{"id":4080,"date":"2022-05-04T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T04:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/?page_id=4080"},"modified":"2022-05-04T00:00:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T04:00:14","slug":"more-water-under-the-bridge","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/?page_id=4080","title":{"rendered":"More Water Under the Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bacon Scrapins<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 \u201c<\/strong>More Water Under the Bridge\u201d<\/h3>\n
by Barry S. Wolfe<\/h5>\n
Bacon Scrapins<\/em><\/strong> are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They\u2019re tasty, but the \u2018nutrition\u2019 needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin<\/em><\/strong>.<\/h5>\n

We were sitting on the large rocks at the top of the slope watching the water race over the dam in a torrent, pushing debris downstream. I\u2019d never met him before. I was watching the flow and he just happened to plunk down on a nearby rock, both mesmerized by the flow. You had to watch closely to track a \u2018floater\u2019 go over the dam top, submerge, pop up, submerge, pop-up again further down.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of water.\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoving pretty quick.\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you see that orange thing coming? Let\u2019s see how long it takes to get to the bridge after it goes over the top.\u201d suggested my new neighbour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be easy. It\u2019s a small pumpkin floating down.\u201d I looked downstream. \u201cIt looks to be about 250 metres to the bridge.\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

He counted out by one-one thousands. \u201cThat\u2019s 124 seconds to get from the dam to the bridge. It\u2019s about 250 metres, four of those is a kilometer, so that\u2019s 500 sec.\/km.\u201d<\/p>\n

He mumbled a few numbers as he did some mental calculations. \u201cThat\u2019s just over 7 kilometres per hour. That river\u2019s moving at a fairly good clip.\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith that much water going that fast something could get pushed a long way fairly quickly.\u201d I added.<\/p>\n

\u201cA long way. Have you heard about that old bridge they\u2019re replacing over on Bridge Street? How far away do you think that is?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, there are a lot of river twists, meanderings and turns between there and here.\u201d I pointed out. \u201cI couldn\u2019t take any credit for being accurate on that number. Maybe we could give Google maps some recognition if we used its GPS calculations?\u201d as I opened my cell phone to Google.<\/p>\n

\u201cSort of like politicians\u2019 twisting and meandering statements about who\u2019s paying for stuff, like that bridge.\u201d he mused. \u201cThat blue guy from Queen\u2019s Park is taking credit for paying for that bridge, but not recognizing that the feds. who started the Infrastructure Canada idea are paying 50% and we locals are paying almost 20%.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere did you see that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, he put it in a tax-payer funded flyer in mailboxes. He recognized that his blues paid only a third of a pool in Kitchener, but his wording took credit for all $3.5 million for replacing the bridge we\u2019re thinking about. Nothing about the feds\u2019 or municipal shares in the other projects he listed. You\u2019d think he did it himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studying the phone screen, I said, \u201cGoogle maps doesn\u2019t seem to calculate twisty rivers any better than politicians are straight when recognizing funding sources, so I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s about 15 river kilometers from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if someone dropped a small floater off that bridge rail, it would take over two hours to get to the dam here.\u201d he calculated. \u201cBetween there and here, all that time, that\u2019s a lot of water over the dam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese days, politicians often taking undue credit for others\u2019 initiatives is just more water under the bridge!\u201d I concluded.<\/p>\n

We sat, pondered and stared, back-and-forth, from dam to bridge to dam to bridge, at the unending, murky, flowing waters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bacon Scrapins \u2013 \u201cMore Water Under the Bridge\u201d by Barry S. Wolfe Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They\u2019re tasty, but the \u2018nutrition\u2019 needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin. We were sitting on the large rocks at the top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4072,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4080","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4081,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4080\/revisions\/4081"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}