Trip #1 In The Books...

I have to leave my hotel in about four hours. Seeing as it's 11:00pm, this is something I'm not happy with. It's only a 90 minute drive to the airport, though, so I'm not concerned. I can sleep on the flight, and I have plenty of coffee.

My first trip of the year went pretty well. They can always go better, but they can certainly always go worse. This trip fell squarely, and comfortably, in the middle.

I landed about 11:30pm; about an hour late, and went to pick up my rental car. Something told me to go ahead and get the four-wheel drive, and I'm glad I did. Once I got into the nether regions of Ontario, it came in handy.

I wasn't too jazzed with the weather when I landed, though. I'd decided to go with a Jeep Liberty. The nice lady at the Thrifty counter pointed through the doors towards them, and out I went.

Into a blizzard.

Okay, it probably wasn't a "blizzard" by the standards of anyone who sees snow every year but, for someone from San Diego, these were white-out conditions. I was snow blind. And this was my truck:

My Jeep Liberty

I was based out of Chatham, Ontario, which is a small town about four hours west of Toronto. Once you get this far out, the majority of what you see is farmland. Well, unless you go to Sarnia, and then you see chemical plants.

I prefer farmland.

As I dabble in landscape photography, I made sure I had my camera; the trusty Canon G12, on the console next to me. You never know when a photo op will pop up and, hey, you wanna' be ready. As I was doing a lot of driving, I expected a lot of photo ops. I got some, but not nearly what I'd hoped. Then again, the weather wasn't the greatest.Still, I'd be damned if I wasn't going to take some pictures.

As I said, there's a lot of farmland up here and, everywhere you look, there are barns, etc; you know, things that belong on a farm.

So I did some snappin':

Of course, barns and farmland aren't the only things to shoot. One thing that Canada has, and Ontario especially, is police officers. The thought that popped into my min when I saw this scene was "They are out there. They are out there and they will find you and they will catch you":

No one ever successfully outruns a cop in Canada.

Now, sadly, my GPS unit died. It didn't wait for an opportune moment to die, it died while I was on my way to London, and driving unfamiliar roads. As a result, I had to rely on Google Maps (eons better than MapQuest, by the way). The bad part about that is, even though the directions are accurate, they do you no good if you don't read them correctly. What happens then is, well, you get lost.

That can be a blessing in disguise, though. When you get lost, you'll see all kinds of things that weren't on your prescribed route. Today, for example, I ended up driving through a residential neighborhood before coming up on a semi-frozen Thames River in Wallaceburg:

The Thames River.

Of course, I would've preferred that the sun was out, but I made do with what lighting I had, and got a shot of something that I never would've seen had my GPS decided to play nice.

You'll notice that there's snow in these photos. Well, one thing I've learned after surviving this winter extravaganza is that, when you drive your car in the snow, it gets dirty. Here's someone who was surely aware of that; they just didn't care:

Cops can't even run the license plate.

I get a big kick out of some of the road signs in Canada sometimes. They're funny. I especially like any sign that has a moose on it, but I didn't encounter any of those on this trip. I did, however, see a few which made me chuckle.

This one kills two birds with one stone: A funny sign and a farm:



Translation: Fatigue kills. Take a break.



What, exactly, is the reason not to drive 140?

All in all, it was a good trip. I got some problems taken care of, and I laid the foundation for problems in the future.

Hehehehe... Okay, not really.

The farms came and went, the cops wheeled by and the snow fell. I fly back in the morning, including having scored a first class bump to Denver. I'm still waiting to see what happens from Denver to San Diego. My fingers are crossed.

A couple of side notes here:

If you like the photos in this entry, and you're looking to buy a camera that isn't a big DSLR rig, consider the Canon G12. I paid $500.00 for mine, and I'm now travelling without my DSLR rig a lot more often. The G12 just gets the job done. If I didn't need the Canon 40D for my concert work, I might just be satisfied with the G12.

As I typed this, I was sitting in my swanky suite at the Holiday Inn in Chatham, listening to the news. Now, I'm not really a fan of CNN, but it's one of the few choices I have. Anyway, there's been non-stop coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. There's non-stop coverage of the nuclear power plants and their possible meltdown. It just ain't good. Talk about a bad, bad situation.

Anytime I see something like this, I'm reminded of one of my favorite sayings: "Dream like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow".

In other words, get out there and shoot some barns: