The Squamidian Report – July 16 / 16
 
Issue #738

Including:
The Ontarion

Hi All,

We were trying to come up with the answers to several mysteries, all of which took place along the Panorama Ridge trail. The first and most obvious mystery was who, or to be more precise, what, was leaving piles of purple poop on the trail. There were, and are, fresh piles pretty well every morning. The poop looked very much like bear skat during berry season except that it was too small. Whatever was leaving the dumps of purple poo was definitely eating the ripening wild blueberries that grow all over the place along the ridge, this deduction being based on rather close observation of the offending plops. The first choice of culprit was a bear cub but that left the question: where is mom? No one has seen any sign of an adult bear in the immediate area and if she was around, she'd be leaving much bigger deposits on the trail because face it, bears have a rather interesting sense of humor. If it were a raccoon, well, it would be showing up around the lodge and basically making a nuisance of itself, and, no one has seen raccoons up there at all. Next mystery is: where have all the chipmunks gone? By the end of last fall the whole trail was almost over ridden with them. They had discovered that people could be convinced to hand out treats and had become quite proficient at mooching from the tourists. There doesn't seem to be any at all out the trail and only a few hanging around near the lodge deck. The same question applies to the grouse, where are they? After an active mating season there should have been hen grouses leading young chicks all over the place. None! And finally, what creature was leaving those unidentified tracks in last winter's fresh snow. The tracks started showing up about mid winter.

One of the head trail keepers finally came up with an answer. The guilty party is a Martin. Not related at all to the guitar type Martin, but one of those big weasily animals that eat any and everything, can climb anywhere and can dig anywhere. This guy has pretty well cleaned out all the wild life along the ridge. Assumably this is how nature works and the creature will literally eat itself out of house and home and then move on to greener pastures. Hopefully it will leave before there is nothing left to repopulate the area. Or, perhaps a cougar will decide that it would make a nice dinner. That too is how nature works.

There was little bit of interest in the link I included last week, the one about the earth's orbit. So, I'm including another one this week from the same source that clarifies our understanding of astronomical distances. This is an area that is pretty well beyond most of us. Once we leave Earth, distances are simply too big to grasp. Face it, space is made up of mostly just space. If two galaxies were to collide, as they sometimes do, there is so much empty space and distance between the stars within those galaxies that the chances of any stars actually hitting each other are remote. Its not really fair and is perhaps a dirty little trick being played on us that astronomical distances between anything 'out there' are so big because it makes going anywhere almost impossible. The fastest thing we know of is light and it takes light years to get anywhere beyond our little world. Our chances of actually going anywhere past our solar system is almost none existent, at lease based on our current understanding of physics. But then at one time no one thought most of the things we do now would be possible so there is always hope. Anyway, you might find this information interesting.
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-is-a-light-year

doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello Everyone!
     Just thought I’d bring you up to date on the interesting week we’ve had since last we talked. Way back in 1975, Carole and I bought our first new house. We had owned a semi detached home for 6 weeks very early in our marriage in 1973 but sold it after that short period of time at the advice of our real estate agent to make a quick buck. We had purchased it just to do exactly that but figured it would take a year or so to turn it over. After only 6 weeks we received a call from the agent that sold it to us with the promise of turning it over to make some money.  He said he had a couple that wanted our style home and would pay cash if they could have it within two weeks. He figured we might be interested in a very quick profit and he was right. He brought the couple over for a look through the house and they offered us $8,000.00 more than we had paid only 6 weeks earlier. We were not interested in staying in a semi at the time anyway so we agreed to the sale! We were out in two weeks and moved to an apartment in Lakeshore Village. We lived there for a year and then bought the brand new Dutchman Home in Laurentian Hills area of Kitchener. We moved into a back split on Calmcrest Dr and lived happily there for five years. While living there we had new neighbours around us that were all newly married and within a year we all had new additions to our families. We had three other couples that we struck friendships with that lived within a house or two in either direction from us. Since we were the second house from the corner Blackhorn Dr and Calmcrest Dr, we had a couple named Paul and Barb that lived just around the corner and their back yard butted into ours. We became friends and associated almost every night with them, Ron and Jacquie who lived beside us in the third house on Calmcrest Dr and also Fred and Lois who lived in the fourth house on our street.

Every night after work we would gather on the front porch or in the back yard of one of our houses and drink coffee like it was going out of style! It was the only beverage any of us could afford in abundance since we were all young and had mortgages and jobs that didn’t pay much at the time. Only on special occasions could or would we afford to have booze in the house so, coffee it was! We all had a lot in common in those days and made our own entertainment as we laughed and joked with each other in the evenings, especially when the weather was good. We did things like BBQ together and gather to swim in Paul and Barb’s in ground pool. They were the older couple by 4 years and had enough resources to have a pool! We spent many many fun days and evenings and special occasions together over those first five years and have said many times since that they were the best five years of our marriages! I guess as far as having a good time with the neighbours went anyway. We’ve never had such a good relationship with neighbours living around us since and the rest of our “Laurentian Hills” group has said the same!

