Waterfalls and a new game

We see on the news this morning that Toronto had a number of lightening strikes, some on the CN Tower and one setting fire to 5 townhouses. It is easy to underestimate the power of Nature.

Rang Ben when we woke to wish him a Happy Birthday. He was having lunch in a pub with Ellie, Freddie & Mary at the time.

Waterfall

On a day with lowering clouds threatening rain, a moderate 25 degrees and high humidity we went to Hamilton 'City of Waterfalls' according to the tourism website. Only they do not appear to be in Hamilton as much as Dundas, they do not appear to be signposted much if at all and the only local we spoke to was very vague about their whereabouts.

Waterfall

We managed after much searching with reference to the web courtesy of Ollie's Blackberry to find only two because the map on the website is insufficiently detailed. Nice as they were, it was a bit of an anti-climax having expected to have a 'fall fest' and as it kept threatening imminent rain, we had to have our waterproofs to hand! We consoled ourselves somewhat with a late lunch at Timmy Hor-tons.

Back in Kitchener, we popped in to Ollie's new workplace to be welcomed by owner Mike and dog Max. Apparently Max is a shrewd judge of character and chooses who he lets in – fortunately he seemed satisfied with us. Zoe would particularly like Max; he is just like a small polar bear cub and quite gorgeous. Mike made us very welcome and Ollie introduced us to the team who were there. They were all very welcoming to us and took time out of their work to have a chat; it seemed to me to be a really great environment in which to work. It turns out that Lisa, the editor-in-chief of Canadian Skies, one of the MHM magazines, has a next door neighbour who is on the organising committee for the Waterfalls of Hamilton and could have got us a map!! Just before leaving we chatted to Mike about our plans for NS. He knows it well and gave us a number of very useful pointers. I am not surprised that Ollie enjoys working there.

In the evening we went to watch Ollie & Ang play 'Ultimate Frisbee'. Never having seen a frisbee used in anger, I was expecting all sorts of arcane rules but mostly it made sense. Think netball meets association football (interperson passing) meets rugby football (running angles and scoring zone) and you get close. The frisbee is passed from a standing position to a runner who has to stop and pass it on to another attacker; defenders attempt to obstruct or interrupt the pass, success leading to a change of ownership. Frisbee not being caught results in a change. The objective being to get the frisbee from one end of the pitch to the other with the last catcher being in the end-zone (try scoring area). It was very interesting and frankly rather more exciting than the professional entertainment offered the previous night. Although very much a team game, it was nice that our team members contributed 3points to the winning 15-3 score.

written by

rickandsuejohnson on July 27, 2012 from Waterloo, Canada

from the travel blog: Go West then go East

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