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.