Rainy Thumb Rest Day

Big Rain Day and I can hardly move out of my armchair. I called our kayaking leader last night to say I wouldn't be coming due to predicted rainy weather and she said, But you will come if it's a beautiful day, right?

Uh… sure...

I spoke with my youngest son later and he said, Why did you lie? Your hands hurt! That's a good enough reason not to go, why did you lie about it?

Uh…

My son The Ethical Philosopher.

Truth is, I don't like to admit to weakness if I can avoid it.

I love being out on the water, and it is killing my thumbs. But paddling fiercely into a strong wind is exhilerating, I don't want anyone telling me I can't do it because I am hurting myself.

Aylesford Lake Kayak Loan Program

These days, first thing in the morning I am on automatic: roll out of bed at 6.30am, coffee, toast, granola, wash dishes, brush teeth, put on bathing suit and pack waterbottle, hat and sunscreen into backpack and I'm out the door. An hour later I am at the lake, signing out a kayak and slipping on a life jacket. Then I'm out there. I am the second fastest and strongest paddler, I team up with the first fastest and we determine where we are going today and then go for it. She is ahead of me, I am putting everything I've got into keeping up with her. I don't know where the other paddlers are, they've gotten used to D and I disappearing across the lake. Yesterday D didn't come so I went alone; she said she had to go to the South Shore but I bet she was home resting her thumbs.

When I get home I usually have a list of things to get done: errands, garden chores, whatnot. But I try to spend at least an hour doing nothing to regain energy for a late afternoon swim, across the Reservoir and back. It's a 5-minute bike ride away. By evening I am so exhausted I wonder if I'll make it out to kayaking tomorrow. Lights out at 9.30pm, down for the count moments later. Repeat all over again at 6.30am the next day.

But there's only so long I can keep up that pace, four days apparently. I didn't go today but I still had a list of things to do. Didn't do any of it. Read the list and mentally ticked off each item: Not Urgent, Forget It. Too damn tired.

Eldest son is coming to visit for a week, he says he has to work online for part of that time so I will probably get out kayaking while he works. But no kayak time is scheduled until Tuesday so hopefully four days of not paddling will allow my thumbs to improve.

One of the kayakers gave me a phone number to call to work as an election poll clerk. I procrastinated because I wasn't sure I wanted to work 14-16 hours in one day. But I did call today, they don't need poll clerks now but there was an information officer position available. I took it. Pays less for same amount of time, but oh well. At least it's close by.

Here's another photo from the evening at Houston's Beach last week; that's me in the pink shirt gazing intently at the popcorn being popped over the fire.

Eaglet, moon rise and post viral

Houston's Beach, cloud with rainbow

Another more or less perfect week. I and another kayaker have been exploring the hidden coves on the other side of the lake that we kayak in. There's a young eagle living there who sits by its home nest calling all day, presumably for his parents to come feed him. He can fly—we've seen him in the air—but he prefers to sit in a tree by the nest calling plaintively. One day three of us floated in the water beneath him and he quieted and examined us from the safety of his perch.

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I missed only one morning of kayaking due to weather and I am glad that I did, I think five days in a row is a bit much for me but I can handle four days broken by rain. Yesterday I kayaked in the morning, swam in the afternoon and went to a beach bonfire in the evening to watch the full moon rise. We roasted marshmallows while waiting for the moon. Our "firepit" was an ingenious little metal affair that folds away to nothing, it has a heatproof but porous bottom to allow air flow from below without setting fire to whatever is underneath, it also has an optional firescreen cover and a grill for roasting food over the fire. The owner of the portable firepit says he bought it over the internet from some company in southwestern USA.

We also had telescoping forks for roasting our marshmallows. My companions prefer their marshmallows browned but not burnt, I prefer them well burnt. I stick my marshmallow into the coals to set it afire, then raise and twirl it to make sure the entire surface is burnt. After we had our fill of marshmallows, the popping corn was popped and we filled up whatever crannies of our stomachs remained unfilled. 

At one point we were all so engrossed in the popping of the corn that we missed the actual rising of the moon. It was halfway up before we noticed. Watching the progress of the moonrise was the highlight of the evening, a few clouds at the horizon allowed you to actually see it rising upwards. It gradually turned from dull red to bright white as it gained height. The reflection of the moonlight on the water of the Minas Basin gave the moon a kind of long bright trail.

The tide was very low so the beach was extensive when we arrived, but it was coming in so that by the time we left the beach was half its width (length? distance to the water's edge?). Some fishers were out fishing for striped bass and flounder; they only come into the Basin when the tide is rising so serious fishers are prepared for nighttime fishing when the low tide is late at night. The beach is also the only place in the county where you can camp for free so there were several tents and one RV set up for the night, with a couple of fires in the parking area. In June recent school grads use the beach to celebrate so it can be quite noisy, but in late July it is quiet.

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I am quite exhausted by a busy week so I try to rest on the weekend, nevertheless I plan to go out tonight to a music event with a couple of friends. I was going to mow the lawn today but couldn't muster the energy so hopefully I can do that tomorrow. My friend J is going to paint my truck cap tomorrow and then sometime this coming week I will get a roofrack installed on it. In the course of prepping the cap for clearcoating last week, J managed to sand off too much of the existing paint, so now he has to paint before he can finish the clearcoat. I didn't think I would find a roof rack before autumn but I found a shop that said they could have it for me next week. A little pricey but worth it.

A birthday and an adventure

On Thursday it rained in the morning with thunder and lightning, so we did not go paddling. Instead I got myself caught up on various chores and in the afternoon went to a birthday party at a local restaurant.

The birthday girl was celebrating her 80th and she invited a couple of other women who also were celebrating birthdays in July. 

Altogether we were six. Since the weather was a bit iffy, we chose a restaurant that had a fully covered patio so we could be outdoors without getting soaked (or baked, if the sun came out). It's a marvelous restaurant specializing in Turkish food. The owner lives around the corner from me and is a single father, I often see him in his apron walking down my street to his restaurant, with two young boys in tow.

We had a lovely meal and greatly enjoyed this being our first restaurant meal since the pandemic started, we showed off our funniest fanciest facemasks. You have to wear a mask when you are moving about but can take it off when seated at your table, and all of us were double vaccinated. Near the end of the meal the owner came to our table bearing a plate of baklava made in-house, with lit sparklers in honour of our birthday party and the fact that several of us had birthdays in July.

"Here in our restaurant, we all have birthdays in July!" he said.

Afterward we retired to the birthday girl's home for more wine and celebration.

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One day this past week the kayakers booked in the afternoon instead of the morning because one person had a dental appointment in the morning. I decided not to go. But as luck would have it I did end up kayaking with someone else I had met at the Reservoir while swimming there. She had bought an inflatable kayak and wanted to learn to use it but was reluctant to go out on her own. I said I would accompany her in my own inflatable. We chose a lake close to town, Lumsden's Pond. There's a provincial picnic park and tiny beach there. 

After unloading all our gear and lugging it down to the beach, I realized that I had locked my keys inside the truck. J, my companion, thought we could go back to my house to get the spare key and then return to Lumsden's in her car which she had left at my house. Then she remembered that she left her car key in my truck. She had her phone and thought she could call CAA (my phone was inside the truck), but it turns out there is no cell coverage at the park. J said never mind, we will cross that bridge later.

I've used my kayak a couple of times already this summer so the process of getting it ready for the water is properly memorized; time-consuming but not confusing. J had no experience at all and her kayak was brand new. Also very cheap. It really took a while to figure it out, even with both of us reading the instructions a couple of times. But eventually we got it water-ready.

J couldn't figure out which end of her kayak was the bow, we had to guess and my guess was opposite to hers. She went with her guess. As it turned out, she was wrong and the kayak was very unmanouverable. She couldn't paddle in a straight line if her life depended on it! So after all that frustration we went back to shore after a very short paddle. Once onshore we turned her kayak upside down to see which way the keel was pointing, and then turned it right side up again to see if there was anything on the bow end that was different from the stern end so she would know the next time. We packed up the kayaks and then tried to figure out how we were going to get my truck unlocked.

As luck would have it a young woman and her child were just heading home, they stopped to greet us and we asked the big question: would you drive one of us to town? And also back to the beach again? At first she said she was happy to take one of us to town but not back again, and we hesitated as we tried to figure out how we would get back, then she said never mind she would drive us back too. She didn't mind the driving, she was just concerned about how her young daughter was going to take it.

I went back with the young woman and her daughter who was fine with it all, she sat in her little car seat smiling until she fell asleep. We had a nice chat, it turns out I knew the woman's parents and we talked about a variety of things, from travel out west to Toronto weather to whether or not to invest in solar panels. She turned down the offer of a bottle of wine for her trouble saying it was her pleasure to help out. Of course my house key was also locked in the truck, but I keep a spare outside so I used that. Note to self: spare truck key somewhere outside the truck cab!

