Canal cycling adventures

So.  Those of you who’ve been here a while may remember that once upon a time, a few lifetimes ago, I decided to do the Ride to Conquer Cancer (and if you're really bored, you can read all about it - in reverse order - here!).  And I dutifully trained and got fit and while prob not as fit as I should’ve been, did it, rode the whole way, and was in the middle (aka not nearly dead last) each day.  However, since then I’ve done exactly zero “real” rides and only a handful each year in general.   But now that Sasha can’t do the long walks w me anymore, and in desperate need of some outdoor cardio, I’m back into the bike ;)

So I got it all tuned up and had Monday after the cottage off work, so I went for a ride.  I’d intended on about 10k - there’s an out and back again route (I don’t love those but it’s the only pretty spot to ride around here) that has good stopping points at about 5 and 10 k distances from my home.   All good.

It's not as lovely as the lake view at the cottage,
but it's still way better than riding in the city!

Also - remember we live “where the ships climb the mountain” aka at the top of the hill between Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario.  Which means every path from here leads down. 

Now that particular trail leads down slowly.  It’s super gradual.  So I had an easy ride but not a ton of excessive speed and I mentally shelved the fact that the return would be uphill.  Was 100% NOT ready to go home at the 5k turnaround so I kept riding.  I noted the 10k turnaround just cause it always amuses me that it’s there (a random ferry that exists cause a ship took out a bridge 100ish years ago and the city decided it was cheaper to ferry pedestrians across forever than rebuild the bridge - and they still do!  For free :)).  Anyways I was amused by the ferry but failed to connect it to the fact that this now meant my overall ride would be closer to 20k.  And kept going.  And then I started seeing signs for Welland business district (insert sarcastic comment here - those who know…) but also what looked like a park or something, so I decided I’d ride to that and check it out.  Was not anything interesting but did add a few more kms to the out distance, so I decided to be responsible and come home.

I kinda love this bridge;
I may or may not have used it as a mini-break to stop and take this photo ;)

Fair enough - super slow comparatively but I made it and wasn’t overly sore.  Was particularly pleased about my shoulders which usually kill after any ride.  Oh Hindsight is a nasty little gremlin.

By that evening my quads were cement blocks.  FML.  Went for a 5k walk (normal loop) to try to work them loose.   Theoretically it helped.  Really?  I doubt it.  It just made me more tired.

Next day - actually felt not too bad.  Decide to do an easy loop, test out my snazzy new speed and cadence sensors (read - I moved the wahoo ones from the spin bike to the real bike) set everything up (incl learning how to measure wheel circumference — my husband has like half a dozen tape measures; do you think I could find any of them when I actually needed one?  Nope.  Hence why I have my own mini tool box ;).   Anyways - wanted to test if the new toys work.  They do.  However with extreme darkness looming and increasingly large drops of rain falling at an ever-accelerating rate, I basically went around the block and back into the garage.  Perfect.  No leg pain, no shoulder pain, world is good.  We won’t mention the entire ride was less than 3km.

So now we’re into today.  Work was long and meeting heavy and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and possibly Friday so I really wanted to go out after work.  Out I go, things feel mostly good, decide to take the trail the other direction.   Only issue with that is it’s a significantly steeper hill that way.  Lol TONS of fun on the down, less good on the up.  Also, I’ve never taken that trail so I couldn’t just fly down it cause I had no idea where it went.  If you knew the route was clear, it’d be so much fun.  But it's a twisty path which is really pretty but has limited visibility.  And the part that is straight has light posts planted in the middle of the bike path ;-P

Anyways - first, I forgot to tell the app I was doing anything till the bottom of the hill.  Boooo.  Although at least my watch figured it out.   It’s amazing how motivating (or Demotivating) data (and lack thereof) can be.  But anyways - decided I wasn’t in for a repeat of Monday so I’d turn around at the 5k mark.    And I DID (although I admit I gave a moment or two’s thought to continuing to where I could buy some ice cream, but that would be slightly counterproductive).   Turn around and go back up the hill.  And up.  And up.  I had to remember how to switch the big gear out - I basically never use that half of my gears lol but I was getting desperate.   I’m not sure I *want* to see the data on how slowly I was moving!   I made it to the top, but by then my poor shoulders - you know the ones I was so excited were not tired the other day — were screaming (remember the gremlin?), and I was moving too slowly to sit up (spoiler alert - that’s why they weren’t screaming on Monday, I did half the ride sitting up instead of holding the handlebars!).  Then on the slightly flatter portion I got enough speed to sit up, and the second I let go, the wind yanked my tire out.  *sigh*.  Riding (horseback that is) reflexes still reasonable since I caught it and stayed on, but yeah *facepalm*.  Riding along the canal is almost always a giant wind tunnel - some places worse than others.   I know this from walking and running.  Yet somehow didn't clue in to the impact on a bike. Lesson learned.  So even though I was contemplating an extra loop near my house cause the legs were feeling good and I was having fun, my shoulders and dying phone convinced me I should go home and the whole ride was a mere 10k and took me 36 minutes 😂.  Horrifyingly slow even with a solid downhill that could've got me some speed if not for trees and lamp posts ;).

