Prairie Dog Blog

 

 

Sunday at the lake.   Woke up this a.m. to the sounds of a loudspeaker announcing a 'classic car rally'.  Right down Centre Street, which as you can imagine is right through the centre of town.   Cars line up on either side of the street.  There was lots of chevies (chevvies?,Chevys?), mostly '56 & '57, a couple of Bricklins (Deloreans), GTO's, Chevelles, Cobras, an old '41 Mercury (didn't Gary have one of those?), a couple of MG's including a '37 MG Roadster.  I met a friend of mine there, he had his '57 Chevy there and it was real nice...... cherry red.  Ray B., whom I knew from the Magellan (Bristol) Aerospace (Rockets &Space plant),  retired the year after I did.  He was stressed out too, and had actually taken a stress leave before he decided that the job was really getting to him. I never did take stress leave, I decided to be stoic about it and have a heart attack instead.  So to save his own life (for that is what it comes down to) he retired early.   

 

We will stay at the lake until tomorrow, unless it starts raining cats and dogs, in which case we will bugger off because we don't need another dog and cats are too shifty and you don't know where they have been.  It's so hot out now that the dog is finding it hard to find a cool place, and she is panting away.  She really prefers the air-conditioned car and frankly so do I, but we have run out of places to drive to.  Yesterday we drove up old #9 north, we saw Camp Morton, River bend Trailer park and ended up in Hnasau (bless you!).  We were going to drive to Riverton but the road turned to gravel and that put an end to that.  Today we also drove out to the Gimli Airport.  They have a gliding club and a skydiving club and the air cadets still go there for camp.  The runways are still active.  I flew into Gimli once but I didn't hang around, I just landed and took off again.  The sports car club has car racing out there now.  Gimli is the airport where the 'Gimli Glider' landed.  A 727 jet, in around 1980 when they were converting to metric,  ran out of fuel over Thunder Bay and glided all the way to Gimli where he landed (glided to) safely.   All he did was collapse the front landing gear.   As I recall, the pilot got an award from the US but Air Canada suspended him, saying that as 'pilot in command' he was responsible.  (He signed off on the wrong amount of fuel, due to a mix-up in converting to metric) 

 

Jack has signed up for 'Skype'.   I have added him to my contacts list,but haven't had the chance to call him yet.   I wish Margot would download Skype then, we could talk to her computer to computer.  Ain't computers wonderful!......er software too, I guess.   I never tried 'Vonage' and as far as VOIP goes I think Skype is comparable and its free too.

 

Well, better go for now. See you on the web..........peace.