Toronto Island - Tri Triathalon

It was a great day!
I didn't feel that way at 5 am when the alarm went off. Stumbling around Christine's place, in the dark, getting into a bathing suit, making breakfast because we have to have fuel. Buying a large Timmies (because I have to have fuel). Driving to Queens Quay, in the dark, and paying $30 to park. But I started to get excited as we took the 4 bikes off the rack and saw others doing the same and everyone making their way to the red tent beside the ferry terminal. We had been down on Friday evening and picked up our registration kits (bibs, swim hats, safety pins and some other loot) so all we had to do on Saturday morning was get our numbers marked on our arms, and our ages on our calves.
The sun was coming up as we waited for the ferry. There were extra ones to carry the race participants.

Showing our age painted calves, while waiting for the ferry.

When we registered we had to tell them any medications we were on, Chris
was not too impressed that on the bottom section of her bib it said: "anti
depressants, ADD, birth control"

I love taking the ferry to Toronto Island. The skyline of Toronto looks impressive and I
am amazed at the number of condos under construction

Upon arriving we biked to Hanlon Point beach area and racked our bikes. There was a large area fenced off with metal racks for the bikes. We chose a rack based on our bib numbers, put the seat of the bike up on the rack and next to it established a small space for the transition materials. For me this was a small folding stool to sit on (others in my area, all of us in the over 50 group, thought this a great idea), a towel to dry off, socks, running shoes, capris and a shirt (with the bib attached) and my helmet.
I then joined the others in walking to the beach where we got our timing chips and attached them to our ankles. Jason was in the first "wave" to start, men 25 to 35. The announcer described the route and the rules and then off they went. The course was marked by pale green tetrahedrons, we started standing in the water between 2 of them. There were life guards in boats and on paddle boards in case we got in trouble. A few people were pulled from the water during the course of the first couple of waves.
Jason had a great swim and we were all able to shout encouragement as he emerged from the water and started to run towards the transition zone.

Christine, Teri and Kendra were 2 waves after (women 25 to 35 and men 35 to 45). They all had good swims, staying in the middle of the group. I was in the last wave (women 50 plus and men 60 plus). I was able to front crawl about 40% of the time and the rest of the time did breast stroke. This group had a lot of breast strokers and some back stroke, whatever it took to get around. The water was crystal clear, calm and quite cold (in fact the previous day the organizers had announced that wetsuits were optional, but not mandatory).
So the race consisted of

• 400 metre swim (out to a tetrahedron, a stretch parallel to the beach to another tetrahedron and back to the beach.
• a run across the beach and along a broadwalk to the transition zone, to put on pants, shirt, socks, running shoes, helmet, and outside the zone mount the bike.
• 10km bike ride (nice and flat with some lovely views of the harbour and Toronto skyline - Oh was I supposed to be looking at that or concentrating on biking - oops).
• dismount and back into the transition zone and re-rack the bike.
• run 2.5km

Ready to start out on the biking portion

Afterwards there were burgers, fruit and chocolate milk (a sponsor), door prizes and awards to the winners.

Christine, Jason, myself, Kendra and Teri. We all successfully completed and said we would do it again next year. It was great fun. Thanks to out support staff - George, who took pictures, held bags and shouted encouragement.
My results ('cause next year I want to do better)
Swim - 14:39, Transition 1 - 3:59, Bike - 28:07, Transition 2 - .54, Run - 22:31 About 1 hour 10 minutes in total.
5th out of 6 in my age/gender group
248th out of 267 in total.

Pelee Trip, Episode One - Port Stanley

Friends rented our cottage so we were off A-Lining again. This time to the Pelee area. The first night we had tickets to see Mini Putt at the Port Stanley Theatre so settled our little home away from home in Port Bruce. We like Port Stanley as it has multiple personalities. We are always there for the theatre which is intimate and entertaining and very well run (my brother is the Artistic Director so I am a little biased in this regard). That hit of culture fits with the East side of the harbour which has nice restaurants, Inns and touristy stores. On the West side of the harbour, over the swing bridge, it is a beach town. We ate at GT's, on the deck, right on the beach. The food was good, Mexican/Lake Erie fusion. The vibe was great. It reminded us of Grand Bend when we were in University. There are at least 6 volleyball courts to watch, live music, young people eating and drinking in their beach attire and just a spattering of us older folks.

GT's looking at the beach.

Port Stanley has a huge beach. Unlike Long Point, you have to pay to park there but I suspect that revenue helps to pay for the change house, washrooms and life guards.
They also have tried to beautify the big oil tanks on the side of the harbour.

The internet is acting up today so its just a short post. The joys of rural internet.

Guelph Lake - A-Lining

Last week friends had the cottage and we camped at Guelph Lake. Our first anniversary gift to each other 32yrs ago was sailing lessons on Guelph Lake.  Our initial instinct was to head for different boats and the instructor insisted that we sail together, his rationale being that we would have to sail together at some point.We both got our White Sail certification there.
We have an A-Liner pop up trailer so it's not really camping and not quite trailering. It's A-Lining.

