Choosing your weapon at Falling Downs

I bet Junior a hundred bucks that no matter which weapon he chose, I'd beat him around the block.

Let me explain the weapons.

In this corner, there's a twenty year old Kawasaki Ninja.

In the other corner, there's a twenty-five year old Mustang Fifty.

Let me explain the block.

We're in God's country here, and that's on top of living smack dab in the middle of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The "block" takes you through three hamlets; Wolsley, Lake Charles, and Kemble.

Wolsley is a former church, two houses, and a gas station turned bakery turned ghost town.

Lake Charles is a 90 degree hard right turn at Wolsley. It's got a church and five houses.

You take another 90 degree hard right at the church in Lake Charles and you're on a four mile straightaway to the Kemble Mountain Road. You can hit some ungodly speed on that stretch.

Then you've got some twisties and an absolutely divine vista unfolding before you on the other side of the Kemble Rock. Then you hit Kemble after another short straight of a mile or so.

Kemble is a post office, a church, and a couple of dozen houses. You make another hard right and head home. There's another set of twisties just as you're getting to Falling Downs. This is the stretch that sees the annual Porsche parade during the Cobble Beach Concours. If you went straight at Kemble instead of making that hard right, you'd be at Cobble Beach in five minutes and in Owen Sound in fifteen... at least if you were abiding by the speed limits.

So Junior picks the Mustang. I get the Ninja. The Ninja is a recent addition to our fleet, so I've not got around to getting either a helmet or a motorcycle license. Which is why I'm being extra slow and extra careful.

That Mustang can run the quarter in fourteen flat, but nevertheless I blow his doors off. There's no traffic at the Wolsley corner, so I use up all the road and I'm off to Lake Charles before he even shows up in my mirrors. That's a nice straight road and I can wring out the Ninja to a goodly turn of speed.

I spot him in the rear-view just as I'm braking for the turn at the Church in Lake Charles. I never see him again. I'm over the Rock and down the straight into Kemble at 125 mph. There's more in the Ninja but I want to take it easy.

I'm gonna try this flat out after I get a helmet.

Full stop at the Kemble corner, and I dawdle the last couple of miles back to Falling Downs.

Junior shows up five minutes later.

Old guys rule!

Decorating with boulders

I've been working hard at sprucing up the place.

It's got a lot to do with that 1980 Allis Chalmers back-hoe, the acquisition of which I've been trying to justify ever since it arrived here.

My first back-hoe project was digging a series of practice holes alongside the creek. I mean, you get a back-hoe, obviously you need a little practice.

I have to admit that original practice project had an ulterior motive. If I did enough "practice holes" alongside the creek, eventually I could just scoop out the berm between the practice holes and the creek and I'd have a pond!

Even a small lake maybe!

Alas, as I've been jacking up the rent I charge my tenant farmer every year, he keeps jacking up the amount of acreage he wants for his cows. This resulted in me having to fill in all those practice holes.

Which was good practice. Besides, we wouldn't want cattle drowning in those practice holes...

But the long and the short of it is I don't have a whole lot of useful things to do with Allis anymore.

Which brings me to landscaping. Back in the spring I took out a huge ugly shrub right by the front porch.

Replaced it with a half-ton boulder out of the back 40.

Lately I've been clearing the logging trails in the marsh across the way. This is a dicey operation, because that side of the road is covered not only by the Niagara Escarpment Commission, but it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well.

Well fuck me.

I'm gonna apply to the United Nations before I can take my Allis across the street?

Obviously not. So I've been over there, rooting around, making one of these "logging roads" into something that ends in the middle of the marsh and has a dock, from which I can access Bass Lake!

Bass Lake is a very pretty vacation-land tourist destination. It's home to a trailer park and a few dozen cottages that when they change hands tend to go for three hundred and up.

So while I'm leveling out the logging roads I keep unearthing giant boulders that were left here by the thaw of the last ice age. The global warming of its time.

Haven't heard that it was "man-made" global warming, but it could have been.

Maybe Iglpoop, the Neanderthal who was an extra in the Quest for fire movie, got careless with the fire...

I know from personal experience how quickly a little controlled grass fire can become something else... so it's utterly possible that Iglpoop set the entire continent on fire.

And then the glaciers melted and ten thousand years later I'm stuck with these random boulders all over my property.

Anyway, I've been doing the best I can with the hand nature dealt me, and today I placed a really nice one ton boulder right in front of the house.

Sure hope the farm manager likes it.