The Wrong Kind of Double Exposure

By 1991, DW and I (who were only dating at the time) had travelled enough together and knew that we were very good companions. We had already been to New York City, Florida, Toronto, Quebec City, and around the Gaspé Peninsula, so we had a good feeling that we'd do all right on an overseas trip.

When we decided to travel to London, to visit DW's best friend, who was there on a work visa, we also made plans to see other parts of England and venture across Wales before flying over to Paris to visit DW's sister, who lived there.

This May will mark 30 years since that adventure, and DW and I have been discussing it a lot these days, mostly due to the fact that I'm virtually trekking across England with my Conqueror Virtual Challenges and I've been revisiting some places where I've actually been. And what DW and I have been learning is that a lot of this vacation is only coming back to us in foggy snippets.

For example, we remember sharing a room in a youth hostel with DW's friend, Catheleen, and her boyfriend (who came with DW and me from Canada), Joel, in London, but we can only remember a few of the city's tourist attractions that we visited: Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. I remember going to a fabulous Italian restaurant in the Elephant & Castle neighbourhood, and I think we enjoyed one of the few sunny days in Hyde Park.

But that's pretty much it. After about three days in London, DW and I rented a car and set out to explore the countryside.

To help me remember more parts of this trip, I've gone through DW's and my photo albums, which were buried in the abyss of our basement. After dusting them off, I began scanning the slides that I shot and some of the print photos that both of us took. And in viewing these old prints, I remembered a major blunder that I had made when we were in Wales.

Typically, when I used up a roll of 35mm film, I would wind the film back into its cannister, listening closely to the mechanism as I got near to the beginning of the roll. I liked to keep the tabs sticking out just a centimeter or so, to make it easier for the folks who processed the roll to get at the film.

Having worked in a camera store, I knew that there was a small risk, in the attempt to fish the tab from within the cannister, of either tearing the film or spreading the opening too much and partially exposing the film to light.

With the tab sticking out, I'd bend it so that it was obvious that the roll had already been used.

But something must have gone wrong one day in Caernarfon, Wales: either I had failed to mark a roll of film as being used or I wasn't paying enough attention when I loaded a roll. The outcome was that I used a roll of film twice.

The error, of course, wasn't noticed until DW and I were back in Canada and had the roll developed.

A Big Ben, Caernarfon Castle mashup.

As a result, all of our photos in London were ruined. Some of our photos of various castles in Wales were also ruined. I totally screwed up.

Starting Thursday, I'm going to share some of that 1991 trip, though I will spare you and not go through a day-by-day account, as I have done in so many other posts of our travels. Instead, I'll stick to highlights: some of the major attractions and some memories that DW and I still laugh about to this day.

Stay tuned.

The Red Jacket

Personally, I haven't worn it in several years. My expanding beer belly has made it quite snug and I fear that, once zipped up, I would split the zipper open, and I don't care to endure that sort of embarrassment.

Some time before the pandemic, we were clearing out old clothing and I placed my old Blackstone Gore-Tex rain shell on the pile to go to Value Village. DW balked, "You're not throwing that out!"

"It doesn't fit anymore."

My first rain shell, Peggy's Cove, 1996.

It was my second such shell and was, admittedly, a much-better quality than my previous one. I call it a shell because I rarely wore it without a fleece jacket or a sweater underneath this thin layer. Together, these coverings kept me warm and dry in any weather. From late fall to early spring, I wore this combination of outerwear for more than 20 years.

My best friend, Stuart, had once loaned a similar though heavier-duty shell to DW when we were travelling around the Philadelphia-Princeton-New York City corridor and afterward told her to keep it. She wore it for a few more years and to this day still hangs on a coat hanger in our basement closet.

A few years later, in 1996, when my first, lesser-quality shell started to fray and leak, DW and I headed to Trailhead to update our rain shells. I believe the decision to replace both jackets came as we were preparing to move to South Korea, and we wanted to have a light, reliable covering for rain and snow.

Red has been my favourite colour for as long as I can remember, and when we went to Trailhead to replace our outerwear, DW spoke up when I reached for the bright-red Blackstone shell.

"You know, I like red, too," she said.

"I thought blue was your favourite colour."

"It is," she said, "but blue doesn't define me. I like lots of colours."

"So, get a red one, too," I said. "I like the red coat and blue isn't a colour that looks particularly good on me." I think the other colour choices were grey, a navy blue, and black. I also liked the black shell but because we often wore these while hiking in the woods, I wanted a colour that would stand out.

"I'm not going to get the same colour as you," she said, "that just looks weird." She ended up buying the blue Blackstone.

We wore these jackets all over Korea.

In Seoul, with our long-time friend, Suze.

Pulling a ball from a dragon's mouth, at Haeinsa.

The guy who processed my film, in Chŏnju.

When we returned to Canada, in 1999, we continued to wear these jackets over the winter months and would pack them with our camping gear, for the days that brought rain.

As I said, time and aging has made it such that I can no longer wear the shell with any sort of breathing space. Over the years, I have also purchased a rain shell that folds into a small pack that can fit into my camera bag, and so it's now my shell of choice. I also have a couple of proper snow jackets, and the fleece-shell combination are no longer necessary.

I was going to give the Blackstone, which is still in excellent condition after 25 years, to charity. But DW has now snapped it up. I'm not the only one who has filled out over time, and her blue Blackstone fits her the way my red one fits me.

And so, this jacket lives on. DW finally has the colour that she's wanted all this time.

Beaver Shot

"Where did it go?" DW asked, as she moved beside me and raised her mirrorless camera.

"Over there," I pointed, "on the shore."

"Where? All I see is that muddy rock."

"That's it," I said, "it's the muddy rock."

Not sure whether or not I was right, she pointed at the dark mass, tucked in shadow, and took her snapshots.

I was carrying my Nikon D7200, with my 70-300mm lens. My now standard camera for photographing the wilderness. The sensor isn't as good as my D750 but with the conversion of a non-full-frame camera, my 300mm zoom became about 450mm, allowing me to get a bit closer.

