Date Night at Kìwekì Point

Size Matters

When I first came up with my detectives for my novel, Dark Water, I wanted them to stand out. From a personality point of view, they're both strong, intelligent, and insightful characters, and the more I write about them, the more I see in them.

I also wanted the characters to contrast one another, physically. I wanted the older, more-experienced detective, Mickey Calloway, to be a towering figure, at two metres tall (more than six-and-a-half feet tall). By contrast, Erin Hayes would be just over five feet, at 154 centimetres.

When I asked ChatGPT to create an image of the detectives, I provided a full description, including their respective heights. It came up with a good first attempt, though the height differences weren't quite right and Hayes looked older than her 28 years were.

So I had ChatGPT try again, stressing Hayes' age but not so much her height. And the vertical difference between my detectives wasn't stark enough, so I tried a third time, noting the importance of getting their height correct.

What the AI took came up with threw me off, because the difference was staggering. So much so, that I deleted the image that it had created, thinking the tool had made a big mistake (it wouldn't be the first time).

In that image, it had looked as though Calloway was standing next to a little kid. The AI must have come up with the wrong proportions, I told myself, and had ChatGPT create Hayes such that the top of her head came up to Calloway's shoulders.

After a bit of tweaking, the created image looked pretty much the way I wanted the detectives to appear. I've shared this image before but here it is, again (I find I'm reusing images in my posts a lot, of late. I hope you don't mind):

But if I wanted to stick to my initial thought of having Calloway two metres tall and Hayes just over a metre and a half, I needed to know what that would really look like. So I turned to HeightComparison.com.

This handy site lets you enter the height of two or more people and will then create a 2-D shadow of that person, based on the sex that you provide. When I entered the numbers for Calloway and Hayes, the outcome was eye-opening.

ChatGPT, it seems, got the height of the detectives correct. Seeing this comparison, it was apparent that I had created a giant and a teenager. It made my characters seem comical.

There is only one reference in the book, so far, that talks about their height difference, but I don't think they have to be extremes. With the differences in height that I had created, almost anyone who would encounter the detectives would want to react in shock or make some sort of comment, and I wouldn't want that. It would become the defining characteristic and be a distraction.

I still want Calloway to be a large, broad, imposing figure, who is two metres tall. When he walks into a room, he commands attention and is, perhaps, feared by some.

But Hayes doesn't need to be so short. I want her to be someone who, when seen for the first time, is not identified as a small person. I want her to be seen as someone who is, while "ridiculously beautiful," according to Calloway, is someone who is regarded as a person of authority.

I've added 16 centimetres to Hayes. For those who still use Imperial measurements, that brings her to roughly 5' 7". To further illustrate, I put my own height into the tool and came up with this comparison:

This new height for Hayes seems more realistic to me and I think will help with how I bring the two detectives together for the first time. I initially made Calloway to be a stereotypical gruff cop who dismisses his new partner straight off. He sees her, thinks her beautiful but tiny. He questions how she'd hold up in a tough situation.

But I never wrote about how Hayes sizes up Calloway (no pun intended) on their introduction to one another. She is simply the rookie inspector who was introduced to Calloway, and I had written from Calloway's perspective only. I'd like to round that scene out and share Hayes' perspective, too.

Once I get the descriptions of my characters sorted, I'll get back to focusing on the actual story. But now that I've seen how my detectives stack up to one another, I truly see how size matters.

Feeling Blue over My Kayak

I haven't yet clicked with my new kayak. And I think it's the colour that's to blame.

I mean, paddling in my Delta 14 is a dream: it's fast, it's stable, and when I've used the rudder, it moves in a perfectly straight line.

I love paddling in it.

When DW and I decided to upgrade our kayaks, it didn't take us much convincing to go with the 14-foot Deltas. We loved our old Deltas and knew that if we wanted to explore larger waterways, we needed the extra length and the rudders. It was a no-brainer to stick with the brand that we knew and loved.

The only real consideration, after taking a test paddle at Frontenac Outfitters, was to decide on a colour. I really liked the lime green, but so did DW. I didn't want to have the same colour of kayak that I had before, even though I loved the red, and the green was the next colour that appealed to me.

Delta had come out with a new colour, a rich orange, but I felt that it looked too similar to red, and I wanted the new kayak to stand out, especially in our videos. In retrospect, I might have been happier with the orange.

I mean, I liked the Azure colour that Delta had, but I feel that I settled for this colour, rather than saying, "Yeah, I want that colour for my kayak."

When we picked up our kayaks, at the end of April, and saw them unwrapped, I liked the blue. We were looking at our new crafts in a heavily overcast, rainy light, and the blue really punched. Maybe I would be alright with this new colour, I told myself.

On our first paddle, I was overwhelmed by how well the Delta 14 performed, how comfortable I was with it. It felt strange looking down the bow and seeing such a bright colour, but I told myself that I'd get used to it.

After viewing the video footage, I wasn't so sure. The blue didn't look like the rich blue that was unwrapped at Frontenac Outfitters. It appeared pale, like a light sky blue.

If the colour that was captured by the video camera was the true blue of my kayak, I wouldn't have chosen that colour.

I've been out in my kayak five times this season, and every time we've gone out, the sky has been cloudless and the sun has shone brightly. And when I've made a video of our outing, the blue of my kayak has not been accurately captured.

Have a look at the latest YouTube video, when we paddled the Mississippi River from Pakenham to the base of the Blakeney Rapids.

Pale, huh?

DW asked me, after this paddle, if I liked my new kayak. "The kayak itself is fantastic. I'm just not feeling the azure colour. I should have stuck to red or gone with the orange model."

It's too late. There's nothing I can do about it now.

On Saturday, for our fifth paddle, we put our kayaks in the Jock River and did a 10K round-trip trek toward Richmond and back. It was late in the afternoon and a lot of time, we were shaded by trees on the western bank of the river. And for most of the paddle, my kayak looked like the blue that I saw when we picked it up.

Ironically, I decided to leave my video equipment at home. I just wanted to paddle without thinking about capturing our trip.

As the sun got low on the horizon, I took a photo with my smartphone. And for the first time, I saw my kayak by its true colour. The photo has been unedited.

