Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Travel posts
This year I’ll be skipping Dragon*Con again to make a trip back home. Flight and car rental are booked. The plan is to be in Edmonton September 19-26. Hopefully if there are no flight hitches, I’ll be going CHS->DFW->YEG and the reverse going back.
I’m looking forward to the trip. I think this time I’ll be able to spend more time playing tourist in my home town.
Had a great time on my trip back to Edmonton this past week. Fortunately the flight through Houston was uneventful. My friends Joe and Alexa were nice enough to let me stay with them and all I had to do was remember how to get around the city.
Most of the trip was spent visiting with the parents and making sure I got to dim sum several times over the week. It was great. I’m pretty sure there’s been some serious dim sum inflation going on though, because some of what I had was a lot larger than I remember them being when I was a kid.
Spent some time rummaging around in the basement of mom and dad’s place to remind myself of what I still have stored there. One of these days I’ll have to ship some of that stuff back to Charleston.
Started off the week with a stop at Boston Pizza with Joe and Alexa once I managed to find my way from the airport to St. Albert. Mmmm, Great White North. Then I went with Joe and Tom to their favourite gun shop on Saturday, where I got to lay hands on a monster of a 50 calibre rifle.
That was kinda cool.
Met up with friends at some new-to-me places for wings and beers. Went to Hudson’s, Original Joe’s, Average Joe’s, Brewsters, and Old Spaghetti Factory. Always a good time getting back together with friends. Realized that “pints” served in Edmonton are bigger than “pints” I get around here. I was drinking a pint of my usual Trad, and thinking to myself “this glass sure seems a lot bigger than the ones I get in Charleston”. Turns out that they are.
Brought my HT with me and had it doing the APRS thing while I was out there. Nice to hear a fair amount of activity on the VE6HM repeaters.
Edmonton’s at a much higher altitude than Charleston is!
Every time I go back home, the amount of change, new construction and growth always surprises me. There was even more construction and spreading out of Edmonton since my last visit. I suppose if I went back a little more often than every three years, it might not be as much of a surprise.
Made a trip out to the U of A and wandered around the campus a bit. Last time I was there the new science building was just about finished. It’s a pretty nice building. Big open spaces, high ceilings, lots of outside light. More new buildings on campus, especially around the U of A Hospital.
There wasn’t a whole lot of touring around the city like I would normally do, and I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I did last time.
Thursday afternoon I got an email telling me my Friday morning flight from Edmonton to Newark was cancelled and that I was rebooked to head out the next day, Saturday morning. Inconvenient but hey, bonus Edmonton day! Fortunately except for the cancellation, the trip back to Charleston was uneventful.
It’s been almost 3 years since my last trip back home, so I decided it was time to make another one. This year I decided to forego the annual Dragon*Con pilgrimmage and will be heading back to Edmonton September 6-13. Parents are getting older now, so I thought it would be better to see them sooner rather than later.
Hopefully the trip will be less of a pain in the ass than it was last time. I’ll be flying United again, but this time I’m skipping the <air-quote>CHS-ORD-YEG route</air-quote> (“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”) in favour of a hopefully less non-existent CHS-IAH-YEG route (YEG-EWR-CHS on the way back).
Naturally one of the things I’ll be looking forward to the most is eating dim sum. It will also be nice to get back home and visit with friends again.
I wonder what new things I’ll see when I get back there.
Got to go driving around to play a little bit of tourist in Chattanooga today (well, Connie’s dad was doing the driving, we were playing tourist).
We drove up to Missionary Ridge where there were some nice scenic views of Chattanooga and some very nice looking houses. Lots of Civil War markers, saw a few canons (some of which were pointed at houses). We were on a two lane road with no areas to pull over, so we weren’t able to stop and check out the markers or take pictures. It was pretty nice though.
Then we drove over to Lookout Mountain and Point Park. Point Park is a National Park and was the location of a significant battle of the Civil War. Lots of markers and battle information. Didn’t spend a huge amount of time there, but enough to walk around a bit and learn a little bit of history. Nice scenic view of Chattanooga and the surrounding area. It’s easy to see why it was such a fought over location during the Civil War. From way up there, you can control pretty much the entire area with artillery.
After that, we took a ride down the mountain on the Incline Railway. It claims to have the steepest section of rail around, with a 72% (about 35°) grade.
The photo above is looking down at the track from the observation deck. It’s pretty steep at the very top and levels off towards the bottom. The trip is about a mile long and takes around 10 minutes. A good way to get up and down the mountain if you live there. Not sure how many people do that, but it’s a pretty nice trip.
This is from inside the rail car looking down from the station at the top of the mountain. Kind of like looking down from the top of a roller coaster ride.
The railcar. Seating is arranged so that you’re pretty much upright when the rail car is at the top, but once you’re at the bottom you’re leaning kind of backwards. Going up the mountain, you also end up riding backwards.
This past weekend I got to experience my first cruise on Royal Caribbean‘s Monarch of the Seas (henceforth known as “Connie’s Ship”). Since the ship is being sold, this was our last chance to cruise on her ship before it left Royal Carribean’s fleet.
Getting on the ship is a lot like getting onto an airplane. You check your bags, check in, wait for boarding and then get on board. On the cruise ship though, you can unpack things and relax while it takes you places. On a plane, you’re just cooped up waiting to get to the other end. On the ship, there’s always something to do, or you can just sit around and do nothing.
Food on the ship is plentiful, to the point where no matter what time of day it is, you can find something to eat somewhere on the ship. Lots of places to explore on the ship and the staff make sure there are lots of activities going on. In addition to being a first cruise, I got to climb a rock wall for the first time, had a first taste of caviar, sampled some new foods, and visited a new place. Food was pretty decent and the buffets offered a nice variety of food, snacks and desserts. I definitely ate more than was probably good for me.
I think what I like most about cruises is the forced disconnect. There’s no cell service out in the middle of the ocean, and using the ship’s satellite internet service is too pricey to make it worthwhile.
Looking forward to going on more cruises.