This blog ends here.

Interested parties are referred to www.goingurban-dbd.blogspot.com

Back with the spirit of the blog.

This, I think, is a former chicken. All I found was feathers in a distant field.

Victim, I'd guess, of an airborne predator, a hawk or similar. That, ladies and gentlemen, accounts for the price of free range eggs.

At 10:19

this morning Anna collected her car, the Element, and drove off to a new life. What a city boy is going to do with 100+ chickens, two horses, a donkey, three cats, a dog and a tractor is anyone's guess. I don't suppose I'll be moving that lot to an apartment convenient for work.

The rest of that weekend.

I had a mishap on the way to the lake, one tyre went all Ford Explody. Leaving the car on three legs.

I thought something must have seized for it to fly apart so comprehensively but the wheel still turns and the tow truck guy thought it might just be a bad tyre. I doubt that considering that we drove from Colorado on it. We'll have to see once a new one's installed.

I had it hauled. Astounding service from the CAA, the driver offered to take me anywhere and then to take the vehicle anywhere else for repair. He also mentioned a place where they sell eighties Land Cruisers, for $12,000 a piece, at that price this one might be worth some restoration. Not that it's for me to say.

Something different.

It was the end-of-summer long weekend and, with Anna at her parents', it was time for a change. Juliette and I decided to try gliding. Here she looks underwhelmed by the prospect.



To be fair, she had just come off a night shift.



Her glider was a new a shiny job.

There's a lot of pushing aircraft around involved in gliding, that and running alongside holding the wing up while the craft gains speed.

Eventually though you do get towed into the air.

My ride was less new and shiny, there was even a small hole in the floor that later offered an alarming view of the ground rushing up to meet me.

This is the view as we took off. The structure below is a bull fighting ring, not something one expects to see in rural Ontario.

This is a passing hang glider. Due to the lack of mountains hereabouts hang gliders are towed to 2000' by an aeroplane. I'm told that, in order to launch, the hang gliderist is pulled along on a skateboard.

Since they launch from grass I think it's probably a contraption in the manner of a skateboard rather than an actual one but who knows? People who soar thousands of feet while hanging on to a kite may be capable of any sort of lunacy.

Hang glider pilots can't see up while glider pilots can't see down, there are lots of tow planes buzzing around. A collision would be ill advised so gliding is not quite the chilled cerebral activity one might think. It's more like sailing in the Toronto Harbour or driving on the M25 than an afternoon of quiet contemplation.

Today's lesson in horsekeeping.

Firstly, for the person who loved the afternoon sky, here's a morning picture. This is fog over a lake I pass on the way to work.

There's a similar amount of fog over the fields.

Anyway, lots of burrs about at this time of year. Austin managed to get his tail into one huge knot.

I unpicked it back to swishability with, er, help, from the donkey.

In the course of which I learned never again to stand behind a horse full of pears.

Oh-oh.

It's lovely here, warm and sunny until it gets dark. Some trees though now look like this:

It's all coming again.