Pat & Walter

Last weekend

Pat and I both had fun weekends even though we were in separate places.

I had a Solosprint event in Shannonville, while Pat had a girls weekend in Ottawa. With the event in Shannonville I was able to stay at my Mom's in Belleville and drive the short distance to and from the track. Mom and Bill came out to watch me on the track for a bit on Saturday which was very nice of them. The car seemed to work well enough both days although I did crack a rotor on Saturday (I had a spare) and had nothing left of my tires at the end of the day on Sunday.

That's not me in the car in the picture, by the way.

Pat stayed at her friend Coleen's in Ottawa after driving up with a couple of her friends. They spent their time hiking in the Gatineaus and visiting a spa.

-Walter

Town 1, Tree 0

Our poor tree finally had to come down.

A man from the town came by one day and told me the large tree in the front yard tree had to come down. I asked if there were any options and he said not really. You'll remember we have been trying to save the tree for some time. It had a large split in it from a wind storm a couple years ago, so we put a couple of bolts through the trunk and tied the upper branches together with cables. But it was not enough. This year the bark on the lower part of the tree started to shed. It looks fine from the house, but not so much from the road.

I asked him when he though they would be bringing it down. He said, "We're busy tomorrow"!!! I wasn't prepared for it to be so soon. It ended up being a couple of weeks before they got around to it. We took a bunch of pictures of our poor tree before, and I was around when they took it down to document it.

Sixty some years to grow and about 6 hours to take it down.

More pics and videos after the break.

Before:

During:

After:

Cutting and shredding some higher branches:

Pushing over the trunk:

Lifting the trunk into the truck: