A Leslie Wong Blog

This is a view of The Cottage as we are pulling into the dock to unload the groceries. You can see the dock is soaked because of all those boats racing down to the Big Chute.

The Dock

It’s a easier to go to the Big Chute and load (groceries and luggage on) the boat.

All those schlumps in the background are waiting for the Big Chute Marine Railway to take them down to the lower part of the waterway.

The cottage is between a lock and the Big Chute. Boats come out of the lock and barrel down to the Big Chute making noise and big waves in front of the cottage.

This reminded me of my sister.

We went to the IGA in Coldwater to get more groceries, because we were too tired on Monday to buy a lot of stuff. The railroad tracks cross the road four or five times between Coldwater and the Cottage . There are plenty of train photo ops when the train is long.

Clouds

Chris an I both observed several times that the clouds look like the ones in The Simpsons.

Getting Up

Liz seemed a little reluctant to go water skiing but she didn’t seem to have any problem getting up.

Mark, the lookout, seems puzzled.

I hooked this Pike with a yellow plastic worm on a lead-head jig. I break off the barbs on the hooks for easy release, but they still get stuck. I had to ask Liz to get me some pliers because in my excitement, I dropped my hook degorger in the water (Chris dove in an got it out later).

The second pike I caught just self released as I pulled it toward the dock.

Wednesday I got another Pike and a small Smallmouth bass, but there hasn’t been any action since then.

There are a lot of weeds in the water. I catch those all the time.

Alien Invasion, Nobody Cares

The rental agent at Thrifty was anxious for us to upgrade to a new Chrysler Pacifica he had on the lot. I said, “Do you mean the big station wagon?” He didn’t see it that way.

It is a very luxurious vehicle. The tailgate opens electrically with a keyless remote.

Outside of Toronto on the 400, there is a large UFO parked that nobody seems to take notice of. The people of Toronto must be hypnotized.

Bass Pro Shops
At some point, I realized that I forgot my fishing reel. Fortunately, Bass Pro Shops had opened up their first Canadian store last November. It is 140,000 square feet. I am impressed. I vow to sell SUNW and buy stock, later to find out it’s still privately held. Cabela’s isn’t doing that great anyway.

The fishing department has about 100 reels on display so you can pick them up and try them out. I go to the reels locked in the display case and point out the Shimano Stella to Chris. I tell her she has to buy me that one because she made me come to Canada.

Bass Pro Shops has a large aquarium, that rivals one at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There are many large fish. I see at least a couple of 12-15 lb. rainbow trout, bass, etc.

We left Pacific Grove at 4:30 PM, PDT, even though our flight didn’t leave San Jose until 10:50 PM.We were going to have dinner in San Jose at a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall, not too far from the airport.

There were two restaurants right next door to each other and we decided to eat in the one where the most people were going into.

Another time, we had eaten at the other restaurant and received such a foul smell of shit for a few minutes, we couldn’t figure out what was going on.

Dinner

We ordered scallion pancakes, beef clay pot, Singapore style noodles and smoked pork with scallions. The restaurant was crowded. While we were waiting, the same odor came for about two minutes and then left. It was very disconcerting. The food was great.

It was now 7:15, a few hours too early to head to the airport, so we decided to go to Fry’s, because it was hot outside and we could walk around looking at stuff in air-conditioned comfort. Fry’s had closed at 7:00.
Sikhs

After filling the tank on the rental car (buying a Chevrolet Aveo is not recommended) we went to the rental car return at the airport. All the big rental car agencies are spread over one gigantic lot. After dropping off the car, we waited for the bus to take us to the terminal an noticed everyone driving the Hertz cars away, after the customers returned them, were wearing turbans.
SJO – ORD

The flight was very crowded. I slept for about an hour and a half. We arrived at O’Hare at 4:45 AM CDT and walked to the terminal where our flight to Toronto would leave at 6:30 CDT. There were 15 people lined up at McDonald’s. I told Chris we should get some frys.