Ottawa

Since I was already in montreal last weekend, I decided to go and visit Ottawa instead. I lived in Ottawa for 8 months while working for the department of national defence, and really liked the city, and wanted to go and visit again. I also went to visit Sadie, a friend from grebel. I don’t have many pictures cause I used to live there, so there weren’t many new things.

Last time I was in montreal  I called a taxi to come pick us up at the train (I got chosen cause I knew French), and I just told them to come to the address of the train yard. We walked to where the entrance was, and saw the taxi pull up. We all started waving, but it didn’t see us, and turned the other way. That way was a dead end though, so we waited 5ish minutes until he got back. He drove up to us and asked us who called the taxi in. I said I did, and he looked at me and said “A**hole!” apparently train yards are a pretty big place, and I didn’t specify exactly where we were, so he was driving all over the place looking for us. He was nice afterwards though. So this time when I called a taxi, I made sure to specify that I was near the diesel shop, and good thing I did cause the same cab driver came to pick me up! He said he felt bad about what he called me last time and was sorry about it, and we had a good conversation during the ride to the greyhound station.

I realized how much I had changed – I left the train to call a taxi, and had not even thought of the next step. I had a small sheet of paper with some addresses I had written down the night before, and a hostel booked, but that was it. My plan was to go to the greyhound terminal and take it from there. And I was travelling from a city I barely knew over 2 hours away to another one, completely on my own. A couple years ago I would have had everything completely planned out.

The bus dropped us off at the University of Ottawa, so I wandered around for a while pretending I was a student, going into random buildings. I found the same structure that’s right by E2/Physics that show all the different ways to connect steel structures together. I was keeping an eye out for a large classroom where I could hopefully sit at the back and learn something, and eventually found one that was just starting. So I went in and sat at the back with the football jocks (they were checking out football websites and facebook on their laptops). Turned out I was attending a french lecture on economics, and learned a bit about money and how without rarity there would be no economy and about supply/demand. I was getting a bit warm and had started to take off my jacket, but realized I had a waterloo shirt underneath, and I didn’t want to blow my cover. After that I went to visit my old office and say hi to the people there. It was very nice to see them and catch up a bit. Went to a Power to Change service at U of Ottawa in the evening, and met a guy from Listowel. He said I was the only guy he had met who knew where Listowel was. (Microsoft Word doesn’t think Listowel is a word, and it’s recommending I change it to Dishtowel. Haha). Saturday evening went with Sadie to hang out with some friends she had met on evening, and had Arabic tea and chatted about being missionary kids (I lived in Burkina Faso for 3 years)

Saturday and Sunday were a lot of biking along trails that I had explored during my last summer term in Ottawa. Ottawa really has a great biking trail network – you can legit go for over 50km barely going on any roads, mostly through forests and along the canal/river and through a farm, all inside a city. It’s fantastic. While biking on the quebec side I found a random street that had had a bunch of sand dumped on it and there were three beach volleyball courts set up with music going. It was some kind of tournament, and they were pretty good. But so random! It was just a normal street, and they were playing beach volleyball on it! 

Also came across a full concert, stage and seating and beer tent and everything, that was taking place under a bridge. I found a new route too, I was at a spot where I usually turned around, but saw a railway bridge in the distance crossing the river. Since I had to cross anyways, I decided to go and see if I could cross there. There wasn’t an actual trail leading to it, but it looked abandoned (lots of weeds and grass), so I decided to go across anyways. The first half had the track, and beside it 3 boards about 10 inches wide, and then a drop into the river. No guard rail or anything. It was actually pretty sketchy to bike across, made harder by a decent cross breeze, but I made it.

 I also randomly met a friend from class, stephanie, who was doing a co-op term in Ottawa. Talk about unlikely – I could have legitimately been in any city in North America, on any street at any time, and I meet someone I know. Wonder who else I will meet on this trip…