canoeing and reading
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
At 6:30 this morning, my friend Richard picked me up for a morning jaunt to Leslie Street Spit from Cherry Beach by canoe. It turned out that the waves were up a bit, with white caps by the time we returned. But it was worth the torture to my cycle-lifting-ravaged arms. The cormorant rookery is the largest on the Laurentian great lakes for the double-crested species according to wikipedia, and has been flooded due to the high waters on the lake. This gives the guano-poisoned, barkless, sun-bleached trees yet another fascinating aspect - they're standing out of water.
Also, with the bridge out of commission, Cell C is now open for the first time that I've ever seen, and we were able to enter. Richard was tinkering with his fish finder, and we would up confirming the concept that fish gather under the wind-ward side of a lake. The theory is that plankton drift on the surface water wherever the wind pushes them, and that the "forage" species follow them. Naturally, the predators (which we fish for) follow those. Aside from a few un-moving larger fish resting in pockets in the lake bed, we found that the majority of fish in the lake had indeed gathered in the area where the wind was blowing the surface water.
Then it was time to get home, so we once again tortured our arms getting across the more open water, and then home.
In the afternoon, we took the kids to a birthday party in the farthest reaches of the city. A place called Woodbine Center, a thirty-five kilometer trip to Rexdale. Mari kept commenting how it looked like a different city altogether. The kids were there to take rides in the "Fantasy" park that was as far as I could tell the only reason for going to the mall. You needed a $27 wrist band to accompany the kids, and I was only along to do the driving, so that left me to my own devices.
Just try to get some reading done in a shopping mall! I wasted two hours trying to find somewhere to concentrate but the modern mall experience makes this impossible. It was like a casino, where you're bombarded with sound no matter where you are. I eventually found a shady spot under a tree in the 30-32C weather, and read for about an hour. But, the kids reported having had a great time.
I fell asleep putting The Girl to bed at 20:30, then slept badly when I eventually did get to my own bed.
Three reasons to be thankful:
- Canoeing into Tommy Thompson park was well worth the effort.
- I learned that that thing about fish following the wind is probably true.
- I almost never have to go into shopping malls.