I'm sure I'll get used to the colour and hope that I eventually bond with it, no matter what light hits it. After all, the kayak itself is awesome and I know that when we hit big water, there's no kayak that I'd rather be in.

Lucky 7

I've been writing for a very long time.

In the fifth grade, I wrote a short story called The Hiccuppy Monster. It was about a monster that had the hiccups and couldn't shake them, and a few friends suggested ways to get rid of them. It took a kid scaring him to end his hiccupping fit.

One friend came up with the idea, another friend drew the illustrations (he was quite talented), and I wrote the story. Our teacher liked it so much that he had me read it to kids in a couple of first-grade classrooms.

In the sixth grade, we had creative writing each week, and my teacher, Bill Townsend, encouraged me to challenge myself. He liked my writing so much that at the end of each week, he'd have me read my work to the rest of the class. He told me that if I chose to be a writer, I'd do well.

Bill Townsend was one of my most influential teachers.

In my late teens, I continued to write short stories. This was at a time that I devoured spy novels by Len Deighton, and when I created Roland Axam. I was inspired by Deighton's Game, Set, and Match trilogy and thought I would write an entire novel for Axam.

My first novel was a spy thiller called The Spy's The Limit. It featured Axam, in Berlin, as an agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Services. He was assigned to assist his controller, Charles Townsend, who used to work for British MI-5 and who, himself, had been invited to bring a long-time agent back to the west, from the Soviet Union. Townsend had been in charge of the West Berlin portfolio and was the only person the agent trusted.

Axam was to be an observer only, but Townsend had other plans. I won't tell the story because I don't want to spoil any surprises, should I ever revive that story.

I actually turned The Spy's The Limit into a trilogy, taking Axam from Ottawa to Berlin, from Berlin to North Berwick, Scotland, and back home. When I finished the third book, Clear Spies Ahead (the second book was called Spy Will Be Done), I read everything, from cover to cover.

And wasn't happy.

I felt the story was too simple and not believable. I decided to shelve the trilogy and maybe revisited it after I had more writing experience under my belt. But I had completed three novels.

Sadly, in the moving that DW and I have done over the years, I've lost the manuscripts. I was upset but figured that perhaps I wasn't meant to be a spy novelist.

I moved on to another novel soon after. It was about teenage suicide. JT was about a teen, Joseph Thomas Smyth, in his final year of high school, and deals with the pressures that face youths. Written from the viewpoint of JT, it follows his last two weeks of life.

This novel, I thought I could get published, so I sent it to several publishing houses. Every one of them rejected the story with a lovely form letter that essentially told me to fuck off. But one of those letters was covered in hand writing around the margin, apparently by the person who actually read JT.

The person said that she actually enjoyed reading my manuscript, felt the main character compelling, and was touched by the emotion the book set. And while her company wasn't interested in this type of story, she encouraged me to keep writing.

Four books written: zero published.

The next novel that I wrote was started in 2001, after DW and I had returned from South Korea, where we taught for two years, and after we bought our first house and started a family. The book was based on our experiences in Korea but as seen through my eyes.

I should note here that all of my short stories and all of my novels were written in first-person prose. Though my sixth-grade teacher never encouraged this writing point of view, it was something that interested me.

Also, none of my books have happy endings. I just don't like them. Sorry.

It took me more than 10 years and three iterations to complete my fourth novel. I eventually brought Roland Axam into it, as the main character, complete with a sad backstory, and made him the person who experienced the things that I had while living in Korea.

Plus some fiction, for good measure.

That book did get published, although it's self-published. It's Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary.

Five books written: one published.

When I wrote Songsaengnim, I initially planned to write it to cover the span of my two years in Korea. But as the story progressed, I realized that the book was getting long, so I decided to split it into two stories: one, the first year of Roland in Korea, with his backstory as a second arc; the second story would follow Roland in his second year, where he teaches at a university.

I also decided to add parts of The Spy's The Limit—or at least what I could remember of the lost manuscript—as a secondary arc. There are actually three arcs in Gyeosunim, the sequel.

I got about two-thirds through writing Gyeosunim before I lost interest. It took 10 years to finish Songsaengnim and I didn't want to take another 10 years to write the sequel. I was bored of the characters in the main arc and needed to do something different, so I shelved my work.

For now.

Five-and-two-thirds books written. Let's say six.

My seventh book is Dark Water and is my first murder mystery, which is a departure from my other books. It's my first book that is not written in first-person prose (it's in third-person) and it's one of the few books that doesn't feature Roland Axam (JT is the only other novel that is Roland-free).

I have friends who think I'm a novice writer. Heck, I have friends who sometimes forget that I'm a writer (even though I worked for 25 years, writing documentation for various companies). I do lack confidence in my writing ability but I look back to my fifth-grade teacher, who liked The Hiccuppy Monster so much that he had me read it to younger kids (and I think he kept the only copy of that story), to Mr. Townsend, who encouraged me to write, and to that unnamed reader at a publishing company, who told me not to stop.

I'm having a lot of fun writing Dark Water and think it is probably my best work yet. Maybe, it'll be my Lucky 7.

Happy Friday!

Partially On the Wagon

If you've been reading The Brown Knowser for a while, you know that it's no secret that I love beer.

And yet, recently, I've sort of been off beer, avoiding the beer section in our friendly neighbourhood LCBO and not ordering from my favourite local craft breweries. There hasn't been any beer in my mini fridge since late May.

I still drank beer, but only occasionally. For the first couple of weeks, while attending my local karaoke venue, I gave up having my usual pint of IPA from Ottawa beer shop Overflow Brewing, opting for ginger ale to keep my vocal chords lubricated.

It threw the bartender, Kevin, who was reaching for a cold can of ale as he saw me approach. He wondered if I was okay.

I find that my overall alcohol consumption has seriously waned over the past few months. Not only have I not had the desire to drink, I also find that if I have more than one or two drinks in one sitting—depending on the beverage—I feel it the next morning.

I don't mean that I'm actually hung over: I simply feel tired, dehydrated (even though I usually drink water between drinks), and my head feels a bit heavy. Booze makes me feel weighted down.

I don't like waking up that way.

Lately, I've limited my drinking to times when I go out for a social event, like karaoke night, or meeting up with friends. And starting this month (though, we're only a couple of days into July), I'm going to limit myself to only one drink during those outings.

I asked for a G&T.
Didn't expect it to be blue.

Last night, for example, DW and I went out in celebration of our 31^st wedding anniversary. We decided to try a nice restaurant in Westboro—Brassica—which was excellent. Usually, when we dine out for our anniversary, we'll order a nice bottle of wine, which gives us three glasses, each.

At dinner, however, I didn't really want to drink, but old habits die hard and I did have a gin and tonic. But only one, and when DW suggested afterwards that we find a patio where we could watch the sun set and have a drink, I said I wasn't interested in having another drink, though I was up for finding a place to watch the sun set.

We went to the new Kìwekì Point, and it was a great venue for the sunset. More on that place in a future blog post.

On Canada Day, we had some sangria, and when we visited my folks for dinner, I was offered a pint of Innis & Gunn, which is pretty hard to say 'no' to.

Because there had been several hours between the sangria and beer, and because after the beer, I stuck to water, I felt fine the next morning (although, when we got home, that night, DW accidentally closed the rear gate of our Niro on my neck, so that was throbbing when I woke up, yesterday).

I don't need to stock my fridge with beer. For more than a month, I've filled it with flavoured sparkling water, of which the whole family goes through a lot. We prefer it to sugary drinks.

At this time of year, I would usually end my work day by grabbing a can of beer from my fridge and enjoying it on our front porch. I haven't even had the urge to do that, let alone have the beer to sip on it.

I had written all of the blog posts for this week, except for today's post, last week. Today's post was meant to be a Beer O'Clock review, that I would have gone shopping at the LCBO, brought home a new brew (new to me, that is), and tried it. But when the weekend came up and DW and I did our shopping, I didn't feel like popping into the liquor store. I had no urge to get beer.

For more than a year, I've been starting to feel my age (notice how I didn't say act my age): I have aches and pains; I'm not as strong as I used to be; and, since last year, my lungs have given me trouble. Maybe a lower tolerance for alcohol comes with the territory.

I'm not saying that I'm on the wagon. Not fully. But I can see a time where I'm no longer drinking alcohol or, at most, enjoying it rarely and sparingly.

Does this post mark the end of Beer O'Clock reviews? We'll see.

Thirty Plus One

I had to do some math.

There's no such thing as a perfect marriage but I'd say we've had a lot of fun, despite the imperfections. All of our travels, our kids, and the life we've built together.

All worth it.

We've been married for longer than I've been unmarried. I said that last year, too. We've been together for much longer than we've been without one another, and I could never imagine being without her.

Happy 31st anniversary, baby!

Canada Strong

The other weekend, when DW and I were cycling along the Thousand Islands Parkway, between Butternut Bay and Rockport, I received a notification on my phone that read "Welcome to the United States." Apparently, we were close enough to the American border to ping off a cell tower that was across the river.

"Fuck you," I said to that message. I looked across the water to the tree-lined shore and thought to myself, I'm glad I'm not over there, in that dumpster fire.

I'm glad to be Canadian. We're not a perfect country—there's no such thing—but compared to our neighbours, we're about as close as you can get.

Happy Canada Day!

Image: theflagstore.ca

Training for a Ride

In September, DW and I will be joining some friends for an adventure in the Saguenay region of Québec. And we feel that we need to be prepared.

Two other couples will spend about 10 days with us for an active vacation, where we will cycle 250 kilometres, over five days, around Lac-Saint-Jean. Each night, we'll stay in a different hotel, inn, or B&B, and will average about 50 kms each day.

When we finish this cycle route, we'll spend three days kayaking on the Saguenay River, taking in the splendid high cliffs that make up the fjord and, with any luck, spying some beluga whales in the distance (but, you know, if they swim up to us, that'd be okay, too).

We're sure that our Paddlefolk will have no issues in kayaks, and we'll be spending weekends, going out with our other friends, lending them our old kayaks, to get them used to paddling on larger bodies of water than the Rideau Canal. It'll be fun being out in so many boats.

But DW and I also want to make sure that we're in shape for the cycling part of our trip. We haven't cycled great distances in a long time and want to be sure that our legs (and butts) can handle multiple days of 50K.

The other weekend, we drove down to the St. Lawrence Seaway with our bikes in the back of our CR-V. We stopped in Prescott, for breakfast, before continuing to the Thousand Islands Parkway. We parked our vehicle at a free parking lot for the waterfront trail (there's a bathroom there, too), near Butternut Bay, and cycled westward, to Rockport.

On our handlebars, we mounted some carriers that we had purchased in 2020, when DW and I were planning a cycling trip from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to Bruges, Belgium, naively thinking that the pandemic would be over by autumn of that year. We've never used these carriers until this bike ride.

In our carriers, we carried swimsuits and towels, and I also threw in my drone. I plan to document our Saguenay trip and am hoping to get some aerial shots of us on our bikes.

The trail along the St. Lawrence is about as challenging as what we expect for the trek around Lac-St-Jean. It's mostly flat with a couple of gentle but long hills, and we think that the wind off the St. Lawrence could be similar to any wind we'd get off the large lake.

In Rockport, we stopped for lunch at a café that was in the harbour and had a patio that looked out into the river. The food was decent but not very expensive, and the stop gave DW a chance to rest, as it was her first time out on her bike for this season.

On our ride back, we stopped at Brown's Bay to cool off. It's a paid day-use beach that costs $21 for cars and only $5 for both bikes. The fee gives you access to a change room, with showers and toilets. We set our bikes up against some lounge chairs and we took turns going into the water, to cool off, while the other person watched our bikes.

The beach is close to the parking lot where we left our SUV, so we were still feeling refreshed when we made it back. The total distance for this round-trip ride was just shy of 40 kms, which was good for DW's first ride.

I also got a chance to use my drone, setting it in one of the automatic modes—Follow—and riding for about five minutes while it stayed behind me, despite other cyclists around me. I think it'll be a great addition to our trip and I'd like to try other modes on future rides.

Summer is our time where we get out in our kayaks almost every weekend, so we have no fear that we'll be ready for the Saguenay River in September. We hope our friends will have built up their confidence, too. And we're hoping to get more rides in, adding fully-packed paniers to the back of our bikes, to simulate what we'll be carrying as we cycle around Lac-St-Jean.

We have about two-and-a-half months. There isn't a moment to waste.

Friday Fiction: Lest I Forget

Previously, I've made all of my Friday Fiction posts about writing, when I've posted excerpts from some of my fiction. Starting today, however, my Friday Fiction posts will also be about the process of writing: my thought processes, my ideas, and the tools that I use to help with the story.

We'll see how it goes.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading my manuscript for Dark Water more than I've been writing. It's my first crime novel and I want to make sure it's a good one, and so I want to make sure that I have covered even the smallest of details.

And, I'm almost reluctant to say, I've been relying on AI to make sure that I don't forget anything.

Before I even wrote the Prologue, which sets up the overall arc under which the story follows, I created a spreadsheet that outlined the story, from the discovery of a body until the killer is found. And then, after getting this bare-boned story outlined, I started filling the spreadsheet with 'meat' (yes, I'm going to use this metaphor again), giving background information and adding layers to the characters and plot.

I'm finding that, unlike any other novel I've written before (hey, did you know that this is the seventh book I've written? I'll share that story another time), a crime story is incredibly complex. Even my spy stories that I had written, decades ago, weren't this complicated. (And maybe, that's why I never tried to have them published.)

Calloway & Hayes, by ChatGPT.

I have a victim. I have suspects. I have red herrings. And I have two detectives who I'm not only trying to flesh out, with background stories and depth, but I'm also trying to have them solve the murder from a perspective where they're going in, knowing little, while I try to not give too much away because I know everything.

At least I know almost everything. Every so often, I encounter a new arc in the story that I hadn't initially thought about, and I have to follow it.

The other week, I realized that I wasn't keeping track of all of the evidence, and so I had to create another spreadsheet to track it, with columns that tell me whether that evidence is actually useful for the case or it's irrelevant.

It's tough.

So, I've been writing less and reading more, checking what I've written and listing the evidence. I have a feeling that I'll have read this story dozens of times before it's done.

Because I have no background in law or in police procedures, I've been doing a lot of research. Google has been fine for a lot of fact finding, but because my story is fictitious, I need to know if it stands up to what I glean from facts of law and what might make for good reading.

And for that, I've turned to AI.

What I've started doing is giving ChatGPT breakdowns of the story, typing summaries of the plot, and asking it if it makes sense. I know that the AI programming is meant to give praise, and it's pretty good at stroking my ego. But it also does tell me if what I've written is realistic, from a legal standpoint and from a hypothetical one.

For example (and, hopefully, without giving anything away), I've provided the AI a scenario that the detectives are playing out, trying to piece together the final moments before the murder against an alibi, and coming up with a couple of plausible explanations. I then ask ChatGPT if the suppositions are realistic.

Sometimes, it says no. Legally, the scenario wouldn't hold up and I'm given parts of the Canadian Criminal Code to prove it (and yes, I'll independently confirm that section of the code through a Google search).

Because ChatGPT knows I'm writing fiction, it sometimes says no, from a legal point of view, but says for dramatic effect, in fiction, there's a way to make it believable. However, most of the time it comes up with rule-bending ideas that just don't fit with the story that I'm telling—and make no mistake, this is my story, not ChatGPT's story.

When the AI confirms that my ideas are realistic, it does provide information about what the detectives need to do to follow that line of inquiry. And it's that kind of information that I put into my spreadsheet.

Lest I forget.

Yes, Dark Water is my work of fiction. I'm the only writer. But ChatGPT is almost like an editor that reminds me to include information that will make my story more believable and interesting to a reader, and I'm glad that I have this tool to use.

Of course, like any tool, it only makes my job easier. I can focus on the storytelling and it will keep me on course for the overall arc.

And when I'm done, I will use a real person to do the important editing of the whole story. AI should help us do a job and should never do the whole job for a person.

A friend, who also writes murder mysteries, told me that I should befriend a cop to hash out the story and get factual information, and I just might do that. But for now, I'll let ChatGPT do that. I may be a novice police-procedural writer but I've been writing fiction for more than 40 years.

I'll trust my instinct. Wish me luck.

Nap Time

Kindergarten was a funny time.

It was only a half-day in school, and yet there was a designated nap time, where all the kids in the class were told to lie down on mats, and the teacher would turn out the lights. I don't remember how long we'd be made to stay quiet but my guess would be 15 to 20 minutes.

Maybe, even half an hour.

I could never sleep during nap time, though I learned how to stay quiet and lie still. I was four, and had a pretty active life, already. I was used to running around with my friends, in the neighbourhood, when our moms would kick us out of the house and tell us to be back for lunch, only to kick us out again afterwards and not want to see us again until dinner.

We roamed the neighbourhood and sometimes, beyond.

I didn't appreciate a nap until after I became a dad. Of course, DW did the heavy lifting—getting up in the middle of the night for the baby's feedings and spending all day with our wee ones—but I was a light sleeper and would often stir when she woke to feed our daughters.

At work, I would get tired around lunchtime. I would schedule my break so that many of my co-workers would be done their lunch, and I could snooze on a sofa in one of the break rooms. I would also sometimes nap at my desk, setting a 20-minute timer, reclining my chair, and propping my feet up on my desk.

One time, I awoke from a nap and found an envelope with my pay stub resting on my chest. Apparently, my manager had come to deliver it and didn't want to disturb me, but also wanted to let me know he had been by while I was sleeping.

He had kids. He totally got it.

There was a long period, after my kids got older, where I didn't feel that I needed naps. Even when I found myself staying up late and getting up early, the next morning. I could put in a full day at work without the need for a mid-day shut-eye.

But when I started working, full-time, from home, I found I needed naps again. I suspect that, while working at home, I would make myself a proper breakfast each morning and would prepare a decent lunch, so that by mid-afternoon my meals would make me sleepy.

I'd set a 30-minute timer and have a good nap, and then get right back to work.

