Thursday - wind from the south-west. My expectations were pretty high for good waves but as I paddled out in bathtub chop around the harbour, I started to wonder. I could see Stringer way out in the distance, coming towards me and we passed when I was about 2km out. As he went by, he yelled "keep going another 2km - it gets a lot better". He was right.

Friday, more of the same. I noticed a wedding party having photos taken in Memorial Park. 4:30pm seems so early for a weekday wedding but I guess this is what couples are forced into by the overloaded wedding industry.
The police were out in their zodiac and they waved as they headed towards the harbour, intent on chasing down one of the fishing boats. I had some fun in the waves and after about 10 km, headed in. I could see the marine unit pulled up along the pier wall, surround by people. There were no boats around - what were they doing? I could make out the wedding party I'd seen earlier. Those bass-turds, I thought, they're giving them grief for taking photos without a permit...but no, as I got closer it became apparent that they were having their photos taken with the wedding party. The groomsmen were posed in the zodiac as I went by. Ah, such nice guys!

Saturday morning and the lake was like glass. I haven't done a steady paddle for a few days so did 14 km. On my way back in, I passed a couple groups in OC-4s. One of them was having serious steering issues but as I changed my trajectory to avoid them, they'd adjust theirs to match mine. I recognized a couple of dbers in the boat but not the steersman who insisted I admire their new OC-4. I was just like yeah, nice boat and kept paddling. Still don't know if he was just that bad at steering or if he confused me for one of their members.

After that I packed up the car and headed to Sutton where I spent a fantastic day with a friend.

Sunday. Kind of overcast and not nice. Marisha, Karen and I were trying to get together but Karen couldn't work it out. Marisha and I decided to go to Sherway instead. Four hours and a couple hundred dollars later and I was home with some new shorts. While we'd been in the mall/bunker, the weather had turned beautiful! I was going to go for a paddle but I didn't have my gear with me and it was already 6:30. I convinced myself that it would be too late by the time I ate something and ended up staying in watching the season one finale of True Blood.

Oh yeah, because of the recent implementation of the law to ban talking on a cell-phone while driving, there's been a lot of media focus on the dangers of texting while driving. Here's a situation where a text message diverted a potential tragedy (neither of us was driving at the time but that's beside the point).
On Saturday, I texted Marisha to find out if she'd heard back from Karen about getting together on Sunday. She texted back that she had not but was up for brunch. We decided to talk in the morning. The next day, she told me that if I hadn't texted, the house she was in may very well have gone up in flames.
Here's how it happened. She and Carmen had gone to some friends' for a bbq. She'd dropped her purse in the kitchen and they were sitting outside talking when she heard the text message beep of her phone. Apologizing for not turning it off, she went into the kitchen where she responded to my text.
"Guys", she said, "something's burning in the kitchen."
The host responded that the bbq was right outside the kitchen window and she was just smelling the smoke coming through the open window.
"No", she insisted, "this is definitely not food and it's really burning."
They couldn't see any smoke but as they moved around the kitchen, the smell got stronger. Suddenly the frame of a painting propped on top of some cupboards burst into flames. They had recently put the picture up there to see how it looked, directly under some halogen lights. They put out the fire and moved it away from the lights, exclaiming they had to invite the person who texted her over for dinner sometime. I feel completely removed from any responsibility (but will take the dinner invitation!).