Our swim

I found a picture, from last year, of our destination islet. As you can see, it’s not quite a Bum’s Rest, but not really big enough for a picnic.

Sunday, December 20

I had a long, but interesting and rather pleasant day.

First, I got up early and took AthleticKid to the next largish city, where she lives, to take her Bronze Medallion (Lifesaving) exam. That took three hours, officially. It started late because the examiner had to drive all the way from our city (heh, heh, heh). It finished almost on time, but then there was another hour waiting for all the students to receive feedback from the examiner separately. Only 40% of the students passed.

However, I didn’t waste the time. First, I chatted with the parent of another student. Then, I read for a while. About an hour into the actual exam, a small Aikido class started in the gymnasium, and I was able to watch it and chat with the instructor.

Then I waited an hour for AthleticKid to get her results. Finally, we were able to go for lunch. We went to a friendly Italian restaurant called Limoncello. The personal pizzas were about $10 each, but each will be good for at least three meals.

I took AthleticKid home and chatted for about an hour with her custodian.

Then I drove to a nearby grocery store that I knew of. I had never been inside, but had noticed it next to the Ikea (Swedish furniture) store. It turned out to be huge, with a large variety of products. Ienjoyed exploring the store and bought some new things to try. Finally, I checked out and headed for home.

Cyclon 2008, Sunday

Cyclon 2008: cyclists at the Welland Canal

I had a most interesting ride from Brock University: over east to the canal, down the canal to the lakeshore trail, across that trail to Port Dalhousie, an extended lunch hour there, and finally back south to the University.

Cyclon 2008: Cyclists at the 1905 carousel in Port Dalhousie

Much of the way was on bike paths, about half of them hard gravel. We rode near the lake and along the old canal.. The last effort of the day was a climb up the Niagara Escarpment on a gravel road. That brought us right to the university’s back door.

LotStreetWiz and Andie did a longer ride and were the first ones back from it. I hope their group didn’t wait for them when they didn’t show up.

Cyclon 2008, Saturday

Cyclon is a three-day bicycling weekend organized by the Toronto Bicycling Network. It is held each year on the first weekend in August, including Civic Holiday Monday. It’s at a town in easy driving distance from Toronto. This year it was St. Catharines.

We all did the 61 km. today and I barely completed it.

Heat & smog alert!

It was very fine on the weekend, but for the last few days, it has been getting hotter and a little more humid each day. Today we had both an extreme heat alert and a smog alert. It’s going to be slightly hotter on Thursday with a chance of thunderstorms, and the same on Friday. We might even have a funnel cloud! On Saturday it might cool off a bit with more thunderstorms.

I’m not going to bike to work unless I can get out early and find a place to lock my bike in the underground parking. Currently we have more bikes than racks.

I was going swimming this morning but I read until late and decided not to get up early. Then I planned to go to Pilates tonight but I cut the travel time fine and then took the underground streetcar the wrong way after letting two go by in what turned out to be the right way. So I just came home.

My documentation is shaping up and yesterday we got access to our wiki where the documentation will be stored. We had a meeting to hash out the standard page format.

The weather report just came on. It’s going down to 19 tonight but right back up to 30 again tomorrow. Today it was 30 but felt like 38. The tornado watches and warnings in Western Canada have been called off. Oh-oh! They had about three inches of rain in Dunneville. I wonder how the Guide Camp is doing?

Now I need to go and hang the laundry that I started this morning. And then I can write my science blog posts for tomorrow and schedule them to appear throughout the day.

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