Author: tastewar

Last Full Day in Montreal

Today’s forecast looked pretty good in the morning, with an increased chance of rain in the afternoon, so we decided to head over to the Botanical Gardens early, and make our way over to the BioSphere later, since we’d be mostly inside. The gardens were lovely

and we got to see many styles of garden, but still felt like we barely scratched the surface.

The Gardens are also right across he street from the main stadium from the 1976 Olympics, so we got to see the outskirts of that as well

After an unintentionally expensive lunch, we went to the BioSphere, which had interesting exhibits about the environment and our effect on it. We got to see a presentation on cyclones, which used Katrina and Hyaiyan to highlight their destructiveness. Emma had just lived through Rammasun while visiting there and saw some of the devastation that Haiyan wrought up close. Another exhibit showcased artistic ways of turning refuse into dresses. Here’s an example

Once we had finished at the BioSphere, we split into two groups. Susan and Tyler took the Metro back to the Old Port where they rented a bicycle car

and on the walk home from there, they came upon (but did not fall into) a Burning Ring of Fire

. Meanwhile, the girls and I rented Bixi bikes and rode to the Old Port. Along the way, while we were riding across a bridge, the skies opened up on us like never before. Emma and Clara had puddles in their shoes. But we did get something out of it

6 August 2014
Trip Tech

I used to have a Linksys Travel Router that I’d bring with me on trips. It was one I’d bought on eBay and had loaded special 3rd party firmware (dd-wrt) onto it. But it became unreliable. So naturally, I bought another one. But this time I decided not to complicate my life by changing the firmware on it.

Well, this is now the first trip where I’m wanting to use it, and I was immediately reminded why I’d bothered with the alternative firmware in the first place: the original Linksys firmware had a nifty feature that let the router connect to one wifi network, but then offer a different one for its clients. That means that you don’t have to start connecting to new wifi nets on all your devices. Only the router needs to connect to the new one, and everything else connects to it. Problem is, the Linksys firmware only let you connect to open networks. So at some point I’ll have to invest the hours and anxiety to see if I can put better firmware on it.

Our apartment was not advertised as having internet access, so I was anticipating having to find the occasional coffee shop (*not* hard to find here!) to stop in at and catch up on email, etc. Thankfully, it was just an oversight in the listing, because our phones, set to Airplane mode, are basically glorified iPods here in Canada, unless we want to pay roaming charges. Going without makes you realize how much we take for granted, and also how possible it is to do without.

5 August 2014
Night Lights

[geo_mashup_map] So tonight, after dinner, we took another walk through parts of Old Montreal, for the light show. Apparently, there’s been an ongoing effort to add lighting effects to many old buildings to showcase some of their architectural details. The highlight of the tour is certainly Notre Dame Cathedral.

4 August 2014
A Full Day of Montreal

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When we woke up this morning, and started planning our day, it was drizzly, and the forecast called for possible rain until mid afternoon. So we planned more of an indoorsy day, including the Underground City and a Metro trip out to the BioSphere but by the time we were ready to go, the rain had stopped and the sky was blue.

So, we changed plans somewhat, and walked some distance in the Underground City, then hopped on the Metro to get back close to Old Montreal. We spent a good part of the morning walking around the Old City, enjoying the geography, architecture, historic sites, and the artists on Place Jacques Cartier. We ended up eating lunch at a restaurant where the rest of the family ate lunch last time they were in Montreal, then we walked down to the Old Port and enjoyed more little shops, etc. Afterwards, we wound our way back through the Old Port, found an ice cream shop on a side street en route to Notre Dame, where we stopped to take photos. Then back to our cozy apartment where we cooked a simple dinner of pasta and Caesar Salad.

4 August 2014
Zip, Basin, Montreal!

We started our day, as planned, with an early departure from our lodge, and headed out for our big adventure of the day — “ziplining” at Alpine Adventures, but before that we did make a stop for breakfast at the White Mountain Bagel Co. We noticed that some of the tour guides from Alpine Adventures were also getting breakfast there, so we felt as though we had made a good choice. On the ZipLine tour, we were told to leave all our valuables in our car, so we didn’t actually take a camera with us. We also didn’t quite want to splurge on the GoPro camera rental to record our adventure for posterity. So you’ll have to take our word for it that it was fun, and not at all like the SouthPark episode.

