I told you that I would tell you about my training for my walk next year, so here goes. Last Saturday and today I did stealth training. I was walking but no-one knows I am training because it looks like I am golfing. On Saturday Carroll and I played golf at the Oaks of Cobden, a beautiful course about an hour north of Ottawa. Today I played with some guys from my community at Manderley on the Green, just south of the city. I totaled 11 km on Saturday and 11.5 km today. Actually any relationship between what I do on the golf course and real golf (the kind that some people watch on TV) is entirely coincidental. I thought as a former army helicopter pilot that golf would be easy. It’s just hand-eye co-ordination, after all, and I have (had?) that in spades. It was a great shock for me to discover that the translation between hand-eye co-ordination for flying and hand-eye co-ordination for golfing is not one-to-one. Closer to a fish on a bicycle. Saturday was good – 111 – but you can see that good is a relative term. It is slowly getting better but the only way that I am going to play my age is to live to about 114. That is my typical score.
A couple of celebrations this week-end as well. Sunday the 10th was Sheevaun and TJ’s wedding anniversary – and the weather was about the same, absolutely beautiful, sunny warm, the trees every colour in creation. Today, Wednesday 13 October is Christian’s birthday. I recall vividly that day 43 years ago in Calgary because I attended his birth, which was very uncommon at that time. It was Friday the 13th, turned out to be a lucky day for us. We called Christian our Centennial baby because it was 1967, Canada’s Centennial. We also called him Christian White Bear Thatcher, but that is another story.