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A Trip To Wine Country

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My friends and I have taken wine tours to some of the wonderful wineries here on Vancouver Island in the past, and we will do that again some day. But we recently decided to try the Okanagan, specifically Oliver B.C., for a change.

Wine not?

After some months of planning, we headed out in late September for a 5 day trip to the interior. We initially had some concerns about ongoing forest fires on our route, especially around Hope and Manning Park.

As we travelled though these areas, it was quite sobering to watch the helicopters fly back and forth with their buckets of water suspended below. And the smell of smoke was definitely in the air when we got out to stretch our legs a couple of times along the way.

I remember at one point looking far up on the side of a mountain from the car window and actually being able to see flames. Yikes.

Once we got past the smoke and fires, the drive through the southern interior was beautiful as always. The slow change in geography between the dark, green forests of the coast, and the dry grass and blue/grey sagebrush of the Okanagan, is something I always enjoy.

We stayed at a guest house on the outskirts of the town of Oliver, run by an elderly couple . It used to be a bed and breakfast until, as the woman told us, she decided she was tired of making breakfast all the time.

As they gave us an initial tour of the unit, which was more or less stuck in the 1980s décor-wise, they pointed out a couple of things:

You had to hold the toilet handle down until it completely flushed. Because otherwise, it wouldn’t.

The temperature was kept low at night because the lady of the house liked it cool. Her husband suggested we might need blankets in the evenings.

Then he looked us over and decided only one of us was skinny enough to require a blanket.

Only one of us was skinny enough. We’re still laughing about that one…

But in spite of a few other idiosyncrasies in the place, it was perfect for us.

The large property had chickens and grape vines, lots of fruit trees and a huge vegetable garden. We were given fresh eggs and invited to pick our own grapes and plums, as much as we wanted.

The morning sun came up behind a ridge of mountains behind the unit, and we could watch it rise as we sat with our morning coffee on a little deck. For the entire time we were there, the weather was perfect.

We booked two winery tours; the first one on a private mini bus, and the second one was something a little different: an e-bike tour.

On the mini bus tour, we had a wonderful driver and tour guide who was originally from Portugal, and who knew everything about wineries and wine making. It was an ideal introduction to the area, and definitely an education.

We travelled to four wineries that day and later decided that four was too much. The first couple of places gave us at least 6 or 7 wines to taste. Even if you only take one sip of each, you begin to lose your ability to distinguish them after awhile.

Well, that’s the story I’m sticking to anyway.

When it came to the e-bike tour, I have to admit I was pretty nervous in anticipation of it. I got on my old bike at home a few times before the trip, just so I could remember what it felt like.

You know the expression “it’s just like riding a bike”? We might have to reassess that simile.

Our e-bike tour guides for the day were another couple, probably in their 50’s. They were careful to get our measurements beforehand so the bikes were a good fit, and gave us lots of instruction as to how to use them.

We practiced riding in the parking lot before we started off in earnest our our wine tour. The husband took the lead while his wife took up the rear.

Shifting gears and e-gears took some getting used to, but I quickly decided the “e” part helped a lot.

We went a little faster than my liking and worked hard at keeping up with each other. But we took plenty of breaks and, of course, spent considerable time wine tasting at 3 different wineries this time.

It was another perfect day and a wonderful trip.

Wineries everywhere around the world are facing a changing climate these days, and the Okanagan is no exception. Rainfall patterns are different, and grapes are very susceptible to temperature changes. We heard plenty of stories along the way.

In light of these changes, wineries are learning to adapt. As am I.

So if you see a wobbly older woman on her new (used) e-bike, making her way home from the grocery store, watch out for me, eh?

I’m trying to get skinnier.

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The Day I Met The Queen. Kind of.

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Like many others, I was not surprised, but still a little shocked when Queen Elizabeth II recently passed away. We knew she had been suffering from various maladies for some time. And, of course, she was 96 years old.

But watching her welcoming the new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss at Balmoral, I thought the Queen still looked pretty well. I did remember wondering if this would be the last Prime Minister of her reign.

Then, only two days later, Queen Elizabeth II was gone.

Oddly enough, I had been watching a documentary series on her life in the days leading up to that. I admired her dedication and commitment, and certainly her endurance. Actually, I find the history of the British monarchy rather fascinating.

My father, however, had no use for them.

I remember when Charles and Diana arrived in Victoria after the opening ceremonies of Expo ’86. My Dad was visiting us at the time.

I packed my baby daughter in the car and and convinced Dad to come with us down to an area where I knew the Royal entourage would pass by on their way from the airport. I parked the car and carried my daughter down to the street corner to watch, but my father refused to get out of the car.

He would have nothing to do with them.

His Royal resentment stemmed from his younger days, back in time when Remittance men were sent from Britain to somewhere else in the Empire, usually Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

A Remittance man was, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, “a term once widely used, especially in the West before WWI, for an immigrant living in Canada on funds remitted by his family in England, usually to ensure that he would not return home and become a source of embarrassment.”

