Here's my travel itinerary for The Big Trip this summer:

2008-07-24 0730 - 0952 - WJ847 from Ottawa to Calgary

2008-07-26 & 2008-07-27 - Roadtrip to Jasper

2008-07-28 - Calgary UFie Meet BBQ @ Danu's

2008-07-30 1030 - 1053 - WJ557 from Calgary to Vancouver

2008-07-30 1800 - Vancouver UFie Meet

2008-08-01 Evening - Sean & Sarah's Wedding

2008-08-06 1302 - 1520 - AC5008 from Vancouver to San Francisco

2008-08-09 Evening - Kendra & Silas' Wedding

2008-08-10 Stupid Early - AC758 from San Francisco to Toronto, then AC458 to Ottawa

It looks like there's a Toronto trip this week too, aiming for the later part of it though.

Hey Kids, I'm off to Jay Peak this evening till Sunday night. I will have limited connectivity & Internet while I'm there, so I likely won't be responding to anything other than urgent & emergency requests. Calling my cells will probably be the best/only way to get ahold of me, and Chris will be the lucky pager carrier. Don't bug him too much!

This is part three of my Nuit Blanche 2007 write-up, be sure to see Act One and Act Two. You can follow along with my travelogue on Google Maps.

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So the cab dumped Ken, Justin and I at Queen at Simcoe, at the WHAT WILL YOU DO TO COOL THE EARTH? The idea was to inspire people to think of ways of reducing global warming... by sending text-messages to be displayed on the screen...

"Ill put blury orange and blue on a screen" [sic]`

Of course, this didn't completely work: "I will hold my farts", "I will only eat once a week", "I will not work for Disney", "Stop wasting Electricity on a screen showing texts on queen street"... Ken and Justin were enthralled, and probably responsible for most of those

Right next door, was Ghosts @ Campbell House, which I couldn't find in the official Nuit Blanche program, but was just a fun exhibit: glow-screens with timed-flashbulbs... painfully blinding, but entirely amusing

Discghosts!

Justin declared he was heading home, and Ken was preparing to take off too... but I couldn't do that. It was about 0555, my feet had blisters like I'd never experienced before, I couldn't walk very well at all - but I wasn't done: I had to visit Lower Bay / The Ghost Station. And I'm sure glad I did.

Please stay clear of the doors.

So, imagine you just spent the past 12 hours touring a city you only know a little, having some very unique experiences... then you go through an unremarkable steel door in the middle of a semi-busy subway platform... and you end up in a different world:

(Play this video with headphones on, or a good subwoofer)

Lower Bay was amazing.

It was dark, sparsely lit by 40W incandescents in the corners, a train on each side of the platform, a massive sub-woofer sound system - using the cars as resonance chambers. Words do not describe. You felt the 'music' (noise?), you smelled the dust. You knew other people were there, but you could barely see them. You know that in a few minutes, nobody will be here again, except for the ghosts. Tranquil yet unnerving at that same time.

It was the perfect end to an amazing experience. The Night Is Over.

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Going topside again, shuffling my way along Bay street, I captured this scene of the city waking up.

Good Morning - La Nuit est fini!

Caught a bus downtown - but everything was a total mess/detours because of the 10K run - and I have to give the driver directions!

Made it back to 151, changed my clothes, sat and sorta just vegged while chatting with the few people awake on #SPORKS... caught the train and went home.

Next year, I'll have to pick and plan my journey, just showing up and wandering was fun, but I think we wasted more time getting across the city than actually looking at things. But I have no regrets, and I can't wait till next year. Highly recommended. Will you come with me?

FIN

This is part two of my Nuit Blanche 2007 write-up, be sure to see Act One. Also, be sure to check out my travelogue on Google Maps, and perhaps add the KML to your Google Earth.

View Larger Map

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After an uneventful Streetcar ride along King, I marched past the new Umbra store up to OCAD, while Wishing You Were Here.
While I waited for ghoti to show up, I took in some really dark, freaky animated shorts... very strange. While dodging Jack Layton and his wife, we drove up to up to Queens Park where we absorbed some caffeine and calories. Satiated, we head over to the Zone B hub / ROM, all the while I'm SMSing math with no effective communication happening:


Eventually we meet up, but not before ghoti makes a cop guarding a barrier along Avenue/University Aves think he's the biggest idiot on earth... I find math committing a non-illegal act in defiance of the DMCA:

Emergency Room Recruitment Centre

math, Syncros, ghoti, Tallo & S.O., JOSH!, and ` were taking in the excitement at the rave out front of the ROM...

DSM5

Of course, since we all managed to get together, we promptly got separated within minutes. I picked up a Nuit Blanche T-shirt, waltzed thru the Zone A hub again, and then met Soj and Emily while in line for free FiveStarbucks caffeine.
Once we regrouped (sans Syncros and his friend), we checked out the Electric Forest and continued on to String of Diamonds where I experienced an early, reverse Halloween:

But don't take candy from strangers

Afterwards, we walked across Queen's Park to Crowd, where we were the exhibit.
Church street was all party... "Nightless City" supposed to be a red-light district, but it was mostly males who (appeared to be) were batting for the same time. A nearby deli adverstized "Pride Sausage"s in it's window.

math luvvin' the party

It was actually somewhat underwhelming, so we made our way south along Church to Dundas, along the way seeing some weird multimedia stuff at Ryerson... and some public toilets:

Some privacy please.

Ironically, a block away, in Yonge@Dundas Square - a Public Bidet.

Stepping inside the Sears North entrance at the Eaton Centre, It's a Cloud was well attended. Syncros got much better photos than I did - check them out here.

Strange people of the night

We were feeling peckish (it was 2AM!) but the only place we could find that was open was Frans... and they had a ninety-minute wait. What the hell?

Someone in the group suggested Chinese, so back through the Eaton Center where Balloonscape was... just... being... weird. Listen to Paul's comment at the beginning of the video:


Stepping outside we came up on Church of Confessions... I think. I couldn't quite find it in the program guide, but it was basically an old church where people could write messages on queue cards and put them up on the walls. I didn't really get it at first, but now that I've thought about it, it really seemed a lot like Post Secret - then you realize that people are baring their souls - and it's fresh. So honest.

Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to find somewhere to eat that was a) open and b) wasn't completely packed full of people. One hungry but memorable moment was when some idiot in a Civic made a left turn onto a blocked side street at about 80KMphs, squeeling tires and all - right in front of a Police car... whom we encouraged to have a word with the driver of the Civic - Mr. Policeman then did exactly that. Yay TPS Report

Passed by Everybody Loves You 2 for the second time,

Do you love me? (Because I could love you.)

... so easy to get people to pose for the camera.

Watcher was eerie. Paul took off for home.

Finding a restaurant that's open after 3AM and isn't packed to the roof - even on Spadina - is not easy. (Though I saw another iPhone)
Eventually we found a place that's open to 4 and had some excellent fried noodles and other weird stuff. The girls at the table next to us were sharing too.

Since Ken and Justing hadn't seen any of zone C, we hopped a cab and head to Trinity Bellwoods Park (... second time for me)

Unfortunately, it was a tad underwhelming, there was some people making weird music in a tent, there was a mobile rave which was cool. I was actually impressed by a couple of guys sitting at a picnic table, playing dominoes and free-form rapping to a beat from a totally old-school ghetto-blaster - on cassette!
Saw the Florescent Globe again, bumped into Candy girl again, hopped into a cab and went back downtown.
On to Part Three!

Zone C Hub - Where the real adventure begins

For the past year, I've been hearing all sorts of stories about Nuit Blanche, and seeing the crazy photos... when I heard it was coming around again - I knew I had to be a part of it.



Well, let me tell you, now that I've experienced it - I'll say it's totally awesome.

