Happy Thanksgiving!

[Administrator]

I want to wish a great Thanksgiving holiday to everyone on the boards!

I'm really grateful for all of our members, and I just want to thank you for being so active and making these forums such a cool place. Posting here and talking with you lads has become an integral part of my routine, and I appreciate that you all spend the time and energy to make OC's forums great. We've got a fantastic nucleus of a community here, and I'm really thankful for everything you do.

Are you guys doing anything fun for the holiday? I hope you all get a chance to gorge yourselves on superb food and to spend time with your families.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

[Anachronic]

Happy Thanksgiving to you to from the frosty North!

[Administrator]

Happy Thanksgiving to you to from the frosty North!

Much appreciated, man!

You guys do Thanksgiving on a different day in Canada, right? I feel like I should start celebrating both Canadian and American holidays, because you can never have too many fun days.

[Anachronic]

Happy Thanksgiving to you to from the frosty North!

Much appreciated, man!

You guys do Thanksgiving on a different day in Canada, right? I feel like I should start celebrating both Canadian and American holidays, because you can never have too many fun days.

We eat Turkey too (some people eat hams instead...) but we do it in October because we're Canadian and we want to be different but not too different.

[Administrator]

We eat Turkey too (some people eat hams instead...) but we do it in October because we're Canadian and we want to be different but not too different.

October definitely makes more sense than late November in a place like Canada, I think. Cities like Calgary and even ones closer to the US border can be getting pretty significant snow by now, and you don't want to have a holiday of getting together when weather conditions make that impossible.

Heck, we even got snow in this part of Pennsylvania last Saturday, and it still hasn't melted off.

I'd be in favor of shifting all holidays to the summer and just hibernating during these dark months. I'm dead serious, if I ever make any money from Outer Colony, I'm getting a condo in New Zealand or Australia and going to the southern hemisphere during the winter months up here. I suppose it's nice to dream, at least.

Do you guys get much snow in British Columbia? My brother is on a quest to visit every NHL arena over the course of his life, and I know Vancouver is high on his list of places to visit. In a place like that, I have a feeling that October is a bit more pleasant than January, though.

[Anachronic]

Do you guys get much snow in British Columbia? My brother is on a quest to visit every NHL arena over the course of his life, and I know Vancouver is high on his list of places to visit. In a place like that, I have a feeling that October is a bit more pleasant than January, though.

Not much snow in Vancouver, just rain but plenty in other areas. Vancouver's a cool place to visit but definitely at its best in the summer and shoulder seasons. Love the snow though. Old-man-me kind of wants to take up cross-country skiing... My dad just bought a fat bike to ride in the winter in Alberta. Good to have an off-season sport I find!

[Administrator]

Love the snow though. Old-man-me kind of wants to take up cross-country skiing... My dad just bought a fat bike to ride in the winter in Alberta. Good to have an off-season sport I find!

The snow is definitely fun sometimes, but the dark and cold of winter are becoming progressively less pleasant for me to deal with, especially because it means that I can't run outdoors anymore. I stick with running and my basic workout routine in the wintertime, but I'm confined to a treadmill in the basement of the YMCA instead of clocking times on a trail by the river.

Wow, and your dad rides outdoors in the winter?! In Alberta?! He's about a thousand times harder than I am. I wonder all the time how people live in a place like Alberta. I would dread walking to my car in that kind of cold, let alone trying to ride a bike.

Oh man, and those fat bikes!! Those are the ones with the really big tires, right? I've started seeing more and more of them on the trail behind my house, and I've wondered what the deal is with them. Do the big tires confer some kind of advantage over bikes with normal sized tires? I'm definitely not an expert, but I never remember seeing bikes like this until just a couple years ago.

[Anachronic]

Love the snow though. Old-man-me kind of wants to take up cross-country skiing... My dad just bought a fat bike to ride in the winter in Alberta. Good to have an off-season sport I find!

The snow is definitely fun sometimes, but the dark and cold of winter are becoming progressively less pleasant for me to deal with, especially because it means that I can't run outdoors anymore. I stick with running and my basic workout routine in the wintertime, but I'm confined to a treadmill in the basement of the YMCA instead of clocking times on a trail by the river.

