Wednesday, May 13, 2009

time passes when you're having fun

We spent a lovely (rainy) 4 days at Pacific Rim National Park on the we(s)t coast of Canada for our 35th wedding anniversary.
It wasn't raining when we arrived so we did our usual and headed for South Beach, just south-east of Wickaninnish Beach since we weren't able to check into our unit until 3:00 p.m. It was somewhat busy and we didn't see any sign of bears this time. When we were visiting around the same time last year we were fortunate to see a momma bear and her cub.


Momma bear and baby at Wickaninnish Beach parking lot, 2008


Since we arrived on May 3rd, which is our actual anniversary, we decided to have dinner at the Wickaninnish Interpretative Centre.
There was some delays in getting there since a new water system is being put in to supply the town of Tofino with water from the nearby Kennedy Lake. After a 15 minute wait we were allowed to continue on to the restaurant. Suddenly a fully grown black bear ran out of the wood on our side of the road, narrowly missed the car immediately in front of us, then also missed an oncoming truck. The driver of the truck had seen the bear so had time to slow down. I was telling Pat that, if the car in front had struck the bear and both driver and bear had died in the smouldering wreck, I would have skirted past the scene of destruction in order to get to dinner. I guess I was just hungry and irritated at the long wait.
The following 3 days consisted of intermittent torrential downpours and drizzle. Even the surfers were missing from all of their usual beaches but appeared at MacKenzie Beach, where we had never seen surfers before.



We were able to do a bit of walking along the beaches although our walk from Long Beach to Green Point was very soggy. As per Murphy's Law, the last day was the best and we were able to take a good long walk along Florencia Bay and then back along Half Moon Bay. That is one of the bad things about having to reserve; not getting the ideal weather.




I had been having trouble with a rash that wouldn't go away. My family doctor said that it appeared to be dermatitis but we couldn't figure out the trigger. While we were in Tofino I spent the first 2 days reading and the rash improved. After my book was done I brought out some cotton/linen yarn that I had brought along and started knitting a towel.
As soon as I got home I returned to working on a cotton-linen top and the rash returned. We figured it was due to the heat (we have the fireplace insert going most of the time) but, after letting the fire die for a few days, the rash was still there. That was when the light bulb finally went off. I had been having respiratory problems years ago when I put a cottolin warp on my loom. I ended up tossing the yarn into the trash. Then two years ago I had bought some linen blouses to wear to work and found that they made me quite itchy. The blouses were given to the Goodwill.
Around Christmas, when I started knitting with cottolin, I started getting the rash. Still the lights didn't go on until yesterday.
Now I've got an appointment with the doctor in order to get a referral to see the allergist. I'm crossing my fingers, toes and eyes in hopes that it is an allergy to linen and not to wool. Just to be safe, I did put in an order for 100% cotton so that I can re-knit the top I had started using cottolin.

2 comments:

Chris Fransen said...

Happy Anniversary! John and I are celebrating our 35th this year too

Grace said...

Happy anniversary to you and John. I tried to convince Pat that I needed wool to celebrate but all he said was that, if I needed yarn I'd buy it anyhow. :-)