The Squamidian Report – Aug. 2 / 03
Also in this issue:
North Nova News
The South Etobican
The Ontarion
Hi All,
We have sweltered through another very hot dry week. Out here you don’t break heat records unless you hit about 40. We’ve come close enough for me, I like it on the cooler side. We’ve actually had bad air down in the valley, at least bad air by coastal measurements. Not the kind of stuff that makes you stomach sick but it did get a bit hazy. White haze, not yellow haze.
I think half of BC is on fire right now. The forests tinder dry and almost anything can spark a fire. Mountain terrain just makes it that much harder for the fire crews. There are on fires near the coast but the forests here are very dry. Stanley Park in Vancouver is on high alert. There are a lot of really stupid people visiting the park that would think nothing of dropping a smoking butt. There are also transient and homeless people hiding in there. The park has over 600 acres of mature trees.
Sue and I finally got around to going out for a bike ride. I never seem to have enough time to go out on the motorcycle and she usually passes up on the invitation. It was a nice evening, cool enough to enjoy the air. Have to do that more often.
And we have been taking Yogi down to the river for a dip. He always loved mucking around in mud puddles so he thinks he has hit the jackpot. However, the rivers around here are very cold, you can look up and see the ice fields that they come from. He likes to lie down in the water but he sure takes his time immersing his privates. That cold water must be quite a shock. Then once settled and comfortable, he drinks the water like there was no tomorrow. By the time we have made the 5-minute drive home his old bladder is ready to burst. You gotta get that van door open real fast. And he usually waits until he is inside the van to do his dog shaking.
Looks like I’ve got myself a new job. The guy I was working for in the spring and early summer tried to get too big too fast and is blessed with a rather volatile personality. He became a bit uncomfortable to be around as the pressure of running a company grew. Then he hired all his unemployed logging friends to run the equipment, leaving us sitting at home. Also, I don’t think he liked having some of his customers tell him that I could work on their job sites but they would prefer if he didn’t. Anyway, I had been busy making contacts and friends in the business, so long before my old boss lost interest in me I had already had another job offer. These unemployed loggers are used to running equipment out in the bush where they can ram and bang all day long. That is a bit of a problem on construction sites. His problems are only getting worse.
My new boss runs a small landscape company. I’m actually a ‘contract’ employee, meaning that I’m really self employed again with one main customer. Works great for me. More freedom. And this boss just bought a new excavator for me to run, air conditioning and all. Sort of the best of both worlds.
And speaking of loggers, this long weekend is the Loggers Sports contests here in the land of Squamidia. These are the international championship lumberjack games where they race up 200 ft poles, role logs, throw axes and so on. Quite interesting to watch.
Sue was in Saskatchewan this week. I’m not sure where and I don’t think she was too sure either. They were doing a ‘hub and spoke’ audit where there is a main branch in a small town and ‘linked’ smaller branches in the surrounding smaller towns. They were staying in the kind of town where the restaurant is in the Esso station.
Each morning when they walked into the restaurant, all the truckers and farmers went dead silent at the sight of 3 businesswomen walking in. All heads turned to watch. Each morning all these men would be sitting at the same tables, same places.
On her way to one of the ‘spoke’ branches, Sue turned right at a T intersection instead of left. She drove for over and hour before she realized the town was the other way.
****
Well we are in the height of tourist season now and Pictou is
booming once again. The streets are
lined with vehicles from all over North America. We actually get tourists who are trying to escape the heat from
their own areas. When we think it is
warm here they think it is just right.
Peter’s sailing business is busy as well. He is really enjoying meeting and informing his traveling
customers about the area and it’s history.
I think he has met his calling.
I haven’t heard enough yet about the big Sars concert in Toronto. We don’t have cable or a dish so there is
not much on TV about it. Thanks Clyde
for writing about your concert experience.
It is great you could do it together with your family. It’s events like these that bring
generations together and I’m all for that.
I’ve been interested in Sass Jorden since she is one of the Canadian
Idol judges. I haven’t heard her
perform but I sure would.
I keep forgetting that Australia is in winter until Karen mentions
the weather. I find it so interesting to hear about far away lands so keep it
up Karen. Our summer has been great
with plenty of hot temperatures and very little rain. I feel bad for those out in B.C. where a forest fire is raging
and they have had to evacuate their homes.
