January 2007

Westering (1)

Posted on by Patrick

Some­time before Christ­mas, my dar­ling wife went online, to the VIA Rail web­site. She punched in some dates, a start­ing point and a des­ti­na­tion, and said “Show me the mon­key!”* Then she said, “Holy crap, it’s cheap­er to take the train to Edmon­ton than it is to fly! Even on Westjet!”

So she ordered up a cou­ple round-trip tick­ets, and gave them to me for Christmas.

* * *

We got on the train at around 8:15 pm on Fri­day night. This was only about an hour after we were sup­posed to be on the train–apparently Via’s got­ten bet­ter at stick­ing to a sched­ule than they were back in the day when my Dad and my Gram­pa were sup­posed to pick up my aunt and uncle, and end­ed up going back into town** to buy some play­ing cards.

We were to trav­el overnight through Saskatchewan, miss­ing the prairie scenery while we slept, and arrive in Edmon­ton at 8:05 on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. We were trav­el­ing in Com­fort Class, because “Com­fort Class” sounds bet­ter than “Seats like a Bus, but with More Legroom and Lit­tle Footrests Class”. It was­n’t my most com­fort­able night’s sleep, and the less said about the cry­ing baby and the snoring/murmuring woman behind us, the better.

We were late get­ting into the Big E, but not as late as we could’ve been. K’s sis­ter S met us, with her hub­by C and their two-year-old Miss J. We went to the pool to see Miss J’s swim­ming lessons, then out to lunch (drop­ping off S at home, since she had to work). After lunch we head­ed to the satel­lite city of Leduc, where a rental car awaited.

Too bad the rental place had closed at noon.

And would­n’t be open on Sun­day, either.

This was the cause of some con­ster­na­tion, and no small amount of swear­ing. I called the 888 num­ber for the rental com­pa­ny’s head office, and was told that there were no rental out­lets open near me. I was polite to the operator–it was­n’t her fault–but I kind of hope that they were record­ing the call for train­ing pur­pos­es, so that my com­ment “I find it dif­fi­cult to believe that a rental com­pa­ny would have no offices open past noon on a Sat­ur­day.” The best part is that this par­tic­u­lar office is con­sid­ered the “air­port loca­tion”, since they’ll come pick you up at the air­port. What hap­pens if my flight comes in at 1:00 PM?

So C drove us back to the air­port, where I dis­cov­ered that rent­ing a car in advance costs about a third what rent­ing a car by walk­ing up to the counter does. Ouch.

At any rate, we were on our way to… Calgary.

Next time: Our adven­tures in Cal­gary and the mountains!

_____________
* This is pure spec­u­la­tion on my part.
** The Via train sta­tion for Bran­don is, iron­i­cal­ly, out­side of Bran­don. (And it’s not so much a “train sta­tion” as it is a “three-per­son shack, usu­al­ly locked”).

Westering: prologue

Posted on by Patrick

Last week we were in the West. Alber­ta, to be pre­cise. We board­ed a train on Fri­day evening, and were in Edmon­ton Sat­ur­day morn­ing. We rent­ed a car, drove south to Cal­gary, and spent a few days vis­it­ing with my sis­ter and her hub­by. Tues­day we drove back up to Edmon­ton, hung out with Kath­leen’s sis­ter and her fam­i­ly, then got on the east­bound train on Sat­ur­day evening. By 9 AM Sun­day we were home again.

That’s a cap­sule sum­ma­ry, of course. Over the next few days I’ll drill down in more detail, but for now I’m tired (I think I picked up a cold out West), and so here are some select­ed pic­tures from our trip (some of which will sure­ly be repeat­ed in the next few posts).

Susie and Jeff
My sis­ter and her hubby.

Mountain
You can tell I’m a prairie boy; every time I’m near any moun­tains, I feel the need to record all of them. This is a set of six or so pho­tos, stitched togeth­er with Autos­titch.

Orchids Orchids I almost stepped in this
Some of the plants in Edmon­ton’s Mut­tart Conservatory.

