2 Engineers Retired

Panoramic shot of Old Town from the Basilica The bucket list.   Always lurking there in the back of your mind, with a “someday” attached to it.   Now my bucket list does not include any airplane (or even bungie) jumps but it does have places in the world that I would like to see.  Someday ... Well this year an amazing bucket list item happened for me.  I (along with a friend) took a trip to the Galapagos.  In my mind the Galapagos and Africa are the two stand out animal destinations in the world.  Africa for mammals (and more) and Galapagos for reptiles and birds. To get there one must first get to Ecuador.  In our case we went via Miami and from Miami I traveled on to Quito.  (My friend opted for Guayaquil).  Quito is the capital of Ecuador and has the distinction of being the second highest capital in the world at 9350 ft above sea level (assuming you count La Paz as Bolivia’s capital – if you go with ...

Christmas decorations in the halls of Parliment Here we are.  In Ottawa.  For the winter.  For a very, very cold winter as it turns out. After last year in sunny Spain the cold is particularly, well, noticeable… We decided that Ottawa would be our location of choice during the winter of 2017/2018 because this is the last year of our son’s university education (we think) and it seemed fitting to stay in country, and close enough.  We managed to get the exact same apartment this time as we did 2 years ago which is terrific.  We know where everything is and could jump right into life in our capital. Ottawa is a very beautiful city with wonderful government buildings, the Rideau canal and our beloved, near-by Byward market area.  We even managed a visitor right off the bat since a mutual friend had an important birthday.  As the seat of operations for the country it can be interesting to do some activities that relate to the government...

Ah those various tasks of fall – particularly those of fall when you live at the lake – such as taking in the boat and the dock.  Our boat is pretty basic.   Unbelievably basic.   So basic in fact that there are no seats except for whoever is driving, and even that is more of a box covered with carpeting.  For the rest of us it is lawn chairs on the aluminum checker plate deck.  Now this baby has served us well – but fancy it ain’t. This year we also had a bit of an oops (having a few of those this year apparently).  There was an amazing wind storm when I was here alone for a few days and after things settled down I didn’t think to check on the boat.  It is a pontoon boat, so what can go wrong?   Well apparently it can sink  … Turns out one of the mooring lines undid (somehow) and the boat twisted around with the result that one pontoon was rubbing on the sand bottom (it is very shallow where we keep th...

So – last we left things we had filled 2 ½ racks of a needed 5 racks for a years worth of wood fuel.  This was done with wood that we had already felled and all we had to do was cut it to length and split it.  Easy-Peasy. However  - 2 ½ racks of wood is not enough to keep us warm and cozy for a heating season.  We need about double that. So – we need to take down a tree (or a couple) There has been a tree kind of looming over the south east side of the house that truly we should have taken down before we built.  It sort of leans towards the building in one of those ways that seem a tad threatening.  So – we identified the first victim of our search for new fuel. (Mostly we don’t want to take trees from too close to our home.  I love the sight of these trees, and really don’t want to live in an open area here.  It just isn’t the point.) Now this beauty was close enough that we were kind of nervous taking it down....

Early autumn shot, complete with pooch Hi Everyone Well its that time of year again.  Finally the weather is cool-ish but not rainy.   And the bugs are gone  (Yay ! there are no more bugs !)   This was a terrible year for mosquitoes – I suspect that with all the rain the little XYZs just kept giving birth to a new crop.  But now they are gone !! So – what is the perfect cool bug free activity?  Cutting and stacking wood of course. We have a wood stove here for our heat.  And the heat it produces is lovely – keeping us very cozy.  Last year in the fall we insulated under the cottage and now our slate floor acts as a big heat sink and stays a nice warmish temperature, not quite like under floor heating but much better than it used to be.  In any case, to heat a cottage with a wood stove one needs – well, wood.  And a fair bit of it. We have quite a big property so access to wood ...

Most of you know that our cottage is kind of old/new. Our cottage in all its soon to be improved glory It was originally built in the 70s in the Muskoka area of Ontario.  It is a Panabode – which is a type of red cedar building from British Columbia that is produced from shaped cedar logs.  The joints between the logs are double tongue and groove and the whole thing stacks together like Lego (or apparently like Lincoln logs which I have never seen).  It is quite a cool concept – but notoriously difficult to add on to.  The previous owners of our cottage wanted something larger, and instead of razing the old place they disassembled it and put it up for sale on Kijiji. Which is where we found it – a disassembled Panabode – essentially a pile of used wood. So we bought it, transported it to our site and rebuilt it.  (Okay – it was a bit more complicated than that).  In any case the final look was a cottage that looked like it had always been t...

Most of you probably know that Bob has a major car hobby.   Our garage is twice the size of the cottage – which apparently results in sighs from other car obsessed people (not me I’m afraid ….). One part of this hobby is a 1984 Porsche 911  mostly the shape and colour that one pictures if you say the word Porsche.  Oddly, as an older car, it is more a time pit rather than a money pit.  The depreciation is long over and the internet has allowed part replacement to be easier and cheaper than ever. Over the 15 years it has been in the garage, Bob has had it almost totally apart – engine rebuild, replaced suspension, etc. While in the past Bob raced and did some other competitive things,  for the past couple of decades he has focused on track events., which are non-competitive events held at racetracks to provide an opportunity to drive fast in a controlled environment.  He takes the 911 to Porsche Club events, where he is an instructor, coac...