I had followed the creature through the lens of my camera since he was swimming in the clearing in the ice, in the water of Mer Bleue Bog. He went under water a couple of times, to negotiate the ice that was still covering his path. But his course was a straight one and I was able to see him move to the shaded area by the shore, where he climbed up onto the snowy bank.

DW and I had seen beavers on a couple of our kayaking adventures but this is the first time we spied one in one of the nature conservation areas in the city.

We didn't have the best vantage and the beaver kept his back to us for the most part. But just when I was about to give up, he turned, for a moment, before going back into the water.

I got my shot. My beaver shot.

Happy Friday!

A Tale of Two Avons

Ever since I started my LEJOG challenge, my virtual journey from Land's End to John O'Groat's, I've been trying to remember the trip that DW and I took in the very early 90s^*, when we travelled around parts of England and much of Wales before heading to Paris, France, for a week.

There are lots of blanks in my memory, and even DW says that some of that trip is a bit of a blur. Perhaps it was because of our little experience with jet lag or that we travelled so much that we didn't take the time to drink it in. Of course, 30 years is a long time to remember details of specific days where what we saw was so fleeting.

But ever since I reached Salisbury on my virtual trek, I've been thinking more of that trip and have been searching for photographs that DW and I took, in an effort to retrace our steps.

The biggest challenge, so far, is to find our photos. We have so many albums that are filled with printed photographs and slides, and when we moved from 35mm film to digital cameras, we moved some of our albums to the basement, a semi-organized repository of all things that we've forsaken.

Around the same time that we moved our albums into our basement abyss, I was also digitizing old photos, scanning the slides or negatives and then putting those albums away. Unfortunately, after scanning the images, the digital files were stored in a massive folder, simply labelled as Scanned slides.

There is no order to these files. When I search this folder, I only find random images that, at the time that I scanned them, I deemed were the best of my images. Over the years since I scanned the images, I've picked some at random, cleaned them up with my photo-editing software, and stashed them in a more-organized folder. When I look at my travel folders, there are only a couple of images from England or Wales, barely enough to reflect the nearly two weeks we spent in the UK.

A couple of the photos that were in my massive scanned slides repository showed two rivers: in one of the photos, DW's and my tent, which we bought specifically for this vacation, stands out in the foreground, and I immediately recognized the River Avon and our Stratford-upon-Avon campsite, just a few minutes outside of the town. We had reached this site, set up our tent, got dressed up, and then drove into town to have dinner and then catch my favourite Shakespeare play, Henry IV, Part II, before returning to the campsite for the evening and then continuing on our trip, the next morning.

The other photo that I found (and enhanced) shows a tiered river that runs through the sizable town that is the city of Bath. The shot was taken by the famous Pulteney Bridge, the shop-lined bridge that dates back to the late 1700s.

When I tried to remember the name of the waterway, my mind went to River Avon, but I dismissed that because the Avon runs through Stratford-upon-Avon, as the town's name clearly states. So I went to Google Maps, and sure enough, the river in Bath is also the Avon.

But not the same Avon.

My first thought was that the Avon was a very long river, but a further Google search showed me that there are no fewer than five rivers in England called the Avon. In Scotland, three rivers share the name Avon. And in Wales, there is another Avon, though it's spelled Afon Afan, which apparently translates as River River.

So, two of the rivers that I captured in the 90s are named Avon, though aren't the same. I've learned something new. And in doing so, I've jogged my memory about this trip.

Stay tuned for more about this trip. Happy Thursday!

^* The more I think about this first overseas vacation with DW, the more I think that it happened in 1991, not 1990 as I've said in previous blog posts. Stay tuned.

Watson's Mill, Revisited

Dream State

For much of the past week, my head has felt heavy and I've been very drowsy. I think it has to do with the massive thaw that has struck our city, particularly over the weekend, when the beginning of spring brought sunshine and temperatures to the positive double digits.

With the thaw, the snow has melted with breakneck speed, exposing wet lawns and dormant plants, and with them, mold and spores. My sinuses suffer every year at this time, and this year I seem to be hit heavier than usual.

Though I did manage to get out and enjoy the warmth, I didn't spend a lot of time outside and, when I returned indoors, all I wanted to do was lie down and close my eyes. I can't tell you the number of times I drifted off when DW and I were watching some of our favourite shows on our various streaming services. I'm going to have to re-watch a couple of shows to pick up the missed scenes.

As I wrote last week, for about a month or so DW and I have been getting up early in the morning to try and reserve a camp spot at one of Ontario's provincial parks, without success. Even feeling tired and having a heavy head, I have fought to get my butt out of bed in time to meet the 7:00 booking time.

On Sunday, I was feeling particularly groggy, and really had to fight to get online. As soon as the 7:00 booking period ended, I shut down my computer and told DW that I was going back to bed.

I had some vivid but strange dreams. DW and I were out in the wilderness, surrounded by towering mountains, and knee-deep in snow. Although we had our snowshoes strapped to our feet, we were still sinking into the freshly fallen powder, struggling to move forward.

An elderly woman on a 1970s-era snowmobile came along, and DW and I waved our arms to flag her down. She passed by us but didn't slow or stop to lend us a hand. But the trail she left in her wake had packed down the snow, allowing us to walk more easily. Our only fear afterward was the risk of other snowmobile drivers following on the same trail and running us down, though this dream ended before that risk became any possibility.

I floated into another dream. I was hiding behind a partition, listening to a conversation between two familiar voices. I peered through a gap and spied one of my friends from my school years, Alan. What surprised me was that he looked exactly as he had looked in his undergrad university years, and I told myself that this wasn't right, that I was obviously in a dream.

Stu, in 1984.

The other voice in the conversation was also familiar to me, but I had to come out from around the partition to see my best friend, Stuart. Stu looked exactly as he looked in high school, and I told myself, in this dream, that it was natural for him to look this way because just the day before, I had been looking at old photos from high school, and our weekend at Mosport Park, and I had come across one photo of my friend dressed and looking the same way as he did in this dream.

As soon as I made this revelation, the dream shifted and I was back with DW, in the provincial park, setting up our camp site and getting ready to put our kayaks on the lake, to explore the waterway.

"I can't believe you snagged a spot," DW told me as I helped her take her kayak from the roof of our car.

"I thought I was dreaming when I got through online," I said.

"Are you sure you got the booking?" she asked, now unsure.

"You know? I'm not sure."

In real life, DW came to our bedside and told me that it was after 9:30 and it was time to get up. My head was heavy and I could have rolled over and fallen asleep again, but I fought to become fully conscious. I reached for my glasses and my smartphone, and I went to one of my e-mail accounts.

In my inbox, a confirmation message from Ontario Parks was awaiting me. I had, indeed, succeeded in claiming a spot, in August, in Killarney Provincial Park.

It's good to know that my body can still function properly, even though my brain isn't exactly in sync.

The Forgotten Vacation

More than a year after DW and I started dating (before she was DW), we went on a trip to the UK, where we visited a friend in London before we rented a car and made a loop around the countryside that included stops in Stratford-upon-Avon, much of Wales, and the southern regions that included Bath, Salisbury, and a slight detour to Oxford, before returning our rental car to London and flying to Paris for a week.

On this trip in 1990, DW and I learned that we travelled very well together.

As much as I remember the trip and some of the spots in which we stayed, my memory of details of the vacation are beginning to fade.

For example, I have vague recollections of driving to a camp site and arriving late at night, when the gates into the site were closed. DW and I had to sleep in our little Ford Fiesta, reclining our seats and trying to make ourselves comfortable. It was a damp, rainy night and with the windows rolled up, moisture developed on the inside of the windows. I have faint memories of the water drops running down the inside of the car and having a rough night sleeping.

But I couldn't tell you where this was. Possibly Wales.

There are so many vacations where I can remember every detail on every day, but this trip has large gaps, and I think it's because the photos that I shot of this trip are still held on slide film, stored in one of dozens of photo albums that I had accumulated before digital photography.

Bits and pieces are starting to come back to me, as I complete my virtual challenge across England and Scotland. As of last night, I stopped in the city of Salisbury, one of the places that DW and I visited in 1990. And my memory of this city is partly lost in the fog of my brain.

I seem to have memories of driving into the city. We approached from a road, coming perhaps from the north, and I seem to recall driving down a slope, where we could see the massive spire from the cathedral as the major landmark. It was late in the afternoon and a warm glow lit the landscape.

I vaguely remember the place where we stayed. It was a farmer's field, just on the edge of town, on which he had allocated spots for caravans and tents. We had the latter. But I don't remember details and I don't remember what we did for dinner. Did we cook food at our camp site or did we dine in a restaurant?

I don't remember that evening. I don't remember the next morning or where we went from there.

There was a stop along the road, next to Stonehenge. I remember that neither of us wanted to park and pay the fees to get up close, so I got out of the car, put my telephoto lens on my Minolta X-700, took one shot, got back in the car, and continued on our journey.

My only photo of Stonehenge.

Today, as I continue my LEJOG trek, I'll be virtually stopping at the historic site once more. I'll use Google Maps to virtually explore the site.

I'm going to find my old photo album, pull out the slides, and digitize them. Maybe then, this vacation will come back to me.

One thing that I clearly remember is this: the trip was too good to stay forgotten.

Two Decades a Dad

Not so long ago, my eldest kid said to me, "You know, when the pandemic lockdown started, I was 18: on my next birthday, I'll be 20."

I don't know what shocked me more: that the pandemic has been here for more than a year or that I've been a dad for two decades.

And while it sucks that this is the second birthday where my kid hasn't been able to celebrate with her close friends, while she is alone in her college residence for this birthday, I'm thankful that she's healthy and safe.

I'm also feeling older but not terribly so. Yes, the last 20 years have flown by, but as the adage goes, time flies when you're having fun.

Happy Birthday to my first-born.

The Long Trek

For almost every day since January 5, I've hopped on my spin bike and pedalled for anywhere from 30 minutes to more than an hour. There has only been one day (possibly, there have been two) where I didn't get on my stationary cycle machine, but on those days I did walk a few kilometres, at least.

Once, when I walked a long distance, as part of my virtual challenge treks, I only had a couple of kilometres to make up for my daily target, and was on my bike for a little longer than five minutes (hardly worth it, but the day was almost over and I couldn't cover the distance on foot before midnight).

At the time of writing this post, I have covered 1,131 kilometres over two challenges. Since the beginning of March, I've travelled just over 356 kms. To complete my current challenge, which is taking me from Land's End, in southwest England, to John O'Groat's, on the northern tip of Scotland, I still have 1,410 kms to go. I've just passed the 20-percent milestone.

I don't think that, in my best years of cycling, I've ever covered this kind of distance in a year. Even when I was training for the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, did I get anywhere close to 2,000 kms.

Signing up for these challenges has been very good for me. Already, with only 20 percent of my LEJOG completed, I'm looking at my next trek. I'm considering the St. Francis Way challenge, a 503K journey through Italy, and even the Pacific Crest Trail, a whopping 4,000K odyssey from Mexico to British Columbia.

Maybe, I'll do both.

If I choose the Pacific Crest Trail, I'll be completing this challenge into 2022. But that's okay. The way I feel these days, my new exercise regime isn't about to end any time soon.

I can't wait for better weather, when I'll be able to get on my road bike and in my kayak to add to my mileage. Riding on my spin bike has been fine (I watch TV while I pedal) but when I get off, I don't feel like I've really gone anywhere.

Until I look at the app and see where I am on a map. (Man, I can't wait until we can travel again!)

My Camino de Santiago medal arrived yesterday.

Birdwatching at Mud Lake

Another Sign

The view from our campsite, at Jones Falls, in 2013.

Three...

Two...

One...

*Click*

It's been a ritual for nearly a month now.

DW and I set our alarms, daily, so that we can get out of bed by 6:50. We trudge downstairs, to our dining room, where a couple of laptops await us. We power up, log onto the same Web site, and search for available spots, and count down the seconds to 7:00, when we can click a button.

Reserve.

