The Squamidian Report – May. 25 /19
Issue #887
Including:
From Lorne
From Russ
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Firstly and most important, if I’ve got my info right tomorrow (May 26)
is Russ’s birthday. Number 90 I think. If I’m wrong about my facts I
apologize but even if I am, I won’t be too far out. But lets assume I’m
right and all wish Russ a great birthday. He deserves it. Russ is quite
a man with an amazing amount of interesting life history. Most of us
have seen a glimpse of this through his writings here in the Squamidian
where he has written about everything from being a young child in the
Centerville area of what is now KW to being an instructor at the police
academy and the interesting steps in between.
I for one am proud to call Russ my uncle. I look up to him, I admire
him and I respect him. Not because we are related but because he has
earned and deserves being respected. And this newsletter wouldn’t be
the same without his weekly input, aways witty and informative.
One of my big regrets in life is that as me and my generation grew up,
we got so involved in our own lives that, for a while, we lost close
contact with him and his generation. Thats something we can never get
back, but, by reading Russ’s stories and his books, we can at least
learn a bit more about him and his life. For any of you who have not
read Russ’s books about his life adventures, please do so. You owe it
to yourself to lean and not loose that knowledge and that contact. Lets
hope for many more birthdays for Uncle Russ. Face it Russ, your
presence enriches us all, so be careful out there on that 3-wheeled
bike of yours.
Happy birthday Russ.
*
I had an opportunity to do a nice little ride up to Whistler the other
day, so I did. Now, some of you know that the highways around here
tends to have a few twists and turns, hills and dales, etc. Perfect for
a little ride on a bike, any bike. Twists and turns make it perfect for
practicing a riding technique called ‘counter steering’. This is where
you don’t try to ‘lean’ your heavy motorcycle into the curves, you
instead push forward on the handle bar grip on the side that you want
to turn toward. In other words, you push ‘counter’ to the direction you
want to go. Many riders don’t do this and end up trying to manhandle a
bike that weighs 6 times what they weight. They might get away with
this for years but if ever the time should come when an emergency
avoidance maneuver is needed, they can’t do it. Another thing many
riders do, without realizing it, is use their throttle to control lean
angle, as in back off in order to lean more (the bike then falls
further into the curve), or add throttle to lean less (the bike stands
back up as long as traction isn’t compromised). Again, the rider isn’t
properly controlling the bike.
With counter steering, when you want to turn to the right, you push
forward on the right hand grip. This pushed the front wheel out to the
left and the bike falls through the curve (I’m generalizing a bit as
there is actually a lot of interesting physics and gyroscopic behaviour
involved). When you want to turn to the left, you push forward on the
left grip and the bike falls to the left. Now, I had mentioned that
many riders use throttle to control the amount of lean. This results in
a jerky none-smooth series of small arks with many corrections as you
navigate a highway curve. The rider actually executes a series of
little curves that can take him or her all over the road lane and
sometimes right out of the lane.
A very fun way to correct this and practice smooth, counter steered
curves is to use the bikes cruise control if it has one. Mine does
although I hardly ever bother to use it. By setting the speed and not
using throttle, you must force yourself to properly apply counter
steering as you can’t cheat by secretly correcting using throttle. So,
I rode to Whistler and back with cruise control set to about 95km and
thoroughly enjoyed a smooth precise ride. You can set yourself up at,
oh say, 1 meter off the centre line and easily stay 1 meter off the
line, as an example, no matter how steep or gentle a curve might be.
Mind you, I tent to stay a bit further from the centre lines around
here because many drivers, especially tourist not used to these roads,
can and often do drift over the lines, way too often.
Anyway, had a great ride, practiced my counter steering and burned a bit more of our ridiculously over priced gas.
doug
****
From Lorne
Last Wed., I dropped my car at a body shop for repairs after something
hit the front end. The insurance sent me to their choice of shops. Now,
to-day, Thursday after 8 days its finely ready. In the mean time, a 7
passenger gas guzzler Dodge Caravan was given me to use. I never once
ventured into the 2nd or 3rd row of seats. 7 passenger? At my age, I
don't even know 7 people anymore. Big enough to hold a convention. Real
glad to get back to reality.
