BY COMPARISON

We all know that comparing ourselves with others is a bad habit, but we all do it anyway.

For instance. We get on a ferry yesterday from Manitoulin Island to the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. Not a bad ferry, I guess, but not as good as BC Ferries where we’re from. BC ferries do everything better, I’m thinking, including the scenery. A flat Lake Huron horizon can’t compare with Active Pass, nor can a distant peninsula measure up to the mountains above Vancouver. Thus, with my nose in the air, I sleep on their parking lot.

Same today, kinda. We’re in Tobermory, which is at the north end of the Bruce Peninsula. They used to fish here, and farm, and probably hack down trees, but now they are into fleece, as in fleecing dumb tourists. You can get boat tours, walking tours, and and and… By the mercy of God it rained here today, so we canceled the tours we had booked. Read books instead. Tidied up the moho, did laundry. Felt better than the other tourists getting rained on.

Not to say, of course, that these are bad places. We had a terrific couple of days on Manitoulin Island, which you all should do sometime. I’m sure that we would have had a terrific couple of days here too if it hadn’t started raining. But somewhere in my brain the contagion lurks: we’ve got better waterfalls than these. This ferry is from the dark ages. Victoria tourist traps make these ones look amateur.

Ya. Hopefully none of you are thus afflicted, but I suspect I’m not alone.

One thing I did learn is that Manitoulin trucking, whose trucks are everywhere, did indeed start in Gore, Ontario, on Manitoulin island, and are now one of the big players in transportation and logistics globally. That’s right, globally. A girl selling ice cream told us that so I looked it up, and sure enough. Their office building in Gore is modest, to say the least, but they are heavy hitters.

Elsewhere I extolled the sound of rain on your cabin roof, even if your cabin has wheels on it. It’s happening again, and I’m loving it again. Finished reading Spare. Vacuumed the rug. Phoned people. And now I’m watching some old guys trying to back trailers in, both to the left and the right of us. Could I back in better than them? How does our equipment stack up…..aw forget it. I would never think thoughts like that.

Rain in, fires out. At least here. Hope that goes on in the rest of the country.

Cheers.