5C's Que Pasa

So very very happy to be here.  We got the RV unloaded in record time and even put back in the storage lot, all within 4.5 hours.  It helped that we brought a car load over yesterday and put it all away.  Today I had all sorts of bins prepacked so that when we arrived we only had to unload them.  Sadly I am not doing so well re my sore knee and I realized as I was unpacking that something was very wrong with my body.  We have the most wonderful chiropractor and she saw me with little notice just 30 minutes before a dinner party at her home.  My left Ilium was locked and creating many issues with the rest of my body.  So I have spent the last three hours icing then heat and repeat over and over.  The inflammation is what is creating my problems.  I really need this to clear up before our trip or I won’t be able to walk and that is what one needs to do to experience Venice.  Hopefully being home will relieve the stress and help me heal.  Of course I really need to be sitting at my desk checking out the many links on how to make our trip to Venice a good one rather than sit with my legs elevated.  I know that I should just let it ride and go with the flow once we arrive but I do need to know how to get from the airport to our Airbnb and which passes to buy re museums and which for the transport system, etc.

The snow pack that still has to melt.

The following is from a bulletin sent out by the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre

It’s a phrase often heard during auctions and telethons: “Where are we going?” The response: ‘Higher’.

That’s the case with lakes, creeks and streams across the Central Okanagan during this ongoing weather driven response to flooding.

And in the next week, you can expect to see further increases as the melting snowpack in upper watershed elevations increases with daytime temperatures expected in the low 30’s late this weekend.

Tuesday night’s high winds are a good indication of what we could expect and perhaps more, as Okanagan Lake continues rising. This morning, Okanagan Lake was at the 342.98 metre mark, up three centimetres from yesterday. That’s just two centimetres below the projected 343 metre figure.

In response to this, local governments throughout the region are checking, monitoring and bolstering defences in place to protect critical infrastructure and upland areas. This is what private property owners along water bodies should also be doing. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

Meanwhile our lake has gone down just a titch since yesterday.  Sadly it looks very likely that a large portion of the City of Kelowna is going to experience flooding.

Having been on the evacuated side of this situation I feel so very badly for those now on evacuation alert.  Our city is entering record breaking conditions.

My fall was last Friday about dinner time.  My knee is still bothering me.  I had the opportunity today to walk a few blocks and it was a bit of a struggle.  Not good news for Venice but I intend to start in a few days to build up my walking.  I have realized that we haven’t had a good walk since our last long beach walk with the girls the end of March.

You may remember that when I fell I thought that I had broken my eye glasses but Colin assured me that they where only bent.  The arrow shows where the barely visible break is.

It was a long weekend here in Canada so today was the first opportunity for me to take them into the only place that I trust with my glasses as I am extremely sensitive and the fitting has to be perfect.  Sadly when Deb picked them up she told me that they were broken.  She is going to call tomorrow and try to get just the one piece required to repair the frame.  I certainly hope so as they are my most favorite frame.

We went to check out our lake yesterday and we were surprised to see it had gone down.  The water level has actually decreased to the point that two of our cement steps are now visible.  Meanwhile the city of Kelowna is only 5 centimeters away from flooding.  Okanagan Lake rose 4.5 centimetres overnight to a new level of 342.95 meters, five centimeters below its highest recorded level of 343 meters in 1948.  Flooding is imminent  yet our small lake level continues to lower.

We are quite surprised at how quickly our lake came up, this was taken May 4th.

This was taken the next day, May 5th and by the 8th we were being evacuated.  You saw the photos of our lawn covered and water up to the house on May 9th.

Colin and I are wondering if the powers that be might have made an error.  The incident commander chief we spoke with on the 8th or 9th told us that they had had to open the dam way up in the hills in order to release some of the water pressure as the dam may have burst.  Was our flood man made?  Had they opened the culvert drain at the far end of our lake and decreased the lake level before opening the dam, the flood very well many have been avoided.  The only other difference is the two days of heavy rain that we had.  However without the dam being opened for just a bit ( that is what they say, just a bit ) our flood may very well have been avoided.  In the past we have always been able to deal with the spring melt.  Over the past several days we have experienced abnormally high temperatures and yet our lake continues to lower.  Something is not correct in this equation.  With my new older age I am going to wisely let this theory of mine go.  Life is short and I really need to start enjoying it.

So that brings us to the good news.  We are going home tomorrow 😀  😀  😀   Finally.  Colin was supposed to work today but it is snowing up at Silver Star so the shoot has been delayed.  As our lake was cooperating we decided to move our return forward a few days.  So today we did some packing and loaded the Jeep.  I can’t believe how much one can pack into that car.  We brought a carload of stuff back home today and unpacked it and I also drove my car home to park it as we can only drive the RV and the Jeep tomorrow.

So very happy to be going home tomorrow.

I only ask because today, May 22nd, I turned 64 😀   Click here to listen to the Beatles sing my birthday song.

It was a beautiful sunny and very warm day.  30C/86F is an abnormal high for this time of year, perhaps a new record was made.  I sort of eased into the day, after all, I’m 64 now and just a tad slower.  Thanks to those who sent suggestions for our upcoming trip to Venice, I have some serious reading to do and a few videos to watch.

Sadly I don’t have the date this was taken but I think I was around two or younger.

A few years later, maybe 4 or so?

Grade 6?? I have no idea of the dates that go with the photos.  Who has the family albums with all the info?  No se 🙁

We eventually headed out today for a late breakfast and after a few errands we decided to check out a few wineries near our RV park. Called The View, this one is known for its red shoe.  I didn’t even finish my five wine tastes for $4.00.  They went into the slop bucket.

The next stop was at the Spierhead Winery.   Five tastes for $5.00. Some were pretty good.

Our final stop was at the Vibrant Vine, a most unique place which one could see even from the parking lot.

They are the only 3D winery in all of the world. The brother of the onsite vintner lives in Colorado and creates everything that is in the shop from wine labels to pieces of art to anything else in 3D.  When you enter the winery you are presented with 3D glasses.  Very interesting  and unique concept.  Their tasting was free.

The wine was very good and we bought a bottle of Pinot Grigio and one of Whoops.

The Whoops is on the left in the photo and if you look closely the label in upside down.  By accident an employee who had been indulging in a bit of the product had put over 700 labels on the bottles upside down before it was noticed.  The owners decided to go with it and renamed the wine Whoops!  Shortly thereafter they decided to enter the bottle in a label competition in Geneva, Switzerland.  After all what did they have to lose with an upside down label and they were eager to hear the comments.  They sent a full case over which the people in Geneva found unusual as only empty bottles are entered in the label competition.  They thought that perhaps the winery had made an error and decided to enter the wine into the wine competition without telling the winery,  Two days later the phone rang here in Kelowna at 3AM announcing that the wine had won the Best White Wine in all the World for 2012! Whoops 😆   Quite the story and really a good wine.

We even found a few hours in the afternoon to do some  further Venice research and then off to dinner.  All in all it was a great day.  Now off to have a final birthday dance to my very special song of the day.

Two weeks from today we will have landed in Italy.  Venice, Italy to be precise.  In early April when we were trying to cope with the loss of our girls we decided that a holiday to somewhere new and in a manner that we have not done in a long while was in order.  We really needed something to shake up our routine and lifestyle.  A substantial change was in order.  Before dogs we flew all over the world traveling.  It did help that I used to work for Air Canada and we took advantage of that for ten years until our first fur kid arrived.

We have never traveled to Venice and who wouldn’t want to go there.  While Colin was in Winnipeg visiting Mommio in hospital and I was all alone in Vegas I started researching a trip.  I knew that we needed something to look forward to, something to take our minds off of our enormous loss.  At first I came upon a deal to Dubai but one week is not enough time to give that city and all it has to offer.  Then an email popped into my inbox and there it was, Venice.

Something that we could thoroughly enjoy in a short week.  We are not yet retired so that is all the time we can take off at the moment.  I know, such a waste to spend all that money on airfare for six nights in the city.  However the main focus of this trip is to shake up our lifestyle.  We haven’t flown anywhere together in over twenty years.  It is worth it to us.

However, who knew that once we got back to our home in Canada from Mexico that we would head out right away on a road trip to buy a new to us tow vehicle. Once back home with the Jeep we only had a few days before our lake started to rise and then we were flooded and evacuated.  Time has flown and we have been overloaded with little time to think.

Do you get the irony that we are going from being flooded to a city that floods annually?

So we are leaving in 12 days, very early morning and are still living in our RV.  By the way we did pack what we thought we would need for Venice when we were evacuated.  So stressful at the time.  Now we are likely going to be moving back home this coming Friday ( can’t do it sooner due to jobs….besides the way things are going, our lake may very well rise again ) which brings a whole new set of to do’s to get the RV unloaded and then put some semblance of order to our home.  We definitely won’t be going through all those bins before we leave 😯

However much as we anticipated the trip to Venice before being evacuated we are now scrambling to get prepared for the trip with what to see and explore while there.  Instead our time has been limited due to all the evacuation stuff and our business not to mention our colds and my fall which has not helped.  At the moment it appears that by the time we leave, I will be able to walk with no pain.  So if anyone has been to Venice and has some suggestions we would love to hear from you.

We are really excited about the new  adventure that is just around the corner.

There will be so much to see and do and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.

Actually I had a few wonderful surprises yesterday.  Colin came home early from a two day photo shoot in Vancouver.  He also returned with about 40 frozen small individual tuna pot pies ( a once per week treat that we really enjoy ) which we had to get into our freezer in our real house as the RV freezer was already full.  When I went there a few days ago I did turn on our fridge again.  When we were evacuated we had emptied it all into the RV fridge, turned it off and opened the doors for air circulation.

The Good Faerie had visited.

It turns out that Walter, our lawn guy, had manged to find a few hours in which to clean up our lawn ( as well as cut it ) and our patio.  He even manged to get rid of all the goose poop.  We were so surprised to see the difference.  Still a lot of crud in the lawn and the patio requires a very intense power wash.  However to be realistic I’m sure that the geese and ducks have made a new mess by now but at least it is almost 100% better since the flooding.

Compared to my Thursday photos we can see that the lake has dropped almost an inch. Good news as that will give the melting snow pack somewhere to go.

Lots of tiny pieces of debris embedded in the lawn but I will get those out over time.  There also appears to be a section of lawn that had sunk under the weight of the water but that is easily fixed, eventually that is.

The water did go under the house, both front and back. But only for a few feet.

The wood pilings that the house sits on at each end, front and back,  got wet about 4 inches up.  The centre pilings are fine.  Those are our kayaks in these last two photos.  We had to leave them in the basement or they would have floated away.  Everything will dry out and as the wood in those areas has been treated there should be no long term problems.

On our way back to the RV we were chatting away and trying to decide when a good day might be to move back to the beach.  We think we will wait a full week to see how the snow melt progresses over the next few days.  It would be wonderful to go back right how but we are being practical.  Besides who wants to evacuate twice 🙄

So we got back to the RV and I was rushing about put things back in place and dealing with the mail we had picked up.  I neglected to pay attention to all of the camera equipment that Colin had brought in.  He claims that it was in the same place that it had been before he had gone to Vancouver.  I just happened to have had the last two days to walk back and forth from the kitchen ( my stand up desk ) to the flat dash which I am using as a filing area/large desk top with a variety of files piled here and there with nothing in my path, when suddenly I hit an obstacle on the floor with my right foot and went flying.

I went down hard, face first.  Colin says that I hit with a very loud bang and that I actually bounced up off the floor.  My eyeglasses were twisted but not broken and I have a very sore nose.  Fortunately I have a second pair that I can use until my favorites are repaired. I hit my left knee full force and it took  a very long time for me to sit up, never mind get up off the floor.  Colin insisted on heading to the hospital right away.  Instead I had a glass of wine and tried to assess the damage but the pain kept moving around from here to there to there.  800mg of ibuprofen started to help along with a second glass of wine.  My left leg was elevated and I iced for a good hour off and on.  Finally I was able to probe the area and as I wasn’t screaming I figured I didn’t need to go to the ER.  Colin actually remembered that he had my cane from the hip replacements in the RV basement and that did help me hobble around.  I iced for several hours before heading to bed.

So first thing this morning we went to see the chiropractor, the very same one we saw last Saturday who helped us both after we pushed ourselves loading the RV last week.  She found about four areas in which I was very out and many smaller areas that required attention.  I suspected that I had twisted myself as I fell and so I had.  So now today is more icing followed by heat and repeat over and over for a few days.   I was so upset with myself as I have been feeling really good with no aches nor pains for the last week and I so hoped to continue that way.  Hopefully in another week I will be back to what I call my normal.  But why do these things have to happen to me 👿  It was a horrible end to our day of surprises yesterday.  All I can say is that some days there is just not enough wine 😉