It turns out we were lucky about the black flies two days ago. One passenger got bit over 50 times. We continued our black fly luck yesterday. We saw a few, but they were lethargic and not biting. Paamiut is an Inuit town of about 1,000 residents. If you come, you will see that every building hosts several families. The bright colors indicate what the residents of that building do for a living. I don’t know what happens if the husband is a plumber and the wife a government official. I suspect everybody knows what they each do without the color coded residences. The buildings I saw housed several families. I did not see a stand-alone building all for just one family.

There’s not a lot to do. They decided not to open the museum. The church was having a funeral. It’s an interesting looking building.

The third thing to do is to go to the top of the rock and look over the entire town. The first picture came from the lookout. Getting to the overlook involves walking on a boardwalk that is part throughway and part private. One of the buildings I walked along has a resident that needs a wheel chair. The ramp they installed is not ADA compliant, but it does the job.

There are few more pics on the internet. To see them, click the photo link at the top of this message. One of them is an overlook of the bay, including our fog-enshrouded ship and a well known wreck.

Today we are at Red Bay, Newfoundland – population 142.

We had excellent weather — cool with light showers. This is excellent weather because if it is sunny and warm, the black flies come out. We were prepared with nets and Deet, but we didn’t need them. The picture is an exaggeration.

Back in the day, Basque whalers used this area to process whale oil. It was a large operation, with at least 19 sites. Much later, it had a fishing industry. Today, it’s all past tense. The major activity is tourism.

Tomorrow is a sea day. Saturday we are scheduled to arrive in Greenland at Paamiut. We met a couple who are on this tour for the 4th time. So far, they have not had weather good enough to allow the tenders to operate. Not to worry. This isn’t the only port we will visit in Greenland. We have also met people who have visited Paamiut, including our captain.

The cities in this part of the world are small by my standards, but they are nice none the less. Corner Brook is large enough to have a Walmart. Can anybody aspire to more? We didn’t visit the Walmart, but we did take a very nice nature trail walk. We had perfect weather.

The city has a small museum. My eye caught a 1936 Atwater Kent radio. In the 1930s, they were the radios you wanted. The information placard indicated this was one of the last radios they made. They were forced out of business by a pending labor strike. This is the kind of information that makes me wish I knew more. What were the other problems Atwater Kent was facing? It’s quite rare for a pending strike to force a healthy company to shut down. I also read that it had “a 3 band set with shallow tuning known as a fan dial”. That would be fun to look up.

I also saw this 1908 one speed pedal bike. The top horizontal tube supports a toolbox. (Point of interest, this is exactly where many new E-bikes put the battery.) Did it have a freewheel? Did it have coaster brakes? I don’t know. Here’s another interesting topic for a cold winter’s evening.

We closed out our visit with this kitschy train ride. The totally unexpected bonus was the offer to stop half way through the way and pet a Newfoundland dog. A few people took them up on the offer. The train reserves a few empty seats so they can pick the folks up on the next ride. Where else can you find a train ride with a feature as cool as that?

Yesterday was a sea day. Shortly after dinner, the captain announced we would have a strong wind overnight. He said he might not be able to tie up to the dock. His alternate plan was to anchor in the bay and use tenders. Sure enough, all was calm until about 3 AM. It was the Wind of Hell. Howling sounds were heard throughout the ship. All exterior doors were locked shut. In spite of the wind, the sea was relatively calm. Ship motion was nominal. Fortunately, the wind let up at about 6 AM. We were able to tie up to the dock.

We were in Sidney, Nova Scotia. Our main activity was a bus ride to the hamlet of Baddeck to see the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. We all know that Bell taught deaf people how to talk (including Hellen Keller). And he invented the telephone. What I didn’t know is that after he was filthy rich, he formed a research company to do cool stuff. For example, Edison’s first phonograph was not useful. Audio quality was terrible. The cylinders failed after a few plays. Bell’s company invented the Gramaphone, which was far superior. It didn’t take Edison long to copy Bell’s improvements, making his system almost as good. For many long years, “Gramophone” was associated with superior audio quality. Bell also puttered around with airplanes, achieving the first flight in Canada. Bell’s “Silver Dart” looked a lot like the “Wright Flyer”.