My insurance covers all but the $ 500 deductible. However, upon picking
up the vehicle, I was told the deductible was waved. Why? I have no
idea and afraid to ask. I did pay the $202 for the replacement of
insulation under the hood that rodents ate. Could hardly claim that as
part of the front end damage. Also I had to pay the insurance on the
cathedral given me to drive during the repair work.
Lorne
****
From Russ
I don’t know if our readers would be interested, but I have no time to
send my usual story-type thing. I have company from the west, staying
with me from May 23rd to the 27th. Mac, and his son Mike have rented a
brand new car and are taking us on a ‘Boys-day-out’ to parts ‘unknown’.
Burt the first stop is in Chesley Hospital where I’m to undergo tests
to make sure my ‘circuits’ are all free and without clots or ‘shorts’.
Actually, we were too hungry to go directly to the hospital, so we
found a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ restaurant called, Bandins Cookhouse on the
main street, and going in we were surprised how busy they were! All the
available seats were ‘Reserved’. But, a kind server let us sit in a
reserved stall anyway. We ordered soup & a sandwich (Mac ordered a
hamburger & salad), and when our order came the soup serving was at
least twice as large as you get anywhere else, and it was ‘delicious’.
I couldn’t believe I ate the hole bowlful!
We are all excited as this Sunday, we’re having a “Meet & Greet” at
the Ripley Legion, from 1PM to 4PM, to celebrate my 90th Birthday and
we’re expecting between 40 & 50 guests. (I don’t even Know that
many people!!).
I’ll let you know how things went next Saturday, in case you’re interested.
Your very old Uncle Russ.
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello Everyone!
You may remember that last winter my son and wife gave me the gift of a
lovely new Canon Rebel camera. Well, contrary to what I once stated
about that gift, I haven’t made much use of it until this past weekend.
A few weeks ago Carole and I were out and about and wound up driving
from Costco on Erb St W in Waterloo, out what I call “the back
way” over to New Hamburg to do some more shopping at their “No Frills”
store on Hwy 7 W. In doing so we had to drive west on Erb St
until we reached a small crossroads called Phillipsburg. Once there we
would turn south towards New Hamburg. Well, before we reached
Phillipsburg and just on it’s outskirts we were approaching a bridge
that spans the Nith River. Just before the bridge there is a stretch
where a set of large power lines crosses Erb’s Rd as it’s called that
far west. As we approached the power lines I looked up and noticed what
I thought was a large Bald Eagle sitting on the outstretched arm of one
of the power line supports. I was shocked to say the least but we had
passed that point so quickly that I didn’t get a real good look at what
I thought was the eagle. I did comment on that sighting to Carole and
vowed to return one day soon to take some pictures of the big bird if
it was still nesting in that spot.
There was a huge nest made of large branches entangling the support of
the power lines so I figured as long as I didn’t wait too far into
spring the big birds would still be inhabiting that nest and maybe just
maybe I’d be able to capture some good photos of the birds before they
moved on. Well, last weekend with our similar cameras in hand Adam and
I decided to take a drive out to see the birds and try to take some
photos. I was excited to show Adam these very large and rare birds in
their nest. We drove west and from quite a distance back from the spot
we could already see the nest. Upon approach we could see that there
was a bird in the nest moving around as if to be arranging something
within. As we rolled up to within 50meters or so of the stand of
supports, another large bird circled the nest in the air and landed on
the extended cross member beside the nest. What an exciting moment that
was indeed! We watched for a few minutes before exiting Adam’s truck to
make sure we didn’t scare the birds off their nest and perch. Looking
also off to the south of the road, we noticed two gentlemen picking up
stones and garbage that had been blown onto their field and realized
that they were the farmers removing refuse from their field before
planting season. The birds seemed oblivious to these men moving about
beneath their resting place.
Adam has a similar Canon camera to mine but a more sophisticated model.
He also has a very large professional model lens that would allow him
to zoom in much closer to the birds than my moderate telephoto one.
