But London, Ontario, may have potentially the second best place to take a family skating. The city constructed a 250-metre, 10,000 sq. ft. skating trail loop in Storybook Gardens inside Springbank Park.
It may be big but it is no Rideau Canal. It's small size and COVID-19 restrictions have made reservations necessary. Cost is another downside to the London trail. While the canal is free, it can cost a small family $20 or more to skate on the London trail. (File images)
To successfully beat the COVID-19 pandemic it is being fought on many fronts. One front, and an unlikely one, is the boot rental area at the local ski hill. Only a few skiers at a time are allowed entry, they are given a pair of boots and then their regular footwear is taken and stored in the numbered compartment which had held the ski boots they are now wearing.
The storage area for all the footwear left by the renters is now closed. Signs saying "Please do not use!!!", block the footwear storage compartments.
To return the boots, the skier goes to a table outside the rental building, the number on their rental boots is noted and their regular footwear is brought to them. The skiers change into their street wear outside in a sheltered area and then leave the rental boots for the staff.
This COVID-19 fighting method encourages social distancing, minimizes indoor contact between skiers and staff, and is actually more efficient than the method used in the past.
Now and then over the past few months, I've toured Ukraine using Google Street Views. My memories of what I found haunt me as the Russians mount an offensive with the apparent aim of taking over the whole country and leaving untold destruction in their wake.
Needing to turn from the televised images of needless, uncalled for destruction, I went in search of my youngest granddaughter. She was busy making an elephant, a frog, a gramophone and more using the Lego brought by Santa.
It was a beautiful sight.
One would think ice-coated overhead wires gleaming brightly in the sunshine would make an easy picture. Althought it looked spectacular viewed from a passing car, it lost its dramatic visual punch when viewed safely from the sidewalk. Shooting from the middle of the road was the best vantage point but the passing drivers clearly disagreed. Damn, those horns were loud. Oh well, what did they know.
Winters in southwestern Ontario are cold but interspersed with the freezing cold days are the occasional thaws when it climbs above freezing. It may even rain. The other day it did both. The result? The pavement in London began breaking apart and deep holes appeared, pitting the roadways.
Today city crews were out spreading asphalt cold patch. This is a mixture of aggregate and bitumen which is more durable than one might think. The repairs last indefinitely.
I believe I have mentioned Mancala in the past. Mancala is one of the oldest games still played today. Its roots possibly go back as far as 700 B.C. The game clearly has staying power. If you would like to sample the game, read on and please click the link in the 3rd paragraph. You will not be disappointed.
I play Mancala with my little granddaughter. She beats me. The last time we played she told me to find a partner and improve my game. My wife bowed out. I turned to the computer and found a fine opponent. The computer not only beat me but did it with poetry. The way it ends the game is absolutely beautiful.
I introduced the online mancala game to my granddaughter. The computer and Isla were soon playing. The computer won. She agreed it was beautiful to watch the computer moves. We agreed that now we both knew how a knowledgeable desert nomad might play.
I researched the strategy of the game and I played and played and played. I got better with time. And then it happened, I beat the computer. It was gracious in defeat.
Wearing a mask never seemed necessary when walking in the park but still masks were often sported by those using the biggest park in London. With so much room, social distancing in Springbank Park was never a problem. Yet, as recently as last month, a walk in the park without a mask could earn one a lot of nasty stares.
Now, in late February the mood has changed. Masks seem to be out. I spotted a mask on only one park visitor. The province is easing the restrictions applying to theatres, restaurants and more and clearly people are ready. Soon we may all know just what endemic entails when applied to COVID-19.
Driving home from the grocery store, I noticed the wires along the road were sparkling thanks to a thick coating of ice, the last remaining sign of the severe winter storm than had moved through southwestern Ontario just a few hours before.
Last night the biggest snow storm of the year hit. When I was boy, we'd have put on our winter duds and headed off to school. School was just a short walk away. Today, with school bus trips taking over an hour each way for some kids, school was cancelled.
This little eight-year-old took this as an opportunity to help Gug, her grandfather, shovel the front sidewalk and drive. She was not alone. A walk through the neighbourhood found lots of kids out helping parents and grandparents clear away the snow. It is a Canadian tradition.
We walked to school. We did not take the bus. We
didn't need to. I left for school at 8:45 a.m. School was but a fifteen minute walk away.
Two of my granddaughters must take a school bus. One granddaughter is up each morning at 5 a.m. to catch her bus. She rides the yellow bus for hours and hours everyday to and from school. That just seems so wrong.
Packs of coyotes roam suburban backyards when night falls. During the day cruising hawks and even the occasional bald eagle.pose a threat from above. Even family pets, dogs and cats, present a danger. Some days the story written in the snow documents the life and death struggle little critters confront every day and every night. These stories don't always end well.
The iRobot Roomba is readily available in Canada: Costco, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond and the list goes on. A friend's parents have the top-of-the-line model and a home with a floor which is mostly open. There are not a lot of places to trap a Roomba. They love it. I maps out the floor plan and saves the info in memory, it tracks straight and then, like a lawn mower, it rotates around and makes its second pass beside the first with just the right amount of overlap. When it is done, it parks itself and is automatically recharged and emptied of dust.
Our kids and their partners, knowing how well the iRobot Roomba is working our for our friend, bought us one for Christmas. (I knew there was a reason I hated Christmas gifts.)
