Morning in Pointe Claire

The sun rises later now.

That means I need to use my Iphone in the morning to shed some light when I rummage through my sock drawer.

It also means I get to enjoy early sunrise views of the lake on my morning commute.

Case in point: the recent shot you see here is of the point that puts the "pointe" in Pointe Claire. The picture was taken from old Lakeshore road in Beaconsfield, just east of the Beaconsfield Yacht Club.  I took the picture from the saddle with my Iphone using the Camera+ app.

I really like Camera+ because it gives you separate controls for focus and exposure, among other goodies.

Commuting in the fall

Last week was very busy work-wise so this post is more of a historical account than I planned it to be.

It's difficult to believe that fall is here. Last Monday morning came with a hint of chill but by the time I rolled into the underground garage at the office, it felt like summer.

At lunchtime I took a good 50 minute walk. By that time it was truly summertime hot on Montreal's streets.

I meandered through the new entertainment district, the Quartier des Spectacles. It was there that I stumbled upon an exhibit of photographs taken from space by Guy Laliberté.

Many countries have space programs, including Canada.

Guy Laliberté, a fellow Quebecker, is a special case. He made up his own space program of one.

The Cirque du Soleil founder became mankind's first clown in space. He brought along clown noses for his space station comrades, but none of the astronauts chose to don them. Real astronauts don't clown around.

Guy took some stunning photos.

That's all I know about clowns in orbit.

Riding in the fall is no big deal. It's certainly nothing like space travel.

If you pick a nice day and you live where the foliage puts on riotous colours, it's a very pleasant feast for the senses.

Commuting on a Vespa in the fall is something completely different.

To do it well, and do it safely and enjoyably, requires discipline and good gear.

Good waterproof rain gear sitting in the pet carrier and ready to deploy is a first must have.

The next thing to consider is how well your scooter is equipped.

With the days getting shorter, an increasing number of commutes will be in darkness. I've added auxiliary rear running, brake and turn indicator lights.

I opted for an Admore Lighting mini light bar. It's a bar of very bright LEDs that combines all the lighting in a single unit. The turn indicators flash in a sequential pattern and the brake light modulates before coming on steadily. The Admore unit increases my visibility substantially.  If you click on the link above for the 'Gear Posts', you'll see the project post that explains everything you need to know about the Admore unit and how I installed it.

My riding jacket (a Corazzo 5.0) has very prominent reflective stripes. My Tourmaster Caliber pants and Icon Patrol gauntlets also feature reflective material.

Cool fall weather makes for pleasant strolls in cardigans and light jackets. Cruising on a scooter calls the wind into play and that changes the equation substantially.

Without a windscreen that extends in front of your hands, and good winter gauntlets, the cold can thoroughly chill you. With those Icon gloves, my Corazzo Underhoody under my armored jacket, and the liner zipped into my armored pants, I'll be able to ride comfortably all the way through October.

As long as it doesn't snow. Then I'll be done for the season, and ready for the commuter train.

Milestone looming!

I find it hard to believe. Yet it's plain to see that my dragon red Vespa will soon roll up to the 10,000 mile mark. All but 1,304 of those miles are mine.

I'm hoping to post a similar photo when that momentous event happens. I'll have to start paying close attention to the odometer.

It's been a busy week for me. I have a more substantial post in the works. This tid bit will have to do for now until I can pull this week's post together.

Pointe Claire Yacht Club

 Today's weather was glorious.  Sunny, unseasonably warm, and just about as perfect a day as anyone could hope for.

 I stopped briefly at the Pointe Claire Yacht Club this morning to admire the sailboats tethered to their moorings, waiting patiently for a weekend sail on the lake.

 The mouth of the harbor and the lake beyond the breakwater were quiet, no sails to be seen.

Perhaps on my return home the slips will be empty and the flotilla will be out taking advantage of what could well turn out to be the last great sailing day of 2011.

Here's hoping this wonderful weather will hold for the weekend.

Crossing the canal

This is something I do very often. Last year, I would have done it ten times in a week. This year I'm more adventurous, and my repertoire of routes has expanded, but I still take this bridge at least four times a week.

The Charlevoix bridge gets you from the south side of the Lachine Canal, to the north side.  It's a good way to get across the canal.

If you prefer tunnels to bridges, there is also the Atwater tunnel a little further west that serves the same purpose.  When I was a kid and we would take the Atwater tunnel on our way to visit my relatives on the south shore, my sisters and I would always bug my dad until he honked the horn in the tunnel.  With the windows down in the summer you'd get the mad echoing of the horn that always made us giggle.  I haven't gone that way on my Vespa.  I'll have to do that before the season ends to see what a Stebel air horn sounds like in the Atwater tunnel. 

Today both sides of the Lachine Canal are being re-developped with condos and lofts.  The building you see in the picture above is a condominium loft development.  The shores of the canal are a linear park with bicycle paths that take you from the old port downtown, all the way to the shores of Lake St-Louis in the west end.  What was once a dismal and decaying industrial zone is now a really nice green space.

Here's a Google maps satellite view of the bridge and its surroundings.

 The canal is open to pleasure craft and is the easiest way to take a motor boat from the lake to the port of Montreal.  From there, in theory, you could sail for Europe.

You might have a shot at it in a decent sailboat, but first you'd have to lower the mast to get through the canal.  Back in the 1960's when the canal was still a vital commercial waterway, all the bridges would open to allow the taller shipping to navigate the canal.  Since pleasure boats don't need the extra clearance, the mechanisms have been dismantled and the bridges are all permanently fixed.

The Charlevoix bridge was a turntable bridge rather than a lift bridge like the Gauron bridge further west.  If you venture under the bridge on the pedestrian path or the bike path, you can still see the turntable mechanism with some of its gears.  None of it is in working order and it's obvious that some of the key ingredients are no longer in place. 

The bridge deck, like many movable bridges, is a metal grid that you see pictured below.  With the decommissioning of the turntable, portions of the grid were filled with concrete to make the ride more comfortable for people in cars, and presumably safer for bicycles.

If you ride a scooter or a motorcycle, you can choose to ride on the grid portion, or the concrete portion.

I used the grid portions all last year and early this year as practice for my assault on the Victoria bridge. For an account of that crossing and what it feels like to negotiate a long metal grid deck bridge at speed, click here.

Ray Bans©

 I love my 35 year old Ray Bans^©.

They're the Outdoorsman model, said my optometrist appreciatively.  "They don't make them anymore" he said with the same fond, wistful look that a car buff might have talking about 1956 Corvettes or MG TDs.  He felt bad for the hard wear I inflicted on them, so he meticulously cleaned off the accumulated grunge when he fitted my new lenses last week.

This morning the dismal weather we've been having began to clear. The sun finally made an appearance so I pulled into Stewart Hall to put on my shades.

Standing beside the Vespa, paces from the lake, I took a minute to absorb my surroundings.  I felt blessed.

The freshness of the cool September morning air, the stately willow to my left, and the stillness of the lake made me want to linger, empty my mind for a spell, and just be.

I stood there surveying the scene, the air fragrant from the freshly mown lawn, enjoying the moment.  I took a breath, then strolled closer to the water's edge.  The only sound was the Vespa purring on its centre stand behind me.

When I got closer to the shore, I saw a couple of jet skis sitting on a boat-lift, close to shore behind a waterfront home on my right.  The jet skis made a pretty picture, the yellow bonnets of their shrouds popping out in the pastel scene.

It was time to 'shake a leg' as my mother was fond of saying, so I shoved off and continued on my way to the office.

Memories of Expo 67

Expo 67 was the 1967 World's Fair that was held in Montreal.

Montreal's mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau, had ambitious plans for Montreal's future.  He single-handedly put Montreal on the world map, first with Expo 67, then with the 1976 summer Olympics.

