Sizzling Ice Cream

In Calgary it has been snowing, but in Ottawa it is hot, hot, hot. Unfortunately, the newly "fixed" air conditioning in our car has not been working. Yesterday, we decided to go out to the park alongside the Rideau River near Billings Bridge (the destination of the ill-fated Wednesday trip)., and then we were going to drop by the grocery store. Apparently, some sort of curse surrounds Billings Bridge, because this trip was also a mini-disaster.

Getting into the car was like climbing into in a pre-heated oven. We switched on the air conditioning with a certain amount of gleeful anticipation, but nothing happened. Worse than nothing happened -- the vents started blowing hot air. It's a short drive -- only 5 minutes, so it was tolerable. The whole way there we kept thinking, "the car just needs to warm up, and then the a/c will kick in."

No such luck.

The walk along the riverbank was fairly nice, particularly because there are plenty of mature shade trees towering over the pathway. We took a few pictures, but our hearts really weren't in it. Once we got out of the shade we just turned around and went back to the car, which had continued to simmer. On our way to the store we decided to abort and head for the comfort of our air-conditioned home. Scott was already pretty red in the face, and we worried he was going to cook through before we could get to the store and back.

Today the car is back in the shop and we'll probably have to pay some more money before we can get the car running the way it should. With no car, we decided to take a walk through some uncharted sectors of our neighbourhood this evening. We found the community center, complete with courts for playing Bocce, an old Italian bowling game. Then we stumbled into a street festival hosted by the local Italian community in support of their church, the Madonna Della Risurrezione.

Despite the games, food and entertainment, many of the people at the festival seemed most interested in looking at me carrying Scott in the baby sling. I felt a little self conscious to hear "oh, there's a baby in there!" every time I walked past someone. It didn't bother me that much, though, especially since I found enough cash in my pocket to buy some "chocolate-chocolate" gelato ice cream.

It's strange that we've lived in this neighbourhood for 5 years and we've never heard of this street festival two blocks away from our house, even though it's been going on for 22 years. Well, we may not have heard of them, but it seems like they've never heard of carrying a baby in a sling -- so we're even.