The Pink Floyd wine trip

Again, not quite like you may have thought, especially if you're my age and were into some of the recommendations about listening to Pink Floyd. This was a drive to Red Deer to get wine, with a soundtrack of Dark Side of the Moon, A Delicate Sound of Thunder, and Echos. This wine.

For those that don't live here, it's about an hour and a half drive from our house to the store in Red Deer. Why there for wine? The price. We saved $338 across those 6 kits.  The four on the left were the pre-orders. I knew I had saved more than enough from them to buy one other kit and part of the other. So why not?

Plus the drive is nice, if you pick the right day. Almost all of it is freeway, making for a mostly relaxed drive on cruise control. You just have to keep an eye in the rear view mirror for the drivers on overdrive control. I was passed several times by drivers going well over the speed limit, probably in the range of 150 kph or maybe more. Zoom. Such is life when your idiot government bans photo radar on provincial highways because, "they're a cash cow." Whatever happened to making criminals pay?

Only saw one crash, which is par for the course. Some driver, somehow, tangled with the fencing in the median and just about tore their car apart. A cop and a guy with a big tow truck were trying to sort it all out. In almost 45 years of driving on Highway 2, I've just about seen it all.

I was in a funny mood during the drive. Something that really resonated with me was from Time. 

"You are young and life is long

And there is time to kill today

And then one day you find

Ten years have got behind you"

As a digression, I sometimes see the so-called 'reaction videos' of people supposedly hearing various music for the first time. I am dumbfounded that anyone can claim with a straight face that they've never heard Bohemian Rhapsody, or any Pink Floyd, or be unaware that Disturb's amazing version of The Sounds of Silence is a cover. So in the unlikely event that any of my readers haven't heard Dark Side of the Moon, find 43 minutes and a pair of headphones. Listen to it all in one go. Thank me later.

Then at the store I was chatting with the young lady in charge. I think she's the grand daughter of the former owner, who has since passed away. I started buying wine there 2002 or so, mainly because I like drinking wine and had just started at Skystone. Lots of the people there made wine, and they were happy to introduce me to the process. It wasn't uncommon to come into the office and find wine kits near the door. People going past Red Deer would pick up kits along the way and save someone the drive. 

I asked, but the young lady didn't know the Skystone name, or any of the people's names I mentioned. Perhaps I'm the last person from those days still buying wine kits. Given the inventory that will be on hand when those 6 kits are done, there might well be enough wine to last the rest of our lives. That's an odd thought that has started to occur to me, that something I've bought won't need to be bought again.

 For me 2002 doesn't seem like very long ago. I thought of myself as young and keen, and eager to contribute. Sean was already working there when I started, and Susi started the same week I did. For a while her office was across the hall from mine. She had a window office, and I had an inside office. She was an engineer, I was a software geek. I never had a window office there, but for a while mine was one of the biggest, matching that of the 3 owners, since I often had training sessions and other client meetings in it.

Sean is much the same age as me and has retired from oil and gas. Susi is much younger (and way better looking and almost certainly smarter) and last I heard is still working for the man while dreaming of retirement. I know at least 3 of the people I worked with there have died, none of them particularly old in the great scheme of things. Perhaps more have died, but I don't know; I've lost touch with all the other people I worked with there and then. Skystone itself doesn't exist anymore, having been bought out and absorbed into another company.

It's easy on any random day in retirement to kick back and enjoy a quiet day. It actually needs to happen periodically and is good for you. But then if you aren't careful, it might not be 10 years, but the time is gone. And when you know there isn't that much time left, you need to start thinking about what you might want to get done today. 

And yeah, that's a hint. I've had an amazingly healthy life so far. No broken bones, although one got  cracked during a memorable fall off my bike. I nearly lost some teeth out of that but they're still hanging in there. My dentist's office is amazed by the whole thing.  Hospitalized only once as a child to get my tonsils out. Did Ironman at 52. My doctor telling me last year that I'm boring, and keep on doing what you're doing. 

Except that clock keeps on ticking. About a month ago I woke up and while I made it to the toilet to pee, I haven't felt the room spin like that since I was a drinking teenager. At first I thought it was low blood sugar, or I got up too quick. As I was puttering in the kitchen making coffee, every time I turned my head the room was spinning and tilting. Before I started dealing with boiling water, I decided to sit down before I fell down. It took a few minutes to pass, and I was very careful with the coffee. I didn't feel particularly better after breakfast, and started thinking there might be a problem.

After visits to my eye doctor and GP, things are better than I feared. I periodically need to do a specific head motion that gets the little crystals in my inner ears back on the job where they belong. It's mostly good now, with a few episodes that typically don't last long. I think of it as a harbinger. There are a limited number of days left.

Today's flower.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

I struggle with vertical in photos. Sometimes it's really hard to get right, especially with wide lenses. I'm just guessing that the corners and windows of the building are actually the real true verticals, but that damn pole is what catches my eye.

Linda

Newfoundland

Polar bears

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago