Just back from my run on the seawall…well, that’s a generous term…more like a fast shuffle, but still, it’s sweat-inducing and exhilirating and who cares if all those gel-pak carrying marathoners fly by? The funny thing is, that here in the city, it’s easier to get away from traffic while running or cycling, than it is at our seaside rural world of Sechelt.

How bizarre is that? In Sechelt, there’s our dead-end road where I start my run and it hooks up to a little seawall along Davis Bay, but that seawall route is short and right along the steady stream of traffic on the one and only highway. After that it’s up and down huge hills that include cars and no sidewalk, though the traffic is very light.

Back here in the city, I step out of our apartment, run across Beach Avenue and I’m on a seemingly endless oceanfront seawall. Just me and the million other runners, cyclists, Canadian geese, gulls and eagles but not a car to be found.

The irony of this does not escape me. But then, I think I find everything ironic and rather bemusing – in a good way.