The Wingman Chronicles

Darlene and I stole a weekend away together in Niagara-on-the-Lake for our sixteenth anniversary a week or so ago.

Niagara-on-the-Lake is a very walkable village, with excellent food, and a very nice atmosphere.  We started off with dinner at Zees Grill on the patio, followed up by “Born Yesterday” at the Shaw Festival.  The play was wonderful (first play for me in about twenty-five  years), and very well presented.  It has been called the ‘gem of the festival’, and I think we would support that assessment.  It was recommended by our B&B hosts, who had seen it three times. 

We spent our second day cycling through the surrounding wine region, with tastings at Peller Estates, Reif Estate Wineries , Ravine Vineyard Estate Wineries, Coyote’s Run Winery, and Marynissen Estate Wineries.   My panniers managed to pick up four bottles of ice wine, and four varieties of red, among other odds and ends.   I tihnk our favourites were Coyote’s Run and Ravine – there are over twenty wineries in the area, so you could make a career out of this if you were ambitious.

We had a late lunch at Olsen Foods at Ravine, run  in partnership with Anna Olsen of the Food Network.  Amazing food.

Some forty kilometers and six hours after we left, we returned to rest our weary legs at our B&B. We spent two nights at the Merlot House Bed and Breakfast. Excellent food, and beautiful rooms. Highly recommended.

Dinner Friday night was at the historic Angel Inn.  The Angel Inn, (along with half the places we visited in the area) was burned by the Americans in the War of 1812 – and then we had go to Washington to return the favour - but I digress….

We ended up with a nightcap at The Irish Harp pub (Guinness of course) to wrap up a long and busy day.

Next day, we wrapped up with a morning of shopping, one last lunch at Olsen Foods, and then back to King City for Sean’s first hockey practice of the season.  

Best of all, this all took place at the tail end of the best weather of the whole summer (and yes, this was in the third week of September).

Definitely earned some brownie points for this one   (I missed  a men’s league hockey game for the play, no less, and withstood the associated abuse.

Looking forward to a couple of weeks off, including some park hopping.

Sean and Ally have survived four weeks of biking, climbing and sailing at Seneca College – highly recommended for kids.

This is a picture of my 1994 Jeep Cherokee being donated to another family member for refurbishing. Although it doesn’t look too bad (especially the Blizzaks – thanks Sean!), it is pretty badly rusted out.

As a note of trivia, this Cherokee replaced a similar one (1993 vintage) that was stolen and chopped for parts after a dismal six weeks of ownership. The picture of the 1994 model was taken in October of 2006.

Great vehicle, quite reliable, and saw me through many a snowstorm – and the messy transport stage of two kids. The kids will soon approach dating age, also known as payback time!

So the question is, what does this have in common with my 2005 Dodge Dakota (other than being a Chrysler product)?

Watch this space for details If you’re lucky, I’ll post a picture of my 1993 Cherokee too.

I heard over the weekend that the pulp mill in my home town – Marathon, Ontario – will be shutting down indefinitely, due to the worldwide financial meltdown, and depressed pulp prices.

The mill was built in 1945 or so, on what is perhaps the best deep-water harbour on Lake Superior between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

My Dad worked there for 38 years, and I spent five years there during the summers while attending university – it basically paid for my education, and then some.

Although the town currently hosts a second resource industry – the gold mines at Hemlo – and there are promising resource discoveries in the area, this is a hard blow for the town. The employees had been doing the right thing (taking a significant pay cut late in 2008).

My Mom still lives there, as do my Aunt and Uncle (all retired).  But my cousin still works there, and many of the folks I went to high school with will be in a tough position – late forties, looking for work in a town where there will be none.

We had the earliest ever home opener of the Marchand Memorial Arena this past weekend, one week after rink construction began. Thanks are due to Mother Nature and brisk seven day period of superb temperatures (well superb for ice making).  Hopefully we won’t get a warm spell in February like we did last year.  A nightly tune-up with the rink rake and we’ll be in business for a while.

Fence and lights are up, and I added the final touch tonight – a Noma remote control for the lights (from Canadian Tire) .  Darlene just shakes her head at me now.

The kids have used the rink every day since it’s been open, and we’ll probably have the first skating party this weekend.  Unfortunately I have pretty much tripled the amount of shoveling I have to do every time it snows….

