Meeting Up with Online Contacts

With the advent of social media, it has often been said that your real friends are the ones you have around you and not the ones you meet online. I'm sorry but I love many of the people I've met online and some of them I have considered to be my friends since well before the invention of the modern internet and Windows and definitely before the term, social media ever started to be in common use.

I have met a few of them over the years. Sometimes they are quieter in person than online. Sometimes it's just the opposite. Sometimes we seem to have said everything there is to say online and it's difficult to make conversation in person without repeating ourselves. Other times we don't discuss much other than what the topic of where we met is online and in-person we really get to know one another by talking about anything and everything. It's always an adventure.

This past week two separate women contacted me out of the blue to join them for coffee here in my own little village. The first one is a businesswoman who joined a networking site called Alignable where you basically only interact with other businesses.  She has lived in the area for the past ten years but she has never really become part of the community as she did her work elsewhere. She is now in the transition of bringing her business here. She thought it would be good to get to know some other people in the area so she has started reaching out to make coffee dates with other local business people she finds on that computer site. I wasn't really comfortable with this in the beginning. I mean, I didn't have a clue who she was or know anything about her line of work. Why would she want to meet me?  But after a week or so of writing a few messages back and forth, I decided I would go and find out. I did a little computer search on her so I had some idea of who to look for in the restaurant. She seemed a little impressed that I recognized her and knew just where she worked and lived. I'm apparently more computer literate than she is so perhaps I can be of some assistance to her in the future. She is a lovely lady and we found a lot of topics to discuss other than what we each do in our respective businesses. We exchanged a stack of business cards that we can each give to our own contacts so now I guess I'm networking offline as well as online.  I also told her of various social gatherings where she might meet more of the people she lives amongst and hopes to work with. I do hope she comes to some of them so I can get to know her better. I think we could become great friends.

The second one contacted me just the evening before she wanted to meet with me. She was going to be in my area the next morning and wondered if I was going to be free. I did a quick check with my hubby to see if he had any plans for us, but he was only planning to make a trip to the dump so I agreed to meet with her. Now this one I knew from a Facebook group or two so I knew we had something in common, but I didn't know much more about her either. We met through Sketchbook Skool so of course she came fully prepared to draw during our meeting. I had thought of that originally but somehow managed to leave my sketchbook in my other bag.  Silly me!  Well, she did dig out her beautifully handmade sketchbook and proceeded to draw me anyway, as she uses it as a sort of journal and this was her way of recording out meeting. I did a quick doodle in a little lined notebook I had in my purse, but I also took a couple of pictures of her and combined them to create my own drawing once I got home.  This meeting was a very comfortable one. It didn't feel like meeting a stranger at all. I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did as I know she comes back to this area from time to time. I'd love to spend more time with her and have already promised to bring my sketchbook and be prepared to draw with her in the future.

I do feel I'm in the process of making two new friends that I never would have met if I had not found them online first.

Thanksgiving Traditions

I know most of you think of Thanksgiving as a time to get together with family eat everything in sight, but our tradition is a little different. Thanksgiving comes at a time when nature is in her full glory and we like to find someplace where we can enjoy all she has to offer.

I have always been a rock and forest person. I feel a need to be in the woods and climb on rocks or at least be where there are some sizeable ones. I have long since warned my hubby that our summer holidays will include climbing either rocks or a lot of stairs in a natural setting. This year we didn't go on a vacation, but for Thanksgiving weekend, we finally made it to Rock Dunder.

The Rideau Waterway Land Trust preserves special places for the public to enjoy, and this is one of them. The trails at Rock Dunder are meant for the physically fit, and there is no way you could drag along a stroller or wheelchair though I did see several families with children and their dogs.

I have wanted to go there for several years, but I had bad knees, bad hips, the weather was too hot, too cold, too wet or there were just too many mosquitoes. There was always a reason we couldn't go.

This year I had not been feeling well for over a week before it was suggested we go. I knew that at 73 this might be my very last chance. I decided to go and just keep any complaints to myself. The weather could not have been more perfect, nor could the time of year. The leaves were spectacular and it was cold enough that there were no bugs at all, yet warm enough that I removed my jacket partway up the trail and never put it back on. The trail is challenging but fun.

There are interesting things to see along the way, if you keep your eyes open, such as this face in the rock. The problem is you are usually too busy watching where you place your feet to look up and around you very often.

My hubby was keeping an eye on me as he knew I had not been feeling well. Every once in a while he would make me stop to rest, though I must admit I objected most of the time.

There are a few benches along the way at good look off points, and there are a couple of cabins in the woods too.

 Yes, this is part of the trail, and not an unusual part either. Sometimes it would be hard to know which way to go, but there are yellow triangles nailed to the trees and where it's mainly rock, there are blue arrows painted right on the rocks.

The climb is worth it though. The view from the summit is spectacular, especially at this time of year.

I don't know if it's always this popular, but there were lots of people up there when we arrived and all along the trail. The parking lot was full and people were parked along the road for quite a while back on both sides. Some of them parked within the no parking zones, which was not good as the OPP are known to ticket the offenders.

It's a whole new way for me to see autumn leaves from above like this. I would happily have stayed up there for quite a while. The thing is though, that we wanted to be safely down off the rock before the sun went down and we weren't sure how long it would take. We were going down a different way than we came up. The brochure says the hiking time for the summit loop is 2 - 3 hours. Well, I'm sure we managed that easily enough but never having walked this trail before, and already seeing how the leaves and pine needles could hide an obvious path, we decided it was best not to linger too long.

The trail coming down sometimes went up as well.  There were little drizzles of paint on the rocks between the arrows so you stayed on the path.

Just like on the trip up, there were surprises to be found on the way down. These ones were harder to miss. There were several places where people had built lots of Inuktitut. They kind of made me smile whenever I came across them. There was also a beaver pond with a beaver house visible in it.

There were other people on the trail that we ran into fairly frequently. It turns out that one couple just lives about 12 miles from us. We likely saw them more often than any of the others since they were also in our age range and traveling at the same speed as we were. We often stepped off to one side of the path to let others go by in either direction.

I knew I didn't want to try to go down the way we came up. I thought it would be too difficult in that direction. I think I chose correctly as I don't think I'd want to go up in the direction we came down either. There are a few difficult spots going in either direction as it was. I occasionally needed a hand when the step was too big for me to handle unaided. I'm quite proud of myself for managing as well as I did and quite thrilled to discover I have no achy muscles the next day. I'm not so old after all. 

It was a wonderful way to spend Thanksgiving, and I'm so glad I got to go.  I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as I did.