The Squamidian Report – Sept. 19 / 09
Issue #382
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Sometimes, on very rare occasions, you can get some pretty nest stuff at good old Canadian Tire. Remember way back in the ‘good old day’s’ when CTC was the top choice of where to shop, at least if you were a male type shopper. They carried their own Mastercraft line of high quality tools and tool type stuff. They also carried a fascinating treasure chest full of everything from camping gear to plumbing materials and it was all good quality. On a typical Saturday morning those stores were so busy that you had to take a number just to talk so some clerk behind a counter.
Oh how times have changed. Now those CTC stores are crammed full of poor quality crap that isn’t usually worth even looking at let alone buying. Most of the stuff is made in China or some similar place and barley stood the trip over let alone being able to do the job it was purchased to do. But every once in a while they will have some item or items that are from a reputable manufacturer and are of good quality. And sometimes, some of those items are on sale and advertised in their Friday evening flyers.
Our local CTC is about as small town as you can get and seldom carried half the stuff advertised in the flyers. The management had long since abandoned any attempt at customer service and what few employees might be found in the store went out of their way to avoid contact with the customers. If you did manage to corner one to ask a question you quickly discovered that they not only didn’t know the answer (like, where might I find a given item) but also didn’t even want to know the answer. Management had tried to remove ALL the checkouts and had installed those ridiculous ‘do it yourself’ machines where the customer is expected to check out his or her own purchases. That didn’t go over very well and most customers insisted on going to the only manned checkout, which was at the service desk. Eventually it reached the point where you couldn’t tell if they were open because there were almost no vehicles in the parking lot and practically no one was in the store. It would be empty and you still couldn’t get any assistance.
Our local CTC came under new management this summer but I hadn’t bothered to go in until last week’s flyer included a sale price on Celestron SkyMaster stargazing binoculars. Now these are those huge binoculars that are so big and heavy that you need both hands just to hold them up. They are not meant for wandering around on a hiking trip with but are meant for stargazing. The optics are configured for maximum light gathering which is what you need for viewing faint objects. They even come with a mounting bracket for use with a telescope tripod. They are not professional quality that cost many hundreds of dollars but they are very good back yard normal person quality. The normal CTC price here is BC is $150 and they were featured at $89. Not bad, a savings of $60 and at that price well worth picking up a set. So I went in and couldn’t find any in the cabinet that displays that kind of thing. Then, much to my surprise a store attendant came up to me and asked if I needed any help. I showed him the item in the flyer and he checked the computer and found that they did have one pair, still in the storeroom. So I bought them. And they work great. My really good pair is better for scenery and that kind of thing but these Celestron binoculars sure do a nice job at looking up at stuff. You have to brace yourself against something solid or use a tripod to steady them but I had no problem at all seeing 4 of Jupiter’s moons the other night and no problem seeing the Andromeda galaxy through a high haze. Not bad at all. The belt in Orion glistens with stars and nebula. The Milky Way becomes a dazzling display of diamonds against a black background. Beautiful. If they had had more than one pair, I’d have gone back in and bought another one just to put away as a Christmas gift or some such thing. But they didn’t so I didn’t and anyone who might have thought they would be getting a really spiffy present from me is just plain out of luck.
And speaking of strange Squamish style stores, there used to be a Dairy Queen here. Unfortunately, the owners ran it into the ground. They let the building get totally run down and the place was a pigsty inside. It finally shut down or went under about 2 years ago. We had always enjoyed a warm summer evening visit to the good old DQ back in Kitchener and we carried on that activity after we moved to the coast. The condition of the local Squamish DQ soon had us loosing interest in indulging and after a while we simply didn’t bother anymore.
However every once in a while we would still get the urge for a soft ice-cream treat. One of those ‘once-in-a-while’ was last Saturday evening, warm clear and beautiful. So we climbed aboard the Harley and headed into West Vancouver where there is a DQ on Marine Dr. The sun was setting as we rode in along the Sound, backlighting the islands and Vancouver Island with brilliant oranges and purples. By the time we got to the DQ it was pretty well dark.
After enjoying our treats we mounted back up and headed for home. I pulled off the Upper Levels at the Cypress Bowl interchange and rode up to the lookout. Sue had never been there and had no idea where I was going. The view out over the city is spectacular with all the lights. The Lions Gate Bridge is lit, the ships out on English Bay are lit. Nanaimo over on the Island is lit. The stars in the clear night sky are lit. Well worth the stop. The ride back up the Sound was great as it always is with the night sky overhead and the rumble of the exhaust echoing off the rocks. Good times, eh?
