Author: Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)

Lost in the rain on the Grampians Peaks Trail

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)3 Comments
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Very thankful for waterproofs

I love to hike in the shoulder season. The temperature is cooler, so you’re not dripping with sweat while you tote around your pack. There are fewer people, so it’s less likely that you’ll be stuck 10 feet behind some asshole who thinks everyone else on the trail wants to listen their shitty EDM playlist. And there’s just something about the misty, transitional weather that accompanies spring and autumn that makes hiking during that time feel like an otherworldly adventure.

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Of course, sometimes that adventure is more like a walk through Mordor than a trip into fairyland. A few weeks ago Steve and I went hiking in the Grampians, a national park about three hours’ drive from Melbourne. The weather during the week was decent but as the weekend approached the forecast looked worse and worse. 80%+ chance of rain is never what you want to see when you’re preparing to spend a few days in the great outdoors. Moreover, this would be our first time tent camping during a hike, spoiled as we’ve been with New Zealand’s amazing hut system.

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My Queen in the North

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If you haven’t been living under a (Casterly) rock you know that the final season of Game of Thrones was… divisive isn’t quite the right word, unless it refers to the divide between the showrunners and good storytelling. While we may see more of Westeros if George R. R. Martin ever finishes the series, for now its watch has ended and most of us who have followed it for so many years are reflecting on it.

I certainly have a lot of criticisms about the series finale, the final season, and the show (and book series) as a whole, but there’s one moment in the last episode that completes a storyline I have cared so deeply about throughout, and it’s the one I keep coming back to when I think about Game of Thrones’ place in the canon of fantasy. Spoilers for all of Game of Thrones from here on out: Continue reading “My Queen in the North” →

“Closing the distance” three years later

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)2 Comments

Three years ago this week, after a year and change of shuttling back and forth between Seattle and Vancouver for weekend trips to visit my long-distance boyfriend, I got on a Bolt Bus with a one-way ticket to Canada (metaphorically, anyway; they mightn’t have let me in if I hadn’t actually booked a return ticket). We spent a few days in the basement bedroom of a not-so-comfy sharehouse he had called home for the first year of his Canadian working holiday visa and then we moved into our first apartment together on West Broadway, a small but cute, retro-looking one-bedroom with mint green walls and close proximity to the many breweries of the False Creek industrial area (all the important stuff).

It was definitely a big adjustment; it was my first time moving in with a significant other and it was our first time spending more than a week in the same place in over a year. “Closing the distance” was obviously so exciting but also nerve-wracking in some ways. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to “survive” LDR (long distance relationships) and being apart from your SO, but as wonderful as closing the distance is, it brings its own set of challenges.

However, after almost three years of living together (aside from another three-month stint of LDR before we moved to New Zealand), I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the important things to remember in order to successfully close the distance.

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My travel bucket list

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)1 Comment

This week marks six months in Melbourne, which means Steve and I are halfway through our visas here in Australia. While we still have plenty of time left for more exploring down under (trips to Cairns, Sydney, and Tasmania are in the works, as well as a few weeks in Japan during the Rugby World Cup), it’s also time to start thinking about our post-visa adventures. We’ll be heading to Ireland as our next long-term destination, but leaving Australia just as it’s coming into summer to head to cold, rainy Ireland in the dead of winter doesn’t sound like the the most fun.

As we begin to outline our plans (in a massive spreadsheet I’m having way too much fun making) for a couple of weeks hiking in New Zealand followed by a ramble through Southeast Asia, I’ve started thinking about my ultimate travel bucket list. I’m lucky enough to have already been on several trip-of-a-lifetime adventures, from a road trip across the USA a few years ago to a year living my best Lord of the Rings life in New Zealand, but the world is so big and there’s still so much more to see. Here are the other places and things I’m most hoping to experience someday.

Hike Mount Kilimanjaro

I bought Steve’s flights for Japan for his 30th birthday present, and I’ve already told him that when I turn 30 a few years from now, I want a ticket to Tanzania. While I’m not into mountaineering and I definitely don’t dream of ascending all seven summits, after Mount Kosciusko earlier this year I would like to see the top of one more. The tallest peak in Africa, Kilimanjaro is high but not overly technical, meaning that you have to account for altitude but don’t have to worry about plunging to your death off an icefall. The average trek takes about a week and a half, and sounds tough but so rewarding.

See the Northern Lights in Iceland

Steve and I talked about flying up to Yellowknife or Whitehorse in hopes of seeing the Aurora Borealis when we were living in Vancouver, but in the end the trip would have been extremely expensive and if we hadn’t gotten lucky enough to see the lights we would’ve felt like there wasn’t much to do in either town. In Iceland, even if you don’t see the lights you’re still treated to some of the world’s most beautiful waterfalls and cliffs. The northern lights would just be an amazing bonus.

Visit Patagonia

Aside from Antarctica, which is its own thing, South America is the one country I haven’t yet visited. When I do, I want my first stop to be Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Mountains, glaciers and lakes create awe-inspiring landscapes. By the end of this year I’ll have plenty of overnight hiking experience and I’ll be prepared to take on hikes like the 7-day O trek, as well as many incredible day hikes around the area. And while mainly being an outdoor-focused trip, I also want to visit cities in villages in the area, like Ushuaia, the southernmost city at the end of the world.

