With the buoys finally completed, we got sent back to Beauharnois to concentrate on assisting ships in the ice of the Canal. On our way through the American Locks we encountered some visitors who didn't trust the brash ice left in the track between the locks.
Ships normally meet in the channel between the locks but, with the ice there is only one way traffic. Getting between the locks in ice is pretty easy as there is only one way the ship can go though it makes it harder for the larger ships to get their bows into the locks without pushing ice in there, as well.
Beauharnois Canal usually doesn't have a problem with ice in December because it is held up on Lake St. Francis by an ice boom but the unusually cold weather has made a lot of ice. At the lower end of the canal are the two Beauharnois Locks with the Generating Station to the south of them protected by ice booms along the Canal outside the channel. Once ice gets into the Canal there isn't anywhere for it to go but towards the locks due to the current. Ships waiting for the lock will sometimes get stuck in the track as the ice freezes around them. Then, we have to break a relief track beside them to loosen the ice so the ship can move ahead.
Ice slows every operation down with the tight clearances between ships and locks. Ships waiting their turn are sometimes told to stop in the ice at the nearest anchorage until there is an opening. Of course, they get frozen into the ice, as well, and often need to be broken free to get moving.
With a real winter hitting the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, we are doing double duty as icebreaker while trying to lift our remaining light buoys before they get damaged by the ice.
Our compatriot on the US side of the Seaway is also out on the water lifting their buoys for the winter.
While the Thousand Islands is cottage country in the summer time, it is quite picturesque in the off season, as well.
Merry Christmas to all the mariners for whom Christmas is just another work day on the water.
Still, the enlightened Plateau Mont-Royal administration continues to shut the door on their network of bike paths on November 15th even when it is a separated lane such as Rachel Street.
I wonder, are cyclists expected not to use this resource because a date has been posted? Will police ticket them if they do? Then, you have the situation on Clark Street where car owners gleefully re-take possession of their beloved asphalt that has been stolen by cyclists for 8 1/2 months of the year. It almost makes the coming of ice and snow worthwhile just to have full use of the road again.
Plus, the embarrassment of parking choices available in this transition period where cars park in both places at the same time. You can sense the giddiness in the air as the car is king mantle is firmly set on the transportation crown. Perhaps someday the city will find the capacity to make bike infrastructure available year-round like, well, roads and sidewalks. Until such time, there should be some consistency in application. If cars are not required to install winter tires until December 15th, then bike paths should, as a minimum, be kept open until the same date.
Caught the race last Sunday after watching the Quebec race on Friday. The Vieux Quebec is a great place to walk around but you only get to see the cyclists for a brief moment because the streets are all so short and winding. Plus the DJ playing music at the finish line in Quebec had the volume cranked up so loud it was very unpleasant. The route for the Montreal race allowed for some great places to catch a good section of the circuit. Most people congregated along Avenue du Parc and on the climb up Camilien Houde. For some reason, the top section of the mountain was blocked off by the police so people had to traipse through the forest to get around to the descent on the opposite side.
Watch for the fans of David Veilleux in the third video who are cheering him on as he finishes his professional career with Europcar. Peter Sagan made a nice jump off of Ryder Hesjedal's wheel on the last little climb at Universite de Montreal and carried it through to the finish. Ryder hung on for third place so it was a popular podium with the fans.
Hopefully, Ryder will carry this positive result through to next season and will have better luck than he did this year.
Part of the holiday in England involved five days on a wide beam barge on the Grand and Union Canal. This was definitely on a different scale compared to transiting through the Welland Canal or the South Shore Canal with my ship.
The system is serve yourself where you have to operate the locks by putting someone ashore who opens the valves (gates) to lower or raise the water to the correct level as well as open and close the lock doors (paddles). This can be a bit onerous if only one person is working the lock, but there is a spirit of comraderie amongst boaters and people help each other out.
The wide canal is designed such that two narrow boats can lock through at a time, but our wide beam barge had to take the lock by itself. Some people, however, seemed to think our barge was narrower than it was!
People who travel and live on narrow boats are a unique lot, and this is reflected in how they decorate and name their boats.
For me, the best part of the trip was passing through the tranquil countryside with plentiful signs of nature and wildlife sharing the canal with boaters.
The English weather seemed to change every five minutes, but every once in a while it paid dividends.
A summer holiday in Europe gave a chance to try out the bike sharing systems in London and Paris. In London, the city has adopted the Montreal Bixi system naming it Barclay's Cycle Hire though it is more popularly known as Boris Bikes after the mayor of London. The bikes are the same as the Bixi bikes used in Montreal though the stations tend to be permanently embedded in a location since the city doesn't have to worry about snow clearing. Initially, I had hopes of biking around the city on one of the Cycling Super Highways, but this dream quickly evaporated once I saw the traffic and that these highways were nothing more than painted squares on some of the street lanes.