The exhibit showing what phones looked like over the years was fun to look at.

Even more fun was the exhibit designed to teach children how to use a dial phone.

I hope all are well.

Our first stop was Portland Maine. Dani and Gayle drove down to meet us. We enjoyed a historic touristy train ride. We had lobster for lunch, then gelato for desert. We got back to the ship just in time to avoid a summer squall.

We’re on board. We’ve had our first meal. The ship is preparing to sail. What better way to start our journey than a map showing where we’re going. Here it is!

We had a trifecta of good things this week.

My bike is fixed. I was able to get a couple of pretty good rides in. The bike rides great. Life is better with a bike.

We signed a contract for upgrades on the house. We came to terms practically at the very last minute. If we did not have agreement by Friday, I was going to put our plans on ice until sometime next year, starting with a new contractor search. We will replace all the cabinets in the kitchen. In our master bath, we will convert that huge tub we never use into a larger shower. That will let us put in a more spacious vanity and give us a small closet where the old shower stands now. We will paint the entire first and second floor. And we will fix a few smaller things to bring our upper two floors up to snuff.

The third piece of good news is our cruise. We leave early Friday morning, taking the Amtrak train to Boston. We’ll stay in Boston overnight, then board our ship on Saturday. We stay on the ship 5 weeks, taking Amtrak back to home on August 23. We will visit Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, and a few more places. The Vikings were masters of these waters in 1100. We’ll be nosing around and enjoying how much things have improved since then. Who knows? We might even get to raid an English castle. (Not.) This is Holland America’s most popular itinerary. They only offer this cruise once a year, due to extreme weather conditions outside the summer season.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a fairly standard week. That’s not all good. We should have had some exciting news about house updates by now. We don’t. We rejected two builders. The third has not been able to give us a contract after two weeks of our initial contact. Even if we get a contract this week, there seems to be little chance of having construction done before Thanksgiving. Maybe next year …

We had some very nice weather for the July 4 holiday. I spent many long hours. At home. My bike has two busted spokes. I discovered this late July 3 while prepping for several days of rides. The bike shop should be open Monday. I’ll get it back in plenty of time to sit on the porch and watch it rain. Bummer bummer bummer.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Other than that minor nuisance, all is good here in Columbia land. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The highlight this week was a visit to the Reeds. It was a low key visit. There was a birthday party commitment. The weather was very hot, limiting outdoor activities. And there were scheduling conflicts. The biggest mis was the demolition derby. We had localized thunderstorms every evening while we were there. We decided it would be unwise to try to attend. In spite of all that, we had a good time being with each other. And you know we were able to do some (indoor) minigolf. Here are some pics.

Elizabeth is an expert at crochet. She made this shark bag.

Letting Google settle the argument.

Having fun jamming.

A sibling discussion and a tired mom.

We gave home renovation a high priority this week. We started with an in-home visit from a company that advertises bed & bath renovations. We had an in-house meeting, followed several days later with a visit to the company’s showroom. We picked out cabinets, counter tops, shower tiles, and much much more. It sounds simple and fun, and it was kind of fun. But there are about 1 zillion details to be discussed. We started at 9:30 and ended mid-afternoon. We were both stressed and exhausted. I think Danita was affected more than me.

At the end of the showroom visit, we were supposed to get a list of all the work to be done, all the models and colors we selected, and the project cost. Unfortunately, when we came to the point of receiving the file, the salesman got extremely busy and said he would Email the document in a couple of hours. That was a day ago. Also, there was a 10% discount available only if we signed a contract immediately. The salesman warned us this was coming. I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. It felt amazingly sleazy. Why is the company so afraid of us talking to someone else? Maybe they’re on the up and up. We’ll see how this all shakes out. We started discussion with a second contractor and have an appointment with a third. It would be nice if we had this done before Thanksgiving, but it’s not like we are obligated to do anything.

House renovations ended up dominating our week, Hopefully the rest of the process will offer more fun and less stress. One thing is for sure, We will have fun visiting Jul & family next weekend. Our first activity is a demolition derby. What can be more fun than that?

I hope this finds everybody doing well.