Floaties and floaters

Penticton is a self appointed city, no cathedral but that's not a requirement it seems.  The city sits between two very large lakes, the Okanagan to the north and Skaha to the south. We live on the shore of Skaha lake right next to and very close to Penticton regional airport.

Connecting the lakes is a man made channel called the channel, at just over 4 miles long and 50 ft wide the flow never exceeds 2mph. So, all the cool people buy themselves inflatable chairs, lilos, dinghys, tubes etc to float along on a hot summers day and know these devices collectively as "floaties".  The local trade in floaties is big with many outlets selling all manner and all combination of mentioned floaties.   One can go with a small single seat job for those hoping to find romance or just have no friends right up to a six seater with a floating cold store for your beer or wine!                The channel will be full of floaties on the weekend............

Today, Saturday, Penticton hosted Scottish day so we thought we might like to hear the pipes and drums and what better way to get there than cycle along the bank of the channel for the 4 miles downtown.

On our way back in the searing heat I thought maybe we ought to get some of these floatie things and join the cooler people drifting south on forthcoming weekends, I pondered on which design of floatie and settled on the small dinghy type as I have a fear of the water and saw a certain element of safety about the dinghy shape. 

As we joined and cycled in the hard shoulder of Highway 97 south, a two lane "fast enough for me" for about 1/2 mile I was suddenly aware of a big object in the air, bearing in mind we were passing the end of the runway, for a second I thought helicopter. Then I saw an inflatable dinghy type floatie crash onto the highway.    Two thoughts at once......

1. If a car travelling along the highway at 60mph swerves to avoid the floatie, we will die!

2. Bugger me, Ive got a floatie!      

The floatie had detached from a vehicle travelling at 60mph, become airborne and landed for my consideration.  Having placed my bike against the airport fence, checked for any fast approaching traffic....clear, dashed into the highway and claimed my prize under maritime law. 

Lyn said later she had never seen anything so funny as me hanging on to the dinghy and trying to cycle off as fast as possible before the rightful owner could stop and returned to rescue his craft.

But scarily, doesn't it make you wonder?  Not 20 minutes before I was imagining myself the captain of my very own floatie and it fell from the sky, just like that!

Funny old world innit?