Closing down for Christmas

It’s 5:10pm and dark on Sunday, December 18, 3 days before the longest night of the year.  By the 22^nd, the first day of winter, we will already be heading towards summer, and I will be in Victoria, BC, I hope.  I’m going to drive there on Tuesday, weather permitting, to spend the holidays with mom and dad and Barbara and Terry. 

My Christmas party was a success.  Most of the people I had invited came.  They were in the mood to see each other after not really getting together much in the last 6 weeks.  The few who were not members of the Vernon Outdoors Club mixed in well.  They all moved around and talked and laughed and ate and drank and stayed quite a long time.  It wasn’t exactly a cotillion, but I have made a puny entry into Vernon society and am satisfied with that for the moment.  Maybe next year I will break into the higher strata of Predator Ridge and The Rise.  Only people from Vernon will appreciate the heights to which I aspire.  Enough.  I overestimated how much eggnog people would drink, probably because my own capacity for drinking it knows no bounds.  I will take what is left to my parents who share my enthusiasm for it.  Dad has been losing weight lately and having to drink supplements; I’m sure he’ll prefer a bit of brandy and eggnog. 

I think my back spasms were the result of my doing too much hot yoga in the sauna and steam room at the Vernon Rec. Centre.  I haven’t been there in the last 3 weeks and all is well now.  This weekend of training for the volunteer program to work with disabled skiers was a qualified success.  I learned a lot, including about my own disabilities.  I have no upper body strength, so I will not be able to work with a sit-ski.  But there are many other things I will be able to do.  The program is well established at Silver Star, and the people involved, although they are all volunteers, run it in a professional way.  They are knowledgeable, skilled, and very humane.  They have a lot of equipment that will take time to learn about, but this weekend was an introduction.  I will not be working alone for the first year.  The snow conditions were good and the weather was warm, ideal for slow practicing on easy hills.

I had a very good class on Friday with Kiran at Immigrant Services.  Unfortunately, Misoon’s husband is still not well, but at least they know what is wrong.  He has angina and will have to live accordingly.  I went to visit her at their carwash on Friday.  She was nodding off in the office; she has to cover all the shifts at the moment.  Very different from the work she was educated for, teaching.  Such is the life of the immigrant. She thinks we will be able to get back to our weekly meetings at Tim Horton’s in the New Year.  I hope so because I think they were good for both of us.  I’m going to happily slack off for the holidays.

Merry Christmas to all

It’s 7:30p.m. on Sunday, December 11, 2011, and I’ve just driven home from Kelowna.  I visited and exchanged gifts with Jules and Carol and then with Peggy and Bert.  I ended up having wine and dinner with the latter. The Christmas entertainment has begun.

 I put up some lights and decorations last weekend and then realized that nobody would see them but me.  So I decided to have a small party.  Without thinking about it much, I took a picture of the front door, downloaded it and turned it into an enigmatically worded e-invitation to drinks and dessert on Thursday, Dec. 15.  Had I thought a bit about it, I would have realized that I was asking for confusion.   It was not clear whether I was inviting the spouses, or not.  Some took it for granted that I wasn’t and others that I was.  I then had to phone the former and make sure they realized that their significant others were welcome.  Of course this ballooned the party to potentially 30 and necessitated my going through old recipes and planning to make more desserts, which I haven’t done yet.  Then I realized that another element of the evening that I hadn’t sufficiently thought through was my plan to have make-your-own eggnog.  I would place a bottle of brandy and a bottle of rum beside a punch bowl of nog.  But I don’t have a punch bowl any more.  It’s one of the many things we got rid of before moving to the condo in Ottawa.  That kept me awake for a while on Monday night, but Mo solved the problem the next day by saying I could use her mom’s, which she had been given and used rarely.  So the party’s on, and at the moment I am in turns looking forward to it and to it’s being over with.

Saturday was a great day of training for SSASS, the adaptive ski program that I have volunteered to help with.  When I awoke at 6:30 and looked outside at the grey morning, I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.  I had had a back spasm, the first of my life, in the middle of the night and was thinking of using that as an excuse.  But I was supposed to drive Mo and decided I couldn’t let her down. So I packed the Rough Guide to Korea in my backpack and was prepared to spend the day at Silver Star reading it if my back hurt.  But it didn’t, and the day turned out to be sunny and warm.  Our instructor was very enthusiastic, and he knew how to teach skiing.  I learned a lot and am now much more eager to face the two days of instruction next weekend.  I was afraid I might not ski well enough to be able to do it, but not any more.

I met the woman I will be teaching at Immigrant Services.  She’s from India, in her early fifties and speaks English quite well, but she wants practice with pronunciation, reading and writing.  It looks promising.  