Like hundreds, if not thousands of other people, we've been trying to reserve camp sites in the dozens of Ontario Parks grounds. The rules allow you to reserve up to six months in advance, and reservations can start at 7:00 in the morning. But because many people are turning to camping, rather than travelling abroad, because of COVID-19 restrictions, these camp sites are being snapped up at record levels.

DW and I have created our own accounts and are trying to get a reservation at Killarney Provincial Park, where we'd like to kayak around the northern end of Georgian Bay, around Philip Edward Island (a different PEI). And every morning that we try, we are thwarted by someone whose mouse click is just a nanosecond faster.

The Ontario Parks Web site even has a clock that lets you synchronize, so that everyone has the same advantage. I'm beginning to wonder if there is a slight lag between the time the reservations open up and the time I click my mouse. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to click about a half of a second before the clock rolls over to 7:00:00.

Because I know that if I'm even a second late, any available site will be gone.

While it would be nice if I was the one of us who successfully snags a site, to make DW happy, I'm also secretly hopeful that neither of us has any luck. After all, I don't really want to go camping. Several years ago, in the Dordogne region of France, I told my family that I had had my fill of sleeping on the ground, of having only a thin layer of waterproof polyester between me and the elements, of having no sound barrier between me and my neighbours.

But because DW and I bought kayaks last year, we've come to the realization that it can be difficult to go for day trips in some of the most beautiful parts of the country without pitching a tent. Most hotels aren't situated close to where we could store our kayaks.

We camped once, last summer, in Algonquin Park. I promised DW that I would break my vow to never camp again this one time, but that I wasn't going to make it a habit. And I let DW know, the next morning, that I didn't have a restful night, that I didn't appreciate the mosquitos that were relentless in their pursuit for my O-negative blood, and that I really didn't enjoy eating or washing up outside.

A couple of months ago, DW was searching for kayaking adventures, once again looking at places where we couldn't just drive to for the day. She's booked us a night, back in Algonquin Park. Unable to secure a camp site where we could park our car, she's booked an interior spot, where we would have to leave our car behind and to where we would have to paddle, with all of our food and equipment with us.

She's also booked two nights at Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park, along the Mattawa River. The fact that she was able to secure two nights over a weekend makes me wonder about how nice a place this is. (I'm sure it's lovely.)

And she wants us to go to Killarney, where (if we can reserve a spot) we would be staying for three nights. I told her that this would be it: no more camping after this. In 2022, don't dare ask me.

She's purchased new gear: a compact double mattress that packs smaller than either of our single mattresses. New collapsible chairs. A trolley for easily rolling our kayaks over portages.

Now, more than ever, I can't wait for this pandemic to end, when we can travel abroad like we used to.

And stay in hotels.

A Sign

For years, DW has been telling me that we need to downsize when it comes to our collection of books. And every time she mentions this news, I've fought back.

"But I'll read these books again," has been my strongest argument.

"You're going to read every single one of these books again?" she challenges.

There used to be a time that I would devour books. Every December, from my university years, I would make a list of the books that I would plan to read in the upcoming year. With The Brown Knowser, I would reach out to my readers for suggestions for what to read, and I received some solid recommendations.

Often, I would start out with a list of 10 to 12 books, and when I got to the last book, I would add a few more. Some years, I would read about two-dozen books or more.

I haven't had a reading list since 2013.

Honestly, I read more when I didn't drive myself to work. At least twice a week, I would take the bus to work, which took at least 90 minutes, each way. On the bus, I'd bury myself in my reading, trying to block out what was going on around me. Reading books made the time go quickly.

I'd also make sure that I left enough time, in the evening, to read a chapter or two before turning out the light and going to sleep.

These days (the last seven or eight years), I've been driving to and from work every day. I also spend more time writing than I do reading. I take a lot of photos and record video. Since the pandemic, I've been watching a lot of TV with my family.

There has been the occasional year when I either haven't cracked open a book or haven't completed one. If I get through more than three books in a year, it's a good year.

Since the COVID lockdown, a year ago, I've read a few more books. I'm two-thirds through my eighth novel, and have my ninth and tenth stacked on my bedside table.

But DW looks at our bookshelves and wants to clear them out. We have more than seven bookshelves, crammed with fiction and non-fiction. Some shelves are double-stacked, such that we have to pull out a book to retrieve another from behind. And even some of these shelves have books lying flat on top of the double-stacked books.

Sometimes, it's hard to find a particular book because it's buried by newer books.

"But I'll read these books again."

"Will you?" asks DW.

In truth, there are some books that I have read more than once. Of those nearly eight books I've read over the past year, all of them had been read before. Six of them had been read twice before, and this was my third reading. They're Len Deighton novels, and I'll never get rid of my collection. Deighton is the author who inspired me to become a writer, myself.

I've also read some of Ian Rankin's books a couple of times. His books will stay on my shelves.

Just this past Saturday, DW reminded me again that we needed to cull our library. This time, I didn't argue as strongly. I was looking at the book shelf closest to my side of the bed, and it was a disorganized mess of both read and unread books.

A few hours later, as DW and I were in the car, heading home from an outing on a nature trail, we were listening to The Next Chapter on CBC Radio. On the show, host Shelagh Rogers was interviewing Canadian personality Candy Palmater, who had just lightened her collection by 1,500 books.

DW turned up the volume: "Listen closely," she told me.

Palmater came to the conclusion that she had to cull her library when she and her partner did some basic math. They took Palmater's rough life expectancy and multiplied it by the number of books that she usually read in a year. The number of books in her collection far exceeded the number of books that she could reasonably read.

"Ring any bells?" DW asked me.

Okay, this was a sign. It's time to find a good home for our collection.

I'm going to start by going through all of the books on the shelves that I haven't yet read. These are growing in number because I continue to buy new books even before I've read the ones I already have.

As I said, I'm keeping all of my Len Deighton books. And those by Ian Rankin.

The first to go are the ones that I read that I either didn't care for or they failed to leave me with a lasting impression. I know that I won't re-read those.

I have a lot of books from university that I haven't re-read: they'll go, with perhaps the exception of my William Shakespeare sonnets and plays.