First, it is not the top-of-the-line model. You turn it on and it wanders about the floor somewhat randomly. At times it seems to shows flashes of brilliance but generally this is an intelligence challenged robot. It will run until its battery get low and then it will head back to its recharging station. That is kinda neat, I must admit. The unit is not emptied automatically but that is no big deal. It is easy to empty.
Still, I would not give our iRobot a pat on its robotic head and tell it that it did a great job. I will admit our home is the problem. One of our beds is too low to the floor, the iRobot gets jammed under the bed. One of our dining room cabinets has a maze of wooden legs and the iRobot manages to get lost in a 2X4 spot and cannot find its way out. When we use it to vaccum the kitchen floor, we must first remove all the chairs and stools from the room. I could pass a manual vaccum over the floor in the time spent moving furniture.
Robotic vaccum cleaners are kinda cool but they need to be fitted into an environment designed with their needs in mind.
Am I happy with ours. Surprise, surprise, we are delighted with it. It was a gift; a gift from our family. Its whirring hum as it skoots about cleaning the floor says, "Love."
Young and too tired to ski, the two kids on the left found their ski poles made excellent rapiers in-spite of the baskets. Rapiers, a type of sword, are thin, light and sharp-pointed. When one thinks about it, rapiers do seem similar in appearance to ski poles. It's too bad Errol Flynn didn't make a ski movie. He could have shown these kids a cool move or two.
It is not uncommon to see young people, and older folk as well, beating their own personal challenges with the kind assistance of the trained staff at Boler Mountain.
Folk who, for a number of reasons, are unable to ski unassisted, are often sighted on the slopes.
This young person has been strapped into a specially designed seat with two pair of skis.
With the assistance of the gentleman holding the two ropes who is following behind, the young person is able to gain the control necessary to ski down the slope.
Accessibility has also been considered when it comes to the new lodge. The ski club received a $45,000 grant to fund the installation of an elevator to provide access to the second floor by those with personal challenges.
My youngest nephew likes to stay active, even in the winter. When he heads out to jog, he always takes his camera. This beautiful, snow covered, wide/wild leek, Allium tricoccum, I hope I have identified this correctly, stopped him in his tracks. He shared the image on his Facebook page.
The art gallery in London once had an excellent art shop run by a group of volunteers. The women in the group, it seemed to be composed of mostly women, were smart both at finding art for their shop and at running a successful and very profitable business. But the ladies and the gallery had a falling out and the in art shop in now only memory.
Our home, like many in London, has a lot of art purchased from those ladies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that art has brought a lot of folk a lot of happiness. With lock-downs and lock-ins, with closed schools and off-limit restaurants, life can seem a wee bit on the bleak side. Art seems to lighten the atmosphere in the home and that lightening has never been more important than now. Today one spends an inordinate amount of time within those walls.
This closely cropped image of a glass on glass plate creation is a favourite of our granddaughters and my wife and me. It brings a little, much needed, whimsy into our home.
When I picked up my first Klutz Press book, I was not surprised to see that it came from Palo Alto. The Klutz credo was: "Create wonderful things, be good, have fun." Klutz books encourage kids to not just read but to do. The book on knots includes the necessary rope. The book on making paper airplanes comes with 40 sheets of flight-tested, ready-to-fold paper, printed on both sides in a variety of colourful patterns.
And possibly my favourite Klutz Press book is The Book of Classic Board Games. I believe it may be out of print but if you can find one, even used, buy it. Kids of all ages love it. Somewhere in there one will find a game one likes:
This is my last post from the race day at Boler Mountain in London. I could not resist posting this image. I rather like the oddly weighted composition. I must confess, this skier approached so fast and I was so slow to react that this skier almost skied right out of my shot.
One always sees skiers blasting down a small, but on the steep-side, hill at Boler Mountain, scooting through gates, flashing down the slope. But Saturday was different, at least for me. Saturday the skiers were not practising but competing. And the skiers were looking good.
This old geezer wishes he could have joined them. I'd have done my best Jean Claude Killy imitation, with the accent (French accent?) on imitation. I was Jean Claude Killy only in my mind, only in my imagination.
We are now in the living-with-COVID part of the pandemic. Skiers on Boler Mountain Saturday were wearing COVID masks rather than balaclavas. Although, I wore both, with my balaclava over my mask. The dining area in the ski lodge at Boler Mountain was open but the seating number, thanks to social distancing, was halved. Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the easing of this all-too-long pandemic.
I decided to post an image of two types of fencing commonly found in London. The old wooden fence was popular about thirty years ago. The newer, plastic fencing on the left, is going up all over the city on both private and public land.
We replaces the aging, wooden fencing with the newer plastic stuff. As it is made to resemble stone, I think I am safe in saying it is, at its core, it is somewhat tacky. Imitations always are.
With snow storms hitting the U.S. east coast and traffic in some locations along the seaboard coming almost to a standstill, snow, at least a heavy snowfall, seems to have eluded the southwest Ontario Great Lakes region. London has not had a prolonged storm, with heavy snowfall and high winds, move in from Lake Huron this year. One has hardly had to even get out the snowblower. A snow shovel had done just fine.
The number of kids who are able to complete a decent jump seems almost limitless. Take a picture of one and the next kid may take it up a notch. Even my youngest granddaughter has given one of the smaller jumps her best shot. She got airborne but her landing let her down -- pun intended.
