Really cold in Canada

I've been feeling under the weather for the last couple of days, hence the lack of a post yesterday.

Today, I'm still feeling kinda crappy, so I'm going to reach once again into the bag of classic CanadaDave adventures for today's entry.

If you've read Cardboard Boats then you know that back in the early nineties I was the kid the political party I support called upon when something stupid needed to be done. This is another story from before the election of October 1993.

Our candidate was a rather athletic man. He was a member of a running club and was very fit. So, for another publicity stunt the candidate decided that he was going to do a cross riding triathalon. We decided that he would be accompanied on each leg by a volunteer. I volunteered to accompany him on the bike leg, but that spot was already filled and what was really needed was someone to accompany him on the swimming leg. I'm a pretty strong swimmer, so figuring this would be a piece of cake, I agreed. I'm just not that bright sometimes.

The body of water that we were to swim across is called Hogg's bay. It's a bay off of Georgian bay, near Midland, Ontario and about a kilometer and a half (about a mile) across.

Sometime in July we did a test run. It went pretty smoothly. I dove underwater, played and generally had a fun time with it. There was a close call with a float plane that almost ran us down (when it took off I could see the pilot), but that was not really a big deal.

The actual triathalon was in mid September. Hogg's bay had been used for a lot of Great Lakes shipping years ago. As such it had been dredged rather deep. I thought that this would mean that this big volume of water would retain heat well into September. I was not what you would strictly speaking call correct.

I did, however, borrow a partial wetsuit, just in case. I covered my legs, chest and back. My arms, feet, neck and head were exposed.

The day came, and I waited on this old industrial dock for the candidate to show up so we could start our swim. Eventually he biked up, dismounted and jumped in the water. I followed him.

The water wasn't so much cold, as ice in liquid form. It was very, very, very cold. For the first couple of minutes it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I basically tread water and said "Oh shit-oh shit-oh shit-oh shit" for about the first three minutes, which felt much longer. The candidate was pretty sure that I'd have to be pulled from the water. But I perservered and finally headed out into the bay.

I didn't dive or play this time. In fact, I don't think my head went under water.

After what seemed like an eternity, the finishing dock was finally in sight. Every fiber of my being screamed that I should get there as quickly as humanly possible, if not faster. The thing was, this was a media event, and finishing before the candidate, nevermind leaving the candidate in the dust (or possibly ice crystals) would be poor form. I had to let him finish first.

Buy the time I got out of the water my feet and arms were numb and all my finger and toe nails were a deep shade of blue.

You'd think I'd have learned after an experience like that not to volunteer for things....

No such luck. I'm sure you'll be hearing more stories of me doing stupid things for political reasons in future entries...

Rude Awakening

I had a very pleasant stay in Lexington this past weekend. Well, mostly.

Sunday morning left a little to be desired.

SouthernKitten and I were peacefully sleeping as reasonable people tend to do at 5:30 AM on a Sunday. Then her neighbour's radio started playing loud enough that I wasn't sure it wasn't the radio next to the bed.

After a few minutes we decided that I should go knock on her neighbour's door and ask them if they'd please turn it down, seeing as it was stupidly early Sunday morning.

I got dressed, tracked down the source of the music and knocked. The music stopped and a short tubby girl in her PJs answered. I thanked her for turning off the music, explaining that it had woken SouthernKitten and I up, and went back to SouthernKitten's apartment and back to bed.

All was great. For about six minutes. Then either ShortTubbyGirl turned the radio back on, or she'd just hit snooze before and the radio had come back on by itself.

A few minutes later I got dressed again, trudged down the hall, and knocked again. No answer. I knocked louder. No answer. When I came back to SouthernKitten's apartment she advised that she'd actually heard the second knock.

Surely no one could be rude enough to blare their radio at that time, ignore a request to turn it off and then refuse to answer the door. Maybe ShortTubbyGirl was in the shower. Surely she just hadn't heard the radio come back on, and then also hadn't heard my knock. That had to be it.

SouthernKitten and I tried vainly to sleep through the 80s hair metal that was assaulting us through the wall, hoping against hope that ShortTubbyGirl would step out of the shower at any time, realize what was happening and switch off the awful awful music.

After another half an hour we decided that this was not going to happen. Once more I got dressed, once more trudged down the hall, and once more knocked, even louder this time. Once again there was no answer.

When I got back, SK told me I'd practically shaken the building.

Clearly ShortTubbyGirl had no interest in discussing her crazy loud music with me and was determined to disturb our Sunday morning (Hence her less than flattering pseudonym..).

We were going to have to change tactics.

We decided to see if the landlord could do anything. But, being reasonable people, decided to wait a few minutes and not wake him before seven AM.

