16.11.09

The Boston Tree

Photo of Boston Tree Snacherooed from those guys stamped on the Picture... -B

So The Boston Christmas Tree is on it's way. I took a ride over on Saturday because I had conflicting newspaper reports as to when this was going to happen and, well, you know my track record with dates on this project.

Sure enough they had changed the sign and bumped the tree cutting up a day. Good thing I was reading the paper at the physio office while I was getting my electro shock therapy. So I drove the Portland over in the back of the truck to Hubbards which is outside of Fox Point, where the tree is coming from.

So I go early I had remembered from talking to Floyd and Elaine Shatford, that things were going to start about 9:30 am. with the tree coming down at 10:30 am. I like to be early. I unload the Portland and coast down to the Trellis Cafe in Hubbards and grab a coffee. If ever in Hubbards you have to take in the Trellis Cafe. It is officially part of the 50k Loop. Then off I go.

Now you have to remember It's November 16th. In Canada. Here is a pick of previous Boston Tree cuttings.



Notice that they look cold, and that the white on the ground is not a backdrop. I awoke to 12°c weather, dead calm and partially cloudy skies. A perfect day to drop a big tree.

So I was feeling so good with my shoulder feeling better now I got my coffee to go. I'm cruising on down through Hubbards with next to no traffic and the roads a bit damp with all the fog we had from the night before. It led to this sight of St. Margaret's Bay from Hubbard's Cove with what we like to call a soft morning.



It started me thinking about a lot of things. About my Grandmother (Nana) who survived that terrible explosion. And her son, my father. Who to make a long story short, during my junior racing days had divorced from my my mom and lived in a little cottage on the Fox Point Road. I had to ride by it and you'll have to excuse the photography into the sun, but just past the drive way to this now big house on the water, and the tree, is a small flat spot with a blue wooden double swing.

That's where my Dad's place used to sit. He's gone also.



So down the road I go having a great time and drinking my coffee. I get to the shoreline and the surf is coming in, big for a calm day, so the crab fisherman out offshore must be cursing.



So it's up this hill to the Boston Tree.



So I get to the top of the hill where the tree is scope it out and set up shop. Here I have to have my say on Halifax Explosion Survivors...

Nana was a survivor. She went through a lot to say the least. We as family really didn't know a lot about it because they didn't talk a lot about it They would say things like well, it was wartime. And we made the best of it. I learned this about them.

They were people that were glad to be alive. That lived life in the present. The survivors, most of them, lived to be old because of this lifestyle. They were very humble people. I think there are two left.

We as family have taken the same stance when it comes to the Halifax Explosion Remembrance or things like this. Others that don't really know have grabbed a hold and have run with it not really understanding or like the Town Cryer with a bell to ring but with no feeling as to why they are ringing it but just reading off a scroll.

We who do just sit back and watch. So...

I get there, pick my spot and there is the tree. Notice where I am, across the road and out of the way.



First to arrive, the boom truck.



Then the first of the many busloads of children from the local schools.



Next to be trotting across Floyd and Elaine's lawn is the Town Cryer. 1800's version of a Blogger.



Things were starting to warm up. I had a ringside seat. Or so I thought. I have to tell you folks from around the world. We here in Canada are going through some though times when it comes to the free market and television. Well, I'm not personally, but the talking heads, and preened and plucked are.

It so happens that when I turn on Global TV, I always come across a commercial telling me just how important they are to me as a local, and to make my voice heard. Or they are going to be wiped out.

So I'm leaning on the Portland on the piece of ground I've had staked out before anyone when I almost get my feet run over by who I'm now going to call Ms. Global.



She's the camera woman/girl/? for Global. Not only did she near mow me down off my squatted spot ruining my view, but rounds the vehicle, whips the back up, takes a look through me. Then walks across the road in front of a truck who is going slow enough to stop for her.

It's great being an observer...

By now traffic has picked up. They had told me there was going to be traffic control and of coarse it would be Canada's finest... The RCMP. They have pulled out all the stops.

The first guy gets in there and scopes out the scene, then deployed the others and they get the traffic under control in no time flat. But then, Holy SheepShit. They start to surprise me...

First they come out with a Mascot to entertain the schoolchildren which are arriving by the busloads.



Now this is where I may have gotten myself in a little bit of trouble with the law. The only way I was absolutely sure as to which one was the mascot as that I had met the other mountie , due to a theft on the property before. Come on... give me a break look at this... she's a pretty big woman. Plus the mascot was in it's Red Surge.



Then I had a problem identifying the exact nature as to the species of the creature the mascot was...



Now I'm in trouble. Why? because I wasn't far off traffic control left. Which would be the Mountie to the left of me. So I say...

Here is where you have to think like a Canadian. If it's brown, and it's Canadian and it's sort of waddling around, then you think, Beaver...

I was thrown off between it and it's helper. Not only that, I'm not sure if it's a Beaver or a Groundhog/Gopher. So I'm thinking family genus, when I make my mistake and say to the Mountie to the left...

What kind of Rodent is your mascot supposed to be? Reply. That would be our friend... Safety Bear... Yikes.

Now I've been a Canuck all my life. I certainly know the difference between a rodent and a bear. But not today.

Change feet.

Then they bring out the Boy in Scarlet...



