Simple Gifts

It's a snowy day, not absolutely frigid but cold enough that it's nice to be indoors in comfortable fleece clothing. It's getting close to Christmas. We haven't put up our tree yet and I haven't done any Christmas shopping so gifts are on my mind. I have a folder in my brain in which I store the surprise gifts I have received from strangers and acquaintances and as I think of giving gifts i go back to that folder.

The first gift in my collection was given to me when I was in my early 20's. I was living in Banff and had a rare day off from my duties in the theatres at the Banff School of Fine Arts. At that time I didn't own a car and used a bright purple ten-speed bike for transportation. On that particular day, I decided to ride my bike from Banff to Lake Minnewanka. I'm not sure of the distance but it wasn't a long ride as I've since come to understand them. I wasn't in particularly good shape and it was a hot day. On my way back from the lake, tired and hot, I stopped at the pullout of a scenic lookout. I was sitting on a picnic table with my bike leaning beside me drinking warm plastic-tasting water from my water bottle when a woman came out of a motor home parked a few feet away from where I sat. I didn't pay too much attention as the woman approached me. In her hand she held a plastic bag of cherries. As l looked up she smiled and handed me the bag. "We have more of these than we can eat," she said, "and you look like you could use them." She smiled. I thanked her. She stepped back into the motor home; the driver started the engine and they pulled onto the highway to continue their journey. The cherries were cold and I was hungry and, although I have long since forgotten the woman's face, I will always remember her kindness.

A number of years later when Richard, my cousin David and I were on a cycling trip in southern B.C. it was another hot day. While the guys stayed with the bikes I went into a small roadside store to buy cold drinks. I also picked up some fresh fruit for a snack. When I brought my purchases to the counter the man behind it told me that the fruit would be free and apologized that he couldn't really afford to give me the drinks for free because of what they cost him. "Anyone who rides in this heat deserves a bit of a break," he told me as he rang up the drinks. I thanked him and filed his kindness alongside the lady with the cherries.

There have been times recently too where people have given me unexpected gifts. One day as I was pulling into a pay lot and getting out of my car to buy a ticket from the machine, a young man walked over and offered me his ticket. It still had quite a bit of time on it he said and someone might as well use it. Since then I always look for someone to whom I can give my ticket before I leave the lot. Sometimes no one appears and I drive home and discard the ticket. Most times, though, I'm able to give it to someone else so they can use the remaining time.

Twice a month I meet my friend Katharine downtown not far from where she works so we can have lunch together. I get there first and buy our lunches, always the same from the same stall in the food court. We've been doing this for over two years now, and while I wouldn't call myself a regular because I'm not there every day, one young woman behind the counter recognizes me and calls in the order as I approach. Twice lately she has leaned over the counter and said quietly, "Today the drinks are on the house." I smile, thank her and leave a tip. Does she give other customers free drinks on occasion? I don't know and it really doesn't matter. I am simply grateful.

The last example in my mental file arrived just a week ago. Judy and I were on our usual walk and we stopped in for lunch at a quiet cafe. We ordered our meals and took them to an empty table. I was facing the window and Judy was facing the counter. One of the women behind the counter caught Judy's eye and asked if we would like a piece of apple pie. Who turns down apple pie? It was a huge piece and we enjoyed sharing it. Perhaps it was getting late in the afternoon and the woman didn't want to keep the pie until the next day. Again I don't know the reason behind the gift and I don't need to know it. In part the gift is in the reminder of how little it takes to brighten someone's day.

I will eat turkey this Christmas as is traditional in our family but I will also think about cherries, cold drinks and apple pie and be thankful.

Turning One Hundred

Let me start by saying that I'm not turning one hundred, just in case there is any doubt. Last Saturday I attended a celebration for the hundredth year of the church I attended as a kid. It was a rather strange experience. I've maintained few relationships from elementary, high school or university. It's almost as if each chapter of my life is in a box by itself and once a box is closed it doesn't get opened again; so it was odd, and wonderful, to meet up with my first best-friend.