The front door picture for the invitation to the party

The living room decorated for Christmas

The fireplace 

Christmas preparations

This is Sunday, December 4, 2011.  I awoke to hear a joke on the CBC radio that made me laugh and get out of bed in a good mood.  It was about a man who gave up trying to unsnarl the Christmas lights.  He just hung the gnarled ball above the front door and told his wife the lights were up.  As I laughed, I remembered Jim’s ill-humored efforts at Christmas decorating.  Men, I thought.  But by 4:00pm, I was laughing ‘on the other side of my face’.  That’s an expression my grade five teacher used to use. “ You’ll soon be laughing on the other side of your face”, she’d say in a threatening tone if you had found something funny that didn’t amuse her. It conjured up an image of contorted features that wasn’t pleasant, but I had never understood what it meant until this afternoon.  I was dedicating the day to Christmas preparations and got to the lights around 3:30.  Jim and I had bought them to decorate the condo on our last Christmas.  We put them up together and liked the bright white stars streaming down the west windows so much that we left them there. I finally took them down in March and just shoved them into plastic bags.  I ended up bring them to Vernon.  When I took them out of the bags today, I knew I was in trouble.  The lights hang in many strings from a couple of central wires, and each light is surrounded by a pointy little plastic star, brilliant when lit against the night sky, but challenging to unravel after they’ve been two years bunched in bags.  By  4:00pm, I was much more sympathetic with the man in the joke and Jim than I had been at 8:00am.  The lights are up, lit and sparkling in the living room window.  And I am sobered again, as I have been so often in the last 22 months by having to do something that I have never done before.  Hanging Christmas lights is no laughing matter, unless you’re watching someone else do it while you drink a rum and eggnog.

Skiing in Vernon is great.  I’ve been cross country many times and downhill once, and I still can’t get over leaving home with no snow and ending up less than half an hour later in mid winter conditions.  The only draw back is the fact that the car gets filthy every time you go up.  They use less salt on the roads here than in the east, but much more very fine sand.  However, the people I ski with are often members of the Vernon Outdoors Club, and they continue the practice of car pooling and paying the driver.  So you can go to a car wash and spray the dirt off the car whenever you drive.  Learning Korean is still the hardest thing I’ve done in years, but I like Misoon, and we enjoy our lessons at Tim Horton’s.   I’m going to meet my student at immigrant services this Friday.

 Living alone so far from friends and family is hard at times, but doing new things is both sobering and a laugh, and learning to help and be helped by strangers is a lesson I think I needed.       

The Black Prince cabin at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre

The end of the fall centre piece.  I'll happily keep the orchid Bill and Paula gave me and the card from Joanna in Dubai, but eating all the squash is going to be difficult.

small world

Life goes on in Vernon, and I am there.  But lately I’ve been struck by how interconnected the whole world is.  I met Misoon again this Thursday at Tim Horton’s.  We had a good time together for two hours, a woman from Korea who for various reasons has lived in Canada for seven years and a Canadian woman who wants to learn Korean because she will be visiting her son there in May.  I think we will be able to help each other a lot.  Her English is better than my Korean, but she still needs help with it and with some details of life in Vernon.  I am moving like a snail without slime in my attempt to learn Korean, but I think I will know a bit by May.  I’ve had three other connections with the wider world in the last couple of months.   When I attempted to get map updates for the TomTom I bought, I called the company.  I ended up talking for about half an hour to a woman in Guadalajara, Mexico.  We spoke a bit in Spanish.  A week or so later, I discovered that the plane tickets to Korea that I had bought on Expedia back in August were no longer listed on my ‘itinerary’ at expedia.ca.  It took almost an hour and a half to settle this by phone.  In the course of the conversation, I introduced myself and asked the man I was talking with what his name was and where he was.  He was Fadi in Cairo, Egypt.  It took a while, but he was able to get my tickets straightened out, an Egyptian organizing the air tickets for a Canadian going to Korea.  The latest small world story involves my glasses.  Almost a month ago, I had my eyes checked and decided to get the new lenses put into my old frames.  I really like them because they are so light that they never slip down my nose, even when my face is dripping in sweat, as it often is now that I’m hanging around with the Vernon Outdoors Club.  The optometrist agreed because they are very good German frames.  After two weeks of waiting, I hadn’t been called to pick them up. I phoned the optometrist.  That’s when I discovered that they had been sent to Thailand where the lenses are made.  The factory in Bangkok wasn’t able to fill the order because of the floods and was sending them back.  Now they are being sent to Germany, the only other place in the world that makes these special lenses.  So, I’m wearing glasses that are about eight years old and squinting to watch the news on tv, hoping that the German economy doesn’t tank like the rest of Europe’s economies and that I will have my glasses before I drive to Victoria for Christmas.  We are interconnected and interdependent.  And it takes a lot longer to get a pair of glasses than it used to.  But I can communicate with family and friends in a way that still amazes me, even if I can’t see them and couldn’t even if they were here.

