Loonies Only

In the womens' bathroom in the Toronto Airport, I was reminded that indeed, Canada is a different country. Not only do they sell Advil, o.b. tampons and breath freshener in shiny vending machines, they require that they be paid for with "loonies". Canadian dollar coins have a loon on them, hence they are called loonies. They also have two dollar coins, toonies. (Twonies?)

Back from backpacking

This is my favorite shot from the trip we just took with Kenn, Carmela and friends of Kenn's in the Mokulumne Wilderness. Most of it was actually completely different than the terrain in this photo, wooded with large granite stones. But, above a certain elevation the landscape changed drastically. One thing that I like about this photo is that it prove my theory that the trail we followed was made by drunken donkeys. Choose the flat or most direct route? No! Let's go up and down that steep hill and add curves on the flat open bits to prevent you from getting bored.

Click here to to see the rest of the photos from this trip.

The Battle

In my previous blog, I mentioned that we were battling bamboo, but I didn't show you what we were up against. Here's the before shot:

Saturday, we, with the help of our garden neighbor, 4 Brazilians and a Guatemaland - and a back hoe and an excavator, sawed down all our bamboo. It took 11 hours. Not only did we have to tear down all the bamboo, but we had to dig a 3' trench to put in a plastic barrier to keep the remaining roots from spreading into the area that we had just cleared. Now we feel naked and exposed... we couldn't see the the street from our office windows before -- now I can see not just the street, but houses around the corner from us.