Sharon and Cy
Kath­leen’s sis­ter and her hubby.

The dome
Not far from home, I found myself alone in the dome car with my cam­era and my lit­tle mini-tripod.

More to come!

13 things I have never read or seen

Posted on by Patrick

EDMONTON—Everytime I say “I’ve nev­er seen Big Trou­ble in Lit­tle Chi­na” I get an aston­ished gasp from my broth­er-in-law or from my friend the Space Cow­boy. I tell peo­ple I’ve nev­er read Lord of the Rings* or The Hob­bit and they give me that side­ways look like a quizzi­cal dog, as if to say “How do you live?”

So here’s a list of things I’ve not read or seen. Things that may sur­prise you. Or may not.

  1. Solaris–nei­ther the book by Stanis­law Lem, nor either of the film versions.
  2. Glad­i­a­tor, the film by Rid­ley Scott.
  3. Titan­ic, the end­less movie by James Cameron.
  4. Any of Isaac Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion novels.
  5. Any of Isaac Asi­mov’s nov­els, in fact. I’ve read some of his short fic­tion, but I just could­n’t get into the nov­els, no mat­ter how hard I tried.
  6. Deep Impact. I saw the oth­er dis­as­ter movie that year, Armaged­don, and thought, Meh.
  7. Robert A. Hein­lein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, though I know what “grok” means.
  8. Eragon, and I have no inten­tions of read­ing it either. Or see­ing the movie.
  9. Cow­boy Bebop or most ani­me. For what­ev­er rea­son, ani­me does­n’t turn my crank, although some peo­ple seem to assume it should.
  10. Sev­en Samu­rai or in fact any of Kuro­sawa’s cor­pus. This I intend to remedy.
  11. Any Shake­speare short of a cou­ple son­nets and Mac­beth. This too needs to be remedied.
  12. Any of the egre­gious Dune pre­quels. IMHO, they should’ve just pub­lished Frank Her­bert’s notes and called it a day.
  13. The Stand mini-series, some­thing which I still hope to see sometime.

_____________
* Not strict­ly true; I start­ed, but around the mid­dle of the sec­ond book, I real­ized that I was read­ing a high­ly-detailed trav­el­ogue, where I had been expect­ing an action epic.

Tech­no­rati

Com­ment and I’ll add you! (But since I’m on the road, it may be a lit­tle while before I get around to adding you…)

Update

Posted on by Patrick

Well, I got my prob­lem fig­ured out. I had to blow away my brows­er pref­er­ences and start fresh, but it works now. (If I’d had time and incli­na­tion, I prob­a­bly could’ve used a less apoc­a­lyp­tic method, but, well, meh.)

Also: Last night I out­lined about three-quar­ters of the mid­dle act (which is where my long projects usu­al­ly start to sag), and fin­ished up the sec­ond chap­ter, too. More writ­ing, if not tonight, then tomor­row for sure. Plus I got some more of the site for this ser­i­al-sto­ry project spruced up.

Stay tuned, and keep warm!

Ping

Posted on by Patrick

You know how some­times, you can look at a prob­lem from 800 dif­fer­ent angles, and it just won’t go away? And you just know there’s a sim­ple solu­tion; the prob­lem is just pick­ing the cor­rect sim­ple solu­tion from the infin­i­ty of incor­rect ones.

And you know how some­times, it’ll fil­ter in your mind, and sud­den­ly you’ll have this epiphany, this flash of insight, and you know the answer? And it turns out you’re right?

I’m halfway there. I haven’t had the epiphany yet, but I’ve got One of Those Prob­lems. Noth­ing life-threat­en­ing; just some­thing that’s intel­lec­tu­al­ly aggra­vat­ing. And Tech Sup­port is involved, too.

#

Did some writ­ing tonight, too. At least that went well. I have some research to do. Things I would like to know include:

  • Bur­ial cus­toms in the 17th Cen­tu­ry (Boston? New York?)
  • 17th‑C slang
      • Things of that ilk.

