Getting the Most out of Simcoe Day Weekend

I think this is a scene from Superman 2

Sorry for the "cone of silence" this weekend, but Sarah and I have been really busy...relaxing. We've been visiting or hanging out with a lot of different friends (and yet it still seems as if we missed seeing so many) and have hardly been home together since Friday night. In no way should you construe this as complaining; rather, I'm merely explaining my absence from this blog for a couple of days. On Saturday we went to a barbecue at the home of our friends James and Karen, with whom we have gone camping in July for several years in a row until the streak came to an end this summer. This was our opportunity to catch up with them because these chances do not come along every day in these busy summer months. James built a tree fort or tree house or clubhouse or some such thing (I'll get it wrong no matter what so let's just say it's one of those) and Susan and Jason decided to pay it a visit while James was grilling the meat. Then, if this picture is an accurate portrayal of events, apparently Jason became trapped in the glass of the fort, never to be heard from again. He looked for all the world like Han Solo frozen in carbonite, or perhaps more like General Zod, banished to the Phantom Zone in Superman 2. Or, um, perhaps something less geeky. Either way, here's Jason in the clubhouse. Or whatever it is. Time to move on....

Awenda 2012 - Day Four and the Journey Home

Chippy bum!!

Sunday saw the end of the chippies (ha! see what I did there?) which is really an annual thing. They don't ever seem to come around on tear-down day no matter how many peanuts we have left for them. This year there was the additional matter of a thunderstorm that rolled through the area in the middle of the night (of course it would rain just before we took down our tents) which may have driven them underground for a while. In any event, the rains were long gone by the time we rolled off of our paper-thin "deflatable" mattress and got on with our day. There wasn't much direct sun on our campsite, but we took full advantage of the little we had and dried all the things that needed to be dried: fly, kitchen tent, clothes that had been on the line. By the time we left Awenda there wasn't a damp item in our collection, except every single piece of clothing we wore to take down the site. Man alive, was it hot on Monday morning. Not only did the rains not help the humidity/heat duo, they seemed to make it worse.

Awenda 2012 - Day Three - Chippy Party Time

Sarah and her "students"

Sarah and I got up fairly early on Sunday morning in order to cram as much fun as possible into the day, the last we would spend with the Ramendas on this trip. Kristen was the first of her family up and she hung out with us for a while until the rest of her family joined her. We cooked the last of our bacon and fried up some more eggs, then popped over to our friends' site to see what their plans were for the day. The kids wanted to do some soapstone carving and we knew that their time would be tight because they needed to be off their site before 2PM, so Sarah and I offered to take the three over to the amphitheatre area while their folks packed up to leave. This is not an area of expertise for me to say the least, but Sarah - being a sculptor and former art teacher - was a huge help to the kids as they worked on their shark, turtle and bear paw (which Erin later turned into a bird, from what I understand). There were a few other people there but it certainly wasn't crowded. If you didn't want to carve the soapstone you could make your own canoe paddle, but I didn't see anyone doing that while we were there. That would have been my preference had I felt compelled to do something.

Awenda 2012 - Day Two

What a delightful way to start the day!

Because we were so late getting to bed on Friday night and because our leaky air mattress interfered with our ability to sleep soundly, we had a bit of a slow start to our Saturday. Sarah and I didn't get out of our tent until 10:30AM and when we finally ventured down the road to the comfort station we were greeted with the message you see in this picture. Kristen, Erin and Matthew put this sign together at the foot of their driveway and it was a hit for every person who passed it by for the rest of the day. After we returned to our site we rustled up some coffee and fried up some bacon and eggs. When we were done and cleaned up we headed over to the Ramendas' site and hung out there for a while until the kids got too restless to sit still any longer. We knew it was time for the beach.

Back Home in Body but not Spirit - Awenda Day One

Not our plates...but they should be

Sarah and I got back home from Awenda yesterday evening, relaxed but utterly exhausted. We spent a good chunk of our time away playing with some pretty energetic young folk (our friends, the Ramendas, met us up there, replete with their brood consisting of one nearly-13- and one nearly-11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy), which will go a long way toward explaining our exhaustion. Add to that the overwhelming heat (thankfully our campsite was in the shade about 90% of the time), the overnight rain on Sunday which caused some issues with our tear down, and the leaking mattress which, in all honesty, we likely would have been better off avoiding altogether and sleeping on the ground. It reached 36 degrees in Penetang yesterday afternoon, about the time we were sitting in the "World Famous Dock Lunch" beside Discovery Harbour, trying to find an appetite to fuel up before driving home. But I'm getting ahead of myself: I have enough material here for one blog post for each day we were away so you'll have to wait until week's end for the story of the drive home.

Just Trying to Make it to Friday

Another shooting today in Toronto. At least this shooter had the "decency" to only hit the one person. I guess that's an improvement.

And then there was the small matter of the machete attack about 100 yards from our car dealership. So, what: it's gotta be the heat, right? Right?

Sigh.

