The
Squamidian Report – Jan. 5 / 13
Issue #554
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
A while back I had been out for an early morning walk with the dog. The streets were salty and slippery so I headed onto the local trails through the bush. There is a very extensive trail system around here that can take a hiker quite quickly into total wilderness. Anyway, there had been a fresh snow during the night and the snow was unbroken ahead of us. Then, we came across some tracks, very big tracks with pads and toes showing clearly, and the toes all left claw marks in the snow. They looked sort of like dog tracks but not shaped quite the same, and were about 4 times bigger than any dog track I’ve ever seen. The only thing I could think of was that there must still be bears out and about but I thought they were all hibernating now. I didn’t give it much more thought until I was talking to a neighbour who does a lot of hiking in the local hills. He says there are a lot of fresh bear tracks around so I guess that is what I had come across. They had been quite fresh and perhaps I was lucky not to stumble across the actual critter that was making them. There are regular warnings on the local radio about cougars in and around town as well so there seems to be a lot to keep an eye open for.
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Right now the biggest ‘silly’ thing around here is the new Port Mann bridge. Or at least it would be silly if it wasn’t so dumb. This new bridge over the Fraser River has cost us 3.3 billion dollars and just opened a month ago. It is supposedly the widest cable suspension bridge in the world. However, so far it has failed every weather related challenge that it has been subjected to. Firstly, just before Christmas, all those suspension cables that were hung from hundreds of feet higher than the bridge deck became covered with ice and that ice broke loose all at once and fell on the vehicles below, damaging over a hundred of them and injuring people as the ice bombs crashed through windshields and sky roofs. Then, on Thursday morning the bridge deck iced up due to a freezing fog, and the Lower Mainland drivers panicked. The end result was several multi-vehicle pile-ups in both directions that pretty well closed down the bridge again. In all fairness to the bridge, the pile-ups were as much the fault of bad drivers who slammed on their brakes on ice which is a pretty stupid thing to do in traffic that is moving about 30 over the limit while travelling bumper to bumper, instead of simply slowing down gently. So, here we have a new bridge that is part of the Trans Canada system, and is not safe to cross in the winter and we have to pay a toll each and every time we try to cross it. Go figure!
The same cold frosty nights that caused black ice to form on the bridge, caused frost crystals to form all over the place up this way. The snow around here is covered with neat little frost flowers about an inch high. They almost look like tiny silver trees. Our lawn, and all the other lawns here look like they have been covered with a plush shag carpet. We get a similar thing in late October when frost will grow as tiny tubular structures that can push up the mud and leaves several inches. However, these frost flowers we have this time of year are very delicate and fine and brittle, so they end up looking like tiny trees and flowers. I took some pictures, just in case you don’t believe me, or I haven’t explained them sufficiently. Here’s the link:
http://www.thedougsite.net/Pictures/House/Frost%20Flowers.html
And, the same weather that is cold enough for frost to form, like all the way down to minus 1 or 2 or so, has forced Vancouver to issue a ‘cold alert’. Yup, on the west coast a temperature of ‘freezing’ is when they open all the shelters and try to get the homeless off the streets so they don’t freeze to death. This wouldn’t happen in most other places across the country until the temperature dropped a lot further. One of the reasons Vancouver has so many homeless is that many people who could end up being homeless come to the coast to avoid the harsher, frigid Canadian winters. But, that’s not what I’m trying to talk about. I’m just pointing out that a relatively mild temperature of 0F triggers a cold alert on the west coast. And now you know….
Well, it’s the New Year now, again. It will be what we make it because lets face it, we make our own luck as we shape our world around us. I intend that my year will be interesting and perhaps even a bit exciting at times, but not too exciting, the ‘just right’ kind of exciting. Winter seems to be a bit hard on all of us, but spring isn’t too far away and every day is getting longer now, and the dark of night getting shorter. So, things are looking up. This is issue number 554 of the Squamidian. Hard to believe when you think about it. Lets see if we can make it to 600 before we run out of stuff to write about and run dry of ideas. Hey, a little help at times would be good. That’s a hint to all of you who have something interesting to say or talk about, and yes, you all do.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the NEW YEAR!