Even his regular lens has more telephoto strength than mine so he
loaned it to me while using his powerful one to view the birds. Once we
were able to check out the breed of these exciting creatures we
realized that they were not eagles but “Osprey”. They are still quite
large and exciting birds of prey to see in our area and being it was a
windy day and sunny for a change the birds spent quite a bit of time in
the air above and not too distant at any one time away from their nest.
We couldn’t tell if they had any young in the nest but it’s a safe bet
that there are at least a couple of eggs being tended to at this time
of year. As we photographed these lovely birds they put on quite a show
of their aerial expertise. They flew and hovered on the substantial
wind for quite some time, as we took shot after shot of their skillful
flight.
very once in a while one of them and sometimes both of them would land
on the nest and spend a few minutes tending their eggs. Then one of
them would stay with the nest and the other would take a pass down
along the Nith River I guess in search of food and then would return to
the nest. We spent about a half hour at the base of the nest taking
dozens of pictures of this nesting pair of large birds of prey then
decided to move on. The farmer had come over to the fence beside the
road and spoke to us about the birds, asking if we knew what breed they
were. He then told us of another nest beside the same river but much
closer to New Hamburg so we took a drive to that spot following his
directions to see if the birds that built it were any more visible than
the first ones on Erb’s Rd. We located the nest alright but the birds
were nowhere in sight. After taking a few pics of second nest we
decided to be on our way as we had a few other destinations to complete
that afternoon. We still haven’t put the pictures we took in a file on
the computer yet but when we do, I’ll be sure to share some of them
with you if they turned out as well as we think they did. I’ve just
been so busy this past week that I haven’t had time to make the file
and install the pictures.
*
With
the weather being as poor as it’s been so far this spring, Carole and I
are still doing the hit and miss thing getting the yard work done for
the spring. I actually managed to spend an afternoon the other day
cleaning and assembling the pond for the summer. I had made a
substantial cover of two by fours and a tarp last fall to protect the
pond over the winter. It was successful as the water was quite clean
and clear once I removed the cover. On the day of reassembly it took me
about two hours to get the equipment out of the shed and get it into
working order in the pond. Today was the second day of operation and
the water is clean and nicely chlorinated from the startup.
For Mother’s Day Adam and I presented Carole with a large bird feeder
that we mounted on a hook attached to the flagpole next to the pond.
The new mixed seed that we filled it with has been attracting many
different kinds of birds since it’s mounting. We are fortunate to have
the Hydro right of way behind our house as it harbors these wild birds
in both summer and winter. For the winter, we mostly have cardinals and
blue jays around the feed we put out but with the slightly warmer
weather here, we have had many different breeds of wild birds come to
the feeder. We even have a couple of squirrels that we find gobbling up
the seeds and have to chase them away so the birds can take advantage
of the new feeder. We’ve had sparrows, black capped chickadees, wrens,
cardinals both male and female, doves, red winged black birds,
bluebirds, black birds, grackles, cedar wax wings and even the odd
oriole on the feeder! It’s mounted on the flagpole where we can see it
from the kitchen window over the sink and it’s a pleasure to watch
these birds enjoying the seed in both the sunshine and not so sunny
days from the comfort of the house. We still have the robins nesting on
the shelf of the back wall of the house under the shelter of the patio
roof. If we’re calm when we exit the house through the patio door, the
robins will stay in the nest where they take turns sitting on the four
eggs the female has laid. Carole even talks to her when she is out on
the patio and the robin seems to sit and listen quite content to hear
her voice. We’re looking forward to having four little robins in the
nest quite soon! When the nest was not occupied this spring the robins
had built one as I told you earlier in the season on the front wall
planter of the house. However you may remember that some other black
bird we believe stole the eggs in that nest and Carole took that nest
and placed it where the robins have for several years built one out on
the patio. We were surprised to see that the robins took to laying more
eggs out back once they discovered their loss out front. Hopefully the
eggs will remain out back and not be vandalized this time. We’ll be
photographing the babies once the eggs hatch out back!
That’s about all I have 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
It is always more difficult to fight one’s own failings than the power of an adversary!
****
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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