I'm no longer employed but I still spend my weekdays at my desk, writing my murder mystery. And, mid-afternoon, I still have naps.

I was shuffling through photos, the other day, looking for a random photo to post on my Bluesky account, when I came across a picture from 2003, when Kid 2 was a few days old. It shows our old sofa, our old kitchen floor, and a much younger me.

And, of course, Kid 2 and I are napping.

We still have those throw cushions, though they're now on a different sofa in a different room. I still use them, each day, to rest my head when I nap.

So maybe I didn't nap in kindergarten but I'm making up for it now, and then some. (Maybe, nap time was more for our teacher than for us?)

Happy Thursday!

Paddling Through the Heart of Ottawa

I can't remember who it was but someone, some time ago, asked me to make a video where I paddle the length of the Rideau Canal Skateway.

I mean, they didn't want me to do it in the dead of winter, when our canal is frozen over and turned into the world's larges skating rink. The person wanted me to cover that same area during the months where the canal is filled with water and the lockstations are opened for traffic.

Although, I can now picture myself bundled up in the cockpit with skate blades strapped to the bottom hull. That'd be something.

Because I'm between jobs (I'm not yet calling myself retired), I have the benefit of taking my kayak out whenever I want to. And so, last week, I strapped my kayak to the roof of my Niro, threw my gear into the trunk, and drove to Hartwell Locks, near the Arboretum and the Central Experimental Farm.

I could have called the Paddlefolk, who are officially retired, but I wanted to do a solo paddle. I just wanted to get in the water, paddle my route, and get back out. I haven't done a solo paddle since I ventured out to the S.S. Pumper, in 2021.

I was overdue for some me-time on the water.

I have to start out by saying that the parking fee at the Hartwell Locks is extortionate. The last time I parked at the locks at Black Rapids, I'm pretty sure I paid $4 for the maximum allowed time, which I think was three or four hours. That was only a couple of years ago.

A couple of weeks ago, when I kayaked at Petrie Island, parking cost $2 for five hours. That was a real bargain.

However, at Hartwell Locks, it cost $15 for four hours, plus there was a surcharge of 70 cents for the privilege of me scanning a QR code and jumping through hoops to get my car registered.

I'll never do that again. And neither should you. In retrospect, I should have driven to Old Ottawa East, where I believe there is street parking for up to three hours. For free. I had brought our kayak cart to help me get the kayak from the car to the water, anyway, and there's a doc on the canal near the Flora Footbridge.

That's where you should go if you want to paddle on the canal.

I've documented this paddle, covering the parts of the waterway that is frozen over for skating, in winter, and then some. Here's my YouTube video. Have a look:

If you like my videos, give them a Thumbs Up and subscribe to my channel. Help me get to 300 subscribers by the end of the summer (and no, I didn't forget to add some more zeros to that number).

I don't remember who asked me to make this video but this one's for you.

Paddling Petrie Island

It's somewhere we've been meaning to go pretty much since we first ventured out with our original kayaks, in 2020.

In our very first kayaking video, where we put our red and yellow Deltas into the South Nation River, at Jessups Falls, we drove past the turnoff for Petrie Island, on the eastern limits of Orleans, in Ottawa's east end. DW and I mentioned that it would be nice to check it out—and in fact, we once drove onto the island to see about putting in our kayaks but didn't have them strapped to the roof of our Niro at that time.

But we never actually returned with our boats.

So far, this kayaking season, we seem to be making decisions almost last-minute about heading out on the water, and at that, we haven't really had places in mind. Our paddle out at Burritts Rapids was almost improvised, though we're glad we went. We thought we might go to Petrie Island on that day, but by the time we got moving and were able to mobilize our Paddlefolk, I felt it was too late in the morning. I had the impression that you had to get to Petrie Island before the crowds flocked to it.

So we held out, and made the last-minute decision to try this spot on the following weekend.

Surprisingly, there was already a lot of activity on Petrie Island when we arrived before 8:30 on a Saturday morning. We discovered, when we reached the parking lot that's closest to the put-in spot for canoes and kayaks, that there was a race that was being held by several of the canoe clubs in the Ottawa area.

We had no problem getting our kayaks in the water on the docks that are in this bay, but race officials warned us to not go left when we exited the bay, as there were lanes marked out and canoeists were racing along that area. There was still lots of public space if we paddled to the right.

Not being familiar with Petrie Island, we didn't know where various channels around the many islands led, whether we'd take a bay into a dead end or find a narrow channel that would keep us moving westward. But that was part of the fun of exploring somewhere new.

DW and I were thrilled to see so many Delta kayaks on the water, from recreational crafts to long, touring vessels like ours. Seeing a Delta gives us the same sense of excitement that we imagine a Ferrari owner gets at seeing another Ferrari on the road.

I almost feel that way when I see another Niro drive past mine. There aren't a ton of them on the road.

We spent less than two hours and covered more than six kilometres. And surprisingly, we performed one portage—something we didn't expect to do when going around a set of islands.

Check out the video. It's 12-and-a-half minutes, so give yourself a break.

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Happy Monday!

Dow's Lake, Differently

On Monday, I left the house early-ish to go for a solo paddle on the Rideau Canal, through the heart of my city. I put my kayak in at the Hartwell Lockstation and paddled all the way to the locks that cut between Parliament Hill and the Chateau Laurier, and back.

I have a YouTube video that documents the trek.

When I reached Dow's Lake, shortly after setting out, I couldn't help but pause and take in how calm the water was. Naturally, I had to take a picture of it.

I've taken countless images of this Ottawa landmark, and even though the background has more tall buildings, it seems, every time I visit Dow's Lake, I wanted to do something different, so that this image wouldn't be like every one before it.

Did you notice what's different right away or did you have to take a second look?

Using Snapseed, I gave the sky, water, and buildings a dramatic look. But that's not how I made this image different. Still not see it?

I've turned the image upside-down and flipped it so that the buildings aren't mirrored.

Whilst in my kayak, I had to paddle backwards to stop my forward momentum, and unfortunately, I added ripples to the water where it was like glass only moments earlier. I should have glided, which would have made the illusion more convincing.