These guys were the black sheep, trouble makers, the male failures whose rich families wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Sometimes the poor little rich boys redeemed themselves in the countries they were sent to. Sometimes not.

My father had mentioned the history of the Remittance men to me several times as I was growing up. He hated the fact that Canada was a dumping ground for the British elite’s undesirables, and he blamed the British monarchy.

And let’s face it, the British Royals have a long and very complicated history.

But I was oblivious to all of this in 2002 when I decided to watch the parade of cars carrying the Queen and Prince Phillip as they visited Victoria during her Golden Jubilee.

I drove to Blanshard Street near Hillside and parked. I saw a group of people standing along the sidewalk, so I joined them and waited. There were maybe 20 or 30 of us.

Police motorcycles rolled up to stop traffic along the intersection, so we knew the motorcade was coming.

And then we saw it. The Queen’s car apparently spotted our little group, so they drove up and stopped right in front of us. The Queen was in the back seat, her window rolled down, but I couldn’t quite see her face.

There was only stillness.

The silence made me feel awkward. Everyone just stood there quietly, and the Queen simply sat. I wanted to be welcoming and share my enthusiasm for her visit.

So it was with the best of intentions that I, in my most Monty Python-esque voice, called out “Helllooooo!”

I had no idea about protocol. You’re not supposed to speak to the Queen until she speaks first.

Doh.

The car pulled away and that was that.

I’m sure Queen Elizabeth had to endure many similarly awkward moments over the years, and the one I created would be soon forgotten by her.

But not by me. I’ll never forget the day I met the Queen. Kind of.

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Don’t Read Twitter, Read A Book

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My Dad, like many older children of the “Dirty 30’s”, never finished school and instead had to go and find work to help his family survive the Depression. But he was an intelligent person and driven to learn more about the world, so he did that through reading books and newspapers and anything else he could get his hands on at the time.

Reading was his education, especially when it came to world events and war history. He referred to historical events all the time as I was growing up.

I was not interested in history in the least, so I would simply roll my eyes at him.

When he passed away in 2013, he left quite a library of books behind. I gave family and friends a chance to take what they wanted, and then donated the rest to the Times Colonist Book Drive. I hung on to one or two of them for myself.

One book is titled “The Bitter Years” by Richard Petrow. My Dad referred to that book often, and for that reason I decided to keep it.

The book is about the German invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway during the Second World War. My family is Danish on both sides, and my mother lived in Denmark during the German occupation.

About 2 or 3 weeks ago, I decided that maybe I should start reading it myself. Considering the war that is going on right now in the Ukraine, and potential war elsewhere in the world, I thought the topic was more relevant than ever.

The book is very detailed and sometimes overwhelming, but I am dedicated to finishing it and maybe learning a few things along the way. Actually, I’ve learned a lot already.

Reading a book takes time, and even patience. And in this world of tweets and tik toks, we’ve become conditioned to getting it all said and done in 280 characters or less.

Not only that, but we often believe what we read in a tweet without making the effort of finding out for sure if it is true.

Maybe we’ll even re-tweet it. I’m ashamed to say that I have done that myself.

As we know, social media has lead to all sorts of misinformation and misunderstandings. How different the world would be if we actually had to educate ourselves about something before re-tweeting it!

I know. That’s not going to happen.

When the internet and Google and Twitter came to be, I was worried about public libraries. What would happen to them?

I worked in a public library for several years and learned so much from that experience.

During that time a lot of people relied on libraries for information, from students, to researchers, to writers. Even teachers. Librarians would be answering questions on the phone or in person day and night.

There were all kinds of calls. Some of them interesting. Some, not so much.

On a Friday or Saturday night, you might get a call from a couple of guys at the bar who’d been arguing over who the first Major League Baseball team was.

Whatever the question and wherever it came from, librarians were trained to find the correct answer.

For a period of time I worked on the switchboard at the library, so my job was to direct questions to the appropriate department. One day I got a call from someone who wanted to know how to waterproof a zipper.

How to waterproof a zipper. I really had to think about where to direct that question. So, I thought, probably not the Sociology Department. Not Language and Literature. Ah! The Science and Technology department. That was it! I put the call through.

These days we Google everything, but Google isn’t university trained like a librarian is.

The good news is that libraries have changed and adapted to modern technology, and have remained very relevant and popular.

There is no excuse to not read a book about something and educate yourself. With a library card, you can also borrow e-books so you don’t even have to go there.

And they have plenty of audio books too. So you don’t even have to read.

And me, when I’m not focusing on my history book, I am into cozy mysteries. But that’s for a whole ‘nother chapter.

Oh, and by the way, the first MLB team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

I Googled it.

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We Are Stardust – Following The James Webb Telescope

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I sat on the swing set with my best friend Shirley, staring out at the blue, blue sky on a summer day many years ago. We wondered about the stars and the sun and how certain words in our vocabulary came to be. That was the nature of our young friendship – pondering the mysteries of the universe.