I won’t even bother to tell you about the fact that on that same day Ryan rode his Harley Sportster to Kamloops for lunch, a round trip of over 800 kilometers from Squamish. Mind you, he left from Langley where he was visiting a friend and therefore cut about 150 clicks off the actual round trip. I also won’t bother to tell you that Sue and I on our bike and Ryan on his did the circle route trip the next day (Sunday). That’s a round trip of a bit over 600 kilometers. That takes us out the Fraser Valley to Hope, then up the Fraser Canyon where it was incredibly hot and dry, then over the Duffy to Pemberton and then down through Whistler to Squamish. It was another great ride but I won’t bother to tell you about it.
doug
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Hello everyone!
I’m sure you all remember my telling you over the
past few years that I intend to send a kite to the end of my 23,000 ft reel of
string. Well, I haven’t done that yet but I was successful in finally getting a
reply from a long way off from one of my “free flight” kites. As you may
recall, I set a couple of kites free a week ago this past Wednesday and was
waiting to hear if anybody found one. This past Monday, I received an e-mail
from a lady in the town of Wheatley Ontario. She said that she had found a kite
in her yard with an e-mail address on it and decided to ask where it had been
released or broken free. I sent a couple of replies to her address and heard
nothing back. Last night before hitting the hay, I checked my e-mail and lo and
behold, there was a nice reply from Wheatley. The lady that found the kite
finally wrote to tell me when and what model kite she found. She said that on
Sunday last weekend, she and her husband noticed a kite caught in the hydro
lines near their home. Come Monday morning she found the same kite in her back
yard. She told me that it was the Spiderman one and the next day she noticed an
e-mail address on it so she dropped me a note. Her name is Mary and her
husband’s name is Jim Price. Wheatley is adjacent to Point Pelee on the north
shore of Lake Erie south and a little east of Windsor Ontario.
I checked on the map to see exactly where they live
and exactly how far the kite had been carried by the wind. Mary told me that
they live on a farm on Hwy #3 about 7 miles east of Wheatley. I told her that
of course I didn’t want the kite back, I was just interested in where and when
she found it and told her to let her kids or grand children have it to play
with. She wrote back and said that her 3 and 5 years old grand kids were having
great fun with it.
When I checked the scale on the map, I found that
the kite had traveled approximately 200 km from its release point at Long Point
Beach. That was quite a successful flight considering the prevailing wind is
usually from west to east along the north shore of Lake Erie. That particular
day the wind was out of the east and usually brings shitty weather with it. Not
that time, the sky was clear and beautifully blue. I wanted to know which kite
she had found because the last time I saw the bi-plane it was heading for the
marsh to the west of Long Point. I figured it had bought the farm that day but
you never know, it just might have been scooped up by a stronger wind and taken
away. I had kind of hoped it would be the bi-plane but as fate would have it,
the lighter plastic delta shaped cheapie won out! Mary and her husband were
quite impressed with the idea of putting one’s e-mail address on a kite and
setting it free. She said they had received a balloon a couple of years ago
with a note in it from a school class somewhere in Ohio and they sent an e-mail
back to the kids and got a nice letter back as well.
Last week when I told Doug about the kite idea he
suggested that in stead of using a kite I should try attaching a note to a
helium balloon and maybe I’d have a better chance of someone finding it and
writing back to me. Well, I’m happy to say that now I’ve had some success with
the kite method and I think I’ll stick to that way for fun for a while.
I still have the challenge of sending a kite up on
the “super” high flight yet so I’ll be trying to accomplish that in the next
little while. I think I’ll take it to the Breithaupt Park fields at the end of
Floyd St in the North Ward where we used to fly them when we were kids and try
to set the record from their. I know that there are no hydro wires anywhere
near that park and it should be a great spot to fly from. Over the next week or
so I’ll do my best to get out and give the record flight a try and I’ll report
the results in a future Ontarion for sure!
That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking
to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg.
PS: Something To Think About>
You might be a member of the Taliban if: You wipe
your backside with your bare hand but consider bacon unclean!
EEeeeeeeeewww! Sorry bout that!
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Have a good one..
the doug
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