Sun., Nov.20, 2011

I propose a change to the old expression, “ It you want something done, ask a busy person.”  I suggest that if you want real action you ask a Korean.  Tammy, the Korean woman I met at Mo’s dinner last Sat., contacted her friend June in Kelowna who phoned her friend Misoon in Vernon, who called me on Tuesday about getting together.  We met at 2:30pm on Thursday, at the carwash that Misoon and her husband own on 25^th Ave., went to a nearby Tim Horton’s and had our first lesson.  I think it’s going to be wonderful.  Both Misoon and her husband were teachers in Korea; they came to Canada eight years ago.  In that time, they have moved around and done a lot.  The best part is that both Misoon and I know a bit about language learning and will be able to help each other.  I could tell by the comments she made in our first meeting that she has an ear for my mistakes and is able to make helpful suggestions.  She even gave me 2 sites to go to.  I’ve gone to one so far, and after downloading some free software, I’ve been able to work on a couple of lessons with sound.  I still think that Korean will be a big struggle, but now I’m much more keen to give it a try.  If one has to use it or lose it, I certainly prefer learning a language to doing puzzles or playing Bridge as a way of keeping my mind alive.  Also, I’m eager to go to Korea to see Jay and that’s a good enough reason to make an effort to learn Korean.  I think I’ll be able to help her too.  She is much more advanced in English than I am in Korean, but even in our first meeting I was able to suggest a couple of things and she was happy to think about them. 

Last Sunday night I went to the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’.  I didn’t decide to go until the day before, but was able to get a ticket near the front and centre because I only needed one seat.  The soloists were good and the orchestra and chorus were very good.  Beginning and ending with music of eternal rest and light, it passed from wrath and doom, through grace and mercy.  I felt drained by the end, and thought of Jim often.  Yesterday I went with Priscilla and a friend of hers to see Philip Glass’s opera, ‘Satyagraha’, live from the Met at the Vernon Cinema.  It was a much more spare experience.  The music was chant-like, repetitive, and ultimately very moving.  Satyagraha is Sanskrit for the power or the force of truth.  The concept behind the opera was based on the ancient Hindu epic, the Bhagavad-Gita, much more cyclical than the Christian.  Gandhi’s early life and work in South Africa was presented as if he had been one of the great persons who appear throughout human history to help lead people out of their misery.  What gave the production its creative exhilaration was the combination of the music with the sets and stage work, which were breathtaking.  The final act was less moving than the first two, but the experience as a whole was well worth it.  I’m entering the cultural stage of my Vernon experience.

 After the opera, I walked to the rec. centre to vote in the municipal elections.  I had tried to find out something of the candidates, but I ended up depending heavily on the advice of a woman who knows the community well and whose judgment I trust.  I woke up this morning to discover that my candidate for mayor had beaten the incumbent and that all the people I chose for council had won, so I guess my acquaintance had her finger on the pulse of the community. 

I went cross-country skiing twice this week.  The first time, I went alone and began as I always begin things, by thinking that I don’t really want to do it.  Getting started was the usual season-opening fiasco.  It took me ages to find my gear, put some of it on, get the rest into the car and decide which wax to use.  As it was, I had the wrong wax, but the woman who was running the lunch counter and shop helped me with the trail map, so I headed out slipping but not gripping.  Just as I got to the opening of the trail, I met Colin, the soul of the Vernon Outdoors Club, and his group of friends.  He took my picture with them and then I started out, still slipping and going slowly but feeling less lost.  By the time I had finished the short and easy trail, I was red cheeked and glad I had done it.  The next time, I went with Marie who showed me a good run.  Next week I’ll have to go through the whole rigmarole again when downhill begins.

Skiing at Sovereign Lake 

Cathy with her grand daughter Cleo on the ferry to Victoria

Marley with her niece Cleo at Lindsay and Matti's

Dad with his great grand daughter Cleo 

Mom with her great grand daughter Cleo

They can't be skiing

On Thursday morning I went for a walk along the Grey Canal with Marie and Osito.  It was a fine fall day, but I was stopped in my tracks when the former mentioned that she and George were going to go cross-country skiing in the afternoon.  I was prepared for winter to come but not for it to be here.  But it is.  Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre opened on Thursday.  I still am not ready to actually drive up into the snow and start the season.  I’ve never before lived in a place where you can drive 20 min. from fall to winter.  I need to be in the white stuff before I get the urge to play in it.  So I have spent the rest of the week in fall mode, picking up my newly edged and waxed downhill skis, raking and bagging leaves, going to a fall fair, getting my hair cut and finally in a last desperate effort to postpone the inevitable, cleaning and weatherproofing every piece of winter footwear I own.  I’m running out of stalls, but there are still a few leaves on the maple and of course I have to use my cheap pass to the rec. centre, which is only good for the month of November, and I’m going to help Bert gather the last of the walnuts from his tree on Tuesday and then I’ll have to crack and bag my share.  Realistically, I don’t think I’ll be able to get on the snow until next Thursday. 

