Heat wave in Hicksville

It’s been damned hot in these parts. Lawns are brown. Tempers fray readily.

It’s a “heat dome,” the internet tells me.

The old double brick pile here at Falling Downs can fight off the heat for two or three days, but if the high heat goes on much longer it becomes a sweat lodge. That’s when we head for the shore.

So today we toured into town to pick up the Saturday Globe & Mail and then set up the lawn chairs on the south shore of Colpoy’s Bay, over Big Bay way. There’s plenty of shade and always a breeze coming off the bay, and of course, you’ve got your carte blanche to avoid all the household chores for the day.

Instead, we spend the day alternating between reading the paper and throwing sticks in the water for the dogs to fetch. Glorious indolence!

And 100% fully legitimised by that heat dome! It doesn’t get much better than that!

You’ll see a variety of boat traffic going back and forth in the course of an afternoon, and that’s always fun too. I’m still negotiating the boat purchase with the Farm Manager. I’ve earned a few points lately with the new gas fireplace now gracing the living room, so it’s just a matter of time.

There’s every kind of watercraft you can imagine on Colpoy’s Bay, from fifty foot cruisers to sailboats of all sizes to kayaks and canoes and the ubiquitous jet-skis. And it was a jet-ski that caused a double-take today.

The little park where we park our lawn chairs is a fave destination for scuba buffs from far and wide. That’s not a hobby that I get. Like, you could run out of air and die… nah, that’s not for me. But more power to the folks who get it. They’ve always got the little “diver down” buoys marking their spot. One day last summer we were sitting in our regular spot, the diver down buoy was maybe fifty feet off shore. A pair of jet-skis were screaming along the shore – must have had a good 50 mph going on. One of them dekes to the outside of the buoy, the other one, believe it or not, cuts between the buoy and the shore.

Holy heck… a guy or gal could be coming up for air in that zone and have their noggin’ detached by a high-speed jet-ski… another reason not to scuba dive.

But no, that’s not the cause of the double take today. Today, we saw a trio of jet-skis heading our way. Two that appeared to be racing, and one lagging a little behind. Up front, one machine was piloted by a single adult male; the other by a pair of teenage boys.

Here comes jet-ski number three, and it’s… a woman in flowing robes wearing a headscarf?

It’s the mom! It’s a Muslim Canadian family out on jet-skis!

Wow!

I haven’t felt such a burst of positivity for the future of Canada since that time I was sitting by the water at Sibbald Point Provincial Park and a couple of sari-wearing middle-aged Indo-Canadian women paddled by in a canoe.

I think we’re gonna be OK.