Some reference books will stay.

This will likely be a long process and may cause some tears to be shed. But DW is right: there are books that are doing nothing but occupying space in our house. And we're moving to an age where downsizing will be good in the long run.

Want a book? Any book? Let me know.

Filling the Negative Space

The New Normal

On March 10, 2020, I left the office at lunch time because I was feeling under the weather. I was exhibiting the signs of a head cold, something that is not uncommon at this time of the year. I packed up my computer and headed home, where I worked online for the rest of the day

On March 11, I worked from home because my head cold was settling in and I was going through tissues like they were going out of style. I was congested and felt tired, and the last thing I wanted to do was to pass it onto a colleague, especially because COVID-19 had come to Canada and was all that people were talking about.

My co-workers even joked that that's what I had.

On March 12, my head was so congested that I called into the office and said I was taking a personal day, to focus on clearing my head. I had a brief, online meeting with my director, who was in Seattle, and then took the rest of the day off.

I pumped myself full of cold and sinus medication, drank plenty of fluids, and slept. By late evening, I was feeling better but thought I should still stay home.

That decision was moot. On Friday, March 13, 2020, we were ordered to work from home. I've been working from home ever since. In the past year, I've only been to the office four times: twice, to bring office and personal items home. Once, because I had a problem with my laptop and needed IT to solve it. And finally, to bring my laptop back in for a network update.

In all four visits, my time in the office was brief, no more than an hour or two. My home office is set up perfectly for my needs and offers me the first window space that I've had in the nearly 14 years with the company.

I've saved money on breakfasts and lunches, which I usually bought at the cafeteria. I drink better coffee. I climb more flights of stairs for exercise (we had no stairs in my office building because we were all on the ground floor). Because I don't get up and chat with colleagues, I tend to focus more on my work and feel more productive.

When the pandemic ends, I don't see my work situation changing. This is my new normal. I will only go into the office if my presence is absolutely essential, which I doubt it would be. We were having video meetings before the lockdown, and even if I was in the office I often stayed at my desk and dialled in.

The only time that I would need to go in would be if my computer needs an update or problem solved, or if I need to go into our labs to see something that I can't see online.

While I miss the camaraderie of my co-workers, I really like how I'm more productive being on my own.

Of course, there's the adage that the only constant is change, but as long as I'm still employed with the same company, I don't see a change to my working environment.

Until it changes.

Mostly Harmless

Just over 10 years ago, in February of 2011, I recounted a day on a crowded bus as I made my way to work and the most bizarre tale of a homeward commute, also on a crowded bus. This blog post was published in my old and now defunct blog, Brownfoot Journal.

I came about my old blog the other night, as I was going through my neglected Facebook account, deleting old posts. I no longer actively use Facebook, though I still have a handful of connections, most of whom are family members and friends with whom I don't interact on a regular basis but upon whom I like to lurk every once and a while, just to see what they're up to.

As I began deleting some links I had posted to my old blog, which is now only viewable by me, I came across some interesting, quirky, weird, and fun posts. One was an open letter that I wrote to people that shared a commute with me, back before DW and I purchased our second vehicle and I no longer used public transit.

When I re-read the post, I thought, oh god, did I actually share that story? (Knowing myself, I was quick to reply, of course I did!)

Not only did I share that story on February 3, 2011, I thought I would share it with you, today.

The following passage is an open letter to my fellow passengers on a crowded OC Transpo bus:

Dear Fellow Riders of the 95 bus that left Fallowfield Station around 8:40 this morning:

I know that you don't know me. I don't usually catch the 95 that late in the morning. If I take the bus, I'm on it three hours earlier, when it's less crowded and I'm guaranteed to get a seat. Because, you see, I have a bad foot and I generally can't stand still for very long. And I'm not very well balanced on sore feet. I'm not always very well-balanced mentally, but that's another story altogether.

So yes, I was a stranger to your morning commute. You weren't familiar with me. But let me assure you that I'm a nice guy. To quote the late, great Douglas Adams, I'm mostly harmless.

When I got on the bus, it was already full. Standing room only. And because I had to use bus tickets and get on through the front doors, I couldn't get far into the bus. And so I stood somewhere between the driver and the middle doors. Do you remember me now? That stranger, clinging for dear life to an overhead bar? Yeah, that was me.

Typically, when I catch my early morning bus, I sit in the same spot. I take my book out from my backpack and read. Today, I couldn't do that because I was hanging on. My backpack stayed on my back, my book stayed tucked away. I tried to keep my gaze out the window, because I had nothing else to look at, and being a stranger to you, I didn't want to make any of you feel uncomfortable by making eye contact. Because, as I said, I'm mostly harmless. But you couldn't have known that and would not have thought that if I was making eye contact with you.

I want you to know that I didn't mean to press against you when we started moving, when we came to halts, or when we negotiated turns. I tried to keep my legs planted in a way that kept me balanced. I tried to hang onto the overhead bar as tightly as I could so that when the bus moved, I didn't. Not much, anyway. That was my intent.

But when I did make contact, when I did press against you, I want you to know it wasn't intentional. It wasn't personal.

I don't like making contact with strangers if I can help it. And I couldn't help it this morning. There were so many of you standing with me in the aisle. Being such a cold day, we were all in thick layers, occupying more space than our bodies themselves required. My backpack was firmly strapped to my back, adding to my bulk.

My free arm hung by my side. It never moved, except once, when I tried to switch my hold of the overhead bar. But by holding the bar with my left arm, I became even more off-balanced, and my backpack pressed more firmly into the rider behind me. I'm sorry about that. I hope you know that I switched back as soon as it was safe to do so. I didn't want to fall. And when an arm was hanging, I was most certainly not using it to grope anyone.

I'm not that type. In that regard, I'm totally harmless. Though there was that one incident on a bus trip home...

True story: a couple of years ago, I was on a crowded bus, heading home. I was sitting in a seat, next to the aisle. People were standing in the aisle and the driver had a lead foot, taking sick pleasure in accelerating and breaking hard, making standing on the bus a challenge. He wasn't transporting humans; he was hauling sides of beef. As usual, I had my face in my book, not paying attention to what was going on around me. But my peripheral vision was working perfectly.