I swam 3 times last week, but I can’t get past 30 laps; my friend Mo and her husband do 80.  They’ve been swimming a lot for about 5 years, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to that.  I’m too keen on the sauna.  The one in the rec. centre is very good, but as they say about the only down side of Paris being that it’s full of Parisians, so with the Vernon sauna; it’s full of Vernonites.  They’re fine people, but the gang in there around 12:30 is full of truisms which they give voice to at high volume.  Fortunately they can’t take the heat for as long as I can, and when they leave, I stretch out, assume some yoga positions, and approach meditation as nearly as I ever do.

We finished our last training session at Immigrant Services this Thursday night, and I should get my student in a week or so.  I discovered when a video section of the class revealed a technical problem that a young man in the class knows a lot about such things.  He fixed the situation, and I asked him as we were leaving if he could come to my place and hook up the Bose sound system, which Jim and I bought with the big t.v. but I had not been able to use.  He dropped by a few days later and connected it in about 20 min.  He didn’t want any money, but I insisted he take at least $20.00.  He’s just out of college and hoping to get some kind of work and volunteer teaching ESL this winter so he can travel and teach English next year.

Last night I went to my first dinner at a friend’s house since I’ve been in Vernon.  Mo and John had 6 people over including a Korean friend of theirs who was visiting them from Edmonton.  I practiced my feeble Korean with her, and she said that she might be able to put me in touch with a Korean woman who lives in Vernon and could be interested in a Korean/English lesson exchange.

Tonight I’m going to hear Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ at the Vernon Performing Art’s Centre.  No snow there.

Fall

Now we are into November, the month of the long nights.  On Saturday I read a good article in the ‘Globe’ about how the myth of Levesque’s and Quebec’s betrayal on the night of Nov. 4, 1981, The Night of the Long Knives, persists among certain Quebecers.  It made me remember the picture I have of Jim with Jay in a pack on his back on Parliament Hill on the day we went to see the Queen and Trudeau sign the papers for the repatriation of the Constitution with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  That was a good day in our lives and for Canada too, I think.

Last night we fell back to standard time and gained an hour, which I appreciated because I went to the Vernon Jazz Club with Mo, a friend, and her husband, John.  We listened to the music of the Sean Cronin Quartet featuring Bruno Hubert.  They were great, a bass, a clarinet, drums and Bruno on piano.  Mo and I talked with Bruno during one intermission.  He must be about 40, but it’s hard to tell because his curly hair is everywhere.  He’s a shy, strange dude who plays jazz piano like a genius.  I asked him about the club’s piano, which didn’t look that hot and he laughed.  He’d played on it about 5 or 6 years ago and actually liked it, but it was out of tune when he tested it yesterday.  However, he can tune a piano, so he did and really enjoyed playing it again.  If you ever get a chance to hear the group or Bruno play, take it.

Hallowe’en on 26^th Street was fun.  I had more kids than we ever got in Wakefield, and they were all cute and well costumed.  One tall couple of high school students dressed in black came collecting food for the food bank. I just sat by the front window reading, watching the street and handing out candies and cans from 6 until 8:30 and then it was over.  Tuesday, I had an ultrasound on my shoulder, which showed that I’ve severed 21/2 of the 4 tendons in the rotator cuff.  I got flu and pneumonia shots on Wednesday, so the centre of the week was spent on maintenance.  I felt like an old car that spends more time being fixed in the garage than driving on the road. 

Fall hit the horse chestnut in the back yard in one blow.  The leaves were just beginning to turn yellow when the temperature dropped to -5 on Wed. night.  I awoke on Thurs. morning to see the ground covered with leaves and more dropping heavily from the tree.  They’re huge and you can almost hear them clunk as they land.  I’m going to leave most of them, but even at that, I spent some time today bagging the ones on the sidewalk, garage roof and parking area.  It was a bright cold day, perfect for such work.  The enormous maple is still holding on to its green leaves.

I will end this entry on a sad note.  Albert’s mom died this morning.  She went slowly but painlessly, and the whole family was around her in her final days.  She never liked to be alone and rarely was.  

Hallowe'en on 26th Street

Winter 2011-2012

The active season of hiking and biking has ended for me.  There’s one more Ramble and hot dog roast on Tuesday, but I can’t go because I have an appointment at the Kelowna General Hospital at one that day for an ultrasound on my left shoulder.  It’s been almost a year since I injured it coming down from Knox Mountain and it still hurts a bit at times.  I don’t know if I’ll need an operation or not, but I’m going through all the steps to try to find out what’s wrong. 

I went to the Vernon Outdoors Club banquet last night with a couple, Mo and John, whom I met hiking just a couple of months ago.  I was surprised to walk in and greet and be greeted by so many people I knew.  I had a real feeling of belonging and was even able to introduce Mo and John to some people.  I saw my friend Priscilla there with her husband whom I had never met.  That was a laugh because I discovered that he had spent much of his youth in Port Arthur; we probably saw each other at the A&W (the A& Root) at Intercity on a Saturday night when the gangs from the two cities met there to hang out and sometimes fight, the boys that is.  The girls just got out of the cars once in a while to look around, checking out the competition and/or prospects depending on the sex.

