The Squamidian Report – Nov. 14 / 15
Issue #703
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Well now, I really don't want to talk about just the weather but
because of the weather, there really isn't all that much else to talk
about. This is after all November and thats how it is. So, we've had
our first frost and ice of the season. Yup, this time of year if the
skies are clear, the overnight temperatures drop and when it drops to
near or below the freezing point we get frost and ice. Its always funny
to watch people on our street scraping their car windows, something we
almost never have to do. You see, there is some sort of weird custom
around here where no one parks in their garages. Heck, most don't even
bother to park on their own driveways. They just leave their vehicles
on the street, all the time. There is actually a very old bylaw that
prohibits overnight parking on the streets but it has never been
enforced and probably never well be. That would make way too much
sense. Anyway, while our vehicles are nice and warm and dry and frost
free in our garage, most of the cars and trucks are out in the weather,
getting a nice coat of ice on their windshields. That scraping sound is
one of those sounds you can identify immediately, and I for one do not
miss being part of that silliness at all.
When its not nice and clear, the sky this time of year is more likely
to be heavily overcast with incredible amounts of water falling from
it. Thats how most of the last few days have been. You know, the kind
of rain where a pail left out on the deck will fill up over night, and
then again the next day and so on. The kind of rain where the water
courses turn into raging torrents, where there are waterfalls cascading
over every rock face. Where you wonder if you should trade your car
tires in for pontoons. Luckily for us its mostly down hill all over the
place and the water runs off quickly, right back into the ocean where
it came from. Those same heavy rains are snow up in the higher
mountains. In fact, Whistler intends to open for skiing next Thursday.
Now thats obviously not down at the village level but way up on its
higher slopes. Skiers simply 'upload' to the top on the chair lifts,
sky those upper slopes and when they are done, they 'download' back to
the bottom. Basically, its winter at the top and still late fall at the
bottom. Handy when you think about it.
Oh, Friday was the 13th. That was the day my motorcycle insurance
expired. Due to the fact that the preceding days had been frosty and
then very wet, the poor old bike was already tucked away. Sad but
necessary. We are not out on the coast where it is a bit more
moderated, we get slippery roads here that end up even slipperier when
sanded so its the right thing to do. I'd hate to dump the bike on a
patch of frost or some such dumb thing. And because the bike is now put
away, I decided to bring the snow blower the rest of the way around and
into the garage where I may or may not need it for weeks or months or
at all. It will just sit there, almost in the way, reminding me that
bike season is over, at least for me. I did decide to do an oil change
etc on the old blower. And yes, it is getting on in years. I forget
when we got it but that was quite a while ago. Especially in dog years.
Something that has always impressed me about that machine is how easy
it is to start. It almost always starts on the first pull. The only
reason I can think of for that level of performance is that whenever I
shut it off, and that shutoff time is going to be more than a few
hours, I always turn the gas valve off and leave the engine run until
it quits from fuel starvation. That way the carb bowl is pretty well
empty and the piston and plug will be dry as well. When I go to start
it back up, be it the next day or several months later, I simply turn
the valve back to the on position, push the prime button several times
until I can hear that it is pushing fuel, set the choke, set the
throttle and give the pull handle a pull. Away it goes. And thats all I
have to say about that.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I know you’ve all been busy with Remembrance Day and other governmental
issues on your minds this past week but now that we’re a few days past
the 11th things are getting back to normal. We aren’t quite into snow
days yet but I’m sure they aren’t far ahead of us now. A rough patch of
weather whacked the mid-west in the USA yesterday and I’m sure it’ll be
happening to us here in Ontario by the end of this month! Make sure you
have the shovels handy and the snow blowers serviced and on the ready!
We’ll talk more about the coming winter in the near future I’m sure.
