That done I made my way over to the nearby St. Patricks church which is another neat Catholic church.   It was pretty nice but I think the one in Montreal takes it.  Such cool achitecture.

How does one get to NY to see the sights?  First you take the free shuttle from the hotel to the Newark airport, take their air tran to the Newark Airport station on the NJ Rail System, take the NJ Train ($15 one way) to Penn Station NY. (not to be confused with Penn Station NJ which is the station before.)

From there you can walk or take the subway. Its not too far a walk, 20-30 I think, but I can see it being super frustrating and annoying if it was a weekday with all the office people in the city too.  Rush hour pedestrian traffic must be insane.

Seeing the sites:

Statue of Liberty

I had purchased a reserved ticket at the Statue of Liberty for 10am , so I took the #1 subway line from Penn Station to South Ferry (note: you have to be in the front 5 cars in order to get off at South Ferry) which is right beside Battery Park where you catch the Ferry.  If I had purchased it online earlier I could have got one that had the monument pass (its free but its first come first serve and theres only so many) .  That gets you into the statue base.    When I got there at just after 9 there were few people, tiny lines and was great.  As 10 approached there were a lot more people and by the time I left I could see why you’d want the reserve ticket.  Means you skip the buying ticket line and the poor regular shmoe line and get into the security line ahead.

Once through airport like security you board the ferry and off you go to the Statue.  They have guided tours every hour or you just explore the island.  I have to say its one of the colour monuments I’ve visited.   The spot right in front of the front of the statue is of course busy with picture takers but at the time I was there it wasn’t to bad.

When done catch a Ferry that takes you to Ellis Island.  It was okay, it might have been neater if it had personal meaning to me though.

Then catch the ferry again and back to battery park.

This is where I had the worst sausage I have ever had.   WORST EVAR It was terrible, not even a sausage , a poorly flavoured hotdog.  And not even a good hotdog.  The guys out front of union make these clowns look well clowny.

Back to South Ferry and on the #1 train to Times Square.

I fully plan to write my senator or local congressman if I knew who they were.  I know this is an issue that is of deep concern to them.  Oil prices high, banks and investment companies failing and US Citizens having to wait in a huge line to go through US customs.  Ridiculous.

So here I am in beautiful miami in a nice hotel with a sweet view overlooking ….the roof.  To add insult to injury its not like I look over the roof to other buildings its over to roof and then solid wall.  So my view is nothing but roof and wall.   Awesome, whats the point of even putting a patio door (which is sealed to prevent you playing on the roof.  I know this cause I wanted to)  Also I have a handicapped bathroom, go ahead make your jokes but not having a tub is unnverving.

Oh and theres a maid next door at 7:45pm thats speaking loudly in french (on a phone I assume) .  What are the odds of that.  French in a place thats either spanish or english with a lot of spanish?  weird.

Pico Bob

Clamity Ficus

Doc UmbrellaTree

Technically Pico Bob is Pico Bob the second as the first went to university with me and was involved in a tragic stationary car accident…he fell out of the car after graduation.   A terrible terrible day.

Upon getting back I find my suitcase had been delivered which was great news until I tried to roll it. Apparently they had felt it necessary to break one of the two rolley wheels. Sour grapes indeed, next time I will check my bags up front. Geez.

I finish work , stop by the Keg for some food and head back to the hotel. I spot a neat old church on my way home and pop in. I love old churches, so much character. I check out whats neat in Montreal and map out two churches to visit the following morning.

First on the list was Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. Built in 1771 its got some history with lots to do. I check out the main part of the church with the fantastic wood/stone work, stain glass and imagery, which not being catholic I was a little mystified at somethings but was still neat. From there you can climb to the tower and look out over Old Montreal. This brings you up and close to the angels that are on the roof which are also pretty cool. From the roof its a descent down into the crypt with a bunch of artifacts that were unearthed not so long ago with some old stonework and arches and earthen walls.

Next was a walk down through Old Montreal which sadly has way to many tourist junk shops. Seemed like a neat restaurant followed by a junk shop followed by a restaurant ad infinitum. Eventually I made my way to Notre-Dame Basilica which was much bigger and much more impressive. I was impressed by the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours but Notre-Dame is very very impressive, I really wish I had taken my camera. Loved it.

To top er off I stopped on the way back to the hotel for a smoked meat sandwich.

Once there they met up with their support crews and swapped gear to start the mountain bike that would take them to Stoney Point.

There they had the orienteering course and ropes course.   The orienteering section they had to find flags marked on their map and retrieve the word.  For the ropes course they had to clip on to a rope (a la survivor) and follow it around , up , over and through logs.