In the above picture, CS7 is actually the second lane from the left so cyclists get to have traffic whizzing by on both sides. As well, the fact that a cyclist died the month before on a Boris Bike didn't help (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23210035). Even so, some people did brave the roads on a BB.
So, still wanting to say that I had biked in London, we decided to head to Hyde Park, which has some bike paths and a couple of Barclays Cycle Hire stations in the vicinity. Of course, trying to get a bike was a challenge as there was a problem with the terminal though the person on the helpline was able to process the transaction and get us going. Once on the bike, it was worth the trouble and a pleasant ride through the park.
In Paris, the bike share system is called Velib. The system is similar to the Bixi, but the bikes are somewhat lighter in weight and more pleasant to ride on.
There are stations throughout central Paris and several around the hotel we were staying at near Place de la Nation. With it being August, half of the Parisiens were out of the city on holiday. Also, our first full day in Paris was a Sunday so the city seemed very tranquil. We saw that there seemed to be alot of bike paths we could use to visit the city and decided to give the Velibs a try.
Overall, the experience of riding around Paris on a Velib was a very positive one. A one day ticket cost only 1.7 Euros, which is less than half of what it costs for a day ticket in Montreal with Bixi. There are many bike paths to choose from though you need to watch out for pedestrians at all times since the paths tend to be placed on the wide sidewalks of the boulevards and do not stand out visually so people tend not to notice them as they are walking. We only had one difficult moment around the Louvre where there was no path and lots of traffic, but our experience, at least during the relatively quiet month of August, was that using the Velib to ride around Paris was a more pleasant and economical form of travel than the Metro. The only issue, seemingly common to any bike share system, was the condition of some of the bicycles we tried to use. With Velib, you had to choose the bike from the list of available ones on the terminal screen. We quickly realized that we had to check the bikes before going to the terminal to make sure the one we picked was in good condition. Even then, it was sometimes impossible to remove the bike from its stand so we would have to go back and try again. As with Bixi, it seems advantageous to get a member's key and so avoid the issue of dealing with the terminal altogether. In any case, we enjoyed using the Velib so much the first day that we signed up again for the second day. Even with the few issues with the bikes, given the number of trips we made over the two days, we probably saved 20 Euros in Metro tickets.
A weekend visit to Ottawa brought the need for a vehicle so I rented one from the local rent-a-car place. I normally go with the most economical choice as it is only a two hour drive but my passengers usually gripe about the amount of leg room so I went with a standard size car for a change. When I went to pick up the car, the rental agent told me, as if I had won the lottery, that he was going to give me an all-wheel-drive SUV for the same price. Obviously, it was because they didn't have anymore vehicles available but I said whatever and he brought out a brand new SUV. He hands me the keys with a twinkle in his eye expecting that I will be impressed and pleased. All I could think of was that I was glad I was taking it out of the city and onto the highway so I didn't have to try and manoeuvre it around all the traffic, construction and narrow streets of Montreal. Climbing in, I got a bizarre sensation that I was extremely high above everything yet I also felt somehow closed in. As I familiarized myself with the various controls, I realized that the designers of the vehicle had undoubtedly designed the interior in order to make the occupants feel safe. The only thing I could equate it to, though I have never been in one, is being inside a tank surrounded by steel.
As I drove around making my way to the highway, I had the impression that the vehicle was actually bigger than it was. I felt like I was going to clip passing cars on the left or parked cars on the right. No wonder regular drivers of these behemoths get irate at cyclists; they need the whole road. Granted, it was a pleasant vehicle to drive on the highway with lots of room but, after foolishly driving around downtown Montreal on the subsequent Monday, I rushed to take this beast back to the car rental early. What a relief to be free of the stress of having this weight around me. I cannot fathom what the thinking is for drivers who actually buy these vehicles when most of their driving is in the city. Can it really provide a sense of security? Give me two wheels anytime.
Wonderful biking weather around Montreal for the Canada Day weekend for the few of us who do not move on July 1st. Plus the start of the Tour de France! Here's hoping that Ryder Hesjedal stays out of trouble the first week. And also hoping that there is a special hell reserved for Lance A. (can't bring myself to write/say his name anymore) who does not know that he should just keep his f---ing mouth shut and disappear. May he spend the rest of his days on a bike path behind a roller blader.
Montreal is investing a lot of money to revamp many of its streets by widening sidewalks at intersections and other traffic calming measures such as speed bumps on residential streets. As I was riding along the Lakeshore out to St. Anne de Bellevue, I was passed by several STM buses. The speed limit on this road is 30 km/hr and there are signs telling drivers to get onto the highway if they are in a hurry. Now, I wasn't doing 30 km/hr; more like 20. But then most of the buses seemed to be moving at well in excess of the speed limit. A thought occurred to me; if every bus in the city drove at or under the speed limit all the time it would 'calm' the traffic throughout the city without costing a single nickel to citizens.
