The Highly Exaggerated Decay of 2026

I grabbed a bus uptown yesterday as it seemed simpler than either walking up the hill or driving and parking. My goal was a 10:30 appointment for a free hearing test at Connect Hearing! on Belmont Street, right near the new park area. One must appreciate the efficiency of a quick transit ride when the alternative involves an unnecessary physical struggle with gravity.

The results from the clinic are exactly what one expects at this stage of the journey. I have a slight hearing loss in my left ear. This diagnosis comes merely a week after seeing the eye doctor to complain about visual floaters. It appears my biological hardware is slowly failing its routine warranty checks.

I am clearly starting to fall apart in 2026. The sheer friction of maintaining a human frame is exhausting. It is a good thing I have an extensive archive of photographs, as I may soon need them to remember what the world actually looks and sounds like.

Here’s Looking at You, Kid

At breakfast on Tuesday, my left eye decided to launch an unannounced visual effects show.

It started with a solid, dark thread drifting and twisting directly across my field of view. Not the usual, transparent microscopic squiggles you squint at against a white wall, but an assertive black yarn. After about ten minutes, it took a lazy swan dive toward the lower-left corner and vanished, immediately replaced by what looked like a shakerful of coarse black pepper strewn across the day's blue sky.

Naturally, my immediate conclusion was that the ocular sky was falling.

By that afternoon, however, the pepper storm had somewhat diminished.  Yesterday, I marched uptown for a 9:30 AM rendezvous with the eye doctor and the eye specialist, who seemed to take immense professional delight in explaining that my eyeball is simply undergoing vitreous syneresis, the preposterously grandiloquent term for the structural collapse and liquefaction of internal eye gel.  It leaves what professionals call, floaters, although that term immediately reminded me of swimming pool noodles.

Apparently, after nearly 67 years of solid service, the jelly inside the eyeball decides it has had quite enough of holding things together. It shrinks, turns to liquid, and pulls away from the retinal wallpaper like cheap contact paper in a humid bathroom. The dark thread was the initial peeling; the pepper storm was just the microscopic debris of a routine biological eviction.

The specialist checked every square millimeter of the perimeter, declared the retina completely intact, and scheduled a one-month victory lap to make sure the detachment stays orderly.

When you are thirty, lectures about aging collagen and vitreous 'body' fall on aggressively deaf ears. You assume your various parts will remain in their original factory-sealed condition indefinitely. One morning your optical gel does a swan dive without warning. Then, fast-forward twenty-four hours to an examination chair where your pupils are chemically blown wide open, and you have to admit that blissful ignorance is strictly a young person's luxury.

I returned home yesterday, caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror looking like a startled barn owl, and accepted that while reading a screen remains a blurry gamble, the wallpaper is still glued on, the sky is right where I left it, and the owl in the reflection, was just plain old me.

The Missing User Manual for Ear Wax Warfare

Public education spends years drilling the Pythagorean theorem and the life cycle of a frog into our skulls, yet completely omits any practical manual for basic human maintenance. One arrives at adulthood fully versed in long division, but utterly ignorant about how to manage the biological systems on either side of one's head. The medical establishment solemnly warns against ever sticking anything smaller than an elbow into an ear, while consumer packaging actively markets cotton swabs that function precisely like miniature cannon ramrods. The inevitable result is an entire generation packing their auditory canals into acoustic soundproofing.

With a formal hearing test booked for next week, I decided to bypass the clinical embarrassment of having an audiologist inspect two solid plugs of cerumen instead of an actual eardrum. If one is going to have expensive diagnostic hardware measure frequency response, the runway ought to be clear of unnecessary debris. Jay recently had a clinic extract some stubborn buildup after a test of his own and wisely concluded that preventative home intervention beats an awkward clinical excavation every single time.

My domestic protocol began with straight 3% hydrogen peroxide, which immediately produced a delightful, effervescing cauldron of tiny bubbles that sounded like a miniature deep fryer working right next to my brain. Once the chemical storm finally quieted down, I recruited Jay to administer three drops of olive oil into each side. Lying stationary for ten minutes while kitchen salad dressing slowly soaked into my skull felt slightly absurd, but good engineering demands lubrication. Tomorrow brings the gentle warm water bulb syringe to flush the system clear, leaving the canals pristine, silent, and ready to face the decibel telemetry. The hearing test is entirely on the provincial tab, but I still prefer to fail the high frequencies honestly on my own biological merits. I'd rather not flunk out due to an easily-removable sound barrier.