Many people put in hours and hours of work on scrapbooks and photo boards for the evening. There were pictures of church suppers, Sunday school groups, church camps and individuals who were part of the church's history. My dad showed up in a couple of newspaper clippings. In one photo he stands with a group of men behind the corner stone for the 'new' church (built in 1960). Dad was also in half a dozen photos in an album. These were taken in the seventies during a church service and it looks like Dad's health had taken a turn for the worse. The shirt he wears is too big around the neck and the jacket seems to have too much material in it.

I was also in at one picture. I didn't notice it until someone pointed it out to me. In it are several small girls, all of us in frilly dresses, with our mothers standing proudly behind us. I found out later that it was taken at Judy's fourth birthday party. Someone remarked that it was uncharacteristic to see both Judy and me in dresses. She didn't like them any more than I did. I wonder if there was a discussion about the dress code for little girls' birthday parties prior to the event, or if some kind of bribery took place to get us both into the dresses.

I talked to many people during the evening. Toward the end of the evening I chatted with the current minister. I knew, in addition to serving on various committees in the church, that my dad was a trustee for a long time. Until Saturday night I had no idea just how long. The minister told me that for twenty-five years after he died Dad's name remained, as the lead trustee, on documents at city hall . I'm not sure when the error was discovered but it took a number of people and much patience to set the record straight. Dad never would give up on a job before it was done to his satisfaction.

As the chairs and tables were being put away and I walked through the snow to my car, I felt my father and the child I was had gained substance and, perhaps, came a bit closer to each other. I also smiled at the realization that we never know just how we will be remembered.

Adventures, expected and unexpected

When we set off on a cycling trip in Spain and Portugal we knew it would be an adventure. We stayed on the Wind Spirit, a motorized yacht that holds 140 people, at least, there were 140 tandem cyclists aboard on our trip.

This was the first time Santana Cycles had run the Spain/ Portugal trip so there were a few kinks to be ironed out. Bill McCready, the leader of the trip and owner of Santana Cycles, is very good at getting things back on track when they look like they're about to go sideways. There was the time that the ship couldn't get into the port and we were all on shore with our bikes. Bill arranged to rent a tent where he and a couple of other Santana stalwarts spent the night with the bikes. The rest of us were tendered to the ship. Bill then managed to rent a truck to transport the bikes to the next port so they would meet us.

Another time the Spanish authorities got a little nervous because they thought that our group would be like the Tour de France closing down roads and disrupting traffic. With the help of a volunteer translator from among the cyclists, Bill managed to allay the governor's fears and we were off the next morning as planned, albeit with a fairly heavy police presence at the pier where we started.

Our last stop was Lisbon, during the NATO summit. All cars were being searched on the way into Portugal and a number of roads that we would have taken were closed. We ended up doing quite a bit of riding in traffic to get to our ship, not our favourite thing to do, but at least we've done it before and know how to do it.

All in all, the cycling wasn't the highlight of the trip for us, a few too many unknowns and a bit too much time pressure. We broke a chain the first day and that put us behind so that we missed a winery tour which, apparently, had fantastic architecture. We rode like crazy one day to make sure we got to the ship in time only to discover that we had the wrong time in our minds and the ship hadn't even arrived when we got there.

Richard says he saw a lot of Spanish pavement as we didn't really take much time in stops. The weather was perfect, for us, highs in the low 20's. Some folks from warmer climes found it chilly but I had my tights on for all of five minutes one morning before getting too hot and taking them off. We rode mostly in shorts and short-sleeved jerseys, although the wind jackets were handy first thing in the morning. The only time we used insulation clothing and our rain jackets was in Tangier where it had rained and was cooler than most of the other places we stopped. Who would have expected that?

Gibraltar was fascinating and I would like to go back and spend more time touring the tunnels. We had a wonderful storyteller/ guide whose grandfather had worked in the facility after WWII. The apes came out to show off on our way to the tour. They weren't used to visitors that early and the van drivers came equipped with goodies to feed them out the window.