The easy down isn’t as much fun as the steep one - you def don’t get the same speed - but the easy up is a lot less embarrassing!  Lol. Overall though, a reasonably harmless way to enjoy an evening.

AI Learning

So continuing the Spanish adventure - a while ago I dove into AI apps that have specifically targeted components for language learning (eg not chatGPT cause I'm too lazy for that ;).  I've recently been getting a lot of emails about updates to some of the options that, when I had a lesson cancelled today but still wanted to practice talking, encouraged me to go do some digging.    And my top three remain the same as previously but I have to say, one has made significant changes.

We'll start with TalkPal - which is an app I have on my phone with a year long subscription that I probably won't renew.  This one was top of the line when I first investigate and is still good - it allows for at least some back and forth and has some semi-scripted conversations that are certainly helpful to practice scenarios, as well as debate mode and the ability to chat with historical (or fictional) characters which is moderately entertaining.  My issue with it is the updates seem to be mostly cosmetic rather than functional; the advice isn't improving, you have to hit record every time (okay that's being really picky but it does take away from conversation) and it's been a long time since any new debates, conversations, etc seem to have been introduced.  Maybe coming soon?  Idk.  But also frustrating is the time delay - if you say more than a few words or pause for too long in the middle trying to think of what you're going to say, it can take more than a minute to send at which point, I've already moved on to other things ;)

TeacherAI I still have hope for and they currently have a 3-day free trial.  They are updating All The Time (I know cause I get emails - that I signed up for, not spam) but I really have issue with giving a credit card for a free trial (not that I won't do it, but I resent having to) and so I haven't looked at the latest version because I haven't seen notice of some of the updates I was hoping for.  I DO think they have excellent language learning feedback - far better than TalkPal that is really just conversation practice.  But app (website not app actually) is clunky and screen shots suggest that hasn't changed, and I'm not super-convinced the other things I was waiting for have been updated.   So I passed on that one.  It MIGHT be a superstar by now, but I'm not convinced.

So the one that won this time was Langua - this one I didn't even play with last time because it was brand new and very expensive.   However, I got an email (again - signed up for) with a significant discount.  AND an *actually* free trial.  Super short, but no CC required.   Also, this is the platform I take lessons from (one of the only one that actually interviews their instructors) and having tried many many many language lesson platforms over the years, I'd really like these guys to stay in business so I would like to support them when it makes sense.    I was SUPER impressed by their AI bot, even on my very short trial, so I sucked it up and got myself a year subscription (admittedly significantly discounted but still a lot more than the FREE I've been paying till now which basically includes everything of theirs that I'd use except AI).

Anyways - the first thing that made me think this was going to be a fun adventure was the personality expressed in one of the first options in the setup:

Edited on Day 2 to add it does occasionally hallucinate,
but no worse than my voice-to-text on my phone does and that's in English

But the best part wasn't included in their advertising (I sent them a message they should fix that!) - after my session I got an option to "receive feedback" that was so incredibly useful it'll keep me going just for that.

So I'm writing this on the basis of exactly one use but things that I found useful as an intermediate learner:

- you can choose whether or not you also want to be able to read what the AI is saying.  And if you select no and regret it part-way through, you can click on the blanked-out dialog box, it will fill in the box for just that statement.  I absolutely love this, and it was one of my big frustrations with early versions of TeacherAI that you couldn't have conversation-only.   TalkPal has it only for one area (phone calls) not for any of the debates etc.

- there is also an option to have it translate what the AI said into English (or whatever your starting language is presumably; you set current language and target language before you start). 