His administration shepherded Montreal from city to metropolis: the 1960's and 70's in the run-up to the fair and the Olympics were frantic times.  Incessant construction brought us soaring expressway interchanges and bridges, the Metro, Place des Arts, Place Ville Marie, Place Victoria, and the Olympic stadium.  Those buildings and public works define Montreal today;  they are prominent among the landmarks that are the signature of this city.

Political turmoil soon followed and the financial markets and institutions that gave Montreal its pre-eminent place in Canada soon fled to the relative peace and tranquility of Toronto.

Montreal eventually got over that economic hump, and growth returned early in the new millennium.

The challenge Montreal faces today is renewing all the infrastructure that was built in the 1960's and 70's.  Bridges, tunnels, and those soaring expressway interchanges that were so daring and futuristic in the late 60's, are now falling apart bit by bit, and chunk by chunk, as the government scrambles to repair and renew.

One way to forget what the future wrought, is to take a trip back to those magical days of the late 60's.

While most of the fairgrounds were recycled for other uses, some landmarks remain.

My Vespa allows me the luxury of lunch-hour ventures.  So I took off south through the downtown bustle, down to the port, past the Port Authority HQ, and headed to Ile Ste-Hélène, one of the two islands that made up the fair grounds.

To get to the island you can either take the Jacques Cartier bridge to the east, or the Pont de la Concorde which was the route I chose to take.

The Pont de la Concorde is one of the surviving Expo 67 landmarks.  It's not a particularly inspiring bridge, but it is fairly long, and extremely wide.  During Expo 67 the Pont de la Concorde, so named in honour of the motto of the City of Montreal Concordia salus, was one of the main gateways to the fair.

It's a challenge to get pictures of the bridge.  Here's one taken from Ile Ste-Hélène.

 Here's another taken from the Montreal side.

A light rail line was built to take fair goers over the fairly large distances between the city and the two islands given over to the fairgrounds.  The double-tracked rail line ran down the center of the Pont de la Concorde.  The remainder of the bridge's ample width accommodated throngs of pedestrians, me among them as a boy, wide-eyed with the wonder that was Expo 67.

One of the other signature landmarks so closely associated with Expo 67 is Habitat 67.  When you head for the Pont de la Concorde, Habitat 67 is the building right before the bridge.

Habitat 67 was architect Moishe Safdie's daring concept of concrete modular apartments.  I don't think that his vision actually ever got any real-world traction, other than that one concept project.

Today Habitat 67 is still futuristic, and is now all much sought-after condominiums, each with spectacular views of the river and the city skyline.

One of the other remaining landmarks has a second career as the Biosphere, now a museum on the environment.  During Expo 67 it was the American pavilion.  Designed by Buckminster Fuller it is a massive 200 foot high geodesic dome.

 Like Seattle's Space Needle, Montreal's geodesic dome is a prominent 1960's tribute to a George Jetson future that hasn't quite materialized. Where the heck are those flying cars?  I was really looking forward to those flying cars.

Mind you, if you buy a condo at Habitat 67, with a view of the Montreal skyline and of the Biosphere, you might begin to think that the Jetsons could be your next-door neighbours.

I can tell you that when you zip around town on a Vespa, and you glide through sweeping turns, you can't see the wheels under you, and it certainly feels like you could be skimming along on a wheel-less air scooter, or a Star Wars imperial speeder bike, or something like this:

With my photos all snapped, off I went back downtown to grab a quick bite before settling in for an afternoon at the office.

Here's a brief video showing the ride back to downtown from Ile Ste-Hélène over the Pont de la Concorde and past Habitat 67 which you'll see on the left after the bridge.

The ride home

In the evening I rarely stop to take pictures.

The day's work has worn me down, and all I want to do is get home.

Don't misunderstand, the evening commute on my Vespa is something I look forward to. There is no better way for me to unwind than riding west along the Lachine Canal and then the lake shore all the way home.

Nevertheless, I'm much less inclined to take the time to snap photos, unless the scene is compelling.

This evening was one of those days.

The weather began to clear at noon and the day evolved into a perfect late summer day. Warm but not hot; a gentle breeze; clear blue sky punctuated by great big white voluptuous clouds.

In a word, a sailor's dream of a day.