First thing I did was unlock the truck and get J's bottle of water out as I was pretty sure she was quite parched by now. Then we went for a swim. We swam across the lake and back, a much longer swim than I am used to but we were chatting so much that we didn't think to turn around until we reached the other side. I didn't sleep so well that night due to neck pain because of the long swim, but it was otherwise a very interesting day that ended well.

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J mentioned a book she was reading, Why We Swim. I looked it up on our local library website and the e-book version was available so I borrowed it. Looks interesting. In the first chapter the author writes about the earliest known record of human swimming, dating to over 10,000 years ago. There are cave paintings of swimmers in the Sahara Desert! In those days there was a whole chain of lakes full of fish, and in addition to the cave paintings there are old harpoons buried in what was once a lake bottom. I can't get those ancient swimmers out of my mind, the idea that where they once swam is now a complete desert.

Kayaks and rodents, and trucks

My truck and J's

It looks like I won't be posting much this summer, too busy. It seems I had more time on my hands last summer to keep posting here, but this summer not so much.

My main activities are kayaking and swimming, with a little gardening on the side. July is my low gardening month, I fertilize and plant in May, weed a lot in June, and then in July I figure my plants are established enough to let the weeding slide. Whatever is not doing so well I shrug my shoulders and think, "I guess it's a bad year for <whatever is not doing well>". And I start picking and eating whatever is doing well. So far it is peas and green peppers and a single cucumber. Green peppers! I have never successfully grown green peppers! Makes up for all the lettuce, kale, chard and squash that failed to sprout or grow.

The garden is overrun by volunteer potatoes, apparently my potato harvest last year was not so efficient. Even so I got a lot of potatoes and had enough left over in the spring to replant this year. The potatoes may be why the squash failed to grow, their alloted space was taken over by the volunteer potatoes.

A friend and neighbour has been organizing daily kayak trips. The county bought a bunch of little plastic kayaks and set them up at a public beach on a local lake for county residents to use for free. All you have to do is book a one-hour time slot and then show up for it. My friend is a great organizer (if she was a dog she'd be a border collie!) so she books the kayaks a week in advance and then herds a bunch of us to the lake to paddle. We carpool because it is a 45-minute one-way trip. My friend does not have a car but she also gets a ride out of it to her favourite golf course on the way home from kayaking (busy girl!).

All told we are in the car for an hour and a half every morning for one hour of paddling. You may think that much driving is not worth it, but it is. It is glorious to be out on the water in a tiny little kayak! On really hot days we go for a swim afterward. At that hour of the day the beach is not crowded, and it is nicely set up with change rooms, port-a-potties, a little kiddie playground, and lots of grass and picnic tables, some of them under cover for shade or shelter from the rain. The beach is more pebbly than sandy so most people sit on the grass when not in the water.

In the junkyard

Lately my afternoons are taken up with my truck project. J found a cap for my truck at a local junk yard, so we went there to buy it and the junk yard guys helped transfer my tonneau cover to J's truck and install the cap on mine (photo at top: my truck and J's with the tonneau cover transferred to J's truck). J has no money but wants to pay for the cover which he says is worth $100 or more, so he's going to pay it off with work on my truck. 

Isn't she handsome?

I now need a slider window at the front of the cap and a roof rack. I won't find those at a junk yard so I will have to pay a bunch for them new and wait a while for them to come available. In the meantime J is going to clear coat the cap and do a couple of small repairs on it, it is otherwise in very good condition. It was pretty filthy when we retrieved it from the junk yard, but a couple of good rain downpours and a bit of scrubbing has done wonders for that. It had been sitting on the ground for at least a year so stuff was starting to grow on it and at least one critter had made a home for itself inside.

Speaking of critters making homes for themselves, I've been finding holes in my potato patches. It looks as if something was trying to dig up my potatoes, but no potatoes showed any damage. Also tunneling into the compost bin. Then one day last week J and I were in my driveway discussing next steps on my truck project when J spotted a critter diving into the window well of one of my basement windows. I looked into the well and saw that there was another tunnel dug in there. A few moments later a head popped up at the edge of the window well. It was a chipmunk! It spotted us a few feet away and immediately dove back down. Since then I have seen it running between my garden and the window well a couple of times.

I am not going to chase out a chipmunk. If it was a grey squirrel or a rat I'd take steps immediately, but a chipmunk? Can't do it. I will put up with its ravages in my garden.