HAPPY CANADA 🇨🇦 DAY

Saturday, June 30th has been productive. Jay and I were at work well before 7:00am. I cooked and gardened while he replaced the really old door on the equally ancient back garage. He was using a slightly newer door that he'd got from our neighbour a few years ago when he helped him tear down his portion of Jim's Eccentricity. My job was easy compared with that. I was trying a new recipe for salmon croquettes, but at least all the ingredients were fresh. He, on the other hand, was struggling with old doors and a frame that time and weather had been warping since the '30s. It's not perfect but it's over 80 years old and it swings freely now. It was a good day for working, not too hot, cloudy and the threatened rain didn't come. Although there's a strong wind now. As I look out the window I see only the backs of the leaves on the grape vines. I remember Ron Noginosh passed on a bit of First Nations lore to me once, in his educating whitey way. "When you see the backs of the leaves, it's going to rain." So perhaps it will. I wouldn't mind and neither would the yard, in spite of the fact that it's been cooler and wetter than usual in the Okanagan lately. I heard on the radio that it's going to be really hot in Ottawa tomorrow.

I finally have an ebike. Thus ends the most serious shopping I've ever undertaken. And in spite of the fact that I did countless google searches, visited six or eight bike shops in Vernon, Kelowna and Kamloops and test rode quite a few bikes, I bought one yesterday in Kamloops that I had never heard of until about two hours before I bought it. I had gone there ten days earlier with my friend Jane. We had bought identical bikes, but there was only one in the shop. We were in Jane's car and she had a rack, so she got it and one was ordered for me. NOT. It's a long story, but I ended up back in Kamloops yesterday to pick up a loaner to ride until mine came in. BUT the dealer called while I was there to say that there was no hope of getting the bike I had ordered, not even for ready money. Ebikes are as popular as pizza these days, and not as quickly made. I had reached my limit. Shopping rattles me the way banks rattle the character in the Stephen Leacock story I can't remember the title of. David, the man I'd been dealing with at Cycle Logic could see that I was getting psychologically shattered. He said I could keep the loaner as long as I needed to. But I couldn't bear the thought of dragging out the agony of shopping. So a couple of hours later I was headed for home with a new ebike, a bit of a deal because of the inconvenience but still a bit more expensive than the one Jane and I had originally chosen. Now I have to study how to make it work. You don't just jump on the thing and ride. I still haven't set the clock on the control panel, and that's the easiest of its functions. Yikes. I'm not going to really appreciate it until Monday when I get to the first hill and engage the battery.



The new door and ebike


The new bike in front of the sunflowers in the back yard.