Two in One

Last weekend, I made a concerted effort to get out of the house. I find that I spend too much time at home and don't get much fresh air. And, I've become extremely lazy.

In preparation for our upcoming vacation (I can't believe we'll be leaving in only two weeks), DW and I have started training by finding steep hills to climb. On the previous Saturday, we drove to the Arboretum, between the Central Experimental Farm and Dow's Lake, and walked up the steepest slope of the hill a few times.

When I finally ran out of breath, we called it a day. We hopped back in our car, drove to our latest, favourite breakfast spot, The Third, and then headed home, where I stayed indoors for the rest of the weekend.

Lazy.

The first week of our vacation will have us up in a mountainous region and we plan to do some hiking. And because I'm probably in the worst shape I've been in in years, I want to make sure that I'm up for climbs. Even in the towns we're visiting, there'll be some climbing and I need to know that I'm able to keep up with my family.

So, last weekend, DW and I drove to the Gatineau Hills early on Saturday morning for a hike to the Carbide Willson Ruins. We're familiar with the trail and know that in the past, we've managed it without any issues.

We strapped on our day backpacks and loaded them up to duplicate what we'll likely have on us when were hiking on vacation. I decided to bring one of my Insta360 cameras and my drone, in its case, plus a large, metal water bottle that I filled to the top.

There was still a coating of granular, icy snow on much of the trail, which presented a bit of a challenge on some of the steeper slopes, but DW and I were able to manage the trail without falling. I decided to use my video camera to capture our trek, and at the ruins, I pulled out my drone to use the automated functions to capture a selfie of DW and me.

I wanted to use the remote controller to get some great shots of the remains of the factory, but I don't have any experience using it. And with the waterfall raging and lots of snow on the ground, I didn't want to risk flying into a tree and losing the drone. It was too slippery to have to retrieve it, should it land somewhere on the other side of the factory.

I did, however, use the remote to simply get a top view of the factory and to close up on the waterfall, but that's all my nerves would allow for this hike.

I've already put the video footage for that hike on my YouTube channel (please subscribe!). It's the first time I've captured video, edited it, and uploaded it in a single day. Give it a look: it's just over five minutes long.

Sunday was an even better day, with the sun coming out for the first time in days. It was warm and there was almost no breeze, so I thought that this would be a perfect day to test my drone.

I wanted to pick a spot where there weren't many people—especially, kids—and where there wouldn't be a great risk of hitting trees. I wanted an open space.

I didn't go far from home. I crossed the Rideau River and parked at Claudette Cain Park, near the Vimy Memorial Bridge. There's a large, treeless field that is surrounded by a circular path, which was perfect for testing my hand at the remote control. And because the ground was still wet, no one was walking on it.

One of the drawbacks of the DJI Neo is that the battery life is limited. They're rated up to 18 minutes but with wind, they tend to get about 15 minutes of less, so you have to have a plan for what you want to capture on video.

Fortunately, I have two extra batteries, so I was good for about 45 minutes of flight time.

I spent the first two batteries getting comfortable with the controller, moving the drone up to about 40 metres or so, turning the drone while moving forward, raising or lowering the gimbal for the camera, and testing the return-to-home function, where the drone will automatically fly to its take-off spot.

Because I set up next to the Moodie Family Cemetery, a small plot of headstones in an enclosed corner of the park, I also practiced moving the drone from a height down to eye level, closing in on the burial plots.

When I felt comfortable, and was down to my last battery, I decided to fly the drone further away, over the trees that separated the park from the Rideau River. Once over the trees, I turned the drone toward the Vimy Memorial Bridge and then circled back to the park before landing it and calling it a day.

I had been outside twice in as many days, the first in a long time.

When I got home, I downloaded the video footage from the drone and decided that I'd make another YouTube video. For the second time, I shot video, edited it, and uploaded the final video in a few short hours.

In viewing the video, I realized that there were some settings that I did not adjust before flying the drone. Being a bright day, I should have lowered the exposure level. And I had learned, from other owners of the DJI Neo, that I should have lowered the sharpness of the video (DJI sets the default too high).

I couldn't do anything with the sharpness in post-production but I applied a high-contrast filter to the video clips during editing. They still don't look great but I was really just focused on getting comfortable flying the drone manually.

With my first drone, which was a cheap, crappy drone, I flew it into trees on my first flight. It survived, but I kept flying it into trees and became discouraged.

The controller on the Neo is much better and makes flying easy. I'll continue to practice but I'm now not as nervous about using the drone when we travel.

