Hail to the Power Weekend

June 23

Over drinks with friends Andrew and Jess (People of the Cul-De-Sac) we decide a summer weekend trip is in order. The only July weekend free for both of us is July 25/26. Date is set, promises made, and the destination brainstorming begins.

July 6

Destination decided - Boston and other nearby salty, fishy sites of interest. 

July 9

Watch Perfect Storm for the 10th time to brush up on local dialect and customs.

July 10

After checking map and talking to cousin, Ana finds out it's at least a 9 hour drive to Boston. Shortly thereafter, plug is pulled on Boston, new destination planning begins. Emails circulate in earnest.

July 21

Tuesday Cul-de-sac meeting called. Charges of procrastination are exchanged since destination has yet to be decided. Team congregates around internet explorer browser and begin googling. After Chicago (too windy), Kingston (too much traffic), family cabins (already full), Niagara Falls (too close), New York (too far), Cleveland (already went there), are considered and dismissed, we finally decide on Rochester, New York with day trip to Ithica. It is a good compromise. Meeting dismissed, people of the cul-de-sac disperse.

July 24

Friday - disaster strikes. Andrew has to work Saturday night as his food and beverage manager as gone awol. Rapid brainstorming ensues. Within moments a new plan emerges like a summer mayfly. Hotel in Toronto Friday night, followed up with a trip to the Woodbine horse racing track on Saturday. Disaster averted. Weekend trip back on.

Friday, 6 pm

Jam bags in car. Take a week's worth of luggage along for the night just in case. Kids narrowly miss being run over by Andrew's 4x4 as he rallies into the cul-de-sac. Everyone in van, depart.

Friday, 7 pm

Arrive at the Keg in Hamilton, eat big juicy steaks. Andrew manages to get them to comp us the meal, what a star. Pile back into van, crack a beer, head to TO and battle traffic all the way.

Friday, 11pm

Arrive at downtown Marriot. By some miracle kids are both sleeping. Haul kids and bags to adjoining rooms, dump kids in bed, proceed to drink heavily, say lots of bad words, and enjoy the spectacular view over downtown Toronto.

Friday, 2am or thereabouts

Lights out.

Saturday, 7:40 am

Awoken by two very alert looking children ready for action. A flurry of plastic animals ensues and the room is soon alive with the roar of blowdryers, which ignites the morning headache.

Saturday, 10 am

Breakfast at Eggspectations, delicious as expected. Talk of life, children, choices, dreams and bowel movements.

Saturday, 11 am

Walk to Andrew's single brother Kyle's super cool downtown condo. Find multiple specimens of women's underwear laying on bedroom floor. Fondly reminisce of the "good old bachelor days".

Saturday, 11:30 am

Leave Kyle's place with his entire Playstation 3 set of Rock Band gear, a well received donation to spark my children's future musical career. It's really not for me at all.

Saturday, 12 pm

Drinks at a scummy downtown Toronto bar. Stella for me, Rum and Coke for Andrew, Margarita for Jess and Diet Coke for Ana. Jess complains of strange and offensive odours in ladies toilet. Leave shortly thereafter.

Saturday, 1 pm

Arrive at AGO - Art Gallery of Ontario (http://www.ago.net/). Elongated heads, little ships, squirrel heads, furry cubes and ivory carvings intrigue, inspire and amaze us.

Saturday, 3:00 pm

Leave Toronto in a blinding rain storm, fight traffic, drop Andrew off at hotel in Hamilton for the evening shift. Along the way, we decide to go to Cleveland after he's done work to look at boats. No sense stopping now, the weekend is not even half over.

Saturday, 5:00 pm

Arrive home, have a nice dip in the hot tub, eat dinner, put jammies on kids. Jess spends quality with Bell the dog.

Saturday, 9:30 pm

Pick up Andrew in Hamilton, proceed to drive to Cleveland. Along the way Andrew suggests trying to find a ferry to take across Lake Erie Sunday afternoon. Idea well received.

Sunday, 1:30 am Arrive in Cleveland, only one 15 minute stop required for entire trip, must be a new record. Get checked into hotel. Too late to embark on drinking session, feel the ravages of old age.

