A long wait for the flying machines

I thought this would have made a good blogpost, but I'm afraid we got tired of waiting for the show.

It was a beautiful sunny morning while we were sitting at the foot of the Rideau Canal locks (the Alexandra Bridge, which would have made a better vantage point, was closed to pedestrians for the day) staring across the Ottawa River along with a large crowd of other people, including patient children, many of whom had pedalled there on their bikes. There was a far bigger crowd on the other bank near the action, or what would eventually be action, ––"Be there at 11am to check out the flying crafts and prepare for takeoff!" it said on the website––but the launching of the home made flying machines during Ottawa-Gatineau's Red Bull Flugtag, didn't actually begin until midday or perhaps later. We had gone by then.

Pilots ... launch themselves off a 22-foot high flight deck in hopes of soaring into the wild blue yonder…or more often than not, plunging into the waters below. Flugtag, which means “flying day” in German, pushes the envelope of human-powered flight ... Teams are judged on flight distance, creativity of the craft, and showmanship.

We missed seeing the flops of the flying beaver and the giant banana. Having read the report in the Ottawa Citizen, we seem to have missed a lot of fun altogether.

The Au Feel de l'Eau Aquataxi had been offering special rides on this occasion to passengers who booked in advance. Anyone lucky enough to arrive by boat could have a closer view of the Flugtag show; we saw some boat owners showing off at high speeds in the vicinity. I see that one canoeist-spectator has left a comment about this on the CBC.ca website, saying:

We went by canoe to join a fotilla of hundreds to enjoy the day. Unfortunately, on the way back we seemed to be the only ones stopped by the police to check if we had safety gear aboard. When asked what are you doing about the boats going at speeds up to 140 km/hr in the river, they responded that according to the law, people can drive their boats at any speed. Yes, but if they do so in an unsafe manner in a crowded waterway like this, that is an offence I replied. Too bad tbe cops [...] seem to focus on canoes when it's the motorized craft that imperil others.

Sunset over the museum

This picture was taken on June 30th (the evening before Canada Day) is a view of the Ottawa River and Musée des Civilisations in Gatineau from Parliament Hill on the Ottawa bank. The view from The Hill is always worth seeing. In the distance are the Gatineau Hills.

At present an exhibition at the museum, called Portés par le Fleuve (Moving with the River) shows the history of another great Canadian river, the St. Lawrence, with which the Ottawa River eventually merges.

"The exhibition retraces the river’s historic path with the Iroquois' thousand-year presence on the land, Franco-Aboriginal alliances, growth of a French settlement in the St. Lawrence Valley and multi-ethnic European immigration for which Québec served as a gateway."

The exhibition is on until March 2014.

Athletes on the water

An article in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday described two oarsmen who get up very early each morning to row on the Ottawa River. One of them, Dean, is the nephew of our friend Carol; I have mentioned him in a previous post in this blog. What the article doesn't say is that he's going to keep this up day by day until November (so he told us)!

Incidentally, the day after I published that previous blogpost the new docks that had been stolen from the Rowing Club in May were retrieved and returned safely to their rightful place.

One of our sunsets

Here is our view from the Minto Bridges last night, looking towards the Gatineau Hills.

Full moon over a full river

The thunderstorms on Friday left a lot of water on the ground and the Rideau River banks have since overflowed in places, which is unusual for midsummer. We walked out onto the boat launching dock in our park last night and I put a hand into the water which after the sunny day was as warm as water in a bath tub. Our walk had been longer than usual because we wanted to see how the flood had affected the Rideau Falls––we made a detour and saw the golden brown flood pouring over. The spray made a rainbow above the falls. The wind had dropped completely which made for perfect riverside conditions and the full moon, when it rose behind Cummings Bridge, was crystal clear. We'd seen the moon the night before as well, from the Minto Bridges, with families of geese swimming in a line in the moonlight, still awake.

Bullfrog chorus

On our walk by the Rideau River yesterday evening we stopped to find out what a group of people were staring at over the wall by the tennis courts in Stanley Park. (50-60 years ago, this wall used to be one side of a swimming pool in the river, the Flat Rock Pool, also called Les Trois Piscines.)

The answer was bullfrogs, lots of them, sitting on the weeds in shallow water and making their distinctive noise. One of the human crowd was croaking in imitation; probably a mating call, we warned him. Looking carefully, we could see these large and rather ugly frogs blowing out the air sacs in their neck as they made the calls. Someone said that they eat smaller frogs; I hadn't known that.

This is how they sound: