travel day
February 21, 2010
The French word for “take-off” is “décollage”. I love this. Coming unglued, or unstuck, from the earth’s surface.
Today was a good day for taking photos out an airplane window, but I only shot film today so gratification is not instant. This takes some getting used to. The icy Northern lakes, under a smooth white layer of snow criss-crossed with networks of tracks (snowmobiles? trucks?) were lovely from the air; not sure yet whether my sweet new lo-fi camera will be able to capture that detail.
The only digital photo of the day was this one, taken during an arse-numbingly long layover at Pearson Airport: Legwarmer #2, almost finished. It’s half a repeat longer than #1, and the longer length is better. It seems there is always a certain amount of rip-and-redo.
Posted by jodi on February 21, 2010 at 8.45pm
notes from a travel day
February 13, 2010
A Tims cup amongst other garbage left behind by hockey fans at Memorial Gardens in North Bay last night. Nipissing Lakers won 7 to 2. Better than that one game I watched a bit of on the local cable t.v., in which the Lakers got scored on in such quick succession that two goals went into the net in the time it took me to raise my teacup to my lips.
Peter and I have gotten so used to me living away in the States that we keep finding ourselves surprised at how easy our travel back and forth is now that I’m living away but still in the same province. At some point last week I was pondering where in North Bay I could go to change my money before coming home, and I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spent worrying on that before remembering that I don’t have to change my Canadian money back to Canadian. Even this morning as we packed our last few things before hitting the road home, I felt that familiar apprehension in anticipation of crossing a border, and had to remind myself out loud that this time we have no border to cross, no questions to answer, and no worries about what’s in our car or how much money we spent while we were away.
But the best part of traveling home to Windsor from North Bay? WE DIDN’T HAVE TO DRIVE ACROSS OHIO TO GET THERE.
Peter’s happiest realization was that he could drive all the way up to get me and drive all the way back with me and never have to stop listening to CBC. You can’t believe how dismal the radio offerings are through Kentucky and Tennessee unless you’ve driven it yourself.
My years living in Georgia left me with an abiding love for the red iron oxide dirt colour, and seeing that same colour cropping up here and there in the jutting towers of rock that rise over Northern Ontario roads gave me that warm sense of home. Funny that my home province feels more like home when it reminds me of someplace away.
I think there must not be any teenagers living in South River, Ontario. Because there was an arrow sign there that read “BUCK YE HORSE FEED” and it had not been hacked. I mean, come ON.
In Huntsville, a Tim Hortons employee chastised us for not approaching the counter quickly enough. Not that remarkable, perhaps, but it was kind of funny how irritated he was. Last night at the hockey game in North Bay, hanging back for a moment before approaching the ticket booth totally paid off because a man saw us, came over and gave us a pair of free tickets (good seats, too!). Nobody at Huntsville Tims offered us free coffees, though. You can’t win ‘em all.
Next time I’ll call ahead to the Fluevog store before wasting a good three hours of our trip parking at Yorkdale Mall and taking the subway to downtown Toronto only to find that the boots on which I’ve now got my heart set MIGHT be available in my size again in August. Argh.
dans des nouvelles de tricotage
I finished up the last few cable repeats of this legwarmer at the hockey game last night; my crowning moment was crossing a four-over-four cable without a cable needle without once taking my eyes off the puck. That only happened once, mind you. But still, it only proves that I am AWESOME, right?
The ribbing and bindoff were finished in the car and #2 is started; I should have been able to knit most of the second legwarmer during our seven hours or so in the car today, if only Northern Ontario weren’t so damned pretty.
Posted by jodi on February 13, 2010 at 8.47pm
a giant frozen tentacle porn adventure!
February 12, 2010
Peter and I took a walk through the trails around Duchesnay Falls this afternoon. The only part of the river that wasn’t completely frozen over was this bit at the bottom, where water rushed up into a spectacular ice formation that resembled a gigantic frozen cephalopod, sucking and lapping at the water with its gross mouth tentacles. We were standing on frozen river to take these photos (I was unreasonably nervous about being on the water considering the ice was probably a metre thick in some places).
A frozen bridge of ice tentacles:
Peter is standing on the river here, about halfway down the falls. Because he cares about SAFETY, he did not attempt to swim. Because I care about hypothermia (and, specifically, avoiding it) I didn’t try to swim either. I was tempted, though.
It’s perhaps not apparent here, but Peter is standing near the top of a pretty much vertical drop about 15 metres down to the river. This was right after we crossed the river ice and CLIMBED up. I’d just like to point out here that my boots, while warm and shiny and sturdy, are made for walking around all winter on nice, safe, snow-covered city sidewalks. They’re a tad slippy on the climbing straight up snowy cliff faces with practically zero footholds. I would have been scared to climb that if it hadn’t been covered in snow. Oh, and also I walked face first right into a huge branch that hung out over the trail and just about knocked myself out. Just like in the cartoons!
Peter, on the other hand, has the perfect boots for living up here. He rarely gets a chance to use them down in balmy Windsor.
Posted by jodi on February 12, 2010 at 5.19pm
notes from a day spent in transit
January 3, 2010
A 4am wake up call is especially brutal when you sleep the sleep of the elderly, logging nearly as much lying-awake-time as sleep-time. Cold Indian restaurant leftovers don’t go down too badly at 4:30am but next time I’ll skip the apple I ate afterwards. Talk about queasy making.
