I’m looking out into my backyard at a scene I would normally expect to see late March or early April. Heavy rains. Snow all melted. Saturated soil. Standing water pooling on the ground. Our mighty spruce tree, now uprooted lies prostate on the ground. Perhaps it encountered one too many springtime’s like this over the years. Our sump pump in the basement is working tirelessly with very little rest to keep our basement dry. I’m praying the electricity will stay on. Have I just woke up after a long three month sleep? I check the date on my computer. It reads December 30th. But it sure doesn’t seem like it. Then I remember I usually write a year end blog post. I’ve been calling these posts my “Running Into” series. To try and retain a little bit of normalcy in my life I decide to write my latest year end post. I guess I will call this one Running Into 2025.

I missed last year’s “Running Into” post for the very 1st time since I started my blog in 2014. I was in New Zealand for my daughter Naomi’s wedding. Plus I got to meet and spend time with my two grandbabies Archie and Arlia for the very first time. I was only in New Zealand for a mere two weeks. It was so hard to leave. When I did arrive home, most of my writing energies was about my New Zealand adventure. New Zealand was such an enormous high for me. For whatever reason, the rest of the year I have felt I have been in a bit of a melancholy funk. So for the remainder of the article, come with me as we travel back together in time through 2024.

RENOVATIONS

My wife Lynne and I bought our current home in 1992. It was four years old when we moved in. We moved in on December 1st that same year when our oldest child Naomi was only seven months old. It is your standard run-of-the-mill starter home in a subdivision where the houses look all the same. It was only after we moved in did we realize how cheaply the house was built. Over the years, several times we were considering purchasing a different home with more land. Nothing happened, as the kids didn’t want to lose their friends. Friends really are important.

We really haven’t done much with this house. Shingles replaced and a new furnace a few years back. I knew the windows desperately needed replacing. They were fogging up between the window panes a mere three years after we moved in. Making them seven years old when they started breaking down. They were that cheap of a window. But money was tight. With so many window scammers around, I kept putting it off. This year we had my wife’s post office friend’s husband (who is a contractor) over to reattach our deck. Which had come off the house after a heavy snow a previous winter. Rotten wood was discovered when a piece of siding was removed. Our old windows had been leaking extensively. Not only did the windows need replacing, the rotten wood particleboard and wood framing also needed replacing. Because so much siding was ripped off to get at the rotten wood, it was easier just to replace the whole siding.

With the siding all off, Lynne and I also decided to have a one inch Energy Shield insulating board installed. The last of the insulating board and siding was finished early December while it was snowing. Randy and his daughter Meagan did an amazing job. On the outside it looks like a brand new home. Indoors it is much more comfortable. No more drafts. The temperature stays constant and the house doesn’t quickly cool down like before. I’m sure (at least I’m hoping) we will see a substantial drop in our heating bill. Which is good for our planet.

RETIREMENT

Well not quite retirement. I’m one of those of retirement age who is still working. An April 24, 2024 Statistics Canada article reports 30% of Canadian born men ages 65-69 were still working, 17.3% by choice and 12.7% by necessity. Cars break down and windows certainly don’t last forever. They need replacing. Which means I’m still working. Sometimes I get envious of others who retire at 55 or even earlier. But I mustn’t let it bother me. I am so grateful that I have the health and strength that I can still work. Plus I really appreciate the two jobs that I now have. When I took on the school crossing guard job in 2019 at 61 years of age it ended 43 years of heavy labor type work. My body was feeling extremely tired and worn down. So often during those 43 years I’d mutter, “I can’t wait to retire”. I’m guessing I may have not have been the only one. I typed those very words into Microsoft Bing and a massive 31,800,000 results came up.

In 2022 I agreed to speak for eight Sundays worth of pulpit supply at three churches in Oro-Medonte and Ramara Township. The three churches are called the Uptergrove Charge. My wife Lynne and myself right away felt so loved and appreciated at each individual church. They are such dear congregations. We were asked if we were interested in continuing. It just felt right to continue after those eight Sundays. In 2023 and 2024 I was preaching three Sundays a month. With a summer break this works out to 34 Sundays a year. With some simple multiplication I discovered I preached 102 times during each of the two years. The same 34 Sunday arrangement has been established for 2025. I’m discovering these churches have been extremely important for my personal health and well being. They give me purpose as I prepare messages for each Sunday. Just like the human body responds to pressure, with bones and muscles strengthening from the pressure of exercise and averting atrophy, our brains and even our spirits can shrink when nothing is calling us to do something creative or active with them. So thank you Uptergrove Charge.

My other job is school crossing guard on crazy busy Ontario Highway 93 in Hillsdale. The highway itself is very draining and soul crushing. Each day I’ll encounter several aggressive, speeding drivers blowing through our little village. Others are driving distracted while on their devices. While yet other drivers are running the red light. Then there are other drivers who block the crosswalk or deliberately roll through the stop signs endangering the children walking to school. With the 900 to 1,000+ cars and heavy trucks travelling through each hour, the constant highway noise encountered each shift gets extremely grating on me. This scientific research article from National Library of Medicine talks about the connection of road traffic noise exposure and inflammation and oxidative stress. This includes the “progression of noise-induced vascular dysfunction, disruption of the circadian rhythm, accelerated aging, neuroinflammation, and changes in microbiome”. Plus with each and every breath I am filling my lungs with highly toxic concoctions from tailpipe emissions, tire particulate matter and brake dust. This is all very concerning.

Yet I know with certainty, if I were to give up the crossing guard job, it would leave a huge gaping hole in my heart. The children give me so much joy. They are so friendly, courteous and respectful to me each day. Their smiles, greetings and always saying thank you as they cross gives me such an important purpose to get out of bed, get dressed and get up to the highway to see them each day. An exciting happening for me is witnessing one of the moms starting a walking school bus on her own. As she walks her two little ones to school, children will wait as if waiting for a school bus and join in as she walks by. The Hillsdale walking bus is getting bigger with more kids jumping on board. A Grade 7 girl has been helping out, which is so cool. The walking school bus is extremely popular in New Zealand, from where my wife is from. Lynne was crossing guard before I took over (she did it for 16 years). She really wanted this to happen for Hillsdale. Exciting for Lynne. And so exciting and such an encouragement for me. As I deeply long to see more active transportation in our community and on our planet. It gets cars off the road, is healthier for the environment & healthier for people. Here is a very informative web page issued by the New Zealand government on walking school buses.

READING AND WRITING

I always have such an admiration to people who have stated they have read 30, 40 or even 50 books (or more) over the previous year. I will read one book, possibly two books a year. Though sometimes I wonder with all the reading I do with my sermon preparation, would it be the equivalent of 30, 40 or 50 books a year. For Christmas each year my son Curtis gives me a paperback book based on a true story. These are my favorite. The books Curtis gets are always amazing choices. I’m “old school” and much prefer a hard paper copy that I hold in my hands and turn the pages with my hands. Reading a paper version is also one of the few respites from having my life being constantly advertised to with intrusive ads and my online activity harvested for data by algorithms while I am surfing the internet.

My extreme dislike of advertising is one of the top reasons why I pay a substantial premium on my main blog. From banners to pop-ups to mid-rolls to auto play videos to sponsored content, online advertising can get really annoying. So I pay to have my main blog advertisement free. There are website platform subscription tools I could utilize if I wanted to. Plus other import options available where I could fundraise to defray my costs of running my blog. Buy Me a Coffee, Go Get Funding, Patreon and the list goes on. But I don’t have any desire to. I am just very grateful to everyone who drops by to read my attempts at writing.

I have really struggled to try to get into a writing frame of mind this past year. Lynne encouraged me to keep at it, even when I didn’t feel like it. In the end for 2024 I wrote 11 articles, 6 on this main blog and 5 for my church blog. One thing I have noticed is earlier articles are really getting buried behind more recent articles. So I have compiled them all in order by year on one page titled All My Posts. This link can also be accessed on the top right of this website. Lots of different topics. I have written an article on all my 15 official timed ultras and 3 marathons. Plus articles on several of my Monarch Ultra relay ultra distance runs, which were not officially timed.

RUNNING

This is definitely not a “save the best to last” moment. I am very embarrassed to call this article “Running Into 2025”. In late April I ran the challenging 50 kilometer Pick Your Poison for my 7th consecutive time. Still healing from injury and with very little training, I was really unsure if I would finish. It wasn’t pretty, but I somehow pulled it off under the cutoff times. It was my slowest Pick Your Poison finishing time by over 26 minutes. I was also the 2nd last finisher under the 9 hour cutoff.

The race was tough on my injured knee. Plus my 65 year old body which had so little training was trashed. I decided to take the next couple of months off from running so everything could properly heal and recover. After those two months it was summer and it was hot. I had absolutely no mojo for running. Because I haven’t had access to my car like other years, I have been doing a bit more cycling. Before the snow hit, several days each week I’d cycle around 10 kilometers of back roads on my road bike. I now have an e-cargo bike to try and replace my car. Most of my e-bike riding has been for the picking up of orders bought from an online store. It is a 45 kilometer round trip. The nice thing with this online pickup place is I’m in and out in 30 seconds or less. My fear with regular stores is my bike won’t be there when I come out after 20 minutes. Despite locking it securely with two locks.

In early November there was a knock on my door. When I saw who it was I literally froze. It was Kim, the daughter of my next door neighbor. She had come down Whitehorse, Yukon to visit her mom. She is young, extremely athletic, and coming from the Yukon she’s a phenomenal trail runner. Kim was asking if we could go out for a trail run. Last year when she visited I had a lot more running mojo. We had some amazing trail runs together. This year, up to when I got that knock on the door I would be very optimistic if I had run a total of 20 kilometers since Pick Your Poison, 6 months earlier. I asked Kim “How about tomorrow same time”. Even if I wasn’t physically prepared, at least this would give me some time to prepare mentally.

The run with Kim went extremely well. Though I do think she went very easy on me. We ran together for five kilometers, but I felt like I could have easily kept going. Which was a great feeling. I’ve really, really missed running with others. Since that early November morning I’ve been running a bit more. And on December 1st at 8:00pm, registration opened for the 2025 Pick Your Poison. This race literally sells out within a couple of hours. If you try to register the next day, you are out of luck. I got in. So April 26, 2025 I will be back on the starting line for an attempt on my 8th consecutive Pick Your Poison 50k.

Although I’ve hardly used my little Prius since I started my crossing guard job in 2019, it was always nice to have it for those times when I needed it. Like going to Copeland Forest for my long runs. That place is so special to me. Not getting to areas like Copeland Forest I have really struggled with this past year. It also means that races further away are not going to happen. I can’t register for a race if I am uncertain I can get there. So when I casually mentioned to my wife Lynne that the Salomon Summit 700 has a new 50k point to point ultra distance at their race in the Blue Mountains, she answered without hesitation, “Go for it, I’ll drive you”. I said, “It will be really tough. It has almost 7,000 feet of elevation up plus down”. Lynne said, “It will be no problem for you. This will be your birthday present” (my 67th birthday is 2 days later on July 7th). The last time Lynne drove me to a race and supported me at the race was the 56k Limberlost Challenge in 2018. She did it for my birthday. The race just happened to fall right on my 60th birthday. It was the strongest race I have ever run. I even won an age group award and got to stand on a podium. Lynne has always been so supportive of me. She’ll believes in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. Whether it is my public speaking, my writing or my running, I owe so much to her. Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you for stopping by and for reading.