We went to see the landlord. He was bleary eyed and didn't seem to understand my Canadian accent. But he did understand SouthernKitten and would see what he could do.

A few minutes later we heard him knock and shortly thereafter the bad bad music stopped.

I don't know why ShortTubbyGirl answered the door for him but not for me, and I didn't care that much. I was just happy that we could get back to sleep.

I felt that clearly we were justified in napping well into the afternoon.

Under the Knife

(Part III, and the conclusion in the story of my knee. See part I Injuries and part II Bad Idea)

When we last left our hero (that would be me), I was scheduled to go under the knife on September 30th. That was just short of exactly two years ago as I write this.

Since it was a day surgery, and I was supposed to be fine the next day, I'd planned on taking just the one day off of work. Anyone I shared this with, to the person, told me I was nuts. But I was determined, not because I loved my job (actually I hated it), or because the company wouldn't give me any more time, but because... Um... Well... Possibly because I'm stubborn...

The day came and Devilboy dropped me at the hospital. It was my second time there, so I had a rough idea of where to go. (I'd been there a week or so before for some pre-op work, but it wasn't very interesting and I don't remember much about it, so I've skipped it). I checked in and was given one of those horrible hospital gowns that won't close properly to wear. I stood and waited for whatever was going to happen. A nurse came by and told me that I should go ahead and sit. I advised he that I was fine and that my current garment just wasn't that conducive to sitting...

Eventually a nurse who would be involved with my surgery came by. She asked me a few questions about whether I had been fasting, as instructed, and double checked which knee it was. She then drew a big X in magic marker on the problem knee.

Later the specialist stopped by. He asked me some similar questions, and then initialed my knee. At least I was pretty sure they wouldn't be cutting into the wrong one...

I was called into the operating room and instructed to lie down on the gurney. I didn't really expect it to happen that way. I figured I'd be knocked out somewhere else and be wheeled into the OR. Walking in under my own power just seemed wrong.

People started hooking me up to various machines that seemed to monitor all sorts of different life sustaining functions of my body... I'm sure that to a person with good eyesight they'd have been fascinating to watch... As it was they were rather fascinating blurry colours...

Next an IV was put in and I was given an injection of something. I asked if that was the anesthetic. No, I was told, this was just to relax me, the anesthetic would come later. I asked to be told when the anesthetic went in and was assured I would be.

When I regained consciousness, I was in some sort of recovery room, with similar gurnies on either side. I checked my knee, it was all bandaged up. They had indeed gotten the right one. Someone noticed I was awake and I was wheeled into a curtained off recovery room. Oddly, since I hadn't had a drink all day, I felt a need to visit the men's room. Possibly the IV had pumped some saline into me, I don't know. I was also anxious to test out my knee and see if it was indeed fixed.

It was! Finally!

A nurse freaked out that I was walking around, but pointed me in the right direction once I explained what I wanted.

I spent a little more time recovering and then my mother picked me up, and drove me to Orillia to finish recovering there. On the way I decided I really wanted something in my stomach, but wasn't really ready for a real meal. We stopped at McDonalds and I got some fries and a shake. Nice healthy recovery meal.

I ended up missing work the next day, as everyone predicted I would. I felt crappy but mostly really didn't want to go.

Turns out that my problem had been a "medium sized tear in my left lateral meniscus" and half had been removed. Apparently you don't need to whole thing... Or so I was told, and so I hope.

When the bandages came off you could barely tell I'd had surgery, and I had no stitches to speak of. Just three hole, each about an inch long. One at the top, and two on the bottom. I don't even have much of a scar to show for all my trouble!

My knee is mostly fixed now, it will never be quite the same again, though. I still walk with a bit of a limp when I'm tired, I just don't swear when I do it anymore.

Talk Radio

This will be a short entry and the saga of my knee will continue next week.

I drove down to Lexington yesterday afternoon.

It's a five and a half hour drive and to entertain myself I listen to a lot of radio. I prefer talking to music, and my first choice is current events or news on CBC or NPR. If, they're playing music, or programming I don't like, I'll listen to all sorts of stuff... The nature of talk radio means I usually disagree with the opinions expressed, but I still find it interesting to hear exactly what the right wing lunatics are on about at the moment. I usually don't even get offended.

Yesterday I did, though. The host (whom I've listened to before) must have been off his meds or something... First he criticized Bush for failing to use nuclear weapons in Iraq. There are lots of things one can criticize Bush for. Tons really. I just don't think that's one of them...

Then he talked about the bill that passed the House yesterday that would prevent people from challenging the Pledge of Allegiance in court. Which I find to be both a waste of time and a preposterous idea. Apparently being opposed to this bill makes me not only a mental and spiritual degenerate but also a sexual one as well...

