Carly, Mark, Hilary & Shayd enjoyed an overnight on top of the world not far from Vancouver a few weeks ago. Carly and Mark attended a wedding in BC and added a few days to be with Hilary and Shayd. So good to see the four of them getting along well!

Nephew Wil - the youngest son of Marcy & Joe - completed the first academic year of his training program at a college in northern Ontario. What a cool class photo he shared with us....

Tom, a former colleague from BC, was for meetings at Mohawk College yesterday, so we had the opportunity to catch up in person again over a meal at "Barrangas at the Beach" in Stoney Creek.

Mountain goats in BC

Hilary, Shayd, Mark and Carly made a hike in the mountains just outside Vancouver during a visit of Carly & Mark (in combination with a wedding of one of Carly's friends in Whistler next weekend). They camped overnight at one of the peaks overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I had a bit of a scare last week when I was cycling one evening back from tennis. I always use a nice path but one stretch has no street lights and there was no moon that night. I never saw the three teenagers coming because they had no lights on their bikes (I did plus I was wearing a cycling helmet which I do not often, but as of now will do all the time...). One of the teenagers must have hit me head on but I don't remember much other than suddenly being hit on my head, and then standing next to my bike telling the kid that he had no light on his bike. By pure coincidence a friend of our son Mark came by and assisted me. While talking to him, I apparently fainted and he called for an ambulance. Not sure how the teenager came out of the collision but they were quickly gone. In the hospital they made a CT scan of my head and fortunately nothing broken and no internal bleeding. A nice shiner on one of the eyes during the following days was seemingly the only damage. My Dad had a very hard head, so I must have inherited a similar hard head from him...

Took it easy for the next 4-5 days keeping Opa Vandenboom a bit of company in his retirement residence. This week I was OK to play some tennis again. But no more cycling back home after an evening match...

August already

 This summer is going by too fast. Loving the good warm weather, the rekindled enthusiasm to play 3-4 times a week tennis again and seeing people in general in better moods. A few days ago I was invited to an event at Niagara College celebrating their launch of the Institute for Global Training & Education.

Clearly I had some fun seeing former colleagues again. Proud of the ongoing achievements of a team of professionals I was honored to start and slowly built their collective experience and skills. The next day I took Opa Vandenboom for an afternoon to Port Colborne to have some ice cream, a coffee and some sweets. He is on his way to 95 and still holding up well; not easy to become one of the last standing up of his generation of family and friends.