No surprise then that the west island sailors were out in force by the time I got to Pointe Claire.

The only unfortunate part of this nice little story is that my Iphone was woefully inadequate to capture the beauty that made me interrupt my evening commute.

As you can see, I took several shots, playing with the exposure, hoping to get it just right. In the end I couldn't decide which was best, so I've posted them all.

It's a shame that the sailboats don't translate in the photos they way they appeared to me. It's the flotilla of boats that got me to pause to take these photos.

If you click on them you'll see them in a separate page of your browser. Depending on your operating system, you can zoom in until they fill the screen. Only then will you see what forced me to stop, if only briefly.

Irene's wake

On Sunday the outer reaches of Hurricane Irene's scythes brought sporadic power failures, tore branches from trees, and littered the ground with leaves.

Monday's commute to work was chilly and windy but with clear blue skies. 

I paused on the lake shore to snap a few pictures of Lake St-Louis, still pretty choppy from the high winds.

It would have been interesting to see the same scenes at the height of Sunday's storm.
 

Secure your helmet

Eventually you will want to park your bike somewhere, and not want to schlep your helmet along for your stroll.

If you wear a half helmet or perhaps a three-quarter helmet, and if your pet carrier or top case are relatively empty, you can store your helmet there and it will be out of sight, protected from the elements, and reasonably secure.

If your helmet doesn't fit there, you'll need another strategy.  Then again, maybe your helmet would fit there, but, like me, you carry other stuff in those places (rain suit, tool kit, portable air compressor, locks, digital camera, Sham-Wow, RAM mount accessories, monocular spy scope, ear plugs, flattened beer can (indispensable for soft ground to support the stand), air pressure gauge, Iphone charging cable, bungee net, GPS unit, re-usable shopping bags, sunglasses, velcro strap to compress the rear brake when the tire needs air, Icon waterproof gauntlets, and other sundries), and then you won't have room for a helmet, or much other stuff.

Sheesh, I sure do carry a lot of stuff.  I'll have to have another listen to George Carlin's inspirational riff on 'stuff'.

You could just lock your helmet to the back wheel, like these brave souls do (I don't know them, I just parked next to them at the mall).

One plus of this strategy is that if a thief takes your scoot, those helmets will smack his leg with each turn of the stolen wheel.

But sitting on the ground like that seems a little inelegant, not to mention that you might get an earful of ants and spiders when you pop your lid back on.

If your helmet strap closes with a double D-ring, like a horse saddle cinch, Vespa's got you covered.  It's easy to overlook this tiny feature under the saddle, just at the lip of the pet carrier, on the starboard side, at one'clock.

If you still can't spot it, this picture may well be worth a thousand more words.

Once you close the saddle, the helmet hangs securely from the chin strap.

You might think that the strategies I've covered so far are the only ones you'll need to secure your helmet.

Well, if your helmet is a full-face helmet, and if it has a nice ratchet closure, like mine, then you're still out of luck.

So what do I do?

I'm glad you asked.  It took me a while to figure it out.

I picked up a short cable lock at the Montreal Harley Davidson + BMW dealer.

I close the chin-guard on my Nolan N102 helmet, thread the cable lock though the visor opening, pass the cable through the grab rail, and close the lock.  I lower the visor, then sit the helmet down on the saddle, up against the topcase.

The nice thing about this strategy is that if it rains while you're off running errands, the inside of the helmet stays nice and dry.

Wait! You say you have an open-face helmet with a ratchet closure?  You're still not out of luck.  You need to get a T-bar thingy specially made for the Nolan ratchet closure helmet.  You thread it through the ratchet, then slip the hole on the T-bar onto the under-seat helmet hook, and close the seat.

There you have it, six sure-fire strategies for securing your helmet, before you set off for a walk in the park.

Secrets of Île Perrot

Susan and I returned yesterday from the annual governance conference of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries that was held in historic Quebec City.

There was a lot riding on my shoulders and, even though the conference was an unprecedented success, I need a break before I plunge back into life at the office.

