Grade One Revisited

Crosby Heights Public School in Richmond Hill opened in 1958, and I was in one of its Grade One class rooms under the tutelage of (I think) a Miss. Spence. Many of us went on to high school together at Bayview Secondary High School, and then went our many separate ways in life, but my formal schooling started at Crosby Heights and after 50 years there are a few folks from those days I’m actually still in contact with after all this time. I’m fourth from the right in the back row in the photo to the left.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended our older son’s graduation from Trent University, and as may be imagined there were several hundred parents, all in open seating watching the event. The guy sitting in front of me seemed familiar and just to prove yet again how small our world is, incredibly it turned out he was one of those folks from 50 years ago – in the class photo of Miss Nighswander’s class to the right, he is the young lad on the right in the second row !

Terry and I have been doing a ‘roll call’ of sorts, and think we can name: Bob King, Rick Haas, Ed Kay, Diane Jamison, Paula Triance, Ann Whitworth, Gail Hitchenson, Steve Marshall, John Smith, Paul Fountain, Bob Bradley, Bob Imeson and perhaps a few others. As it turns out, Crosby Heights is planning a 50th anniversary this year, so It would be interesting to see how many folks can be located.

I had lost touch with Terry after high school, but when we were 17 or 18 we actually both had the same model of first motorbike (Yamaha YA6’s) and we used to compare notes and information on how to fix them when they weren’t working – which seemed to happen frequently ! He and his wife were vacationing in Western Canada this past week, so last night we met up to swap old motorcycle stories here in Calgary before he and his wife returned to Toronto.

Lots of only slightly embellished stories (!), and quite a pleasant evening.

Way Too Busy !

It has been a busy couple of weeks ! Since my last note, we have managed to successfully bring the newest addition to the stable across the border into Canada. The little Yamaha YA6 was given an inspection by the US and Canadian port authorities at the Wild Horse border crossing between Montana and Alberta. I’ll admit, I was really very pleasantly surprised with both how helpful and easy to work with the folks were on both sides of the border. It was such a different experience to that of a couple of months ago when we had some ‘discussions’ on the Canadian side of the border at Midway in BC. The Midway Canadian border agent was quite rude, and appeared to resent the the fact he actually had to do some work ! In contrast, the Wild Horse (and you have to admit it is a great name for a border post eh ?) US and Canadian border folks were great, and they have restored my faith in government employees. The funny thing, is that without Google Maps, we would never have known of the place, and we would have missed out on both a good experience, and also some great scenery. When I pumped in a request for directions on the best way to get from Delaware to Calgary, that was the border crossing that Google automatically selected. It is actually quite an isolated location, and I suspect possibly doesn’t get a lot of traffic as it is in the southeast corner of Alberta, just south of the Cypress Hills Provincial Park area. At any rate, once the paperwork had been completed, the tax paid, etc., we stopped to take a photo to mark the occasion of the YA6’s entry to Alberta !

The round trip from Calgary to the east coast and back again, covered 9,085 km. In contrast to the outbound trip , the average speed on the return was 89 km/hr and the average fuel consumption rate was worse at 12.8 l/100 km or about 22.1 mpg (imperial gallons). The fuel consumption no doubt was impacted by having to cross through the Appalachian hills (they call them mountains, but they are actually just hills when compared to what you see on the west coast), the crawling along for half a day in road construction through Wisconsin, and I have to admit also due to enjoying the pure exuberance of the 75 mph limits (the traffic was actually moving along at over 80 mph) in the mid-west states of Minnesota and North Dakota ! The average fuel cost on the US leg of the trip was just over $1/liter for premium, or roughly 70% of the cost of the same fuel in Canada – I’d say the Americans really have nothing to complain about when it comes to the cost of gasoline ! As on the outbound trip, we saw lots of wildlife – many more prong horn antelope (typically in the same fields with the cattle as you can see to the right), but also quite a few deer.

Since arriving home, the Yamaha has had an oil change and a minor tuneup, and is now running a bit better. Over the next few months I will likely pick up a few eBay sourced bits and pieces, as well as talk to the folks here in town at Walt Healy Motosports and elsewhere to see what they have in the way of NOS parts and bits. The Walt Healy shop has been in business here in Calgary since 1931, and the staff have been helpful the few times I have gone in to talk to their parts counter people.

The next project I’m about to start is the restoration of another GT750 Suzuki water buffalo – the ‘home’ site for the project will be here. – busy times !

125 cc’s of Nostalgia !

Many years ago – actually many, many years ago – I bought my first vehicle.  At the time, I was 18 years old and I most definitely did not have my parent’s permission – in point of fact, my Dad had expressly said ‘no’ to the idea. The vehicle in question was a 1966 Yamaha YA6 125 cc motorcycle which was in much less than ‘good’ mechanical shape, but did at least run and was plated. The school friend I bought it from coached me on how to drive it – driving along side of me on his motorbike down Bayview Avenue north of Richmond Hill, shouting out ’shift’ whenever I had to change gear as I had never driven a standard before. This was complicated by the fact that at that time, Bayview wasn’t really paved  and was a mix of gravel and pot holes, as well as the fact that the shift lever was missing and in its place was a pair of vise grip pliers ! I also didn’t have a driver’s license valid for a motorbike, although I did have insurance. At any rate, I managed to drive it to a friend’s house where I hid the bike as I couldn’t take it home. This worked well for a few weeks, but eventually it leaked gasoline on his driveway and his father demanded it disappear, so I had to take it home and face the music from my Dad.

I put a lot of miles on that bike, and even took my driver’s license test on it eventually in early winter and in several inches of snow – not my choice actually. I’d been caught by a friendly police officer who gave me a bit of a break as I did have a drivers license for a car – he gave me a couple of weeks to take the test etc., and it was just unfortunate that we had an early snowfall. At any rate, lots of good memories, including driving it up to King City to see the girl I’d eventually marry.

I’d been watching for a decent YA6 to come up for sale over the past year or so but they were all in the US and generally too far away to make buying them feasible. When I recently found this one (photo to the left) near my brother’s place on the east coast of the US, I jumped at the opportunity as we owed them a visit and as well we were going to be ‘in the area’ for our son’s graduation in Ontario so it seemed like a great opportunity. My brother was good enough to pick the bike up after I bought it, and then store it at his place (which is a lovely home) till we were able to get there this week.

The bike is in really good shape for a 42 year old machine . It runs, although it probably could use a bit of a tuneup, the paint is good and to cut a long story short, I’m really happy with it.

Now all we need to do is get it home !

One down, and one to go !

June 4th was a big day in the Sandy household, as our eldest son Sean graduated from Trent University in Ontario. It was a very good day, which will only be matched when our second son graduates next year.

The rain held off long enough that the event could be held out doors, and while it was overcast and a bit on the cool side, the weather was not a problem. The chancellor of Trent in the photo with Sean, and who presided over the event is Roberta Bondar, probably best known as the Canadian astronaut on a shuttle mission in 1992 – quite the lady !

All in all – a great day to remember.

On the Road

We arrived in Toronto yesterday having driven from Calgary. The route we took was via the TransCanada highway leaving Calgary (Alberta) and passing through Regina (Saskatchewan), Winnipeg (Manitoba), across the top of Lake Superior through Thunder Bay, Sault St Marie and Sudbury in Ontario – total distance turned out to be 3380 KM. Some other statistics:

• time spent on the road (so excluding over night stops, but including fueling and lunch breaks) was 39 hours
• the average speed was 86.7 km/hr travelled
• wildlife seen included several pronghorn antelope, many deer, one adult black bear and four moose (a mix of adults and yearlings)
• the average fuel cost for premium gasoline was $1.44/liter
• average fuel consumption was 10.6 l/100 km or roughly 27 mpg (imperial) – which was not bad considering we were towing an eight foot long trailer, carrying three people plus lots of luggage, there were a lot of hills in the Ontario stretch (not to mention many slow downs due to road construction) and that the vehicle is a full size Volvo sedan which are not the most fuel efficient cars in the world.

For the most part it was an easy drive, although why Ontario speed limits are so much lower for similar road types than in Western Canada is a mystery (and to be honest, I didn’t notice anyone paying attention to them too much including the OPP). It was interesting to see again (this is the third time I’ve done this) the changes in vegetation, terrain, communities and wildlife. We would have driven longer into the evenings, but wildlife on the highways – especially in northern Ontario – is a real danger. Moose are really, really big animals, and given how many moose we saw during daylight hours, it would be really foolish to drive a car in the dark as they tend to roam about more at night. In addition to the damage done to the moose, the potential vehicle and passenger damage could be significant.

All in all it was a good trip – we will be attending my son’s graduation from university this week, and then return home via the US as gasoline is still relatively quite cheap there, plus we want to visit my brother and his wife on the US east coast where he has an old motorbike waiting for me.

Should be fun !

And She Said It Was “Cute”

I have been tracking the MID (mobile internet device) space for some time now, and have tested several devices just to get some real world experience using them. These devices supercede the UMPC devices that were all the talk of the town a couple of years ago such as the Samsung Q1 device. I had one of those for awhile, and although it is brilliant, it just doesn’t work for me without a keyboard. What I want is something that is light, has a keyboard and a decent screen but that will also very nearly fit in my pocket – and when I say ‘very nearly’ what I am looking for is something that you can use in the economy section of an airplane and actually be able to do some work. I’m OK if it is about the size of a small hard cover book

A host of small form factor ultra small laptops have appeared in the past year – anything from the OLPC device through to the over priced OQO – the one that really caught my eye though was the eee PC by ASUS. This originally appeared with a 7 inch screen which was OK, but just in the last short while they released one with a 9 inch screen, and it is gorgeous. So I bought one. It is a LINUX based device, weighs next to nothing, has 4 GB of ram, a 16 GB SSD, wifi built in, Open Office preloaded (so I can open and edit all my Microsoft documents), FireFox for internet access and very good support for Google Apps which is nice as I had been testing them for another project I was working on and starting to use it more and more for general document creation.

All in all, I was very pleased with myself in a Dilbert sort of way, and had an opportunity to show it off to a few friends the other night, Everyone said that they wanted one, but I was slightly disappointed that the must common comment was not that it was a technically amazing device (which it is) at a very affordable price (which it also is) , but that it was ‘cute’ . It sort of took the wind out of my sails and initially left me vaguely dissatisfied. But I got over it – after all, I can live with ‘cute’ if it can do useful work – and this can. I’m using now to generate this blog entry – I’m in a hotel room with wifi, and the Linux OS configuration has no trouble connecting me to it, the keyboard is small, but adequate with good key travel, the performance is more than good enough and the screen is easy to read even using my graduated bi-focals !

The only niggles so far are the fan noise and the battery life – but they are minor. It is a form factor we could have used at work and which folks would have lined up to get – back when I was working that is. This is my third day retired, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it !

eee PC – recomended.