Our Visit to the New Lab

Today, Jay and I went uptown to the new LifeLabs location on Sixth Street to get our baseline bloodwork done. This was our first time visiting the "new digs," which recently replaced their old spot over on Fifth Avenue.

I have to say, the new location is a significant improvement for overall access. The space is larger and the layout is much more functional. While the old clinic was definitely inconvenient to get to, it did have a view. However, this new spot certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard. I snapped a photo right from the lab chair, enjoying a surprisingly great peek out over the uptown high-rises and bustling 6th Street below.

One of the tricks to navigating the medical system here is knowing when to plan ahead. We had the foresight to book our appointments online in advance, which meant our wait time was a fraction of what it would have been if we had just walked in. The waiting area is always full of folks who didn't book ahead, resigned to a lengthened bout of sitting.

It got me thinking about how general medicine actually functions here in Canada, and specifically in British Columbia. To an outsider, the system might seem complex, but it operates on a very direct sequence. It all starts with the Family Doctor, or a walk-in clinic for anyone not lucky enough to have a dedicated GP. The doctor acts as the gatekeeper. They issue the requisition for the lab work, which in BC is primarily handled by private entities like LifeLabs that operate under the provincial health umbrella.

Once the requisition is issued, a patient simply gets their blood drawn, and the results are routed directly back to the doctor. Thanks to modern provincial portals, I can log in later today and see my own numbers the moment they are finalized. It is a hybrid system of publicly funded care delivered through a mix of private labs and independent physician practices. When it works smoothly, as it did today with our booked appointments at the new Sixth Street clinic, it is a remarkably efficient machine.

We Canadians certainly love to complain about our medical system, but one only has to look at places where healthcare is entirely privatized to appreciate what we have. In those models designed for moneymaking, the level of care received is entirely dependent on a person's wallet, leaving far too many folks with unequal treatment or abandoned by the wayside completely. Furthermore, there is a massive, hidden financial burden in those systems just to maintain the competing, redundant, and often poorly organized infrastructure required simply to keep the billing departments running. It might not be perfect here, but our single-payer baseline consistently delivers better overall outcomes than the wild west of the completely for-profit healthcare industry.

Authorized Generic Ozempic

​For the past two years, Ozempic has been highly effective maintenance; it dropped my A1c from a pre-diabetic 6.3 to a perfectly normal 5.6. While the clinical results have been steady, the financial relief that I experienced today at the local Walmart was a milestone I have been tracking for months. The generic rollout has been highly anticipated, and this morning, the supply chain finally delivered those savings directly to me.

​Because of Canadian government involvement, the cost of the brand-name drug here was always substantially cheaper than south of the border. It averaged around 250 CAD a month, which is a stark contrast to the punishing 900 USD (roughly 1,250 CAD) out-of-pocket costs routinely seen at American pharmacies.

​However, the real tipping point came down to an administrative blunder. Canada recently became the first G7 nation to authorize generic versions of semaglutide. This happened largely because Novo Nordisk notoriously failed to pay a 250 CAD patent maintenance fee back in 2019.

​That single missed payment caused their Canadian patent to lapse permanently. It opened the door for Health Canada to approve generics years before the US patent expires in 2032, and the financial impact on the ground is immediate and quite staggering.

​Let us look at the raw math for the standard 1.00 mg dose pen, drawn directly from my own purchase history at my uptown Walmart:

• ​March 2026: 246.12 CAD (173.53 USD) for Brand Name Ozempic
• ​Today: 89.39 CAD (63.02 USD) for Apotex APO-Semaglutide

​That is a 63.7% price drop. For anyone paying out of pocket, this changes the calculus entirely. Apotex clearly entered the Canadian market to aggressively undercut the brand name, rather than just offering a token discount. It is a brilliant bit of market disruption, and a very welcome break for the wallet.

The Great Off-The-Cuff Catastrophe

It seems we've had an untimely casualty in the travel gear department. Just yesterday, the upper-arm, all-in-one blood pressure monitor which Jay and I have come to rely on suddenly lost its will to inflate. The convenient cuff has officially given up the ghost.

