Great start to the year

After our 2009 Olson family review and 2010 goal setting, I printed out all our major family goals and posted them in a conspicuous location in the home office. What is "in sight" is definitely in mind for me so this was a great way to keep us focused on what we are trying to accomplish this year.

Our number one goal was to buy a sailboat...and we did! It's a beautiful Hunter sailboat that we found down in Maryland, US. We happened to be in the right place at the right time and got exactly the boat we've been looking for....actually, far more than what we were looking for, and for only slightly more than we were looking to spend (okay, maybe quite a bit more...but trust me, it will be worth it!)

In the process, I somehow managed to write an ebook on how to import boats from the US to Canada. After doing my own intensive research, I realized there was no quality resource out there to help people through this process so I used our experience, web resources, written sources and the experience of industry professionals to write the "definitive" manual on importing boats from the US to Canada. The final version is ready to go and can be found at www.importingusboats.com. Please buy a copy and help me pay for my dockage this year!

We're now revving up the marketing machine and doing a lot of learning in the process. It's incredible how much technology has changed in the past few years...and how easy it is to get left behind. Ana and I having fun figuring out all these new marketing mediums which didn't even exist only a few years ago.

We took a trip down to Maryland to inspect the boat and made a vacation of it. We were gone for a week and visited some great places - Annapolis, Washington, Atlantic City and New York City. Of course the kids were along for the adventure as well as Ana's folks and we really had a fun time, probably because it was such an unexpected trip; the original plan had been to go to Florida for a sun holiday but when the boat opportunity arose we speedily adjusted plans. The highlight was definitely Annapolis and Washington, D.C. - in particular the Smithsonian museums which we visited in the capital. The natural history and airplane museums were truly a wonder and something we're very happy to have seen. It seems that the best planned vacations are sometimes the vacations where you have no plans. Try it and see!

We also just returned from a Family Day long weekend trip to Saskatoon to catch up with the Olsons.  It was a weekend of visiting, eating, drinking and staying warm indoors.  Nothing too strenuous or adventurous, just a great visit with the family.  Visiting Saskatchewan in the middle of February is reserved for the suicidal, mentally insane, or lonesome ex-Saskies.  In case you weren't sure, I'm in the last group.

An excellent start to what promises to be a wonderful year.

Paradise Island to Disney

With Christmas almost upon us we finally stopped for a breather this weekend. In the past month we've been on two trips; the first to Bahamas and the second to Florida, in our continual attempt to avoid Canadian winter..even though winter has hardly yet hit southern Ontario.

We returned to the same resort we visited last year on Paradise Island in Bahamas. But this time, damn the luck, the kids both came down with a fever and cold the day we left. To sum it up...it was a bust. Try as we might to keep jovial, the two sick kids had the upper hand and did their best to thwart all attempts at relaxation and calm. It didn't help that the weather was cool and windy, in fact, it wasn't even nice enough to spend much time in the pool. We can't blame the kids for getting sick, but since we had already paid for the accomodation there was no way we were going to stay home so we just made the best of it. Fortunately, we did get an afternoon away at my favourite bar in the world - Hammerheads, which we followed up with conch salad and fried fish at Arawak Cay.

The trip to Florida was a completely different story. The kids were back to normal and traveled like champs. We flew into Orlanda and spent a day at Disneyworld with the kids then were met by our neighbours Jess and Andrew who flew in the next day, after which we drove to Pompano Beach, just north of Fort Lauderdale. Disney was about the last place in the world Ana or I wanted to go but Jess' mom had three tickets she didn't need which she gave to us. It was nice to go for a day to see it, but any longer would have driven me crazy. I cannot believe how people can go there for entire weeks, just not my thing I guess. It was probably the six dollar cold hot dog that turned me off. Or maybe it was the standing in lines all day long. The kids thought it was okay but I think they are still a little young to know what most of it was about. At least Stella got to have her picture taken with a princess!

The place we stayed at in Pompano Beach was excellent - right on the ocean with miles of beach. My old buddy Stillman lives in the next town over so we met up with him a couple times...and finally got to meet his girlfriend, which was long overdue. Once again, though, we didn't exactly luck out with the weather. It was nice and warm, but overcast most of the time with a little bit of rain. Nevertheless, we had a great time and explored some parts of Florida that were new to us. We also did some hunting around for real estate...but didn't find anything too interesting. We're still wary of owning anything in the US due to the distance, administration and tax issues.

As a final word, our big backyard project is COMPLETE and has already hosted a party or two. It turned out spectacular, if I do say so myself....

Stay tuned for my annual Christmas letter.

Las Vegas

We finally made it down to Vegas for a long weekend, what a time we had! As usual, the kids were star travelers, we consistently find that they are much better behaved when we are on vacation then when we are at home. In fact, Stella admitted to Ana that she much preferred hotel beds to her princess bed at home. Princess, indeed.

As expected, it was hot - just short of 40 each day. The dry, cloudless days were a much needed relief from the wet and cloudy Ontario summer we've lived through this year. Fortunately for the folks back home, the Labour Day long weekend was warm and sunny, which obviously made our escape less enviable, but enviable nonetheless.

I haven't been in Las Vegas for 15 years and the changes were astounding. All the glamorous new hotels I explored last time were now eclipsed by mind bending new behemoths built upon the demolished remains of old mobster casinos. Among our favourites were the Venetian and Paris. Of course the older casinos were still amazing, especially the Luxor pyramid, which was Magnus' favourite. That little boy was a real trooper, he kept up with us the whole time as we walked miles each day exploring the strip.

We are now down to one vacation on deck (sailing in January) so we really must plan something else. Our family policy is "two vacations in the hopper at all times"!

Prairie love

Ahhh, the prairies! Everytime I go home I realize I've forgotten how huge the sky is.

We visited our cabin out at Fishing Lake after a two year absence. We lucked out with beautiful, hot weather and the company of many friends and family members. On top of all the beer drinking and tractor racing we even found time to catch a few fish.

We are so excited about the full week we plan to spend there in August, that should really give us time to kick back and enjoy.

Just a short one this time...

Trip to Rochester

Last Friday evening, after pouring a concrete pad for the shed we are going to build in the backyard, Ana and I discussed the plan for the weekend. We soon realized there wasn't a plan. To us, it's a tragedy to be sitting there on Friday night with no plan or commitments for the weekend. Once we realized our terrible planning error, we got to work!

Ana chose Rochester, New York as our weekend destination. We blasted off early Saturday morning, making a brief stop in Brantford to pick up Ana's folks and a dose of T-ho coffee. Three hours later we found ourselves in the town of Pittsford, where we enjoyed a nice stroll along the Erie Canal and a delicious lunch. Oh yes, and Ana bought this incredibly ugly wire wagon wheel trolley for a dollar at a knick-knack sale. I nearly threw it in the canal when I saw her walking up with it but since I'm such a nice guy, and didn't want to get kicked, I just hurled verbal abuse.

After that we drove up to Rochester and discovered the Strong Museum of Play located downtown. In we went, parents, kids and grandparents, to see what treasures we could discover inside. I loved it! More than anybody else, perhaps even all of them put together! This was chiefly because of the giant video game arcade that housed at least a hundred vintage arcade games, games like Donkey Kong, Crystal Castle, Track & Field, Q-bert, Gunfighter and a whole bunch of others that propelled me back in time and turned me into a 10 year old boy with a sticky quarter in my hand, walking into the arcade at the plaza in Fairhaven, Saskatoon.

Besides the arcade, they had toys and games of all descriptions. There was a magic, crystal ball, kid-sized wizard robes, magic wands, king and queen costumes, building blocks, crayons, miniature grocery stores, interactive games, funny mirrors, thousands of books, plastic hamburgers, sandboxes of silicone and an extraordinary butterfly garden.

After this we drove to the hotel and John and I took the kids for a swim while the ladies went shopping. For dinner, we found an Uno steak house and manjayed some meaty sirloins after which, we retired to the hotel and I managed to stay awake for about 20 minutes of Escape From Alcatraz.

The next day we had a quick tour of downtown Rochester, including a stop at a large waterfall encased by crumbling factories - a very strange sight indeed. We then drove north to the southern shore of Lake Ontario and continued west towards the Canadian border. We were surprised at the lack of development - most of the lake front cottages were actually just cottages...instead of unneeded mansions.

We cut across the border and continued to the town of St. Davids where we stopped for lunch at Mike and Ana's bakery/cafe called Olson Foods & Bakery - Ravine. They were actually off for the day, which doesn't happen often, so we settled ourselves at one of the tables and had a yummy lunch of bbq ribs. It's a lovely place, very vintage, evidenced by the odd collection of beaten up chairs, no doubt scavenged by Michael at garage sales and auctions across southern Ontario. Stella helped the depreciation process along for one of the chairs by breaking off a lower crosspieces while attempting to climb the chair to accost her mother. Just before leaving, Ana walked over to check out the items for sale and was delighted to see the lofty prices of the Le Crueset pots, as she had recently picked up a set of three at a garage sale in Paris for $30!

