Boat and Car Out Of Storage

Wendy took this shot from shore as she passed me heading up the river. USA in the background. Click pic to enlarge.

I made the annual 26 nautical mile mile trip from Port Lambton up the St. Clair River to Sarnia/Point Edward in our Phoenix 38 on Wednesday. It was a cool 65 F, overcast, foggy and calm as glass. Leaving close to noon, I tied up in Slip 43 at around 2:30 pm. The Cats purred their way against the current at 1250 rpm (2 1/2 to 3 hours). Probably cost over $100. Why didn't I fill up last September? Dummy!!! Diesel now costs more than gasoline - go figure. Good thing they go further on a gallon.

View from the bridge. No danger of bad visibility, but not sunny and nice.

It was a little cool and foggy but calm as glass as I motored up the river all by myself.

Picked up my eBay purchases at the UPS Store. (Is this getting out of hand?) eBay Addict! Maybe I need a bigger car or should I bring a trailer?

Thursday we crossed the Bluewater Bridge into USA and to my UPS Store in Port Huron, where we picked up a few eBay items. It pee's Wendy off because when I buy on eBay, she can't shop or we'll be over our (import) limit for zero tax. She says "This has got to end!"

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I had to borrow everything to fix the dock from the kind barge owner next door.

Back at the condo I repaired a couple of rotten dock planks. The kind owner of the barge parked next to me loaned me the pry bar, hammer, and nails. He even cut the planks for me We earlier checked out the 'Habitat For Humanity Store' where I purchased a nice 2 x 6" dock plank for the princely sum of $1.

The huge Searay 52 was too long to fit at a regular dock. Very big boat!

They are constructing a new landing for a brand new 52 foot Searay two docks down from me. The owner of 'Final Purchase' IX is our neighbour Harold who owns the Lambton Ford car dealership. You should come down and buy a Ford to help Harold fill up.

Goose poop is everywhere. Worse than I've ever seen here before. But the little ones are cute.

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The Phoenix looks a little yellow at its dock due to the golden morning sun.

Friday morning I pressure washed the dock ready for summer. Then we awoke the old Oldsmobile from its winter sleep and drove it back to London for the Steve Plunkett Show Saturday morning.

Fleetwood Country Cruise In

Click on the picture to enlarge

Coming up this weekend, Steve Plunkett's Fleetwood promises to be a really big show. I just hope it doesn't rain. Can you imagine the muddy mess 2000+ cars would make to his private golf course? If It rains I may not be able to take my '48 Olds, although last year the Oldsmobile Club was right near the entrance/exit so maybe I could make a speedy escape.

The Joys Of Owning A 50+ Year Old House

I’m not going to bore you with the details but these pictures could be worth a few thousand boring words. You can see why I feel like a member of a chain gang road crew from a prison in some southern state.
Walls and foundation repairs

For this work I hired John Egan, a semi-retired and very skilled bricklayer who apprenticed in England

Erosion control in the north side yard
After John completed repairing and parging the foundation wall, my son Tim and I began to work at erosion control to help prevent further damage. Lots of slugging.

John did a great job on the cracked foundation. He gouged out the crack and re-filled it, then parged it over.




Wall reconstruction around our patio deck

This is a pretty ambitious project with several pahases - ongoing.

Love Them Tomatoes

Elaine, (Brianna's Mom) Brianna (the beautiful future Bride), and Reenie. The ladies were at the shower.

On Sunday we drove the scenic 'Talbot Trail' which is the old Highway 3 down to Leamington some 90 miles down Lake Erie. You might know that this Ontario city is the most southerly in Canada and is on the same latitude as Northern California. For this reason, Leamington is known as the 'Sun Parlour Town'. Because of the temperate climate Leamington is the Tomato Capital and is the home of the Heintz Ketchup Company.

David and his lovely daughter Tania greeted shower attendees.

I was driving Wendy to attend a bridal shower for Brianna, soon to be wed to Matthew who is the son of my oldest friends David and Reenie of Brampton. While the ladies enjoyed their shower at the Portuguese Hall, the guys got together at the future bride's parent's home for a BBQ seafood extravaganza.

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Guy talk was non-stop

Uly brought the seafood

Patio BBQ turned into Garage Party as rain sprinkles drove us inside.

Reenie's Uncle is 93 and he and his wife were here from London.

David from London brought his newest addition.

Matthew and my old friend David. David was 'Best Man' at my wedding.

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The food was brought by a friend of Brian's named Uly who owns a seafood importing company. Brian (Brianna's Dad) is the Sales and Marketing guy for Veg Gro a huge hydroponic greenhouse operation. I met and talked with John Moauro co-owner of VegGro. You might enjoy reading about how they use bumblebees to pollinate their production tomatoes. The operation is huge!!! Over a million and a half square feet. John is a car buff and I invited him to come to the Steve Plunkett event in London. I hope we can get together again there. Since I used to own a factory, I would particularly love to get a tour of his marvelous operation some day.