We truly loved that little unit. It fit neatly into a small box and was absolutely brilliant when packing. To have it fail after just a bit more than a year and a half is definitely disappointing. Still, looking on the bright side, I suppose I should feel lucky that it didn't decide to stop functioning two days into our month in Morocco, which kicks off this Wednesday!

Today’s mission involved heading uptown to hunt down a replacement. Strangely, nobody carried a similar all-in-one unit. The only compact options available were those smaller wrist monitors, which medical professionals generally do not recommend. When one uses an upper-arm cuff, one is measuring directly at the level of the heart. With a wrist monitor, you can get significant differences in pressure depending on exactly where your wrist happens to be resting.

After striking out at Walmart and one pharmacy, we finally picked up a new unit at London Drugs. The Bios-labeled device is smaller than most standard options out there, but still not as compact or easy to store since we're back to dealing with a tube. It'll have to do. Jay and I are quite religious about taking our morning and evening readings. In fact, I have the statistics to prove it: at least a decade's worth of data that I've dutifully logged into my Android app. Let's just hope this new machine keeps the metrics flowing without developing any inflation drama.

Things I Noticed When Walking

Jay and I live in an active earthquake zone. We reside right on a 40,000 km horseshoe-shaped belt around the Pacific Ocean where over 90% of the earth's active volcanos and quakes originate. The 'big one' is not a matter of if but rather when.  I am sure the earth's crust moved a great deal even over the past winter.  

Let me explain why.  I used to walk to uptown New Westminster, BC last summer.  I did the walks because I love the neighbourhood and for exercise as uptown is quite a hike in elevation.  My Fitbit app says I had 52 meters in elevation gain walking to the Walmart at the Royal City Centre this morning.  That might have been what was reported last summer, but the hike surely felt like more of a workout than previously. I am pretty sure the hill is much bigger this year!  LOL

 

I like walking up residential Forth Street and seeing all the historic, cute bungalows and houses.  It is stunning to realize that many are worth millions of dollars nowadays.  The gardens and lawns are well  manicured and folks are out walking their dogs overjoyed by the owners' attention.  

The 'redone' uptown space is more inviting than in the past.  As I walked down Sixth Street, I noticed that petrol cost $CA 2.079 per litre.   That'd convert to around $US 5.79 per gallon at today's rates.  I'm glad I haven't purchased gasoline since 2018.  I'd never give up driving an electric vehicle.

Light Me Up

Last week, two of the four old T12 florescent tubes in the kitchen ceiling fixture started acting up.  Within a hour, they went dark. As we're so close to going away for the winter, my solution was to ignore figuring how to replace them until we got back in spring.  Then, right on schedule, last night, the remaining two started to give up the ghost.

I had done some checking on keeping the same fixture because we sort of like the wooden frame and thought of adding LED tube replacements.  In most situations, people change from the newer, skinnier T8 bulbs.  In early products I read about, a ballast bypass was required.  However. a hardware store search, this morning, showed the availability of newer plug-and-play LEDs that work in T12 or T8 fixtures.

So today, I went to find some.  The GE bulbs at our Rona branch were completely out of stock for the 2-pack set.  I bit further along the road, at a Home Hardware, I got Philips UniversalFit replacements.  

They turned out to be about US$10 each but work perfectly.  The price difference over the older florescent type should be returned as now I'll have a total draw of 64w rather than 160.  Oh, as they're LED, I probably won't need to replace them.  Their expected lifetime is 32 years.  Hey, that's most likely longer than I have left!

In order to ensure maximum productivity during how-ever-many years are left, Jay and I had annual eye exams at around noon.  For the check, my eyes were dilated. Now, it is bright and sunny but at 12:30 pm, it was still overcast and darker.  I'm happy to announce we made it home with me half blind at the wheel.

This tree in Edmonds, by the Rona Hardware store, cried out for a photo, even after battling the heavy rain and wind we had earlier in the week.

And One Year Later ...

It's been quite some time since I last created a journal entry about my Ozempic experiences. As I was prepping my small travel case for the flights to Barcelona, I decided it'd be useful to add one now. I'm still taking taking weekly injections and have been since last summer. Although I didn't start standard doseage until early in in the spring of 2025, I started the process around 13 months ago.

   

I'd say that I'm substantially more fit than last July. My weight has plateaued for four or five months now. This doesn't mean that I'm not still seeing the effects of the GLP-1 medicine. My bathroom scales attempt to show body composition and not simply is my BMI lower, but also are the readings of visceral fat. Because I'm supplementing, my protein levels are normal and I have increased total muscle mass. 