Much to my delight, we had two bird surprises. In Barcelona I elected to stay in the hotel room and get some extra sleep to help me deal with a cold. When I felt better, I went wandering around the area by the hotel. I heard a squawk I recognized coming from one of the palm trees. I followed the noise and discovered the first of many Quaker nests. I spent a wonderful hour or so tracking Quakers and watching them go in and out of the huge communal nests.

On the Danube trip two years ago, I was disappointed when we elected to stay on board one day and missed seeing storks. Well, this time we saw storks in Portimao. They really are as large as people have told me!

All in all the trip was enjoyable. We'd like to return to some of the places we saw and spend time to hiking and taking photographs.

The next adventure awaits.

A Walk on All Saints Day

Today was gorgeous. The snow hasn't hit Calgary yet and the sun was bright. Judy and I usually walk on Mondays and today we were joined by Krista who is visiting from the island. It was just above freezing when we set out but gradually the air got warmer. Our destination, as on many Mondays, was a coffee shop. We sometimes meet another friend there for a coffee and a chat before we head back to our cars.

We walked and talked in the sunshine and caught up on each other's lives. At one time the three of us were part of a core walking group that trained for the 60 km walk for The Weekend to End Breast Cancer. We walked many miles in preparation and then walked together during The Weekend. There were initially five of us. One has moved to Lethbridge; Krista has moved to the island, and one has faded out of our lives.

The coffee shop was a bit busier than usual when we arrived and, because we knew that another friend would be joining us, we took the table reserved for four or more people. We has just gotten our drinks when she arrived. Quite soon afterward a group of about twenty people came into the coffee shop. They began to rearrange the tables so they could sit together and we offered them the third table from our set of three. They looked like a group of walkers and I wondered aloud which group they were.

When we had almost finished our drinks one of the men brought the table back and said to us, "There, now you'll be able to hear yourselves think." They were quite noisy as a group of twenty people who know and like each other tends to be. We were ready to leave at the same time as they were and as the man went by the table again I asked him what group they belonged to. His answer was, "The Chinook Hiking Club." I realized that was one of the clubs my mother helped found.

I was going to carry on with our walk without talking to them further but I decided I wanted to know if any of them knew my mum and the only way to find out was to ask. When we got outside they were standing in small groups. I approached the man I had spoken to earlier. I asked about my mother by name. They knew her they said. In fact she had helped to found the club. I told them who I was. They called others over to talk to me. One man, whose name I recognized as having taken over the organization of the club from my mother, then told me the rest of the story of the polished stones.

At my mother's memorial service I placed a basket of stones at the back of the church and invited everyone to take one to remember my mother. There were many people from the hiking clubs Mum belonged to there and, at the reception, one of her friends asked if he could take more of the stones. We found the basket and he took a handful. He said he would take them with him on the mountain hikes during the summer so people could leave a stone on some of Mum's favourite trails. Today, in front of the coffee shop almost four years later, he told me that most of the people had left their stones in Ribbon Creek. That was where Mum had wanted them. I don't know how he knew. Maybe she said something about how much she liked that hike or maybe he sensed Ribbon Creek would be a good place. I didn't ask him.

The whole exchange couldn't have taken more than a few minutes. We have been to that coffee shop many times before on Monday mornings and this is the first time we've seen the hiking group. How appropriate on this All Saints Day when we remember those who, while they lived made our lives better, that I should meet my mother's friends.

As we turned to go our separate ways I said to my walking companions, "That just made my day," to which Krista replied, "I think it probably made theirs too."

It's the pictures that get me.

I've sat down a couple of times in the last week to do a blog entry and each time I've thought, "Nope, I don't have any pictures to go with that." I don't have any pictures tonight either but it would be very easy to slide into oblivion again because I don't have pictures. That probably wouldn't make a great deal of difference to the world but I'd like to develop the blog habit. I've struggled for years with trying to write regularly and writing a blog does count as writing.

