Mom and the kids were up at 6 AM to go to Muskoka. El & I slept in
I pressure washed Mom's flagstone patio all morning. Pat's funeral was at
two in the afternoon. We were barely on time.
After the funeral, we went to Mom's, packed and headed over Faye and
Bill's. From there we went west and hour to Whitefish Falls, and the
traditional camp of the Piirto clan where we spent two nights. Bill
enjoyed the pressure washer.
We spent the day visiting and relaxing. I had put my camera in Ellen's
handbag since we were checking our other bags and forgot I had it. So I
have no pictures of this exquisitely beautiful area this trip.
Slept in a bit, then got out the pressure washer. my project was the
boathouse dock which had accumulated moss and moulds. It came out clean,
but was a slow job, especially since I had to install Ground Fault Circuit
Interrupter receptacles in the boathouse and also create a garden hose fitting
there for a supply. This necessitated a trip to town and some tinkering,
but now it is done and things are safe for posterity.
In the morning I finished cleaning the dock and washed a mat on the
veranda. It did not clean up as well as I had hoped. Bat guano does
not come out all that easily. It leaves a dark stain in a cocoa mat.
We headed south around noon and stopped at the McMichael
Exhibit to see the O'Keefe,
Carr and Kahlo show that opened there this week. The show was actually
Ellen's main reason for coming east, since she is an artist and these are
important painters whose work is not always easy to see on exhibition.
From there we went straight to the airport where we were able to stand by for
an earlier flight. As it turned out when I calculated the mileage, the
Toyota Echo had given me 48+ miles per imperial gallon ( ~58 miles/US
gallon) and had lots of performance and nice driving characteristics. I
found it quite different from other cars I have rented recently and a bit basic
in that it had neither cruise nor power windows & locks. It did have
A/C and a great stereo. With power options, it would be a very acceptable
car.
Once boarded, we sat for an hour and a quarter on the runway waiting out the
thunderstorm that was directly overhead. We got to Calgary around 10, but
our luggage was nowhere to be seen. We reported it lost, then went home
without it. We were told that later flights were held up even longer and
if we had taken our originally scheduled flight we would not have been home
until 2 AM -- or later.
"If I make a
living off it, that's great -- but I come from a culture where you're valued not
so much by what you acquire but by what you give away,"
-- Larry Wall (the inventor of Perl)