Category: The outdoors

Hiking, camping, canoeing – if it’s an outdoor adventure, it should be under this heading

Astonishingly enduring boots

Back when I was in high school (before 2000), I was given a pair of Raichle hiking boots, purchased at Mountain Equipment Co-op (and also kindly mailed to me in Oxford before my first trip with the Walking Club).

The boots are excellent, with solid ankle support, a reliable ability to maintain grip in wet and slippery conditions, and excellent comfort. I hiked in them in the heat of Italy, Morocco, and Malta; on rain-covered rocks in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England’s Lake District, and British Columbia; in ice-bound Tallinn, Vermont, and Helsinki; and tramping through the mud in Devon and Oxford’s Port Meadow.

I am glad the people at MEC recommended these leather boots over Gore-Tex ones. They essentially never soaked through, even after the occasional slip into streams, and were comfortable with wool socks in even very hot conditions.

They have also been my standard winter boots for five years in Ottawa and four in Toronto. In all that time, I haven’t even had to replace the laces — though I have tied them to fix breaks two or three times.

Yesterday, part of the rear right heel came loose. I will check into whether replacing the Vibram soles is possible and affordable. If not, I will be in the market for a new pair of hiking boots for the first time in an absurdly long while. Without a doubt, these boots have held up to at least twenty times as much use as any other pair of shoes or boots that I have owned. It makes me wonder what makes all the rest of my footwear so inferior, including Blundstone boots which cost only a bit less than the Raichle’s did but which only ever last a couple of years and Allen Edmonds boots which cost over twice as much and which have needed multiple repairs despite only being worn for formal occasions.

Post-wedding brunch

This past weekend, I was in Midland for my cousin Marko’s wedding.

The official wedding photographers/videographers asserted their exclusive domain over the wedding and reception, preventing me from getting any shots there (and saving me 12+ hours of post-processing).

I did get some shots at the family brunch the next morning. Several of the photos are of my cousin Tamara’s son Mykyta, who I have photographed before.

Watching the aurora

Thanks to the intervention of my friend Amanda, I spent the weekend at my friend Sabrina’s cottage on Paugh Lake, near Barry’s Bay, Ontario.

I had high hopes for a clear view of the fading Perseid meteor shower on Friday and Saturday night. Friday night was overcast and raining, though it was still remarkable to be in a place where rain falling on roofs and water, along with animal noises, were the only things audible. I am not sure when I was last outside a major urban area, but there haven’t been many cases since I moved to Toronto.

Saturday gifted us with perfect astronomical viewing conditions: far from city lights, and untroubled by the moon. We didn’t see a lot of meteors, but the sky was so full of stars that it made identifying familiar constellations a challenge. Across the sky, the band of the Milky Way was clearly visible, wheeling above us as the night went on.

Experimenting with some long exposures with my Fuji X100S (and a stepladder and dishcloth as an improvised tripod) I was surprised to see that the vague light in the northern sky came out as brilliant colour when photographed at 1600 ISO with a 30″ exposure.

I ended up spending hours photographing the aurora. There will be high quality images soon (and animated GIF is a terribly low-quality format for something so beautiful), but I wanted to put something up right away that would show the movement of the lights.

You may need to click the thumbnail to see the animation:

Aurora Borealis from Paugh Lake, Ontario 1/3

Aurora Borealis from Paugh Lake, Ontario 2/3

Aurora Borealis from Paugh Lake, Ontario 3/3

Aside from reducing the resolution and converting them to GIF format, these images are straight from the camera, not manipulated with any sort of software.

Two-string kite flying

Yesterday I went to Hanlan’s Point beach with some friends, in part to fly my DC Sport dual control nylon kite: 60″ wide.

It’s a fun thing to fly. The only control surface you have is the entire airfoil, and the only axis of motion you can directly control is roll, by altering the relative length of the two strings.

The kite has a flight envelope comprised of a curved two-dimensional surface, with varying levels of power in different places. With very little practice, most people get a high degree of control. One guy walking along the beach was able to do it almost immediately when I suggested he give it a try.

It would be neat to get a parasail-style four-string kite with more power, pitch as well as roll control, and the option for controlled reversible landings.

Jacobs’ four top requirements for cities

To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

  1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.
  2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
  3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.
  4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.

The necessity of these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961. p. 150-1 (hardcover)