When the bus lurched forward at Bayview Station, I sensed someone falling towards me, and without looking up I instinctively raised my arm an put out an open hand to halt the mass that threatened to interrupt my reading. I wasn't planning to catch the person; I was trusting that the person was going to do everything he or she could do to stay upright. Well, I stopped the person from falling, but as luck would have it (good or ill, I'm still not sure), my hand came into full contact with a breast (perhaps, more accurately, a breast came into contact with my hand). It was a perfectly aligned contact: full hand on breast. And, because the poor woman was still off-balance and was still coming towards me, I couldn't take my hand away.

Did I mention that this happened during the summer, when neither of us was bundled up? My bare hand was on a blouse: I could feel the cotton fabric and the contours of the bra beneath it. I could feel the firmness of the breast that I was supporting.

My eyes lifted from the pages of my book and moved to my hand, then to the chest with which I was making contact, and then to the eyes of the woman I was supporting (in more ways than one!). Shock filled her eyes. Horror must have filled mine.

As soon as the woman righted herself, my hand moved away faster than a magnet moves away from its polar similarity. The woman was younger than me, perhaps in her early to mid 30s. Her physique was what I can only describe as average. Slightly athletic. Fit.

And definitely real.

In a stuttering voice, I apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry," I said, "I beg your pardon... I didn't mean to... it happened all so fast and I wasn't looking. Please forgive me!!"

I'll never forget her reaction, never forget the words she spoke. She smiled, let out a little laugh. In a clear, raised voice that everyone near us could hear, she said: "Oh, that's okay. That's the most action I've had in a while. If you want, you can grab the other one so that it doesn't feel left out." She then turned her body slightly, so that her other breast was better aligned with me. And she moved closer. "Go ahead," she beckoned, "you'd be doing me a favour."

The man in the seat next to me laughed. The passengers sitting in front of me turned their heads to see what the commotion was about. Here I was, sitting on a crowded bus with a woman positioning her breast towards me, asking me to grab it.

I'm mostly harmless. I don't like to interact with fellow passengers. I don't like to make contact with strangers. I was feeling very uncomfortable, and would have bolted out of there if we weren't so crammed in. So instead, I did what seemed appropriate.

I reached up and gave her breast a gentle squeeze.

Yup, definitely real.

"Thank you," she said. "I feel balanced now."

I got off the bus at the next stop, at Tunney's Pasture.

I swear, that's a true story. Maybe someone who reads this post was there, will remember. Please leave me a comment so that my readers don't call BS.

So to my fellow travellers on today's bus. To those I was pressed against. Believe me when I say I wasn't pressing up against you on purpose. Because I really wasn't.

I'm mostly harmless.

Negative Space

In 1989, I was really getting into my stride with photography.

At 24, I was the assistant manager at a camera store and I took every opportunity to hone my photography skills. My camera was always loaded with 35mm, E-6 slide film, and wherever I went in my car, my camera bag was usually on the floor, behind the driver's seat.

When it was quiet in the camera store, I would pour over the pages of the photography books that we kept behind the display cases, often standing next to the premium SLR cameras. When the sales reps from Nikon or Minolta came to visit, they would always share great tips to get the most out of your camera. (It was through the Minolta rep that I learned the trick of how to advance the crank on my X-700 without moving the film, allowing for the possibility of multiple exposures.)

One summer evening, I drove to the Arboretum to photograph the full moon as it was rising. And while the view from the lookout toward Carleton University and the Rideau Canal is impressive, I decided that I wanted to get a bit more height and I didn't want to include Dunton Tower in my shot, so I moved over near the Heron Road Bridge and parked in the lot to the fairly new St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Shrine.

Back in 1989, this church's domed roof and towers were not yet adorned in gold, but it was still an impressive structure. From its parking lot, I had a clear view of the rising moon, which had a pinkish hue to it.

When I took a few shots, I wished that it was possible to have this Catholic shrine as part of the image, but the building was at my back when I was photographing the moon, and to move to the other side meant that I would have to wait for the moon to rise higher, when it would lose its warm glow.

I had attempted a double-exposure photograph already, with the Chateau Laurier and the moon. Would this full moon look good with this holy structure?

In the composition, I wanted to keep the moon fairly low and I knew that I'd have to visualize the frame as I recomposed the church for the second shot. I decided to keep the building low in the shot, too, creating a negative space of blue sky above.

I had recently read about this technique but had never thought of using it before.

The film was the house brand of Black's Cameras, a 36-exposure, 200 ASA slide film, which was manufactured by Fuji Film. The rule of thumb for shooting the moon was f/8 and a shutter speed that equalled the reciprocal of the lens focal lenght: that is, for a 50mm lens, the reciprocal would be 1/50th of a second, but because the camera didn't have a setting for that speed, you would choose the next-fastest speed, which would be 1/60th of a second.

For this shot, I used my 70-200mm lens, and for the moon I would have zoomed to its maximum magnification (I know this because I still have both the camera and the lens). I would have set the shutter speed to 1/250th of a second.

I then swung around, changed the zoom to 70mm, opened the aperture as wide as I could, f/4.5 (it wasn't a great lens), and shot at the slowest speed that I could, for hand-held, at that magnification, which would have been 1/125th of a second (possibly 1/60th of a second if I was feeling particularly steady).

Here's the shot.

I've been going through my old slides again, looking to digitally revive images that I felt were well-composed or shots where I tried experimenting. With the slide scanned, I used Corel PaintShop Pro 2021 to sharpen the image, provide a bit more contrast, and to pump up the colour a bit, but only because there was some colour loss due to the scanning. The image looks more or less exactly as it does when I hold the slide up to the light.

Oh, yeah, and I removed the dust and other spots that were caught during the scan.

I'll be sharing more of these, perhaps enhancing them through Luminar AI. Stay tuned.

The Long Drive

It breaks my heart to think that I'm getting too old for this.

