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I’ve been working on a summary of 2009 for a while, but version 1.0 just did not come together the way I wanted, so I’ve abandoned it in favour of version 2.0.  Hopefully this one works out a bit better.

2009 was a busy year for me on a number of different fronts.

Blogging

According to my calculations, I posted 116 entries to my blog in 2009.

The Great OC Transpo Bus Strike provided almost limitless things to write about and generated a lot of traffic for my blog.  I almost had a bunch of buttons with my anti-ATU logo made so that I could hand them out to people. Fortunately, the union more or less saw the light and returned to work just before they were legislated back by Parliament.

I wrote about dragon boating, chasing weather balloons (and here), Rogers’ decision to remove WPBS from their lineup and their subsequent decision to not remove it and celebrity deaths. Climbing, photography and the weather also featured among the things I wrote about.

The year ended with a couple of entries about the pirate radio station run by Jayhaed Saadé, a fourteen-year old spoiled brat in Greely. After being presented with not one, but two, cease-and-desist orders from Industry Canada, he pulled the plug on his illegal radio station, put the equipment into “third party storage” and posted an apology on his website. However, within a few days, he was back on the air and the apology was removed from his site. He’s back in the news as a result of being back on the air, but the media coverage is not as flattering and fellow amateur radio bloggers Bob and Darin have both written about him. (Bob is even quoted in the Ottawa Citizen on this matter.) Sooner or later, Industry Canada is going to confiscate the $80,000 worth of equipment and probably levy some pretty stiff fines, too.

Travel

When I think about the travelling I did in 2009, I find myself thinking about the trips I took for work. I went to Montreal in February for a couple of days to observe focus group testing and then headed straight to Toronto for the weekend to visit my relatives. During the summer, I headed up to the cottage a few times. October saw work take me to Sturgeon Falls, Sherbrooke, Halifax and Winnipeg. The first two were just before and after Thanksgiving, while the last two were in the same week. I was able to head to Halifax a couple of days early and had a great time visiting Peggy’s Cove while I was there. In early November, I ended up in northern New York state while chasing an amateur radio weather balloon. The last trip of the year was to Mississauga for Christmas with my relatives.

Work

It was a busy year at work, too. My first survey report was release in February and I had a couple of other articles published, too. I also did a fair bit of travel, with the five trips I mentioned above. Most of the trips were to monitor telephone interviews for my survey – I was the person who was “monitoring this call for quality purposes”. (It’s not quite as creepy as it sounds.)

Play

But 2009 wasn’t all work (even though it felt like that at times), I had some fun, too. I steered the Singapore Slings at three dragonboat festivals last summer and I’m looking forward to the upcoming season. I went climbing at the climbing gym about once a week and went climbing in the Gatineaus a few times, too.

I logged 55 geocaches in 2009 and went to two Go And Get ‘Em events. I hid my first geocache in about 3 years for the fall GAG.

April saw me replace my faithful 2002 Tracker with a 2009 Hyundai Santa Fe. Up to then, I had been a dyed-in-the-wool GM owner, but with all the chaos in the North American auto industry, and the fact that the GM vehicle in the same class just didn’t compare, led me to stray from the flock and look at Hyundai. I don’t think I’ll be back any time soon.

ARRL Field Day 2009 was held at the end of June and the Manotick Amateur Radio Group set up a station at Long Island Marine. I headed down on Friday and operated one of the radios for most of the weekend. The weather was great and a good time was had by all.

I went to a couple of days of the Bluesfest last summer and saw KISS in concert for the first time. Though I wouldn’t classify myself as a die-hard KISS fan, I have to admit that the show was pretty impressive. I even posted a few pictures online, too.

Speaking of music, I also took part in Ring To The World, a biennial handbell festival that was held at Carleton University in June. I had the privilege of playing some amazing music conducted by some top-notch conductors, who just happened to have composed the pieces we were playing. Lots of fun and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Looking ahead to 2010

There are lots of things I’d like to do in 2010. I’ve already committed to steering for the Singapore Slings, which can’t come soon enough. Climbing in the Gatineaus (and elsewhere) more often is definitely on the list. It would be nice to do a little more geocaching. I got out golfing quite a few times last summer and I recently got a new set of hybrid irons, so I’m really looking forward to get out more often in the upcoming year.

I’ve been wanting to visit my friends Rob and Yuki in the UK for a couple of years now. There’s a geocaching mega-event being held in Scotland at the end of July, so I might just combine the two and visit them in Cambridge before going to the mega-event. Time will tell…

So, what are you looking forward to in 2010?

All week I’ve been adjusting my watch forward and backwards, culminating in last night’s rollback. (You did remember to set your clock back, right?)

Saturday saw me set it forward an hour when I arrived in Halifax for a few days, combining business and pleasure.  I had a great time visiting Peggy’s Cove on Sunday where the weather was absolutely amazing with sunshine and 18C.

Saltwater must run in my veins because I lost track of time sitting on the rocks watching the waves crash onto shore. Feeling the salt spray on my face was incredibly relaxing.

I also visited one of the memorials to Swissair flight 111, which crashed into the ocean about 10km offshore of Peggy’s Cove in 1998. Two monuments were built, one near Peggy’s Cove and the other in Bayswater. There are sightlines at both monuments which triangulate on the actual location of the crash.  Very impressive.

On Monday I met up with my co-worker and we spent the next couple of days working in our regional office. Wednesday morning we headed to the airport and caught a flight to Ottawa. I parted company with her and met up with my boss at the gate for the flight to Winnipeg, where I spent the next couple of days.