Like Doug said, it’s hard to believe that this has been going on for the past 10 years! WOW! Ten years of columns and 10 years of retirement for me, it’s amazing indeed! I’m having a rough time typing with my hands so sore but I’m toughing it out to get a few last columns in before I have to go through the surgery on the 15th of this month. I have an appointment with the specialist to meet him right at the Grand River Hospital at 8:30am on that date in the “Fracture Clinic” so I am hoping he wants me to meet him there so he can do the surgery after checking the x rays I had done yesterday to take along to show him. I hope he gets it over with at least on my right hand to start with. Then he can book the left hand for several weeks later. It would be a mistake to have him do both hands at the same time, mainly because I’d have nobody willing to WIPE what needs to be wiped a couple of times a day! Hahahahahaaa…… Carole has already told me that she’s sure as heck not wiping anything more than my dinner plate if I get both hands done at the same time! LOL! Hahaha….. I can’t say I’d blame her on that one! Hahahaha…. I think I’d feel the same if the shoe were on the other foot! Guess I’ll just have to make sure the Dr does only one at a time!
It’s going to be another chore to type anything after the surgery too! Guess I may have to politely ask Carole to be my secretary and take dictation of my column while I recuperate! I wonder what I’ll have to pay her to do that?
The rate has likely gone up since I was in High School and did typing for University Students at a penny per word! I had to type a heck of a lot of words to make any decent money. Most of their papers were between 500 and 3000 words so as you can see, it wasn’t very profitable! When you could only type about 40 words per minute it was a slow process. If I didn’t have to make sure there were no spelling or grammar mistakes it would have gone a lot faster but they wouldn’t accept the papers with errors!
There was a time when I could type around the 75 word per minute rate but on the old “Selectric” typewriters of the day, mistakes were common! I say old but they were actually the most up to date machines of the time! At least with the ball mechanism they had an auto correct function but were still slow. The “auto correct” still had to be worked manually so you had to be alert for sure! One of the advantages of doing work like the student papers was that it really improved your spelling skill. Nowadays the computer programs do the correcting and spell checking as you type and even capitalize where needed. Who says life was simpler back then? Hahaha….. At least students had to know how to spell and punctuate back then, not like the kids of today who learn to spell phonetically! Heck, many of today’s kids have trouble writing anything by hand since computers are so prevalent! I’m sure today’s kids would be lost if they were handed a straight nibbed pen and an ink well to do their writing with! Ha, that just conjured up visions of Ebenezer Scrooge sitting at his tall work desk on Christmas Eve working with his “Quill” pen and ink well! If Mr Scrooge had owned a computer back in his day, he might have made it home in time for Christmas!
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Speaking of money, I had to have the water pump on the Jeep replaced the other day. It started to leak on the garage floor during the Christmas weekend and luckily my friend and Chief Mechanic for the Fire Dept was off duty during the holiday week and was able to take the Jeep in to his place on Wednesday and replace the pump for me. If I had taken it to the dealer it would have been at least $300.00 plus tax but Chris did the replacement for me for an even $150.00 total. It sure pays to have connections like him. The Jeep us just about to hit the 260,000km mark so I guess I can expect the odd thing to start to leak or break down once in a while. I’m still very happy with the Liberty and am hoping to get a couple more years out of it. I guess as long as I keep up with the maintenance it’ll last at least that long. I’m sure it’ll be ok for a while yet and if not, Santa will be buying himself a replacement that will be about 10 years worth the Christmas presents all in one! LOL!
As I’ve said in other Ontarions, I’d like to make the Jeep last till the half million km mark if not more so we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes!
That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll be looking forward to taking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
I wondered why the snowball was getting bigger, then it hit me!
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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.