From the time before I had my driver's license, I've loved being behind the wheel. My father first started showing me the basics of driving at the tender age of eight, when I would sit on his lap and control the steering wheel, while his feet would take care of the gas, brake, and sometimes the clutch pedals, as we negotiated the empty parking lots of the nearby shopping centres.

Those were the days long before Sunday shopping made empty parking lots a rare commodity.

At 13, when I could finally sit in the driver's seat and handle the pedals and see over the hood of the car, I was allowed to drive on the dirt roads around our house, when we lived up in the Gatineau Hills. Sometimes, we'd return to vacant parking lots, where my father taught me skills for accident-avoidance and what I like to call "offensive driving." I think he was grooming me to be a race-car driver.

By the time I received my learner's permit and had signed up for driver's education, I knew my way around the roads. In fact, on the first day of my in-car class, after a few minutes of driving around the Sir Robert Borden High School parking lot, my driving instructor had me stop the car, when he turned to face me and asked, "How long have you been doing this?"

"Three years or so," I said.

"Okay," he said, "carry on." From that point, he didn't bother with parking-lot exercises. I spent many sessions, driving my instructor on errands.

When I bought my first car, I loved to get behind the wheel and just go. Often, I wouldn't have a destination: I would just start driving and let the car take me where it wanted to go. I would drive on county roads on the outskirts of Ottawa. I would take unmarked, winding roads around the Wakefield area, just to see what I would come upon.

One evening, I just started driving south, from home, following old Highway 16 (the Prescott Highway) and ended up at the Canada-U.S. border. When asked why I was heading into the States, I said, "I'm just going for a drive." (This was before passports were needed to cross over and long before 9/11.)

I crossed over the bridge at Ogdensburg, NY, and then headed eastward, along Highway 37, where I stopped in Waddington for a couple of photos—I always carried my camera bag and tripod in the trunk—before continuing through Massena and then crossing back into Canada at Cornwall, where I made my way to the 401 and backtracked to the Prescott Highway, returning home.

I loved to drive. Day or night.

My trusty Sunbird, Betsy.

When I had finished Journalism School and began dating a University of Ottawa student, who lived with her parents in Mississauga during the summer months, I regularly jumped in my Pontiac Sunbird and made the trek to see her, even if it was for less than 24 hours. Some of my friends from Journalism School had moved to Toronto after graduation, and I also spent weekends with them.

Once, when I was studying at Carleton University, and DW and I were in our early dating phase, we took my Sunbird down to Daytona, Florida, for spring break. I drove practically non-stop for 24 hours before we reached our destination, set up our tent at a campground, and I passed out for nearly 12 hours.

Driving through Syracuse, NY, coming back from Florida. (Yes, I'm photographing while driving... bad boy!)

Our campsite in Daytona.

Long drives have never bothered me. Until now.

Because of the pandemic, DW and I haven't felt comfortable with DD19 using public transit to travel between home and her residence, at a school in the Greater Toronto Area, and so I've made the 10-hour return trip from our driveway to her campus, and back.

The first trip was exciting because she was moving for the first time. We packed all of her belongings into our CR-V and the whole family came along for the drive, to help her move into her residence and have a proper goodbye. Because of the pandemic, we were limited in going into her residence building and we didn't want to put up in a hotel, so we drove straight home after DD19 was moved in.

Dropping off DD19 at her residence, with her sister and DW.

The long drive was no problem.

About six weeks later, I made another trek down to the GTA to pick up our daughter for the Thanksgiving long weekend. It was surprising how much we missed her, and we had a very nice visit. I picked her up on a Thursday afternoon and drove her back to residence on the following Monday. Two return trips to the GTA in four days.

A few weeks later, I returned to the GTA to bring DD19 home for her first-semester reading week. This time, I picked her up on a Friday afternoon, kept her for more than a week, and drove her back on a Sunday.

Mid-December, I was back at it, picking our kid up and bringing her home for the Christmas holiday. This time, she was home for four nearly weeks, and we spent some quality time together as a family can under a pandemic lockdown. Her time home ended early, however, when the Ontario government ordered a lockdown for all non-essential travel, and at the last minute I drove her back to the GTA and was back home a few hours before the lockdown took effect.

On the last Friday in February, I made the trip again, to bring our daughter home for her second-semester reading week. This time, because she had assignments that were due by the end of the week, she spent a great deal of her time reading and working. The week simply flew by.

But because I had noticed that the day after these 10-hour trips would leave me exhausted the day after, we made the decision to drive DD19 back to the GTA on the following Saturday, rather than Sunday (yesterday).

Long drives never bothered me. I looked forward to them. From the 15-or-so hours, through the night, out to PEI for family vacations, to the drive for a long weekend in New York City, I've loved being in the driver's seat.

But now that I'm in my mid-fifties, now that my joints get sore and my blood circulation isn't what it used to be, I'm finding these drives are taking their toll, especially when I'm returning my daughter to school, and my drives home are solo.

I've told myself that these drives are necessary: neither DW, nor DD19, nor I want our kid to put herself at risk by sitting on a train for several hours during this pandemic. DD19 keeps herself isolated from others, taking her classes online from the safety and comfort of her dorm room. Sharing a ride with her dad, who avoids people at all costs, is a safe way for her to travel. I have no regrets, no matter how tired I am when I get home, how drained of energy I feel the next day.

But I look forward to the day that the pandemic is over and we're able to cautiously be closer to strangers. This fall, not only will DD19 be returning to the GTA for her second year, but her sister may also be in Toronto for her first year (or she may be in Montreal, which would make commutes to pick up our kids more challenging).

We're considering giving DD19 our CR-V in the fall, so that she can drive, herself. Like her dad, she loves to drive and gets behind the wheel for about an hour each day to see where the vehicle takes her.

Maybe then, she'll be ready to take the long drive on her own.

Father passes the torch.

Double Exposure, 2021

A little more than nine years ago, I shared a double-exposed photograph that I had shot sometime in the late 1980s. It was a photo of the moon, superimposed on a capture of the Chateau Laurier and Daly Building (which was torn down in the 90s).