I know blogs are more interesting with pictures so, I guess, there are a couple of ways I could go with this. I could take more pictures of everyday stuff and have them in reserve for blog postings or, I could get in gear and take pictures of the things I'm thinking about using for blog postings. I could also allow myself to write blog entries without pictures. I don't want to make a habit of that. It is easier for me to write than to organize myself to get the photos. My head generally can be found on my shoulders and my computer seldom goes walkabout. Now where did I put my camera?

Multiply by three

I was making candy for a fundraiser the other day. I'm not fond of making candy so I looked up the easiest recipes I could find on the net, recipes meant for people to make with their kids. I figured if kids could do it I could. Anything involving a candy thermometer was automatically out. I found three recipes and decided that two of them looked easier than the third one. The first one I tried was really easy, four ingredients and a microwave. Unfortunately, that recipe yielded a kind of chocolate/ peanut-butter soup. Oh well....

The second one I tried required a bit more fuss. Cut marshmallows in half and then freeze them. I guess I'm used to really stale marshmallows because I was sort of surprised when they were all stuck together in a gooey mass in the package. I managed to separate them seriously gooing up my hands in the process. In order to cut them I kept dipping my knife in water, otherwise I just ended up with more goo. I laid out the marshmallow halves in neat little rows on cookie sheets and put them in the freezer. Finding room was a bit of a challenge but with the chest freezer and the beverage fridge downstairs I managed. When they'd been sitting there for a few hours I brought them up and proceeded to the next step. This required a double boiler which I actually have. Next there was a lot of bubbling and snorting from the double boiler and a lot of stirring from me. I didn't think the carmels would ever melt. Did I mention that before I could add the carmels to the top of the double boiler, I had to unwrap three packages of them. Maybe this recipe is a plot to keep kids out of trouble for a while.

When the stuff in the double boiler finally melted together I had to take the marshmallow bits off the cookie sheets, dip them in the bubbling mixture and then roll them in cereal. You guessed it: more goo plus this goo was hot. Richard got involved in this step. I dunked the marshmallows, dropped them into a pan of cereal and then he rolled them and put them on trays to cool. There didn't seem to be a good way to do this without heating the fingers beyond the comfort level. The refrain for this part of the process was, "Ouch, that's hot!" If I put too many marshmallows into the pot at a time they started to melt before I could get them all out. Adjust process.

Eventually we got all the marshmallows coated and cooled. The recipe said that the whole process should take an hour and a half. I don't know where they got that timing. Of course, they didn't count the shopping which I did in the morning but even after I had the ingredients it took me most of the rest of the day to get finished and that was with Richard jumping in and helping.

I don't know why I was surprised that it took longer than the recipe stated; most things do. There was the saw bench that three of us made. That was supposed to be done in a day. I think it took us three. Similarly we built sawhorses which were supposed to take a few hours. Again they took two days rather than a few hours. Is this some kind of plot betwee the cooks and the woodworkers? I live in hope that the times given for a task will actually be reasonable for me but I think the contingency plan from now on will to multiply any times given by three. That way if something does take less time than expected I can be delighted with the found time. If I make candy next year, I'm going for even easier recipes.

Tangled Web

I got sucked into spending the evening on the net again! I never know what I'm going to encounter when I click the mouse. Tonight it was an email with a link to a Youtube video of Free Hugs in Italy. The video was interesting but more interesting to me was the background music: 'Hallelujah' written by Leonard Cohen and sung by k.d. lang. I had to play the video twice just to listen to the song. I have heard her sing it before but something about the song caught me, so I went surfing. I found a couple of videos of k.d. doing it and then a couple of Cohen doing it.

That brought back memories of the first time I heard a Leonard Cohen record. I was in a drawing class at university and one of the guys brought in a Leonard Cohen album. I don't remember the name of the album but it had 'Suzanne' on it and it had a picture of a woman, scantily clad of course, emerging from flames. Those many years ago there was something about the gravelly voice and the lyrics, I didn't quite understand, that demanded my attention. I bought the record.