Do a YTT abroad

I know that I want to undertake a yoga teacher training someday, more to deepen my own practice than necessarily to teach, and ideally if I can take the time to do so I’d much prefer an intensive version of the 200-hour course than one that is split up over nights and weekends, in order to fully dedicate myself to the training. And if I can go the immersion route, I’d love to do so in another country, where a new environment will help me leave behind the day-to-day and completely focus on learning and yoga.

Take a photography trip to the Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Skye

My friend Medb and I were planning to do this a few years ago and then she, a fellow adventure-lover, ended up taking off for New Zealand on short notice instead (and really, who could blame her?). However, I’d still love to do this someday and now that I’m heading back to Ireland for good(-ish) maybe we’ll even get to go together! I’ve only been to Edinburgh previously, and while it was a beautiful city I’d like to revisit, I really want to get out into the wilds of the moors and see the rugged beauty of the far north of the country.

Backpack Southeast Asia

This is the one that’s in the works. As I said, we’re hoping to skip out on Irish winter and spend a few months eating, hiking, and relaxing (but mostly eating) our way around SEA before arriving back to Ireland in early March (“Just before Paddy’s Day” – Steve). Right now our hope is to visit Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and while we haven’t done much planning yet, thinking about this trip is my current favourite daydream. Anyone with recommendations, please share them!

The sounds of memories

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Last week I was lucky enough to see two gigs by artists I have loved and wanted to see live for a long time. I still remember exactly where I was when I first heard Shakey Graves—down to which song (‘Dearly Departed’) on which radio station (NPR) and even which street I was driving on when it came on the radio (Davisville Road in Southampton, PA). And Hozier is one of the few artists I can say I listened to before they got big, although that was only because I was living in Ireland and so ‘Take Me To Church’ was on everyone’s playlists for months there before it ever hit North American airwaves.

It got me thinking about how strongly tied to memory sound can be. There are so many songs that make me think of a certain time or place, down to minuscule details about where I was or what I was doing when I listened to them. Often music conjures up memories of people or moments as well, whether it’s a fond memory of childhood and your parent singing your favourite lullaby or a song that you can’t listen to anymore because it reminds you too much of your ex. Sound is unavoidable. It can sneak up on you, a song coming unexpectedly on the radio or in the grocery store.

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Six Months to Marathon

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When I finished my first half-marathon, I thought “I’ll definitely do that again, but I’ll probably never run more than a half.” When I ran my second, I thought, “I could probably tack on a few more kms, but I’ll probably never run a full marathon.” After the third, when I had finally reached my sub-two-hour half-marathon goal (1:56:42), I found myself immediately thinking ahead to the next goal. But this time my goal isn’t just time (although I’m hoping to run <1:55 in my next half-marathon in a few months), but distance. I finally felt ready to take the plunge and sign up for a full marathon.

The first thing I had to decide was: which one? My first, obvious thought was the Melbourne marathon in October, as I knew that we would be moving over here after our time in Wellington had finished. However, we originally weren’t certain that we were going to stay in Australia for a full year, and I didn’t want to train for a marathon and then not run it (barring circumstances like injury that could obviously crop up wherever I am).

I started looking at the Gold Coast marathon in July, hearing that it was a flat course and figuring that the dead of winter would hopefully cool things down. After moving to Australia I quickly reassessed; the heat and humidity of summer in Melbourne has both made it very hard to run much, meaning I’d be very behind on my training if I was to run a marathon three months from now, and it showed me that I have no interest in going up to the notoriously-humid Gold Coast for a race. Luckily, by this point we had decided that we were going to see out our year in Australia, so Melbourne was back on the table.

The Melbourne marathon is on Sunday, 13 October, exactly six months from now, and I officially registered last night. I’ve decided to use a Hal Higdon plan based on the recommendation of… pretty much everybody, and I’m going with the Novice 2 plan because I want to push myself a little (I’ll drop back to the Novice 1 plan if needed but looking at the prerequisites I think I should be okay. It will be slightly modified as the plan has you running a half-marathon at the end of the ninth week and I am going to do Run Melbourne’s half-marathon event on 28 July, which is only seven weeks in, but for the most part I’m aiming to stick to the plan as closely as possible. It’s definitely going to be tough to stick to in points—namely just two weeks before the race, when we’re planning to be in Japan for the Rugby World Cup—but I’ll make the time to run and will luckily be tapering then anyway.

The plan runs for 18 weeks up until the marathon which means that I won’t actually be starting it officially until the second week of June, but in the meantime I’m taking advantage of the cooler weather (finally) and building mileage, strength, and endurance by running as much as I can in preparation. Running a full marathon six months from today is going to be the biggest fitness goal I have ever, and maybe will ever, achieve, and I’m planning to do it right. I’ll check in with updates on my training and progress as I go, for support and accountability, and on 13 October I’ll see you at the far side of 26.2.

Follow me on Strava if you want to keep up with my training!