Wednesday September 3 – School, Power Outage and Climbing

The day started with wet feet again as we walked on the grass to get around the construction at the school.  Once again there were no construction workers in sight.  To keep the children safe from moving construction vehicles long parallel fences were set up from the road to the back of the school where the addition is located.

It is amazing how little has been done given that the fences went up at the end of May.  The principal told me today that the construction company told her progress would be slow during the World Cup as workers would just not show up or would leave early to watch the games, but once it was over they would get the work done before school started.  As far as I could tell they rarely showed up all summer long.

After dropping Owen at school I jumped on my bike and rode up to Caledon East for a coffee and a round trip ride of 35 km.  My knee, though still swollen, did not hurt even though this is the longest ride I have done since falling.  The leaves have started to change colour.

I had coffee at Gabe’s Country Bakeshop.

I returned home so Owen could come home for the second nutrition break at 12:35.  This worked better than yesterday when he came on the first break at 10:35. After lunch I headed to City Hall to watch a Committee of Council listen to delegations on a motion to kill the Metrolinx proposed LRT on Main Street in Brampton.

Metrolinx has proposed running Light Rail Transit from Port Credit GO Station at the south end of Mississauga to the Brampton GO Station.  The plan is to run it straight up Hurontario / Main Street.  The Brampton Historical Society, among others, do not think the proposed route makes sense for Brampton.  Council asked staff late last year to prepare a report detailing alternatives.  Staff hired consultants.  The report has yet to be shared with Council.  Yet for some reason, Council saw fit to hold a meeting to kill the LRT without having information about alternatives.  I have so many questions.  Why do we pay taxes for a planning department which appears to be unable to do basic planning work?  Why would our politicians not hold staff to account?  It has been almost a year since the information was requested.  And why would they make a decision in the absence of that information?   In the end they voted unanimously to kill the project as currently planned.  I hope this doesn’t turn out to be short-sighted, but I fear that it will be.

Just after 5pm our power went off for no apparent reason.  The sky was clear and sunny.  I called Brampton Hydro, but the line was busy.  We had a power outage under similar circumstances back in June and it took hours to get the power back.  At that time I started following Brampton Hydro on Twitter as they sent out tweets as information became available.  This time I tweeted to them right away and they responded within minutes to say they were investigating.

Since they didn’t know the cause we figured it would be a while before we had power again so we headed out to Casey’s for dinner.  We ordered a bunch of appetizers – onion rings, deep fried shrimp, garlic bread, fries, sweet potato fries and artichoke dip – and shared.  It’s been a long time since I have had that much greasy food.  I realized that I don’t really miss it.  By the time we finished the power was back on and we headed home.

A

Every year since 2007, I and at least one of my children, have climbed the CN Tower to raise money for the Toronto United Way in October.  We train in the parking garage at the local hospital where there are 108 steps.  We begin after Labour Day and work up to climbing up and down 17 times, which approximates the effort involved in climbing the tower.  This year Trystan and Owen are climbing along with my nephews Jason and Ryan.  Alun holds our family best time record and we are trying to encourage him to come out this year to defend it against Jason, but we haven’t convinced him yet.

This evening  Alun, Trystan, Owen and I picked up Jason  and Ryan and headed to the hospital.  Just as we we entering the staircase a security guard approached us to ask what we were doing.  I told him and he told me he didn’t think that was allowed.  I expressed surprise and told him that this was the eighth year I had trained at the hospital.  He left to check with his supervisor.  I told the kids to start climbing.  To be honest I had long expected to be told not to climb there, but it had never happened before.  To my surprise he returned about ten minutes later to tell us we could continue.  How reasonable.

It was hot and humid in the stairwell, however that didn’t stop Jason from climbing up and down 17 times.  Congratulations Jason, you are ready to go.  If Alun doesn’t come I think you will beat his best time of 16:42.  Ryan and Alun each climbed 11 times.  Trystan climbed ten, I climbed six, stopping when my knee started hurting, and  Owen climbed three.  We are going to try to go back every Monday and Wednesday evening.