One of the fun things we did as friends back in that time was to purchase “Mopeds”. Ron and Jacquie had purchased theirs first and it was a blue Peugeot. It was fun to take turns riding it on the street out front so we all decided to see if we couldn’t find one for each couple so we didn’t have to expect Ron to share. Carole and I bought one out of the KW Record for $75.00. It needed a bit of work but I finally managed to get it running well with Paul’s help as he was a bit of a mechanical guy. He and Barb bought theirs next and not long after that Lois and Fred found one in the local paper. We finally had four bikes that we could ride together. What fun we had taking turns with the girls riding the Mopeds. First they would take off through the neighbourhood and be gone for half an hour and then the guys would jump on the bikes and drive off into the distance. The rest of the neighbours must have thought we were nuts as we hooted and hollered while racing up the streets of Laurentian Hills! These mopeds would likely only run at about 15 mph top speed but they sure were fun! After the first week of this kind of silliness, the girls decided we should have matching tee shirts to wear while riding our “motorcycles”! They went out to a local print shop and bought 8 baby blue shirts and had “HELL’S MOPEDS” printed on the backs in bold black letters! What a hoot it was to see us terrorizing the neighbourhood as the “HELL’S MOPEDS” biker gang!

We really did have fun for that first five years of our early marriages. As time would have it, we all drifted apart and built careers and homes in different parts of the city. Paul and Barb had even moved to Florida about 10 years after our first homes. We had kept in touch with them for sure as they had gotten Carole and I interested in vacationing in Florida quite often. We would vacation mostly in the Clearwater Beach area. Paul and Barb moved from Florida back to St John NB, which was their original hometown. They kept a condo in Florida and spent their summers in St John. They didn’t like the winters so they would spend them in Florida. Paul had a business here in Kitchener as well as eventually one in St John and would operate them long distance during the winter. He still has a business in St John and now they live back in St John permanently! They decided to move back to NB to be near their families in their senior years. Their daughter lives and works in Florida.

About two months ago we got a phone call from Barb saying she and Paul would be coming to Ontario for a celebration of another couple’s 50th anniversary in Ottawa and would like to come to Kitchener while up this way to spend a couple of days with us! We were totally thrilled that we’d be seeing our old friends after 12 years! The last time we had seen them was at the funeral of a mutual friend we’d met through Paul and Barb. He had passed away and we drove to NB to attend the funeral. Being such a long distance away, we had drifted away from seeing each other as you can imagine! Well, we got a phone call on Sunday night last weekend and it was Barb saying they were in town and had taken a motel room. We of course gave them heck for not coming to stay with us as per our invitation but they did not want to “put us out” as Paul said! It would have been no imposition at all of course but he was just being his usual polite self I guess! After all, they had hosted us a good dozen times while they were living in Florida and had always insisted we stay with them while vacationing there! Anyway, they were here for two days and we spent the whole time with them and taking them around to see whatever it was they wanted to see after all these years. We called Jacquie and told her they were in town and met her on Monday morning at their motel restaurant for breakfast and a good gabfest! We hadn’t seen Jacquie since the early years in Laurentian Hills. Ron had passed away and she had remarried 28 years ago so she had a new life and was very happy. It was amazing to see her again and the five of us had a great morning together. She had to get back home after a couple of hours as she helps her husband run their business and only had a couple of hours to spare. We then drove to Paris Ontario to visit Lois who had also lost her husband Fred. We didn’t know that Fred had died but we had known that she had married a second time to a gentleman named Laverne! When we arrived at her home in Paris, she told us that Laverne had also passed away four years ago. We were saddened to hear that but she’s doing quite well again and was very happy to see the four of us once again as well. We went out to lunch with Lois and Paul and Barb and once again had another good visit until late in the afternoon. It was actually funny when Carole mentioned that this had been the first reunion of the “HELL’S MOPEDS” in 36 years! We all had a good chuckle out of that and vowed to make a point of getting together on a regular basis or at least much more often that we have been doing in the months and years to come!

     The second day we spent with Paul and Barb we visited all the houses in Kitchener that they had lived in over the years and took pictures of them in front of each house, that was a hoot for both them and us. We stopped at the houses we have lived in as well and it turned out that our first semi detached was only a block away from Paul and Barb’s first house in Victoria Hills area of Kitchener and had we walked around the block back in 1973, we might have bumped into them sitting on their front porch! I know, that’s a long shot but what a coincidence that two years later we did live next to each other and became life long friends!

This whole situation reminded me of one of my favourite Ann Murray songs with the line “Hello my old friend, gee it sure is good to see you again! No it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, just open up the screen door and c’mon in!”
The fact is that no matter how long it is between visits with Paul and Barb, when we do see them it’s like we had only seen them yesterday and we pick up as if no time had passed at all! What a lovely feeling to have friends that are so imbedded in our lives that it’s that easy to continue a great relationship!

    We do value all of our friends and I’ve had that same friendship with Doug over the past 18 years and sincerely hope it continues for another 18 or more! LOL!
So next time you and Sue make it to our neck of the woods Doug, “Just open up the screen door and c’mon in”!

That’s it for this week folks!
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

 Something To Think About>
“Live a good, honorable life… Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time!”
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Have a good one..
the doug
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