I’ve been looking forward to visiting Rebel’s Rock Irish Pub since Eunie told me about going there with Hans two years ago on a musician’s night. I’m told that these events are designed to recreate the ‘kitchen party‘ atmosphere which is an informal gathering of musicians, often, literally, in someone’s kitchen – very popular in this part of the world. This is a photo from across King Street:

Rebel’s Rock is owned by a female Toronto Police Officer, Kate Chapman, originally from Northern Ireland. There’s an interesting history of the place here. This is a shot of the bar area:

The whole place is contained in one rather small room. I’d be surprised if you could cram more than forty people in there. I’d just eaten an hour before we went to the pub, so I didn’t sample the fare. By all accounts, it’s excellent. I did manage to deal handily with a pint of Kilkenny, an absolutely wonderful Irish cream ale. It’s medium dark and a bit chocolaty from the heavily roasted barley. It’s not as strong and overpowering as Guinness (which I don’t like), but the head is Guinness-like and it’s superb – as smooth and thick as full cream. We settled back to wait for the musicians:

I don’t know why I expected to get an evening of Irish tragedy lyrics. Sometimes the obvious is not what happens. Instead, what we got was an eclectic medley of folksy-to-rock ‘70s-to-‘80s numbers that settled into wave after wave of pleasant reminiscence.

The delivery was off-professional, in your face – we’re having fun so we don’t care, sing along if you like, and thoroughly enjoyable despite the occasional off-key note or forgotten lyric. Here’s a shot of nearly the entire place with us mellowed out at one end and the earnestly striving band at the other: 

Since I wasn’t using flash and the musicians seemed oblivious to me, I decided to get up-close. This is my favorite shot of the night: 

If you get to Hamilton someday, here’s a spot where you can enjoy a pleasant evening and not drop a wad of cash doing so. Bring some friends. Bring me.

Photographer’s Note:  This is pushing the limits of available light with the Canon G9, at least for me. It was dimly lit in the room. I did most of the shooting at f2.8, 800 to 1600 ASA, and got shutter speeds of 1/6 to 1/8 second. Obviously, you’ve got to have the camera firmly braced against something. I took dozens of exposures of each composition. I could then choose the one that looks best. When you’re not using flash, you don’t need to worry about spooking your subject. Opening the image in Photoshop, the noise looks hopeless. A great filter to deal with this is NoiseNinja Professional. These available light shots were all massaged with NoiseNinja. It’s cool to discover the secrets of the National Grographic dudes.

Went for a massage today. My friend insisted. We rode about a thousand miles to someplace called Emmet. Apparently, massages are cheaper there.

I had a massage. (More about that later.)

After the massage, as my friend was paying (they don’t take plastic – HAH! I knew that all along – it was a ploy to avoid coughing up eighty bucks; I had no cash), I looked outside and saw a squirrel. Now, squirrels have to be the stupidest of rodents. Sure, they’re cute – all ruddy and furry with those bushy tails. But this is how a squirrel hides:

Is that stupid, or what? Ha ha, you can’t see me, ’cause I’m hiding – POW! I must have plugged a couple of hundred of these with my .22 when I was a kid. There’s not a lot of meat on them, but they are tasty. I don’t kill things to eat any more. I let somebody else do the killing and I just eat the stuff. On the day of reckoning, will the animals be less angry at me for that?

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a Mexican Restaurant. I had a Modelo Especial (not so special – BUD with an accent) and Huevo Rancheros. In case you don’t know, That’s fried eggs, sunny-side-up, with salsa and cheese and other stuff on top. It was served with refried beans and rice. It was very tasty, but I can feel the cholesterol blobs floating around looking for a place to settle.

They had a cool Mexican hat – a sombrero, actually – hanging on the wall. I took a picture. Don’t ask me what Santiago Western means. The waitress explained, but I didn’t understand. I Googled it, but came away unenlightened. Anyway, here it is: 

I’ll probably be off the air tomorrow. I’m going back to Hamilton to finish my time with Eunie, and Hans’s family. I gotta spend seven hours at O’Hare tomorrow waiting for my connection. Bummer.

If you’d like to read my (supposedly humorous and entirely fictional) Instructions to My Masseuse, go for it. However, if you are a tasteful and sensitive person, give it a miss. It is far from my intention to offend. Better safe than sorry.