- for Spanish I had the option of AIs from several different countries (important for accent, vocabulary, and because there are certain core structures that are different in Spain from everywhere in Latin America)

- I also had the option of whether I wanted it to include slang (I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm looking forward to it :)

- after I spoke it wrote what I said and the conversation continued without pause.  However, I could at any point go back to something I said and get it to identify errors (literally one click), and if I didn't understand those errors it would give a bit of an explanation and an example of how it could be rewritten.   As someone whose grammar knowledge far exceeds their speaking ability, this was super helpful to me, because as soon as I see what's wrong or what it should be I know enough to understand why.   IF, however, you were a stronger speaker than grammar-nerd, this might be super frustrating and would be a good time to have a real-life teacher waiting in the wings to ask follow up questions of.   That being said, there's also a section of the AI about "ask a grammar question" so in lieu of a real person, that's where I'd go next.  But I haven't tested that out yet.  It's clunky to me to have to leave the conversation to understand something - I can see it getting there, but it's not there yet.

- However, to be fair, I didn't ask it.   I say this because at one point the casual chat, it asked me a direct question in which there was a critical word I didn't know (aka without knowing that word the sentence itself had no meaning); I asked them to explain it to me, which they did - in Spanish, and the conversation was able to continue after that as though I hadn't interrupted it.  So that was awesome - worked just as it does in my lessons.   This was also before I figured out I could cheat and translate what it had said to English, but it's a far better learning tool to ask it to explain to me so I'm going to forget I know that option ;)

- And, if you DO leave the conversation, you have the option of resuming it in the same place when you return, which is excellent.

- only other mild frustration was that one correction changed the meaning of what I was trying to say.   That was not something I was going to debate with a computer so I took a screen shot so I could check later.  Google agreed that what I wrote was the correct translation for what I wanted to say.  But despite common belief, Google doesn't know everything so I also took it to my human teacher (who also presumably doesn't know everything but I trust him more than Google when it comes to accurately translating common usage statements between Spanish and English lol) and he also confirmed I'd said it correctly.  So win for me, but may be mildly aggravating if it happens often or if it derails conversations.

- the first chat I did (talk about anything) was pretty good at staying with the conversation and it followed a natural trend that didn't forget TOO soon what we were talking about.  I'll test a longer one in the next few days to see how long before it starts annoying me for not remembering basic details.  That was my biggest frustration with TeacherAI the first time I tried it and I was ready to throw the machine out the window.   The second chat I did was under the "debates" category about Remote Working (those who know... ;)) this one appeared to flow naturally and was not repeating at all, but definitely felt a little more scripted.

- I told it I was an intermediate speaker and I'd say the whole thing was level appropriate.  I obv haven't tested how that might change if I tell it I'm a beginner or advanced.   

So yeah, I'm very excited about this one, but the follow up PDF feedback summary was HUGELY valuable to me and I didn't really see that that was going to be included when I signed up.  It identified strengths and weaknesses (which align to feedback from my real-life teachers so I tend to believe it) which was very cool to see.

I found this useful and it just appeared after I ended the conversation

It also included the script of anything that I said that had errors along with the correction, explanation for the correction, and potential alternative suggestions (regardless of whether I had clicked into these in the chat), and, interestingly, a "cultural note" at the bottom about using formal language (since this was potentially a work-related discussion; I didn't take it that way - more like talking about work than talking to people I work with, but I appreciated that they highlighted it either way).

"Cultural Tip

In Spanish-speaking countries, especially in professional settings, it's common to use more formal language and address people using "usted" instead of "tú". While your conversation seemed casual, in a real work environment, you might need to adjust your language to be more formal, particularly when speaking with superiors or clients."

So yeah - that's my summary of day one with my new toy.  It's definitely still early tech, but I was really super-impressed. 

Short hair challenges

TIL Dying short-ish hair is harder than long hair.  Truly short hair I would imagine would be no problem, but dying hair that wasn’t long enough that I could bring all the strands in front of my eyes and follow back to the root made it clear how much I’d been “cheating” in how I was dying my hair previously.   Suffice to say this did not result in the most professional looking effort ;)

Birthday adventures :)

Took my birthday off work today.  The original plan was either the ropes course in Niagara or a local beach - both of which got toasted by weather that was going to be on and off rain all day interrupted by thunderstorms.  Awesome.

So backup plan - went out for breakfast as a solid start :).  And then went hiking at Short Hills.  I found a just slightly less than 5k loop "Terrace Creek Trail".  Sb good to go right?   Well for the first half it was; the trail was well marked, we were clearly on the right one, and despite a few raindrops making it through, for the most part the weather was holding.   And then...  There were multiple trail options and none of them were ours :(. We spent a fair bit of time (and a couple kms) walking around to see if we could find the 2nd half of our loop and eventually failed at took a completely random other half loop back.  Our walk ended up being an extra couple kms long and with a soundtrack of increasingly angry thunder.   However, we didn’t have to double back so I actually really enjoyed both parts other than the frustration of not knowing where we went wrong 🤣    Any the trees protected us from most of the rain, so I’m still deeming it a pretty strong start to the day :)

This was my favourite spot on the trail

We made it back before the serious rain though and home with no challenges, only a few minutes before the torrential rain hit.  Chilled for the afternoon with my critters and looked up some promising restaurants for dinner, completely forgot that basically everything that step nicer is closed on Mondays around here.  Fail.  Ah well - we went to Chilie and Agauve for nachos and fondido which was super tasty.  Stopped on the way back to snag some birthday cake and overall a really lovely day.

