Mid-June 2023 Review

June 1st and it is already 30°C (86°F), which if we were still in Arizona would be a spectacular temperature, but because we are in Ontario we have to add in the humidity factor, making it more that a little uncomfortable. And many of the natives here in the park, have fired up the air conditioners, afterall the price of the electricity is included in the seasonal rates … jus sayin.

Rich & Bonnie are off for a week, they have guests from the Dominican Republic visiting, so they have been playing tour guide, but that is also another reason why they have brought us back, just to deal with the normal day to day operations of this park while they spend more time at their other park and enjoy life a little more.

We joined them at the beach for a sunset fire, always a popular event here at LHR, and the colour of the sun has turned nearly red because of the smoke from the forest fires in Alberta, and we are obviously also only a day or two from the full moon.

So on Saturday night Lorne while doing his security rounds had an issue with a site, persisting on breaking the quiet time rule, and had to respond to a number of noise complaints at the same site. I had discovered an Incident report form last year because of some of the nightmares that I dealt with last year so I suggest he fill it out and forward it to the office, now I’m thinking it is something that we will implement here this year just to record the times and details of the problems that happen arise from time to time. I’m pleased to see an email followed shortly after reminding everyone of the rules and expectations

OK it’s Tuesday June 6th and we have been invited by friends, to take in an international earth exhibit at a church in Exeter, a bit of a strange outing, certainly not a normal adventure for the Buchanan’s. But as it was explained to us we decided that it sounded interesting enough to be worthy of an outing, so as a blogger I decided that it would be a good plan to do some research before our adventure. So, I started with this Google search “earth exhibit in Exeter church“, thinking I had covered all the possible parameters, this is what came up.

S0 back to google search with this description “earth exhibit in Exeter Ontario” and it brought up the actual exhibit that we would be attending. The exhibit was created by a UK based artist “Luke Jerram” who created the exhibit using detailed imagery of the earth’s surface from NASA. It allows the public to see the earth almost as though they were floating in space looking down at the planet, the exhibit only runs from June 1st till July 3rd. The globe is 6 meters (19.6 feet) across and is called “Gaia” (the word means the personification of the Earth by Greek mythology) and is being hung from the church roof, the pews have been removed and the stained glass windows have been tinted to allow viewing. I also observed that the exhibit seems to have shrank a meter (3 feet) during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, as the English description referred to a seven meter exhibit, the price of viewing £5 in England or $10 Canadian here in Ontario.

Today was also my appointment day with the people from the “Old Fart” (Canadian Longevity Association) survey calling to confirm that I have managed to make it through another year of life, and to most likely confirm that I have obviously been losing (or at least misplacing) some of my marbles as I get another year older. So this survey consists of multiple phone calls over a few weeks where they ask old farts like me numerous question to determine just how much our mind continues failing us as we age. I have been participating for a number of years and as an old fart I already know just how much my memory is starting to fail me, even for the simplest tasks, or just remembering names of either people or places. Let’s just say that the whole aging thing is not a pretty process, but it is a process that we will all struggle through the golden years.

Before the exhibit we enjoyed a lovely lunch on the patio of Eddington’s of Exeter, a venue that Laurie & I had yet to explore, it was a little breezy and cooler than we had expected but the good food and great company more than made up for it. Laurie and I shared a caesar salad and a pizza for lunch, I enjoyed the salad more than the pizza, both were good but maybe my flavour expectations of the pizza were too high. It is always a bonus when someone else drives, and unlike when I drive we secured prime parking for both lunch and the exhibit.

This is most likely one of the strangest exhibits that we have encountered, and in the same thought, it was also at one of the strangest places possible. So let’s explain a few little things that we discovered, first of all the difference in the exhibit size was not caused by shrinkage from the trip across the Atlantic, no actually there is more than one exhibit and they vary in size. Our tickets for the exhibit today were for four o’clock, and I must admit I expected there to be a number of people there, and technically there were but the during the hour we spent at the exhibit, there were only six people in total, now it was a Tuesday afternoon, but still. Included was a 20 minute video about reducing our carbon footprint, Dr. Suzuki was involved in the making of the video and it also was very informative.

So let’s look at the exhibit, a six meter globe suspended from the ceiling of a church is something that you don’t see often, as this is the first one I have seen in seventy some years. The globe was actually rotating, taking approximately three minutes to complete a single revolution, I understand that the globe was made up of NASA views of the earth that have been stitched together to create the exhibit. The desire was to create the earth as it would be seen if being viewed from the moon or the space station, and while I have never viewed earth from the moon, I certainly can imagine that it could be true. This exhibit has been in a number of different locations and from what I have read and seen many of these other exhibits gave viewings from different levels which would have allowed us better viewing of the northern hemisphere area. And I guess the cloud cover shown is natural and real but a little less would have made the experience a little more enjoyable.

Now was the exhibit worth the price of admission? A big resounding YES, if for no other reason than just to gain perspective, everyone commented on how big the Pacific Ocean appeared, and how much of the earth is actually covered by water. We also were surprised how much cloud cover there was, I for one had a globe as a child, but this is so much cooler. The venue had to go through some major changes, like removing all of the church pews, covering most of the stained glass windows, and I can only imagine the expense incurred bring this exhibit to a church in Exeter Ontario. But this exhibit is only there for a month, so I hope the word gets out and they get some more people there to experience it.