It must be so hard to leave and not be sure if the house would be still
standing when they return. We had a
forest fire a few years ago up on Fitzpatrick Mountain. Luckily the wind was blowing in a direction
where there were no homes but they had the big water bombers dumping loads of
water every few minutes. By the time
the fire was out it had burned a large strip of woods. Living with woods around you is so beautiful
until there are extremely dry conditions and then you start to worry.
Have a great summer everyone,
****
The
South Etobican
By the time you fine folks receive this
newsletter, Jim and I will be well on our way to the wilds of Ontario to enjoy
a week of backcountry canoeing. Usually, we spend our one camping week in the
Algonquin interior, but this year we're heading further north to Temagami. The
Lake Temagami area has some of the oldest old-growth forests in the province
and what promises to be some beautiful scenery.
To add to the adventure, we are making this a fly-in / paddle out trip.
We--along with our dog, Saba, a canoe strapped to a pontoon--will be flown in
from the access point on a little Cesna plane (Doug could probably tell you
more about the plane than I could).
We will then spend the next seven days leisurely paddling our way back to the
car.
I absolutely love the peace and solitude of these trips and look forward to
complete decompression from the pressures of everyday life. I'll be sure to
post some pictures when we get back and send you a link.
I had intended to write last week but just got too busy. We took in the Toronto
Blues Fest on Friday night. There was some good music and I particularly liked
the Afro Celts (african-celtic mix). The odd thing was the only blues music I
heard was the canned stuff they played between sets. It was put on by the same
guy that does the Ottawa Blues Fest which is supposed to be quite a big event
in the business. Maybe Rosemary could comment on the "blues-y-ness"
of it. The rest of the weekend was spent dehydrating food for the camping trip,
preparing to pack, dim sum with the inlaws to celebrate Jim's dad's 70th
birthday, and so much running around.
The main reason I wanted to write was to say a huge "Way to go Mom!"
to let her know how proud I am of her for climbing the Chief last week. I was
one of the nay-sayers telling her not to attempt the climb and she proved me
wrong. For those of you that don't know Carol that well, she has a history of
being...well...accident-prone to put it mildly. She can manage to break her
ankle just walking down a sidewalk. I could just imagine what might befall her
on her way up and down a monolith! But she made it in one piece, bringing back
with her the same number of limbs she went up with. So, way to go Mom!
Speaking of my mom, I was talking to her and Al Friday evening. They were in
some little town in Michigan, after getting slowed down by what mom described
as a "glorious storm". Too bad I missed it but she sure enjoyed it.
However, it has set them back a day and they won't make it home in time to get
a column in before the Squamidian goes to press. But mom said to let you all
know she'll fill you in next week and that she has a ton of wonderful travel
stories to report. I look forward to seeing the pictures when I get back from
my own little trek.
Have a great week, everybody!
Jackie
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
August 1, 2003
Greetings
everyone! Well, the Stones concert is finally history. Looks like we proved
that Canadians still have the best manners and don’t have to act like animals
to have a good time. I watched and listened to the only American commentator
that covered the event for CNN and to say the least, he might as well have
stayed in the States. Once again, I look back at the statements he made and can
only draw one conclusion. According to Americans, Americans are the only people
on earth that can do anything right. This bird should be assigned to reporting
on paint drying competitions! He had nothing good to say about the bands, the
concert itself, the organizers or the Canadian people that were in attendance
at the event. As far as I’m concerned, the organizers did an amazing job of
putting one of the most successful Rock events of all time on in RECORD time.
Since I wasn’t at the concert, I can only comment on what I saw on the news
reports. It makes me proud to be Canadian when such an event happens here and
is absolutely flawless in its entirety. My congratulations to the organizers
and to the city of Toronto and I think we as Canadians owe the Rolling Stones a
hearty THANK YOU for helping an entire city in need. They did indeed prove
themselves humanitarians and again the Greatest Rock Band ever! I’ve said
enough about the concert, I hope that Clyde will sit down and write a report on
the concert from the perspective of an “aging” (just kidding Clyde) Rock fan! I
know he’s already written a short piece on it but I’m sure he has a lot more in
him to give.