Adios, amigo.

Yesterday was another injection directly into my pleasure center. A friend and I did “The Lowman Loop” up through the mountains visiting Idaho City before returning to Boise. When I did the same ride four years ago, it was miserable. The temperature was an unmerciful 40⁰ C (118⁰ F for Yanks). Yesterday it was much nicer – about 30⁰ C (86⁰ F) lower down and a few degrees cooler up in snow country. Here’s a bit of pretty scenery on the way up:

You can barely see some snow on the mountaintops in the scene above. As you climb higher, the habitat changes from scrub and deer to pine and bears – no, I didn’t see any, but I’m told there are plenty around. A little place where we ate had a bearskin hanging on the wall above my chair. I kept looking around and seeing its teeth. Here you can see the beautiful piney woods – smells wonderful too:

I think the highest elevation we hit was about 1900 metres (6200 ft). It was still quite warm. I was happy with my t-shirt. Once in a while a blast of icy cold air would rush over us, making for cheap thrills. For a brief time we were surrounded by snowfields and pine trees:

Of course, wherever you’ve got toasty warm mixed with snow, you’re going to get lots of water. Alongside nearly every valley road there is a rushing stream: 

We went with a small group of riders from my friend’s church. Fifteen or twenty were expected, but only five of us showed up. I found that more pleasant, anyway. Here we are in Idaho City (minus my friend, who’s taking the picture): 

On the way down, I got a little camera-happy. My bum was killing me. You try sitting on a Shadow’s pillion seat, about the size of a cigar box, for seven hours. See if you don’t suffer temporary deformation of your gluteus maximi.

As I put my zen to work distracting me from the pain, I kept noticing the interesting reflection on the back of my friend’s helmet. It was like a backwards, warped, magenta movie – psychedelic in the extreme. After staring at it for a few minutes, getting the gestalt of it, I remembered my camera: 

Feeling better now, I began to think of other distractions. Rear-view mirror? Why not? 

This photo will help me to remember that I was actually there – it wasn’t a dream. Speaking of which, as the sun ratcheted lower there was one bit of magic left for my lens: 

I don’t know if I’ll ever enjoy this delight again, but good memories are nearly as satisfying as repeat performances.

If you have the bandwidth to do YouTube, you can watch some video. A riverside scene is here. The snowy pine forrest is here. A bit of helmet psychedelia is here. The sound is terrible – you can only hear the wind

I’d been looking forward to yesterday’s main event for about four years – the last time I had the pleasure. I went horseback riding in the austerely beautiful landscape around Boise. On the drive up to the ranch neighborhood, a peculiarly American type of community, we saw some deer. This is not out of the ordinary, as the countryside is crawling with them:

On arrival at our hostess’s ranch, I was greeted by one of many dogs, this one an incredibly huge white creature whose coat would shame the finest of sheep. Animals were all over the place, dogs, cats, beautiful horses. Our hostess explained that many people dump their no-longer-loved pets in the area, knowing that, if they survive the highway, they’ll be taken in. This one’s name is Beast. He licked my hand calmly and then pressed his huge head up against my thigh and closed his eyes as I scratched behind his ears:

I was alarmed when they began to discuss the horse I was to ride. She’s a twenty-three year old mare and she’s in heat. It was explained to me, in rather more detail than I needed, that that’s not a good combination. I was beginning to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I’ve ridden only a half-dozen times in my life. My training consisted of a youth spent watching cowboy movies and practicing the moves of a horseman in my imagination.

As I was introduced to my mount, I began to feel more confident. I feel a close kinship with dumb beasts. Honey, my beautiful buckskin mare, seemed to accept me, for the moment, anyway:

When it was time to mount up, there was a problem finding enough bridles. We had only a halter for Honey. Our hostess lined up her daughters, calling them my ‘slaves’ while she took this shot:

I took Honey around the corral and felt I might do okay without the bit, but I was advised that I wouldn’t be able to control her without a bridle and bit. I hastily agreed that I didn’t want any trouble. A broken leg would be an inconvenience for a rancher, but it would be a disaster for me. With one of my slaves leading Honey, me sitting atop feeling like a frivolous decoration, we went searching for the proper gear:

With a proper bridle and bit, Honey soon learned who was boss. Sort of. The scenery was gorgeous and the trail a challenge for me. Honey was fidgety. She wouldn’t stand still. It took me an hour to read her well enough to anticipate her moves and counter the ones I didn’t like. When crossing a creek, she stopped in the middle and began to splash the water violently with her right foreleg. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing or if it was a bad omen. A friend behind me yelled, “Kick her. She’s just playing.” I gave her a nudge with my boots and she scampered up the steep slope – a little too fast. At the next creek, I let her enjoy her play a little longer. Here’s me and Honey out on the trail:

In horse years, Honey is my age. Maybe that’s why we got along so well. Further along the trail, our hostess dismounted to take this group shot:

What could be bad about a day spent with generous friendly people, kids running around like wild Indians, and pleasant, compliant animals that share the spirit of the moment? I don’t know if I’ll ever get such an opportunity again. I’m savoring the memory already. And, I’m not even sore today.

Despite the wickedly cold wind, we were enjoying a little family walk along the shore of Lake Ontario. As we strolled past this fellow and his wife, he made some kind remark. We started talking with him.

Here he is with his wife and youngest child:

He is a very friendly fellow. He has plenty of interesting things to say.

He left Iraq during the big war with Iran. As he was discussing it, his face told the tale. He was sick of the fighting. He went on to talk about the troubles since that time. He showed no noticeable bias – he just shook his head as he spoke and frowned at the sadness of it all.

He complemented us on our wives’ modest dress (maybe he didn’t notice it was freezing cold). He told us that ne never wears short sleeved shirts. When I expressed puzzlement, he explained that once, when he had his sleeves rolled up, his wife took him aside and told him that she noticed a woman who was looking at his forearms with lust. He promised her that he would never wear a short-sleeved shirt again. Though I was impressed by his modesty and his acceptance of the wisdom of his mate, I don’t get the forearm equals hot equation. I can honestly say I’ve never noticed it. Maybe if my forearms looked like Arnold Schwarzenneggar’s . . . I think it must be a cultural thing.

He also complemented me that I do not shave. He didn’t scorn Hans (who does), but he made it plain that a ‘real man’ does not shave any part of his face. He stressed the importance of the mustache. “If you must swear, you must swear by your mustache”, he proclaimed.

He spoke intelligently and with passion about the many places he’s been. He said that the wonderful thing that he’d learned is that we all are much more the same than we are different. I felt as if I could, despite our differences, call this man brother.

It’s so easy to demonize those we don’t know – can’t be bothered to know. I feel fortunate that I’ve seen many places and interacted with many people in those places. I wish all Americans could experience such a blessing. The needle in my brain that plays the tracks is hopeless stuck somewhere in the middle of The Age of Aquarius.

Others call me an American, but my spirit whispers that I am an Earthling. I’m just an Earthling with a US passport.

My first hint that it was going to be a long, miserable day arrived when the TSA (Transportation Safety Authority, or, as I prefer, the Tyrannical Sneering Apes) took away my skin cream stuff. I just bought it the day before to keep my new tattoo happy. They mercifully left me with my deodorant and toothpaste. There was obviously something sinister about the tube of coconutty smelling white goo. It alarmed them. Perhaps they feared I would use it as a weapon – “I’m taking over this plane. If anyone moves I’ll squirt this all over you and make you smell like a coconut macaroon!” The horror, the horror . . .

So sad. I was looking forward to walking around all day sniffing my forearm – I like coconut macaroons. Anyway, after a couple of hours cooling my heels in Buffalo, I was off to Vegas again. But, first, I gotta mention that they have bronzish-looking statues of bison – North American buffalo – scattered all over the city of Buffalo. Is that to remind you of where you are? I don’t get it.

So, on the way to Vegas there was an interesting flight attendant. He was a big guy and he was black. No racial overtones here; it’s just not what you normally expect – not just black – big and black. He turned out to be quite the entertainer. On approaching Las Vegas, he kept calling it “Lost Wages” – it wore a little thin at the end. Overall, though, he greatly enhanced the otherwise boring trans-continental flight. I felt a little sorry that I didn’t thank him. On second thought, it occurred to me that he was a fellow that you would not want to say no to. I think he was ‘dual purpose’. Fortunately, nobody gave him any sass, so we never had to experience his dark side. He was great with babies.