I decided to take the marathon approach: catch the afternoon train out of Ottawa to arrive in Toronto just in time for dinner (which I failed to actually do) and then begin the Night. Since 151 Front is right next to Union Station, my laptop and other extraneous crap from my backpack got dumped in my cabinet there - my $1500/mo locker Caught the King line streetcar to Liberty village and suddenly realized I had no idea where to go... for anything. With all the research and planning I'd done ahead of time - I didn't actually note where I wanted to be. Thankfully I was able to wrangle the Nuit Blanche website onto my Treo and eventually determined that Queen and Strachan (pronounced "Stron", like "Strong" without the g sound) was the Zone C hub.

#15 Fluorescent Dome

I looked at the map, looked at the index, and failing to figure out any effective strategy, I decided to march west along Queen - see what I could see. Fortunately this worked out for me, but a lot of the installations/exhibits were just static art galleries... looking at pictures and paintings on the wall isn't for me, so I moved along quickly.

Play It By Hear

Despite all the stories I hear about Nuit Blanche 2006, I wasn't prepared for interaction; the globe above was neat, but only because of it's construction, the next exhibit I noted was Play It By Hear, where the volunteer watching over the piece was encouraging me to connect my iPod and make the pipes sing. I picked Rush's Far Cry because it's loud, yet inoffensive
Not far away was Secret of the Syncope II, a curious installation where they carpeted over a road, but again - the interaction: at the far end of the road, they sat at a mobile desk, where they were cutting squares of the carpet, and then tagging them with serial numbers. These were handed out and people were asked to photograph their square and submit the photos to the website for use in next year's exhibit... Interesting - I'll have to figure out something unique to do with mine...
Just across Queen street, there was a lot of light, a lot of people and some really cool blue sticks:


Moving along, I encountered Femmbomb, Water Fall, then this nutty show:

... I dunno... huge line-up to see it though. Checked out the Drake Hotel, which wasn't very exciting - still early in the evening.

Then I encountered the Incursion:

Further along, Gladstone House was in full Nuit Blanche mode. Several installations and exhibits, and while many were very cool - I found the most noteworthy thing was a sticker on a streetcar stop shelter:


math, Syncros, ghoti and I were to meet at OCAD by 9:30, I started to head east, but the sidewalks were full of people, and they were spilling out on to Queen street - thus inhibiting vehicular traffic and the TTC. Despite my limited knowledge of Toronto, King street seemed like a viable opti--- whaaaa???

I doubt Pattison signed off on this billboard

... not wanting a Quick Lobotomy, I hurried to the King line streetcar and hauled over to OCAD.
On to Part Two!

Despite being an "Easterner", I quickly adapted to PDT, so waking up at 8AM (11AM Eastern) was somewhat brutal - but then again, anyone who knows me I don't like waking up anyway
In the words of J.D., who met us at the airport and bought me a chai, "Man, you look like ass." - I didn't comment on his appearance.

... I'm on the right.

Since this post is really just an excuse to use the above image, I'll treat you to some of my other photos from this trip that didn't end up in another of the previous posts.

Harbour Center reflected in the EA Games building

The mess of trolley wires above the intersection of Granville and Robson

"you're ugly and that's funny"

Sean saw this sticker on a very pink motorcycle parked near our hotel on Robson... he insisted I photograph it.

Megababe.

Optically Thrillin Kats
- OTK Crew

A valley (Sean took this photo on our way to Vancouver)

Almost home!

Ottawa Airport

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My Vancouver Trip: The Warning, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

After Friday's madness, we took Saturday easy, doing a little shopping downtown and having a fantastic lunch at Kitto Japanese House on Granville. (IfWhen I go back to Vancouver - I will definitely eat there again!)

After Sarah got her hair done, we headed to The Cat's Meow on Granville Island for dinner - close to the wedding venue - and where André, the groom was having dinner too

I wish we'd had more time on this trip to see more - the glimpse of Granville Island we had was such a tease.

Bubbles!

