Jul 16 - visiting and stuff

Mid afternoon we headed out, stopping at the dump with a load, in Loring at the Post Office and then met up with Anne who picked us up at the Le Grou's Lake landing.  Maurice and Anne's Paul were in town, unbeknownst to us, at Home Hardware, so we went past them.  They returned shortly after us.

There were 7 of us for dinner -- the two of us, my Aunt Ruth, Anne and her Paul, who had been up all week along with Christine and Maurice, who drove up from Toronto that morning.   We always have to clarify which Paul since there are Paul Thompson, my cousin, Anne's Paul and Christine's son Paul.  Three different surnames would also make the situation clearer.  

After dinner and before dessert, Maurice and Anne took us for a boat ride, showing us where a mini tornado had come through a while ago and then a long cruise on the lake.  The lake is bigger than I'd realized.  I'll have to take a look at it on Google Maps, to orient myself to that tour.  Much of the lake is water access only cottages and many, many are without power -- big places too.

We headed back to the landing in twilight.

Abby was actually looking kind of spiffy, getting herself around quite well.  Perhaps all of the anti's are helping.

Earlier in the day I did some weed-whacking with the DR and Stihl.  Before that, I took the Bayliner into Mike in Port Loring, who was expecting it ... I had been worried that he might have forgotten about this inbound project, but no.  I told him that I wanted him to replace the steering cable at some point and he siad that he could get one in overnight, if I wanted him to do that ... ok, go for it !  I also told him that I'd bring the 9.9 Johnson into him at some point so that he could do a carb job on it too.  It would be nice to have that one running.

Sandy was telling me that Lauren wants to learn to drive the boat.  If that's approved by Stef and Aaron, I'll get her organized to do the online test and get out there with her.

The Le Grou's Lake Thompsons have a new boat, replacing the one that my uncle had bought and had served them for so many years.  Like my Dad's boat, the flooring had finally given way, rotting.  They should make these things with artificial wood and they'd live forever.

Anyway, they have the inboard/outboard equivalent to my 16' Bayliner and it has the wake board attachment overhead.  That's quite the thing, makes me wonder if one of those would fit on ours.  The other question would be if the boat would still fit in the boathouse ... but probably not.  One of these days I should replace the roof of the boathouse and make it higher.  An extra foot would make a huge difference.  A little higher would be fairly easy; a little wider wouldn't be easy to do but would make a huge difference in getting the Bayliner in and out.  My Dad poured a lot of concrete there so excavation and removal of the existing side walls would be a real problem !

Tomorrow in the wee hours I head to Concord (Vaughan) for a 300k ride that starts at 6am.  With any luck, I'll finish that up by 9pm and be home around midnight.  I did a bunch of bike maintenance on the True North yesterday (as opposed to the Litespeed), adjusting the rear derailleur and replacing the chain, in particular.  I found that the upper pulley on the RD wasn't spinning freely so I dismantled , cleaned and reassembled that.  I might decide to replace it before heading to France.  I've got two new ones in my parts bin.  

Next week I really should take that bike apart, watch a video and see if I can get it packed in its case.  If I cannot, I've got two options -- visit Hugh at True North to take a lesson or simply pack it in the big bike box ... which would cost me and defeats the purpose of getting the S&S couplers, so I don't want to do that.  I'll see if I can find a video.

Speaking of videos, I finished using Handbrake and now have 400gb's of movies.  Our movie collection is now portable, running on the Plex server.  Yes.

Onward ?