I had my A1c tested back in April and I was happy seeing a 5.8 down from an all-time high of 6.3. I'm fairly sure I'm already in the normal range because my periodic glucose tests are now standard. So on that front, things are peachy already! 

There was a belt I discovered in a dresser drawer that has no holes where they'd be needed now. I did donate all my size 38" waist pants and shorts to a thrift store and moved to 36". Most of them no longer feel snug and I am assuming that by next summer, I'll be able to downsize another couple of inches. 

So, it all feels like sort of a slow moving miracle. And there's even better news in Canada. It's not that I already pay less than a third of the prices charged in the US.  Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, neglected to file some important paperwork a few years ago protecting their exclusive patent rights.  So, beginning in January 2026, semaglutide will go generic here and a few companies have signaled their intent to provide generic versions.  That means the drug will probably drop to around $US50 or 60/month.  And many more people will be able to benefit from it sooner rather than later.

Thirty Seconds of Today's Walk

 

Last week's foul weather kept me from completing my usual walks uptown. Today, I got back into a short-lived routine. Starting next week, we'll be putting on a lot of distance by foot as we travel through Southeastern Europe.  I was encouraged to continue exercising after weighing myself this morning and clocking in at 87 kg.  Last July, when my sister and friend came to visit, I weighed 101 kg.  It's nice to see progress again towards my goal of just 75 kg.

Today, I walked up Third and down most of Sixth. I lingered for a while in London Drugs but just as a diversion from the little 4K hike. Oh, I also stopped for thirty seconds coming back through Tipperary Park that's next to the New Westminster City Hall. 

I'm continuing to occasionally shoot a static 30-second video for this journal. It's nearly as easy to upload as a photo and it can provide a bit more of a view and accompanying sound.  I can hear the noise of a 'parks guy' mowing grass an adjacent area.

 

Cold and Drizzly

One good thing about the weather in Vancouver is although we leave from November until April for retirement winters, we really don't have to miss out on typical winter weather.  It's 11°C degrees yet again today and raining.

On Fridays, I usually walk uptown for a little exercise.  It didn't look as though that would be enjoyable in the rain.  So I took the 9:53 SkyTrain with Jay to Metrotown.  They leave every three minutes but we know this one comes from Braid and is never completely full.  While he went to the Bonsor Recreational Complex (gym) near the station, I walked directly into the mall. 

I didn't check my Fitbit to see exactly how far it is from the station to the other end of the mall.  I walked to the far end, to the now shuttered area of The Bay. I returned through the food court on level 2 back to the SkyTrain.  At the present, at lunch time, I've walked 4.6 km.  I estimate the mall walk must have been about 3 km of today's present total.

Oh, and for the first time, I went into a fast-fashion, Canadian clothing store called Urban Behavior.  I bought a white, light-weight, linen shirt for hot summers.  Now, I'm waiting for one.

One Yard in Circumference

My weight hasn't decreased much since mid-February when I started taking a full 1mg weekly injection of Ozempic to reduce my A1c. I initially lost around 12 kg (26.5 lbs.) between last July and January even though I was on a lower dose. Yet, I'm seeing other changes. My bathroom scales report a few percent of my body fat has become skeletal muscle. My BMI has remained the same for a few months but my waistline is smaller.

 

We were uptown today and I bought some pants.

I cannot remember the last time I actually wore-out a pair.  In recent decades, I buy new ones or search the thrift store because I require a different size.  Presently, I am moving from size 38 to 36.  It's nice being comfortable in smaller pants.  I'm hoping that these will eventually have to be donated too. I'd really like to see myself with a 34" waist again.

I Can Have My Cake and Eat It Too

The apartment smells great because Jay made a vanilla, butter cake earlier this afternoon.

   

This one is for the traditional celebration of New Years in Sri Lanka. The actual date falls on Monday this year.  Many Asian cultures marked spring as the beginning of the year. The Sinhalese New Year has a lot of traditions and, of course, food is one of them. His Canadian version is scaled back but I still get some special foods.

I look forward to eating them. On a related note, I'll copy some data from yesterday's blood test work.  Patients can review all test results by logging onto a special web portal.  This allows patients to discuss the results with their family doctors. I was most interested in my A1c results.  During the last five years my blood sugar was sitting in a pre-diabetic range.  However, thankfully, my weekly Ozempic injections have pushed me back towards normal.