We then took the long, winding road home, avoiding the highways and instead getting a lovely tour of the fruitlands. As luck would have it, we found a flea market along the way, just outside of Jordan, and the "adults" did some shopping while us kids stayed in the car.

We arrived home by about 6pm, tired, happy, and very satisfied with our decision to turn an otherwise dull weekend into an adventure!

Weekend in Fort Myers

Ana's been on a mission to plan us a long weekend getaway and it's been quite an adventure. The first choice was Nassau, Bahamas - we were hoping to go back to the same cool all-inclusive we visited last year but the price was much higher this year so we decided against that. The next idea was Barbados but the flights were too full and the accomodation prices were ridiculous. Next up was Newfoundland...which seemed like a great idea until we looked up the expected weather for this time of year and it was wretched. Plus the flights got filled up anyway, obviously a bunch of masiochistic tourists or homesick Newfies headed to St. John's. So then we set our sights on Las Vegas. Brilliant idea - the flights were available and the accomdation was reasonable. Plus Ana, nor her parents had been there before, and I hadn't been there for about ten years so it seemed like a great plan. We booked the hotel and watched the flights.....slowly fill up until this past Wednesday when it was quite obvious they were going to sell out. At that point, desperation was setting in. Not on my part so much, but more Ana. Once she sets her signts on a vacation weekend, it's like a crocodile snapping it's jaws down on a wildebeast's leg. In other words, the crocodile will not go hungry.

By this point, we were down to looking at what flights were available....going anywhere. The rapidly filling flights made us wonder, "Recession.....what recession??". It's not that often that every single flight leaving Toronto on a Thursday or Friday to anywhere remotely interesting is almost completely filled. Ana looked at Victoria (too full), Phoenix (nope), Fort Lauderdale (full), Orlando (okay coming back but full going down), and those are just the ones she told me about. By this time, I had practically resigned myself to spending a quiet weekend at home. Besides the desperate flight situation, the weather forecast for Brantford was looking remarkably lovely with highs of 25 and 26 over the weekend. Finally, from the depths of our home office, came a sort of cautious victory tone from my sweet wife.

"Fort Myers! Fort Myers is clear! And we can come back through either Tampa or Orlando, we're good to go!"

With that, accomodations and flights were booked and Ana was happy once again.

The only minor hiccup was that our sweet little girl Stella broke out in a most unusual rash, something looking very much like chicken pox. There was just enough time to get her to the walk-in clinic before we left, where the doctor admitted he really had no idea what it was, but it was not likely chicken pox since that affliction is very rare these days. Since Stella was feeling fine and in a great mood, though slightly itchy, we decided to push ahead with the trip.

So here I sit, Friday night, with a chilled Presidente beer in hand, commiting my thoughts to cyberland, with the kids in bed together watching a Diego video while Ana and her folks are out shopping. When it comes to the decision between going shopping and doing anything else, I almost always choose the latter, unless there's a nice cafe or cold beers or cigars or preferably all three included in the shopping picture.

Here's to another Olson-style power weekend!

From Cleveland to Port Dover

My friend Andrew bought a whoop-ass boat from a repo liquidator in Cleveland a few weeks ago. With the ice completely gone from Lake Erie it was time to go pick up the vessel and transport it back across the lake to Port Dover, where had had arranged a slip for the season. He asked me and another friend, Justin, to come along to give him a hand piloting it back to Canada. The boat is a 33 foot Sea Ray with twin 454 V8 engines and every onboard amenity you can imagine including tv, refrigerator/icemaker, stereo, electric toilet, gps, radar and free alcohol, though no topless servers this day, as it was very early in the season and a little chilly.

We had Ana, the kids and Andrew's girlfriend Jess drop us off in Buffalo, where we rented a car and drove to Clevelend, then stayed overnight at a hotel. We stopped en route in Erie, Pennsylvania for a burger and beer at TGI Fridays, which promptly put me to sleep in the passenger's seat for the remainder of the ride.

