Same Drummer, Different Rhythm

I spent the day doing some serious wood working. Although I still work at a snail's pace I'm actually getting faster. Instead of taking 5 days to make one board flat square and smooth on six sides using hand tools, I managed 4 boards in a day today. Actually that's not quite fair because I used a couple of pieces of maple that had been pretty much cut square and had been run through the band saw so I didn't have to start from rough stock there. I'm going to make the ends of the box from pieces cut from the walnut of the foot board of Mum's bed. It was up in her attic for years and got water damage so the auction places didn't want it. Because I cut the walnut pieces out with a hand saw the edges needed some straightening up. Since the pieces were already finished on two sides it was just a matter of taking off the finish with a hand plane and not introducing any bumps and hollows in the process.

One of the problems of working with walnut is that it stains your skin. I'm used to having chalk everywhere but that's easier to get off. At least if it doesn't come off that easily it won't come off on clothes and papers and such.

This is the Friday night of the Labour Day long weekend. It's very nice to feel rested on a Friday night, another new sensation. There have been so many Labour Day Fridays that we've been travelling somewhere to cycle or canoe. This weekend we're content to stay home and out of the campgrounds.

I remember one Labour Day weekend when we went up to canoe from Jasper to Hinton. I think we got back at about one o'clock Tuesday morning and Richard and I both had to go teach after a few hours sleep. We managed better most long weekends when we went out to ride the Silver Triangle in central B.C. I noted one time on the way out that we had spent as much time driving as we had working that day. On the way home we tried to leave in the early afternoon so we would get home before midnight.

Part of the routine was to pick up a couple of submarine sandwiches before we left Calgary and eat them in the car as we drove. I think we had just about every vehicle we ever owned out on the Silver Triangle. We went with the Tercel with a roof rack on top for the bikes. We took the Volkswagen van out and on one trip it only had one headlight that worked. It was pretty exciting driving windy roads without binocular vision so to speak. We took our Toyota van to carry the tandem and we took the big brown camper van. I wonder how many times we actually did that trip. The last time we did the trip was the year Princess Diana died. We were in the windy campground in Kaslo when we heard the news. We intended to do the ride other years since then but one year I broke my foot and another I broke my collar bone. It never seemed to work out.

Now I think we'll try to travel at times other than long weekends unless, of course, there's some trip we want to do that is only offered on a long weekend. Different rhythms indeed.

In some ways the Silver Triangle was my favourite weekend ride with the Elbow Valley Cycle club. Usually we were in good shape having ridden quite a bit over the summer. We got a chance to see the Kokanee salmon spawning and it was very interesting staying at Lemon Creek which was the site of a former Japanese internment camp during the second world war. Some years the weather was quite hot and others it was cold and rainy. It always felt like the last big fling of the summer before work closed in again. Perhaps that's why the trip stands out. The year will take on entirely different rhythms now. It will be interesting to see how they develop.