The Longest Weekend

I almost feel as though I've been on a short vacation, though I didn't leave home.

Yes, this past weekend was the Labour Day long weekend, but it was made even longer with an extra day, given off from work, on Friday. The director of my company's development team gave everyone under his leadership last Friday off, which meant that all of my co-workers would be away, leaving me and the writers alone. So I spoke with my manager, who spoke to his boss, and we were also given the extra day to ourselves.

Gotta love that.

I made excellent use of my time. I spent Friday morning getting fitted for new reading glasses (no eye surgery in the foreseeable future—pun intended) and then worked on some writing and an upcoming Brown Knowser YouTube video: stay tuned. (Incidentally, another video dropped yesterday: give it a view when you can.)

That evening, we went to my parents' place for dinner and had a lovely evening catching up. It had been a couple of weeks since we had seen each other, even though they are a five-minute drive away.

I awoke early on Saturday and decided that I wanted to get a sizeable ride on my bike. DW and I cycled to Manotick together, but when she wanted to stop at a coffee shop for a snack, I bid her adieu and continued on my way. At first, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go and just maintained my regular 42K route, taking River Road south of Manotick. It was shortly into that part of my ride that I would follow River Road to its end, in Kemptville.

The route there was just under 40K. I made one stop to stretch, sip some of my iced tea and eat one of the fig bars that I had packed with me, before heading north, toward North Gower, and onward toward home.

Total distance: 82.6 kms.

When I got home, I had a quick bite before I changed into some shorts and a t-shirt and headed out to mow the lawn. I knew that after a long ride, I'd only have so much energy left before I'd want to take it easy. I got the front and side lawns cut but it was too hot in the backyard, so I decided to wait until later in the day, when the house would cast the backyard in shade.

I ran out of steam shortly thereafter and took the rest of the day easy, working more on my upcoming YouTube video.

On Sunday, DW and I decided to head downtown for breakfast. We weren't sure where we wanted to go, so I asked my Twitter folks for suggestions and received a lot of very good recommendations. Ultimately, we decided to make our way to Elgin Street and settled on the Ministry of Coffee. Afterward, DW recommended that we go for a walk, since I knew I wasn't going to get on my bike that day but wanted to accumulate some distance for my virtual Appalachian Trail challenge.

We walked up Elgin Street, cut through Confederation Park, and cut through the Rideau Centre, where DW decided to do some more shopping for comfortable shoes and travel clothes, for our upcoming trip to Portugal (10 days to go!).

From there, we wandered through the ByWard Market. Because I wanted to practice capturing some cinematic video, as practice for our Portugal trip, I used my smartphone to play with video settings (even though I'm not really planning to use my smartphone for video captures). You can see some of the video I captured on my Instagram account.

Back at home, we decided that we had procrastinated enough, and it was time to give our backyard fence some attention. When we returned home from Cuba, last December, we discovered that two of our fence panels had blown down, and that two of our fence posts had snapped.

In the spring, I tried digging out one of the post stumps but found the clay and cement wouldn't budge. And so, I gave up. On Sunday, I dug the hole a little bigger, went deeper, and used a heavy iron rod with a chisel-like head to try breaking up the concrete. It worked and I was able to break about a foot off the concrete. I then wrapped a chain around the post and, using a tall jack, was able to pull the post out of the concrete.

The post didn't move, so DW and I put a new post into the hole, hammered it a few feet down, and then sealed the hole with expanding, hard-setting foam.

One post down: one more to go. But by then, the sun had set and we hadn't even located the other post stump (dirt had filled in after the fence fell) so we called it a day.

I started Monday with another bike ride but didn't plan on going as far as I had gone on Saturday. I did my usual route but added Long Island in Manotick to the return leg. Total distance: 42.9 kms.

As soon as I got in the door, I made myself some breakfast and then changed back into my yard clothes. Sure, they smelled sweaty from the day before but I was only going to get sweatier (and I was already sweaty from my ride).

Back outside, I located the second fence post stump and started digging. I had to dig more than a foot to find where the rest of the post was, as the wood had rotted and the post had snapped off much lower than the first post. I got down about two feet before I struck concrete.

There was a lot more concrete surrounding this post than the previous one and the clay seemed much more dense. It took me all afternoon to chisel about a foot of concrete and when I tried wrapping the chain around the post and pulling like the first one, it would not budge. I used the iron bar until my arms just wouldn't lift it anymore, and I called it a day.

We barbecued some tandoori chicken and called it a day. (I barely had the energy to type this post, and my wrists were killing me.)

Four long days.

It was an extra-long weekend but in some ways, it felt like a mini vacation. With only 10 days to go before DW and I fly across the Atlantic, it was a great pre-vacation vacation. With a lot of exercise.

Mind you, we'll be getting our fair share of exercise in Portugal, with walking, climbing, kayaking, and cycling. I just hope our muscles wont ache at the end of each day.

I hope you had a good long weekend. Happy Tuesday!