Wow, and your dad rides outdoors in the winter?! In Alberta?! He's about a thousand times harder than I am. I wonder all the time how people live in a place like Alberta. I would dread walking to my car in that kind of cold, let alone trying to ride a bike.

Oh man, and those fat bikes!! Those are the ones with the really big tires, right? I've started seeing more and more of them on the trail behind my house, and I've wondered what the deal is with them. Do the big tires confer some kind of advantage over bikes with normal sized tires? I'm definitely not an expert, but I never remember seeing bikes like this until just a couple years ago.

Yeah fat bikes are pretty new I think... the big tires just make it all a little bit less risky and they float on snow really well. Running in the winter is super hard so I totally sympathize; harder than cycling. At least biking you can usually take it pretty easy if you want and keep your heart rate manageable. Running is just... hard. I don't know how you do it. I've been doing short trail runs by my house when I have only a very short time to exercise. Lots of technical up and down and trees to hurdle over but I'm done done done after about 15 minutes. It gets pretty slippery in the rain (only fell in the creek once...) so I guess just trying to keep your balance adds to the ouch factor. As far as I can tell running on the road is even more excruciating. Makes me want to buy some Lakota for my knees

[Administrator]

Running in the winter is super hard so I totally sympathize; harder than cycling. At least biking you can usually take it pretty easy if you want and keep your heart rate manageable. Running is just... hard. I don't know how you do it. I've been doing short trail runs by my house when I have only a very short time to exercise. Lots of technical up and down and trees to hurdle over but I'm done done done after about 15 minutes. It gets pretty slippery in the rain (only fell in the creek once...) so I guess just trying to keep your balance adds to the ouch factor. As far as I can tell running on the road is even more excruciating. Makes me want to buy some Lakota for my knees

Oh man, technical running is extremely hard. Negotiating severe terrain is an art of its own, and it's something I actively shy away from when working out, just for fear of sustaining injury. But the mechanics of it are difficult and physically exhausting, too, having to adjust momentum to clear obstacles. Fifteen minutes of technical running is probably worth an hour of treadmill! And the winter running is merciless. Once it gets down below 40, the air kinda' starts to feel painful in my lungs. I'm always stunned by the idea of Swedes and Finns and Canadians who manage to keep running outdoors in the winter - they fall into the category of extremely hardcore and tough in my book.

And there are very few advantages to being 5'7'' and 135 pounds, and perhaps one of the only ones is that it makes running mechanically less demanding. I've got a much taller uncle who's tough as nails and is a pretty hardcore athlete, but the running was murder on his knees. If you're on the smaller side, as I am, you can run all day and never feel it. In the winter I'm 35 miles a week and in summer I'm 40, so I'm not at that hardcore marathon runner tier of exertion, but I run enough to work out the mental strain of sedentary work.

Honestly, I get to the end of a day of programming, and I just need some kind of physical exertion. There are certain things about developing software that are very neat, but I think I'd have lost my mind long ago if I couldn't get it all out with a solid run or workout at the end of the day.

Is it the same way for you with biking, man? There's a part of me that thinks sometimes that the human animal wasn't designed to sit all day, and that our modern world imposes this on many people is like some kind of cruel joke. It's probably better than being eaten by a bear in the wild, but there are certainly some ways that the very nature of a desk job can be mentally taxing.

[Anachronic]

Is it the same way for you with biking, man? There's a part of me that thinks sometimes that the human animal wasn't designed to sit all day, and that our modern world imposes this on many people is like some kind of cruel joke. It's probably better than being eaten by a bear in the wild, but there are certainly some ways that the very nature of a desk job can be mentally taxing.

When I don't get to mountain bike, or at least do something physically demanding and slightly dangerous, then I go completely insane. At the same time the idea of a standing desk seems abhorrent. Good luck with all the running and keep at it! But yeah when it's that cold out it's not worth it. My dad used to tell me not to run too much out in the extreme cold because I'd get frostbite on my lungs... No idea if that's true or not but it was enough of a deterrent. I always stuck to skiing in the winter in Alberta where I grew up, but haven't really been into that so much lately now that I live on the coast.