At that point I picked my jaw up off the floor of the car and changed the channel...

Bad Idea

The saga of my knee, Part II

It had been three weeks since I hurt my knee. It was still sore, but I could put weight on it and walk mostly normal. I bought a brace like the doctor had said and figured I was good to go. Clearly the brace made me invincible!

So, I ventured out on to the Ultimate Frisbee field again.

The first game went alright. I wasn't exerting myself too much, but I could run, everything seemed to be well on its way to healing. Now and then my knee felt a little loose and unstable, but I was sure that would go away in time. I was back!

The next week was the playoffs. There'd be none of that namby pamby not exerting myself this time! I was, after all, back, I felt (mostly) good, and I wanted to win!

At this point I'm sure that everyone reading this know roughly what's going to happen next. If any of you have access to a time machine or temporal displacement device of some kind, would you mind traveling back and warning me? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

I played for a short while without incident. I don't remember what the score was or anything beyond the fact that someone had thrown a pass that was skimming the ground just ahead of me. I planted my left foot, put all my weight on it and lunged forward to catch the disc.

My knee buckled under the strain. I collapsed to the ground (again) and swore very loudly (again).

I hobbled to the sidelines and had a seat. Someone from the other team offered me a cold beer. I'm somewhat of a beer snob and normally don't think much of the brand I'd been offered, in this case I accepted it and was enormously grateful.

I grabbed my phone, explained my plight to Devilboy and asked if it was at all possible for him to come get me in my car.

"Dumbass" He said.
(Ok, whoever went back in time, you told the wrong person. Thanks for the effort anyway, though)

The field we'd been playing on was behind a school in the middle of a oval shaped running track. Part of the track ran close to the parking lot with only a thin strip of grass separating them. When Devilboy arrived he ran over that thin strip, and drove my car around the running track to get me. It was a pretty amusing sight, and I was really happy I wouldn't have to hobble any further than necessary.

Before this all started I hadn't had a doctor in Toronto. After my visit to the ER, I decided that I really ought to have one, and I also ought to have someone else look at my knee. Just to be absolutely sure. After eventually finding a doctor who was accepting new patients I'd made an appointment. That appointment was two days after the second falling down and swearing incident, so not being anxious to spend another evening in the waiting room, I opted to just gut it out for a couple days and wait for my new doctor to fix it.

The next couple of days passed slowly. I was back on my crutches again and generally displeases with the turn my life had taken. Finally, the day arrived. Surely the doctor would fix me! All would soon be well!

Not so much. Since this was my first appointment with her, my doctor wanted to do a full physical and get x-rays done before really dealing with my knee. I was poked and pricked and went through all the routine things one does for a physical, but was not a lot closer to having my knee fixed. My next appointment was in a few weeks. In the meantime I was supposed to get some x-rays of my knee taken.

The x-ray clinic my new doctor used did both mammograms and x-rays. There weren't a lot of men in the place. The woman who took the x-rays was either having a bad day, or just really didn't like men. I couldn't tell. Never in my life, though, have I felt more like a piece of meat.

I brought my set of x-rays with me to my next doctors appointment. I'd spent some time analyzing them myself and was confident I'd found the problem. I handed them to my doctor and waited for her to confirm my diagnosis. She only needed to look at them for a split second.

"Those are fine" she said.

She wiggled my knee, tested the range of motion and determined that there was definitely something wrong with it, though.

But it was not something she could fix.

She referred me to a joint specialist and instructed me to call his office to make an appointment.

I did so.

More weeks passed. I'd been limping for so long that my shoes had developed an irregular wear pattern.

Finally, the day of my appointment with the specialist came. This was clearly the day! I would go to sleep tonight without pain in my leg! Joy!

Ummm... No.

The specialist poked and prodded my knee. Asked if it hurt when he poked various places around it. I'd seen this show before.

The specialist told me I had two choice. An MRI, which would take months to schedule, and then weeks to schedule an operation if it was needed, or arthroscopic surgery, it had less of a wait, and he could likely fix whatever was wrong while he was in there.

I went with the surgery. My appointment was scheduled for September 30th. I'd hurt myself sometime in early June.

Tomorrow (or possibly Monday as I'm going to Lexington for the weekend) Part III: CanadaDave goes under the knife.

Injuries

I was woken up this morning by an intense pain in my right knee, otherwise known as my good knee. I have no idea what I might have done to it, but I suspect I may have bruised it somehow by walking into something (I can be clumsy like that).

I call my right knee my good knee because a couple years ago I injured my left one playing Ultimate Frisbee and eventually had little pieces taken out.

