Every once and a while we get a shocking reminder of how fast the world is passing us by. Like when I looked at our blog page and realized that it was last February that I last posted or when I sent a mass email to our friends and received responses like: "where the hey are you?" or even more depressing "who are you?" .
Anyway, our life has not changed much since our last blog. We have been doing exactly what we please---kiting, fishing, hiking, swimming--- enjoying our winter in the southern most part of Texas and our summers on Okanagan Lake. We pinch ourselves each morning to ensure we're not dreaming and hit ourselves over the head with a 2 x 4 each night to be sure we do not take this good life for granted.
We were away from home a fair bit this summer but we only had one short trip out of BC in our trailer. After visiting Vancouver for my Uncle's 90th birthday, we took a short detour to the coast of Washington before returning to Vernon. I did my annual pilgrimage fishing with Howie my brother in law in the East Kootenays and also managed a day of fishing with Mike in Invermere (a fellow kiteboarder we met in Texas).
I fit in a 4 day hiking trip into Spectrum Lake and the high alpine beyond with my fishing buddy Ira.
This year our trip back south was the quickest ever. By the time we got out of Vernon and visited my parents in Cranbrook, October was done and there was snow on the ground. We made a quick work of the miles to Utah where the weather improved briefly so we stayed 2 days in Moab to explore arches National Park. From there it was a bee line to our destination.
We are now back on South Padre Island, Texas. As you know, we are both addicted to this kite boarding sport so we have chosen to spend our winters on this island. My brother Glenn and his wife Sue have joined us on Padre Island this year. Glenn is also a member of Kiteaholics anonomous. His wife Sue kites but she and Jude have slightly larger brains than the Mohr boys so they are not quite so taken by the sport. Nonetheless, we have enjoyed kiting as a group and several of our happy hours have expanded beyond the requisite hour.
Glenn and Sue usually winter in San Carlos Mexico but they arrived here shortly after us and I believe they have taken to referring to the island as this god forsaken place. Since we arrived this year we have "enjoyed" what old timers here are calling the worst winter in there memory.
It started with the red tide. Unlike our experience with redtide in the Pacific, this red tide not only poisons the shellfish but also kills masses of fish. For the humans on the island, it made it difficult to go outside without a mask because of an airborne component that made breathing next to impossible. Fortunately, the worst had passed when we arrived so we only had to put up with a constant catch in our throats whenever we were outside. Walking on the ocean side of the island was not pleasant and kiting there was often impossible. That lasted a month and gradually diminished---it has been gone for almost two weeks now.
Then there was the Hurricane Ida---she never came near the island but they blamed the unusually high tides and the poor winds on her. Ida passed onto the US coast line five hundred miles to the east the first week in November but the poor winds and high tides remain. The high tides have made the normally sandy dry kite boarding beaches and their access roads a slippery mass of stinking mud and water. Often, we are driving our truck through 6 inches of salt water and setting up our kites on small humps of vegetation. The poor winds have meant fewer days of kiting and instead of the normal balmy prevailing winds from the South East, we have had 9 out of 10 days blowing from the North. Often with cold temperatures and rain.
Enough of bitching about the weather already! what kind of sympathy can we expect with our cloudy and 24 degrees Centigrade when the wind chill in Edmonton is -52!!