Sunday, 7 am

Wake up. Get kids and women moving. Jess does Stella's hair and she looks like a beauty queen. Mental note that the "ragamuffin" is not the only look Stella can pull off. Investigate ferry options. Quick brekkie in hotel lobby. Leave hotel. Note that it's a gorgeous day.

Sunday, 10 am

Arrive at National Liquidators boat yard after driving through the inner city slums of Cleveland. Feel good about our situation in life.

Sunday, 10:13 am

Find our ultimate dream boat. 1996 Catalina 40 foot, pristine condition. Call broker to make offer. Find out boat already sold that week. Feel bad about our situation in life. Andrew continues shuffling through Sun Rays, Rinkers, looking for the ultimate deal.

Sunday, 12 pm

Arrive at WWII submarine, right between boat yard and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Women stay outside and sun themselves while kids join the men inside and cause trouble the whole way through. Amazed and astounded that 97 men could live on such a vessel. Imagined smells are overpowering.

Sunday, 1 pm

Depart for Sandusky, 40 miles west of Cleveland. Arrive, buy tickets, eat lunch and drink beer in shabby but cool downtown pub.

Sunday, 3 pm

Ferry departs for Pelee Island. Lovely ride on a beautiful day. Girls mix us deadly strong rum and cokes.

Sunday, 4:45 pm

Ferry arrives. Clear Canada customs. Drive around island to public beach. Remove shoes, play in water, skip stones. Magnus picks up dead fish and brings it over. Later, inspects flattened garter snake on roadway. Nature trip over, back in van.

Sunday, 5:15 pm

Arrive in the southernmost tavern in Canada. Listen to country music, drink OV, eat greasy stuff, watch the strange people.

Sunday, 8 pm

Ferry departs for Kingsville, Ontario. Much larger ferry this time, retire to canteen to drink, eat popsicles and talk about life. Conversation gets very serious. Andrew is barely talked out of a career as a low paid pilot.

Sunday, 9:30 pm

Arrive Kingsville. Grab a Timmy's. Girls take over driving duties while boys make obnoxious comments from back seat. Kids watch movies. Along the way, try to figure out why on earth we weren't able to fit a blimp ride into the weekend.

Sunday, 12:15 pm

Arrive Paris Ontario. All hail the Power Weekend.

Global warming on pause

Seems there's not much statistical weather ammo being generated in Canada for global warming buffs. It's been an odd summer. Besides back to work Mondays, which have been consistently beautiful, the weather has been unseasonably cool and rainy. Of course, by cool I mean low 20's, which is actually a great temperature for being outside, but far from the 30 degree July heat we normally get. We spent a week in late June at a rental cottage in Port Franks, which is on the shores of Lake Huron and less than 90 minutes from our home. It was spent with a pile of Ana's cousins and aunts and uncles, basically the Portuguese Mafia and me. We lucked out with two hot days to start the trip then it turned cool and rainy, but that didn't stop us. There were several early injuries in the trip, limited mainly to purple toes, ripped knees and intense bruising, all due to the outbreak of two vicious games of barefoot soccer. As usual, participants were highly energized, highly intoxicated and physically unfit for any sort of exercise, especially high octane European style football.

In the days that followed, physical activity reverted to much less strenuous activities, such as bobber fishing, hot tubbing and synchronized beer swilling. This past weekend we visited my brother, sister-in-law and nephew in Ottawa. While my most understanding wife looked after the kiddies, Marty and I went to a Cake show at the Ottawa Bluesfest. As expected, it was outstanding. The nice part of the weekend was that we decided to fly instead of suffering through that grueling drive. We're planning a trip this weekend to Windsor then across the border to cover some new ground in Michigan. As Ana says, our goal is to not let a single summer weekend go to waste!

Fear and greed

As the stock market roars up magnificently I again feel the forces of fear and greed. I think, “Why didn’t I invest everything I had when the market was down?” I think, “I can’t invest anything now, what if the market tumbles again!” Today I even considered, “Maybe I should short the market and make a fortune!” This investing is hard business.

In other news, I’m happy to report I finally finished up all our personal and corporate tax returns, what a great feeling that is. I celebrated the other night by drinking a nice cold Carlsburg while sitting in the hot tub with the kids and Ana. We celebrate all victories, accomplishments, occasions and special events, no matter how small - this is one of the most important traits of the Olson clan!

