Nevermind!

Today went from crappy to awesome to awesomer. More about this tomorrow. I'm-a-passing out!

Québec sous la pluie

No. Just no. I've had all the walking around in the cold rain I can take. If it were 90 degrees I wouldn't mind so much. It's 58. The sky keeps tempting me with sunshine and then opening up and raining. It was sunny for the third time, I started walking downtown. Then I got poured on and decided to turn around. Right now it's sunny out. Right now my sneakers are soaked through and I'm not going to go out.

Montréal sous la pluie

So this morning I woke up, got out, and got rained on. I was determined to go sightseeing today though so first I stopped off at McGill college. My host from Yarker, Ontario was a photographer and had an exhibition going on outside the college. He took old photos of Montreal, that were at least 100 years old, then recreated the exact location, angle, time of year, and lighting conditions and took a new photo. The photos are arranged side by side so the viewers can see exactly how each location has changed since the original photo was taken. It's pretty cool.





Still getting rained on, I headed into the subway and took it to a station nearer to the old city. I then walked around the old city and the Port taking pictures the whole way and just getting rained on non-stop.

The thing about raincoats, is they don't really do much below the waist. So from my knees down to my toes I was drenched. My sneakers were waterlogged by the time I made it to the port.

Oh well. After walking around the port and decided against paying the entree fee for the Museum of Natural History, I stopped for a snack at a crêperie and had an apple, cheese, and maple syrup crêpe. It was delicious.

By the time I finished my crêpe and decided to head back to the subway, it was still raining. I knew I was near chinatown but I didn't feel like looking for it. Turns out I found it anyway so I walked through for a couple blocks still making my way to the station. As I walked past a dim sum place I almost regretted having a crêpe for a snack. Almost. That was a damn good crêpe.

Thoroughly soaked to the bone, I decided I better head to the tourism information center to ask what there was to do inside (preferably for free). When I got out of the subway it had stopped raining and as I made my way to the building, the sun even came out. Well, forget the tourism desk! I'm going to climb Mt. Royal and get some great panoramic views of the city! I check the time and see I have 2.5 hours. I remember my last mountain climb that was only supposed to take a few hours and ended up taking all day and half the night and decided maybe I better just check out those two islands east of the city that make up one big park. I walk around most of the first island and get a lot of good pictures.

Check out the photostream to see the rest of them.
It's now 4:30 and I make my way to the second island and it looks like I just walked onto a race track.

Rather than figure out exactly how to get to the parts I want to see, I just turn back because it's 4:50 and at 5 I'm meeting my host Cindy for a motorcycle ride.

We ride, eat dinner, come back into town. Now I'm "blogging". Ugh. Anyway, I'm dead tired and I have to pack up all my stuff. Tomorrow I leave Montreal for Quebec city. 2 days is not enough in Montreal. You need at least 3. It strikes me as kind of odd that I've never been here before. Montreal is closer to where I grew up than RIT, where I went to school. It's also closer to RIT than where I grew up. It's a great city, has the feel of a foreign country, and is just a few hours away. I should come here more often when I get back and have a job...if.

Oh, and ALDO shoes will make your brain into a disco!

"There is no Canada like French Canada, it's the best Canada in the land..."

Yesterday I arrived at my hosts' apartment in the middle of Montreal. We then went over to a concert that some other couchsurfer was playing in a bar. They were of course competing with the annual Montreal Jazz Festival which is going on all week so it was like a private concert. It was a cool experience and if you like folk music, check out http://kateelliottmusic.com

Meanwhile, today I left at 7am with my host who was going to work. I was going to the tourist information booth to see what brochures/maps might pique my interest. I figured if I asked them what there was to do, they would just tell me about the Jazz Fest. After leaving the tourist info desk, I realized I forgot my camera so rather than go to all the sightseeing spots with no pictures to share with everyone, I figured I'd kill the day at the Jazz Fest and walking down the big street with all the shops on it. You're welcome. I've pretty much been walking for 12 hours and in my travels I've discovered Montreal is a totally cool city. This suburban kid could definitely be happy living here. Pictures to come tomorrow.

Bad Weather, Good Mood

It's day three of my trip and the second day I've been hit with bad weather. It doesn't bother me. In fact, this is a good thing. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, things can either go perfectly to the very last detail, or you can have a great story. There's rarely anything interesting about everything falling into place and nothing unplanned for happening.

Any setback can also be a blessing with a small perspective shift. I'm stuck inside but it gives me a chance to relax and recover from the road, plan my next few days a little more completely, and re-pack my things in a more organized and manageable way.

The days that I get rained on or rained in make the other days so much better. One can hardly appreciate a clear blue sky if you've never seen anything else. You would start to take it for granted. You would never look up and see what an amazing thing it is that our atmosphere appears to have such a vibrant color. Then you would never notice the different shades that appear even on a clear day. Then you would never realize what an amazing thing it is that our atmosphere has any color at all. If you were to think about it, you might determine that it is nice having a clear blue sky, but the true beauty of it all would escape you. Opposites let us appreciate extremes.

The good and the bad are all part of any experience. If you want the experience, than have to accept the less desirable parts of it as well as the desirable ones. To do otherwise is to ruin it for yourself. If you refuse to accept the bad parts of an experience, you will find yourself letting your fear of the unexpected prevent you from doing anything. The overall experience here is a vacation. A relatively long vacation where mishaps are bound to happen. It is those very mishaps that make the good days even better, and the overall trip more interesting and exciting.

Day 1 and 2

It took me all morning but I finally packed up every last thing I could think of onto my bike. Behold "Mt. Luggage"!

I still managed to forget a flashlight. Anyway just as I got it all packed on, I started to get rained on. Checking the weather revealed that there were sever thunderstorms all up and down the state. It may seem impossible but it's not unheard of for a biker to die because they were struck by lightning on the road. So in rain I ride cautious but when Zeus starts playing tiddly-winks, I run for cover.
I waited for a break in the weather and when I saw it, I took it. At around 6pm I hit the road for Rochester. I'm pretty sure I left at 6 but somehow I didn't get there until 1am. Oh well. 7 hours of hard riding later and I arrive at the home of my friends Craig and Katie. I lift Mt. Luggage off my bike in one massive piece and bring it in. In doing so I'm sure i hurt my arms. Either that or the 7 hours of riding did it. Either way, my arms were killing me.

Today, I went to lunch (breakfast) with Craig at the Pita Pit. Then I packed Mt. Luggage back on my bike, one piece at a time, which absolutely killed my arms. Did I injure myself somehow? Is that what this is? I guess I'll figure that out later. I got on my bike and rode the 5 hours east, north up I-81, and slightly west to Yarker, Ontario, Canada. Tomorrow is a day of recovery and mostly nothing. Then on Sunday I'll head up to Montreal.

Off on the road to adventure!

Ok! First post! So I'm FINALLY all packed up and only two days behind schedule. I spent the last three weeks at Bike Week in Lake George, NY; Bike Week in Laconia, NH; and cleaning/preparing/packing. I figured as long as I have to wait for a break in the weather, I might as well get this blog started and let everyone know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.