Well, we had some ups and downs, but 2008 was pretty good year all around.  Here are some of the highlights!

Winter 2008

It wasn’t a cold winter in King City, but we had more snow over the course of the winter than we’ve had since we’ve lived here (some 15 years).  I gotta say, I still love the snow.

January - We had a hockey tournament with Sean in London, and had a great time.  We put in the largest rink we’ve ever had – about 55 feet by 25 feet.  I didn’t think it would take (we had torrential rain in early February), but it lasted through the end of March.    I believe the neighbours think I’m crazy.

February- In place of a birthday party, Sean and two friends (from his hockey team) elected to have a skating day to collect contributions for the local food bank.  The result was a resounding success, including about thirty-five happy kids, several hundred pounds of food for the King food bank – and a bunch of kids who are starting to get it.

We also squeezed in some skiing at Horseshoe.  The kids are doing pretty well – we need to do more of that.

Spring 2008

March - Season 21 of Geek Hockey came to an end – in the usual way. Oh well, there is always next year.

I had a business trip to Paris – left three feet of snow, to see blossoms along the Seine.  The family is still bitter.

April - Ally’s junior girls basketball team went to the York Region finals after winning the area championship. They had a SMOKING season!  Of course, the video meant I had to buy a new quad-core computer for editing

May- I spent a few days in sunny San Antonio, with enough time to actually walk around and see a few sights! I was also Berlin (Kopenick) for a few days – first time there.

I attended the annual “Old Geek Hockey Squad” training camp, to celebrate the end of Season 21.   Worked on our golf swing, but not much hockey!

Ally met her favourite author – Erin Hunter – writer of the “Warrior” series of books, stories of cats living in the woods (perhaps hunting the bunnies of “Watership Down”).  She and her friends were beside themselves.

Summer

A busy summer that was affected by Sean’s busted landing gear, but we managed to have a good one nonetheless.  I had a blast coaching four on four pond hockey.  Sean played a few games at the beginning, and managed to return for the last couple of games after having his cast removed.

June - A brief but exciting trip to Killbear Park ends up with Sean falling out of a tree (what else is a ten-year old boy gonna do I guess?) and broke his left leg in two places.  Our camping trip turned into a three hour visit, followed by a night in Parry Sound.

My brother and his family visited for a couple of days on their way to visit my Mom in Marathon.  We all went to a Blue Jays game (the Jays beat up on Cincinnati), and we stayed up far too late.

July - Stuck around the house mostly, and found cast-friendly things to do with Sean.  I gotta tell ya, for such an active kid, he dealt with the six weeks of downtime in a pretty mature way.   Ally was great with him too, pushing his wheelchair at the Zoo, and taking pretty good care of him.

August - We had a great week camping at Silent Lake, surviving the rain, attending a wolf howl at the Haliburton Highlands Wilderness Preserve, and partaking of the “Walk in the Clouds”.

Darlene and Ally went back for a girl’s weekend later in the month. This included rock climbing, canoeing, and night hikes – very cool.

We also got reacquainted with some old friends, Sean, Theo, Roan and Riley.  Good to have them close again.  I just need to talk Sean into the  Pukaskwa Coastal trail while our knees are still up to it….

Fall 2008

September - Second trip to Paris this year, including visiting many of the sites on foot, and spending two days at an amazing conference center (built in the 1500s).

October - Ally makes the volleyball team for the first time – they had only moderate success, but it was a great experience for Ally – and, to paraphrase Arnie, “She’ll  be back!”.

We also spent Thanksgiving at the Delawana Inn in Honey Harbour, for the third time.  Sean managed to put his foot down beside a rattlesnake, and that was enough excitement for us.

November - Sean and Nobleking Peewee 1 attended a hockey tournament in Wasaga Beash, winning the B pool, and having a blast in general.

December - A busy month, as always, including a week-long trip to Marathon to visit my Mom, Christmas dinner for twelve at our house, followed by a three day hockey tournament in Niagara Falls – and with a flooded basement and blown-down tree on our return.  Not the way we wanted to end the year, but what the heck….

Work

It was a busy year at work as well, including lots of travel – 75,000 air miles (not so much), 41 flight legs (which was plenty), including a Tuesday day trip to Dallas in March – with a canceled return flight to Toronto, resulting in a desperate red-eye through Las Vegas so I could make it home to shovel out the house, go visit a customer, and then get on a flight to Paris on Wednesday afternoon…but far be it from me to complain, as I had great trips to San Antonio, Berlin, and Paris (twice!).