Our beautiful, annual site at Awenda

Well, if we make it to our car safely on Friday morning we're off to Awenda this weekend. We've camped there the last three years in a row, but usually in a large group that goes mid-month. This year that gang went to Presqu'ile and we just didn't want to go there, so we booked a week later on the same site we've had every year (pictured at right). Our friends the Ramendas will be joining us for most of the time we're up there and that will be a really nice treat for us. We're getting out of Toronto early Friday morning to beat the weekend traffic (which, in Toronto, starts around 11AM these past couple of years) and we're not coming back until Monday afternoon or evening, depending on the weather, for exactly the same reason. My kids are splitting the weekend cat-sitting duties for us, which we really appreciate.

Missing Kenora

A tile wall mosaic at the Kenora Skate Park

A friend of mine is currently on a solo bike trip from Toronto to Vancouver (and blogging about it); sort of a One Week without the health issues. She's in Saskatchewan right now, but the first part of her trip took her along the same route that Sarah and I follow when we drive to Kenora, a place I like to get to as often as possible. I didn't make it there last year for mainly financial reasons; those reasons persist and I won't be there this summer, either. I was dealing with this pretty well until I started following my friend's blog and seeing the pictures that she took between Toronto and Winnipeg. Now I'm sitting in the stinking heat of a Toronto summer that is suffocating in every possible meaning of the word, wishing with all my heart that I could instead be perched on a dock in Northern Ontario on the incomparable Lake of the Woods, watching the float planes take off and land, feeling the cool, clear air off the water and listening to the loons.

Pool Party!

I wish I was still in this pool now...

It was a great weekend for seeing friends; luckily for us, we did a lot of just exactly that. Yesterday we dropped in on the Lofthouses and their brand-new baby; today we dropped in on the Fullers for a barbecue and a dip in their pool. They're moving in a week, so this was our last chance to take advantage of the pool and we missed out on the last invite in May because we just couldn't get out there. There was no way we were missing it this time, especially with the ridiculous temperatures around town the past little while. So we navigated through the various road closures around town this Molson Indy weekend, fended off the threatening clouds and spent an idyllic few hours in the ultra-relaxed company of some pretty fine people.

Heading for the Ottawa Valley

Sunset on the Ottawa River, seen from Mom's home

It's Art Fayre time in Dunvegan, Ontario this weekend. (If you haven't checked out the Art Fayre blog or Facebook site please drop by and take a look.) Some very talented local artists will have their works on display at this annual exhibition and Sarah and I are really looking forward to being there. Today we're on the road, heading up to Sarah's mom's home in Lefaivre, near Hawkesbury. We haven't been up there since last August; we used to go a little more frequently but the addition of Addie to our family has made us, by necessity, less spontaneous. It requires some planning on our part if we're going to be away even overnight; this weekend my son, Tim, will be staying in our apartment and cat-sitting for us.

Rainy Sunday: Perfect for a Stroll

As usual, Sarah was the brightest thing I saw on the walk

"Habitat Restoration": a very good idea indeed

I finally had the opportunity to go with Sarah on one of her weekly perambulations around Taylor Creek Park. It's been drizzling on and off here most of the afternoon, but that just made the walk even more refreshing than it would have been on a hot, sunny day. There were very few people on the paths in the valley and virtually no cyclists flying along from behind us. The air smelled wonderful: clean, fresh and healthy, unlike the heavy haze of recent weeks. Sarah has mentioned that the Parks and Rec people have been letting the natural habitat take over in many areas of the valley; here is a sign that speaks to that decision, one we are both very much in favour of.

My Own "Field of Dreams"

"Field of Dreams" from our balcony

Sarah and I have lived in our current apartment for nearly 7 years, having moved here in October of 2005. There are days when it has its challenges from noise and other bad behaviour but the one thing we will never grow tired of is the view from here. We are 20 storeys up over Stan Wadlow Park and the only tall building around for a couple of kilometres, so we can see Lake Ontario and all the way across to Niagara Falls - on a clear day we can see the Skylon from our balcony.

Zoo Therapy

So I have been working with a wonderful group of people at The Challenge Factory and we have finally reached the point where I need to do something called a "Sweet Spot Statement". The whole purpose of my work with them has been to get me to a point where I can find something to do with myself in the "next chapter" of my life that is enriching, satisfying and - hopefully - monetarily rewarding. I've been having some trouble with this part of the programme, mainly because I am afraid of tricking myself into an incorrect "sweet spot" based on values I don't really hold for myself. Of course I have been tossing around ideas like writing about music or politics, mentoring youth, some kind of teaching....or animal welfare.

And yesterday - before Sarah and I were to sit down and work on that Sweet Spot Statement for me - we decided to go to the Toronto Zoo.

Now, being more or less fatalistic I don't believe that it was an accident that yesterday was not only a day that Sarah had booked off just to recharge but also one that turned out to be so absolutely incredible for walking around outside while working out just where that "sweet spot" might be. When we realized - at 10AM - that we were in for something special from the weather, we got ourselves together, fueled up at Timmy's and headed out to the Zoo - ostensibly to see the new baby penguin chick (born in late January but only on display since March Break or so).

Because I am a bit of a cluck (see what I did there?), I forgot my "real" camera at home so I took this picture of the chick through the glass of his enclosure with my phone's camera. Still, I think it came out fine - and the cool thing is you can see Sarah and me reflected in the glass! The down on this little guy is almost gone and he seems to be just about as big as the adults in the colony already, but he still appeared to be very, very sleepy. What a cutie!