But then it was time for the main event...

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André Baron + Tanya Mineault
July 14th, 2007
_{The Baron & Baroness}

Waiting for the bride

Presenting Mr. And Mrs. André Baron

You May Kiss The Bride

The Newlyweds!

We have to do what?!

Okay!

Let's Party!

(The girl on the left was doing the wildest robot-dance)

When the house is a rockin'...

I had a blast and appreciate being invited; met lots of new people too, everyone was so nice. Congrats guys! (And Kim, you didn't seem that trashed...)

After quick breakfast at Joe's Grill, we walked down to Spokes at Denman at W. Georgia where we rented some bikes for the day, they weren't the greatest...

Sean's bike is being awesome (again.)

... I had warned Sarah that we (Sean and I) were going to complain every 5 minutes about the suckiness of the bikes.

Despite the threat of rain, we rode into Stanley Park - yes, it was mostly open and quite a wonderful ride. The weather cleared up as the afternoon wore on too.
_{(don't forget to follow along using my handy Google Map!)}

Brockton Point Totem Poles

Bikes - the new mechanical horse?

Beaver Lake - Can you spot the turtle?

That tree has over 1800 rings - Sarah has just one...

I suspect by this point I was very close to heat- or sun-stroke, and I'd already fixed one customer's Tomcat failure, so we called it an afternoon and headed back to the hotel to cool off and get ready for the UFie meet. (Felt 100% better after getting out of the sun and taking a shower. I'm sure I smelled 100% better too
Grabbed a Hybrid cab with Yohimbe as we headed for Vietnamese Noodle to meet up with Dark, Tatertots, Shminux and the infamous Illiad.
Since Tanya (Tatertots) and Andre (Dark) were getting married the next day (ostensively the reason for the whole trip), and the owner of the restaurant knew them, he was passing out 'poppers' for good luck and celebration.

How to use a popper...

Less than 24 hours until these two are married!

We had a lot of fun, the food was great, stories were told. Well, attempted to be told... There was a moment when conversation slowed, so I recalled that Illiad had mentioned (on #SPORKS) that he had a story to tell us, we all sat there for a moment trying to remember what it was. Since no one could remember, I had to go log diving, but the pertinent log of that moment wasn't on my laptop, so I would have to SSH into my desktop machine; there wasn't any open WiFi, and I haven't yet setup my Treo to work with my MacBrook Pro, so I sought André's Moto Razr and commenced swapping SIM while JD narrated...

"If there was anything to be known as geek sex", as he nodded towards Andre and I eviscerating our various mobile phone and exchange SIMs, "this is what it would be like; but the sound, it'd be more like..." He then proceeded to make a sound, an emanation that I believe no human has produced, or ever even heard before that moment... And I lost it:

Myke: Now available in Red.

About two minutes later, I managed to come back up for air and asked, "Do we really need to find those logs anymore?"
Too bad for Sarah, she was in the bathroom for the whole scene. Somehow, I kinda wish I'd been there too.

Afterwards, Shminux kindly drove us back to our hotel. Along the way, I pointed out that the 'Defrost' setting in his Pontiac Vibe enagages the air-conditioning, and perhaps this explains his poor fuel-economy. (Days later he confirmed that his mileage is getting better.)

At this point, I'd thought were we done for the evening, but apparently Sean was getting tired of the impracticality of lugging around his Olympus (E500?) DSLR and all it's associated glass, and that he really wanted a pocketable camera. So at about 10:30PM we head for the nearby London Drugs (pharmacy cum Walmart.) For the next hour I pitched the Canon SD800IS to Sean and some random guy from Egypt. (I'd given my mother one for her birthday after extensive research. It is an excellent pocket camera but it does have a $450 pricetag.) More than once, the salesgirl, Pamela IIRC, offered me a job hawking cameras. T'was rather amusing, and I was all warmed up for geeking from the UFie meet. Sean did end up picking up the camera, and since then has been quite happy with it.