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Matthew cooked up a storm. Here is some chicken if you don't want fish or shrimp.

Guys and BBQ is serious stuff. Brian and Uly supervise the progress.
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Nice large shrimp make me wish I wasn't allergic to the tasty crustaceans.

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Although it was a little cool and overcast with intermittent rain drops, as they say 'a good time was had by all.'

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Got A Great Spot For The Phoenix

Click the picture to enlarge
Since we now have two boats, I had to find another dock at our condo. Our Pearson 30 sailboat is parked in my original spot and I lucked out with a new position for the Phoenix as you can see in the map above.

The Old House Is Still Standin' - Or Is It?

Click to enlarge

We stopped by Wendy's Mom's old place on Riverside Drive. The new owners are moving ahead with the needed renovations. The pictures show how they have poured a new foundation where the old kitchen was. It will probably be a lovely house when it's finished but we can't help thinking about all the bad odors from the sewage plant across the river. The folks on this part of Riverside were really dealt a bad hand when the city decided to build a sewage disposal and incineration plant in their back yards some 40 years ago. Had that not happened, these properties would surely be worth 10 times more! Sad how government in some ways seems to ruin everything it touches.

May Has Been Pretty Ho Hum

May has not been a great month for blog-worthy events. That’s not to say there have been no events - just not too blog-worthy stuff. I shall post a few pictures of the lowlights. The weather in May has not been the greatest and when it is warm enough, we have been doing yard work and maintenance. Yawn!

During the trip to USA last month to bring back my friend David’s boat, the hard drive in my computer died. This is a very unsettling thing to have happen. My son Tim had backed up the drive back in October 07 before our November cruise. He did so again before our March cruise, but this time he didn’t save it to disc. When I (and my computer) arrived home safely, he erased the backup. Too bad! When the drive crashed, I then was out all my data since October 2007.

Checking around for hard drive retrieval companies, I was shocked to find they charged anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 in North America. We found a company in Singapore, Greenergy. They have a special price for students and home computers. This company actually does the recoveries for many North American recovery companies who simply send the drives away anyway. Avoid the middleman.

The total cost was S$600 (Singapore dollars) or about $450 CDN. The price included a replacement new 350 gig hard drive, so it wasn’t so bad. It also cost $8 to send the broken drive to Singapore and $95 to ship the new one back by courier. Grand Total, with taxes etc. about $600 which although not trivial, is a whole lot less than most places. I recommend Greenergy highly. They communicated frequently and were very professional.

Lesson Learned:

Backup Backup Backup! FACT - Every drive ever made will fail eventually. Mine was only 2 years old, but drives in laptops, notebooks and tablets are even more susceptible due to bumps and shocks caused by handling. My son Tim now has set up several backup hard drives in various locations to routinely allow backups. Even with that redundancy, we still periodically burn to DVD as well.
Backup Backup Backup!

In Spring An Old Man’s Fancy Turns To Outdoor Projects

The wonderfully warm weather last week (highs in the mid seventies) brought about the need to get some outside yard work done. There were three main jobs that stood out on our list of many.

The first project was safety related. A large Ash tree in the back yard appears to have died from the effects of the Emerald Ash Borer, a devastating bug believed to have come to North America from China in wood shipping containers and pallets. Our land is quarantined and we are not allowed to move any wood or brush from the property in an effort to stop the bugs’ spread. Unfortunately I think our government’s efforts to control it are futile since it has spread across the St Clair river from Michigan and continues to move eastward across our province. The bug attacks Ash trees and kills them by boring under the bark in rings thereby stopping the flow of nutrients up to the branches.
During the winter a large section of the tree broke but did not fall. This posed a danger to anyone walking under it. Once we cut it down you could clearly see the rings under the bark where the little bugs strangled the tree. A very sad situation. 

Our next project stemmed from the conversion of our swimming pool to a saltwater pool a couple of years ago. A swimming pool dealer assured me that the low concentration of salt would not damage garden plants, so I went ahead with the installation. This year we noticed our cedar trees were browning where they were exposed to the backwash drain water. The dealer was wrong and I found out at the cost of three trees. My remedy was to pipe the drain water underground to a drain culvert in the side yard. My son Tim dug the trench. This will seemingly solve the problem.
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The final project last week was a major garage clean-up. For the past few weeks we have not been able to park either of our cars inside. This is because we moved Erin back from her apartment in Windsor. All her stuff and the remainder of treasure from Wendy’s Mom’s place last fall added up to an eyesore garage. Since I want to bring my old Oldsmobile back from Sarnia to go to the Plunkett mansion in June, this project was elevated to priority one status. To solve the problem, we had to either rent storage space, build a shed, or maximize the garage. I chose the latter after visiting Lover’s (a surplus office equipment warehouse here in town) Thursday morning they delivered 40 new looking shelves and 26 uprights with a few hundred nuts and bolts. The results were nothing less than spectacular. Cars fit in garage – mission accomplished.
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