If you want to see the drone video, which is just over two minutes long, have a look:

It wasn't until after I viewed the video that I realized I had captured the whole setting of the opening chapter of my novel, Dark Water, where the body is discovered by two kayakers on the Rideau River. You can see Chapman Mills Conservation Area, the river, the bridge, and the park.

Coincidence.

I need to get out of the house more, and now that the weather is improving, I expect the drone will be good incentive to get some fresh air.

Happy Thursday!

Back to Ruins

Lost and Found... and Lost Again

I took it out of my back pocket because I didn't want to break it.

DW and I were hiking in Gatineau Park with a couple of our friends, Nina and Brian, and were making our way to the Carbide Willson ruins, a place we've visited too many times to count. You would think that, by now, I would be tired of bringing a camera, that I've captured enough angles of the remains of the mill and the waterfall.

But no, I could never get tired of photographing this site. Every season brings a new look. The light can vary, depending on whether the sky is sunny or overcast. There's always a new angle that I haven't shot.

Sometimes, I dropped behind my companions to capture a moment but I would always catch up. I had a quick pace and I knew the trail well. By the time we reached the ruins, we were together, though once at the site, we would split up and explore the structures and the falls on our own.

I'll share some of my photos on Wednesday.

Just before we were ready to head back to our cars, about one-and-a-half kilometres away, we all gathered by the rocks on the other side of the waterfall from the shell of the mill, to sit, rest, drink some water, and snack.

I took my smartphone out of my pocket and set it on the rock, next to my D-SLR. Sitting on such a hard and uneven surface, I didn't want to risk cracking the screen or bending the metal. Being next to my camera, I wouldn't forget it when I stood again.

But when I stood up and grabbed my camera, I wasn't really looking next to me. The camera was resting against my leg and I instinctively scooped it up as I stood. I also had a water bottle in my other hand, and something in my brain told me that I had only been carrying two objects.

My companions and I stood up and started heading toward the trailhead without looking back.

Back at our vehicles, DW and I were invited to lunch at our friends' house, and we gratefully accepted. We agreed to follow their vehicle back to their house.

I placed my D-SLR in the back seat area but under the driver's seat, where it can be relatively secure. I placed my water bottle in one of the cup holders between the front seats, and I reached into my back pocket to retrieve my phone, to place it on the cordless charger below the car's console.

My phone wasn't there but when I looked at the charger area, there was a phone already in that place. For a second, I had thought that I had already placed my phone there, but a closer inspection told me that the phone belonged to DW.

I felt all of my pockets. I looked in the back seat, wondering if I had placed my phone, absent-mindedly, with my camera. It wasn't there.

I closed my eyes and remembered that the last time I had seen my smartphone was when I set it next to my camera, on the rocks near the mill. I remembered that I had set the phone on the far side of the camera, such that it was slightly out of sight, and I had made a mental note that perhaps that wasn't the best place to set it because I might not see it when I stood up again.

I never forget my phone, I told myself. Famous last words.

Our friends said that they would go ahead to their home and that we could meet them there, after I retrieved my phone. I high-tailed it back to the ruins.

I've never walked that fast on a hiking trail. At times, I sped to a trot, letting my momentum carry me down some of the steep sections of that path. DW was following me and she later said that she was challenged in trying to keep up.

Eventually, she stopped trying. She'd catch up with me at the ruins.

As I passed people, heading toward the parking lot, I asked almost every one of them: "Were you at the ruins, and did you see a smartphone?" I asked it in both English and French. To my surprise, some people had, indeed, seen the phone, and described where they saw it. It was exactly where I had been sitting.

I continued to ask the question, even after I had received the first confirmation, just in case someone had decided to pick it up to take to the park's visitor centre. The first person had told me that she had considered taking it with her, but she had left it in place in case someone returned to look for it.

Several people had seen it there.

The last person who confirmed seeing the phone was less than 10 minutes away from the mill. I was fairly confident that I would get to the rock and find my phone waiting for me, wondering why I had abandoned it.

From another time but close
to where I left my phone.

It wasn't there.

Several thoughts went through my mind: someone had found it and was on their way to the visitor centre, but had taken one of the side trails; someone had found it and decided to keep it, and had lied to me when they had said that they hadn't seen it; someone had found it and thrown it into the falls, just to see what would happen.

I swore a mean streak. I walked all around the site, looking in spots that might have seemed a more obvious location to discover a forgotten object. I remembered that I had seen several people who appeared to be part of a running group, and I didn't stop them to ask if they had seen a phone. They were concentrating on the path and I figured that they wouldn't have stopped to pick up a phone. Where I had sat wasn't particularly along a trail, though it wasn't far from one.