Of course it being Nova Scotia, Mountie on the left gives me the heads up because what else would you drag through this show but a load of lobster traps.



First they had to get all the school kids around and get a guy I've been interviewed by before, Bruce Nunn, that somehow has written a kid's book about this... see what I mean...



You have to give it to him. He's being creative while trying to put supper on the table. He told the story to the kids while we waited.. The kids loved it. God bless the children.

Now to the tree... This could get long.

They moved everyone back after the politico's stopped blabbing...

...and brought the boom truck in, hooked up and cinched up tight, because the big thing is to not damage the tree...



Then the instructor of forestry at the Lunenburg campus Of the Nova Scotia Community College went to cutting...

After this I ran out of card on my camera. So I had to quickly delete some video to get a picture of the tree being laid down.



I didn't have time to stick around to take a pick of it going on the flatbed, but this is what it looked like last year. Same truck this year same tag.



So there you have it. The Boston Christmas Tree Report. Enjoy the tree Boston.

Merry Christmas Nana, I miss you.

-B

13.11.09

Wait for the Signs

It's been quite the week. Considering that just a few short weeks ago after I had done a compaction test on the pavement with my shoulder and separated it just a week before cyclocross season, things looked grim. To top it off just a week ago it was snowing here, I figured that that was it and pulled out the road bike and set it up on the trainer.

And then the tables turned. I spent a great long weekend with daughter #1 who came back from Alberta for a visit. You may remember me going out there in the spring to visit, and she brought with her the newly minted granddaughter #3 to the loop.

That perked me up quite a bit. Then the weather turned real nice. I mean shirt sleeve nice. I was pulling out of the driveway at work headed home for lunch when passing across the driveway was a guy my age on, of all things, a new Portland. I could see farther down the hill a younger woman on a a bike. I pull out.

I pull up beside him and power down the passenger window on the truck and you could see he was preparing for the abuse. But I come out with, hey how do you like the Portland? I've got one too! And he replies, Love it. and I say,have a great ride and pull away...

That did it. I went home with nothing really pressing changed up unhooked the Portland and pumped up the tires. I hooked up with them at Bayswater Beach. He was a guy my age out with his daughter for a ride on a nice day. Semi-retired. We rode and yaked. Became great friends and exchanged names and will most likely hook up to ride the loop more often.

The shoulder felt great, it was stiff but no pain. I went to physio that afternoon and told this to my guy Adam who is a cross country ski guy so he knows shoulders. He was impressed.

But I get ahead of myself. Back to the bike ride. On the way back home after I turned and left my new friends, I spied the Dept. Of Highways truck at Bayswater Beach.

It's the road foreman and he's by himself and not a soul around. Here is my chance... time to gripe about my sign. The poor bastard...

I was nice.



You see that pile of wood covered in seaweed down over that bank in the water. Well, it goes up and down with the tide and it has been doing so for the last three years. What it is supposed to be doing is give you the directions to this perplexing piece of intersection.



The sign was knocked down by a snow plow three years ago which happens everywhere. The foreman comes around in the spring and takes note and they put the signs back up... makes work. All part of winter here. Well not this sign. It didn't get put back up.

I live to the right of that intersection. That's the famous, should I go left or should I go right intersection, when I go for a ride. Which means the hills are way more torturous if you turn to the left from my house.

Anyways, you don't know how many times I've found confused cagers (people in cars for you non cyclists) siting there wondering which way to go. If I only charged five bucks for every time I gave directions I'd be riding a new Cevelo.

You see for the times I wasn't there I think they came up with a mathematical formulae.

Take the intersection...



Go back to the other road and subtract the way you've just come from...



Factor in where those other people go when they come out from where they live...



Get back in the car. Go back up the road from where you came at least three miles to the look-off where it's easy to turn around. Come back curse and swear and then finally give in when your wife says, why don't you look at a map you cheap bastard, I told you buy the GPS but NO.... , there was no way you could get lost in a teeny tiny place like Nova Scotia you say.

That's the formulae.

So I pull up next to the road foreman to have a chat.

Welcome to Nova Scotia folks. It's all about politics. It seems like all of my calling and talking and complaining has just plain hit at the wrong time. The road foreman, God bless him, turned out to be great guy. He was on beaver patrol... no kidding. Beavers that block up culverts and flood out roads. He has one woman that has a yard stick in her ditch and when it gets to a certain height she calls him... like I said the poor bastard...

He looked at me and said, you know I can retire any day I want... but I like my job most days. I have no man power. They (the government) have cut back my budget so much I have no one to do the work. I've had your sign in my shop for two years.

I hung my head.

Two days later...



There's my sign. Mr. Road Foreman, I take my cycling helmet off to you. You've just made the 50k loop that little much better.

Thanks,

-B

06.11.09

Remembrance Day Weekend

It's not really a long weekend in Canada with Remembrance Day falling on Wednesday this year. The Canadian Legion would like us to remember by asking us to try and turn it into a week of Remembrance.

I would say take a look at what our Great Grandfathers and Grandfathers had to do in the mud to preserve our freedom from tyrants...



So that we can go out on any Sunday in the late fall in the mud and have this kind of fun...



Thank you all for your sacrifices.

-B

05.11.09

I Needed That

Thanks Jim, I need that.

-B