      G’night!

Writing project

Posted on by Patrick

My New Year’s res­o­lu­tion, writ­ing-wise, prob­a­bly won’t show up here until about March, but rest assured I’ll be work­ing on it start­ing tonight. I hope to start a ser­i­al sto­ry, post­ing “chap­ters” about a thou­sand words long, twice a week. The sto­ry (at least so far) will be one that I’ve had fer­ment­ing in my mind for over a year and a half now, called Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened, and it fea­tures a zom­bie lawyer, a sea­far­ing cap­tain, a man named Fauntleroy, a jun­gle king­dom, an undead vizier, a trea­sure map, and a threat to every liv­ing soul. Intrigued? I know I am. I’m look­ing for­ward to writ­ing it. Tonight I did 1100 words, and here’s a few of them:

Doc Hutchin came up from below, his face and hands and shirt bloody. There were men and boys down there that had been run­ning the pumps for hours, maybe days. They’d been work­ing the wood­en han­dles, cal­lus­es split­ting and weep­ing, blood serv­ing as oil to lubri­cate the pumps, and no one real­ly knew how long it had been any­more. The sun’s trav­els had seemed errat­ic ever since the can­non had explod­ed, but Riley was pret­ty sure that it was just the cri­sis, punch­ing a hole in his expe­ri­ence of time.

Hutch came over to him, tak­ing slow and care­ful steps. He nev­er seemed to get his sea legs, ever, but he did­n’t often rel­ish going ashore in port either. The men whis­pered the­o­ries about his check­ered past, how he had a con­sta­ble look­ing for him in every port. One of the boys had once found a WANTED poster nailed to a tav­ern door which bore a decent like­ness of the good doc­tor’s face.

“Drink?” said Hutch, sit­ting down next to him.

“No,” he said. “Got to get up. Soon.”

“You’re exhaust­ed,” said the doc­tor. He pulled a flat-sided brown bot­tle out of one of his boots. There was a foomp! sound as he pulled the cork out of the neck with his teeth. “Bit o’ rum ‘ll do you some good, I reckon.”

“I don’t–”

“Doc­tor’s orders,” said Hutch, hand­ing him the bottle.

He swigged down two swal­lows’ worth, then hand­ed the bot­tle back. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Hutchin took a healthy pull, then re-corked the bot­tle and slid it back down into his boot.

“Help me up,” said Riley. “The men need to see their cap’n.”

“Aye,” said Hutch, and rose to his feet. He put a hand on the bul­wark to steady him­self, then extend­ed his oth­er hand to Riley. The doc­tor pulled the cap­tain upright.

Some­thing shrieked from on high, and they both looked up, shad­ing their eyes against the sun. A gull wheeled above them.

“Will we make it, d’y­ou think?” said Hutch. His voice was non­cha­lant, as if he did­n’t care one way or t’other about the answer, but Riley had known him a long time. The doc­tor was ter­ri­fied; it was writ­ten all over his face, in the wor­ried lines around his eyes, in the hard set of his jaw, clamp­ing his teeth togeth­er so tight they ground one against the other.

“It’ll be close,” said Riley.

“Ah,” said the doc­tor, and bent to retrieve his bot­tle again. “No sense let­tin’ it go to waste,” he said, straight­en­ing up. This time, when he pulled the cork out, he spat it overboard.

“True,” said Riley, accept­ing the bot­tle when it was offered. The rum burned its way down his throat to his bel­ly, warmth spread­ing out like slow gold­en fire. “To Man­dalay,” he said, rais­ing the bot­tle high, then hand­ing it back to its owner.

“To Man­dalay,” said Hutch, hold­ing the bot­tle aloft, then drain­ing it and let­ting it drop to shat­ter on the deck. “Long may she sail.” 

(Man­dalay is the name of the ketch (or, in this par­tic­u­lar world, the cor­ti­co) on whose deck the action takes place.)

More to come, lat­er. Like I said, prob­a­bly start­ing in March, and run­ning till it’s done.