Jonathan R. Schmidt

Virtual Tours

I was looking around at Virtual tour software and settled on one that was quite easy to use and published with flash. I know I could probably figure it out on my own, but why? There’s all this great software out there, so why not use it? I love panoramic pictures and this is a great compliment to all the work of splicing together a series of individual photos into a panoramic that many people will never see.
The below photos are from the top of Mount Allan in Kananaskis Country, Alberta.

Feats

I’ve created a page called ‘Feats’. It’s just a few things I’ve done which I consider physically and mentally challenging. On the page I made a few notes about other feats of humanity that I find truly impressive and which I never want to equal -they are simply insane and I’d rather live, thank you very much. Nonetheless I think we all enjoy a bit of a challenge and those of the human race who enjoy extreme challenges are particularly intriguing as we all ask the question, why? If people climb Mt. Everest ‘because it’s there’, why do people do other crazy things like run across deserts or canoe 1200 miles? The quote below is my only explanation, apart from an evening of philosophying around a campfire.

“If you want something you’ve never had, you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done”

The quote above is only thing that I’ve found to adequately explain the human psyche that strives to undertake seemingly impossible feats. The human body and mind are incredible and feats like the ones below continue to amaze me.

Dean Karnazes running a marathon in the antarctic
Don & Dana Starkell canoeing 1200 miles from Winnipeg to the Amazon
Diane Van Deren winning a 300 mile running race in the Yukon
Goran Kropp cycling to Everest from Sweeden, climbing it and cycling home

Most of these links have associated books that are quite interesting to read. I’d recommend the Starkell and Karnazes books.

Trail Running

For about a year now I’ve been doing my running on Nose Hill Park in Calgary. It’s about 2 km from our apartment and it is a great place to run. It has hills, valleys, paved trails, single-track and dirt paths. Every so often you can even see a deer, owl or other wildlife. Another highlight of running on Nose Hill is the view – mountains as far as the eye can see. Since I haven’t invested in any fancy equipment I had no idea how far I was actually running on Nose Hill. I knew how long, but not how far. So the other day I took the handheld GPS I use for work and packed it in my camelbak. The results are interesting and fun. I ran at almost exactly 10km/hr – not bad for all the hills and trails. I covered 16km in 1 hr 30 min. I also always wondered about the elevation gain and hills. Although graphs can be misleading this one is interesting. It’s 400 ft elevation difference and approximately 1000 ft in climbing during the 16 km route I took. Have a look.