Thursday, September 3, 2009

Summer of Beer: Beer

Owen Sound is a town of about 20,000 situated at the south-east base of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. Georgian Bay turns into an estuary and then a river at Owen Sound. Grains and minerals from the Canadian prairies and northern Ontario are shipped across Lake Superior and Lake Huron to Owen Sound, and from there they are transported to the U.S. and other markets.

But that's all the boring stuff.

I had one of the best summers in a long time last month. I stayed with my high-school friend Mr. GMC, who, since his divorce last year, has a 4-bedroom home. He rented one of the rooms out to me for the month.

In addition to hanging with Mr. GMC, I travelled to Hanover (1 hour south of Owen Sound) to visit my friend and Mr. GMC's younger sister Ms. Pickles and her husband Pie. They have a nice house with a big patio and a hot tub in their backyard. I was there at least once a week during the month. Ms. Pickles and Pie are fun, generous hosts and nobody was ever without a beer in their hand and food in the belly. They are vegetarians but they went out of their way to buy a couple of juicy steaks for me at a barbecue they were hosting.

I also went to Kitchener-Waterloo once a week to visit my friends Ms. Q and Mr. Dutch, who are always fun. Ms. Q and I always have a lot of laughs and, like her sister Ms. Pickles and brother Mr. GMC, is generous but in a dry, sarcastic way.

More in the next post.

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