Happy New Years Everyone! 2023 was a great year, our first full year living in a new house in a new province. We accomplished so much and got back into blogging. The cover picture is a shot taken last week from the dam at lake Minnewanka, Banff.
Grab a drink, some fine food and step away from the keyboard, it's time to celebrate! I cut down drastically on drinking this year and more often than not have zero drinks in a week- the doctor should be happy, lol. We tried black caviar for the first time and the cats tell me when it's time to stop work. The most important thing of all is to find that work-life balance, part of the reason why I moved out to the mountains. I'd rather hike than work and don't need to work as much to get a good quality of life out here. win, Win, WIN!!!
Here is proof of a big HPUD participation. The past month you may have noticed I blogged every day, this is the second time that has happened since 2018. Time flies and I respect everyone who has posted consistently with better quality than myself- It takes a lot of effort and I intend to catch up. Powering up this much Hive on day one of the New Year shows my commitment. Waiting for a few more events to happen to double or even triple my wallet by year end.
In a few of my hiking blogs, you may have noticed GPS screenshots of the hikes we did. Last June, I got a Garmin Watch with GPS and a heart rate monitor to up my fitness game. Now my only regret is that there's no barometer or altimeter. It would be nice to accurately track ones ascent living in the mountains.
A proud accomplishment along with blogging everyday this month was exercising every day this month for at least 30 minutes and tracking it. These smart fitness watches gamify fitness-30k steps in a day, 300 minutes of intense exercise in one day, or 300,000 steps in a month are all achievements to be proud of. We have yet to release most of the blogs to match those days but trust me, those were achieved on days of some pretty epic hiking.
Fitness is not the only path to good health, clean air is also important too. We just got this because sometimes the wildfire smoke gets into our house and a good filter ensures high quality air. Upon plugging it in, I thought it was busted as it showed 100% clean air. We hadn't cooked all day and the doors were shut, having central air with a filter was enough to have 100% clean air. Then I decided to fry something up (with the hood range on) to test it out, now I am sort of upset I didn't get one of these sooner. Calgary is one of the cleanest cities on the planet, but the air in ones house is still poor quality, especially if you cook and/or don't have central air. We've been breathing this shit in all our life; if you can afford it do yourself a favour and get a high quality air filter.
Speaking of health, we already had an air washer, this might be another reason why our air was clean. They not only clean the air but add some humidity as well. Things get dry during an Albertan winter, moisture freezes. It's next to another smart purchase of 2023, a rowing machine. We don't walk as much in the winter and it's too cold and dark around this time of year anyways. Sometimes we ski, but this machine is convenient, it was cheaper than a few months of a gym membership and it's in our face. Rowing will be an excellent way to keep in shape for the new year. Now, all that needs work is my diet: I love food, excessively large portions and cooking.
This is Castle Mountain above, it's about halfway between Lake Louise and Banff, we all love looking at it. Thank you for reading this post and I hope you all had a great 2023 and that 2024 will be even better. Wishing that all your dreams will come true and thanks again for all the support Hive.