Not long after, on July 20th, 1969, I was in Shirley’s living room watching the blurred black and white TV images of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon. “One small step for man…” he began. It was wonderous.

We went outside and tried to find the moon in the day time sky, but couldn’t. Still, we somehow understood that we’d never look at it exactly the same way again, because now we knew human beings had been there. It was forever changed.

I thought about that the other day when I saw the first pictures coming in from the James Webb Telescope on the NASA website. Look how far we’ve come, I thought.

I don’t like saying the word “awesome” too much because it’s overused these days. But those pictures were definitely awesome.

That the James Webb Telescope was even able to blast off was, in itself, a huge feat. Over the years it was being built, there were many cost and scheduling issues. Lots of little things went wrong along the way, and it almost got cancelled completely.

And just imagine the pressure there was to make sure the telescope was as perfect as they could get it before it launched. Because once it was way out there in space, there was no going back.

When it finally left the earth on December 25th, 2021, more than $10 Billion had been spent. And a lot of people were pretty nervous.

Would it get to where it was supposed to go? Would it unfold properly? Would it work at all?

As we saw the other day, it exceeded expectations.

Stephan’s Quintet – Many Million Light Years Away

All of the pictures were spectacular and mesmerizing, but the one that struck me most was Stephan’s Quintet, seen above. First of all, I didn’t realize it, but Stephan’s Quintet is something I’ve seen many times before.

A couple of minutes into the 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life”, there is a scene where the angels are praying for George Bailey. The angels are represented by an animation of Stephan’s Quintet, having a conversation.

I never knew that that.

The Carina Nebula photo is also stunning, with sparkling, golden cloud dusts beneath millions of twinkling stars.

The most amazing, mind boggling thing to me is the fact that in those photos, we are looking far into the past. In some cases, we are looking back many millions of light years.

Light years. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that concept.

The telescope’s main mission will last 5 to 10 years, but its expected lifespan will be up to 20 years, similar to the Hubble telescope. Just imagine what scientists, and the rest of us, will learn from it by then.

Maybe we’ll discover all kinds of new things, including ways to help ourselves, and, especially, our tiny blue planet.

As Joni Mitchell sang:

We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to find our way back to the garden.

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COVID Is Still Out There

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Like many others, I’ve spent the last two and a half years diligently washing my hands, wearing masks, and trying to avoid larger crowds and risky situations. And I’ll continue to do so as long as this virus keeps circling the planet.

Now the experts tell us another wave is coming and may already have started. No matter how fed up we are with this, it isn’t going to go away any time soon.

To be honest, I was pretty smug about my success at keeping COVID at bay. Until…

About a week after he retired, my husband went on a trip to Palm Springs with a couple of other family members. It was a way to rest up, soak in the pool, and re-imagine what his life was going to look like.

He came home the Friday before Father’s Day, and so on the Sunday our adult daughters dropped by for a family barbeque.

That evening before bed, he started to feel a bit of a scratchy throat.

Oh, oh.

He took a COVID test just in case, and it came out negative. By the next morning, however, it was showing a faint positive.

Since we have a relatively big house, I immediately moved my things to the upper floor in a desperate attempt to reduce my exposure and stave off the virus. I still had two weeks of work left before I retired from teaching guitar, and I was not going to let my students down.

I did send them all emails to let them know our situation, and a number of them opted not to come for their lesson that first week. But a couple of days after my husband got it, three of us, my daughter, her boyfriend and I, started feeling the first symptoms.

Interestingly, my other daughter and the two family members who went with my husband to Palm Springs, didn’t get it.

I spent most of the last two weeks of my teaching career in bed, sick as a dog.

Ours was not the mild form of the virus by any means. We had fevers and body aches, headaches, brain fog, loss of appetite, loss of taste and smell, sore throats, stuffed heads….you name it. It was nasty.

It came in waves. One set of symptoms would start to peter off and then other symptoms began. It seemed never ending.

And then, over the next couple of weeks, the symptoms started to ease and we all finally tested negative.

Now here I am on my first “official” week of retirement, rid of this rotten virus for good. I hope.

The thing is, the experts tell us we could still become re-infected with either another variant or the same one again. Not only that, but it’s possible that the next infection could deliver even worse symptoms. I don’t want to hear it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just get rid of the darn thing and never have to suffer through it again? Nope. It doesn’t work that way.

It keeps mutating and variating and having its way with us. The most we can do is get vaccinated and boosted in order to keep it from being even more serious.

I’ll be first in line for the next booster.

Having now experienced COVID, I’ve become more acutely aware of protecting myself and others from it. If I was starting to be just a little complacent about this virus before, this bout has now commanded my complete attention.

I also feel a deep sense of gratitude now. First and foremost, I’m grateful that my family are all well again.

I’m also very grateful for the many experts who have put their heads together to find ways to lesson the impact of this virus. I will continue to follow their guidance because I know my experience could have been so much worse.

And last but not least, I’m deeply grateful to be able to sit out on my back deck with a full heart and finally start enjoying my retirement!