I was up well before the crack o’ dawn this morning to play bells with the other people in A Touch of Brass on CTV Ottawa’s Morning Live show. We played two pieces this year: Christmas Angels Medley and Let It Snow.

The two segments have been posted on YouTube by CTV and I have to say I think these are our best appearances on the show, yet:

and

…pedestrians in the crosswalk have the right-of-way. The fact that you entered the intersection late in the cycle when turning left does not give you the right to block the oncoming traffic while you sit in the intersection at the crosswalk honking your horn and yelling at the pedestrians who are crossing with the light.

I had a fairly busy week this week. To put things in context, I’ve put together a little table that shows what I was up to.

So, several very long days that started way too early in the morning. Sleeping in this morning was nice and I’m looking forward to repeating that tomorrow.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve basically resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably going to have to make weekly excursions to a comic book store because it appears I may have started following some comic books series. Today being Wednesday, I made the first of what’s likely to be many treks down to one of the local comic book stores (the Ottawa branch of Silver Snail).

I picked out copies of Green Arrow #1 and #2 and joined the line for the cash to pay for them. A couple of days ago I had emailed the store asking if they could put aside copies of the first two issues of Green Lantern: New Guardians, so when I was next I mentioned this. The guy behind the counter asked me my name and when I told him he said, and I quote:

Oh, you’re the new guy!

And then the girl behind the other cash register looked over from whatever she was doing and said exactly the same thing.

Anyway, enough about that… it’s time to carefully read my purchases before I put them back in their individual bags with boards.

It seems like there are more and more cyclists riding on the sidewalks rather than in the streets where they belong.

Aside from being illegal, it can be dangerous for the people walking on the sidewalk (where they belong).

I was out at lunch with some people from work one day last week and we were approached from behind by three cyclists – two women and a man – while walking along Parkdale. When I pointed out to them that they weren’t supposed to be on the sidewalk they responded that there “wasn’t room” on the street. Me and my friends responded that there was room and that regardless they shouldn’t be on the sidewalk.

The guy on the bike decided to respect the law and rode off the sidewalk and off in to the distance on Parkdale. The two women, however, continued to ride on the sidewalk behind us, so we eventually stepped aside to they could go past us. The picture above is them riding off into the distance.

The fact of the matter is that if you’re riding a bike, you belong on the road, either in the bike lane if it exists, or at the side if it doesn’t. It is illegal for you to ride on the sidewalk. If your comfort level is such that you don’t feel comfortable riding on streets that have traffic then you shouldn’t be riding on those streets. You, like the women I encountered, should be taking side streets and bicycle paths where you won’t have to deal with traffic.

It’s been a fairly busy June and I haven’t been blogging as frequently as I’d like so I thought I’d post a quick summary of things.

Since my last post, I took part in the Tim Horton’s Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival steering for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings. I’m proud to report that we have once again won the Mill Street Brewery Hospitality Challenge Cup. If memory serves me correct, this is at least the fourth time that we’ve won it since I joined the team. We also raised almost $8000 for the local charities sponsored by the Ottawa Dragon Boat Foundation.

Last weekend I joined the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club (OVMRC) at their Field Day station (VE3RAM), which was set up in front of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. With the exception of one voice contact on 6m SSB, I operated several shifts on the digital mode station. There were a few notable contacts, including Igor (RU6CH) in Russia and two French stations that I chatted with around 2am while the bands were dead. The 30m contacts didn’t earn us any points, but it was nice to have an actual conversation and I even got to use my French. 🙂 Last I heard, the digital station made 188 contacts, which is respectable. I think we were the only ones at the OVMRC Field Day to operate the full 24 hours — some people wimped out an actually slept!

Other than that I’ve been to the climbing gym a couple of times and I’m looking forward to getting out on real rock as soon as my climbing buddies and I can find a mutually convenient time.

As far as what I’m doing for Canada Day, that’s still in the air (and yes, I do realize it’s June 30th!). The options include heading downtown with the mobs of people to Parliament Hill, heading to Kemptville to watch fireworks there or escape the city to the lake for the weekend. All have their merits, so I remain undecided.

Last week turned out to be a week of good deeds and karmic payback.

I stopped for gas on Wednesday and noticed a Starbucks card on the ground next to the pump. It had a small hole in one corner, so I expect it was attached to someone’s key ring. Sadly, a crack meant the hole was more of a notch and thus not very good at remaining attached to a key ring.

When I got to my destination, I took a picture of it and tweeted a lost-and-found message. I also asked @StarbucksCanada if they could retweet it for me. Their response was:

I sent them a direct message with the numbers and a couple of days later they sent me a Starbucks gift card via email. Hopefully the owner of the card had registered it on the Starbucks website so that Starbucks can issue them a new card.

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