My favourite time of day for walking right now is the first two hours, from about 6:00 – 8:00 am. The weather is cool, the traffic is light, my feet are fresh, the sun is starting to peak out over the hills, and the bugs are virtually non-existent.
Almost like clockwork, the first black flies catch up to me at 8:00. So, I put on my sunglasses to prevent them from doing the suicide dive into my eyes. It’s not always easy removing black-fly carcasses from my eyes. I don’t have a mirror, so I end up digging under my eyelids in desperation to find the bits and pieces of their carcasses. So, it’s best just to try to keep them out. The blinking reflex isn’t fast enough to stop a suicidal black fly, but wearing glasses help. Blackflies that get in behind the lens can’t build up their velocity enough to beat the blinking reflex.
By 8:05, the black flies become bothersome, so I put on my hat. That works for a few minutes, but by 8:10, I’ve dug into my back pocket for the bug net.
So, yes, the first two hours of the day are best. And this morning, the first two hours went by like a breeze. Almost on the two-hour mark, I arrived in the town of Schreiber, famous for being home to boxer Domenic “Hollywood” Filane, 10-time Canadian champion and 2-time Olympian. The time went by so quickly, I only just finished my 20th rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “Swinging on a Star” before I got there. I always forget the words to the verse about the mule so I make them up.
“A mule is an animal with long funny ears; he likes to drink a lot of beers…”. That sort of thing.
For the second time in two days, I passed three provincial highway workers sitting in a truck doing nothing. Later, when I was taking a break near a bridge, they edged up to the bridge on the other side, sat in their truck for fifteen minutes, and then reluctantly dragged themselves from the vehicle. One was younger, but two were about my age, both with beer bellies.
Two grabbed shovels and one grabbed a broom. “This should be interesting,” I thought. The young guy started shoveling the dirt along the edge of the bridge, steady, deliberate work. The guy with the broom pretended to sweep a bit, then just stood there doing nothing, leaning on the broom. The other guy with the shovel threw two scoops of dirt over the side, then wandered to my side of the bridge to watch the waterfalls, then lit up a cigarette and sat on the side of the highway. Finally, the young guy, probably the best worker of the lot, but younger and probably afraid of getting a scolding from his co-workers for working too hard, just stopped and leaned on his shovel.
What a jolly good show this was! Reality television at its best. People making good wages pretending to work. Or should I say “not even pretending to work”? They wouldn’t even make an effort for a watching bystander. Lordy, what entertainment! Much better than making shadow animals to amuse myself.
Finally, I had my fill and walked on. Later, their truck stopped at a garbage pull-out a half-kilometer ahead. No one left the vehicle, just passing the time until the end of their shift.
Don’t confuse these three stooges with the contractor guys working on widening the highways. Those contract guys were working their butts off.
At a picnic spot just outside Rossport, I saw three young people sit down at a picnic table with some food, immediately start waving their hands in front of their faces, and then grab their food and run back to their car. Yep, welcome to Northern Ontario in June.
I stopped for bread at a First Nations gas station. I asked the woman working there how her day was going so far.
Woman: Itchy.
Me: Your day is itchy?
Woman: Yes, from the black flies.
Me: Oh, I see. When does the black-fly season end?
Woman: Oh, they’ll be around for a while. But then come the sand flies. They’re worse.
Me: Sand flies? Worse?
Woman: Yes. But the mosquitoes are the itchiest by far.
After I left, considering the misery I was experiencing from a rash, I thought that, no, poison ivy is the itchiest by far.