Friday June 9th and although there had been an open fire ban introduced to the area a week ago, today the county has added campfires to the ban as well today, never a popular ban at a campground but with all the forest fires burning all across the country I guess it should have been anticipated. The crazy part is the wording of the ban seems to include propane fire pits as well, very unusual as normally a fire ban excludes these propane fire pits as much of our winters are spent in areas with campfire restrictions that do accept them.

Well it’s Monday morning the 12th of June, the day after the the Canadian Open. So for those of you who are not golf fans once a year the PGA (Pro Golf Association) make the trek north to Canada for a golf tournament, the venue moves around a number of good Canadian golf courses and this year it was held just north of Toronto in North York at the Oakdale Country Club, and for the last seventy Canadian Opens a Canadian golfer has not won this Canadian national tournament. But that all changed yesterday, as on the fourth playoff hole. Nick Taylor from British Columbia native has secured the long awaited Canadian win. Our last close chance happened back in 2004 when Mike Weir lost in playoff holes to Vijay Singh, it was a true heartbreaker for Canadian golf fans. This year it was a playoff between Nick Taylor and Tommy Fleetwood an English player, and Nick has won it with a astonishing 72 foot long eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole to secure the title and win the trophy!

Other than the excitement of the golf yesterday we are under dreary skies here in Ontario with rain today, oh I’m not complaining about the rain, as we needed this rain badly, mid-June and the lawns were starting to brown off, and it has been a steady rain that started overnight and continued into today. The problem is that the temperature has dropped almost as fast as the rain with today forecast high of 13°C (56°F) in fact the whole week is looking to be cooler till the weekend which should bring temperatures back up into the 20°C (70°F) range. Typical unpredictable Ontario weather, but the rain should help with the fire hazard.

Today we had our Huron County health department inspection of the pool at the park, after working within the guidelines of the British Columbia health board last year it is somewhat amazing how different the rules can be, what was a concern in British Columbia is not even a concern to be checked here. But Ontario wants the chemicals checked every two hours while British Columbia was twice a day, we are having a issue with the alkalinity of the pool water, just an issue of being on well water, and our readings are always on the high side. The issue is to bring it within the desired range it means adding a lot of corrosive chemical which could be hard on both equipment and people. It is not a new issue and certainly provides no danger to anyone using the pool, it is just an issue of not fitting into the desired box here in Ontario, while we would fit nicely into the British Columbia box.

Well, the results are in and long and the short of it is, our pool inspection was a fail because of the high alkalinity of the pool water, so now the fun begins to make the pool water a government acceptable mix of chemicals. It can be brought into the parameters, but this old fart still has trouble understanding how a mix of muriatic acid and sodium bisulphate is better for swimmers than straight chlorinated water. The issue is really balancing the mix to keep all three standards within the proper parameters, because adjusting one effect’s the other two, and it’s usually in a negative manner.

Tuesday June 13th, and I’m going to do battle with the Ontario government today, it will be the day of trying to renew my drivers licence and health card that expired last September. It expired because I needed to re-write my air brake endorsement, and to be very honest the whole “air brake endorsement” is simply a money grab by the province in the first place and to make every truck driver re write the exam every licence renewal is definitely a money grab.

So I start my quest at the “Service Ontario” (just a name, service is totally optional) office in Goderich, to see if I could write the test there, but I was told that I would have to drive to Clinton to write the test. The term writing makes it sound like I would be putting pen to paper which is not what happens, it is actually all done on a touch screen computer terminal. Twenty multiple choice questions with instant feedback as to whether you chose correct, 80% is required for a pass which allows only 4 mistakes, now I did purchase an air brake study book some five or six years ago. I have a good working knowledge of the different air brake systems as I was a certified truck technician, but that was a few years ago and it was before Canada went metric so I was trained in psi (pounds per square inch) as opposed to kPa (kilopascal) which is always confusing to an old fart like myself. But I got to Clinton to the drive test location, I paid my $16 for the privilege to take the test, I passed with three wrong so 85%. But this drive test office can not do my renewal so now I have to drive back to the “Service Ontario” office back in Goderich, where they quickly took my $90 for my drivers license renewal but because I didn’t have a photo identification other than the two pieces issued by the province of Ontario, I was unable to renew my health card, after all you couldn’t expect the office that issues the photo identification to accept something that they had actually issued, could you.

So now I have to sit back and hope that they will actually send my new licence before we leave for Arizona in October, and I will take another run at getting a health card renewal next week, but just one battle at a time.

Well Friday June 16th and our second pool inspection is scheduled for today, and I’m feeling pretty good about our chances of passing today. Dropping the alkalinity has also drove the Ph level way down but I think I have got both of the numbers into an acceptable level, the chlorine level is well within the parameters but we are just waiting for the inspectors seal of approval. Well the inspector just left and we have walked the tightrope and got our approval, so the pool can open tomorrow as scheduled.

I’m going to close this blog out here, as we are settling into the summer routine at the park, the second couple has made it much easier and certainly more enjoyable. We didn’t take a lot of photos during this period, with the wildfire smoke making it seem overcast and then a week with rain and real overcast skies, and temperatures have fallen down in to low double digits (low fifties), we even had to fire up the heater again!

Let’s bring on some summer warmth!

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Day 2082