The Squamidian Report – Nov. 7 / 15
Issue #702
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Hard to believe, but we are a week into November already. Thats somehow
a bit unsettling. October gave us some pretty spectacular weather then
somehow that vanished right on cue as the calendar turned over. Several
days, well, mostly nights of incredibly heavy rain marked the beginning
of the new month and then the sun came out for a few days. Wow. The
mountains are all wearing a fresh bright coat of new snow, right down
to about roughly the 3500 ft level. It fits so very well with the words
from a song I wrote a couple of years ago, especially so for the first
verse....
There's fresh snow on the mountains
Bright in the morning sun
The crisp fall air is telling me
That winters coming on
The leaves are turning and falling from the trees
And soon they'll all be gone
Taken back to the earth where they came from
And the circle carries on, carries on.
Somehow November has a 'feel' to it that no other month seems to have.
It seem to be dark way too much, and damp and cold a lot of the time as
well. Can't do much about the damp and cold but there is no reason we
couldn't dump that stupid time change and just leave it on Summertime
time all year round. Dark lasts long enough in late fall and early
winter without inviting it to come an hour sooner. The lower
temperatures and early evening dark have contrived to convince me that
my riding season is coming to an end which of course just adds to that
'November feel'. This was not a banner year for riding by any means due
to the amount of time we were tied down due to various things but I did
manage to put on a couple hundred clicks over the 10,000 km mark, and
the bike did turn 100,000 a month ago. Its now parked against the back
wall of the garage with a tank full of treated fuel and the battery
tender is plugged in to the battery. However, if a nice afternoon were
to present itself there is nothing to prevent me from heading out for
another toot, just for the fun of it. I'd simply top up the tank on the
way home.
An up-side to the end of the biking season is the fact the my little
pickup truck gets to park inside again. I think it feels pretty longly
and abandoned during the summer when its left for long periods of time,
unused, sitting on the parking space out by the street. It could stay
parked in our garage during the riding season but then I'd have to move
it every time I take the bike out. I'd end up going through tanks of
gas just moving it in and out and in and out, over and over.
Another November type thing is making sure the snowblower runs. I don't
expect to need it for several weeks yet, if at all. Heck, last winter
was a total dud. We received almost no snow at all and the blower was
needed only about 3 times. In fact, I didn't even bother to properly
put the blower away, I just ran it out to the back shed and left it
there. Didn't even top up the gas in the tank. Abandoned! Every once in
a while over the summer I'd think about it and tell myself I really
should attend to some of the things that should be attended to in order
to keep it running in good order. But, somehow summer slipped by and
now we are well into fall and I was starting to wonder if my neglect
would jump up and bite me. So, the other day I snuck out to the shed
and pulled the blower out toward the door, turned on the gas valve, set
the choke to full, set the throttle to full, primed the carb, and gave
the pull rope a pull. Away it went. One pull. I guess its not mad at me
after all. Now like I said, it could be weeks or months or longer
before its actually needed, but, those old wooden railway tie steps
down to where the shed is are very slippery when wet and if I were to
get caught by an unexpected early dump of snow with the blower still in
the shed, I'd have a heck of a time getting it up out of there and
around to the front. But I really don't want it in the garage until
riding season is definitely over and the bikes is fully tucked away.
So, I brought it up those slippery steps and parked it under the main
deck where its out of the weather and easy to get to. Should that
unexpected dump happen its easy to run it the rest of the way out to
the front, just one set of steps to go down and down is always easy. My
intention is that once the bike is properly put away for the winter,
I'll bring the blower around and into the garage where it will spend
the winter and once its there I'll do the needed maintenance things so
its ready for whatever comes along, be that nothing or inundation or
something somewhere in between.
Something else I had intended to do this fall but simply hadn't had any
time to do was to take my Martin guitar back in to my luthier and have
one last little tweak done to it. She had set the guitar up for me
shortly after I got it over a year ago and it was pretty nice. The
intonation had been adjusted and the action had been lowered. But I
wanted the action a little lower still. Only thing was, the guitar was
too new to try to get it perfect. The wood still had some seasoning to
do that only playing it for a year could cause to happen. Its been over
a year now and I've played that thing almost every day. You could
actually hear the tone improve as time went on and the wood stabilized
at the cellular level as it vibrated to the notes. After playing it for
over a year it was time to do a final setup. The word 'final' is not
quite correct. Guitars like this and for that matter any guitar worth
taking care of should be given a good once-over and setup every year or
so depending on use and environment. I finally had an opportunity to
make an appointment with the luthier and take the guitar in. I figured
she'd need to lower the bridge about half a millimeter to get the
strings where I wanted them. She did some measuring and decided that
what was actually called for a simple tweak of the truss rod which she
did. Only took her a minute or so as she adjusted then measured then
adjusted and measured a couple of times. Neck is perfect, relief is
perfect, string hight is perfect, fingering is like butter. She put a
new set of strings on and the sound is incredible, with a sustain that
goes on for ever. Gotta love it. Oh, there is one little draw-back in
taking the guitar to her, her luthier shop is in Vancouver and I
therefore must brave that traffic congested, stress ridden Vancouver
section of the drive to get there. But yes, it is worth it.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Back at ya once more!
I know I got a little wordy last week with our visit to Paris France so
I’ll try to keep it a tad shorter today and in the future Ontarions.