Prairie love

Ahhh, the prairies! Every time 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! 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 tackled 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 orchards and fruit lands. 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!

What to do with our website?

Our treasured, packed, interesting, rugged and extremely worn website has been on our minds lately. We've been running http://www.lifeisgrand.org/ for almost 10 years now which, in internet terms, is mind boggling. I've been reading up on Web 2.0 technologies and am amazed at how much the technology has moved on. For instance, we've been writing a journal on our site since Oct 5, 1999. When we started, there was really no such thing as a social networking site, so we used our website as a tool to keep in touch with our friends and family as we travelled around the world. Of course, it was "one-way" communication, which is really what Web 1.0 was all about back then. We posted pictures, stories and journals which were available for anybody in the world to read, and it worked great! Over the years, we've built up a substantial readership, in fact, we still attract over 10,000 unique visitors per month, mainly looking for travel related information. Now, the internet world is much different. The name of the game is "interactivity" - the days of a static website are pretty much over. Which puts us in a bit of a spot. During the past year we've been kicking ideas around about what we can do to derive some income off the website, as the original purpose of the site has been pretty much replaced by Facebook (what we're up to), online photo sharing (where we've been), instant messaging (communication), wikipedia (information on countries) and Linkedin (networking for business/projects). We have really struggled with what to do with it. The first problem is that neither of us have kept up our web development skills, so any attempt to freshen up the site would probably just end up in a mess. We are also extremely cheap, so the idea of paying somebody to redo the site for us is not appealing, unless there would be a good return on investment. Which takes us to the second problem: what exactly is the purpose of our site? The most successful websites out there have a clearly defined function or purpose. They offer specialized information, specialized products, or a unique way of getting required information. The same is true of the popular blogs - they are narrow in focus and keep a readership by focusing on a particular subject of interest. Our website and blog is all over the place!! I like to write about things that interest me, such as investing, travel, finance and politics. But I doubt that there are many people out there who are interested in the same wide span of topics that I am so my blog is really just a replacement for a personal diary. Let's take the travel aspect of our site, which draws the most visitors. There are thousands or maybe even millions of travel websites out there, many very focused on one particular country or even regions or towns within a country. If you want to get detailed information on a specific place, our site is definitely not the place to come, as many of the countries we've written about, we only visited one or twice years ago so the information is not up to date. What we do offer is a very personal opinion on places, which is sometimes difficult to find on the web as it can be hard to tell if there is an "advertising" aspect to a website's opinion. It's a trust issue. Ana and I have brainstormed various ideas, looking for an angle, trying to figure out what we have to offer that isn't available elsewhere and what we've come down to is this: we have struck an amazing balance between employment, business, travel, raising kids and having fun. We don't know anybody else who has been able to balance all these things as well as we do. That's our angle. Now, we just need to figure out how (or indeed "if") that translates into a successful website.

Analyze a boat purchase

A great deal on a sailboat has come to our attention so we're now in the process of deciding whether to pursue this purchase. Whenever we face a life decision like this, our first step is to decide "why". Last night we came up with this list of reasons why we'd like a boat:

1. We love spending time on boats

2. We want the kids to grow up around boats and water

3. We want to develop our own sailing skills to enable us to do a year long sailing sabbatical

The next step is to figure out the real costs of owning a boat. We contacted the marina where we would keep the boat and got the prices for monthly berthing, haul in/out, winterizing, etc, then spoke with our friends to get an approximate cost of insurance. If we spread that out over the entire year it worked out to be about $230/month. If we then add in maintenance costs, which are high on older boats, we get another $166/month(based on a $25,000 boat, mid 1980's, 8% maintenance/year).

That makes a total of almost $400/month per year to own a sailboat. Hmmmm.

If we decide that we can afford that cost, we then need to decide what activities our new sailing hobby will displace. As you can imagine, our life, like most peoples', is extremely busy, so when we pick up some new activity, then something has to give. It seems the area most likely to give would be the impromptu weekend trips courtesy of our favourite airline, WestJet. We're okay with this, especially considering we'll be spending the time sailing, fishing and swimming.

More to come, stay tuned.