Some random observations

Hello Everyone,

I'm back in Vancouver for the week, and while I haven't been biking much, I do have some unconnected observations.

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In my very fist post to my web site, I talked about a similarity between dogs and babies. More recently, I've noticed another between dogs and young children: for much of their lives they are, sometimes frantically, kept in check. Don't bite that, don't climb on that, don't eat that. It's a lot of rules. But there is one place where both dogs and children can be free, and that is at the dog park.

I regularly take my nephew Jack to go throw the ball for Arthur at the park. And here, they can both run to their heart's content. Want to throw the ball and hit a tree? Go for it. Want to throw the ball launcher itself? Sure. Want to run after that other dog? Knock yourself out.

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Arthur has a peculiar characteristic where he doesn't recognize threats from any animal smaller than him, but it acutely aware of any movement from an animal larger than him. Many times I've seen a small terrier snap and snarl at Arthur, only to have him blithely walk by or continue sniffing that dog's butt, unaware or uncaring about the threat.

Add another animal to that list: geese. The cantankerous Canada Geese here at Trout Lake were giving Arthur every threat display in the book the other day. They were hissing at him, tongues out, wings up, the whole deal. He could not care less. We were walking around the park, and this gaggle was eating grass in one area, a couple of adults and their brood of goslings. Arthur was mildly curious and went close to them to sniff them out. They did not like that one bit. Out came the threats, but Arthur was utterly unmoved. When you have sharp teeth and a strong jaw, anything with that much exposed neck just doesn't look dangerous.

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When you win a championship trophy, it doesn't really matter what you drink out of it. Sometimes it's champagne, sometimes it's some sponsor's beverage, it could just be water. Point is, you won the trophy, you accomplished something great. It's nice that there might be champagne involved, if you happen to like champagne, but that's not why it's special.

Celebrating your 65th birthday with a meal with your grandkids is something like that. It's nice if you are having hamburgers and you like hamburgers, but that's not really what's special about it.

My nephews were squirming in their chairs throughout the meal, the younger one fussing until he got more chicken. the older talking loudly at different times and only vaguely understanding why we had cake this night. Jack likes cake, so that made it special to him. But that's like the champagne in a trophy.

wes