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.