From the Plateau, a ride out to the West Island and St. Anne de Bellevue is somewhat longer than out to the east point. Depending on my mood, I will do it clock-wise or counter-clockwise. Yesterday, I decided to go out along the Lachine Canal and the Lakeshore because I thought I might just turn around and backtrack instead of continuing past Senneville and Boulevard Gouin. In the end, I decided to carry-on but chose to try a different route that cuts through the middle of suburbia via Chemin de l'Anse-a-l'Orme.
Nothing special about the path following the chemin; a marked shoulder section on a road designed for cars to head for the highway. To connect up with the path to take me through Kirkland, I just turned left at the first street I came to as shown on the map above. Not surprisingly, there was no sign on l'Anse-a-l'Orme to direct cyclists to turn. The path through Kirkland is a very nice paved path leading through a hydro right-of-way almost up the Boulevard St. Charles. It then just stops in a mall parking lot and you have to make your way through the parking lots on both sides of St. Charles before picking up the path again. This was not too much trouble, especially when compared to the design of the path further east at the intersection of Salaberry and Boulevard des Sources.
Here, the path stops for an entire block before des Sources and cyclists are expected to walk their bikes along the block and then across des Sources before picking up the path again. The only problem is that the lights at des Sources do not allow for pedestrian crossing on the north side of the intersection. There are no painted lines, no pedestrian lights and the traffic lights are set up for traffic to turn left throughout the green. In the end, I had to cross to the south to cross the intersection. Once across des Sources, I was so pissed at the whole situation I just kept biking along the road. It is beyond all logic that all this effort has been put to create cycling infrastructure except for the most critical spot with the highest risk due to volume of traffic. It is a shame because I would certainly chose this bike path over Boulevard Gouin as it leads directly Parc nature du Bois-de-Liesse as its east end.
I often ride out to the east end of the island of Montreal following the south shore and then coming back on Boulevard Gouin, but my favourite part is the zen-like ride through the Parc-nature de la Pointe-aux-Prairies.
Even though it is a gravel path, the surface beats the majority of the supposedly paved 'path' on Boulevard Gouin.
I was not going to do the Tour de l'ile de Montreal this year, but changed my mind at the last minute. Even though it started in pouring rain, the atmosphere is so positive that I did not regret the decision. Within the hour, the sun was out and it was extremely pleasant as we stopped at the 2nd rest area in Lasalle.
Perhaps the raison d'etre for the tour might be diminished now that cycling has become integrated into the transportation fabric of the city, but it is still an energizing experience to the full access to the road without the worry of avoiding cars and trucks all the time. Long live the tour!
I have often noticed these signs around the Plateau, but did not really think too much about them.
I can understand the request in order to protect vegetation but, if it is just a question of aesthetics, why single out bikes? Why not request that cars not park in front of the yard, as well?
I decided to alter my normal ride out to Parc Maisonneuve and keep riding east on St. Zotique into Anjou. I followed the bike lane all the way, which zigzagged through the suburban east end of the city. East of Viau you don't see many cyclists and, clearly, drivers don't see you even though the bike lanes on the street are reasonably well marked. In fact, you have to be careful not to be lured into a false sense of security by the bike lane because alertness is the watch word. In a short span, I was cut off by several vehicles at intersections and drive ways, and even had one driver head right for me, oblivious of the marked bike lane I was following. It was a comfort to return to the Plateau where, for cyclists, there is safety in numbers.
Three weeks ago my ship was going through St. Lambert lock. Today, I took advantage of the few remaining days that cyclists can ride around Ile Notre Dame before the F1 train comes into town and then took the path that follows the South Shore Canal to the Estacade and Ile des Seours.
The sun was wonderful after several days of rain, but the clouds of shad flies meant one is well advised to keep their mouths closed. The bugs continued all along the river out to Lachine so I came back via the Lachine Canal and got to see the Dragon Boat crews practicing.
Even the buildings seemed to be enjoying the seemingly rare sunshine.
The Georgian Bay Small Craft Route winding through the 30,000 islands along the eastern shore of the bay is famous for its narrow channels through the rock strewn waters. However, the wide and sheltered expanse of Parry Sound just northwest of the town of Parry Sound makes for some idyllic and relaxed cruising.
Our next trip into town brought another vessel on a cruise in the Sound.
Not sure what he was doing that required him to display his 'Restricted' shapes, but we were the only other vessel around and were not planning on bothering him anyways.
