7:00pm Sunday and still sunny

I'm tired and my cheeks still feel warm after a long day of biking,at my very relaxed pace. But it was windy, and I walked quite a bit too. After getting up early on Saturday to bike to Clover Point to watch all the yachts in the Swiftsure regatta start, I wanted to at least see one of them finish. And I did. My first stop this morning was Ogden Point. I had to walk my bike out it to see one of the boats in the long part of the race, some boats did shorter courses and finished yesterday, cross the finish line which was just beyond the point. The rest of the day I just biked around; there was no construction on Dallas Road, so it was possible to go all along the shore. Of course I had to walk the bike up a couple of the hills.

On Friday I had coffee,as usual, with Barbara and Terry and then they took me to the exhibit, "Egypt, The Time of the Pharaohs", that just opened at the Victoria Museum. It was well worth visiting. The exhibits were mostly of real things, not reproductions, and, as I was once before at an exhibition of ancient Egyptian artifacts, I was impressed by the fineness of the work. Afterwards, we had a left over lunch of all the food we had brought home from lunch at a restaurant the day before. That day we drove to Sooke to pick up a book of Latin phrases translated into English that had been Terry's father's. Terry had had it rebound by a woman who is a real crafts person. She did a very good job. It was fun to see her workshop because some of her equipment is beautiful, hand made in wood by a craftsman like her.

Earlier in the week I met Ross and Elizabeth for a walk in Oak Bay. Ross had to go right home for a conference call, but Liz and I had a good old coffee and chat after. Last night I went to their place for a Thunder Bay dinner. There were seven of us, five from TB and even more precisely, Loon Lake. The food was delicious,we had a lot of laughs and I learned news about people I've hardly seen since high school.
























A mummified cat. Glad to see it's organic. Good enough to eat?





Two of my favourite exhibits, one from each of the places that contributed artifacts.






My favourite name of all the yachts that were moored in the Inner Harbour on Friday night before the Swiftsure race.





The 'Simpsons' banner near the top of one of the stays on Panic.





The start of the third set of yachts. I was surprised by all the black sails. I went on line when I got home and discovered by reading a wonderful article on a sailing sight that black is the new white in the world of sailing. The author, Bill Schanen, said that the reason is partly technical and partly sartorial. The best and most expensive sails now are made with carbon fibre but even some that are good but not made of carbon fibre are black. The visual effect is foreboding, more an armada than a fleet.





Number 1717, Blue, crossing the finish line off Ogden Point this morning.