Well, I left off after finishing our visit to The Eiffel Tower last
week and that was only the first full day we were in Paris. If I keep
on being that detailed, I’ll still be writing about our trip long into
next year. So, I’ll be trimming the content or at least the details of
each feature so neither you or I will fall asleep while trying to read
the weekly Ontarion, at least until I finish covering the trip to
Europe!
The next adventure we had in Paris was a visit to The Louvre Museum. Of
course no visit to Paris would be complete without a visit to see the
most famous painting in the world, “The Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da
Vinci. Our day began with a pleasant but fairly long walk to The
Louvre. It was about a fourty five-minute walk through the narrow
streets of Paris from our hotel on the south side (or Left Bank) of the
Seine River. The museum is of course located on the north side of the
river and also to the east of our hotel location. It was indeed an
interesting walk as we were able to peruse the different shops and
architecture of the city as we made our way along the narrow sidewalks
of midtown Paris. Carole found some of the little but interesting
fashion shops for women as we walked the back streets. She enjoyed
looking at the latest fashions offered in one of the most fashion
forward cities in the world. She managed to purchase a lovely
reversible fall/spring jacket that I’m sure would not be available here
in North America! The multitude of different shops was interesting to
look through during our walk. Adam and I also appreciated the variety
of interesting items contained in the shops of Paris. When we finally
arrived at the Louvre, it began to rain! The Louvre is a huge set of
buildings placed in a “U” shaped configuration around a massive
courtyard. They have a well-controlled way of making sure that their
security measures are adhered to before anyone is allowed to enter the
museum. We had to line up in the courtyard for almost two hours in the
pouring rain before we reached the entrance and some shelter! Luckily
there were many young men selling umbrellas to the tourists and we were
able to purchase three of them for 5 Euros each just as the rain began
to fall. For the most part, we managed to keep dry during our wait. The
museum is entered through a huge glass pyramid shaped structure that
covers the escalators that take you down to the lower level. This is
the area where all tours and choices of which wing to visit first take
place. You can head in three different directions once in the foyer so
we of course chose the wing with the Mona Lisa figuring we’d see the
most famous artwork early in the tour. We walked hallways and climbed
stairs for a good 15 minutes before reaching the room containing MONA.
Once inside we realized we wouldn’t be able to just walk up to her and
take a look from a few feet away. There were about 500 people ahead of
us. The “Mona Lisa” is surrounded by a roped off area measuring
approximately 50 x 50 feet. You must stay outside the roped off area
and wait your turn to get closer to the rope so you can get a decent
view of the portrait. Of course there wasn’t a courteous person in the
place. I would say about half of the visitors were of Asian descent and
maybe 10% of the crowd were English speaking. We were packed in like
sardines in a can and you literally had to resort to acting like the
rest of the crowd and start pushing your way through the crowd too make
you way to the front. We got to within about 10 people from the rope
and gave up trying to push any further. Luckily Adam had the camera and
was taller than most so he could take some clear shots of Mona and of
me and Carole with Mona in the background. I even managed to take a
couple of Adam with Mona behind him as well, just so we could remember
actually being there in her presence! LOL! After fighting our way
through that crowd and back out of Mona’s room, we walked for at least
another five or so hours to make an attempt to see the rest of the
paintings and sculptures in the Louvre. It was an interesting day but a
very tiring one indeed. I haven’t been shoved and pushed and stepped on
by so many rude strangers ever in my lifetime and it was an experience
I don’t care to repeat. Other than the rudeness of the crowds in each
wing of the museum, the paintings and sculptures were absolutely
amazing and well worth the abuse of the day! Before I move on, I must
tell you that back when Carole and I were first married, we purchased a
portrait of Mona Lisa along with some living room furniture we bought
in Elmira. She has hung in a place of honour on our living room wall
ever since and I must say, she’s quite like the “Real Thing” that hangs
in the Louvre! I’ve been told that the real portrait of Mona is much
smaller than our “copy” but having seen the “Real Mona” I now know that
our “Mona” is pretty much identical in size and looks, at least from a
distance behind the rope!
After we left the Louvre we crossed the River Seine and visited another
famous museum almost directly across the river from the Louvre. It’s
called the Mus’ee D’orsay. The Musée d'Orsay (French
pronunciation: [myze dɔʁsɛ]) is a museum in Paris, France, on the
left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a
Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum
holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings,
sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest
collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the
world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne,
Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at
the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in
1986.
We once again were immersed in history of France’s most famous
painters, photographers and sculptors. One of the most famous portraits
was the “self portrait” of Vincent Van Gogh. He was an ordinary looking
man with a very bright red beard but one couldn’t help but stand for
quite some time staring at the amazing facial features and detail he
was able to capture in this self-portrait. Luckily the museum allowed
photography of any and all of their paintings etc. Adam took over 5000
pictures on our trip and a good many of them were of the paintings in
the museums we visited.
Our day ended a few hours later with a long and tiring walk back to our
hotel. We made sure that each day was filled from morning till late
afternoon or early evening with interesting sites and sounds. Indeed
Paris is an amazing place to visit.
I’ll stop at this point and bring you more from our trip next time!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
How many people are buried beneath the streets of Paris!
Find out next week when I take you to one of the most interesting historical sites in The City of Light!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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