A little excursion today to Île Perrot seemed just the ticket.  You see, Île Perrot harbors some very special secrets.

I thought I'd share two of the secrets with you.

If you're here, or when you come for a visit, and if you can explore on your own, you'll have two secrets to seek out, and more to discover on your own.

To get to Île Perrot I took the Galipeault bridge.  So this post gets tagged as a bridge post as well.  Bonus!  For an aerial view of the bridge, and of Ile Perrot, click here.

The best place to see the Galipeault bridge is from the boardwalk in the village of Ste-Anne de Bellevue. 

The boardwalk sits on the canal lock that allows pleasure craft to get from the Lake of Two Mountains to the west, to Lake St-Louis in the east.  The lock itself sits right under the bridge (actually three bridges, once you include both vehicle spans and the railway bridge).

Navigable watercourses are a federal government jurisdiction, so the lock is a federal work.

The flag is flying at half-mast in honour of Jack Layton's passing last Monday.  He was easily the most loved of Canada's federal politicians, and was the leader of the opposition in Parliament.  When I announced his passing at the conference at Monday morning's plenary session, a ripple of shock spread through the ballroom at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel.

I got back on my Vespa and set out across the bridge to Île Perrot.

Just over the bridge, you'll find the first secret.  It's not exactly what you'd call a genuine secret, since it's there for all to see, hiding in plain sight.  It's just that unless you're in-the-know, you wouldn't know that one of Montreal's iconic fast food treats is smoked meat (others are 'Montreal bagels' - click here, and here, for the bagel posts - and of course, poutine which has spread all the way to New York, if you can believe it).

Anyway, you can get smoked meat in just about every no-star restaurant in the province of Quebec, and there are places in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver that claim to offer it as well.  But, like the venerable Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, most offerings of the delicacy leave much to be desired.

The kind of smoked meat that put smoked meat on the map is only served in a handful of Montreal restaurants, and nowhere else on earth.

There is the legendary Schwartz's on the main, along with the Main Deli, across the street, Dunn's is right up there at each one of its two or three branches, there is tiny Deli B, in the Valois village in Pointe Claire, Abie's on St-John's boulevard also in Pointe Claire, and then, there's...

From time to time, one of Montreal's daily newspapers holds a foodie survey to determine which place has the very best smoked meat.  Schwartz's usually comes in first, and Smoke Meat Pete comes in second.  For the life of me I don't know why, because Smoke Meat Pete is clearly head-and-shoulders the clear winner by a country mile.

Oh well! Les goûts se partagent mais ne se discutent pas! or à chacun son goût! or, as my brother-in-law is very fond of saying, à chacun son mishigas!

I didn't have time to stop to indulge, so I set off again, heading for the very tip of Ile Perrot.

My Vespa becomes a time machine, and I am magically transported to 1705.

I dismount, and twenty steps later, my Vespa might as well have been my horse.

A wooden walkway leads through the woods.  A short enchanted stroll later and the best secret of Ile Perrot emerges from the light at the end of the soft green canopy.

There's the miller's cottage, and just beyond, at the water's edge, amazingly, a perfect little windmill.

The mill was lovingly restored back to its original working condition in 1979 and won an award for the best historical restoration.  The last time I visited many years ago, the mill produced flour to demonstrate how mills operated in the 18th century.

The site is landscaped so that when you're at the mill, there is no evidence of the 21st century that intrudes to break the spell.  You are, while you are there, truly transported in time.

When you turn around to leave, the modest miller's cottage stands in your way.

Before you leave, take a moment to take in the pure beauty of this slice of life from 1705.

Then again, with another of my time machines, in this case a wicked long lens on my Olympus SLR, I can peer forward in time and see what the city of the 21st century looks like, shimmering through the haze.

I thought you might appreciate a treasure map to guide you on your discovery of these secrets, so before setting off on my return trip, I pulled out my Iphone and switched on the GPS tracking.  This interactive map is very cool.  Click on the "Earth" option.  Explore and you'll even find the windmill on your own.

View Ile-Perrot-2 in a larger map