Today I pretty much did two things: I woke up, and then we went to my grandparents’ friends’ house. They’re Indian (real Indians, not those Native American posers), and they made Indian food for us. It was kind of nifty, actually, I got to help make the flat bread, which is apparently just made of flour and water. Then you flatten it, put it on a griddle, and then put it on top of a rack over a stove element, it puffs up some (steam inside the bread) and then you take it off and it flattens out. Then come dinner time, it becomes your utensil. You just put things on your plate (we had curried chicken, rice and vegetables), and then you scoop/roll it up with torn off bits of bread, and eat it. I wasn’t the most elegant at it, but it was certainly easier (and less awkward looking) than eating with chopsticks, in any case.
Archive for June, 2008
Indian Food! (Day 11)
Monday, June 30th, 2008Nearing The End (Day 10)
Sunday, June 29th, 2008It’s starting to feel like the Canadia trip is coming to a close. We’re half way through the last weekend now, and then it’ll be home on Tuesday. Today I got up nice and late, and went for a bicycle ride out on the dyke with Grandpa. Along the way, oddly enough, we saw an old farmer’s field full of heron. Just all sitting out there on the soil. I’d post a photograph, but I just left the camera home today. I haven’t bicycled in a while, and I was surprised when I got off to find that my legs were actually a little bit wobbly. Wobbliness notwithstanding, though, I went ahead and did my running and such about an hour later, and it proved a little more difficult than usual: I guess I was running on fewer calories than usual, after the long bike ride.
A Walk in the Park (Day 9)
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
A fun, albeit un-identified, little bird
Woohoo, I’m on a roll with the titles! Or not. Anyways, we got up and went back to the Reifel bird sanctuary today, which turned out much differently from yesterday. The bigger birds weren’t generally out today, so I spent a lot more time paying closer attention to the smaller birds that flitted around, and generally made themselves mighty difficult to photograph. First thing on the way in, we saw lots of these little guys. Also, as a sidenote, the Flickr plugin I just installed is acting up, so if you want to see bigger images, you’re gonna have to click through for now, I’m afraid. [Edit - got it fixed]
Birds Galore! (Day 8)
Friday, June 27th, 2008I attempted to wake up early this morning, but that didn’t work out so well. So Aunt Rhonda left really early in the morning, which leaves me with an actual room and bed now. When everyone else got back from the airport, we went over to Vancouver and picked up the rental 400mm f/5.6, and proceeded to go to assorted parks looking for birds, with little luck. As a side note, in a rare act of foresight, I went ahead and picked up an extra 2GB CF card while we were at the camera store. Then we headed over to Ladner and ate at Quiznos (as it turns out, Quiznos sort of sucks) before heading out to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, which turned out much, much better. There were birds all over the place, with blinds and everything, and the 400/5.6 handled like a dream. Also of note, there were a lot of ducks. And I mean a lot. They’re none too graceful, either: I saw an awful lot of them crash landing whenever they took off.
As soon as we got in, we found this guy, my new friend the bald eagle, way up on top of a tree. He was way up there: even with the 400mm lens, that image is cropped in significantly. This meant not only that he ended up small in the frame, but that the angle was less than advantageous. It was really one of those situations where a 600 f/4 and teleconverters would come in handy, but I guess it worked out well enough: certainly better than it would have with my 70-200 f/4. I snapped away with him sitting up and moving his head around for a couple minutes, and then he got up and flew away.
We went on through the park, and ran into some assorted small birds, and also some bigger ones, namely the great blue heron and sand hill cranes. I got some decent shots of those, but they’re not terribly exotic, so I decided not to bother processing any for now. There is one of a smallish bird that I wasn’t able to identify below. Once again, it would have been nice to have a 600 f/4, as that one’s cropped significantly, but once again, it still worked out pretty well. Especially considering how light the 400/5.6 is. It’s sort of sad, I’ve been doing pretty much everything with my own lights lately, and I’d all but forgotten how to make the most of the camera’s built-in meter and on-camera flash. I’m happy to say, though, that I’m getting used to it again, and with some good tripod technique, I’ve been getting some results almost as good as what I get with totally controlled lighting and still subjects (did I mention that I cropped all the bird shots in this post?)
So we left there, with plans to go back tomorrow morning. After that, we picked up some big prints of our hosts’ new granddaughter that I made from Costco, got a frame, and surprised them with it when we got home. They seemed mighty pleased, and I even got a “You’re making me cry,” with a big smile, of course. Then I went for a run, came back, did some shadow boxing, dinnered, and set up a still life of my new old camera, with the nice old-looking hardwood floor in the room I’m staying in (that’s the photograph below). After that, I just watched some TV, put some batteries on the charger, and settled in to write a blog post. I guess that’s the end for now, hopefully there’ll be some great new bird photos tomorrow.
The Usual (Day 7)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Okay, so I’m not sure I did so well on today’s title. But at least I tried. It’ll be a nice short post today, because not that much happened. We got up, had breakfast, and then went to see my grandparents’ friend. She teaches third graders, and it’s their last week of school, so we went out to the beach where they were field-tripping and talked to her/met some of them. Then we went scouting some potential birding locations, went to Costco and Future Store (basically a Circuit City), came home and had dinner.
