Autum is here and Marcia has had it. She’s ready to head home. Possibly it’s the fact that the daytime temperature is in the forties while trying to get into the 50s. Or maybe it’s the fact that white caps have been spotted every day this week as the wind has been parked at 11mph and then quickly flips into the 20s. Whatever it is, she’s complaining.

” Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.” ~ Lily Tomlin

On the other hand, the sky has been cloudless and the sun blinding. So, I’ll raise my coffee as a salute to the color, the crispness, and the change.

Autumn – and as I stated earlier, Marcia has a bit of a struggle. With that said, our thoughts have turned to home, family and friends.

All of this had me refresh on a little article written about the neighborhood we love and the diversity we so value: “…… how a little pocket of North Avondale produced a five-time Tony Award-winning Broadway producer, an Oscar-nominated director and producer of documentaries, a former mayor of Cincinnati, the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, a Los Angeles TV production company executive, and a multimillionaire entrepreneur who invented the Spinbrush toothbrush and sold it to P&G, not to mention a batch of doctors, lawyers and university professors. And all but one of those was born in 1946 and graduated from high school (Walnut Hills, now Marin’s school to be exact) in 1964.”

“It is unusual to have that kind of concentration……..but that’s North Avondale. It’s a very unusual place and a very interesting community. It was a very close-knit, upper-class, reform Jewish community.”

We’ve been told by our contractor that a week from now they’ll begin work. Assuming that he’ll stick to his promise, we’ll head home in three weeks. Hear that Marcia?

Pictures tell the story – the work to get, transport, and place our little outhouse to then receive our compost toilet. As I told people, traveling down the Trans-Canada highway with that little building in tow made us look like we were dragging a redneck RV – I loved it. Thanks to Bob and Donn the impossible was made possible – not forgetting Marlene and Marcia who manned the safety line while unloading.

Blinko Lake – was our destination for what will probably be our last ATV ride of the season. Heading there was a solid multi-mile run on easy-to-ride logging road. Then it was trail riding, much of it hunched over due to the low-hanging canopy. Crossing a creek and up a slippery embankment we eased past a bit of a washout of the trail. Finally we came on a “trapper’s” cabin – properly licensed as such and only to be used for nearby trapping purposes. Finally we broke through to a phenomenal sight. Blinko Lake! The place could be featured in National geographic as an Alpine Lake. It is so different from the way most any other lake looks in this region. Hated to leave that place.

Also, for the first time ever, I used a full tank of fuel on a single ride. Visually my tank was bone dry when we hit the Trading Post where I managed to get .65-liters of fuel over the stated tank capacity.

What, me worry?

Fini – Yup, even with the wind blasting our faces and layered in several layers of clothing Marlene did our three mile walk this am.

In a little bit we’ll head to nearby St. Joseph’s Island for their annual Organic Agricultural Tour. From this trivia lover: did you know that St. Joe’s is the second largest fresh water island in the world?

Make it a great week and stay safe.

Cheers.

Dirk