May 7

Days are getting longer as spring is now in full bloom. The weather forecast for this weekend is for warm temps and sunshine. Yesterday they had snow at Big White.. We decided to delay our journey up for some nicer weather. We had hoped to have a campfire with some friends and snow is definitely not conducive to sitting by a fire.

Things are getting busier on the roads. Traffic is still light but we can tell everyone is out and stretching their legs. The big thing I notice on the roads is the lack of out of province license plates. There are no red plates, no green plates, only blue ones. I wonder if this coming summer will see an influx of Albertans and people from Saskatchewan and beyond. I really don’t think we will have the usual number of Washington plates if any. Our beloved Okanagan will suffer in some ways this summer, tourism will be down.  I hope the water level isn’t up.

Mission Creek flooded today and there are people that are now pumping out their basements. There were also floods in Fort McMurray recently. There were fires in Australia early this year, as well some strange locust in Africa and now Murder Hornets in BC. On top of this, we are having a plague across the world. All we need is famine and we will have all of the signs of the apocalypse. If I really want to depress myself I can follow all the conspiracy stuff on Facebook.

Instead we go for another walk. I phoned some neighbours to see if I could recruit anyone to join my honey and I walking down our street. No one answered so off we went; just the two of us. We have spent more time together these last two months than we ever have in our relationship. It’s a good thing… thankfully!

I remember thirty years ago; vaguely. My fiance Diane and I used to go for walks in downtown Calgary. Invariably we ended up on Electric Avenue. The Fox n’ Firkin, Coconut Joes, Sky Room and numerous other bars used to line that street in the beltline of downtown Calgary. I wonder what that young man who had the world by the tail would think of where the world is today? I had a Motorola brick cell phone, a pager and a paper daytimer that I could barely read and keep up with. HIV was the big scary bug and the Berlin wall was being torn down. I didn’t end up marrying my first love and I left the big city behind.

Our world has certainly changed in those thirty years. I don’t think any of us would believe that it would take a pandemic to force us to return to a semblance of the pace our lives were back in 1990. As we reopen our province, I hope the new normal we return to is one that involves time for walks. I hope the new normal gives us all more time for each other.