Back to an Exercise Routine

It has taken me two and a half weeks to get back to my 'home-for-the-summer' exercise routine.  Walking uptown is a bit of a hike because of the 90 meter gain in elevation.  Consequently, it is a perfect place to get in some enjoyable exercise.  Last summer, I became enamored again with my thrice weekly walks to uptown New Westminster.

We're down near the Fraser River but a lot of the city's shopping is around 6th and 6th near the Royal City Mall.  And, that was my destination today.  I ducked into the Walmart and bought a year's worth of baby aspirin.

As they say, getting there is half the fun.  I walked up 4th Street and through Tipperary Park.  Then, today, I walked up 3rd to the height of the land at 6th Avenue.  Many out-of-town folks do not really know about the lovely neighbhourhood streets that lie between uptown and Queen's Park.

I love the manicured lawns and heritage houses.  I love seeing folks out walking their pets or pushing strollers.  Today, I used my new Sony headphones and played a Spotify playlist called, Wake Up Happy.  Seeing the scenery and hearing the music was intensely emotionally uplifting.

It would have been pretty darned difficult being in a sour mood on a day like this!

   

Less is Better

Day 088: It's a day that's been a while in the making. After I stripped to get on the scales this morning, I was suddenly overweight! 

I have a set of those digital, Bluetooth bathroom scales on which one must use bare feet.  That allows them to calculate a whole load of stats other than just how heavy one is. I couldn't imagine not having access to all those numbers this winter. So, I brought the scales along for our winter away! I did hold off on bringing along the kitchen sink.

   

Today, I moved from the obese category to merely overweight. Back on July 27 of last year my BMI was recorded as 34.1  Using a Body Mass Index is not a perfect way to choose a suitable weight but it is a great screening tool. Today's score of 29.9 is hardly something to brag about, but it feels like it's taken a while to get here.

---

I've been taking Ozempic since last summer, primarily as a means to bring down my A1c results of last spring showing a pre-diabetic 6.2.  The weight loss side-affect of the Semaglutide injections has likely made moving from 102.1 kg  (225 lbs.) to 89.5 kg (197 lbs.) less of a chore.  

Getting rid of an extra 28 lbs. seems pretty good until I realize there's a months-long road ahead.   I still have to drop more than that amount again to get to my weight goal of 75 kg (165 lbs.).

Who's on What?

It's a surely a sign of maturity! I don't remember it happening until quite recently though.  When the gang gets together, one topic of conversation often includes drugs and medicines now. 

I guess as retired folks, we have found new things to discuss. I got prescriptions filled this morning at the uptown Walmart. I got the medications I need to take with me for the winter as we'll be leaving on November 9th. So, when we get together with friends and the topic of medicines come up, I'll have something new to share. 

My blood pressure has only ever been slightly elevated and I want to ensure it stays low. I had been taking Ramipril which is an ACE inhibitor. I was on a low dosage and understood it's a good idea to take these medicines in the evening. Lots of people taking this type of medicine get an annoying, tickling cough. Recently, I've woken myself up during the night because of that. I mentioned this to my doctor. He has switched me to just a daily 4mg of Candesartan, which is an ARB type of blood-pressure medicine. 

So, on November 2nd, when we have the guys over for a final dinner of the fall, we can find out ... who's on what!

  This video was removed from YouTube by copyright holders.

Obtaining and Maintaining an Optimum Weight

I hate being a one-trick pony by writing a lot about a single topic.  However, as I was about to create today's entry for 'my eJournal and images', I accidently opened yesterday's long Ozempic status post. When reviewing the text, I decided to modify some bits to clarify that information. 

The effort left me thinking about the last time I managed to get rid of a large amount of excess weight. I believe at beginning of this millennium, I may have weighed as much at 235 or 240 lbs.  I did discover through old entries here that I lost a lot of weight during the year of 2012. Between January and October, a dozen years ago, I went from 209 to 169 lbs. I remember when we visited Sri Lanka at the end of the year when I was probably around 170 lbs.  

It has taken me more than a decade to pack back on the pounds. I will let this be a warning to myself to be a bit more vigilant about keeping an eye on bathroom scales ... like for the rest of my life!

 

This was Jay and me at YVR airport. We're in front of The Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Jade Canoe by artist, Bill Reid.  And below, I was in Negombo, Sri Lanka.

 

An Ozempic Status Report

I opened a new Ozempic pen this morning so I thought it might be a good day to add to some data about my experiences in today's post.  Today was the seventeenth time I have injected myself.

I took my first weekly injection on July 6th. During that entire first month I used the titration dose of 0.25 mg.  That initial time was to ensure my body could get used to the medicine.  There were most likely no therapeutic effects at the low dosage.  I did not experience the gastric problems that many patients have when starting Ozempic.  By the third day, I did notice the drug's effect on my appetite.  I no longer needed to have so much on my plate.  

During the following six weeks, I moved to the low maintenance dose of 0.5 mg.  This was when I started noticing changes in my weight and appearance.  

Subsequently, rather than moving up to the standard dose of 1 mg, I decided on trying just 0.65 mg per shot. That was the pen I used before today and it lasted for six injections.

 

So last week, I took my sixteenth shot making that a four-month point.  Because Ozempic is taken weekly, I waited until today to add some of my statistics here.  I'm not in a rush to lose weight.  It took a long time to put on and it's better if it takes a while to come off.  Old skin isn't as elastic as when someone's young.  Nature will give me sags and wrinkles without helping it out by rapid weight loss.

The most important reason for going on Ozempic was to lower my A1c results.  In the spring I tested at a 6.2. I wanted to lower that.  Although still high, this week's test showed a 6.0. At least it's moving in the right direction.

On July 27th, at the end of the titration dose regimen, I weighed 102.10 kg.  This morning I clocked in on the same scales at 92.3 kg.  So I'm pretty satisfied with the loss of 9.8 kg or about 21 lbs. in three months.  I set myself a somewhat daunting challenge with target-body weight goal of 75 kg. That works out to be about 17.3 kg (or 38 lbs.) more.

Importantly, my BMI, as calculated by my bathroom scales, dropped from 34.1 at its highest to today's 30.8.  In the next couple of weeks I can leave the category of obese and simply become overweight. I'm going to keep at watching what I eat and continue moving about a lot.  

That is practically guaranteed as we head away for the winter in a couple of weeks.  I bought a special medical thermos to transport three Ozempic pens in my carry-on.  The stuff is usually kept in the refrigerator until opened. The gel pack will keep it cool for up to 36 hours, they say.  I can pop the meds in the fridge when were arrive at our destinations.  While away, just to make it easy, I'm carrying enough to take 0.58 mg a week.  

My doctor and I will decide the course of action when I return to British Columbia in mid-March.

Wednesday's Walk

As today was Wednesday, it was one of my days to get in some walking. In order to get maximum benefits from my Ozempic, I'm determined to include a lot exercise as part of my routines. 

It's been nice reconnecting to the neighbourhoods that make up my compact city. Today, I included the 2.5 km trail along the eastern side of Queen's Park. Then I walked up 6th Avenue where I took today's picture. Next, I went into the uptown Walmart and back down 6th Street. It took me 1 hour and 21 minutes to travel 5.76 kilometers. I had an average Fitbit heart rate zone of 130 bmp and burned an estimated 903 calories.

The exercise is good for my body but the scenery is beneficial for my soul.

 

The New Westminster Waterfront Esplanade

Jay and I walked past the new Pier West towers yesterday.  Years of construction work had discouraged us from stopping at the popular area along the western end of downtown New Westminster's riverfront.

Seeing the Quay encouraged me to walk the whole length of the Waterfront Esplanade today, especially because of how nice the weather was.  I strode past the public quay and the 'World's Tallest Tin Soldier' both going and returning!

For a month or so, I've been trying to put in four or more kilometer walks for exercise. I've been doing these on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 

Today, was the first day I didn't walk uptown though. My Fitbit still rewarded me with similar statistics. For example, I managed to burn an extra 619 calories in one hour and seven minutes. During the outing, I averaged 118 bmp in Fitbit's heartrate zones.  My trip west and back totaled 4.25 kilometers.

 

So although I got in my exercise this morning, I was happy just to enjoy the scenery along the Fraser River in our downtown.  The temperature was around 19°C at the time.  The sunshine felt wonderful.  

We have never once had a single regret in the choice of our adopted little city in the geographic center of the Metro-Vancouver area.