The blisters were too much

On Thursday, I had one of my longest planned walks between Belleville and Napanee going through Mohawk territory

The last 5km, after leaving Deseronto were real rough. I had four blisters on my toes and I was pushing through it. Starting and stopping is usually the worst part. Once I get moving I generally don’t notice it and can get back to a good pace after about five minutes. 

Friday I woke up and it was just too much. I had another 30kms planned to get to Kingston. I tried to push through but just couldn’t feel confident that I’d be able to do that for six hours. Walking through the middle of nowhere. No options to bail halfway through. 

There’s a bus that runs direct from Napanee to Kingston. I pulled open the page, went to book and then closed it. No this is fine, I have to keep moving. I’m walking to Montreal not bussing. 

I kept moving on a trail about a kilometre from my Airbnb and came to the same pain conclusion. I sat on a big rock and wanted to cry. This felt like giving up. I haven’t done a challenging thing since I immigrated to Canada. To see a challenging thing through to the end is just something I don’t do anymore. 

I booked the ticket and walked a bit further to get breakfast near the bus stop. I lost the battle but I can still win the war, so to speak. I’m determined to not make this another hobby or interest that succumbs to my ADHD induced disinterest. 

At that Tim’s, I had my coffee and took whatever paper material I could find to start reworking my plan. 

I know my limits better now than when I started. I put together a new plan which allows me to walk a bit less each day, aided by a few local bus routes to give my feet a break. 

My rest day is over now in Kingston. Getting to spend that with my wife meant so much. We happened to be here for the 10th anniversary of the last Tragically Hip concert. It was an amazing break. Quality time well spent. 



I’m getting to Montreal the hardest way possible. But now I’m doing it with a new plan, renewed energy and a new pair of boots. 

From the tent

I’m lying here in this little world I’ve built. Everything around me carried on my back for over 100km now. I’d love for some more room to spread out, but it’s all the space I actually need. 

It keeps me free of the bugs, gives me privacy from the other campers. Later tonight I hope it will keep me sheltered from the rain. 

I’ve long felt a certain safeness in small spaces. Opposite of claustrophobia, though I wouldn’t describe all small spaces as safe. How you can feel like you have just enough in just enough space. Nothing more and nothing less. Like an astronaut packing their necessities. No rockets required. 

I feel that now. This part of camping I don’t mind. 

Update on Camping

Look at how beautiful this is!

Still not a fan of camping. Back hurts and a bad sleep. Thankfully only 20km of walking today. That will put me a stone’s throw from Belleville!

I need to get a new pillow and sleeping mat. The cheap ones I picked up a few years ago really aren’t cutting it. 

The blisters are also getting to me today. Just spent a good hour in a nice park in Brighton trying to get those fixed. That park had public washrooms, picnic benches, lots of shade AND a water bottle refill station. 

Honestly, today hasn’t been great. It’s felt the loneliest, hottest and the biggest struggle, despite it being such a short walk today. 

Yesterday was a really great day. I had briefly befriended a garbage man. Two different cyclists who were bikepacking and a pair of runners cheered me on. I had miss calculated my route and originally thought I’d be passing through a town in the middle to get water. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. Thankfully I found a public beach on Lake Ontario and got to use my water filter for the first time and take a dip while I waited for the Aqua Tabs to do their thing. 

Had a nice break at a nature reserve too


Shout out to “The Royal Crown” pub I stopped at in Colborne. Excellent food and cold Steam Whistle on tap. The bartender, upon hearing about my trek, offered to fill up my water bottles. 

This is going to be a short one

When I get to longer breaks on this walk I’ve been reading. I have a bunch of books downloaded. 

I should probably be reading something very profound on this long walk. Like Thoreau or stuff written by a monk. But I’m reading Carley Fortune’s “Meet me by the lake”

and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

GTMTHW: Day 2

Day 2 of Getting To Montreal The Hard Way kicks off with my new morning routine of taping up my feet  has been great for blister protection  

My water filter kit still sits in its bag unused. I have a feeling this kit won’t stay with me past Kingston. I brought this based on thruhiking recommendations. It gets added to the list because thruhikers on the PCT, AT, etc. don’t have water taps available at the end of the night. 

No issues refilling for me! But we’ll see. I want to use it at least once so I can feel like a real backpacker! Even on a day like today where I won’t encounter any water taps (or maybe even water sources) until I get to my destination, I can still carry enough water to get me through the day. 

Off to Port Hope. Here’s a video from a pit stop yesterday. 

Off to Montreal

First leg kicked off with a walk from the CN Tower through Biidaasige Park with Mer. Took a pit stop to have a coffee with my friend Adam. Now I’m en route to Bowmanville to walk my second leg of the day to Newcastle. 


Yesterday I discovered this heat map feature on Strava which shows all of your recorded activities on a single map. So it very neatly shows the complete route I pre-walked going in. 

See the pink line going along the lake

I’m feeling good. Today is an easier day, around 15km of total walking. I’m nervous but ready to get going and feel as ready as I’ll ever be.

Coming to Main Street/Danforth station today felt like a real trip. This station has been the starting point for a bulk of my walks these past two weeks. The goal of walking to Montreal always on my mind but now it’s really happening. Once I get off this train I’m going east and not heading back home till I set my feet in La Belle Province. 

Allons-y. 

Toronto to Montreal, The Hard Way

I wrote about my sabbatical plan here 4 months ago: https://nowuh.com/landing-on-a-sabbatical-plan

Since then I've been busy preparing and getting married. This Saturday, 6 days away as of me typing this, I will set off on my walk to Montreal. I've gone through different gear (hello new backpack and boots) including things I bought for this trip that I now realize I won't use and learned a lot about how to keep my feet mostly free of blisters.

If all goes according to plan, I should be walking into Montreal on September 1st.

In planning this I've gone through a ton of refinement. I did many practice walks with and without my backpack. I learned that I am able to go on a hike right after camping. I learned that 55km is my absolute max I can walk in one day but I'll sacrifice the next day. I also learned that the route from Toronto to Montreal really isn't made for people to walk it. 

One concession I've made is that busses are okay to use. When possible, I'll take a city bus to cross a town. This will come up in Port Hope to Coburg and crossing Kingston. Because the lodging options are a bit difficult, I did have to prebook everything to make sure I'm not leaving myself stranded. There may come a day I need to skip a hiking day just for my physical safety and for the Toronto-Kingston leg, I can mostly rely on the Maple Bus to do that. I'd like to avoid that bailout option if possible. 

In total, I should be walking around 513km with around 40km being aided by bus. This is both to provide myself a bit of a break and because hotel/camping options aren't always available in the cadence I need. Another way I could have avoided this is to add a couple days to my trip, but I know I'll need time to recover within my sabbatical before returning to work. 

Another weird thing I'm doing with this is I'm not technically starting in Toronto. I'll actually be walking from the town of Bowmanville to Montreal. To condition myself from this trip, I've been walking the portion of Toronto to Bowmanville in several chunks. 


When hiking a long journey like this it's important to ramp yourself up. So those 5-10km hikes should help with the conditioning. On August 15th, the only thing that should be left is CN Tower to Danforth GO. So I plan to walk that segment, jump on the GO train, then GO bus and then continue walking until I hit Newcastle to end day 1.

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This coming week, I'll wrap the last two middle segments I have left (Guildwood to Rouge and Rouge to Pickering) and then start doing more 15-20km walks to continue ramping things up.

Wow I’m married

I found it remarkably true what people say about this being the happiest day of your life. I'm filled with so much love and happiness towards Mer and the life we've built so far, and for the life we're going to continue to build together. I'm still replaying memories of that day in my head.


What I didn't find was that it went by in a flash. In some ways it went by at the speed of any other day. But this had moments that were excruciatingly slow (like waiting for our first look around 3pm) and other moments that you could blink and miss. The legal signing ceremony was one of those moments. I think we both just looked at that time as a formality when we were planning it out. But it was really magical. My mom, who has trouble speaking, gave some moving words before we signed. All of our immediate family was in the room with us, sharing in this moment before the festivities. The champagne at the end was a nice touch to deal with the nerves that had been building up throughout the morning.


I spent that morning with my brother Adam and one of my groomsmen, Cody, sampling a flight of ridiculously fancy coffee. It was a nice distraction from my nerves about messing up my vows. A great way to caffeinate after a very sleepless night.

Mer and I headed out on a mini moon right after. A perfect length of time in a tranquil spot filled with good food, highland cows, a neat train and the love of my life. It's an amazing place that everyone should visit, but I'll go ahead and gatekeep it for now.

Revisiting virtual subscriptions

At the start of the year, I posted this about everything that's coming out of my account every month as a subscription. I wanted to check back in on this now that it's been almost five months. 

Note: I'm using voice-to-text software to write this, specifically Wispr Flow, because I recently broke my finger and it's very difficult to type with the cast on.  

My recurring payments of of this writing

This is literally everything that comes out of my personal or joint account on a regular basis

  • Kagi
  • Fastmail
  • iCloud
  • Communauto
  • Carshare
  • Koodo (dumb phone)
  • Fizz (iPhone)
  • SpinCo (gym)
  • Various donations
  • The Globe and Mail
  • NYTimes
  • Posthaven
  • Bikeshare
  • Transit App
  • Google Drive
  • Renters insurance
  • Pet insurance
  • VPN
  • Ente
  • The Verge
  • Betches Media
  • NPR+
  • Gym close to my office
  • Gym close to my house
  • Deezer
  • Monarch
  • YouTube Lite (x2)
  • One video streaming service
  • Sportsnet
  • Nebula
  • All Trails
  • The Guardian