Monday I got a shock when I went on ‘my itineraries’ in Expedia just to check my Korean flights.  Only the return portion was there.  What followed was an almost 2 hour telephone conversation with Fadi in Egypt.  He said that Expedia always alerts people to changes made in their flight plans.  This time they hadn’t.  Korean Air had changed their schedule and both my flights to Korea were scrapped.  Fortunately I had noticed it early enough and he, after a lot of searching, was able to get me almost identical flights on the same day, May 1.  The whole trip will take longer, but that might be a good thing because the original plan did not give me much time between landing in Vancouver and taking off again for Seoul.  The times are still good.

As far as other plans are concerned, all the lines I threw into the water for volunteering began to bob this week.  I went to the first meeting for Immigrant Services Volunteers on Thursday and got together with the head of the Adaptive Skiing Program at Silver Star on Friday.  So winter is beginning.  I now have a downhill membership at Silver Star and a cross country one at Sovereign.  I took my newly found skis to be sharpened and waxed yesterday, and as Thursday’s bike ride in Lumby was the coldest I’ve ever survived in my life and today’s hike in Kal Park was great but also cold, I’m going to get out the winter clothes and move into the next season.  Daylight Saving time begins next Sunday and although the leaves have not all fallen from the trees and I still have a couple of roses in bloom, the larches are yellow and people say that it’s time to head for the hills.  Apparently the Okanagan is grey much of the winter unless you go up to the ski slopes where you’re above it all.  We’ll see.  

I asked Marie about her dog's name, and it's Osito because os means bear in Spanish and 'ito' is the diminutive and he looked like a little bear when they got him.   

John, Mo, Maggie and her man and Priscilla having lunch on the Kal Lake Park hike.

The view from the top of Noble Canyon

My 'art shot' of a hiking pole and boot at the top of Noble Canyon.  The end of the first season with the Vernon Outdoors Club.

The gang preparing for the last bike of the season on a cold, grey morning in Lumby.  Fortunately, we began and ended at the Blue Ox Pub.  Some of us broke with tradition and had beer with our lunch instead of the usual coffee.

Stability

It’s been a week like all weeks, filled with the mundane matters that have to be done to stay alive, but this one had more than its share of incidents that called into question my mental and physical stability.  It began with a quiet Monday in which the highlight was a trip to Canadian Tire to buy ugly winter rims and have the tires changed in preparation for winter.  Tuesday started off well, with a Ramble to a beautiful location above Lake Okanagan.  For the first time, I felt confident enough to volunteer to be the ‘sweep’. This involves carrying a radio, staying at the back to make sure no one is left behind and counting the gang at 3 different spots.  I volunteered before everyone arrived and found the counting part stretched my capacities to stay focused and count people as they passed me.  There were 49 by the time we left.  All went well, but when I got home things took a turn for the worse.  I decided to go into the garage and continue my preparations for winter by bringing in the skis to see what work had to be done on them after over two years in a bag.  I couldn’t see them in the spot where I was sure Bert had put them on the day I moved.  I called him, hoping that I was wrong and they were in his garage.  They weren’t.  He and Peggy listened and calmed my nerves, especially concerning how deflated I felt about someone having got into the garage and stolen the skis.  It shook my faith in what I had believed to be my safe neighborhood.  They suggested that I tell the police, which I did on Wednesday after seeing the optometrist whose office is near the RCMP station.  I also called a woman I know who got me interested in the handicapped ski program.  She said she had a pair of skis I could use until I did whatever I was going to do.  I decided to move things I didn’t want stolen out of the garage and into the basement.  As I was doing that, I saw some boards left over from the renovations that looked all crooked, so I went to straighten them, and you guessed it. Behind them were the skis.  Right where I had cunningly hidden them shortly after the move, too smart by half.  I was really happy to have my faith in the neighborhood restored, but now my faith in my memory was in tatters.  I talked with Ina on Skype shortly afterwards, and my admission of vapidity prompted her to tell me that for about 2 years now she has had a notebook in her desk which she has entitled, ‘Where did I hide that?’ into which she writes down where she has hidden some pieces of valuable jewelry and to whom she has lent what books.  I felt a little less alone in my idiocy after our talk, but none-the-less concerned about my mental stability. 

On Thursday I went to dinner with George and Marie, he’s a vet, and they rented our house while they built theirs.  They are becoming good friends.  I brought home their dog, Aussi tot, for the weekend while they went to see their daughter in Vancouver.  I spell the dog’s name as I do because that’s how it sounds when Marie says it and as she’s originally from Quebec.  I’m going to ask them about the name when they pick him up in about an hour.  He’s a wonderful dog, and between him and the Sunday hike, I’ve walked my legs off this weekend.  This brings me to the question of my physical stability, which was called into question this morning when I took Aussi tot for a walk before leaving for the hike.  I thought he would need to have his morning turn out, but he didn’t.  I however turned my ankle and fell flat on my face at the bottom of a few stairs on the walk.  Fortunately I only bruised and bashed my nose and seem to have sprained a finger.  So ends another week. 

