I had a lot of fun this past weekend. Saturday started with a dragonboat practice followed by brunch with some of the other people on the Algonquin College Singapore Slings. Once sated, I did a bunch of errands that saw me drive back and forth across Ottawa from place to place. Tiring of that, I headed out on my bike along the Ottawa River path to the top of the locks and into the Market for gelato at Piccolo Grande on Murray. Happily full of a double-chocolate gelato that had big chunks of white chocolate in it, I headed back towards the Cenotaph to check out the festivities related to the Ottawa Race Weekend.

To say the area was crowded would be a bit like saying the Pacific Ocean has a lot of water in it.

Most of the roads were closed to cars because they were packed with people. People who had just finished a race, people who were getting ready to race, people who were in a race, people who were watching the races and people who were trying to figure out how they could get to where they wanted to be given all the road closures and people.

A friend of mine was doing the 10 km race, so I found a good vantage point near the first turn and waited for the race to start.

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Near the end of January, I posted some pictures I took of sunrise one morning. Last week, on the first day of Spring, I took some more pictures at sunrise. Here’s a photo from each day, side by side for your viewing convenience:

January 21, 2009

March 20, 2009

The astute observer will have noticed that the sun is rising 10 to 20 degrees to the left of where it did on January 21st. This got me to thinking that there’s an experiment you can try at home based on this difference.

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@BadAstronomer re-tweeted a link to some photos of the space shuttle and the International Space Station taken about an hour before they docked yesterday evening that’s worth a visit. If a similar opportunity exists when they separate, I may try to take some pictures, too.

I was out and about at lunch with a co-worker last week. We passed by a local chip wagon so we stopped to order lunch.  While waiting for our orders we browsed through a table full of books in front of Collected Works, a book store near Holland and Wellington. In one of the boxes I came across an interesting set of titles that reflected some of the major stages of life, pretty much in chronological order.

The books on dating, marriage and death were in another box.

After writing the previous entry, I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed to a darkish area in Tunney’s Pasture. Once there, I set up my tripod on the hood of my Tracker, located Venus (hard to miss as it was the second brightest thing in the sky) and pointed the camera so that it would have the best chance of the ISS being in frame. And then I waited.

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My apartment faces roughly east-southeast, meaning I am often treated to some fairly spectacular sunrises (if I am awake). This morning’s was particularly impressive so I decided to take a few pictures.

The squarish building on the horizon is one of the buildings in the Experimental Farm, while the building with the smoke stack that looks like a factory is actually the Civic Hospital.

It’s amazing how much of a difference a couple of minutes can make. Most of the photos were taken a minute or two before the sun actually poked it’s head over the horizon, while the last two were taken after sunrise. The difference is like night and day (literally!).

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I drove Brian home to Kanata this evening after our weekly gaming session. While driving along the 417 westbound near Maitland we watched a car in the eastbound lanes go zipping off the road, hit the snow bank and flip over into the ditch. I immediately called 911 who transferred me to the OPP. While reporting the location, we got off at Maitland and got back on heading east. We arrived on scene to find the driver standing near his car along with a couple of Bylaw Enforcement officers who happened to be passing by.

Fortunately, the driver was just a little shaken up and not actually hurt so he must have been wearing his seatbelt. The skid marks were still visible and showed that his trip into the snow bank probably started from the left lane. Talk about a lucky guy!

Once I confirmed to the dispatcher he was uninjured, I set up some road flares to alert on coming drivers. An OPP officer arrived just as I finished lighting the last flare and a tow truck appeared a few seconds later. The OPP officer released us from the scene and we resumed our journey to Kanata and I’m happy to report that was uneventful. I snapped a picture of the upside down car before we left.

On my way home from Kanata, I came across another car in a snow bank on the other side of the median. Fortunately, this one appeared to be just sitting on top of the snow bank. As another car was stopped nearby and there didn’t appear to be anyone looking injured, I called *OPP (*677) to make sure they were aware of it rather than calling 911.

While most people on the 417 were travelling around 80 km/h, there were a few who insisted on driving along at 100 km/h or faster as though the roads were bare and dry rather than partially snow covered and slippery. Hopefully, they arrived safely at their destinations and not upside down in a snow bank.