I just returned from a trip back home to Canada.  This is the first time I've been back there in 6 years.... and a LOT has changed.

When you're gone from your "home" you don't think much about it.  Well, I don't anyway.  Traveling back this time though was... weird... I felt so out of touch with life there.  Everything was so... big.. and spread out.  The city I was born in has almost doubled in size.  The small town I grew up in has almost disappeared.  The people I knew when I lived there have all grown old.  Errr... maybe I am doing that too   There is a nice description (with some photos) of the place I grew up on the Ray Cooley website.  The garage described in the story there is the same one my father owned and operated from the mid '70's to the late 80's.

I had a good time though.  I went to two reunions while I was there.  The first was a reunion for all the students who went to Cereal school.  The second was a reunion for my massive high school graduating class... all 9 of us.  It was pretty interesting to see everyone again... it's been 20 years (eeep!) and the funny thing is.. most of us still look the same.  Not really any older... maybe a little less "Breakfast Club", but still the same.

One thing that will stick in my mind was the "Time Capsule" dig.  In 1984, one of the grade school teachers in Cereal got this idea to get the whole school to put together a bunch of stuff and bury it in the school yard.  We filled in a questionnaire and put it all in a jar and buried it a little over a meter deep in the school yard.  The hole was dug straight out the back doors of the high school wing, right where the sloped ground met the level of the baseball diamond.  Photos were taken, and then the hole was filled in, and most of us forgot about it.  Some remembered... kind of.  No one really remembered exactly where this hole was dug, and conveniently... the playground had been landscaped a couple times in the 24 years the capsule was buried.  The slope off the back of the school was gone... the teacher who arranged the time capsule is no longer alive... and all we had to go on was some vague memories addled by the years.  Despite all that one of the former students found a backhoe and we set about digging.  We guessed where to start and found... a gas pipe... weeping tile from the 1940's... and no time capsule.  We excavated an area big enough to bury a couple pickup trucks and put in a nice swimming pool... no capsule.  After several hours of this we gave up, filled it in and called it a lost cause. 

A couple of people wouldn't give up though.  They went digging through the archives and found some old photos.. compared the landmarks in the photos to landmarks that still exist, and worked out to within a half meter where they thought the capsule was... about 3 meters away from where we dug the swimming pool.  The next day out came the backhoe again, and... they found it.  Ha cool.  I am getting some photos of the contents sent to me in the next week or so... looking forward to it.  I'll see if there is anything worth sharing here... if anyone is interested in what a goofy teenager put into a time capsule 24 years ago.  Ha.