfully unaware the second time. I took most of the fall on my hand, my wrist was a bit swollen and very sore for a couple days, and only recently I haven’t noticed it at all. I was lucky not to have broken my wrist.

As we get older, falls become one of the biggest threats to our wellbeing. I have to wonder if I was 15 years younger, would that ice have caused me to fall, or would I have been able to regain my balance? Also, would my situational awareness have been sharper, since I should have already been aware that section was slippery?

Either way, I fell, and had the potential to do a lot more damage than I did. A few months ago I was regularly working on my balance. One thing I was doing was balancing on one leg with my eyes closed. I was getting better at it and then asked both my daughters to try and they had no issues doing it longer than I could. This is something that definitely decreases with age, and I want to add improving my balance back to my stretching routine.

My dad passed away at 79. At that time he was already shuffling around, unable to go up or down stairs without holding the rail and going one step at a time. My in-laws are in their 90’s and were far more mobile than my dad was at 79, but I can also see their struggles with balance now.

Physical balance is so critical to a healthy lifespan, and it’s something that is easy to take for granted until you no longer have it. And falls can be a quick way to hinder how well you can balance in the future, or at the very least they can disrupt your healthy routines with an injury. Yes, strength trading helps a lot, as does cardio training… but I think exercising specifically to maintain balance is something I need to pay a bit more attention to.

Archiving memories

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There is a quote I often hear about the fact that nobody will know your name in 3 generations. This makes me think of my grandparents, and the stories they used to tell. I was fortunate enough to get some video recordings of both of my grandmothers (Granny T & Granny B), but not of my grandfathers. Today I dug up the 10 pages story that my grandfather, Motel Truss, had recorded a few months before he died. I don’t have the recording itself, but I have the document that my mom transcribed from the recording for him. He wrote it as a request from the Barbados Jewish Community. Later, a book was written, ‘Peddlers All: Stories of the First Ashkenazi Jewish Settlers in Barbados‘ and my grandparents were all mentioned in it as well.

I think towards the end of the year I am going to try to document images and stories of each of my grandparents. Nothing extravagant, but something that my kids, and maybe their grandkids could look at to learn a bit about their distant ancestors. It was a very different time, with completely different hardships and challenges, and I think their stories are worth documenting and sharing.

I wasn’t quite prepared

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Today I learned a good lesson. I’m in pretty good shape, but almost all of my cardio training has been under an hour. The only exception has been training to Everest The Crunch, (climb a local power line hike 37 times in two days this coming August, to exceed the height of Mt Everest). Two weeks ago we did 4 times up and ended with one trip down the crunch.

This week we did one more trip up for a total of 5 up then one down.

It was a gorgeous day. We got started by organizing cars and help driving at the top, then headed down to the base and started walking up around 7:45am. At that time the sun wasn’t out yet and I was dressed warmly, but not appropriately. This was my first mistake. I was wearing heavy, fluffy long underwear under water resistant track pants, and a cotton shirt under a hoody and a rain shell.

By the end of the second trip up the hill I was a hot mess. My long johns and cotton shirt were soaking wet. I felt either too warm or chilled from the sweat, there was no happy medium.

My second mistake, and the bigger of the two, was that I didn’t eat enough. I brought no snacks, and only had a protein shake about 45 minutes before starting. There is a stairs section of the crunch that always gets my heart rate up pretty high, and on both the fourth and fifth trip up the hill my heart rate didn’t really go down after the stairs. Basically, I was running on empty.

My buddy, Dave, who is doing this adventure with me (it was actually his idea), appropriately lectured me. And, I’ll be wearing quick dry layers and bringing more sustenance than half a water bottle of flavoured water the next time we are doing 3 (and more) hours of exercise. Lessons learned.

The good news is that 5 trips up still felt completely doable, and I’ll be prepared to get to the next level in a few weeks when we go for 8 trips up. We are still a long way from being ready for 37 trips up in 48 hours, but I’m confident Dave and I will be ready when the time comes… especially since I’ll be a bit more prepared.

Parent influence

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In my early years of teaching I had a student, Caitlyn, who seemed to have everything ‘together’ which is not something you usually say about a Grade 8 kid. (I think it’s ok to use her real name, she would be around 40 years old now.) She was bright, a good student, polite, kind, and helpful, with a good sense of humour and just the right dose of confidence.

Caitlyn came to me one day to tell me she didn’t have her homework because she did it the night before at her dad’s house, forgot it there, and then slept at her mom’s last night. Up to that point, I didn’t even know her parents were divorced. A while later we had student led conferences and both parents came. The way they interacted with Caitlyn and each other, I would never have guessed they were divorced. I remember thinking that there is no way Caitlyn could have been so ‘together’ if her parents were angry and bickering and making a battle out of the divorce.

Kids are incredibly influenced by their parents. I’ve seen this time and again. A parent is quick to blame others for something their kid did, so is the kid. But it’s not just kids mirroring their parents. A parent puts up hard, unrealistic expectations, a student rebels and refuses to play along. The point being, parents have incredible power to influence their kids and that influence cannot be understated.

How do we as parents treat others? Respond to stress? How do we value community, physical fitness, diet, diversity? It’s not a perfect match, but I’ve seen over and over again just how much parents influence their kids.

I was reminded of this again when I met another Caitlyn-like kid. It was an interview situation for our school and in the interview I watched the way her mom supported her, encouraged her, and gave her space to be her own person. The kid was an absolute gem, and I could tell this was fostered and nurtured at home.

It’s not a perfect correlation, and I even know families where you’d swear the siblings had different parents because their personalities and dispositions were so different. But time and again, I’ve seen the difference good parents make. Kids can be awesome despite their parents, but good parenting goes a long way to fostering great kids.