Ultimate Frisbee is a great sport. There's a lot of running and it's supposed to be non-contact. I played for a few years on a great team called "Smackdown!" back when I lived in Toronto. I loved that team, everyone on the team was a great person and we were getting pretty good by the time I left.

I think it was during my second year playing when I injured myself. I had a couple of friends watching the game, so I was playing a little more recklessly than usual and trying to show off.

Someone threw a high pass and I jumped to try and grab it. So did two large gentlemen from the opposing team. We collided in mid-air. One of the gentlemen hit my left leg above the knee, the other below it. Consequently my knee bent sideways, far exceeding design specifications.

I fell down in a heap and swore at the top of my lungs.

On the upside two of my more attractive female teammates helped me to the sidelines (this was well before I'd met SouthernKitten).

I lay for a while on the sidelines, convinced that I'd be fine after a few minutes and could finish the game. The league rep happened to be spectating and, glancing at his clipboard, noticed that I hadn't signed the league release waiver yet that season. I signed one while lying on my side, applying ice to my knee. I stayed in that position for the rest of the game.

By the end of the game, my knee was feeling no better. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd better seek medical attention. I couldn't put any weight on my left leg and my knee was absolutely killing me. However, my team had decided to go out for drinks after the game, so that'd have to wait. One has to have priorities. At the bar, when the waitress came by and asked if she could get anyone a drink my answer was an emphatic "Good God, yes!!!"

After spending an hour or so at the bar, Devilboy (who'd been one of the spectators and had accompanied us to the bar) dropped me off at the front door of the local hospital. What neither of us realized at the time was that the emergency room was on the other side. I hobbled in. It was after hours at this point, many doors were locked and very few people were around. I asked a janitor how to get to the ER. His directions involved going outside and going around the block. What must have been a powerful look of dismay crossed my face. I still couldn't put any weight on my left leg and that was a long way to hop. Noticing the dismay, and my lack of mobility, the janitor took pity on me. He fetched me a wheelchair and unlocked a couple doors, allowing me to wheel into the ER.

Once I got there I filled out at small forest worth of paperwork and sat down to wait.

Among the problems with an injured knee is that it doesn't bleed, it's not life threatening and if you're not moving it won't get any worse. At a glance all of these seem like good things, but in ER working on the triage system, it put me at the very bottom of the list.

So I waited.

And waited.

Then waited some more.

And just when I thought it couldn't possibly take any longer.... It did.

After spending seven or eight hours in pain and bored out of my skull in the emergency room, my name was finally called.

A doctor examined my knee, tested the range of motion and declared that I should stay off it for a couple of weeks, but that I should be fine. He even said I could go back to playing sports in three weeks or so, as long as I used a knee brace. Then he gave me crutches and an aspirin and sent me on my way. Aspirin. Well, that was eight hours well spent.

Spending a week on crutches makes you realize just how badly some things are designed for people whose mobility is limited, even temporarily. Because I still couldn't put any weight on my leg, little things suddenly became a lot more challenging. The two inch barrier I had to step over to get into my shower now seemed about four feet high. The security door at work seemed just plain fiendish. The procedure was to slide your passcard in and out of the slot, type in your four digit code on the keypad, then pull open the door. This was not at all hard most of the time, but took on a whole new level of complication with a crutch in each hand. But there were one or two benefits, too. I always got a seat on transit and people seemed very eager to fetch things for me.

After about a week I didn't need the crutches anymore and happily limped around without them.

A couple of weeks after that, I bought a neoprene knee brace and wandered onto the Ultimate Frisbee field again...

Tomorrow - Episode II in the saga of my knee: Bad Idea.

Oops

Because I'm feeling a little lazy today I'm going to post a classic CanadaDave story about a moment of unsurpassed brilliance. I'd documented it at the time, so this post is mostly a cut and paste job. It's the tale of the time I managed to lock myself out of the house for the second time in two weeks. (Including one time this summer I've now done that a total of three times... The first time was uneventful but maybe I'll post the story of the most recent time later. it's kinda funny too...)

