The Squamidian Report – June 6 / 15
Issue #680
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Bet you are wondering why this letter has come out a bit late, assuming
that you noticed it was late... Well, I was in no shape late Friday
evening when I'd normally send it, to put it together and send it. And
its not being sent from my usual location, my 'main' computer. Its
being sent from my laptop through Webmail as I lay helplessly on a bed
in one of our guest bedrooms. You see, after waiting a year and a half
to have my blown-out hernia re-done, I got the call from the surgeon
that they could do it on Friday, June 5. That pretty well ruined that
day and will now ruin the next month or more from a riding point of
view but it had to be done.
Some of you know that while I was back in Kitchener in April I rented a
car through Avis. Picked it up at the airport, and dropped it off at
the same place. Very convenient and it worked out quite well. However,
a week ago I got an invoice from Avis to cover a road toll that had
been registered against that car on one of the days it was in my
possession. Hmmm, that didn't seem right. The invoice, which had
already been put against my Visa, was for $28.61. $9.40 was for the
toll and video thereof, $17.00 for administration fees, and $2.21 for
taxes. To make it more puzzling, the toll details showed the car
entering the toll road, assumably the 407, at 7:29Am, but does not have
an exit time or location. Apparently the car must still be on the 407
somewhere.
Needless to say I called Avis. There's an exercise in futility. It took
who knows how long to work through the automated voices just to get to
a North American location, then numerous more menus etc to get to a
real voice that turned out to be somewhere in Oklahoma. After talking
to that person, they gave me a number for customer service. First try
on that number took me to more automated voices so I hung up and tried
again.
This time I got a real person who listed to my story and said that all
they could do was look in to it, but repeatedly asked if I'd simply
forgotten that I'd been driving on the 407. I explained that not only
had the car NEVER left the city of Kitchener, or that I had put less
than 300 kilometers on it during the whole time that I had it, but that
on the day in question the car either sat at on a relative's driveway
or at a funeral home. Neither I nor it could possibly have driven to or
on the 407. Again, they said they would look in to it and possibly get
back to me in about a week. I then sent off an Email to the same
department outlining the situation.
Its not so much the amount of the Visa debit, its the principal of the
thing. I have a big problem with paying someone else's bills. The fact
that the invoice details only shows a vehicle entering the toll road
but not leaving it tells me that the camera misread the license number,
because it could never find that same number exiting. The most likely
thing is that someone that commutes around there drove to work but the
camera didn't catch their plate correctly. Now because part of the toll
fee was for video, the assumptions is that there will be a picture of
the mystery vehicle somewhere for someone to cross check.
I finally heard back from the Avis person on Thursday, turns out there
is no picture of the license plate, at least not one that was
'retrievable', whatever than means. However, because no legible proof
of plate number or car could be provided, the toll company has backed
down and Avis will be refunding the amount they debited my credit card.
I'm glad thats over with now. It wasn't the 28 bucks, it was the
principal of the thing. And I'm pleased that Avis did the right thing
in investigating my claim. Thank you Avis.
*
We've been doing a chapter springtime BBQ for our CMC
riding group ever since we got involved with the club. This year was no
exception. We put on our BBQ last Sunday. To that end, 'The Wife'
slaved away getting everything ready the day before. On the Sunday
morning I headed down to Horseshoe Bay to get the ride organized and
lead it up to here. The ride went nice and smooth. One things that
helps with that is the fact that all our road captains use the U-Clear
comm systems so we can communicate easily which makes sheepherding a
dozen bikes in formation up the highway through traffic almost
seamless. Bringing the column of bikes up into our neighborhood is
always fun as we wind our way up the hill. The bikes all rumble as they
climb and people tend to pop their heads out to see whats going on. Our
neighbor says it sounds like an endless thunder rumble that keeps
getting closer and closer. Then, once here, we park all the bikes along
the street and enjoy the afternoon. Once the bikes are parked, no one
would even know we are here because we are not a very rowdy bunch, we
are all just normal people ranging from lawyers to movie set directors
to bank tellers to retired people to 9-to-5 workers and so on. Anyway,
a fun time was had by all, 'The Wife' served up a great lunch and after
that out came the guitars (I have enough guitars here to lend to anyone
who wants to play along, except the Martin of course). By 4pm everyone
had headed back to the city in order to be ahead of the Sunday
afternoon heavy traffic the tends to build when Whistler empties out.
Anyway, here's a link to some pictures of and from the event.
Biker BBQ
And one last thing, we've had the pleasure of enjoying a visit from
friends who live in Colorado. Neil & Michele lived in Squamish for
a few years, a few years ago while he was taking a course in North Van.
He's a guitar player and so all of us obviously hit it off pretty good
at the time and still do. Had a chance to show them around at 'our'
gondola while they were here. We did the Panorama Ridge trail twice in
one visit. First time the clouds were around and under us limiting what
they could see, but that itself creates a pretty cool experience.
Second time the clouds had cleared out a bit and the view opened up.
They could even see the house they had lived in. Again, cool.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Well here we go again with decisions made by our local government that
were decided upon without any input from the taxpayers. I should say,
with little input from the taxpayers. The city did have a meeting that
was hastily put together and from what I witnessed on the CTV News
there were only about two dozen taxpayers that showed up. They allowed
a total of about six folks to voice their opinions on the changes to
our garbage collection schedule before doing what the council wanted!