A planned early departure turned into a 12 noon kick-off due to several unforeseen circumstances such as missing supplies, marine stores that don't open until 10am, bad navigation in downtown Cleveland, and a small mishap at the fueling dock which resulted in 25 gallons of petroleum pumped into the waste tank of the boat instead of the gas tank which had to be suctioned out.

One we were finally underway, we found lake conditions to be absolutely perfect. It was about 17 degrees with a minor wind of 10 kph and hardly a boat to be seen. We began working our way up the US shoreline, about 2 to 3 miles offshore. We kept the boat at 3,000 rpm which, Justin advised, offered the best tradoff of speed versus fuel consumption. At that rate we were doing about 21 to 22 mph which was a nice steady comfortable pace.

Upon the approach to Erie, which was about 5 hours after leaving Cleveland, Andrew decided it would be best to fill the gas tanks before making the run across the lake to the Canada side. After several cell phone calls we learned that the pumps at the regular marina were having issues and the only place that had fuel was the private Erie Yacht club, who only reluctantly agreed to sell us gas. After 45 minutes of waiting for them to find somebody to turn on the gas pump, during which time we paid a visit to the club bar and caught some lip from a drunken sailor, we finally got fuel and were able get back underway.

This was the part of the trip I was originally most nervous about, as Lake Erie is home to hundreds of shipwrecks and known to turn deadly with fast changes in weather. Luckily for us, the wind was steady and smooth and gave rise to waves that were no more than 5 or 6 feet at the highest. The trip across took about two hours and was interrupted only twice, first by a strange engine noise which didn't reoccur, and second by me nearlying running the boat into two feet of water at Long Point.

The final two hour trip across the lake culminated in our triumphant entrance into Port Dover harbour, evidenced by nobody as the marina was almost completely devoid of boats. The ladies and kids arrived shortly after our landing, and after a few minutes of phone chatter with Canadian customs, we were cleared and free to go! We all squeezed into the van, stopped at Callaghan's for a quick fish feed, then drove back to Paris, nicely finishing off a relatively uneventful Lake Erie navigation- which is exactly what you want when crossing large bodies of water!

Weekender in Saskatoon

Considering we normally visit Saskatoon every couple months this trip is a long time coming. We haven't been back to Saskatoon since last summer so it was definitely time. We left Thursday after work and arrived here around 8:30 pm, which gave my brother Curt and I plenty of time to get good and smashed - in fact the nightcap consisted of half a bottle of fine port, which was like a sledgehammer to the cranium the next morning. Well, like the tshirt says, "The liver is evil and must be punished".

It's always a busy trip visiting Saskatoon. This time we're staying at my brother Curtis' funky new Hay Loft (http://www.saskatoonhayloft.blogspot.com/) where the kids are having a most adventurous time exploring all the nooks and crannies of this exceptional house.

Well, time to blast - we're heading out to Mom's greenhouse to help them plant some tomatoes.

Economic disaster - time to buy a boat?

We took a drive to Cleveland last weekend. If you're as geographically challenged as I am you probably haven't got a clue where it is or why you'd go there. Cleveland, Ohio is about a 5.5 hour drive from our home in Paris and the route takes you through steely Hamilton, past splashy Niagara Falls, across the border at wingy Buffalo, then west across the spooky south shores of Lake Erie until you hit Cleveland, home of the Rock & Roll Museum and I'm not sure what else. Our friends Andrew and Jess put a bid in on a repossessed 34' Sea Ray powerboat and we went down there with them to check it out in person before sealing the deal. Of course, spending a couple hours poking around beautiful, bargain priced boats certainly puts you in a "retirement fantasy mode" and we of course started scheming for our own boat purchase.

We've been thinking that we'd like to spend our 40th birthdays on a sailboat someplace warm. And since our 40th birthdays are six months apart, it really gives us no other choice besides spending a full year away. My original calculations produce an estimated departure date three years hence but when I checked with Ana to see how old we were, I found out that I slipped a year somewhere and was a bit older than I thought. So we may have to do our 41st or 42nd birthdays on a boat. Regardless, we still need to get a boat beforehand to actually learn how to sail. The last time I owned a boat I nearly destroyed it on several occassions, which is a tremendous way to learn, but this time around I think it may be a better idea to take things somewhat slower and try not to sink it.

If anybody hears of a person with a 37' to 40' mint condition sailboat manufactured in the late eighties who is desperate to sell for a ridiculously low price due to job loss, divorce, mental instability, boredom, grief, fun, or whatever, give them my email.