Summer 2013

 The transition from spring to summer was a wet one, but on Friday, June 21 the clouds broke in the late afternoon, the sun set brightly and the full moon shone for a while.  We've had more rain since, but the sun is coming out now.   I’m back to biking, with a smaller group doing less strenuous rides.  It’s fun, and I’m going to celebrate by biking over to the store where I bought my bike and getting a pack that sits on a rack above the back tire.  I want to use my bike more for shopping and riding around town.  Vernon, like a lot of places, I imagine, is in a prolonged period of tension between those who want to encourage the development of bikeways and the real use of bikes in town for riding to school and work and those who don’t want the width of roads altered in any way that might either make it more difficult for them to manoeuvre their big trucks and SUVs or raise their municipal taxes.  Almost every edition of the local newspaper, ‘The Morning Star’, has a letter to the editor on this topic, some of them quite heated.  It reminds me of the Great Giant Tiger Debate in Wakefield.  Like Joni, I’ve looked from both sides now and really don’t know at all but feel drawn to the pro bike argument here because it seems that at least inside a small town you don’t need big vehicles, even if you do need them in this vast country sometimes.  Vernon could have thought ahead a bit and left more of its waterfront and hills as public property.  It’s time to make its downtown more pedestrian and bike friendly.

We’ve had a lot of rain in the last 2 weeks.  I went to a small but great concert on Mon. night. Because of the rain, it was held in a 2 car garage instead of outside in the yard.  If you ever get a chance to listen to ‘dave lang & the twin otters’, take it.  I even bought their hand made cd entitled ‘champagne breakfast’.  We also had rain on yesterday’s hike, but it didn’t dampen our spirits much.  We haven’t had flooding like Alberta, but the Okanagan hills are green instead of their usual camel hair color.  My cedar hedge likes it.

I went to Dr. Inkpen, the neurologist this morning.  He stuck a needle attached to a monitor into my deltoid muscle, and we actually heard it working.  At least that’s what he said we were hearing.  It just sounded like static to me, but I was eager to believe him and will now always associate the sound of static with muscles working.  I’m a long way from being a body builder but very happy that at least the nerve has repaired itself.  Now all I have to do is exercise: muscles, to get them back into whatever shape they can attain and caution, so as not to dislocate any more joints and stretch any more nerves.

Russel Earnshaw, one of the funniest women in  the VOC, using the radio.  It was a rainy day, but it's never dull when she's around.  I took the picture because she and Jane and their gear were such bright colours on an otherwise dull day.