Starting this month Kitchener is going to have garbage collection once
every two weeks instead of once a week. They say this will slow down
the filling up of the landfill site on Erb St W in Waterloo and it will
also save the city, not the taxpayers mind you, but the city about 1.5
million dollars per year. It’s hard to believe but they are saying that
the bi-weekly pickup will facilitate having fewer trucks on the road
and therefore save money. By my calculations saving up one’s garbage
for two weeks will still generate the same amount of garbage and
they’ll have to have the trucks make more runs to the dump to empty
what they collect so they can go back out for more. This just doesn’t
make sense at all! They say that this idea will encourage taxpayers to
use their recycle “Blue Boxes” and organic matter “Green Bins” more as
they will still be picked up every week. They are picked up weekly as
it is and if folks aren’t using them now what makes the city think
they’ll use them any more frequently with this dough headed schedule?
They are also going to limit the amount of garbage to 4 bags per pick
up and there will be a charge per bag over and above the allowance of 4
bags. The charge per bag idea has been tried in other municipalities
and it only resulted in people taking a drive at night or out into the
countryside and tossing their “extra” bags on the side of the road.
Great Idea councilors! I also have no idea how this larger volume pick
up is any different when they will be picking up two weeks worth of
garbage each time rather than one week’s worth once a week. It’s apples
and oranges if you ask me! It’s also not going to slow the filling up
of the dump from where I stand! Who elected these jerks anyway? Oops! I
guess we did, the same people that are complaining about their poor
decision making capabilities! Guess we just can’t win!
Last weekend we celebrated our son Adam’s 39th birthday and had him
over for dinner. He came over around noon and asked if I’d help him dig
through the many boxes we have stored up on the mezzanine above the
garage doors. He was looking for a particular large rubber figure of a
Wrestler by the name of “King Kong Bundy”. These figures were very
popular with the kids back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and
Adam had a collection of most of the figures offered by toy companies
when he was a child. Over the years as we moved and had other reasons
to hold garage sales, he chose to sell off most of his childhood toys.
Since “King Kong Bundy” was his favourite wrestler he decided not to
sell that particular figure and to hang onto it as a keepsake. I
willingly said I’d be glad to help him search for the figure. So, we
went into the massive pile of boxes to see if we could find his figure.
We took turns up in the extreme heat of the mezzanine with a small
flashlight trying to peek into the many boxes and trunks. The best way
to have handled this would have been to bring the boxes etc down onto
the garage floor where we’d have more light and would have been able to
fully open them to look at the contents. We were not successful in
finding what he wanted that day and gave up after only about an hour.
We went out to dinner that afternoon to celebrate his birthday and
enjoyed the time we had together. Come Monday morning Carole asked me
if I’d be willing to help her bring all the boxes down so we could
actually get a good look inside and maybe we’d be able to find “King
Kong Bundy” for Adam. He desperately needed this rubber figure so he
could take it with him to a Comic Con convention in Niagara Falls this
weekend. He and another friend of his collect memorabilia and attend
these gatherings as a hobby and the real “King Kong Bundy” is going to
be at this weekend’s convention signing autographs. Adam figured it
would be cool and good value to have the rubber figure autographed by
the famous wrestler of yesteryear! SO, out to the garage Carole and I
went and box after box came down onto the garage floor. We spent most
of the day opening up and digging through these boxes to locate Mr.
Bundy and to no avail. Oh well, at least we were able to see just what
we had packed up there some 17 years ago when we moved into this house.
Some of the boxes of stuff had been packed back in 1990 when we had
left Kitchener and moved into a house we built in Linwood so they
really contained a lot of mysterious items! While digging through the
boxes etc, we came across a small light chocolate brown suitcase with
the initials WC printed on it in gold leaf. As it turned out, this was
the original suitcase that Carole’s dad “William “Billy” Cromie” packed
and carried with him on the day he joined the British Navy back in 1937
at the tender age of 18. He was truly just a young Irish lad from
Belfast NI. Carole cleaned the surface of the case and as she wiped the
dust off I could see tears forming in her loving blue eyes. She had
been the only daughter among 3 brothers and of course was daddy’s
little girl! She looked lovingly at the case as she ran her fingers
over the gold initials and exclaimed “I can just see my dad as a skinny
wee lad walking toward the ship he’d been assigned to, heading off to
war!” My gosh, he was only a kid who was very quickly to become a man!
Billy served in the British Navy until the war was over and then after
being discharged he married his girlfriend Pat and they started a
family together! Three boys and one girl and a number of years after
that, they packed up that suitcase among others and immigrated to
Canada to start a new life once again! It’s hard to believe that Billy
and Pat were so brave that they took on such an adventure as moving to
a far away country they knew very little about to start all over again
and did it with their relatively large family in tow! It was quite a
thrill that evening to sit and talk about all the memories of her dad
that were brought to mind by that little brown suitcase! It now
occupies a place of honour on the hearth of our fireplace and will
likely never again be stuffed into a dusty storage area in the attic of
our garage! After clearing out that storage area and sorting what we
truly want to keep and what we really didn’t have any further use for
we disposed of the unnecessary items and repacked the keepsakes in
strong plastic bins to be opened sometime in the years to come! There
were many more items found over the past few days of searching that
also brought back great memories. I guess that’s what keeping items
from your past is all about! MEMORIES!
Guess that’s all 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
PS: Something To Think About>
Talk is cheap, except when government does it! - Anonymous
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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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