I'd been going out to buy a few miscellaneous groceries and when I closed the door behind me and had the sudden, nagging feeling that something was terribly amiss… I checked my pockets. Crap. No keys. “Well,” I thought, “This sucks…” And I figured that I was going to have to call and get Weregirl (who as well as being my friend is also my landlord) to come and let me in… However, seeing as I was embarrassed to have locked myself out in the first place, did’t want to bother her and wasn't even sure that she’d be back from a trip she and one of her roommates had taken to Toronto that day, I decided that I was going to try reaching in through a missing window on my porch and unlocking the door that way. Weregirl had done this the summer before when we couldn’t find the keys, so I knew that is was at least possible… It is, mind you, worth noting that she is smaller than me. MUCH smaller… But, at that point, this still seemed like a pretty reasonable idea…

So, I took off my jacket, emptied my pockets, climbed up on the ledge and gave it a go.. My head got in without a hitch. Then my shoulders. Chest…. Nope. The lock was tantalizingly close. I could almost feel it, but it was still far enough that this wasn’t going to work. I got down from the ledge…

I was soooo close, though… I started casting about for ideas… Maybe if I could find a stick I could use that to turn it… Maybe I could pick the lock.. Maybe there was another way in…

Then I remembered that I was wearing a sweatshirt. It wasn't overly thick, but I didn’t need much more clearance… I had a t-shirt on underneath, so I wouldn’t be walking around half naked or anything…

Off came the sweatshirt and up I went. I was even closer this time. Still not all the way there, though. And… Wait… If I shimmied a bit I could get even closer… Closer… Closer… Got it! Victory!! Now I could just hop down and walk on in…

Yuh-huh. This is failing to take into account that at that point I was firmly wedged halfway in and halfway out of the stupid window. I tried to pull out… Yup. Pretty stuck… Not really going anywhere… I considered going all the way through… A little mental math suggested that there was, however, no way on this Earth that my hip bone was going to fit through that narrow opening.. K… Hmmm… That sucked… I began to wonder how long it would be before someone found me… Long time I thought… My cell phone was over on the porch with my jacket and sweatshirt… Besides, this was even more embarrassing than locking myself out… My legs were getting tired… This really was not a comfortable position….

K… I really couldn’t stay like that…. I kept squirming, trying one method after another, trying desperately to free myself from this amazingly stupid situation… Finally, after what seemed like an eternity… Ouch, oww, ouch, ouch, I was out!

I calmly opened the door and walked into the house…

Lessons learned…

1. Always, always, always check to ensure I have keys before closing the door.
   
2. There are more embarrassing things than locking oneself out.
   
3. If necessary, I could get in using the window trick. It just hurt. A lot.
   
4. I should secure my home a little better
   (Which I did. This technique no longer works to break into my house...)
   

---

In other news, you may have noticed that I'm experimenting with a little animated title thingy at the top of my page. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I may keep it, I may not...

Also, SouthernKitten has safely returned from her trip to Reno!

Close to home

Before moving to Windsor for school I lived in Toronto for several years. The last few were in a neighbourhood called "The Beaches", so named for the rather obvious reason that he neighbourhood abuts the lake, and as such there are a number of very nice parks and beaches.

It was a very pleasant place to live and I miss it a lot. The people were friendly, it had a lot of park land and there was a lot to do.

Devilboy, who was my roommate at the time, and I would often hike around they neighbourhood, exploring and drinking coffee. I used to walk a lot with Weregirl, who I had a thing for at the time. I played countless indoor and outdoor sports with the local sports league, and generally just loved the area. (But I did not love my job, hence why I am back in school and here)

The sad/scary part is that, since I left, the area has had a couple of significant near disasters...

The first happened this spring. A man who deranged man from New Brunswick (a maritime province on Canada's Atlantic coast) drove to Toronto with a car-load of guns because he planned to go on a shooting spree. Seems he thought the people back home were too nice, so he came to Toronto, more specifically the Beaches, my old neighbourhood to do his killing. He decided against it when he took a walk in the park, encountered a friendly dog, and decided that maybe my neighbours where also too nice to kill... story

The second happened this weekend. One of my two favourite sports was beach volleyball. This weekend a big tournament was scheduled and just as they were warming up, they discovered that someone had seeded the courts with blocks of wood with blades sticking out. story

Scary stories appear in the news all the time. Frankly, there are worse things in the news almost every day. But these strike a little closer to home for me and just feel a lot more personal. These sorts of things are not supposed to happen in Canada.

Cardboard boats

Today we're going to tell one of SouthernKitten's favourite stories, so that she has something fun to read if she gets online in Reno.

A bit of background first, though.

Before the federal election in October of 1993, the last time my party had won my home riding had been in 1940. Back then my grandparents would have been a little youger than I am now, and neither of my parents had been born.

I've been politically active for as long as I can remember. I've done everything from fold pamphlets to manage election campaigns. The summer of 1993 I was almost 18 and I was the kid the local party recruited when something kinda stupid needed to be done.

This is the story of one of those times...

Orillia is situated between two lakes, so there's a lot of recreational boating that goes on. Every summer there's a big boat show at the lakefront park near my parents house. In 1993 a new event was introduced, the cardboard boat race.