After our adventure, we drove back up I-93 to the Basin. The kids had a blast here; the fun rivaled that of ziplining in fact. As a parent, it was a little more nerve wracking watching them walk across the fast moving stream, on slippery rocks, etc. I tried to always remain downstream, just in case. An interesting contrast to the ziplining which might well have more inherent danger, but which is offset by the professional guides and abundant safety equipment. In any case, we all managed to survive yet again.

After that, we got back on I-93N and finally, finally drove further north than our lodge. We’d managed to spend a lot of time driving south on I-93 from our lodging, then heading back north to it. This is what comes of a trip with planned lodging and spontaneous activities. Or one possible outcome, anyway. We had a good stretch of driving left to get to Montreal, so we planned to have lunch in St. Johnsbury, where I-93 and I-91 meet. We found a nondescript Chinese restaurant there, and had a mediocre lunch. We fueled up the car, confirmed our lodging, and headed up I-91 for the remainder of the U.S. portion of the driving. The border crossing couldn’t have been easier, and we made it to our rental apartment at about 5:30.

This was a bit of an experiment — we arranged some of our stays through Airbnb where we get to rent people’s apartments (or homes) for short term stays. So our accommodations in Montreal are cute — we’re in a small, garden level apartment a couple of blocks from Old Montreal (in Chinatown, I guess). [geo_mashup_map] After getting settled, we walked a couple of blocks to the big IGA supermarket and bought some groceries so we could have a couple of breakfasts in the apartment, as well as one dinner. After that, we walked through the Place des Arts where there was some indigenous festival going on, with live music, and native arts being demonstrated, etc. From there we walked a bit more to find dinner at a local pizza restaurant, Il Focolaio. This was a lovely restaurant, and we got to eat at a table (actually, three adjacent tables that couldn’t be pushed together because they’re screwed to the flooring 🙂 ) outdoors, and it was a perfect night for it. An older, apparently Italian couple came and sat at the table next to us a bit later, and as if to demonstrate for us the cosmopolitan feel of the city, our waiter, whose parents were apparently from Italy, started chatting with them in Italian.

3 August 2014
Rock Hounds

While the highlight of the day could arguably have been breakfast at Munroe’s Family Restaurant, which was awesome, probably a stronger case could be made for our next stop, which was Ruggle’s Mine. [geo_mashup_map] Visiting old mines and quarries is a favorite activity of ours on vacation, and Ruggles was a pretty good example. It had a nice gift shop, complete with two elderly (or at least exceedingly calm) German Shepherds. The mine was mostly out in the open, though there were nooks and crannies to explore.

After that, we headed in the general direction of our lodge, and since it was late for lunch and early for dinner, we stopped for ice cream. While there, Emma happened upon a pamphlet about the 81st Annual League of NH Craftsmen’s Fair. We initially thought it was in the same general direction as the Lodge, but later discovered out error. After a half hour drive, we arrived as cars were streaming out at 4:45. Turned out they close down at 5:00. We checked things out briefly as the artists were packing up.

With a two hour drive ahead of us, we decided to break it up with dinner, and stopped at the Route 104 Diner Everyone enjoyed their meal, and we then finished our trek back to the lodge, arriving somewhat earlier than our first night.

Some frisbee on the front lawn was followed by showers for all, and packing up so we’ll be ready for an early exit in the morning.

2 August 2014
NERT

We begin our NorthEast Road Trip with a couple of nights in New Hampshire. We left after a full day of work on Friday, hitting the road just before 5:00 to join the other crazy people in the mad rush North out of The City. Shortly after, we realized that 40% of us lacked sneakers, so we stopped in Concord for shoe shopping and dinner. The LL Bean Outlet looked potentially promising but didn’t pan out. EMS had a small and expensive collection, with nothing really kid appropriate. Fortunately we found a Payless nearby and all three kids found footwear they could live with.

