It’s Saturday, September 10, 2011, and tomorrow Priscilla and I will try to cross into the USA on the 10th anniversary on 9/11. There has been so much coverage of the event on the CBC this past week that I have started to tune it out . I remember very clearly what I was doing when Jim called me from Heritage to tell me about the attack and how I watched TV for hours as I rewrote my whole recipe book that day and how I later cut out and saved Lewis Lapham’s articles in ‘Harper’s’ when the Bush mob used it as one of their lame excuses for entering Iraq. It was a momentous and tragic event that certainly has influenced our time, but it seems to me that CBC is overdoing its coverage of the 10th anniversary considering all that has happened since and other events that have intervened. It undoubtedly suits Harper’s agenda to go over the top about the issue and milk it for every ounce of fear possible, but the CBC doesn’t have to be in such lock step. That’s it for the rant.
The theme for the rest of this blog will be biking on abandoned rail beds over trestles and through tunnels. This past Thursday I went with the gang on a 50km bike along the Kettle Valley Railroad bed. It’s part of the Trans Canada Trail. The biking was easy, and the views that you get as you wind along the Myra Canyon over the 18 trestles are spectacular. The whole area was burned out in the wildfires of September 2003, which destroyed 12 wooden trestles and damaged 2 steel ones. They have all been rebuilt and sided for biking and walking over. The 2 tunnels are short, but one of them was pitch dark for a moment, long enough for me to remember a cartoon I saw recently. The picture shows the opening to a black tunnel and the caption reads, “ Due to budgetary cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.” This coming week when we bike on the Hiawatha Trail in Idaho, we will be going through a few long tunnels. It is also an abandoned railway. I had to buy a red rear light for my bike and front lights too. I bought an official rear light, but for the front I bought LED lights that fit on the peak of the visor that I wear under my bike helmet. I hope they work; they certainly will look a little dorky. I think I might have started a mini trend in the club. So far, I have one convert to wearing a visor under the helmet, but I might lose her when she sees me with the LED light ‘add ons.’
A picture Caroline took of me at the Kettle Valley Winery wearing the top Jay and May sent me from the Philippines
A view down the Myra Canyon from one of the KVR trestles. You can just see Kelowna in the haze from the first forest fire of this year, as well as what remains of the trees burned in 2003
A couple of the KVR trestles
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