The trailer takes a matter of minutes to set up. The dining tent takes longer.

When the kids were young, we had a Bonair camper, a canvas pop up. We went on two major trips; one out East and one out West. There are things I like about this kind of travel and things I don't. I don't like the mosquitoes (especially on a wooded site), the amazing array of moths when you go to the bathrooms at night, having to remember all your stuff when you go to the shower. I do like the smell of the wood fires (though don't understand why people light them at about 4pm, way before they are going to sit around them), the sound of rain putting me to sleep, everything having its place in the trailer, feeling close to nature. I do recognize the hypocrisy of liking being close to nature and disliking the mosquitoes and the moths - its complicated.
While there we spent a day at my sister(Nicola) and her husbands(Dave) house and, with Mum and Dad, canned Salsa. There was much discussion about how hot/spicy to make it and in the end we cut the recipes hot pepper amount in half for the first batch. The second batch we cut that amount in half and planned on putting none in the third batch but relented and added some.

We all took home some from each batch.
The next day George and I biked around the campsite and Guelph Lake. The Conservation Area has a couple of beaches and lots of camp sites; some "serviced" with hydro and water like ours and many more without those amenities.

Main day use beach

We biked across the dam, that forms the lake, to mountain bike trails on the other side.

Looking up the Lake from the dam.

George on a trail on the other side of the dam.

In total we only did about 12 km but as there were some tough hills and rough terrain we thought it a pretty good workout. The next day we biked part of the Elora Cataract trail (yep, it goes from Elora to Cataract). We started on the trail just East of Fergus, near Belwood Lake. It was pretty flat and through lovely farmland, occasional glimpses of barns, silos and old farmhouses. We were feeling pretty good so decided to go to the little community of Hillsborou. Stopped there and bought some fabulous butter tarts that we had for dessert for our picnic lunch. Then biked back - the last 5km or so were not fun. In total we biked about 30km that day and hadn't done that kind of mileage since .... well, we were much younger!

Barn along the trail.

Long Point and east.

Its been a busy couple of weeks so this post is a random compilation of one of those weeks.
Fiona came to stay for an overnight, so nice to spend time with her as she is such a beach/cottage/water kid.

Looks like an innocent sandcastle but underneath is Fiona, hoping
to surprise Dan when she came to pick her up.

We had to go to Fort Erie to pick up cherries that Mum had frozen for us. We drove most of the way along the lake and I was surprised at how close the windmill development is to Port Dover.

I don't know how many windmills are going to be built along this part of the Lake Erie shoreline but there is evidence from Port Dover to Dunneville. It's not just windmills themselves but also the hydro lines have to be renewed, roads built out to each site (big enough to take the huge trucks carrying the pieces of the towers and the blades), wires underground from the windmill to the hydro lines, cranes to hoist the whole unit up in place - it is a very busy piece of the countryside right now.

On the way back we were detoured off Hwy 3 into some lovely farm land and held up on a country road as a truck was negotiating a corner that was not designed for truck traffic. Looking up there was this bird on the wire, I think a young red tailed hawk.

He looked as though he couldn't quite figure out how his nice, quiet little
neck of the woods turned into a traffic jam!

Another photo from our return journey. Who can resist a field of sunflowers, they make me smile just looking at them.

Racing on Wednesday was not particularly exciting. There wasn't enough wind, so it ended up being cancelled but not until we had sat and bobbed for a while, hoping that the dark clouds would bring some wind, but no rain, with them. The changing sky led to some beautiful effects on the water.

Sometimes it looked like ink.

Sometimes it looked like silver

Sometimes it was hard to say where the water ended and the sky began.

Long Point - Growing in sand continued.

I have posted pictures of the yucca and the ditch lilies already. They are by far our most prolific plants. There are others flowering now worthy of mention.

The yucca have now completed flowering and have formed large bumpy
 seedpods on their huge stems

These are hybrid day lilies that I transplanted from the Paris garden. They are having their best
year yet, must have loved the wet spring. Each flower lasts longer than the ditch lilies and has far more petals.

The other plant that grows surprisingly well in sand is Hostas. They could not be further from their natural, woodland habitat than they are here, but they still grow and flower, though admittedly not as lushly as they did in the shaded soil of our Paris garden.

The bed in the middle of the circular driveway gets occasional shade and I tip some of the soil from previous years containers in here. This is not, therefore growing in pure sand but the ground is still mostly sand. Here I am able to grow some Brown Eyed Susans, Daisies and Purple Cone Flower, all I believe from the same family. I do have some planted in the sand, on the dunes, but they struggle for a year or so and then give up.

One of the things that I love about living here is the vast expanse of sky. It was one of the things I loved about the prairies too, when we travelled there when the kids were young. But here there is the added bonus of the water and the effect the sky colours have on the water colours. I couldn't resist taking a photo of this cloud formation one evening.