Month: September 2020

Holy sh*t.  I can’t believe I did that. 

On Wednesday I launched myself out of an airplane at 13,000 feet (with a professional skydiver strapped to my back to keep me alive)! 

That easily ranks as the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Sitting on the lap of a strange man on the floor of a small rickety 30-year old Cessna airplane with my feet dangling out of the open side-door, 4 kilometers in the air above the prairies. Then 8,000 feet of freefall for 60 seconds and a smooth parachute glide the rest of the way down.

I’m not exactly sure “why”.  But I think it was therapeutic in some twisted way.  Perhaps it was the act itself that required relinquishing absolute control of my fate, or perhaps it was the hasty but emotional hand-written letter to my family that I left behind for them to find in the event that I hit the ground at full speed.  Or if nothing else, it made for another good story from the sabbatical…

Also had a great day on Friday with my youngest son as we set off on a road trip to Drumheller to check out the dinosaur museum.  After about 5 visits over the past 15 years with the kids, this was the first time any of my “guests” had the attention span to last more than 30 minutes. I finally had the chance to make it to the end of the dinosaur exhibits and find out what actually happened to them (until now I had assumed over-industrialization of a carbon based economy).  We also did a guided tour through the local hills and found several small dinosaur bone fossils which was kind of cool. That was enough to satisfy my long held desire to become a paleontologist.  We thought about cloning the DNA in the fossils to genetically recreate the dinosaurs in order to populate a for-profit theme park on a private island.  But turns out it’s been done before with mixed results.

And finished the weekend with my oldest son on an amazing fly-fishing float down the Bow River.  It was way better than the couple of corporate event fishing trips I’d done in the past, as this one included beer, 80’s rap music, no corporate bankers, and we actually caught fish (shout out to our friend and expert guide Scott Rayner!).

It’s going to be tough to top this past week, but I’ll keep trying.

This week I focused more on my physical fitness and sporting skills. It was primarily centered around nightly adult “learn to play hockey” lessons.  Having taken up the sport at age 40, my hockey skills are slightly behind those of my peers (if peers is defined as 9 year-olds).  I do feel that I made moderate progress this week (again, if progress is defined as sucking slightly less). On the plus side, the home-made picnic table has proven to be quite useful as a place to air out my hockey gear. Not sure I ever want to eat lunch on it again though. 

My days were also fairly active. This week’s full workout regimen included the following:

• 6 hockey sessions
• 4 golf sessions
• 2 tennis sessions
• 2 soccer sessions
• 1 personal trainer session

In the end it proved to be quite exhausting. I don’t think that I can keep this pace up for the balance of the sabbatical. By Friday I was almost longing to be back to the somewhat sedentary life of a desk jockey.  But then I had a nap and felt better.  Except for my knees, sprained right ankle, and pulled groin.

Looking forward to this coming week when I tackle my fear of heights head on.  Unless I chicken out.  We’ll see…  Stay tuned for this one!!

Struggling to settle into the new routine with the kids’ school and activities starting back up (although “routine” was exactly what I was trying to break out of in the first place with this sabbatical…).  It is definitely harder without the kids around during the day.  I’ve found myself driving them to school in the morning just to spend a bit more time with them, even though last week I had forked over a not-insignificant cheque for the school bus service…

The other challenge with the new kids fall routine is to have them delivered to the pool at 5:45am for swim practices.  Guess who gets to chauffeur.  So much for a solid 8 hours of sleep per night while on sabbatical.

Started a meditation practice this week.  There’s an app for everything.  The intro course is pretty easy as its only 7 minutes a day.  Although you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to be “present and mindful” for that long.  In fact, on Wednesday the 7 minute meditation turned into a 45 minute nap…

Other successes this week include:

• Survived cardio-tennis class
• Daily golf practice
• Gambling on English Premier League soccer
• Got my mountain bike fixed (now just need to ride it)

Enjoying the last of the summer weather. 

Buenasera. Io sono una mela verde matura.  I thought I was making some moderate headway learning Italian this week. Killing it on my app, then got a reality check when I tried to watch an Italian soap opera on-line.  Going to need some more motivation. May try to book a trip to Europe, maybe go sometime between the second and third wave…

Did fly to the Okanagan this past weekend for the official end of summer holiday at the lake.  Booking this flight 8 months ahead seemed like a good idea at the time.  Very odd experience that included fever sensors and Air Canada pre-bagged care packages with headphones, pretzels, water, masks, gloves and sanitizer.  Fake sense of cleanliness while you sit inches away from sweaty strangers. Great weather out there though, while Alberta got it’s first snowfall of the year. And kudos to my daughter who finally won the family wakesurf competition, landing the first 360!  I was never even close.

In the vein of self-betterment, though, I think I hit golf balls at the range every day last week. We’ll see how it translates to real rounds.  Have a couple games planned this week and don’t want to suck badly.  Also have cardio-tennis sessions starting up this week.  Never tried it before.  Worried that the more experienced stay at home moms will be hammering forehands at me as I sprint back and forth, begging for mercy.

And back to school. First real week this week. Let my peaceful introspection begin.

Well, I’m not going to lie to you, they’re not all going to be spectacular. This past week was a little bit slow. Spent the better part of it recovering from the week 6 canoe trip (i.e. sleep deprivation, muscle pain, gastro-intestinal challenges (shouldn’t drink water straight from the river…)). Don’t get me wrong though, it was still a great week just hanging out at home and in Canmore, with family and with friends, getting some golf in along the way.  I may even have drifted off to sleep in the afternoons a couple of times while I was reading the paper. 

But I didn’t advance any of my grand self-actualization objectives.  And that’s ok too.  I think of the past 7 weeks as “phase one” of the sabbatical. Holidays with family while the kids were out of school. Not worrying about anything else. Now comes the harder part, though.  Transitioning to “phase two”. Kids will be going back to school this coming week. Leaving me at home. By myself. All day. A whole lot of Jonny Gould time.

Of course I’ve started to think about some of the things I’ll be working on in the coming weeks and months. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here by putting them on paper, just in case I don’t actually get to them.  But suffice it to say that I’ve just dusted off the old guitar, and have downloaded a learn to speak Italian app…