Day Fifty Eight: The Polish Bakery: The end is near.

November 17, 2017

The bikes and us finally fly all the way home on Monday, but probably we will end this blog tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big day, with daughter Laurie and her husband Dave flying in from Seattle, and an iconic hockey game on the agenda.

Today's big event was the kids and I walking out in the sub freezing weather to the Polish Bakery. This came after Joseph and I developed a hankering for good cake, and there is no better cake than the "Stefanka" chocolate layer confection that is a specialty of the "Patisserie Polonaise". The bakery also has a lot of other good cakes and pastries, but like all bakeries in Canada, they think an "éclair" is a whipped cream sandwich. How foolish of them.

I was impressed with how well kitted out the children are with effective coats, hats, and boots. That stands to reason, since they need that to survive Winter here. I am rather glad to be soon escaping to our relatively warm west coast island.

These kids are actually ready for much harsher weather than this.

Joseph and I also launched another project, the replacement of a defective kitchen sink faucet. Joe was in there helping me with his dog shaped flashlight. Unfortunately the replacement faucet was also defective, so I got to cycle out to the plumbing store (actually, "Canadian Tire") to replace the replacement. Outside the store I locked the bike, but just hung my helmet on the bar. When I came back out, no helmet. Any form of bike related theft is so mean - the owner is clearly not a fat cat, and clearly really needs that bike, or in this case, helmet.

Steve gets help and advice on the faucet project.

Before we left, I lent my two mountain dulcimers to son Jeremy, who wanted to give them a try. He first learned some basic tunes, and then came up with this freeform composition he calls Grampies 50. I put it together with photos from the retrospective part of this blog, and came up with this:

The next Grampies tour:

We are generally thinking to start in Paris and to spin around to Amsterdam, Berlin, Leipzig, Prague, Vienna, and back. A circuit like that would be at least 4000 km. We will probably have to wait for a knee operation and recovery for Dodie before doing it.

But if the operation is delayed, we may get antsy and take off to Cuba, or Thailand, or ?? for a lesser time and distance.

This is only the vaguest of notions. Let us know if you would like updates and notification of how it develops and when it actually will happen.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0