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Work is done, Chloe is at G-ma and G-pa’s and the car is packed. It’s been a busy couple of days packing and getting ready. Not sure what we’re forgetting as it seems we have more room than last year.
I’ll be doing regular updates to the blog as time and internet connection permits. The updates will be posted here on Rainwater Rambling. Stay tuned.
Happy Birthday to Susan who celebrated her birthday last week.
On Friday night Susan and I were invited to see the film “Cold Blooded“.
It was screening as part of the Mississauga Independent Film Festival.
It was co-produced by my friend Tim Merkel. It was good to see Tim, as well as some of his family. It was a good crime drama with some humour sprinkled in. If you get the chance to see it on the big screen, DVD, or Netflix down the road, check it out. After the showing there was a Q&A with some of the cast and crew.
It was filmed in a shut down wing of Humber River Regional Hospital on Keele St. It is used as a movie location with many different sets. It is run by Medicine in Film, a company owned by Tim’s sister.
Today we headed down to Mountain Equipment Co-op. Here are Angela and Claudia on King Street. Gillian stayed home to study for her physics test tomorrow.
The MEC store on King Street.
The corner of King and Blue Jays Way.
From MEC we headed up to Christie Pits to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs Inter-County Baseball League game. They were playing the Burlington Twins. They almost picked off this guy at second.
Here he is shaking the dirt out of his uniform.
It was a good game, but it was a hot day. This was the second last home game of the season.
The centre fielder, Raul Borjas.
Here is one of the Maple Leafs getting caught in a rundown.
This bird landed a few feet away from me. Shortly after a foul ball came my way.
When we left at the bottom of the 7th inning, the Maple Leafs were up 3-1. The final score was 5-4 Toronto.
A final shot from left field, the guys on the field are the bullpen. It turns out the GM of the Burlington Twins is an old high school gym teacher, Doug Kelcher. The Twins use to be the Mississauga Twins, they played in Meadowvale for a couple of seasons before moving to Burlington.
The girls in their TML baseball hats, the hats were free with the purchase of a raffle ticket. For $2 we each got a New Era baseball hat, not a bad deal.
Claudia has been having a good year of soccer, she has played defence most of the year, last week she played the second half at forward.
Claudia taking a goal kick.
They lost 2-0, they got close towards the end of the game, but just couldn’t put one away.
Mixing it up on the field.
Water break.
Going up against some of the taller opponents.
It doesn’t look like they have playoffs this year, just a one day elimination play down. It happens on the Sunday after we get back from holidays.
We have pretty much figured out our vacation for this summer. In August we are doing a road trip down to the east coast. We have a cottage booked on Prince Edward Island for a week, we also are planning to visit, Quebec City, the Cabot Trail, Halifax, Moncton and to work our way back through the states. We’re hoping to visit the LL Bean flagship store (open 24 hrs), the Maine beaches, and catch a New Hampshire Fisher Cats baseball game in Manchester. Hoping to have some vacation amnesia by the time we get back.
I spent the week in Saskatchewan for work. I flew into Saskatoon (YXE) on Monday morning.
From Saskatoon we drove to Buffalo Narrows, about a 6.5 hour drive. I was staying at the Waterfront Inn on Churchill Lake.
Buffalo Narrows sits between Churchill and Peter Pond Lakes. It is located at 55° north.
Tuesday was spent in the bush just south of the town. Temperatures reached 32°C, not much of a break from southern Ontario temperatures. We were trying to find a location for a new monitoring site. As is often the case, people in the north like to use access roads off the highway as target practice and
dumping grounds.
An old abandoned cabin.
Bark.
Looking up.
Wednesday it was off to Cluff Lake Mine. In the fall of 2010 we had installed one of our precipitation monitoring sites at the decommissioned Uranium mine owned by Areva Resources. The site ran for a few months before they informed us they could no longer support our program with the recent cuts they had undergone. Fast forward a couple of years and word came down that we would have to get our equipment out of there before this fall. We co-ordinated with Sask Environment who also had some equipment running there and went up together in one of their vehicles. Cluff Lake is about 75km south of Lake Athabasca. It is located at 58° N.
We spent the night at the camp. This is Cluff Lake.
Some lichen along the shore.
The water felt pretty warm, they had also gone through a heat wave, temperatures reached 35° C the day before we arrived.
One of the open pits that has since been flooded. The mine was operational for 22 years during which time they produced over 62 million pounds (28,122,700 kgs) of yellowcake. Yellowcake is used in the preparation of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors.
Thursday morning it was time to head back south. We were back to Buffalo Narrows to pick up our rental vehicle and then down to Meadow Lake for the night. It was approximately 600km. There are a couple of water bombers stationed at the Buffalo Narrows airport.
Long desolate stretches of highway 155.
Our stop for the night was in Meadow Lake.
On Friday we departed from Meadow Lake for our site south of Regina to drop off our equipment. Along Highway 16 there is a sign for the town of Richard, SK. Here I am standing next to the sign. You can see a RCMP cruiser passing to the left. When we stop to take the picture, he slowed down to see if everything was alright.
Saturday morning it was back to our site before flying out of Regina. After a week of heat and sun it was a relief having some cloud cover and showers off and on.
Some wheat in the adjoining fields.
The more typical Saskatchewan roads, when you get further north in the province, the terrain is a little more interesting, not quite as flat.
On the other side of the road were some canola fields.