Arriving in Winnipeg meant setting my watch back 2 hours compared to Halifax, which I had adjusted to during the four days I was there.

The weather in Winnipeg basically grey and wet almost the whole time we were there. The forecast kept warning of impending snow, but I’m happy to report that we didn’t see any snow while we were there.

The time change caught up with me, so it always felt like it was about two hours later than it really was. And since we were working weird shifts in the regional office, it only got worse. By the time we left Friday morning, I had no idea what time it really was.

Arriving home Friday afternoon meant setting the clock forward an hour. I dragged my suitcases upstairs and promptly fell asleep on the couch for a couple of hours.

It’s now sometime on Sunday and I’ve dutifully adjusted my clocks again, this time to switch over to Eastern Standard Time. Consequently, everything feels out of sync again.

At least it’s sunny out.

If you’ve taken a VIA Rail train during the last few years, you’re probably familiar with the 2+2 seating arrangement found on many VIA LRC trains.  Two seats on the left and two seats on the right. While quite comfortable, the train stock has been in service for quite some time.

Enter VIA’s Renaissance trains.

VIA’s Renaissance equipment was originally built by Alstom for use in the UK. VIA Rail acquired the train sets and has been running them on routes east of Montreal for a few years. About three weeks ago, they reallocated some of the Renaissance stock to serve routes west of Montreal and I’m fortunate to be writing this on the Montreal-Toronto run today that has it.

Rather than the traditional 2+2, the Renaissance cars, at least in VIA1 class, have a 2+1 seat configuration. Each row has individual overhead bins, compared to the bins on their older cars that run the length of the car. Under seat storage is much different that the older stock.

On older trains, you shove your stuff under the seat in front of you. On the Renaissance stock, you have a space under your seat that can easily hold a computer backpack, pair of boots and a 35mm camera bag comfortably. There’s a fold down footrest if you want to put your feet up.

The seats themselves are raised up above the level of the aisle and are quite comfortable and roomy. Fold down trays are located on the back of the seat in front of you and unfold to a full-size tray if needed. Otherwise, you have a tray about 6 or 8 inches wide. Very slick.

Sound-wise, they seem quieter than the older grey stock and the ride seems smoother, too. (That could be due to the fact that I’m on the Montreal-Toronto corridor which sees a lot of traffic rather than the Ottawa-Montreal corridor which doesn’t.

There’s also a club car available to VIA1 passengers with comfortable seats, a tall table thing to stand at and a wide-screen TV on one wall.

According to one of the on-board staff, the crews working the routes where the Renaissance trains were taken from aren’t happy about the loss of their trains and want them back. She also told me that they do one run a day each way between Ottawa and Montreal, so if you’re able to book your travel on train 634 or 635 go for it because you won’t be disappointed.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few weeks, you know that Local 279 of the Amalgamated Transit Union is on strike. Today, they union is being forced to take the last offer from the City to the members for a vote. The union executive is strongly encouraging its members to vote “no”, meaning the strike will continue, even though the majority of citizens in Ottawa are prepared to freeze them out.

Most of the bloggers I know are encouraging the union members to vote “yes” for what is generally felt by everyone except the union executive to be a fair offer. Here’s a quick round up of what they’re writing:

• Darin points out to the members that this is their chance to redeem themselves for the behaviour of their union boss by voting to accept the offer
• Ken suspects they will vote “no” and muses about the fact that it appears Cornellier was set on striking from day 1 of the negotiations
• Trashy hopes the members ignore the union rhetoric and vote to accept and reminds us that the Canadian Industrial Relations Board is accepting submissions from members of  the public on how they’re being impacted by the strike

And, of course I’ve written an entry encouraging people to not demonstrate outside where the union members are voting.

All there is to do at this point is wait and hope that the union members are clearer thinkers than their union boss.

*** If you’re looking for the results, I wrote about them here.

2008 was a year of highs and lows (though I guess that can be said about most years) – fortunately there weren’t many lows.

It included my Granddad’s 100th birthday party, curling, a ridiculous amount of snow, a trip to San Antonio, a trip to Greece, dealing with water damage in my apartment caused by a leaky air conditioner, dragonboating, playing Ultimate, going climbing in the Gatineau Hills for the first time after years of climbing in rock gyms, a trip to Quebec City, meeting some of the Harlem Globetrotters (Curly and Buckets) while playing bells at the A-Channel and some geocaching (though not as much as I’d have liked).

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I was finally able to do some geocaching here in Quebec City.  Since arriving, I’ve scoped out some caches, but wasn’t able to actually find any of them because there were too many people around.  I remedied that by doing some late night geocaching.  One I found was near the fountain in front of the Quebec legislature building (GC154TJ).  Naturally, the geocoin I’ve been carrying around for a while was too big to fit in the container.

The other one I logged was a virtual geocache.  There’s a tree in the Old City that has grown around a cannon ball and to log the cache you have to take your picture with it. (GCHKWJ)

This bumper sticker was stuck to a number of things in the Old City, so I thought I’d take a picture of it for Trashy.

Pictures of it and some other pictures I took since the last update are in my gallery.

I drove down to Quebec City to attend the week-long 16th General Assembly and International Scientific Symposium of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) on Saturday.  Yesterday evening, I wandered around Old Quebec with one of the other people from Ottawa and took some pictures.  It was raining, so everything was shiny and the clouds glowed in the lights giving the buildings a kind of spooky aura.

You can see the pictures in my gallery.