Kelowna Vacation, Day 4

At least some things never change… I went to the creperie this morning, and it was closed. So I went off to Café Soleil and had breakfast, then checked back, and they were open. I asked the lady about it and she said, “Yeah, we were late this morning.”

I wonder if this is habitual around Kelowna? In one way, it’s kind of nice that these people don’t live in fear of being a few minutes late. On the other hand… c’mon folks, you’re running a business.

I packed up – the suitcase closes, barely – and drove up to the hills to see if I could get a decent picture. Relatively decent; telephone poles in some directions. Still, another gorgeous, clear day. It should be a lovely flight home.

This morning, driving out to the airport, I was thinking of all kinds of observations about Canadians… and now they’ve all fled my mind. I was thinking that while I’ve been detailing what I’ve been up to, I haven’t done such a good job describing what’s around me or how I’m interacting.

Something I did learn last night: what the point of curling is, and why Canadians enjoy watching it. Okay, I gotta admit I still can’t understand the latter. But the “tournament of hearts” curling matches are on television – women’s curling – and after watching it for a while last night on the television while eating my dinner, I figured I needed to look up the rules. Essentially it’s a game of marbles on ice. You’re trying to knock your opponents stones out of the circle, leaving your own closest to the center. Those who are closest to the center, wins; if you have two or three stones closest to the center you get 2 or 3 points, respectively. At the upper levels, you usually only wind up with one or two stones left in the ring, as the girls are too good to leave many of them in the middle. It has become more interesting to me, now that I understand the point. But still: 10 rounds of watching people sweep brooms across the ice to make a stone do what they want it to? Seems very strange.

I enjoyed hearing something of what is going on up here, since the U.S. tends to think there is no life beyond our borders. My friend in D.C. actually sent me an article about this over the weekend: not just that Americans are stupid and insular, but they are aggressively so – they will vehemently argue they don’t need to learn. In part, I would assume, because it’s easier to deny than to have to learn. I thought about looking to see if I see the same thing elsewhere – do other countries write the same way? Clearly the increased connection and constant stream of information has decreased our capacity to absorb any of it. I know my memory is much worse than it used to be. But I don’t know that Americans are really unique in that way.

Maple. I do love the land of maple. Last night at the end of dinner I had the “bite-sized” maple blondie – sponge cake, maple cream, caramel, vanilla ice cream – I’m very glad it was a bite-sized one because the regular one would have killed me. Still, I love maple and it is good to see it get its fair turn up here.