DW and I headed back to the car but my anger, at myself, kept me moving fast. I could hear the blood rushing in my head, past my ears. A strong, solid pulse that sounded like a war drum. My breathing was loud, taxed. As I climbed one of the inclines, I turned around to see how far DW was from me.

I was light-headed, and if I was going to pass out, I wanted her close by. She was only about 40 to 50 metres behind me.

I continued at my brisk pace.

When we reached the parking lot, I approached the attendant and asked him if anyone had turned in a smartphone. No one had. DW and I got in the car and drove to the visitor centre. The ladies behind the desk had told me that someone had also called to enquire about my phone.

Nina.

I gave details about the phone, DW's phone number, and my name. I was assured that if someone from a running group had come upon it, there was a very good chance that it would be turned in. I was also told that sometimes, running groups met up at Les Saisons, a café in Chelsea. DW and I knew the place, as it was where we usually stopped to treat ourselves when we cycled in the Gatineau Hills.

We grabbed ourselves a drink and a treat, and sat outside Les Saisons, but there were no runners or cyclists to be found. Nina was keeping in touch with DW and said that she was sending regular text messages to my phone, which gave DW's number and said 'lost phone.' If someone had my phone, they would see this message appear.

DW said, "Well, if we don't find your phone, maybe I can entice you to moving back to an iPhone."

"Never," I said, "I'm an Android person."

I wasn't looking forward to replacing my smartphone. It was my 'pandemic' phone. I had purchased it at the beginning of the COVID lockdown, in April of 2020. It was a Samsung Galaxy S10 and still worked perfectly. I had fully intended to use it until it was no longer supported or until it came to a natural end of life.

There wasn't a scratch on it. It looked like new.

Sitting on the patio, I started thinking: if I had my phone on me, I'd likely be on social media, posting about how I had foolishly left my phone on a rock and had to walk an extra three kilometres, at speed, to retrieve it.

But it was lost. I had lost my phone. Others had found it but left it in place, and now it was lost again. Why couldn't they have taken it to the trailhead with the intention of leaving it with the parking attendant?

I sat at the café, worrying that I'd never see that phone again. DW and I would have to cancel our lunch plans with our friends, and I'd have to get myself a new phone.

DW's phone pinged. A woman had found my phone. She was with a running group but had taken it home, trying to figure out what to do with it when she saw a text message that said the phone was lost and to contact DW.

The woman gave her address, in Aylmer, about 20 minutes away. We quickly finished our drinks and snacks, and jumped in the car.

When I had the phone in hand and got back in the car, after thanking the runner profusely, DW, who had waited in the car said, "You should have asked the runners. Perhaps she passed by us and had the phone then."

"She didn't pass us," I replied.

"How do you know?"

"Because she's a very good looking woman. If she had run past us, my eyes would have noticed her."

For that, I received a major eyeroll.

It was good to know that as worried as I was without my phone, the panic wasn't as strong, the urgency wasn't as great as when DW and I had lost Kid 1, years ago, in Québec City. Not by a long shot.

But the feeling of the possible loss was real.

Mill in the Woods

Wordless Wednesday: Return to Carbide-Willson Mill

Photo Friday: The Miller's Daughter

More than a month ago, I attended a model shoot at the Carbide Willson Mill, in Gatineau Park. We took advantage of the secluded woodland, waterfalls, and mill to create an atmosphere of isolation.

The location was great: sadly, the weather didn't cooperate.

It rained lightly as the photographers and model met in the parking lot near Meech Lake, and gained in strength as we set up. Throughout the shoot, the rain fell in torrents, drenching everyone and everything.

A tree fell along the pathway that brought us to the mill. Had we been 10 minutes later in arriving, it could have been catastrophic.

Our model was good natured about the weather, didn't complain about the thousands of mosquitoes that were relentless. Didn't get upset about being cold.

We had to stop when the rain started affecting our equipment. My shutter release stopped working—it would focus on my subject but wouldn't take the picture, or would delay by several seconds; another photographer's camera seized altogether.

Post production involved removing raindrops from fabric, which was darkened with spots, and smoothing skin, which was water-saturated.

I couldn't have been wetter if I had fallen into the waterfall.

But it was entirely worth it.

I have only edited a couple of photos from the shoot, have dozens and dozens to go through. Some are posted on my 500px site. Be careful: many are not safe for work.

Happy Friday.

Wordless Wednesday: Back to Carbide Willson Mill

Wordless Wednesday: Lost in the Woods