The man who was party candidate at that time had been working for about a year at that point, trying to get his name out in the community. If there was an event where he could go out and meet people, he was there. Someone (I don't remember who, but it was probably my mother), came up with the idea that he should participate in the cardboard boat race. Everyone thought this was a splendid idea. We just needed someone dumb enough to build the boat and sail it with him. This is where I came in.

So, I set about building a boat. Now, it should be mentioned at this juncture how much I know about boats, boat design and generally all things nautical. And that is almost nothing. Boats float, and one end is usually pointy. The were the design specifications I was going with.

I recruited my good friend Devilboy to help with this little project. Our first step was to search out the raw materials we'd need for this boat. After a little searching, we found a huge pile of cardboard behind a local furniture store. This was going to be easy! This was going to be the best boat ever! We gathered up as much as we figured we'd need and trucked it back to my parent's house.

Next came the part where we looked at what we had and figured out how to make a boat out of it. The most promising piece of cardboard was a box that was about three feet, by three feet, by six feet. This was great! We'd just cut out one side, but a pointy nose on one end, reinforce it a little, slap on some paint, and voila, boat!

So that's pretty much what we did. We had a few visitors during the process, none of whom thought my creation looked all that much like a boat. I'd try to explain what we were doing, Devilboy would just shrug his shoulders.

After the boat was built, we needed paddles to propel it. Someone (possibly the candidate this time) thought it would just be a whole lot funnier if, instead of using proper paddles, we used a hockey stick and a broom, so some were acquired and off we went.

They day of the event my mom talked a local car dealer into lending us a cubevan to bring the boat to the park, so we used this enormous thing to move my creation the four or five blocks to the park.

We unloaded and got ready for the race. The competition was varied from boats that looked like they'd been built the night before, to ones that looked like teams had spent weeks on them. Ours was somewhere in the middle.

Once the organizers realized who our team was, the event was delayed. I later learned that someone had had to wake up the incumbent candidate so that he could rush down and be a last minute judge. (You don't spend 14 years in office without making a few friends). After a half hour or so delay, a sleepy looking MP staggered down to the park and was introduced as a special judge.

Then came the moment of truth, the race itself.

After the starter's pistol sounded, the candidate and I pushed the boat into the water, and jumped in.

Our first problem was that I rally hadn't accounted for how buoyant cardboard is. The boat, which I had anticipated sinking six inches to a foot into the water, didn't. Instead, maybe an inch was under. This made paddling from any kind of seated position impossible. We had to stand to paddle and anyone who knows anything about simple physics, nevermind boats, will tell you this is a bad idea. This also meant that the boat had no torsional stability and twisted down the middle with every stroke of the paddle. Lastly, brooms and hockey sticks - not good paddles.

The race was to another dock and back. Maybe 150 feet, all told. We got about halfway to the other dock and capsized. My beautiful creation became waterlogged and tore into little tiny pieces shortly thereafter. The candidate and I spent the remainder of the race in the water. The majority of the other boats did not survive either and many, upon disintegration, were found to contain (horror of horrors) wood! Oddly, the officials didn't seem to notice... But really, once you introduce wood, is it really still a cardboard boat? Isn't that more like just a regular kind of boat? But I digress...


We participated in the race a couple more times. Until I started working full time and no longer was home for the summers.

The other years were a lot of fun too.

Maybe some day I'll tell those stories, too.

Changes to my blog

SouthernKitten leaves early tommorow morning on a business trip to Reno, Nevada. In honour of her trip I have added Reno to the list of weather conditions on the right side of my blog.

(edit - She's back so I removed it again)

Also, I was surfing, of all places, the Kentucky DMV website when I noticed that they had a little terror threat condition level on the side of their page. On closer inspection, all pages by the commonwealth of Kentucky have this little notice. As a member of a Kentucky portal, and not wanting to be left behind in this growing trend, I immediately added them to my page. You can find one for all the places I list the weather for. Note that since Canada does not use this system I had to set the levels for here myself. I'm considering raising Windsor to a Blue level, though... Detroit is awfully close and threatening...

Differences

On my frequent trips to and from Lexington I have a lot of time to ponder various subjects. One that gets a lot of attention in particular is what exactly is it that makes Canada different that the US. Cynics here will say that we are just USA-lite. The US with a smaller population and a smaller economy. I don't think so. I like some things about the US, I like Lexington an awful lot, but it still feels just a little alien.

Our countries do share an awful lot. The language is almost identical (Though the US seems to have misplace an awful lot of "U"s from their words). We watch their TV and movies, read their books, eat their fast food and overall share just an awful lot of their culture. Of course, arguably, culture is the USA's main export. It's one of the reasons why every nation in the world is so aware of all things American and invading US culture is also one of the reasons why so many groups feel such antipathy and even sheer hatred of the US. But I digress.

