Back to Guide camp after many years

Today I accepted a ride to Camp Kiawa on Lake Erie, as Andie was starting a week there. I has been many years since I went there for a week. I wouldn’t have recognized it.

Route from Hamilton to Lake Erie

Here’s an aerial photo.

Southern Ontario and the shores of Lake Erie

Barn dance in Guelph

Yesterday, for a treat, I took Andie to Guelph for a barn dance. At 17:30, I got ready and picked up my son, then drove to Hamilton and picked up Andie from her mother, and then we went on to Guelph. We found the church, which was a fine old limestone structure, paid our fees, and went in.

The evening started with barn dances, then a contra dance, then reels, and a couple of waltzes. It was a lot of fun but hot. The band was Relative Harmony and the caller was Judy Greenhill. Rick, who is in the band, and Judy have moved from Toronto to Guelph.

Relative Harmony plays a wide variety of folk music. For contra dances, it has a Celtic flavour.

Relative Harmony is an acoustic trio comprised of Rick Avery (voice, keyboards and guitar); Judy Greenhill (voice), our son Jonathan Avery (violin and percussion); and on occasion, our daughter Katie Avery (violin). We perform a wide variety of British and North American folk music.

At the end of the evening, I retraced the route to Hamilton and then Toronto.

New clothes

LotStreetWiz bought some much-needed replacements for worn clothes when he was in Vancouver on business. He contributed this picture of a new, pink-and-gray shirt.

Bike ride, June 15

It was thundery in Toronto; in fact a bolt of lightning sizzled, spit, and cracked over my head this afternoon. But in Hamilton it was warm and fine.

I picked up Andie in the afternoon and we went to the Hamilton lakeshore trail. We biked from the 600-m mark to the end, up around 8 km, and a bit beyond.h When we looked back, we could see the big bridge where we’d started. The weather was glorious. We saw lots of red-winged blackbirds. Many of them seemed to be trying to perch on tufts of goldenrod. I wonder if they are staking out nesting sites for the second brood of the season. And we passed a turtle crossing the path, so I had to go back and take another look. It seemed to be heading for a swampy area that might not always be wet. Did it go down to the lake to lay eggs? Or was it just out for a stroll along with the cyclists, roller-bladers, walkers, and wheel-chair rollers?

Just after we turned around to come back the wind changed and rain threatened. We booted it back fairly quickly. We stowed the bikes in the van and went for a burger and milkshakes and some delicious, soggy french fries.

After our supper we walked back to the van. And we saw the biggest dog… it was an English Mastiff that weighed 250 pounds. According to its owner, it’s unusually small for the breed. I asked Andie to stand with the dog for scale.

Perhaps you need more than one picture to see how big this dog is. Here he is with his owner.

The dog was well behaved, but when he decided to go somewhere he was hard to hold.

The man himself was fairly tall. His companion, in the background, was dwarfed by the mastiff.

Here is the dog with Andie again.

Here’s a link to a picture of a large mastiff. Just scroll down until you come to it.

Notice that this multi-use path is wide enough to be shared. It’s about twice as wide as the paths in Toronto. People could walk four abreast and we could still get around them on the path.

Cell phone? What cell phone? My Ride for Heart

This morning we went out to bike the Ride for Heart. LotStreetWiz signed up for the 75 km route but wisely registered me and Andie for the 25 km. I’ve only been out twice this year on the bike so 25 km is quite enough for an early-season ride. We got started late, The ride, not a race, has thousands of people attending. It starts down near Toronto’s lakeshore at Exhibition Place, then goes east across the bottom of the city on an elevated highway called the Gardiner Expressway, then up the Don Valley Parkway. 25-km riders turn at the Bayview/Bloor ramp. 50-km riders go up to York Mills Road, which is almost up to Highway 401 (which runs more or less across the top of the city) and back to Exhibition Place. 75-km riders go up to York Mills Road, down to Bayview, then back up to York Mills road and back all the way to Exhibition Place.

Andie and I started out late, so we jumped in at Dundas Street, near the south end of the Don Valley Parkway, then cycled north. We went under the viaduct to the Bayview/Bloor ramp, where LotStreetWiz was waiting for us, as he told me via text messages. From there, we all turned south and went back to Exhibition Place.

At one point, he and Andie went ahead, while I tagged along behind at my own speed. Just when I was climbing the ramp back up to the Gardiner Expressway, my cell phone rang (I thought). When I got to the top I looked at it but I had no calls nor messages. Because of my recent problems with cell phones and water, I was carrying it in a small, sealable plastic bag, a zip-lock baggie. I continued, passing and being passed, among cyclists, parents with little kids, middle-sized kids weaving all over the road, bikes with trailers, tricycle bikes, recumbent bikes, fast guys and people slower than me, at least one with a hand crank and someone with an artificial leg. Everyone can play! Parents of small children were often stopped, waiting for their children to rest. I wouldn’t take a small child on this ride.

When I got to a point overlooking Fort York, the original fort nestled in the underskirts of downtown, I stopped. LotStreetWiz and Andie must be at the finish by now and I wanted to send them a message. I carefully snugged my bike up against the curb and stepped up on the curb myself, took off my backpack, and got out the phone in its baggie. I took out the phone and tried to open it. It slipped. It fell. It fell off the damn Gardiner Expressway, flat open, and landed in the middle of a lane in a small road below. No traffic. I shrugged on my backpack, jumped on the bike, and pedalled for the nearest exit — which happened to be against the flow of cyclists. I went the wrong way down an entrance ramp, slid the bike under the gate closing it for the Ride, and back up another ramp to Lakeshore Road. Around Lakeshore to Spadina, across Spadina, and back onto the little side road where I’d last seen my phone. No phone. No pieces. Nothing on the sides. It was probably broken anyway, but it seems that someone picked it up. I kept looking. Could I have mistaken my spot? I didn’t think so.

Toronto’s 2007 Ride for Heart was very smoggy

Now I had no way to contact the other two. I biked morosely back across Lakeshore Road past Ontario Place to Exhibition Place, then joined in the queue to approach the finish line. LotStreetWiz and Andie popped out of the sidelines and hailed me. I told them my sad news. It was all his fault. If I’d just biked with Andie I wouldn’t have been phoning. But I’d probably have stopped to look at Fort York. You don’t see much of it when zipping by on the highway. On this one day of the year I could legitimately stop. And then I would have wanted to take a picture. And I would have gotten my phone out. It was all my fault. I was the one fumbling the phone.

Less than two days! That’s the briefest phone ever. This time it’s gone with the flash card, my contacts, the movies I took of geese and goslings last weekend, and any pictures I took since Friday, such as our cats attacking a stuffed toy, the Girl Guide parade in Hamilton on Saturday, last night’s Stanley Cup game, or the massed cyclists on the highway. Luckily, LotStreetWiz took a couple of pictures of Andie in her biking togs.

After we met up, we all rode past the finish line and back to the car at Dundas and the Don Valley. So Andie and I got the 25 km, just with a different starting point than most people.

Bike ride, May 24

It’s Victoria Day and a Saturday and the weather is beautiful. I went out with LotStreetWiz, who was doing a short, medium effort run as part of his Ironman training program. We drove to the Don Valley and took to the multi-use paths along the Don River. This is only the second time I’ve ridden my new bike. It’s as light as a feather compared to my old Trek, which I’ve been using for most of the last ten or fifteen years both for commuting and occasional pleasure rides.

There were lots of families cycling and walking, plus a few runners. We didn’t go very far, and it was hard at first to keep the bike down to running warm-up pace. Then we decided to cut short the run and we rested at the Forks of the Don, where the east and west branches come together.

I pulled up some dog-strangling vine, an invasive weed that has invaded the valley in the last few years. Across the river from us was the wreckage of a wood & iron bridge carried downstream in the spring floods a couple of years ago.

The point on the right is between the two branches.

Beyond the point, you can see the west branch of the river fading into shadow.

Just upstream is the confluence of the east branch with Massey Creek. Here and there in the valley, a pink-flowered bush is blooming.

I biked a little further. I looked at the giant “elevated swamp” sculpture with its solar-powered waterfall, from the old Don Road bridge.

Here’s the old Don Road bridge.

Here’s a view through the columns to the railing of the old bridge over the east branch… [My God! That's why they call creeks "branches" in the States and you can get "bourbon & branch water" to drink! Or is it "runs"?]

The sparkling water of the east branch goes under the old Don Road bridge. Here’s a look through the fence.

Here’s a look over the fence.

This is my bike on the other side of the bridge.

Beyond the bridge is the Don Valley Parkway with a smattering of Saturday-afternoon traffic.

When I got back to LotStreetWiz, he told me that he’d seen a handsome black-crowned night heron at a shallow spot further up the river. I went back and checked a couple of gravel-bars, but I didn’t see it. Then I powered back to the car.

Eating right?

I must be eating correctly. Last night LotStreetWiz came home from Vancouver. I went out and bought lots of groceries for the coming week. We skipped Pilates and had a nice, throw-together meal: a sandwich on whole wheat bread, green salad, some cole slaw and some potato salad, milk for me and water for him. Then rhubarb pie with whipped cream. Then some high-fat cashew nuts for me. I was stuffed full off food when I went to bed. And when I woke up, I was hungry!

Home from BC

I’m safely home from Revelstoke, where we successfully married off the blushing bride. This is my cousin’s daughter (thus a cousin once removed) and her new husband, after their (non-religious) marriage service.

Dinner out

An old and good friend is in town with a colleague. So they met us at The Auld Spot on Danforth and we had a nice meal and talk. Eventually my brother showed up as well. Everyone seems to have a lot of interesting experiences to share.

The Auld Spot is named after a pig or a breed of pigs. The front of the pub looked like this last summer but there’s a new, roll-up front now.

It’s spring!

All four cats were out in the back yard today, together, including our grey twins Fog & Cloud.

see more crazy cat pics

And I went for my first bike ride of the year and my first ride on my new bike, with Andie.