Me as proud 'sweep' on the hike to a spot overlooking Lake Okanagan.  I'm holding the official radio.

There is a bit of red in the fall here.  I saw these trees on a walk with Aussi tot.

Aussi tot on his bed by the front door

Snow on the path to the top of Silver Star today

A fellow traveller, Sue, enthusiastically beginning her lunch at the top of Silver Star

Oct.8 to 16, 2011

Eight days in October with the Van de Vyveres.  Well, not fully 8 for me, but I had 2 dinners for seven here, more cooking than I’ve done in two years, went out to dinner twice at Bert and Peggy’s and enjoyed the company of Brian and Cathy at my house for two nights, lots of food, wine, talk, fun and even tequila.  We tried it the MacMillan way, a Mexi-Caesar.  It was good, but I still think I like tequila straight with salt first and lime after.  I drank more than I have in months and spent today with my head feeling like an old sponge.  I went from one household job to the next in a semi trance and then walked to the Town Cinema to see the bi-weekly Monday movie, “ The Guard’.  It was ‘feckin’ great.  For the first few minutes it seemed a bit clichéd, but it soon became an entertaining mix of profanity, brutality and humor which had me humming and smiling as I walked home. 

The only other highlight of the week was buying a bike, which I finally did on Wed.  After driving to Kelowna to have one last look at a Brodie, I came back to Vernon and bought a Trek.  I had looked at one earlier, but on Wed., I was lucky because when I went back they had just put together a maroon Trek 7.2, 2012.  That’s the model I wanted but in a better color than the 2011 one I had looked at.  It was only ten dollars more, so I bought it.  I spent a couple of hours on Thursday practicing working the gears and then rode up to the college to join some other bikers who were waiting there for Michael Schratter, a local man who has biked about 36,000 kilometers all over the world in the last year and a half trying to raise awareness and acceptance of the fact that about one in five Canadians suffers from some form of mental illness.  He himself does.  He hopes to raise money and fight the stigma that surrounds all mental and psychological disorders.  He has a good blog called, ‘ridedon’thide.’ We had a police escort as we drove with him down to the Canadian Mental Health Association offices where the Vernon Vipers hockey team, the mayor and many others cheered him on.  He made a very good speech and then there was a barbecue.  By chance, I was in the background of the picture that made it into the local paper, so I’m a real Vernonite now and Brian Van de Vyvere has more to mock me with.  He has always found the fact that I was a counselor at Sherwood Forest Girls’ Camp to be a source of hilarity and now my being a Vernon biker sends him into fits of laughter.  I find it a bit funny myself, but as Jim used to say, “Go for it.” 

Brian and Cathy at my house

Rob and his intended at my house after dinner.  Because we won't be able to go to their wedding in England on Dec. 28, we celebrated with them this week.

The Trek

My friend Priscilla (in the blue jacket and bike helmet) approaching Michael Schratter who is her son's very good friend.

Oct. 9, 2011

Last Sunday at this time, I was just arriving home from Victoria after a long day of rising at 5:30 am at Barb and Terry’s, taking Bill to the airport, carrying on to the ferry and arriving there just a minute too late to catch the 7 o’clock, resting in the car and drinking coffee until 9 and driving home to Vernon.  I was so tired I just unpacked, had a bath, ate a bowl of noodle soup and went to bed without setting the alarm.  So I missed the Monday morning Skype with Jay.  The house was in good shape and the cedars and new bushes that I worried might suffer in the hot sun were happily enjoying their third day of rain.  Vernon has entered a rainy fall; the camel hair hills are soaked to a dull dun color.  Even my parched lawn has a faint greenish tinge combined with the dark grey clay.  I miss the colors of the season in the Gatineau, but I do have some bright roses left. 

Since I’ve been back, I’ve put away the summer clothes and brought out the winter.  I keep the mid season things out all the time, and this year I tried to make sure the stuff I’ll need for Korea in May would be easy to get at.  The weather has been cool all week but that didn’t interfere with the outdoors club bike in Armstrong on Thursday.  I began as usual cursing the long ‘faux plat’ and ended as I always do thinking that biking is wonderful.  Many of the roads had been gravel and not too hilly, perfect conditions for my old bike and me.  I felt so elated I even went to the club G.M. with Priscilla that night and made the first serious investigations into buying a new bike the next day.  Good as it was on the gravel, the old one is heavy and I could use a few more gears.  I went to the 2 bike stores in Vernon and have a possible purchase in each.  The decision should be made by late next week.  On Friday I had a fitting for my host’s uniform for the BC Winter Games in February.  That’s bound to be an experience.  The woman running the show seems very efficient, and I will see more of Donna, the Caring Clown, whom I met at the Filipino Fiesta.  She’s usually good for a laugh.  Saturday I awoke around 6:30 with a cold nose.  After checking the manuals for the gas furnace and the furnace itself, I determined that the problem must be with the thermostat, which was just reading ‘LO’ and some things that were neither letters nor numbers.  I could not find any papers for it so I went on line but it was hopeless.  I emailed Honeywell with my question about how to open the thermostat and had breakfast.  I tried calling the company that had installed the whole system, but of course they weren’t working on Thanksgiving weekend.  The house wasn’t really that cold in the bright light of day after a strong cup of coffee, so I carried on with my planned bike ride with Marie and her friend.  It was sunny and we went all over areas of Vernon that were new to me.  When I got home I decided to try to open the thermostat and install new batteries myself, but not without reservations.  Mom used to say that I was a member of the awkward squad, and Jim agreed that if there were a wrong way of doing something I would find it.  So I began very carefully feeling all around the unit for something to push or press.  But it was hopeless.  I finally tried just pulling but without enough conviction it turns out because a woman I hiked with today drove me home, came in and yanked it apart.  I replaced the batteries, the furnace hummed into action and we celebrated with a gin and tonic.    

Bill on Mount Doug in Victoria

The last roses of summer in my front garden

Lake Okanagan from Pincushion Mountain 

Bright green moss on Ponderosa pines and a splash of yellow poplar leaves in the distance.

Sept. 29, 2011

One year ago today the lines that came to me and that remain as true as they were then in relation to my thoughts of Jim were:

                        This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.

                        What falls away is always, and is near.

                        I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

                        I learn by going where I have to go.

Jim is always in my thoughts, but I’m getting used to living alone and slowly discovering that life without the companionship that being one of a couple provides is not necessarily lonely.  I am helped through every day by the kind words and acts of family, friends and strangers.  Writing this makes me sad for the loss of Jim and brings tears to my eyes.  I know that these sentiments will do nothing for him, but I get a sense of peace after releasing them.  As I rarely have any desire to be anybody other than myself, I spend most of the time living life much as I always have.  Although I think I am more aware now of the reality of suffering in life and hope that this will make me better able to sense when and how I can help others as so many have helped me.

While hiking the other day I had a vague memory of something Yogi Berra said.  I consulted the great god google to see if I could find it.  I think I’ll keep it in mind as I continue to “learn by going where I have to go.”  A slight paraphrase is:

                        Keep trying. Stay humble.  Trust your instincts. Most importantly, act.

                        When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Bill and I are having a good visit with the aged Ps.  It’s emotionally charged as such reunions are, but we are all trying to control our tendencies to be opinionated and contrary.  As usual the fact that I can withdraw to the sanity of Barbara and Terry’s suite is a great help for all of us.  We had lunch at Barbara and Terry’s today.  The food was delicious and the conversation lively.  I’m off to bed.  Tomorrow will be another busy day with mom and dad’s neighbors coming for coffee at 10 and me driving Bill to the dentist at 1:30.  He’s had a toothache and will probably have a root canal.

All the best to all of you.

Jim preparing one of our many ill-fated barbecues

Dad, Barbara, Terry, Mom and Bill after today's lunch at B and T's B&B.

One year on

It’s a dark and stormy Sunday.  Bill and I are on the ferry heading for Victoria, no thanks to us.  We arrived at the ferry as it pulled out, so we were first in line for the next one.  We ate our lunch and then fell asleep waiting for the ship to come in.  When we woke cars were driving around us and up the ramp.  Nobody even honked.  Paula, Bill and I had got up this morning at 4:55, stumbled around taking turns in the bathroom and were on the road by just after 5:30.  I discovered why women used to use vanity tables.  When 3 people are using one bathroom with only limited time, you just do the water stuff there and all else in your room.  We did that this morning and all went well. Paula and I put on our makeup and did our hair in the bedrooms. In the strange way that things have of coming into your life in pairs or bunches, I had just talked about vanity tables with the carpenter who repaired my rocker.  He told me how he had altered one to make 2 bedside tables because nobody ever uses them any more.   After this morning, I think I might look for one.  I had made banana/walnut muffins and we stopped at Tim Hortons for coffee.  We left Paula at the Kelowna airport to fly back to Thunder Bay at 7:30 and drove on to Hope where I programmed Tom Tom for mom and dad’s in Victoria and then drove off in the wrong direction back to Kelowna.  This sent Richard, the voice, into a correcting fit.  We did what he told us because there was no option and within about 7km were pointing in a westerly direction again and following ‘the voice’ to the ferry.  No wonder we dropped off waiting for it.

The ship’s really rocking.  There’s quite a wind blowing now, and I think its been going for a while.  Even in Hope there was a strong wind and the road was strewn with leaves, boughs and branches.  It was the same in parts of Surry.  I’m getting dizzy at the computer, so I think I’ll stop writing.  This week marks a year since I left Mela and Don’s and started “The West Commences.”  I think I should change its name.