Immediately after crossing the border I have a definite feel that I am in a different place. Of course, living in Windsor means that when I cross the border I'm in Detroit, and Detroit is not a nice place. But even once I've left Michigan entirely, I know I'm not at home.

There are a number of subtle and less than subtle reasons for this.

One of them is the way Americans wear their religion on their sleeves. Religion is pervasive in the US. It's much more subtle in Canada. In the US I can always find several religious stations when I scan the radio dial. These are few and far between here, at least in Southern and Central Ontario. Religion in the US everywhere and very public. There's a plastics company on I-75 in Ohio with a religious slogan (which escapes me at the moment) all lit up in huge letters on the front of their building, there seem to be a lot more churches, and even the money says "In God We Trust". Canada just isn't like this.

Religion plays a major role in politics in the US. The fundamentalist Christian vote was a major factor in putting GW Bush in power, and is a major influence in the Republican party. In Canada most politicians will attend church of some sort, but it's not a big deal. The religious groups make a lot of noise about abortion, gay marriage and a lot of the same things they make noise in the States about, but they don't often get their way. In the US the "young Earth" theory (which, basically, adds up the timeline of all the events in the Bible and thus concludes the Earth is really about 6000 years old) is a common belief. Here a politician once mentioned he believed it and he was mocked (Well, Stockwell Day was mocked for a lot of reasons).

Guns are another big difference. I listened to a segment on the radio this morning about a debate in Utah surrounding the question of whether concealed weapons should be allowed on the campus of the state university. A senior state Republican politician spoke in favour of allowing them. His rational basically boiled down to a "Wild West" mentality. The gun lobby both in the US and here seem to think that having a shoot out in public is a reasonable solution and/or deterrent to crime. The big difference tends to be that in the US these people have influence and people listen to them. We have a gun lobby here too. A few years ago the governing Liberal party passed a law requiring all guns to be registered. The gun lobby despised this law and vowed that it would be the downfall of the Liberals in the next election, then lobbied as hard as they could to that end. The next election the Liberal party won a huge majority. There were many reasons for this, but my point is that the gunners had a negligible effect.

I went to the bank in Lexington with SouthernKitten a while ago. On the door, next to the "No Smoking" logo was a similar "No Guns" logo. I found it terribly odd and went on a while about it at the time. It just seemed so obvious to me, don't run with scissors, don't eat yellow snow, don't bring your gun to the bank. I told this story to the man handling my student loan at my bank in Orillia. He was flabbergasted.

There are guns in Canada. The people that own them are very attached to them, but they are generally used for hunting, target shooting and the like. They are not carried in public (I don't actually remember it ever even being debated), and they are not part of home security.

There are exceptions to all of that. It's entirely possible that your roommate's brother's bestfriend's sister is a Canadian and sleeps with a loaded gun under her pillow. My point is that it's less common here and vastly so. (at least in this region of Canada, I really shouldn't speak for any other region. Canada is a vast and diverse country.)

This is an interesting topic to me and there are plenty of other ways Canada and the US differ, but that's enough for today. I'll likely come back to this topic now and then.

***

While I don't care that much about hockey, I'm still pleased that Canada won the World Cup of Hockey today. Mostly, I just like it when Canada wins things.

Sneak Attack

For those of you playing the home game, September 7 was my birthday. My traditional birthday event involves me dragging a person or two to the annual CNE Air Show.

In roughly twenty years (I think), I've missed it maybe twice. I love the air show.

This year it was SouthernKitten who was my vict.. er, guest. SK has been very good about my airplane fascination. She willingly goes along to this or that airplane museum and only rarely tells me to shut up when I ramble on.

So, the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend SouthernKitten and I left at the very last minute and after a short subway ride and long walk arrived at the CNE at about the time the air show was scheduled to start. We picked the first available spot on a grassy hill and sat down.

The first thing we noticed was that we had wet bums. The second was that despite the show having be scheduled to start five minutes ago, there was a distinct lack of airplanes.

Being not that happy about the wet bums and less than impressed with our hastily selected spot, I suggested we move somewhere a bit closer, before the airplanes showed up, which I was sure would be any minute. SK suggested some rocks on the lake shore and off we went.

Ten minutes later, I was also unhappy with our new spot, and there were still no airplanes. I suggested a hasty relocation before, I was sure, the imminent arrival of the airplanes and off we went.

Our last spot was a seating are on a sort of a concrete ship looking thing that the CNE has for watching events on or over the lake. I was happy with this spot. My bum was dry and we had a spectacular view of the cloudy sky and no airplanes.

