I’ve taken a few stabs at starting to document my retirement, and I haven’t liked any of them so far. Too frequent and the writing feels forced and dull. Too infrequent, and I won’t be doing regular journaling, as is one of my habit goals. I have settled on writing by hand more frequently – often near-daily, so now I’m going to try pulling together a monthly summary and hoping I’ll build a habit that sticks better. My consistency was less than ideal in July.
Canada Day, Pride, Hot Rods, Pacific Marine Circle, and Pension “stuff”
July began with the Canada Day weekend. I recall July 1st being warm, with lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf, including a lot of walking, and culminating with fireworks on the inner harbour.
We’ve also been doing a lot more thinking (and test driving visits) about where to settle and buy in the CRD for our retirement. Prices are far more appealing on the West Shore, but any further than the Hatley Castle area of Colwood simply isn’t on. South Saanich, View Royal, Esquimalt or Vic West are our most likely destinations, with the last two a strong preference. Victoria would be lovely, but properties that don’t need a LOT of work tend to be too much money no matter where they are located. Access to the Galloping Goose, Lochside, or the E&N rail trail is essential, too.
The Victoria Pride Parade was on July 6th; always a happy, colourful event, and this one was pretty toasty as well.
On July 9th I tried to restart my interval run training, but in all honesty running feels like it’s mostly going to be for pleasure and somewhat easier paces. I just don’t have a fast gear any more, and tempo and long runs seem to be more my jam now. This doesn’t mean I won’t ever race to test myself a bit, but a season of racing, like I used to do most years, isn’t happening.
On July 10th we did a little day trip over to Salt Spring Island. In all honesty it was primarily to have a bite and hit our favourite taproom. We often hike there but were lazy and got a bit of a late start.
On July 14th I ended up pulling a muscle in my lower right trap (according to my physio) and it lingered for a few days, and it really didn’t massively affect my activity levels, except for avoiding strength training for the better part of a week.
We had a classic car event on the inner harbour (we only live a block away) from July 17-20, and it was awful. Endless hot rod engines revving, air and noise pollution until close to 11pm Friday and Saturday night, and a nightmare of 50,000 people descending on the inner harbour Sunday all day.
On July 22nd, we did a full day driving the Pacific Marine loop, which basically goes around the south end of the Island, west to Sooke and Port Renfrew, then across to Lake Cowichan and then comes back down the Trans-Canada over the Malahat to Victoria. We had some nice beach walks with three stops en route, and I started using my DSLR again, and plan to continue using it more. I would say though, that the route didn’t really impress us enough to drive it again any time soon.
The only other major thing from July was sorting out my pension. Given we’ll still have a mortgage I opted for a temporary annuity until I hit 65, which is still four years away. When that expires, we’ll still be OK, with OAS and CPP kicking in for both of us. Until I actually start getting pension payments (likely around the beginning of September), we won’t be in a position to make any offers on properties.
Health & Fitness
In general, running for the month was middling to a bit low, at a little over 70k, but I did the most cycling of any month since the crash, totalling 475k. I’d like to regularly be doing 120k of running and about 600-700k of riding a month, so a little way to go yet. Walking has been really solid since we came back to Victoria, with my total for July just shy of 144k. I still do yoga most nights, and resistance training at home 2-3 times a week.
As for other things I now monitor / deal with, my BP has generally been quite well-controlled, averaging about 128/75. I saw a couple spiky readings mid-month after going down to monitoring once a month, but monitoring it twice a day for five days, I never saw anything concerning again. I think I’ll stick with once a week for a while. In terms of things still lingering from the crash, I want to say I’m fully recovered cognitively, but since I won’t be returning to work, I’ll never really know if anything would have reared its ugly head under pressure. I’m still waiting for a CT scan, which needs to happen before I can get my incisional abdominal hernia, a nice souvenir of my spleen removal, fixed. Apparently I can expect to wait up to a year, and it’s only been 3-4 months so far. Sadly, I think I may be saddled with the loss of sensitivity in my pectoral / rib area permanently. Not seeing any change there.
I still have significant light sensitivity (often when doing the morning dog walk on sunny days), but my vestibular symptoms when running and walking, and the nondescript brain fog, are pretty much gone. The light sensitivity does trigger tiny episodes of both, but they tend to be momentary.