Every time I ferry ten year old kids around to a rink for a game or a tournament, I learn something.

Sometimes it’s about winning or losing. Sometimes it’s about kids pulling together into a team.  Sometimes it’s about how silly the parents can be when the kids are the better example of the right thing to do. And sometimes, it is remembering my Mom or Dad taking me to a volunteer-built rink that showed daylight through the roof on a Saturday morning.

But when I watch a pair of kids who have both gone on the ice to play the same position sort out the problem with the legally recognized method of Rock, Paper, Scissors, or see kids passing the puck for the sake of making sure their teammate gets a goal, or see a whole team cram themselves around a table to play some combination of “Cheat” and “Texas Hold’em” (while sharing french fries, and using a cobbled-together deck with perhaps a hundred cards), I gotta say, it gives me a little bit more faith in the human race.

And it makes me wish I was ten again

We’re getting ready to head to Silent Lake Provincial Park for a week, and we’re hopeful that this camping trip will last a little longer than the last one.

We spent four days in the park in 2007, at a walk-in campsite. The weather was great, and the sites are a stone’s throw from the beach.

There was lots of wildlife as well. Sean and I saw a beaver while we were biking, and he grumpily slapped his tail at us in indignation. Deer were pretty thick on the ground as well, and we had a pair of baby raccoons up a tree at our site at one point.

The best part, though, was the canoeing – this park has a breath of Algonquin in it, what with the Canadian Shield rock, and forest.

Although Silent Lake itself is not huge, there are a few connected lakes (which we’ll see for the first time this year), and it is motor-free. The park also includes a 15km hiking trail, a day-use beach, and number of mountain biking trails. If your interests tend more towards winter, you can reserve yurts here as well, for cross-country skiing or snowshoeing in the winter – maybe next year

The full photoset from last year is at Flickr.

After six weeks of wearing a cast (four weeks of which was part of summer vacation), Sean’s cast has been removed. He has a fair bit of physiotherapy to work through, and he still can’t walk on it, but he’s a pretty happy guy. And we’re pretty sure he won’t be climbing any trees in the near future.

All things considered, he dealt with it pretty well – no complaining, and he took good care of his leg. We made it to the zoo, a Blue Jays game (when his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin were in town), and various other cast-friendly venues. A word to the wise – it is a LONG way from Union Station to the Skydome for a kid on crutches.

We’re hopeful he’ll be able to walk short distances by next week sometime, as we’re off to Silent Lake Provincial Park for a week of camping and canoing – but that is another post.

We toddled off on our usual trip to Killbear Provincial Park this year, with grand plans for four days of swimming, biking and beaching. We like to try to get in there before the end of the school year, when it is much less busy, and you can get a decent site without booking five months in advance.

The park has a gorgeous beach, and is right on Georgian Bay. Some of the highlights include a few easy hiking trails, a bike trail that extends the length of the park, and a brand new visitor centre. Wildlife is relatively common. The park is close to Parry Sound, for access to shopping and amenities.

Things got off to a good start – Sean saw a deer while we were registering, and our site was very nice. Right next to the beach, good shade, and lots of forest to explore. We managed to get everything set up, had some stew on the stove, and had pretty much everything in order. Sean and Ally had begun exploring the beach, collected some rocks, and were vigorously feeding the local mosquito population.

Unfortunately, Sean came out on the losing end of a ten foot fall while on a tree-climbing expedition – the tree (right) had a nice view of Georgian Bay – and we ended up spending a grand total of about two and a half hours in the park. Final tally – the tree – one broken branch – Sean – two broken bones, and displaced bone – memories of Joe Thiesman – ugh.

Sean spent the night in the Parry Sound Medical Centre, and we ended up ‘camping’ in the Parry Sound Comfort Inn.

Sean did manage to get his first ambulance ride, his first cast, and has subsequently been spoiled senseless. And he’s getting pretty handy with crutches. But it has put a cramp in his summer hockey, mountain biking, etc., what with this happening ten days before the end of school….

The weekend ended up being rainy and stormy, so it wasn’t a total loss. We were at least dry.

But what about the the title?

We left home at 2pm on Thursday, and were back at 2pm on Friday – 24 hours door to door (With apologies to Kiefer Sutherland and 24).