Eventually the show was cancelled due to a lack of visibility.

Not to be deterred by mother nature I managed to convince SouthernKitten (who is the best girlfriend in the universe) that we should come back the next day.

This time we didn't actually enter the CNE grounds, but hung out in a nearby park. The view wasn't as good, but we were stilled peeved about paying for admission the previous day and not seeing any planes. Also, we were a little short on cash. So, we plonked ourselves down on the base of a flag pole, and happily watched the airplanes for most of the show.

Then sprinklers popped out of the ground and started spraying the people twenty feet or so to our right. After indulging a little schadenfreund we went back to watching the airplanes zoom about. Shortly thereafter the sprinklers shut off and water started gurgling from the ground at the base of some bushes to our left.

"Do you think we should leave before it sprays us?" asked a wise Southern Kitten.

"Nah, it's just going to gurgle, not spray us" silly CanadaDave replied.

And gurgle it did, for a few minutes.

Suddenly sprinklers popped up all around the flag pole and started spraying us from several directions. I gallantly scurried away so the stream of water that had been hitting me smacked SK in the head.

After a moment of confusion SouthernKitten scurried with me and we watched the rest of the show from near a WWII monument.

The view was about the same but at least this time our bums weren't wet.

I am not dead.

I haven't posted lately for a variety of reasons.

My last post was made from Orillia. I left there and came back to Windsor, but only for about twelve hours, and then I was off to Lexington. From there, SouthernKitten had a business trip to Indiana and I tagged along. Really, I could have posted from Indiana while she worked,and in fact meant to, but really, I guess I'm too lazy.

From there Southern Kitten and I came back here, but again, only briefly and then we were off to celebrate my birthday in Toronto. Since then I've been here. Southern Kitten left a few days ago and since then I had a bit of a financial crisis and had some technical difficulties with the internet.

It's all resolved and I'll be home for a while now, so, with any luck I'll get back in the habit of posting.

Now that the excuses are out of the way, on to something (hopefully) more entertaining..

***

The trip back to Windsor with SouthernKitten was not entirely as easy as one might have hoped. We got a little over halfway, well into Ohio, when Devilcat's sitter called.(Devilcat is SouthernKitten's, uh, kitten [cat, really, but he'll always be her kitten]) Seems that Devilcat had not been adjusting well to his temporary home. Consequently he'd been locked in a room upstairs. After a couple days of this the sitter decided that maybe he'd open the window and give poor Devilcat a little air.

This was not a good idea.

No one knows exactly how, but somehow Devilcat managed to pop out the screen and escaped out the second story, over asphalt, window.

The sitter looked for four hours, enlisting the help of several friends before he called. They made posters and everything. Clearly fearing the wrath of SK once she found out. He called just as we were entering the small municipality of Piqua, Ohio on I-75.

I could tell from the one side of the conversation that something bad had happened to Devilcat. Frankly, I feared that he'd fallen to his death. SouthernKitten asked that we pull over for a bit so that she could collect herself and then was ready to get back on the road north to Cold Cold Canada. This didn't seem like the best plan to me. Continuing north with a sobbing girlfriend in the passenger seat did not seem like much fun. (She figured I could just turn up the radio very loud and drown her out) Spending the next several days in Canada with the same girlfriend, now worried sick and likely occasionally still sobbing, also did not seem like much fun. (I didn't want to have to carry a radio everywhere) So I suggested maybe we should head back to Lexington. She didn't think we needed to. After repeating and rephrasing the question about a dozen times, she decided that maybe it was a good idea after all.

Devilcat is a... unique creature. He's declawed, which most of the time is good. (If he weren't, I'd have no legs left beyond the mid-shin level and he'd be a lovely rug) In this instance, out in the wilds of suburban Kentucky, no claws was a liability. As was the fact that his considerable girth means that running more that 15 feet requires a nap and his antisocial demeanor means that he won't respond to anyone but SK.

All this really meant that I thought that SK's immediate presence would substantially up the odds of a happy ending to this tale. (He comes when she calls. If anyone else tries this, including me, the most they get is a disinterested look)

So I turned the car around and we trundled back towards Kentucky.

About half an hour short of Lexington, SK's cell phone rang again. The sitter and his crack team of searchers had located Devilcat. In the middle of his neighbour's back yard.

So, Devilcat was successfully recovered and everyone was greatly relieved. Since it was now after midnight we decided that we'd crash at SouthernKitten's place and resume our trip the next day, after a bit of a rest.

All in all this little detail had meant that we'd covered a total of about 60 miles in about 7 hours using a full tank of gas.