Back to the present. After listening to Cohen and lang, I left the computer and went to the living room to tune up my guitar. I don't play it much nowadays. Classical guitar and piano are mutually exclusive activities since for guitar you need long nails and for piano you need short ones. I tuned it up and started trying to figure out the chords to 'Hallelujah.' I got most of them. Then I thought of my old guitar, the one I bought when I was about 15. I still have it and it's still in the case that I decorated with decals, all the rage in the '70's. I got it, dusted off the case and opened it up only to discover that the 'A' string was broken. I must have been thinking ahead because there was a new set of strings in the case. Remove old string, install new string and then try to tune it. I did get it tuned and played the chords I'd been fooling with earlier. Somehow the guitar's sound wasn't as resonant as I remembered it.

I wondered if it might be time to get rid of at least one of the guitars I own and get a better one. Back to the computer to look on the net to see if the old Harmony is worth anything. Apparently it isn't. Cheap entry-level guitar. In my search I found that Harmony, the maker of my old folk guitar, also made Stella guitars. A Stella was the first guitar I owned. I think I gave it to a kid down the street when I bought my Harmony.

There was something familiar and comforting in strumming that old guitar. It grew up with me, came with me when I moved out, came with me again when I moved back home to go back to university and it came to school with me sometimes when I started teaching. One time a friend and I did an English lesson in which we played and sang folk songs.

While I was drifting back I had an 'ah ha' moment. I don't have to play classical guitar. I enjoyed it while I did it but I enjoyed playing chords and singing even more. I can go back to that, dust off the chord sheets and strum away for my own amusement. Back to the computer to look up the chords for Hallelujah. Music is so easy now with the net and mp3 files. I found the chords although not in the key I was playing.

I may start looking for a home for at least one of my guitars. I'll keep my good classical and I'm not quite ready to let the old Harmony go just yet. I think when I want a break from learning piano and practicing my singing, I may just haul out the old guitar and fiddle with a few chords. It would be handy to get the callouses back on my fingers again. Playing classical guitar is solitary; playing chords invites others to sing. I'm wondering how I got so far away for so long from what I loved as a kid. I guess that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I now have time to sift and appreciate the experiences I've had and, when I want to, I can pick up where I left off.

There is life after teaching and it's busy

It's kind of embarrassing to see the last time I actually posted anything here; however I can always start again. There have been lots of changes since the last blog post. The shop is finished and is too small. We knew that was going to happen. Just like you can never have too many clamps, you can never have a big enough shop. We have most of the machines we want and I've built a tool tower and a couple of rolling carts. We still haven't decided how to handle the space on the wall by the sink. I need something for sharpening and we can't cover up the cold air intake. At the moment, we're still using the door and sawhorses to give a horizontal surface.

We've been on some very cool holidays: hiking in Italy last October and hiking in Switzerland for a month in July this past summer. All those trips were Road Scholar (the new name for Elderhostel) trips. We spent time with Bart and Brigitte whom we hadn't seen for 15 years since we met them at Mount Robson and they gave us a lift into Jasper when our bike rim split on the long trip across BC. They live directly above a train station which is very cool indeed.

The way the Switzerland trip worked was that we signed up for back-to-back programs and we had 5 days in between. We took the train to see Bart and Brigittewho were wonderfully hospitable and we both enjoyed getting to know 4-year-old Eric. When it was time to hook up with the second program group we took the train to Villars sur Orlon. We had very warm weather and it was good that we were staying above the valleys where it cooled off at night. We only had one day of rain and another day when it spit a little bit. We took over 1,000 pictures. You gotta love digital cameras. I can't include any at the moment because we combined our efforts and all the photos reside on Richard's Mac. The countryside of Switzerland is gorgeous and I'd go back there in a heartbeat.

So far we have no specific plans for next summer. We joked that we would go back and raft down the Nahanni River for our 25 wedding anniversary. I don't think that's high on the list anymore. We rather like the creature comforts of staying in hotels. We'll just have to see what jumps out at us from the Road Scholar catalogues or elsewhere. In the meantime, this winter looks like it will be busy and interesting but more about that later.