We apparently weren't done yet - we got some dessert at Mom's over on Denman.

Finally, around midnight, we called it a day. And what a day it was!

_{Photo credits/post-processing to Shminux and Stef}

Saw a nice car...

Nice Ford GT - Did Clarkson ever get his?

... On the way to the SeaBus...

The Burrard Beaver

_{(don't forget to follow along using my handy Google Map!)}

Then we took a bus to the base of Grouse Mountain, and rode the gondola to the top... some interesting things to see... (including a few patches of snow, though I seemed to have neglected to take any pictures of it!)

The silly deer didn't even care that there were people nearby!

... Sean and Sarah checked out the potential venue for their wedding (August 2008), we bemusedly watched the Lumberjack show, I got sunburnt, and and generally enjoyed the afternoon...

(I'm really starting to have fun with these time-lapse videos...)

Yay! Heavy machinery!

Afterwards, we took the bus back downtown across the Lion's Gate Bridge...

Looking South, towards Stanley Park

... bus dropped us off at the corner of Denman St. and West Georgia, where we briefly checked out Spokes, a bike rental shop. Then aimed hotel, stopping at Bell Pizza to pickup some pizza which we munched happily over the next hour. S&S went out again, I vegged, processing photos and nursing my sunburnt face.

Here be Mountains - So rare to perceive 3D topography mid-flight

Our flight was unexciting, which - in my opinion - is a very good thing. There was no humour that I could detect, but that too, is likely a good thing. Well, other than our running joke that *here* was the furtherest West I'd ever been.

Shminux was kind enough to pickup Sean, Sarah and myself at the airport and cart us off to our temporary residence: The Listel Hotel.

Driving around a foreign land for the first time is always interesting: traffic-lights flash green at many intersections, this is to indicate that it's a pedestrian controlled intersection... not a protected advance like here in Ottawa. Confusing? Yes very. I'd've easily had an accident within minutes of arrival if I didn't know. Good thing I wasn't driving.

The next thing I noticed was that Vancouver has electric trolley buses, so they have two power poles, which means there's two wires suspended above the lane - and a fantastic mess of insulators and joiners and guides hanging over the intersections where the lines cross.

This mess is neatly paralleled by the mess of power lines that seem to traverse many alley-ways. Very curious...

Typical Vancouver alley-way... With an atypical stinky-truck.

We checked into our hotel, unpacked, vegged a little and crashed the hotel WiFi. Alimentation was rapidly becoming a priority so we grabbed a bite at Tsunami Sushi (don't worry - I had the beef teryaki - and it was good. Very good.)

S&S were feeling kinda wiped, since it was about hour 20 of a 27 hour day, so they when back to the hotel and I met up with Yohimbe for a drink at Lennox. Afterwards, it was rapidly approaching 6PM, I walked with him down to the harbour-front train station... Wow:

Harbour? Check!
Ferry? Check!
Cruise Ship? Check!
Helicopter? Check!
Mountains? Check!

A few minutes (and a lot of photographs) later, Sean and Sarah met up with me and we began to wander down Water Street into Gastown. Old town areas are very cool to me, much to see, much to photograph. Sadly the steam clock appeared to be broken, I suspect I could've fixed it - but I didn't think that'd go over well with the natives. Eventually hunger struck again, and we selected Steamworks for dinner.

Steamworks Brewing Co.

(I was trying to get an 'action shot' with blurred people walking past with the neon sign burning through, but the nearby vagrants were perseverant and odoriferous, so we didn't hang around very long.)

Harbour Center

As we meandered back to the hotel, the evening light was making photography very fun and interesting. Please peruse the galleries for more pictures.

Can you see the mountains?

Before we even made it to the hotel, André & Tanya called to invite us for Gelato! He didn't have to say much to convince us to come!

La Casa Gelato

Over 200 flavours! Delish!

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I've made a snazzy Google map of our trip, check it out:

Click for interactive version

More Vancouver posts to come soon!