Buzzards and Bicycles:

It's been a pretty busy week off for me. I think the concept of "mandatory vacation" should be implemented more often.

Yesterday, I attended a graduation of a friend of a friend at the Ontario Police College in Aylmer. On the way there, it was a pretty enjoyable drive through the countryside. The corn is much shorter than I would have expected at this time of year, but then we've had a pretty cool wet summer. We also encountered a couple of huge black vulture-like birds circling around a carcass on the road near a tiny little town with the unfortunate name of Crampton. A rare but interesting sight.

It was a nice ceremony, although I'm already used to all the formation marching and the pipe and drum bands due to my brother's association with the Toronto Scottish Regiment. I think they should have reconsidered having a couple of motorcycles circle around the parade square (we got a hefty dose of diesel fumes). But it was short and to the point, which is what everyone always hopes a ceremony would be. The highlight of the day had to be finding out that Wendel Clark was in the audience. We saw him drive into the parking lot with his honking huge black SUV with (we assumed) his wife and two cute kids. He was there to support his brother, Kerry Clark, who was also graduating. After the ceremony we were all standing outside and he was within 30 feet of us. Young kids went up to him for his autograph, but since in our group we were all in our 20s and above, we thought it would be slightly tacky if we tried it. I think we were able to sneak a photo of him from a distance (yikes, we've become amateur paparazzi!).

Today, I decided that I want to live on one of the Toronto Islands. My friends and I brought our bikes downtown, took the ferry across the harbour, biked around the islands, and had ourselves a nice little picnic too. The first thing that really struck me was how quiet it was. Even with the downtown core not that far away, it was as though we were biking somewhere in the country. Very cool. It didn't take that long to get from one side to the other, but it was a leisurely ride, interrupted occasionally by cars passing at 30 km/h (the speed limit) and those little tour trains that you see at places like MGM Studios ("and on your left, you'll see the 'clothing optional' beach"). We had to cut our adventure short (some of us had to get our long weekend started), otherwise we could have stayed until dusk and rented a firepit on the beach (the one where clothing is somewhat mandatory). But now I can add another "favourite Toronto activity" to my list. I wonder how much one of those houses costs...

"What would you say, don't drop the big one, if you a monkey on a string, don't cut my lifeline"