Jan 16 - five days

It's hard to believe that we've been here for five days. December 19 & 20 + January 14, 15 & 16 -- five days in total when I did a quick review of what I needed to backup on the computer before shutting down. There were a few days driving in between ... but I used the laptop on the road.

We had two cold ones and three warm ones. It looks like it might be just barely below freezing this morning but otherwise it's been pretty warm. I was outside doing stuff in a short-sleeved t-shirt yesterday.

I had some fun yesterday. I decided to change the winter tires for summer early in the day since the temperature wasn't going to change. Had I finished in reasonable time, I'd have gone into town ... but I screwed up and that small job became a big one.

The Borbett rims that I have for the snow tires have a tamper-proof torx head bolt that holds the hub cap in place. These are the inexpensive rims. The BMW rims have no such feature. Go figure. Anyway, I used the wrong sized bit and stripped it. My excuse is that the bigger bit didn't fit due to debris (road crap) in the bolt and when I realized my error -- pointed out by Bob Troup who was there providing advice -- it was too late. I ended up having to drill the bolt out. I'll figure out in the Spring whether I can get the partial bolt out of the rim or whether I have to take it to someone who can extract it. There is nothing substantial projecting at this point to grab hold of.

So ... my tire changing took a couple of hours. When I'd finished that and came back down to the house, I discovered that two of my fishing rig flags were up ! The first was just an active minnow, but on the second I had a pike. Just a little guy (or gal), I let it go. Later in the day though, I did catch a keeper. Bob Troup, in the meantime, took most of my excess minnows but I had a few at the end of the day that I let go into the lake. Freedom !

Most of the packing is complete and some stuff is in the car. The driveway is quite slippery so the car is parked up at the barn. I'll have a half-dozen trips up there with the rest of our stuff a little later ... included two trips with cases of wine. Those will be at the last minute. The cooler is another heavy load. Oh well.

It was time for dinner. Jim picked us up at 5:30; Troups were already at Jakes when we got there. We were in no hurry but it was almost 9pm by the time we left Jakes. Jake came to our table around 8 pm with a bottle of wine; later opening another couple of bottles of wine; Bob Troup brought a bottle of wine out of his truck; it sounds like a lot of wine, doesn't it ? One of Jake's bottles was corked and we only made a dent in one of the bottles that Jake brought ... so in the end it boiled down to 2.5 bottles of wine among the five of us (Neither Jim nor Bonnie drink red wine).

Jake is quite the character. The initial conversation was about staking the snowmobile routes but it quickly turned raucous after Jake started telling some off colour jokes. My Dad knew Jake quite well. He would come into town more days than not and sit at the bar, have coffee and chat with anyone around, spending a couple of hours. When we lived in North Bay he frequented a restaurant there on the weekends.

I could see that Jim and Bonnie were getting impatient ... so to spark some action I said that I needed to use the restroom, which I did, causing Jim and Jake to move out of my way from the booth in which we were sitting and by the time I came back everyone was getting their coats on. Jakes normally closes at 8pm but of course that means that some customers are there afterwards ... I think that our waitress was happy to see us go. She'd been working since 11am.

Speaking of our waitress ... young, blond and ... well, you figure it out. I doubt if she'll be reading this blog. While we were all having good fun, she couldn't keep our orders straight. Three of us ordered the pickerel platter including fries ... mine came with a salad. "I ordered fries" ... "well you got a salad" ... "could I have some fries ?" ... you can picture this exchange. Jim wanted to order a half-dozen wings with his salad ... they're listed at $.49 each on the menu but $.59 on the "specials" board, $7.99 for ten in the menu. Huh ? Well, the $7.99 is explained ... tonight is wing night so they're cheaper tonight. $.59 on the board because he had to put up the price and hasn't reprinted the menu. Ok, this is a small town, we can live with that. So the exchange is as follows -- "I'd like six wings" ... "the wings come as five or ten" ... ?? so why show a price that is per wing ? Well, we had fun with Jake on that score and we kept on coming back to -- Jim, do you want that one more wing ??

It was a fun night. I went to bed soon after getting back home; I don't know what time Sandy finished up. Her preference is to do things the night before ... I did my computer backup etc. this morning. She'll get up around 7am and be ready shortly after 8am; I'll start draining the water etc. at that point having already loaded the car ... and we'll hit the road.

On the way to Oakville we'll stop at Costco in Barrie to pickup some things; another grocery store somewhere to pickup cereal for Sandy; Sears to return the sewing machine that we bought Meagan for Christmas (it was exchanged for the next model up, covering Christmas and her birthday). David, Kim and Meagan head for Florida shortly ... we'll see them in a few days.

Whew. It will be good to sit still for a while in Florida.

Onward ... southward ... warmward ... !