A woman behind me in the Air Canada check in line was annoying the hell out of me with her chirpy, pushy efficiency writing out those little name tags for all of her and her husband’s bags. At one point her husband made a growly noise and then tore up and threw out something that I think was the bag tags she had just made for him. Three seconds later she was at the counter again, doggedly filling out tags.
I guess you don’t have to take off your shoes at security when flying within Canada. How come nobody told me that last time?
Inside security, Chipper Lady’s husband lost his two dollar coin in the pop machine. She told him to press every button for every kind of pop, to press the money return button again, to press every button AGAIN, then said “are you sure you put your toonie in?” (huh?). The husband then flew into a rage, slamming on the machine and shouting “fucking piece of shit! fucking piece of shit!”. Oddly enough, airport security didn’t say squat to the guy about his behaviour. And he didn’t get his pop, or his two dollars back. I hoped they weren’t going to be on my plane.
On the plane I heard another woman talking about how she hoped “those Americans” wouldn’t be on our plane. Meaning Mr Rage, I guess, in that charming way some people have of assuming anybody who’s a jackass must be American. I sort of doubt he was (American, I mean: he was clearly a jackass). He was flying from London to Toronto, after all, and his wife said “toonie” without any sort of emphasis to indicate it was a novelty to her. Anyway, Mr Rage and Chipper Lady WERE on our plane, but they were drowned out by the engine noise, so, yay.
The plane to North Bay had only ten passengers on it, and loads of empty seats. Fortunately none of the other people were significant to me in any way and we did not wind up back on the Island. Phew.
Our plane out of London was so slow to take off that turnaround time in Toronto was only fifteen minutes instead of an hour. Guess what that means? My luggage did not make its connecting flight on time. Whee! This is my first ever experience with Delayed or Missing Luggage. Next flight from Toronto gets here at 3:30 this afternoon, so here’s hoping.
Here is a picture of Lake Nipissing from the plane:
It’s frozen!
There was a young woman from my plane (with stringy hair, giant floppy dread-hat and hippie shawl) standing talking to the people who were picking her up (parents?) while we waited for our bags that didn’t arrive; she said something about being served chili with brown rice (yup, hippie food) and the woman (mom) wrinkled her nose magnificently, drawing up both corners of her mouth up Billy Idol style at once (I had no idea it was even possible to do such a thing with a mouth) and said, “What? Chili on RICE?” like it was Just the Craziest Thing Ever. Heh. Awesome.
I have always eaten chili on rice, by the way. I guess that makes me a HIPPIE. Too bad my patchouli oil is currently lost somewhere with my baggage.
In the checkout line at Zellers later, feeling as if I was struggling to stay awake after a long, long day, I caught sight of a digital clock over the cashier’s shoulder. 9:50am, people. The realization was nearly enough to make me fall asleep standing right there. Also, I blame the fatigue for making me not think to get a toothbrush or underpants, so worst case scenario is I’ll be teaching my first class at Nipissing in the grubby clothes I traveled AND slept in! First impressions FTW.
The view out the front window of my new temporary home. Yup, there’s a portajohn across the street. Could come in handy!
Posted by jodi on January 3, 2010 at 2.44pm
cold (and getting colder)
January 2, 2010
It’s currently minus-11° here; minus-22° in North Bay. Which is where I’ll be moving tomorrow, for the next four months, for a limited term teaching job at Nipissing University. I bought extra long johns.
Posted by jodi on January 2, 2010 at 11.40am
busy, busy
January 1, 2010
Getting ready to fly.
Posted by jodi on January 1, 2010 at 3.13pm
heading north
August 25, 2009
I’m flying up to North Bay, Ontario today for a job interview tomorrow. I’m always nervous talking about things that still have a chance to fall through, so for now we’ll leave it at that.
I started a little Ishbel shawl with some of my handspun in order to have something easy I could knit during my flight. With the changeover in Toronto it’s about four hours there and back, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m into the lace portion by the time I get home tomorrow night.
Posted by jodi on August 25, 2009 at 11.46am
like hurtling backwards and forwards in time
April 7, 2009
Peter and I just returned from a six-day trip to Athens Georgia to attend the 2009 MFA thesis exhibition at the Lamar Dodd School of Art and to visit dear friends we haven’t seen since I graduated and high-tailed it out of Georgia, almost a year ago now. It was days and days of highway driving punctuated by little whirlwinds of red hot tearful reunion action, Waffle House coffee, record shopping and taking full advantage of the absurdly cheap booze to be had in this special little college town. But one of the very specialest moments of the trip was spotting this little boy at the Kentucky Welcome Center, pausing for a meditative moment in one of the weirdest makeup jobs I’ve seen in a while:
The funniest part is that painfully normal logo sweatshirt. I so badly wanted to pinch his cheeks, tell him how awesome he is, and then take him to the mall and buy him some goth-boy clothes.
Otherwise, when I wasn’t clinging to people (it likely won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I’m very hands-on, the huggy type), there was a whole lot of this:
and also copious amounts of this:
Also, since it was warm like summer and I was able to go around bare-backed quite a bit, I discovered that Michiganders love the hell outta me. They see the Great Lakes tattooed on my back and they come up with their hands raised in the mitten shape and say, hey Michigaaaaaaaannn! And ask me where I’m from. It’s awesome fun, and I’m thinking about starting to ask them all to write in my book or something. I haven’t yet met any Youpers this way, but I’ll keep on trying. Now, of course, I’m all bundled up again, having returned home from bare legs and tank top weather back to snow on the ground and dull drizzle.
Posted by jodi on April 7, 2009 at 8.36am