We passed by a Boloco just off the highway, and we’re planning to eat there but getting to Payless took us a bit away, and we happened upon a cute burrito joint in downtown, Dos Amigos, and ate there. Great atmosphere and very good burritos. An auspicious beginning to the trip. We then drove the remaining hour and a quarter to our lodging at Carlson’s Lodge, and were greeted, even at our late arrival time of 10:00, by a friendly, 14 year old dog. We got settled quickly and went right to sleep.
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1 August 2014
Doing our share

This past week was a pretty big one at the Stewart household. Two “environmental” projects came to fruition this past week. First, and most important, is that our photovoltaic array went live, and we are now generating some of our own electricity. We have 28 250 Watt panels distributed among our main roof, dormers, and the garage roof, for a maximum hypothetical power rating of 7 KW. However, the DC-AC conversion isn’t 100% efficient, and by design the sun doesn’t shine on them all equally, so we won’t expect to see that number ever come up. But it is fun to see numbers, and to that end, here is a web site that is publicly accessible that shows some statistics about our power production: http://www.solrenview.com/SolrenView/mainFr.php?siteId=1910. Today we produced 35.1 kWh, and had a peak power output of 5.7 kW. Payback of our initial investment in the system is expected to take 5-6 years.

On another front, we also purchased a new vehicle today. Well, more accurately, a used vehicle. Partly because we understand that the best value to be had in cars is in ones that are 1-2 years old, but also because a friend reminded us that buying a new car implies the assumption of the environmental cost of producing a new car. I was enamored of hybrids for a time, but the same friend educated us about the environmental cost of sourcing all the rare earth materials for the batteries. So the conclusion we came to was to find an efficient gasoline powered car. But we couldn’t find one. Perhaps my standards are “too high” but I remember cars from back in the 80’s that would achieve 50 mpg. Many friends have heard me wonder aloud whether this technology was somehow lost.

It seems that there are a couple of big factors at play here. First, people expect their cars to be more powerful that those “econo-boxes” of the time. We expect to be able to get up to highway speed from a standstill in a matter of seconds. Another factor is that people have come to demand/expect many more accoutrements in their vehicles, like power windows, power locks, GPS Navigation, big, honkin’ sound systems with 12 speakers, power seats, etc. Do they still make cars without air conditioning?

I also remember reading an article a while back in an online car magazine (TopGear) about a project where a team was challenged to put together a car for less than $7000 that would get 70 mpg and be able to get from 0-60 in 7 seconds. I think I’m remembering all that correctly, it was a long time ago, and the article was taken offline quite a while ago, unfortunately. All that remains are posts that link to it, and archive.org failed to have a copy, unfortunately. Here’s one post that at least references the series, called “Project Sipster.” They took an old diesel VW Rabbit that they got for next to nothing, and put a lot of work into it, including a new engine, and new suspension. I don’t think the $7000 included the weeks of labor. Watch the video, though, and tell me you wouldn’t want to own this car:

In spite of my 13 year old truck running OK, and having no major problems, we didn’t think it would necessarily last through the next 10 years which will include paying for three college educations. And so, inspired somewhat by the above, we bought a 2011 VW Jetta Sportswagen TDI with only 18,000 miles on it. It’s fun to drive, and gets an EPA estimated 30/42, but you hear plenty of reports of people getting better. Really depends on how you drive it. Unfortunately, it is peppy, fun to drive, and encourages acceleration. Hopefully it will last through the kids’ college years. Isn’t it cute?

17 March 2013
Glory Days

I never had a Blue Box; never really did any phone hacking (just occasionally helped connect phone lines to different people’s dorm rooms so they could share), but I’ve always loved phone tech. Wired has an article up that reaches back to tell a story of intrigue from the early days of phone hacking.

8 February 2013
Happy New Years!

For Christmas, I received an awesome kit clock that I spent a good part of the following day putting together. We have a tradition where we spend New Year’s Eve with another family, and as one of the neat things about this clock is that the software it runs (I know, it’s a weird concept…) can be modified. So I spent parts of the next couple of days modifying the original software to include a countdown to New Year’s mode, which is what you see in the picture.

30 December 2012