ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Well summer is almost over and to say the least it was marginal at its best. It started raining basically on 30 Apr 08 and sort of stopped in the middle of August. You think I'm exaggerating, well let me tell you. We had four days of sunshine in June, three in July and in August, well we got so discouraged that we quit counting. Having been in the cottage rental business for the better part of nineteen (19) years, this season will go in the record books as the worst summer ever. If the monsoon season wasn't bad enough, simply add the factor of the price of gas and you know what, folks are starting to seriously worry about where this "war against terrorism" is taking us. I'm not going to elaborate on this subject today because I woke up in a good mood and would not want to ruin my day. Simply put and if we look at war time history a bit, our parents went through a depression during the 30's then went to war in 1939, built an industry around it and got out of the hole. Our scenario is completely different. Life was going along quite well in 2001 when somebody decided to crash two planes in the World Trade Center. Instead of really sitting down and think of all the possible consequences, somebody decided to go to war over this, both barrels blasting. The irony of it all is that somewhere in this world, somebody is laughing all the way to the bank as most likely this is what they wanted and we fell right in their trap. If we were to look at today's world economy, it's simple to see who'se winning and it's not the "guys" pretending to wear the "white hats". Here in North America, because of the exorbitant price of oil, everything is affected. The housing market is in the toillet thus sending the stock markets crashing down. The banks are seeing their profits go down from billions to millions (heaven forbid) and the auto industry has simply flamed out. This all trickles down and the man on the street, well he's at the point where all his credit cards are "maxed out" and he's making choices about buying groceries or paying his electricity bill. So when our fearless politicians tell us that everything is "honky-dory", well they're just covering their own "ass" and blowing smoke up ours. If you think we're not in a recession, maybe you should get a hold of a book called "The Great Deppression" by Pierre Burton and compare notes. There's so many simularities of what happened then and what going on now that it's scary. It's just that we don't see it because of the huge smoke screen. Be advised though, this present path we are following is going to get even more treacherous. We have yet to have seen the bottom of the barrel. And to say that I wasn't going to talk about this subject...

Then here they are trying to convince me that I should go back to the "rat race". Yeah right! I don't think so. The dogs and I have our own plans They're no longer yearlings and we have been preparing to take this show on the road for the last two years. The above picture is not because we ran out of gas but rather to announce that we've started training for the 2008/09 racing season. To see the "Mob" pull the dog buggy along for six miles yesterday through rough terrain and all, simply brought tears to my eyes. It was great to see that they hadn't forgotten what they had learned over the last winter. It's as if they knew that this was going to be their year. It was as if they knew that we were getting ready as we would be racing the CAN-AM 30 in Fort Kent, Maine. They seemed to be "Gung Ho" about being on the trail and that's a good thing. Now if the weakest member of the team can only get his act together. Yeah, as most of you have now realized, the weakest link would be me. Let's face it, it's hard to re-start running at 51 years old. The body doesn't necessarily want to do what the brain commands. However, we'll put in the effort as if we're going to do good figure this winter, it has to be done. Let's face it, I wouldn't want to dissapoint the "Team". So, this blog hopefully will give a good record of how things went. So sit down and enjoy! To Bruce, hang in there, Buddy! If you feel like "crap" it's probably because the treatments are working.

Gino