Thanks Santa

Today it cooled off a little. The high was supposed to be about 12° or 13°, but with the sun and little wind it was still t-shirt weather…almost.

I rode the bike to work and after the first few minutes, it was a pretty good ride. My fingers were a little cold, but that is my fault for not wearing the proper gloves. When I got home, I watered the garden and did a few household chores. Pretty much a normal day in this life I have.

 

Bill and I decided that we would drive up to Airdrie and check out Cross Iron Mall in general and the Bass Pro Shop in particular. We parked in the lot and on the way to the store it started to snow. Yes, snow! I said WTF and Bill told me that it probably wouldn’t stay. Well, no shit Sherlock! Yesterday it was 20° C and today it snowed. Yes, just for a short while, but it snowed! I had to cover the garden tonight because there is a frost warning. I am not mentally prepared for frost warnings. Perhaps in a month or two after the trees have started losing their leaves it will be soon enough.  

 

The Bass Pro Shop is a store devoted to hunting and fishing. Not just hunting and fishing, but everything that pertains to hunting and fishing even marginally. When you enter from the mall, there is a guy manning the turnstile just to make sure that if you are bringing in a gun or rifle to the store, it will be unloaded and trigger locked. I realize that most stores don’t have people bringing guns in on a regular basis, but this one does. I guess if you need to get repairs done or sights set then this is the place for you.

We spent some time in the boat and Quad area looking at the various fishing and sport vehicles. There was a boat there worth $51,000. You have to really like hunting and fishing to justify that kind of expense. There was a 300 HP outboard motor on one of the boats. The boat we had at my grams cottage was and aluminium row boat that had a 3 ½ HP motor. It was pretty slow, and we dreamt of having a really fast outboard like the Fry’s had. What I would have given for that 15 HP engine. I just can’t even fathom how fast a boat with 300 HP could move.

This store has everything. I bought some BBs for when I think Hurricane and Tornado are ready to shoot cans. That will more than likely be sometime before Arwen thinks they are ready. They have all sorts of camo clothing for kids and adults of course, right down to camo baby booties. There are stuffed animals all over the store and I hope that I never get as close to a real wolf as you can get to the stuffed ones at the Bass Pro Shop. They have a huge aquarium with prime specimens of the fish you might be able to catch in Alberta and BC. Kids and Poppas love to watch the fish.

I am sure there are Bass Pro Shops all over, and if you get a chance to go to one then you should do so. It is a real experience and a peak into a world I have little or no knowledge of. One Christmas as I was leaving the store, I noticed an item by the cash registers on the “impulse buy” shelf. It was called “Butt Out” and had these nasty looking plastic barbs attached to a handle. I guess what you do with it is once you have killed your deer; you would insert the “Butt Out” into the animals rectum, give it a twist and pull out the animals anal canal. What amazes me is that this is an “impulse buy” item, placed alongside of the gum and sport magazines. Weird!

 

That Christmas, in my stocking I found my very own, “Butt Out”. Thanks Santa!