Random word of the day

 TIL: A luthier is someone who repairs stringed instruments - not sure how I never knew that before 

How to train your dog

TIL Guide dogs trained to find appropriate gender washroom based on concentration of scent of hormones.   That makes perfect sense but was still somehow fascinating to me.

Lake Superior Circle Tour: To Mackinaw City and Home Again

Kinda loved the symmetry of this shot

So after Duluth was a long driving day to Mackinaw City, but it was good weather, some entertaining randomness, and - of course - really pretty scenery.

This is Duluth - much better shot with the sun out

We passed into Wisconsin fairly early in the drive but no drama as we drove through it.  

One of the last Superior shots I took

Pretty scenery and not much else.  Kinda lovely.

In Wisconsin we had some marsh-like breaks to add variety to the scenery

We got to Michigan and shortly Lake Michigan started appearing on the other side of the road, which was kinda cool but almost distracting 😂    Like beautiful scenery but it just seemed wrong to have the lake on that side of the car.  

Lake Michigan

I really have no idea what was going on here, but it made me laugh

This just might've beat out the Canada Goose on the other side of the lake ;)

I really enjoyed Mackinaw city.  I could've used another day (or even a few hours) there, but then that'd be enough of that.   It's not huge and like 99.8% tourists.   I think not much to do beyond a day or so of exploring the primary strip.

The bridge going toward Mackinaw City;
The weather was wild depending which direction you looked...

Took this on the bridge to Mackinaw City

The view from our room was fairly stunning

To the point that our hotel had no interior hallways (like what you see in the Caribbean) which tells you it's absolutely not open during the winter.

This was in the same area as the market

When we got there there was a market type thing set up about a block from the hotel and we tried to go explore, but we were getting there about the same time as a terrifying-looking storm was rolling in, so vendors were packing up as quickly as they could.  Ah well, prob ended up saving me money I didn't need to spend ;).  

Dinner we went to a restaurant on the main strip and had fairly excellent pizza.   It was packed and a very odd combination of Christmas trees and disturbing animal trophies -- I feel like it's a decor that's particularly American ;)

I mean, we had driven past this earlier in the day ;)

After dinner the rain had ceased so we walked part of the main strip - mostly cause I wanted to go to the Kandy & Korn store to get some Candy Corn for Chris (ugh - I swear HE would consider it a treat 😂.  It's not my thing, but I can appreciate that it is his).   But the store didn't have any?!?!   It had types of candy and types of popcorn, but sadly no candy corn.   

Roosevelt also appreciated the room

There was lots of ice cream though and had I not been super stuffed from dinner that would've been the perfect way to end.   Or so I thought...

Because that night, just after Mum had started to settle in and when I was still up, we heard a loud bang!   Sure enough, there was an *amazing* fireworks display on the lake that our balcony gave us a front-row seat for.   We had NO idea it was scheduled.   So we sat and watched that as a really magical end to the last hotel night on the trip :)

The cherry on top

The next day all that remained was the drive back home.   I will say I hadn’t really clued into the difference the Canadian ban on single-use plastics makes till I saw the pile of garbage we had collected just at breakfast in the hotel.  Each piece of cutlery was plastic AND individually wrapped in more plastic.  Other stuff too of course but that was the part where I really saw the impact. 

On the road again...

The drive itself was good. Billboards re-appeared about Flint Michigan.  The funniest part of the trip home was at the border crossing where Google suggested a faster alternate route ;).  Suffice to say, we kept to the original route.  

umm thanks Google but I think we'll suffer through the 6 minutes to avoid being arrested

The only really difficult part of the drive was the two-hours it took me to get from my parents' place to mine (usually about 50 min *sigh*).  So that was less ideal.  But made it, tired and happy, and looking forward to the next one.

Still smiling over the fireworks last night.   What an amazingly perfect end.

