Just one thing

 A little over 12 years ago a lot of really smart doctors were seriously concerned that I was going to stop breathing. They had a lot of good reasons to be concerned but they were wrong, i never needed help breathing but I did spend 4 and 1/2 months in the hospital and had to learn again how to walk. That's another story.

So I think recovering from a near-death experience leads toFOMO. I want to check every box and do everything I can. So just a few weeks after returning from Sydney Australia and fnished a marathon, I decided to go to Calgary and then Vancouver.

Vancouver was always on the top of my bucket list for reasons I'll get to in a moment... but the GBS Foundation of Canada had there by annual meeting in Calgary. The meeting was great. I got to reunite with some great people and meet some new people. I also got to do one of the stupidest things I've done in my life. In hindsight I should have stayed an extra day in Calgary and then booked a day trip to Banff and Lake Lorraine. But I didn't. I only had an extra afternoon in Calgary and a couple of my old friends we're going on a downhill go-kart ride. Sure I said not even knowing what it would be looking like. It turns out it's a ride that requires functioning hands which I do not have. I was unable to pull back on the handlebar to properly apply the brakes so I had to pull back with my forearms. And the part of the forum I was pulling back with was the part that had tendon transfer surgery so my fingers became numb as I did this.The alternative would have been flying off the edge of an Olympic Bobsled route. I survived it's been a week and my arms still hurts.But my thumb isn't numb anymore so I don't think I have to call my surgeon. But I did get to ride a ski lift with one of the greatest athletes I ever sat next to. Watch the trailer. 

But believe it or not my 3-day trip to Calgary was not my primary reason for visiting Western Canada.There aren't really any direct flights from New York to Calgary so on my way there I had to stop over in Toronto but on my way back I went the long way and stopped over in Vancouver It was a 12-hour stopover in Vancouver. And I got to look out the window and see this. It was already worth it. (Also, I totally screwed myself up in a weird way my return flight home from Vancouver to New York was at 11:15 p.m.. But I entered the flight information into my Google Calendar in eastern time so when I got to Vancouver it looked like I had to leave at 8:15. So I rushed to the airport and missed the interesting dinner I was going to figure out how to have it Vancouver.)

For literally years I've been working out at the YMCA and as soon as I was physically able I enjoyed getting on the elliptical. The elliptical is great for me because I can take off my ankle braces run as fast as I want. I don't have to worry about turning my ankle because the pedals are rising with my feet. I can get up there for 45 minutes and run at full speed and work up a sweat. All the aerobic equipment in the YMCA has a video screen. You can choose what you want to watch. On the stationary bike you can view pieces of the Tour de France and I recognized some locations in Clive's movie. But one of the GoPro tours on the elliptical is Capilano suspension Bridge Park in Vancouver. I try to mix up the videos and watch them and order they appear on the screen and I always look forward to that one sometimes I repeat it over and over again. It's a really beautiful park with cable suspension bridges connecting trees as well as suspended from Cliffs. I've watched it many times and observed that everywhere I would go would be accessible to me. All the stairs seem to have proper handrails and there wasn't anything off road. No grass no gravel.  Also the very end of the video shows people leaving the park exiting into what looks like a place where buses go. That's what gave me the idea that I can get there this park wasn't in the middle of the Wilderness it was a place where buses go.... and it was

Accessible to me today
but not 12 years ago

So with Calgary a 90 minute flight to Vancouver I decided to make my stop over there. I arrived at 9:30 in the morning and my flight back home wasn't until 11:30 p.m. From Calgary I took a plane to a train to a ferry to a bus and got to the park at around noon. I'm going to post some crappy pictures that I took but if you really want to see what the park looks like go above and click on the link or look at the Google pictures that other people took.

When I got to the park and paid my admission price and entered I took a big breath. It looked familiar. I had been there about a hundred times in the past but never in reality it was weird. Upon entering the park I noticed the docent giving a tour it looked like it was winding down. At the end of the tour I followed her back to her station and told her my story. I told her I watched a video of this park about a hundred times while relearning how to walk and run on an elliptical machine. I told her the absolutely only reason I came to Vancouver was to visit this park. I was lucky that she appreciated my story (She probably noticed I was holding pack of tears). About a half hour later she saw me and gave me a hat she told me the owners of the park would love to hear my story and I hope they see this blog post.

Below is a little collage of some of the pictures I took. Again they are crappy I took them with my shaky hands and I couldn't take out my phone and some of the places where the best pictures would have been for fear of dropping it into a Ravine so go to Google and find some better pictures.

So I gave someone my camera and
had them take this

A couple of years ago I told someone who had lived in Vancouver that I wanted to go to this park. She said why would you want to go there it's just for tourists. WTF i'm going to be a tourist.

And below believe it or not was my money shot. I reproduce the picture of the exit that was seen in the GoPro video on the elliptical. I started watching this video when I had just learned how to walk again and eventually I watched it and realized that this is a place I can go to and this is a tour I can take.From Sudden paralysis and hospitalization to a year you went using a wheelchair. To relearning how to walk. And spending hours on elliptical watching videos and then actually getting to go to that place by traveling across a continent. FU GBS, FU!

So I'm not the kind of guy that could operate an elliptical and cell phone camera at the same time. So here's a bunch of pictures I tried to take..  But it was basically 15 minutes worth of video of a guy wearing a GoPro and walking around the suspension Bridge Park. If I can figure out how to get it from Life Fitness I'll add it to this.