What's changed

Added
  • Gym close to my office
    • I thought having a gym close to my office would have been convenient. I have found out that I prefer going to the gym closer to my house. It's more convenient on the weekends and in the evenings. Usually, this office gym is pretty busy around the same time I would find it convenient to go. Unfortunately, I'm locked into a year commitment on this, but we'll be cancelling it at the end of the year. 
  • Gym close to my house
  • Deezer
    • This is a bit of a left field one and feels like it's very antithetical to my goals but I explain more in the conclusion 
  • Monarch
    • I actually had this one before. I just forgot to add it on the last list
  • YouTube Lite (x2) 
    • Buying two YouTube Lite subscriptions for my partner and me was cheaper than buying a YouTube Family subscription.
    • We both have been watching more YouTube over the past couple months and reached a breaking point with the ads, and we broke down on this.  
  • One video streaming service
    • Used to be Crave, now it's Netflix. This is mostly used by my fiancé, although whenever a new season of Love is Blind comes out, I do jump in on it. 
  • Sportsnet
    • It's baseball season, and the Raptors made a run in the playoffs, so we added this. Mostly used by myself. 
  • Nebula
    • Like Monarch, this was already something we were subscribed to. I forgot to add it to the list last time. 
  • All Trails
    • This one is for my sabbatical. We'll get rid of it after the first year. 
  • NY Times Games -> NY Times
    • Covered by work
  • The Guardian
    • Also covered by work

Removed

  • Apple One
    • We've gone down to just having iCloud.
  • Set App
  • TTC Monthly Pass
    • Switched to pay-as-you-go
  • Bear
    • I had originally intended to get rid of Posthaven instead of getting rid of Bear, but I found Bear to still be a little too limited, especially since I don't support creating blog posts via email, which is the main way I like to post my blog. 
  • Transit App

Planned Changes

Ente

This is a tough one because I really love Ente. I think it's such a great platform. It's really thoughtfully designed, the tools work really well, and I've emailed the CEO and gotten immediate feedback. The trouble is the cost. It's a very expensive product, and it does a lot more than I actually need it to. I don't want to be supporting a big tech company, and it's hard to justify when Google Drive has the ability to share and collaborate on documents, which is, on a day-to-day basis, a bigger thing that is needed for our household.

The Ente Locker is a cool feature, but we mostly get that through 1Password, which I get for free through work. I would pay for 1Password on its own just because of how much we use it. The tricky thing with a lot of this stuff is the collaboration between my partner and me. This would be a different thing if it was just myself. I would probably be using an open-source document service, and I really wouldn't need anything beyond what's on my computer or my iPad.

Since it's not just me, I need to find something that works well for both of us. In an ideal world, we would be seeing something like these smaller, privacy-minded, independent platforms like Kagi and Fastmail, Mailbox and Ente, all of them collaborating. They are aware of each other and that they share common user bases. What's missing is the ability to have one subscription and strong integrations between these so I could mix and match between services and offer my partner a simple solution to collaboration. That's what's missing here, and with a lot of these privacy-focused tools. 


Conclusion

This is very much a one step forward, five steps back kind of post. I was hoping that after four months I would have removed a lot of the subscriptions for my life, specifically the virtual ones, but I actually increased them.
  • Sportsnet will eventually be cancelled after the end of the Jays season, but that's still going to be most of the year. I just have to accept that I really enjoy baseball, and that's not going away any time soon.
  • YouTube: I have mixed feelings about adding it, but we do use it a lot, and I really don't like ads.
  • Deezer was a surprise to me, to see a music subscription streaming service being added to this list. It's hard to deny how convenient it is to be able to quickly listen to music and get a feel for an artist or a song, especially if I'm evaluating going to concerts during NXNE or Departure. There just really isn't an alternative to streaming here.
I've kept my Plex set up at home, so I still am able to stream music from that. That's been nice, and I go back and forth between the two, but Deezer I found to be fine. It kind of reminds me a bit of how Spotify used to be five or ten years ago, when they first came out: pretty simple interface, pretty easy to use, and they have a lot of good AI policies. I determined them to be the lesser of all the evils.

I gave Qobuz a try as well, but it was just not good. Really hard to use, always playing through the wrong speakers, really clunky app for playing music. Just wasn't worth it, but I did like that you could buy music through Qobuz and have it integrated into your library.
























First hike with gear

34KMs in the books. Still need to work on how to properly adjust my bag shoulders were really feeling it at the end. Had to pop into a Shoppers near the end to get some blister patches. I’m feeling good that after consistently practicing like this I can reach Montreal :) 

Last night after recovering from the hike I went through and reorganized my pack. Currently I’m at 19lbs without food or water. I have a few more bits of gear I need to add that are going to bump that number up. Even with food I should be able to stay under the 20% of my body weight rule of thumb. That said, there’s a few more adjustments I can make to get even smaller.