A canola plant.
The flight back from Regina (YQR) was through Winnipeg, there was a 30 minute delay in the flight leaving Winnipeg (YWG). Probably 75% of the flight was making a connection in Toronto (YYZ). When we landed, a quick look at the departure screen showed a lot of delayed flights, most of them waiting for passengers on our flight.
It was a long week of travel, our tour of Saskatchewan was 2073 km’s of driving. In that distance you could drive from Mississauga to New Orleans, LA or from Rossland, BC to Las Vegas, NV. Of course we did all that without leaving the province. The weather was good, a little hot, and we had a doozy of a lightening/thunderstorm in Buffalo Narrows the first night. The wildlife was abundant on this trip, I saw 3 black bears, 1 wolf, a rabbit, pelicans, hawks,sandhill cranes and 3 deer. I drove the Trans-Canada highway, the Yellowhead highway, the Semchuk Trail, the Lois Riel Trail and the Canam Highway. Below is the route A.Saskatoon, B.Buffalo Narrows, C. Cluff Lake, D. Meadow Lake, E. Bratt’s Lake, F. Regina.
Angela, Claudia and I headed down to Exhibition Place today to take in the free Honda Indy Day. Gillian was unable to come with us this year since she is taking summer school. She is fast tracking her grade 12 physics, so she can take french as well next year. Here are the girls next to a set of tires.
Due to the heat we went down earlier, so we walked around the Indy Car Paddock. Each team has trailers like these, and if you wait long enough, a driver might come out and sign autographs.
Part of the car from E.J. Visio’s car.
The Paddock area gas station.
Some of the crew working on Takuma Sato’s car. He drives for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
William Ashley China custom-designed the Honda Indy Toronto commemorative trophies. The official Honda Indy show car was on display with each tire supported by one bone china teacup, demonstrating the strength of bone china.
A full dinner table with all the place settings.
As always the Free Friday lets you sit anywhere. We like the grandstand behind pit lane.
Looking over towards the air-conditioned Direct Energy Centre. With the temperature reaching 35 degrees C it was a busy place.
James Hinchcliffe out for his practice run.
After the practice round we headed over to where the cars and drivers go by to get back to the paddock.
Claudia.
Angela.
The paddock area was busy after the first practice session,
One of the Firestone tires from the practice session.
Angela and Claudia posing in the winners area.
Honda is the major sponsor and they sponsored the free friday.
One of the best parts of the Honda Indy is getting to see the drivers up close. They either have to walk or scooter through the crowds to get to and from the track. Here is Helio Castroneves of Brazil. He had his highest finish in Toronto, finishing 6th, he was pretty excited during the post race interview, as his previous best was 10th.
Ryan Briscoe of Australia.
Takuma Sato from Japan.
Chip Ganassi, the owner of Target Chip Ganassi Racing.
Just after the practice session started, there was a loud thud, it turned out Justin Wilson couldn’t stop his car when he was coming into the pit and rolled into the back of Sebastien Bourdais car in front of him. In the process four crewmen were injured.
Sebastien Bourdais was a little steamed at Justin Wilson and some photographer who was trying to photo the injured crew men.
Josef Newgarden of the USA, one of the rookies this year.
Marco Andretti of the USA. He is the son of Michael and grandson of Mario.
Sebastien Bourdais of France getting a ride on his car.
The only female this year at the Toronto Indy, Simona de Silvestro of Switzerland.
Michael Andretti, 7 time winner of the Toronto Molson Indy and owner of Andretti Autosport.
Alex Tagliani of Canada.
Dario Franchitti of Scotland. He was the pole sitter for the race.
A crowd favourite, local boy James Hincliffe of Oakville. He is driving the Andretti Autosport Go Daddy car that Danica Patrick drove previously.
Graham Rahal of the USA and his girlfriend Laken Kurtz.
Justin Wilson of England.
E.J. Visio of Venezuela.
Charlie Kimball of the USA. He finished in 2nd place.
JR Hildebrand of the USA.
The winner of the 2012 Toronto Honda Indy and his third victory in a row, Ryan Hunter-Reay.
There were 25 cars in field for this years race. There are three engines powering the IZOD Indycars, Honda, Chevrolet and Lotus. All of the teams except one are running either Honda or Chevrolet. They all use Firestone tires. This is Simon Pagenaud of Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports.
James Hinchcliffe of Team GoDaddy.com owned by Andretti Autosport.
Graham Rahal of Service Central Chip Ganassi Racing.
Helio Castroneves of Team Penske.
E.J. Visio of KV Racing Technology.
Ryan Briscoe of Team Penske.
Ryan Hunter-Reay of Team DHL/Sun Drop Citrus Soda owned by Andretti Autosport.
Simona de Silvestro of Nuclear Clean Air Energy Lotus HVM Racing.
Alex Tagliani of Team Barracuda-BHA owned by Bryan Herta Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian.
JR Hildebrand driving the National Guard Panther Racing car.
Dario Franchitti in the Target Chip Ganassi Racing car.
Tony Kanaan of GEICO/Mouser Electronics KV Racing T echnology w/SH.
Sebastien Bourdais of True Car Dragon Racing.
Marco Andretti of Team Dr Pepper owned by Andretti Autosport.
Ed Carpenter driving the Fuzzy’s Vodka / Ed Carpenter Racing car.
Will Power in the Verizon Team Penske car.
The final standings of the race.
