The Squamidian Report – Feb. 25 / 06

Also in this issue:

The Ontarion

Hi All,

Well guys, I didn’t get to spend much time with many of you this past week but the nature of my visit was to be with my mom and at her special birthday. Not the kind of occasion that you’d want to miss.

Leave it to Air Canada to take the fun out of flying. They got rid of all the ticket wickets and forced everyone to book on-line to save them money. So now you have to print your own itinerary, then go to a kiosk at the airport and check in yourself. Then you stand in a cattle line with six hundred people in front of you so you can check your bags. All in the name of progress I guess.

The flight home was uneventful, which is the best kind when you think of it. We were a half hour late getting away from the terminal but Sue was late getting the YVR to pick me up so it worked out well. Turns out she spent the whole morning hacking a tunnel through the 2 feet plus of snow that came down last night. Once she got the car out onto the road which had not been plowed she was able to follow 4X4 tracks down to the highway. The highway just re-opened as she was ready to head into the city.

When we got home we needed to do some shoveling again to get the car off the road and into the garage. Since then the plow has worked it’s way up our road and now the wind-row of snow across the front of the driveway is about shoulder high on me. That will take some time for us to dig through. Our snow is very heavy and wet.

I guess this issue is going to be a short one, I need to get un-packed and settled in. It is nice to be home.

doug

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THE ONTARION REPORT

FEBRUARY 25, 2006

Hello everyone!

Well, Doug landed in KW safe and sound on Friday afternoon. He seems to be enjoying both the visit and the weather. We spent Monday traveling around the region visiting motorcycle dealerships. Just to get a look at the upcoming seasons new models. We were both day dreaming a little while viewing those big shiny road machines. As Doug said, anyone that buys the new Honda Goldwing will need a degree in engineering to understand the conglomeration of buttons and switches on the control panel. It’s got everything from a CD player to a full GPS system. I think the only feature missing is air conditioning and who knows, that may be the next big thing. There certainly are some beautiful machines on the market these days. Doug and I talked about the days when the British manufacturers were the on top of the heap here in North America. Triumphs and BSA’s were the most popular bikes around this area anyway if not across the continent. Harley’s were around but most of them were owned by bike gang members and being popular with the likes of that made them unpopular with any decent motorcyclist. If you didn’t ride one of the big Brit bikes you got your intro to motorcycles with a new toy by the name of Honda. The Japanese began to market their “Groovy Little Motorbike” in the summer of ’64 I believe. I remember watching their TV commercials and thinking what a great lot of fun it would be to own one of their machines. My cousin and I are the same age and at the time we both had a yen (so to speak) for the Honda 90. It was the next step up from Honda’s base model by the name of “Cadet 50”. The Cadet was the most prolific motorcycle ever made. It was manufactured in Japan and shipped by the millions around the world. I watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago about the Top 10 motorcycles of all time. The Honda Cadet was rated #1 and Honda produced a total of 40,000,000 of the little bikes. YES, that’s 40 MILLION of them! I’m sure that a good number of these were sold here in North America. With that in mind, I wonder why we don’t still see people driving them even after all these years. There have to be thousands of them still in existence since they were virtually indestructible. In this documentary, they did everything from carry a rider as well as 350 lbs of vegetables in crates on their test model to dropping it off a 4 story building onto the concrete sidewalk below. It still started and ran after the fall. The producers just couldn’t kill the thing. Back in the 60’s the population of Canada wasn’t 40 million so that meant there was more than one Honda 50 for every citizen of our country. Of course, not all of the bikes were sold in Canada but a large portion shipped to NA was sold here. I bet there are lots of them sitting in garages just waiting to be cleaned up and put back on the road. It would be fun to find one and do just that. I may keep my eye open this summer for one. I think they sold back then for about $699.00 but you’d probably pay more than that for one today. If anyone of you knows where I can pick one of these collector machines up, please let me know. I’ll give you a ride on it after I get it fixed up! LOL!

Anyway, the week is winding down for Doug and Vivyan’s official birthday is Thursday. We’re all looking forward to dropping in to extend our best wishes to her on Saturday so I hope to see many Squamidian members at the Brubacher Homestead.

“ HAPPY BIRTHDAY VIVYAN!!!!” Carole and I hope you’re feeling better and enjoy your birthday!

I’d say “Don’t eat too much cake Vivyan!” but what the heck, I think you’ve earned the right to eat as much sweet stuff as your little heart desires. Dig in to that big fat chocolate cake and enjoy!

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Thanks for tuning in everyone and I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now… Greg.

PS: Something To Think About>

To be 80 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old! Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. c.1889

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The Family and the Squamidian sites:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca

Have a good one..

the doug

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