At the Las Vegas airport, it was just as annoying as the last time except there were hundreds of people playing the slots instead of a couple – it was mid-day instead of the dead of night. It’s hard to describe the effect of having gangs of these twittering, banging, clanging money eating machines hammering at your eardrums for several hours. You can’t escape it; they’re everywhere. It’s like an aural Chinese water torture. Here’s the latest herd of suckers dropping next month’s rent into the mob’s pockets:

Taking off, I’m heading for Boise. That’s in Idaho. Americans who don’t live in Idaho think of it as, “Where they grow potatoes.” Actually, they do other things there as well. Anyway, on our way out, I got this nice shot of Vegas. The interesting thing here is that what we think of as Las Vegas (the glitzy bit) is amazingly small. Look at it (click the photo to get a bigger one). The showcase Vegas covers only a few square blocks:

On boarding the flight, I feigned to be clever. It was ‘open seating’ and I was in group ‘A’ which meant I could get a front-row window seat. Oh, joy! I put my backpack on the floor in front of my seat and draped my legs over it, naively hoping that the flight attendant wouldn’t notice it. She did, of course. And, of course, the only space left for it in the overheads was several rows back. Now I could savor the prospect of swimming upstream to retrieve my backpack on landing or just waiting until everybody else was off. So much for me being clever; I really should stop trying.

The lanky young guy next to me was about eight feet tall and, I’m sure, was thanking his lucky star that he was able to nab a front-row seat. The only problem was that his elbows extended about half-way across the adjoining seats. He kept poking me in the ribs without seeming to notice he was doing so. Trying rather successfully not to be annoyed, I scrunched over toward the window and tried to sleep. No success there.

On approaching Boise I saw something that startled me:

Yikes, I thought. I’m going down there! They’ve had a lot of snow (some said about 11 meters – actually they said 431 inches, but it’s America). I was greatly relieved when we landed and the temperature was mild – I got by with only a thirty year-old flannel shirt over my T.

Today I’ll be cruizing on my friend’s big Honda Shadow. I’ll check out the latest micro-brews and have a Fat Tire. On Saturday, it’s off to ride horses. I hope to get some good shots. Adios.

Sometimes a guy just has to do the right thing. For me, it was a trip to the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. It’s not that it wasn’t interesting. It was, in a surreal sort of way. I just think that a normal man can look at only so many shoes before he pukes. There are four floors of shoes in about eight or ten galleries. I’m not selling it short on effort, investment, class, history, or the many other fascinating factors that resulted in its creation. It’s a truly faaaabulous place. It’s just that I got tired.

They give you this goofy little clippy thing to fasten to your clothes to prove that you paid to get in. It’s not cheap, either. My son sprang for it and it set him back $50 Canadian for the lot of us. Eunie and I got ‘senior’ discounts. I clipped it on my earring. I got many odd looks. It pleased me greatly. Here it is: 

This one will be mostly photos, because, frankly, I’m still nearly speechless. Here is my granddaughter, Audrey Rose, examining a pair of stainless steel shoes that look as if they were designed to instantly lacerate a woman’s feet so severely that she’ll never desire footwear again: 

And, how about these: 

And these: 

Comfy, eh? What is it with the things that women put on their feet? Bare ones have always been the most appealing to me, but then I’m a little strange.

 Here’s my son, Hans, feigning interest (he’s a great husband and dad) in something: 

On the train back to Hamilton, when I was feeling less disoriented, I got my trusty G9 out and asked the ladies to make some funny faces for me. They did. I got this shot:

There are a couple of interesting things in this photo. First, I love the G9 for its amazing available light capabilities. It will shoot in low light at a shutter speed just fast enough to get the shot, but still let motion speak – so much better than flash. I like the bit of blurriness that gives life to the photo. I also note that Philippa Jayne (Pippa) seems to be coming unglued. Tamara, as usual, is bemused by her father-in-law.

Then there’s the nice lady on the left. Her expression is priceless. You’ve got to picture me sitting there in my Nanook of the North outfit (I’m always cold) with my long, wild Cherokee hair looking like a scary halo and my Turkish Gypsy hat topping it all off. She must have been spellbound.

The family conclusion seemed to be that, throughout history and across the planet, the indigenous North Americans seem to have produced the most practical and beautiful shoes of mankind.

Hans and I are going to get even when I get back from Boise. We’re having a family outing to the Warbirds Museum.