Uneventful, But Fun (Day 6)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
Beach on Vancouver Island
Alright, I really think I’m starting to get better at this whole title thing. Not too much to write about today, I suppose. We got up, and I went and worked out some. It was a sort of interesting experience, because I walked in and was shocked to find that the largest dumbbell they had was only marked “50″, but it was still really big. So I thought “Well, that’s an awfully large fifty pounder,” and went to lift it, not expecting a whole lot of resistance. This is when I remembered that Canadians measure things in kilograms. Seriously, weight manufacturers, would it be that terribly difficult to put units of measure on your dumbbells? So, I spent the rest of my time there having fun trying to figure out how much weight to use for my various exercises…in kilograms. On the bright side, they had a preacher curl machine, and preacher curls are my favorite. Turns out I’m good for ten reps with, if I recall correctly, about 60 or 70 kilograms. After that we all headed down to the nearby beach, and I actually think I got a decent landscape shot of it.
A Pair of Days (Days 4 and 5)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Alright, finally a slightly more creative title. Slightly. This one encompasses two days, since we didn’t have Internet access last night. Of course, there’s no Internet tonight, either, but there is enough time to type up a blog entry to upload tomorrow.
Yesterday wasn’t too eventful, as it was mostly spent in travel. We got up a little late, and met more hosts’ neighbors’ children. I also got a graduation present from my grapndaparents’ old neighbors, which was awesome. It’s an old Kodak Browny, a foldout camera. Takes 620 roll film (hooray for medium format), and it’s thoroughly manual, in every way. There’s also apparently some odd type of flash contacts on top, so my next project will be to get some 620 film, and see if I can get this thing synced to a Pocket Wizard.
After that, we left and met with my stepdad’s mother, who just happens to live nearby, and then drove up to Whistler. Didn’t do very much that night, just checked into the hotel (for the record, the Tantalus resort is pretty nice) and went out to dinner. This morning, though, I got up early and ran (turns out running in hilly areas is awful to my shins: going downhill puts way too much pressure on them), and then my grandpa and I went on a zipline tour.
The ziplining was mighty impressive. Up above there is my awful attempt at a self-portrait while flying along on a zipline, and Grandpa also zipping along. They took us a little ways up into the mountain, and then down along a bunch of ziplines, over rivers and trees and such. A little scary, but certainly lots of fun. There’s a couple more images from the trip down below.
After that was finished, we met back up with Grandma and Aunt Rhonda, and went up to the top of Blackcomb on a chairlift. We saw a bear on the way up: that’s the first image below. Once we got up, there were lots of landscapes to be made, which I hopefully did at least a decent job at. There’s one down below the bear, that I had lots of fun making: just about fell through some snow, and had a great time trying to keep my tripod steadied. And it was cold. Very, very cold. It was a pretty great relief to make it back to the bottom.
When we finished with the mountain business, we came back down to Horseshoe Bay, and took a ferry over to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Had a nice long ride on the ferry, and got to catch up with some photographs. Then we ate at Swiss Chalet, and finally made it back to the lodge. We’re staying in a cabin-type place now, that’s pretty nice. They’ve got a gym, too, with free weights. First time I’ll get to use those since I’ve been here. And I reckon that about finishes it. Tomorrow I’ll have to post all this, plus another entry for the day.
Day 3
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008Gotta say, I’m starting to onder if these titles are getting a little too…dry. I might have to try spicing them up later. That being said, today was much less eventful than yesterday. Finally got to sleep in nice and late, and then we spent the day going scouting for eagles and such. Didn’t find any, thanks to the time of day and an air show going on, but we’ve found out where they usually are. That, and we’ve found a bird sanctuary to go check out, which apparently has duck blinds all nice and set up. All this, of course, is preparation for Thursday, when we’re gonna go rent a 400mm f/5.6 lens from a local camera place (on a side note, Leo’s Camera is the first real camera store I’ve ever been to, and it’s insanely awesome) and proceed to relentlessly pursue wildlife. I’m also considering the Sigma 10-20, but I’m not really sure if it’d be worth the money. Guess I’ll see if it’s in Thursday, and go from there.
Amazingly enough, scouting for birds actually took up most of the day. After that, our host’s neighbors, children, and their neighbors children all came over for dinner, which was great. And their daughter had a new baby, Ruby. (In case people don’t figure it out on their own, she’s the photograph below).
We all ate dinner, and I had a go at baby photography, which it turns out is actually really fun. They’re a lot easier to get to act natural than older people, and they do the most adorable things. Plus you get all kinds of fun mother-child-emotional type shots, although I didn’t upload those. Gonna go ahead and keep tonight’s post light on photos. After all that, we all got together for a group shot, that I’ll put down below.
In the top row, from left to right, there’s me, my hosts’ daughter and son-in-law with their new baby, Ruby, our hosts’ neighbor’s son, our hosts, and then their son. The bottom row has my grandpa, our hosts’ neighbor, my grandma and aunt Rhonda, and our hosts’ neighbor’s husband (also their neighbor, obviously). I know the arrangement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s just sort of how we all fell together.