Lake Superior Circle Tour: Into the US

A good day for driving and atmospheric photos;
less great for scenery ;)

This was one of our shorter days and mostly rainy - we were targeting Duluth and our room wouldn't be ready till 3 (or later as it turns out ;) so we took our time leaving in the am and getting there.  The border crossing was easy, and I was really pleased that we weren't immediately inundated with billboards and weapons advertisements as happens when we cross the border closer to home.   It was still super-pretty, and even still had "Lake Superior Circle Tour" signs along the route.   Kinda love that.  Also, it still seems wild to me that we drove so far north and were still 10 mins from the border lol.

At a random rest stop

There was a town I was interested in doing a Let's Roam on the way (the "Castle Danger" Tour - how could we NOT do that one), but it seemed like the weather wasn't going to cooperate.   

Tunnel through the clouds

Also - when we got to the relevant city for that Let's Roam (which was super cute btw and if it hadn't been raining I would've loved to walk around and explore), we had zero cell or internet.  Making Let's Roam an impossibility and Google questionable at best.   Why does Google matter?   Well Chris had asked me to bring back some craft beer for him, and being not a beer drinker, I purchase based primarily on name, and we saw a sign for Castle Danger Brewery.   lol so we found it and paused long enough for me to go in and get Chris his souvenir :)

Even in the rain, you sometimes have to get out and explore.

We continued to Duluth which is a pretty town with a scary number of churches (seriously disturbing - and an entire AISLE of bibles in the Barns and Noble?!?!  And yes, I went in the book store; Canadian bookstores don't shelve Spanish books so I have to stock up when I can).  But otherwise the town was very pretty, generally well kept up, and I love all the hills!   😂 Mum’s car recharges if you ride the breaks so all the downhills were a win!   

There were all kinds of storm-inspired waterfalls that made the drive even prettier

Hotel wasn't ready when we got there, but they said it'd only be about 20 mins, so we went and got gas and then more craft beer for Chris (again based on names - Templar and Samurai beers this time lol) and when we got back to the hotel the room was ready.

We were pretty hungry so we hit up the chain restaurant across the parking lot and very much enjoyed it.  Then just to kill some time, we visited the aforementioned Barnes and Nobel (a few blocks away) before heading back to the hotel for the evening.   

I was very tempted to order this drink just for the critter ;)

Also, remember back to the start of the trip when Mum bought me a Wooble as a souvenir for the trip?   Well, meet Roosevelt:

In Duluth I finished my 2nd ever crochet creation,
and earned a fabulous souvenir for this trip!

Lake Superior Circle Tour: Last Days in Thunder Bay

The Sleeping Giant
Wearing a ship for socks ;)
Lake Superior is COLD!

So after 29 degrees and sunny, the next day was only like 8 deg when we got up?!?!  And drizzly.   Complete reversal from the day before so we took that as a good day to go to the Panorama Amethyst Mine and learn about Amethyst mining history and geology.  The route to get there was a little dodgy at times - we were pretty sure we were going the right way, but what seems to be a very obvious tourist location, quickly feels like it's really hidden in the background.  Then there's a very steep hill with some switchback turns that was... more intense than expected.   So I laughed when we saw this at the top:

Someone had a sense of humour

It was a family owned mine and the woman telling us about it was very passionate.

The owner during the history and geology lesson

It was interesting and I definitely learned things.  I'm glad of my habit of reading signs or I would've missed my favourite part - they mythology lesson!

I enjoyed this

There were very few people in our group, but the parking lot was huge - my guess is both school buses and tour busses visit (I also assume this cause part way up the hill there was a sign that busses should not go any farther ;).  But once again, timing win, as there were very few people there when we went. 

The mine

Neither Mum nor I were super into digging for Amythysts ourselves though and we were being partially eaten alive, so once the tour was over we explored super briefly, stopped in the shop, and then headed out.  Some great views and pics on the way back - weather was thinking about clearing :).  But still chilly so we mostly just spent the rest of the day relaxing.  

The drive up the hill was steep,
but the view before you go back down was worth it!

The sun came back the next day so we went down to Prince Arthur’s Landing.  

The whole walk was super pretty

I really enjoyed it; there were various different types of gardens, some art exhibits, it was fairly gorgeous out, we walked the full length and then sat and enjoyed the park for a bit.  

The trail was as accessible as they come :)

Later had a lazy afternoon involving a book in the sunshine :)

We spent some of that lazy afternoon chilling in the park instead of the hotel

The hindsight gremlin probably would've put one fewer day in Thunder Bay and one more on the trip home, but we had originally planned for roughly one thing per day and wanted an extra day in case we got rained out.  It's just that we squished many of those things into the first two days!

Random extra photo with part of the garden, the Sleeping Giant, AND a sailboat :)
Just a perfectly lovely day - temp, weather, activity, and company.