Once that was completed it was back to the bikes to head to Greenock Swamp.  Let me tell you about this swamp.  When it was originally scouted last year it was dry and dense until you got near the lake where you could sink in and get a really smelly shoe.  That was last year.  This year it has rained and the swamp was super swampy.  One of the members on Three Wisemen was rumoured to have sunk in upto his neck at one point.

To get to the swamp teams had to ride their bike in to the middle via a nice and slick clay atv trail.  I bailed on it twice last year and it was only kind of wet.   Once at the cp, they’d drop their bikes and head into the various checkpoints with only one being mandatory.  Needless to say all the teams chose to do just that one.  As it was they were in there for a good 5 hours at least.    Once done they’d get back on their bikes and head to the Brant Tract trail where they did a series of optional cp’s on a mountain bike trail system.  From there they headed to Paisely to get in their canoes and paddle to Mikes Challenge at the finish line. Mikes challenge was an optional 70 squats for 10 points. (which all the teams opted to do amazingly).  Once finished they portaged their canoes the 500 or so meters to the finish line.

Rawwwwwwwwwk!!

Hey, lets make them canoe on choppy lake huron for 16km and hey lets make them bike on clay atv trail leading into the middle of swamp (that this organizer wiped out on twice while scouting) and then lets make them drop their bikes and then lets make them trek into the swamp.   Oh and make it night time too.  Oh and its rained a ton since then and now the swamp which was relatively dry is super swampy with some racers falling in up to their chests.  Oh lets not forget the torrential down pours and cold weather.  That’d be awesome too.  Lets not forget the ropes course which when being designed had the constant check of “Is this too mean?  naaaahhhhhh.”   Awesome.

Registration:  Point Clark Lighthouse 8am-12pm Saturday.

Registration took place in the historic Point Clark Lighthouse and surprisingly a lot of teams were there bright and early to check in and get their maps.

Start : Point Clark Public Beach 2:00pm Saturday

8 Teams:  Novarobots, Tigers, Three Wise Men, Natural Selection, SOS, Walter Claus Experience, Have No Plan,J&J/Running Free

At slighty after 2 the go was given and teams launched their canoes into Lake Huron to paddle 16km north to Kincardine.   Team Novarobots got off to a bad start as they dumped their canoe approximately 1m off shore trying to escape the breaking waves.  At least I think it was them, it could have been the East Coasters Team Natural Selection.   Appoximately 30 minutes into the canoe it started to rain and rain hard.  So hard in fact there were points it was hard to see in front of you.   They had been told to make it to the 8km CP 1B point and check in.  At that point the call was made for safety and teams pulled their canoes up to the road and proceeded to the first TA (Transition Area) on foot.  Which was great for people except for team who had todo that trek in sandals.  Wet feet and sandals equals blisters.  Only one team made it to shore without dumping with some skillfull steering to shore.  Most of the others dumped within sight of the CP as they got to the shallower waters where the waves were breaking.  Team SOS learned the hard way that their water proof map bag wasn’t so waterproof.  I saw them pulling out their map bag from the bottom of the canoe and cringed
thinking oh man, I hope that bag was sealed.  Turns out they had been sold the map bag and the person selling it had punched a hole into it to attached a ring to it for clipping.  Needless to say it was now no longer water proof.  Team Have No Plan beached earlier and portaged for an hour to get to the CP whereas most teams dumped at about the point where the CP comes into view and then portaged the last bit.

To Be Cont.

I must say I feel quite special surfing away in the dark.  There can’t be many online right now with everything black as far as the eye can see.  The good ole ups, saved many a things with all the power blips this place gets.

I had the desktop on the ups which is good but when I’m not there it’ll suck it dry.  I’m not sure when the power went out but it had drained most of the battery by the time I got in.  So I shut it down and unplugged the printer from it as well.  I may have to insall the software that automatically shuts the pc down as well as rearrange which is on the battery and which is just on surge protect for next time for maximum

I think its kind of hilarious the super has to sit at the front door cause it doesn’t work without power.  Also the garage door to the underground parking doesn’t work either.   So the matmobile is out in visitor parking.  Not surprisingly there aren’t many in visitors as all the old biddies in the building were in by 7.  The ole biddie to age ratio is like 435:1 I swear.

Apparently theres something about my models year that necessitates forgoing the lube.  The 2002 Grandprix? Cheap.  The 2004 GP? Cheap.  The Mattmobile (2003 GP)?  sans lube.  Theres no chip in it so what the hell could be worth that?  If its there its hidden and unadvertised.  I used a key copied at cdn tire and there was something about it because the security light lit up on the dash and it killed the engine.  I can only assume its a personal vendetta against me to be constantly screwing me on stupid little things.  Oh and they sent me a nice piece of mail informing me its time to change my coolant (dexcool) I figure better to let it get low so when it leaks into the engine (as those series of engines do) it only kind of destroys it.

GRRRRRRRRRR

So bitter.