Once everyone left, I took to trying to photograph their cat, Herme. I was trying to use my 28mm lens, but it looks like that’s not gonna work: as soon as I get the cat framed up, the focus motors scare him away. I’ll have to try tomorrow with a telephoto, I guess. In any case, the cat’s mighty amusing. He has a really weird meow, sort of like a frog. Also, he pretends to be dead. He’ll just sit in the middle of a room with his eyes closed, being very convincing about it. Then he’ll start to move his head around like he’s looking at things, but with his eyes still closed. Really, quite the cat: I’m gonna have to make sure to get a shot of him before I go.
Looks like tomorrow we’re leaving to go to the mountains (hooray for Whistler), so there may or may not be posts for the next couple of days. Regardless, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of photographs when I come back. For now, though, it’s getting a little late, and I still have to shower and such, so I guess it’s time to end the post now.
Day 2
Saturday, June 21st, 2008Day 2 in Canada was a little more adventurous. Woke up, ate breakfast, and then we headed up to Vancouver, to Stanley park. On an interesting note, you have to go through a tunnel and over a bridge to get there, and they have quite possibly the most insane traffic control system I’ve ever seen. There’s between three and six lanes, depending on what part of the system you’re on, and on the bridges and in the tunnels, one or two lanes in the middle actually change directions depending on how traffic is flowing.
Anyways, after we got up, we went to Stanley Park, a really massive park in Vancouver. That up there is my Aunt Rhonda, posing on a great big fallen log (they had a big hurricane come through in ‘06, did a lot of damage to the forest there). Then there’s a couple of ducks, a big one and a little one, that we found by the Beaver Pond. Also, a nice little shot of the Beaver Pond, and its assorted flora.
After that we headed on up to Grouse Mountain, which, amazingly enough, still had snow on it. Saw a birds of prey show, that’s the first photograph below. Then my grandpa took the camera for a moment and photographed me in…a snow bank! It’s all warm up there, but it was so thick that there’s still some left in places. There were also some (contained) bears, which I added with a nice Colbert-ish twist. And, the obligatory mountain view. I’ll just go ahead and finish there, because it’s late now. Turns out trying to sort through and process photographs and write a lengthy blog entry all in one sitting is just a little too much…
Day 1
Friday, June 20th, 2008I finally made it to Canada. I got tired of telling everyone individually what’s happened to me really quick, so I decided to just go ahead and make me up a nice little blog. So, with no further ado, the first day’s report. There’ll be photographs later, as I make them, but for now just text.
My grandma, grandpa, aunt Rhonda and I left from Tampa at about 6:20 PM, Eastern Time yesterday. There was a relatively short flight to Houston, an hour layover, and then a way long flight up to the Vancouver airport. Of course, they had a fancy in-flight entertainment system on the short flight, but nothing on the long flight (which was ultimately okay, because that flight went on until almost 4:00 AM Eastern Time, so I had some sleeping to at least try to do). We finally managed to get to where we’re staying and get to sleep at about 2:00 AM local time, which is five in the morning back home. Needless to say, we were all tired.
Anyways, we woke up nice and late in the morning, had some breakfast. Turns out we’re staying in Tsawwassen (pronounced too-woss-en), on the same street my mom, aunt, and grandparents lived on when they were growing up. We’re staying with their old neighbors, two-doors-down from their old house, and we met them as well as their old next-door neighbors today (they’re all mighty friendly, unlocked doors, coming and going, all that typical Canadian stuff). They’re letting us stay in the upstairs, which has got two bedrooms, and a mattress on the floor, which is mine until Aunt Rhonda leaves next week (her room also has the router in it, so I’ve got an effective Internet curfew until then).
So, first thing I see in the morning paper here: the washed-up-feet mystery. Apparently, they’ve had five feet now, in running shoes, wash up on the shore. Just feet. No DNA matches to any known missing people, and apparently not anything to do with the University up the channel. Figures. Canada must have known we were coming, and decided to get nice and weird, just like home.
Today was spent mostly shopping, after we got up. We went to Costco, and then a mall, got some food, protein stuff, and I got a pair of long running pants: turns out it’s still pretty cold up here. And Aunt Rhonda got lots of Splenda. She’s all health-like, so now we can share recipes and crap, fun stuff. The shopping took most of the day, then we came back and I went for a run (turns out there’s a high school with a track really, really close), and we ate dinner. Tomorrow we get to start going out sight-seeing, which should be awesome.
The area’s just immensely cool. We’re on sort of a peninsula (which, interestingly enough, the border slices through, so there’s a tiny spit of land on the bottom that’s part of America), with Vancouver to the North, and Vancouver Island to the West. Vancouver Island is a massive island, pretty much on par with England. Seriously. Apparently, there are people that spend their entire lives there, never leaving it. There’s mountains to the north, and there’s water all over the place, and awesome clouds and great landscapes and hordes of Great Blue Heron (turns out they also live in Canada: go figure).
And now it looks like I’m about to lose computer access, Aunt Rhonda’s getting ready to go to bed. That pretty much sums up the day, tomorrow’s looking like it should be fun, and hopefully I’ll have some photographs to show.