Oh, well.

Happy Friday!

Die Laughing

I couldn't stop laughing and I was worried. But it would have been a great way to go out.

The last time I hung out with my brother, Chris, before the pandemic, was in a social setting with my family, his daughter, and our folks. We wanted to get out and do something that everyone could enjoy, at all age levels: Chris' daughter, Piper, was under 10; my kids were 18 and 16.

We decided to go to Level One Game Pub, near the ByWard Market, because it had games for every age level and the adults could enjoy drinks, too. It was our first time checking the place out and I'm glad we did so, even though it nearly killed me.

Much like fine restaurants have sommeliers to help you choose the best wine to go with a meal, there were experts at Level One that could determine the best games to play, based on age, level of complexity, and the interests of the gamers. Because there were eight of us, we had various games at our table and we split up the players into groups of four.

At one point, Kid 1 and Kid 2, Chris, and I played What Do You Meme?, where you try to match images with relatable memes, much like how you try to pair questions and answers in the game, Cards Against Humanity. And like CAH, some of the choices are rather risqué.

And hilarious.

My girls have pretty twisted senses of humour, much like their dad, and some of their photo-meme pairings were downright hilarious. Also, when I was trying to match up my own memes to images, I'd start laughing before playing the cards.

And I mean laughing hard.

So hard, that I couldn't stop. My face turned a garnet red and I had difficulty catching my breath. My laughing fit became so intense, so unstoppable, that everyone at the table stopped what they were doing. My brother asked me if I was okay, and I said, between gasps, that I didn't know.

DW captured some images before putting her phone down and wondering if I was going to keel over. Even people at surrounding tables couldn't help but notice.

Of course, I didn't collapse, didn't drop dead. After a couple of minutes, I was able to get my breathing under control, slow my guffaws to a mere giggle, to sighs, and regain my composure.

But we had to end the game. Any match I tried to make would get me going again. Not as bad but we didn't want me returning to that state.

Yes, when I finally go out, I would love to die laughing. At least then, anyone around me would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I died a happy man.

Happy Thursday!

Visualizing Roland

As I said in yesterday's post, how I find it a challenge to visualize the characters in my books, and how I asked ChatGPT to create the detectives in my novel, Dark Water, based on my descriptions, I was finally able to visualize inspectors Mickey Calloway and Erin Hayes, which has actually helped me develop their characters more.

Thanks, AI.

For fun, whilst creating that post, I uploaded images of singer-songwriter Midge Ure and of myself, from when I lived in Korea, and asked ChatGPT to merge the images to come up with Roland Axam, the central character to my novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. Here's what it came up with:

Image: ChatGPT

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Though the film noir feeling that Ure's portrait for his The Gift album cover suits him perfectly, I wasn't feeling it for Roland (though, as my novel tells, he has a dark past). So I asked ChatGPT to add colour to the image and use the background from the photo of me.

Image: ChatGPT

And while it still looks like the person in the first image, I felt the face was too round for Roland (it captured the roundness of my face perfectly) and it had also created somewhat of a double chin for the character, something that I definitely didn't have in 1998. So, I told the AI tool to slim the face and lose the double chin.

Image: ChatGPT

I can actually see this as Roland Axam. Well done.

I can finally stop visualizing either myself or Midge Ure when I think about my character, who will make an appearance in another book, someday.

Happy Wednesday!

Visualizing Characters

Midge Ure in 1985.

When I created Roland Axam, more than 40 years ago, I had a clear picture of how I wanted him to look. My favourite band at the time was UK new-wave band Ultravox. Around that time, front man Midge Ure had started releasing solo albums, and the cover for his first one, The Gift, featured Ure in a black-and-white, slightly noir head shot.

Roland Axam, in my mind, didn't look exactly like Ure but close enough to win a look-alike contest. Roland had a more-defined jawline and eyes that always looked half-closed, like he was either in deep thought or was sizing you up.

If you ever looked at Roland, you would never know what he was thinking. And that was perfect for the short stories and trilogy that I wrote, in the late 80s, where Axam was a spy.

Me, in 1998.

By the time I wrote Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary, Roland looked like a cross between Midge Ure and myself, especially how I looked at the end of my first year whilst living in South Korea. I often visualized Ure, on the cover of The Gift, and a photo of me in a Seoul market, and I mashed them up in my head to create an image, but that image was never clear to me.

When I write about other characters, however, I don't always see a face.

When I started writing Dark Water, a few months ago, I didn't have images for most of the characters. When I created the victim that is discovered in the Rideau River, I just imagined a woman in her late 20s or early 30s, with long, red hair.

Once she was extracted from the water, I kept picturing one face as I wrote about her. And I'm a bit disturbed to have my image be that of Ottawa journalist, Rachel Gilmore.

I say 'disturbed' because while she fits the profile of my victim, I would never want to see any harm come to Gilmore. She's great at her job and I enjoy following her on Bluesky and YouTube.

So far, I've been unable to clearly visualize my two inspectors, Mickey Calloway and Erin Hayes. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, when I asked ChatGPT to create a book cover that included these characters, I purposely requested that the detectives faced away.

The AI tool was actually pretty good at visualizing my description of the detective duo.

But this week, as I was reading through my rough manuscript, trying to flesh out the characters more, I still couldn't give Calloway or Hayes a face. So I finally asked ChatGPT to do it.

Image: ChatGPT

The first attempt was pretty good and I liked the face that was given to Calloway. I think he could be 'drawn' taller and more imposing (he's a solid 2 metres and broad-shouldered).

And while the image of Hayes is good, I think she appears in the image older than she is in the book. She's supposed to be 28 and, as Calloway put it, is "ridiculously beautiful." I mean, the woman in the ChatGPT image is pretty but not ridiculously so, IMHO.

I then asked the tool to make her prettier and younger, reminding ChatGPT that she's supposed to look 28. I think the woman in the first image looks mid-30s.

Here's what it gave me in its second attempt:

Image: ChatGPT

Closer. I prefer the Calloway rendering in the first image but Hayes looks closer to her age this time.

As I've written her, Inspector Hayes is half a metre shorter than Calloway. In the image that I had ChatGPT create where the detectives are faced away, I asked it to change the image so that she was 75 percent shorter than Calloway, and the tool gave her the legs of a child but kept the proportions above her legs the same.

Talk about ridiculous. Obviously, I didn't keep that image.

I'm not going to mess with the characters' height in this image. It's not important. I just wanted to create some faces to give me a better visualization for when I write the story, and I think these images help accomplish this objective.

Unlike how ChatGPT visualized Roland Axam when it merged our photos.

Happy Tuesday!

ChatGPT's first interpretation of a merge of me and Midge Ure, as Roland Axam. Hmm...

Learning to Fly

I'm a lazy SOB.

I bought my DJI Neo drone on Black Friday, last November, as an early Christmas gift to myself. And because it was my Christmas Gift, DW made me wait until December 25 to open it.

In the meantime, I watched countless YouTube videos about the best settings for the drone and about the best way to configure the drone, and several reviews that put the Neo through its paces. And even though DJI doesn't recommend flying the drone in sub-zero weather, I saw one reviewer fly it in –20°C, in Saskatchewan, without any issues.

I can do that, I told myself after watching the video. I live in a similar climate. As soon as I have some free time, I assured myself, and as long as the wind wasn't too strong (I find that it's much windier in the Ottawa area than it used to be), I was going to head out.

Of course, I hate going outside when it's –20.

I did drive out to the Experimental Farm, one weekend, to try my hand at my drone, using the automatic functions, while DW waited in the car, keeping the head going. I had the drone follow me, fly straight up for 10 metres, while the gimbal was pointed straight down. I had it fly an orbit around me and had it perform a 'selfie' flight, where it backs away from you while climbing, and then coming back along the same route.

That's about as much as I did before I felt too cold, and we returned home to a nice, warm house.

I did take it out again, one weekend, when I was snowshoeing on a trail. I had it perform the dronie manoeuvre and follow me as I ran in my snowshoes. I also had it follow DW and she skied along a parallel trail. But I didn't have it do much else because while we were out, it started to snow.

I shared that footage as part of a video about winter in Ottawa.

I wanted to get more practice with the drone but I've turned lazy when it comes to going outside and doing this sort of thing. I bought a large telephoto lens so that I could photograph birds, and knew that I should practice using it with the birds at Mud Lake, in preparation for our trip to Peru, but I was too lazy to go out.

I knew that I really needed practice with my drone before going to Peru but apart from flying it, one afternoon, in Claudette Cain Park and getting it up high for a sunset hover above my neighbourhood, I didn't master my drone before our trip.

As it turned out, there were so many places that we visited where drones were prohibited that I only flew it a couple of times. It wasn't worth bringing it on the trip.

I initially bought the Neo because I thought it would be good to have when DW, our Paddlefolk, and I got out in our kayaks. I thought it would be good to get some video from high above, while we paddled on a river or lake.

The previous weekend, we went out for our inaugural paddle with our kayaks, and I brought my drone along. But because we were setting out from one of the Rideau River lock stations, which are run by Parks Canada, the drone was prohibited. I knew that you couldn't fly a drone in a national or provincial park without special permission, but I didn't realize that the rule applied to the locks.

When we got away from the locks, I thought it would be fine to fly the drone but the wind became blustery and there was no way that I was going to attempt to land my drone on a moving kayak.

This weekend, we went kayaking on the Ottawa River at Petrie Island, in the city's far east end. We've never paddled here before but we had heard great things about the place, so it was high time that we checked it out.

We were meeting our Paddlefolk but DW and I arrived early so that I could fly my drone. But when we reached the canoe and kayak put-in area, we discovered that there was a race event going on. I could have walked over to the north-east end of Petrie Island to fly my drone, but I got lazy and instead packed my carry case in the storage compartment at the bow of my boat.

We set out and moved away from the race area, and headed west along the southern part of the chain of islands. There were so many people out in kayaks at canoes that I didn't want to fly my drone in this part (also, because I don't feel confident enough to land the drone while in my kayak).

When we got into the main channel of the Ottawa River, we made our way eastward, following the northern shores of the islands. The wind had picked up and caused little swells on the water, but it was nothing that our new kayaks couldn't handle (they're made for this kind of water).

There are sandy beaches all along the northern shores, so at one point, we moved in to take a break and stretch. I find, lately, that I just don't have enough padding on my ass and it gets sore when I sit for too long.

While we took this break, I thought I'd try using my drone. The wind was a bit strong but I figured that the Neo could still handle it. I also hooked it up to the dedicated remote-control unit so that I could have better control.

Almost immediately, I could see that the Neo was working hard to maintain its position against the wind, leaning into it and boosting its motors. Because I had it over water, I was very cautious about how I wanted to position it to capture video. I couldn't fly it too high because the wind was too strong above the trees.

My anxiety shoots up when the Neo gets to a certain height and this flight, over the choppy and fast-moving Ottawa River stressed me out. But I did get enough video to make it worthwhile.

But this flight told me one thing: I have to stop being lazy and take the time to properly learn how to fly the drone. Because even though I'm on the ground, I'm still considered a pilot of this flying machine.

Because of its size, I don't need to be certified nor do I need a permit for it, but I still need to fly responsibly.

It's no longer –20°. I have no excuses for staying indoors.

Also, I'm currently putting together a video of our Petrie Island paddle. It'll be ready later this week: stay tuned. (Here's a sneak peek at the thumbnail shot for the video.)

The Hidden Door

I didn't notice it until the day after I had taken the photo.

I can usually park on Kid 2's street, and had I been able to do so, last Friday, I would have never seen the artwork, let alone what it concealed. But there was construction that had a huge swath of the road torn up, including in front of her house, so I had to keep driving and found a vacant spot four blocks away.

It's hot in Toronto and our kid lives in a triplex where her bedroom occupies the third floor, and because heat rises, this room swelters. She had the same issue in the last apartment she kept, and so DW and I bought a small, portable air-conditioning unit that didn't draw a ton of power but kept her room cool enough to sleep comfortably.

But when our daughter moved out of that place and was going to be staying in a new place that was too small to afford space for the AC unit, DW and I brought it back home, where we kept it in the basement, waiting for when she'd have a place that had room for it.

Little did we know that she'd be moving out of that small place a few days later.

Shortly after we returned from vacation, Kid 2 contacted me to say that her new apartment was becoming hot and she'd need the AC unit as soon as it was possible to bring it down. Because I'm not working* these days, I said I could bring it down on her next day off.

That next day was last Friday.

Thankfully, the drive to Toronto was uneventful that day and I made it down fairly quickly. As I reached Scarborough, Kid 2 called me to let me know that there was no parking on her street due to construction. I said no problem, that I would find a place nearby and call her once I had, so that she could meet me and help me carry the parts for the AC unit.

Hence the space four blocks away.

Kid 2 led me along a side street that was a bit longer of a route than the main street, but she thought it would be easier to wheel the AC unit along a sidewalk with fewer people, and she was right, though the sidewalk on the side street was somewhat uneven for the small wheels of the unit.

When we reached her house, I realized that I had forgotten her jacket, which was in the back seat of the car. Kid 2 had worn it to Ottawa the day before we flew to Peru, and because it was too warm for where we were going, she had to leave it behind.

Kid 2 needed to take a shower so I told her that I'd go back to the car while she did so. This time, I walked along the main street, as it was a shorter route.

But I also noticed, as I got to the car, that there was an alley that ran immediately behind the buildings on the main street and it seemed to go all the way back to Kid 2's street. And so, once I had her coat, I took this seemingly deserted lane.

Toronto, like many cities, is full of graffiti. It's something that I love to see, and as you may know from many of my previous posts, I love capturing some great examples of this street art. About halfway down the lane, there was one piece of graffiti that caught my attention, so I stopped to photograph it. Though I did throw one of my D-SLRs in the back of the car before I left for Toronto, I only had my phone on me.

By the time I got back to Kid 2's place, she was showered and dressed, so we went out for lunch. Though brief, it was a nice visit. But because I wanted to beat Toronto's rush-hour traffic, I gave her a hug after lunch and said goodbye.

Toronto traffic is unpredictable and even at 3:00, it still took me an hour to get through the city and reach the 401.

I didn't look at the photo that I had shot until the next day. And looking at the relatively small size of my smartphone's screen, I thought that the colours and the texture of the snail were particularly good. It was a shame that some of the paint had been scratched off and that there was some sort of sticker on the shell.

It was then that I looked closer and saw that it wasn't a sticker on the paint. It was a steel plate and a handle to a door. When I had taken the photo, I hadn't seen the door on the wall at all.

If I hadn't mentioned the hidden door in the title or said anything about it at all, would you have noticed it right away?

Happy Friday!

Milestones

Sometimes, it's hard for me to believe that I've had my Kia Niro for more than five years.

It was bought as a replacement for my Ford Focus, which suffered mechanical issues shortly after I bought it and continued having issues over the nearly seven-and-a-half years that I kept it. The Niro was going to be my new commuter vehicle and, being a hybrid, it was going to save me even more money because of its low fuel consumption.

Of course, two weeks after bringing the Niro home, the pandemic forced us into lockdown and I had never returned to the office on a regular basis again.

So yeah, the fuel economy to work was great.

Despite working from home, we've driven this car a lot. We take it with us more than 99 percent of the time that DW and I go kayaking. I've driven to the GTA several times because Kid 1 and Kid 2 attended university down there and because Kid 2 still calls Toronto her home (more on that, tomorrow).

Still, I've put fewer kilometres on the Niro than I did with the Focus, which averaged more than 20,000 kms each year (it was over the 150,000-km mark when I said goodbye to it). I've averaged fewer than 20,000 kms per year in the Niro.

Last week, I drove down to Toronto once again. And as I headed out, I noticed that the odometer was over the 99,000 km mark. Doing some quick calculations in my head, it was apparent that I was going to hit the 100,000 milestone (kilometrestone?) on this round-trip drive.

The only question was where I'd reach it and whether I'd be able to record it.

I managed to be stopped when I recorded 77,777 on the odometer and 88,888 more than six months later. Having witnessed these numbers (and I don't know why they appeal to me, but here we are), I wanted to notice the 99,999 km reading.

I have a routine when I drive to Toronto. I fill the gas tank at the Barrhaven Costco before I hit Hwy 416, nearby. And though I burn less than a quarter of a tank by the time I reach Napanee, I always stop to top up the tank at the W.O. Stinson station that's across from the Flying J. There are three gas stations at this intersection (there's also a Petro-Canada) and the W.O. Stinson always has the lowest price when I'm there.

I'm then able to continue to Toronto, and when I head home, I stop in Napanee to fill the tank again, which is usually still a third full.

Last Friday, because I wanted to get to Toronto ASAP, I filled up at my local Costco but didn't stop for fuel on the way to my kid's place. Looking at the odometer, I knew that I'd reach 100,000 kms on the way home.

I've never driven from Barrhaven to Toronto, and back, on a single tank. I think it's possible but I wouldn't want to try it because it's hard on the electric motor to run without fuel to back it up. But I knew that it was no problem to get from Barrhaven to Toronto, to Napanee, without any issues.

And that's what I did last Friday.

I really wanted to see the odometer turn over to 99,999 but my first priority was to concentrate on the road. It was a long day and I needed to be alert.

As I passed road signs that indicated distances to fuel stations, I made some mental calculations. I would reach Napanee at about 100,000 kms on the odometer, give or take a kilometre or two. And as I saw the road markers (still called milestones, even though they're marking kilometres) that lead up to the exit for my gas station, I calculated that I'd actually see my odometer reach my goal.

At exit 579, the odometer rolled over to 99,998. And, as I pulled in front of a pump at W.O. Stinson, I took this photo:

I also wanted to capture my dashboard as it rolled over one more kilometre but I didn't want to be back on the 401. The entrance to the gas station is on a dead-end street, so I drove back and forth on it.

Milestone reached.

And yeah, I'm kind of weird about the odometer readings on my Niro.

More than five years after buying my Kia and 100,000 kms in, I'm still happy that I bought the car, which is something that I couldn't say for the Ford Focus at the same point in its life.