My week has been one of errands and appointments. I noticed a clunking sound in the new Liberty. I went to the dealership and had a mechanic accompany me on a ride so he could hear the annoying sound. Of course he only thought he could hear it. That was on Tuesday. I then made an appointment to take it in to them on Thursday afternoon so they could fix whatever it was that was clunking. I wasn’t sure they’d be able to find the clunk but after 2 mechanics spent about 2 hours in it and under it, they were able to find a brake line that was hitting the frame when the Jeep was driven over small bumps. It was funny, it only happened when I was cruising at about 40 Kms/hr and hitting only moderate bumps. At any rate, they were able to find the problem and that makes me feel a lot better.
Adam was hit in the rear end of his new Mini Cooper on his way home from work on Tuesday night. So, my next mission was to take his Mini to the dealer after calling the insurance to get an estimate on repairing the damage. He was sitting at a red light and an 18 year old girl hit him from behind at approximately 30km/hr. She got charged with “careless driving” for not paying attention to the road or the traffic in front of her.
Of
course here in Ontario, thanks to the NDP government we had a number of years
ago, we still have “No Fault” insurance. This means that when you get into an
accident, your own Insurance company pays for your damages whether or not
someone else was at fault. Still a screwy way of doing things if you ask me.
Whether or not you are at fault, this means that the accident is on YOUR record
as an incident. Once you have a couple of these, the insurance companies can
drop you like a hot potato. At least they don’t increase your rates when it’s
not your fault. It turned out that there is $1600.00 damage to Adam’s car. They
say that they will use all new parts for the repair and he won’t know that it
was ever hit. I think this is small consolation when your beautiful new vehicle
isn’t original anymore. Oh well, I guess he should be grateful that it’s fixed
properly and nobody was injured. Now he just has to wait to find out when he
can take it in to have the work done. Should be sometime next week.
I
also spent the morning in Waterloo today having a trailer hitch installed on
the Jeep. I checked at the dealer last week and they told me that a hitch from
them would be $500.00 installed. They also told me that the wiring had to be
done by them because if not done properly it would screw up the computer in the
vehicle and void the warranty. Well, when I stopped at a place called Maurice’s
Welding on the way home from there, I found that he would make a custom hitch
and do the wiring according to Jeep’s specifications for $206.48 including
taxes. I just about flipped. I made the appointment and was there at 8am this
morning. I waited around while they made and installed the hitch and it took a
grand total of 2 hrs. I now have a Class III trailer hitch that will pull up to
5000 lbs. I of course don’t own a trailer but one never knows when one might
need to tow something! Actually, I have a friend that has a utility trailer and
that is probably all I’ll ever haul with my Jeep but ya never know!
I
just figured that the Liberty is too pretty to be hauling junk in and I don’t
have access to a pickup truck so the trailer hitch is the next best thing. Now
I’ll probably be looking through the local Buy and Sell for a cheap trailer. One thing always leads to another,
doesn’t it?
Speaking
of one thing leading to another, these days it seems that one rainstorm leads
to another around here. Actually, they’ve been predicting rain and
thunderstorms for our area for the past week and we’ve only had a few
sprinkles. The weather site on the net says that we are in for storms for the
next 5 days. I’m hoping they’re wrong. I would like the month of August to be
sunny and mild. A nice way to end the summer!
We
are once again supposed to have company coming from Saint John NB. They are the
same couple that came up last summer in their new motor home. If you remember
last year, they didn’t show up on the date they said they’d be here. They
decided to travel to northern Ontario to visit his aunt instead of coming here
first. We worried like heck for 5 days till they finally knocked on our door.
After giving them a lashing with a wet noodle we decided that as long as they
were safe, it was forgivable. This year, they told us that they would be coming
up to Ontario early August and they would give us plenty of advanced notice
before arriving. WELL…………..It’s early August and we haven’t heard a word from
them in 3 weeks. So, we’re not sure if they are coming or not and we’d like to
make plans of our own if they are not. I’ve written to them via e-mail and
gotten no response. I guess we’ll have to phone them some night soon and find
out if they’re still coming. It ticks me off when people are so inconsiderate.
If they’ve changed their minds about coming up, the least they can do is let us
know! I said to Carole sure as heck we’ll have the Jeep all packed and be
pulling out of the driveway and they’ll pull up in the motorhome. I guess
there’s no figuring people! Well, that’s about all I have for this week. Thanks
again for tuning in and I’ll be with you again next week. Until then, stay safe
and have a great week.
Later, GREG.
PS: Something To Think About>
Don’t question your wife’s
judgment, look whom she married!
****
Have a good one..
the
doug