*
Vacation Paris
Getting back to the continuation of our visit to
France is once again the topic for this week’s Ontarion as you might
have guessed. As I promised I have an interesting topic for your
perusal today. We were very busy visiting the different well-known
sites that most people are familiar with when Paris is mentioned. Over
the first few days of our holiday in this marvelous city we covered the
most popular tourist attractions. On the fourth day, Adam had chosen a
site that he knew of when planning our trip with Carole. It was a
complete shocker to me when he told me what it was that he’d like to be
sure and visit when in Paris. We left our hotel early that morning and
started walking east through the streets of the city. Once again we
passed and visited shops that caught our interest as we made our way to
the day’s destination. When you spend a good portion of your holiday
walking in stead of taking some other form of transit, you tend to find
yourself in more interesting and out of the way places. The only
information I had from Adam and Carole was that we were going to visit
a place called “The Catacombs”! It turned out that “The Catacombs” is
actually a three-kilometer series of tunnels deep beneath the streets
of east central Paris. The entrance upon our arrival was a simple
looking old two-story building and it appeared that we were just
waiting in line to enter the side door of an old commercial building.
As it turned out the entrance to “The Catacombs” is just that, a simple
brick structure that houses a spiral staircase. The spiral stairs
descend a deep and scary 132 steps straight down into the ancient
tunnels. These tunnels were dug beneath the streets of Paris several
hundred years ago and had been long forgotten by a more modern city on
the surface. Many years after their construction there was a disastrous
cave in mid-town Paris and the tunnels were rediscovered by the people
of the day. The council of Paris decided to research these tunnels and
find out what their origin was. Once the realized that the tunnels were
very extensive beneath the streets, they decided not to fill them in
but to put an effort into stabilizing their existence and to make use
of them. Paris of the day was over run with dozens and dozens of
cemeteries that held mass graves containing the remains of the dead
that had been killed by the terrible plague that had run rampant
through Europe hundreds of years earlier. The Paris city council
decided to remove the remains from the surface cemeteries and line the
many rooms and cubbyholes of “The Catacombs” with the bones from the
mass graves. To this day these tunnels contain approximately five
million victim’s bones and sculls from the plague. It’s incredible to
walk the length of these tunnels and observe the piles and piles of
neatly stacked femur bones and skulls that line the walls and rooms of
the hallways under the city. You are face to face with so much death
it’s hard to believe they are real! There are signs at the entrance to
the tunnels once you’ve descended the staircase that warn “DO NOT TOUCH
THE BONES” but I must admit that I did touch one of the skulls before
realizing it was taboo. Adam and Carole both pointed out the signs to
me a moment after I had committed the offense. Nobody else was within
sight of my faux pas so all I had to do was resist touching my face or
other parts of myself until I could resurface at the other end of the
tunnel and wash my crime ridden hand! LOL!
We walked for what seemed like hours before finally reaching the Exit
Staircase to daylight. Once we climbed the winding spiral stairs to the
street above we realized it had been hours that we had spent in the
depths of this mesmerizing historical attraction of
old-world/underworld Paris. Of course there were dozens of printed
signs on the walls of the tunnels explaining which cemetery each pile
of bones had been taken from for placement in “The Catacombs” along
with pictures of the workers that had completed the task of rebuilding
the massive underground gravesite. They showed the workers standing on
risers so they could reach the top rows of room after room of the
perfectly aligned skulls and bones. It was an amazing site to see how
they spent years “building” the display that is now a tourist
attraction of a very different kind! To think that there are the bones
of over five million people in that city beneath a city is absolutely
dumbfounding! You truly find it hard to believe until you see “The
Catacombs” for yourself!
Upon exiting the tunnels to the present day streets of Paris you are
confronted by a small store that sells mementos of the day you spent
one hundred feet underground with five million skeletons! It’s once
again interesting to review your experience by looking through the many
items you can purchase to commemorate the day. Once again we were on
our way back to our hotel.
We stopped along the way and enjoyed another meal at a street side
café. I don’t remember what I had for supper but I’m sure it wasn’t
something that I had to gnaw off the bone! LOL!
I hope you found this edition of The Ontarion interesting and
informative. If you would like to see this site for yourself I’m sure
you can easily find it listed on the net! By doing so, you’ll be able
to learn a great deal more than I have been able to tell you. This site
was a total surprise to me so the details of the story of “The
Catacombs” in my personal version and visit are I’m sure missing many
points. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting indeed to read the history
of this amazing true life and death structure that exists beneath the
streets of Paris France!
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
PS: Something To Think About>
A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy
memory!
****
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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