Your not the boss of me!

Well the day has finally dawned! I never thought it would come. At times it felt like time was going in reverse, but here were are...my final day of working for Scotiabank! Having only worked for one company my full time working life, this is momentous for me!

To say I wasn’t a bit melancholy would be lying. The future has so much to offer, but all I’ve known has been working full time at the bank since I was 22, so this is going to be different, new and exciting and I know I will be fine!

I have had a boss my entire career. Banking is of course a very heirarchical, structured organization where everyone always has a boss. Even the CEO is accountable to the Board of Directors, so they in effect, have a boss too. I’ve had some good bosses (the last 20 years) and some terrible bosses, but in the future I will have NO BOSS! Richard likes to jokingly say “I’m the boss of YOU!” But I now I can counter back with “I HAVE NO BOSS!!”

Our morning started with a very early start. Not being able to sleep, I was up at 4:30am thinking about the cell phone switch to Rogers. At 5:30am I was on my email checking if the tech department in Toronto had resolved the situation, so we could move my phone over to Richard’s Rogers business account. Richard was up at 7am and started on the phone with Rogers. Of course it was not resolved yet! After many heated conversations (Richard too) we finally got what we had wanted, which was to have my work phone moved over to Richard’s business account. The normal protocol is to have the employee get a personal account with Rogers, which is not what we wanted and didn’t make sense since Richard is ‘grandfathered’ with a great Rogers package, which we also wanted for me. After 2.5 hours today and 4 hours yesterday on the phone with Rogers and the Bank, I am finally on Richard’s phone plan...and after that stress was resolved, we went off for our hike! FYI. Cell # is the same at 416-277-4248 and my email address going forward hasn’t changed either at golferprincess@hotmail.com

A former Island resident and colleague of mine suggested that we should visit Brown’s River Falls. All Trails says this is a 2.9km, out and back trail and rates it as “easy”. We set off in Jerry, for our 26 minute drive up Highway 19, to just west of Courtenay to tackle Brown’s River Falls.

We quickly found the trail head, parked Jerry and started walking gingerly down the trail.

The trail started out very wet with huge puddles. The father and child in the photo had started down the trail just a few minutes before us, but turned around and came back out, because the trail was so wet.

My Sherpa in his Blundstones. A little bit of water won‘t stop us from hiking!

We had read that the trail to Brown’s River Falls was not very well marked, but we should take the first right we come to and proceed to the Falls.

Upon entering the forest, the trail changed. There was a forest of beautiful ferns, with the sun streaming through the trees, in the forest. The walk was very beautiful and we were the only hikers who ventured down the trail while we were there this morning. The trail still had a lot of big puddles, but we were mostly able to “side step” around the puddles by stepping carefully on the ferns.

A huge fallen tree which had been moved off the trail.

We could hear the rushing waterfalls and we knew we were getting very close to being able to see the falls. Then we unfortunately hit a snag.

We could not jump over this body of water, and the entire section of the forest we needed to cross, to get to the falls, was covered in water. So we either went through the water, or we didn’t get to the waterfalls. Our Blundstones are water resistant but not water proof, so we decided to walk through the water and make it as quick as we could! Not the safest option, but it had to be done. We wanted to see the falls!

Finally we caught our first glimpse of the falls!

We could see there was a very narrow upper trail where we were walking, or a very steep trail leading down to the river, where we would have had the opportunity to get even closer to the falls. Taking the falls route meant holding on to a very muddy rope and going down the trail backwards. I liken the experience of going down the trail backwards to rappelling down the side of a mountain....a bit scary and totally not what I was expecting to do today!

I apologize the photo is a bit blurry and I only took one. Here is Richard going down the trail backwards. I did it too, but I realized, there was no way I was going to get to the bottom of the trail, so why bother? I got down the trail as far as I was comfortable, to be able to take some photos.

The “road“ or trail not travelled. Sometimes as Richard says “the juice is not worth the squeeze.” There was no point in me re-injuring my leg on a very slippery, steep trail to get a few closeup photos of the water falls.

Another goofy photo, but the waterfall was beautiful...at least what we saw of it.

We were happy for the short 1.5 hour hike today as we had a very busy agenda for our day. Richard keeps asking me for the “grid” for our day. When he works as a Trip Director in the travel business he is given a “grid” to follow every day. I keep telling him “Don’t trip direct me!” There is no grid! We make it up as we go along. Serendipitous is way better than trying to follow a “grid” every day!!! I especially don’t want to be thinking about dinner at breakfast, which is often what I’m asked! So now that we have that figured out...retirement will be much better without the GRID!!!

As we were heading into Courtenay on the country roads we saw another ‘honour system’ farm stand and this one was selling apple juice. We had just finished the amazing apple juice we purchased on Denman island, so we were very happy to pick up a box of delicious homemade apple juice! The apple juice has a spigot on the box, just like the wine cubes from Target in Florida!

Next up was to pick up my new camera from the Purolator depot. I was very excited when I received the text this morning letting me know my camera had made it overnight from Campbell River to the Courtenay Purolator depot.

My retirement gift to me! A Fuji XT4 mirrorless camera!!

The excitement is killing me!

Now that the camera has finally arrived, the timing is perfect. With 100% chance of showers for the next 2 days, I have something new to keep me busy indoors!! A new challenge! It is good to keep the grey matter engaged!!! And the camera is totally waterproof if I do want to venture outside to try it out.

We were early for my osteopath appointment so I asked Richard to please pull into Marina Park and Fisherman’s Wharf in Comox. We had not made it down to this part of Comox before, so I left Richard in the car to guard the new camera, while I took off down the pier to take some shots.

The Marina Park was reclaimed from the sea in the 1970’s by pumping mud from the bay to create the harbour extension that they now call Marina Park. It was lovely to see the children on the playground in December, running around without having to wear snow suits and listen to the locals chatting about not being able to have golf tournaments to raise funds for charity, but they could have people play golf, but not hand out prizes. I don’t think they know how lucky they are that they can still be playing golf in the winter!!

Comox Fisherman’s Wharf

I particularly liked the name of this ship! In banking we would always do our “due diligence” on anything we were thinking of acquiring.

The only sea kayaker out in the harbour today. Whenever I see the sea kayaks I think of how peaceful and serene they look, while they are gliding so seamlessly across the water. Exactly what I’m looking for now in retirement! Peace...no boss...serenity...and calm! Health and happiness too!

Please raise a glass to toast RETIREMENT from the corporate world of banking...but definitely NOT from life!

Cheers everyone!!!

We wish you all a very Happy New Year! 2021 will be much better than 2020...we hope!

Now I’m going to dig out those waterproof hiking boots because from the looks of things, I’m going to need them from now on!