Idaho

I don’t have a ‘bucket list’.  In fact the very expression makes me squirm for some reason, but I’ve just done something I never thought I’d do, spent a week biking almost all the way across the N. Idaho Panhandle with the Vernon Outdoors Club.  It was more fun than I feared it would be.  I’ve discovered that I keep myself moving by telling myself I won’t do things or if I do do them I won’t finish them and then when I find myself with others actually doing them, I do finish, most of the time, and actually like it.  So I’m not a self-starter, but I choose my friends carefully and carry on with them.  It has worked so far.

Priscilla picked me up at 7:00am on Sunday, September 11, 2011, a fateful day to cross the Canada/US border.  But aside from choosing the slowest of the 3 lanes, we had no problems there.  Our GPS, however, was a different story.  Priscilla and I seemed to be on the same wavelength, a somewhat quixotic one perhaps, but compatible. Tom Tommissina, on the contrary, was tuned to a different one.  She kept nagging at us to take routes we didn’t want to follow until we turned down her volume and finally shut her off.  The rest of the trip was fun.  We had a delicious lunch in a Mexican Family Restaurant in Colville, Washington, drove through some lovely scenery and arrived at our ‘villa’ in time for dinner.  Our accommodation was a rabbit warren of places, each with a name, ‘The Backwoods’, ‘The Villa’ and 2 other equally exotically named units all in what had been one lot in the town of Kellogg, Idaho.  We shared our dinners with the 3 women in ‘The Backwoods’, so each only cooked once.  We had great food, cheap good wine and hot tubs every night.  That luxury combined with the fact that the rides were not as hard as I had feared they would be made the whole week a surprising delight.

The Monday ride, however, did begin with something I had not given enough thought to, the 1.7mile long Saint Paul Pass, otherwise known as the Taft Tunnel.  That distance sounds like nothing until you enter with no light except the pathetic glow of a few LED lights on the brim of your bike helmet.  Within seconds, it was pitch dark, wet with water running in gutters on each side and cold.  I became quickly disoriented and almost wobbled off the bike before I fixed my eyes on the red tail light of the person in front of me, clenched the handle bars and my teeth and carried on to the end.  About a week earlier I had laughed at a cartoon about the light at the end of the tunnel being turned off because of cutbacks, but by the time I pedaled out of the Taft, that joke had lost it’s punch.  I was never so happy to see the light and feel the warm dry sun.  The rest of this Route of the Hiawatha; across the Bitteroot Mountains between Idaho and Montana, over 7 high trestles and through 10 much shorter and dryer tunnels; was wonderful and only slightly tainted by the knowledge of the fact that we would be going back through the Taft at the end. 

We biked every day and did the whole of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, from Plummer to Mullen.  That is, some of us did.  Priscilla and I carried on as we began, a bit less than seriously.  There were among us some who wanted to tick off every mile, but we managed to miss a few.  One day, we were the only ones who parked at the right trailhead but we didn’t finish the route.  The next day, we left the car at the wrong place and consequently missed most of the glorious downhill.

Of course we became the butt of jokes, but our skin is tough, unfortunately not quite tough enough on the butt end, however.  Five days of biking took there toll there.

Two of the highlights of the trip were on Tuesday.  We biked until about 2:00pm and then took a tour of an abandoned silver mine near Wallace.  Our guide was a crusty old miner who was full of vitality in spite of a career underground that would have killed me.  Once we were down in the shaft, he turned on some of the machines and turned off the lights and gave us a sense of the dark and the noise and the heavy work.   And we didn’t experience the heat that they have to endure in the deeper parts of the mines.  Silver has made a lot of money for the area, but they have paid.  All along the trails were signs warning of the poisons in the water and ground as a result of the heavy metals in the tailings leaching out of the many high slag hills.  After the tour, we went to a brewpub and drank.  The ale was very hoppsy, as Jim would have said.  We talked to the owner, and he gave us a tour of his huge stainless steel vats.  So there is more to the Vernon Outdoors Club than coffee and ice cream.

On our drive home we ignored Tom Tommissina again and crossed the Grand Coulee Dam.  This time we chose the fastest line at the border and ate in the car, so we arrived in Vernon in record time, even after a stop to shop at Lulu Lemon in Kelowna.  That care package is getting close to complete, Jay.

Outside the Ranch Chico, a family Mexican restaurant in Colville, Washington.

Someone exiting the Taft Tunnel, lucky guy.

Just outside a shorter tunnel

Priscilla and I had this picture taken as proof that we started at the Black Rock Trailhead, in the right place at the right time for once.

A view on the Route of the Hiawatha

Another 

A little bit of Mexico in Wallace, Idaho

Russ, our lively guide, in the silver mine near Wallace.  The canary in the cage never was alive. 

A bridge across Lake Coeur d' Alene.  If you click on the picture, you'll see that it says that jumpers will be prosecuted.  As the water is shallow, it reminded me of lines from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid":  "Jump."  "I don't swim."  "Are you kidding?  The fall will kill you."

They make big bugs in Idaho

Priscilla and I are reflected in this one's chest.