To accomplish this effect, I first took the photograph of the Chateau Laurier and then had to manipulate my old Minolta X-700 35mm camera so that I could take another shot without having to advance the film. I also had to memorize the composition of the buildings in the first photo so that when I photographed the moon, none of the subjects would overlap.

When I photographed the moon, I also zoomed in on it with my telephoto lens.

I didn't know whether that effect was successful until about a week or so later, when I received my processed slides. Luckily, it didn't turn out too badly.*

Today, the process is much simpler: I only need to take the two photographs and layer the digital images in post-processing. Or I can even skip taking a capture of the moon, myself.

Using my standard photo-editing software, Corel PaintShop Pro 2021, I chose two photos that were as close to my original photo of the Chateau Laurier as I could find. It also includes the War Memorial, where I would have been standing even in the late 80s. I then sought out a photo that I had shot of the moon, which was a more-difficult task: while I have lots of photos in which the moon appears, I have very few in which the moon is the main subject.

Finding a clear image of the moon was even more of a challenge and I have now learned that I need to hone these skills.

As soon as I had two satisfactory images, I selected only the moon from within its RAW file and copied it into the other photo (which had already been processed from RAW and saved as a JPEG) as a new layer. I positioned the moon and tilted it to an angle that I liked. I then blended the two images, so that they looked like they were a single image, and here's the result.

It took me about 10 minutes to get this PSP image to as good as I could (not counting the time it took to find an image of the moon). I almost never use layers and it's been several years since I have, so I found editing this image to be a bit of a PITA.

Next, I took the single JPEG image of the Chateau Laurier and cenotaph, and opened it in Luminar AI to see how it would handle it.

There are several special effects tools in Luminar AI, which I had discussed in a previous post. You can easily add objects to a photo, including birds, clouds, fireworks, and more. There are two images of the moon, and so I chose the one that best matched the moon that I had for my PSP photo. I dropped it in, made it smaller, and tilted it so that it was close to the tilt that I added to my PSP moon.

Total editing time: less than a minute.

Which photo do you like the best? The 1980s double exposure, the PSP layered double exposure, or the enhanced, augmented Luminar AI photo?

Happy Friday!

* The 35mm slide photo was further edited with PSP for this post. To see the original (digitally scanned from the slide), go to my original post.

Beer O'Clock: More Globetrotting

These days, all of my travels to faraway lands are purely virtual. Whether I'm following the pilgrimage trail of the Camino de Santiago or hiking the entire length of the UK, I'm not really leaving the confines of my home or neighbourhood.

But since last summer, I've also been taking a virtual beer vacation, travelling to the UK, India, Switzerland, and even the North Pole. My latest globetrotting with beer takes me to the far-away reaches of Madagascar. And the brewery that has helped me achieve these destinations has been Kingston's own Spearhead Brewing Company.

The folks at Spearhead have been spoiling me a lot over the years, and I was delighted to find another six pack waiting for me on my doorstep last week. The latest offering from their limited Globetrotter Series is a German bock that is made with Madagascar vanilla beans and lush passionfruit.

I'm used to seeing vanilla in stouts and porters, and I love them. I also love these German dark lagers and was excited to see that the creative heads at one of my favourite Ontario breweries try a new blend. I can't recall any other brew with passionfruit, so I was looking forward to seeing how it worked in this bock.

Let's see how this flavour combination works.

Madagascar Vanilla Bean Bock (5.8% ABV)

Appearance: a murky, muddy brown, like prune juice, with red highlights; the head is a foamy, pale beige that slowly settles to a dense lace.

Nose: a slight, smoky caramel, with mild cocoa.

Palate: rich caramel and a hint of prunes, with an acidic followup, from which I can only assume is the passionfruit. There is no solid fruity flavour but something cuts the cloying, slightly sweet Munich and Caramunich malts, and ends in a light, chocolatey finish. But where is the vanilla? I can't taste the vanilla. I need more vanilla!

Overall impression: in truth, it is a very tasty bock. But I'm a bit bothered that the Madagascar vanilla is so prominent in the name but not as prominent in my mouth. With every sip, I sloshed the beer in my mouth, whistled backwards (inhaling rather than exhaling), and let the liquid rest on my tongue, all to no effect of getting a solid vanilla flavour. I got the caramel that I expect with a bock but, try as I might, I cannot discern much, if any, vanilla. There's a slight fruity flavour that I can only assume is the passionfruit, but it strikes me as a slight acidic balance to the malty caramel. The finish is more chocolate than vanilla.

I love vanilla. Every morning, I make myself a fruit smoothie that I supplement with a vanilla-flavoured protein powder, and it makes the smoothie so rich and delicious. Any vanilla-bean stout or porter that I've had shines a spotlight on this decadent flavour. This bock has a lot of flavour: vanilla just didn't make it to my taste buds.

Beer O'Clock rating: 🍺 + 1/2  While this is a very good bock, with rich flavours of caramel and an added bonus of ripe passionfruit, I wan't more vanilla. The label promises it but the contents are holding out. If I were to rate this brew based on a blind tasting, having been told to try it simply as a bock, I would have given it an extra mug. There is no doubt that this bock is tasty. The passionfruit helps cut the cloying caramel flavours.

Vanilla in a bock got me excited. The delivery just didn't meet my expectations, though I did enjoy Spearhead's bock and would recommend it for all of those dark German lager lovers. But I'm giving this bock a lower score because it doesn't deliver as advertised.

Now, when I review a beer, I drink it at a very slow pace, often taking more than an hour to empty my glass. The beer starts cold but falls to room temperature, and the fizz settles down such that there is no longer a head and no bubbles cling to the sides of my glass. Doing so brings out the flavours as the air changes the composition, much like it does to a glass of wine.

More than an hour after opening the can, I could start to detect some vanilla but it still wasn't enough to make me feel that the label deserved to place that ingredient in its name. But man, it was still a great bock!

Spearhead has never made a beer that I didn't like, and they continue to impress me with every new creation. I'm looking forward to the next release of their Globetrotter Series and where it will take me in my virtual travels.

Cheers!

MVT/ART