Walks

The best thing to do during this period of "social distancing" and self-isolation is to go for walks. Last week - during the cleaning up of the basement - I pulled a muscle in my lower back, so I had to lay low for a while. But today I went for a nice walk just outside of Fonthill where there are a few apple orchards (Ralph helps out at one of them during "pruning" season)... 

At the end of the walk I passed the retirement home where Opa Vandenboom lives. They were just having lunch. The place is in quarantine at the moment (nobody in and nobody out other than the staff working there in order to try to keep the COVID 19 virus outside), but I took this photo through the window of the room where they have their meals.

Sunny day, rainy day

Yesterday it was a beautiful sunny (early) Spring day. With all (or many) of us staying at home as much as we can, I spend a few hours on our front porch collecting natural vitamin D. I read a book which I found during the basement clean up, given to our son Mark when he graduated two years ago from his electrical engineering program. Short letters of advice and encouragement of experienced engineers to recently graduated engineers. A lot of it rang true to me after graduating from industrial design engineering in Holland myself in 1981....

Today it is rainy day, so no front porch at the moment....

Hilary 28

Opa Vandenboom (90) - who is in "isolation" in his seniors home in Fonthill - made a nice sign to send his birthday greetings to our daughter Hilary who turns 28 today. Hilary works in a hospital in Vancouver in the ER ("eerste hulp"). A few photos of her in action these days....

Social distancing

During this period of caution and self-isolation, Mary and I started our older habit of cleaning up parts of the path along the Welland canal from what some other people leave behind: empty Tim Horton's coffee cups (and plastic lids), lots of shapes and forms of plastic bags, empty beer and pop cans and many other things which are not good to leave in a natural setting such as the canal.

Yesterday and today both three bags. That is our daily maximum....

Afterwards I did some exercises and yoga poses which I just started to learn these during the past two weeks (but now the classes are canceled for the time being). See the simple set up in our basement.

The other part of our basement has become a kind of a warehouse of "old stuff". Started to go through this and weed out what we still want to keep and what can be tossed out (for practical of "keep-sake" reasons). A perfect task to do during these weeks.....

 

Regional travel

Hadi, a former colleague from Toronto, visited me yesterday in Niagara. He came with the VIA rail ($25 one way) and flew back with FlyGTA, a small operator based on the Toronto Island airport. They offer a few daily flights between Toronto and the Niagara Regional Airport. Cost is about $90 one way. When I dropped off Hadi at the local small airport, I witnessed the easiest and quickest check-in and boarding procedure I have seen in my life.

Two weeks of serious effort...

The things you start getting involved in upon retirement.... Mary and her Dad (90) started a puzzle with 1,000 pieces, but abandoned the project relatively quickly. I took it over and two weeks later (after days of 4-5 hours working on the darn thing), voila: finished. I am taking it apart again to send it to my brother-in-law Bert in Holland. He has been retired already some 15 years and has completed a few of these beasts. This will be a cool one for him to put his teeth in. I challenged him to have it finished by the time I will visit them in June....