The weather glory continues. Friday night, with free tickets, we attended the Spruce Meadows "Masters" equestrian event. It is a big deal, with riders and horses coming from all over the world to dress up in English-style habit and, among other things, vault over gradated fences, etc. Quite a lah-dee-dah feel to it, sort of like the Kentucky Derby crowd or something, with people sitting in special boxes, dressing fine, and attending fancy receptions, etc. We saw Ian Millar (people surrounded him like a rock star) the Canadian who last year won an Olympic medal in show jumping at 61 years of age (go sexagenarians!). Millar wasn't jumping, just watching that night, by the way. It was quite lovely with the pageantry and so forth--the perfectly manicured green grass, the jumping fences with huge bouquets on each side, the riders stopping to tip their hats to the president of Atco Electric and his wife (Atco sponsored the event) like knights in tournaments once did before sovereigns, I suppose.

But after about 45 minutes, we started getting bored, or just wanting to go home, so we did. (Very nice, we thought, we'll file away this memory for future reference, but we really would rather get outta here now on this Friday evening instead of getting stuck in a massive traffic jam exiting the property later on.)

Today we again hit the outdoors, this time going to Nose Hill Park, Calgary's largest natural environment park, or some such thing. It's just a gigantic area with rather big hills covered with prairie grasses and some trees and bushes, where you can overlook three-quarters of the city at once. We got to the top of one hill, in the bright, glorious sunshine and strong breezes, and sat down, then lay down, soaking it up, soaking it in. We stayed in that position awhile, with one of us even falling asleep before trekking back down the hills and gullies to find our car and motor on homeward...