Musings

Many bridges usually mean many rivers, or at least, vertical terrain change. Here it is rivers.

And bridges may lead to islands. Saint Helen’s Island was enlarged and modified for Expo 67. Most of the buildings are gone, and this is one large park. The iconic American Pavilion has become the Montréal Biosphère. Don’t know about the castle structure to the right—water tower?

Blue? Nice touch. Is this a mansard roof—or merely mansard-like?

Like the ice warning sign behind the handlebar.

Elsewhere we saw a truck watering the street. My guess it’s part of the horse clean-up strategy.

I think only the right door is in use, and the café has kindly offered seating for the unused half of the steps. This is in the old-town area.

Overview drama: who can post to social media first?

That was a sample of our Montréal morning. We followed the Ottawa River downstream, taking a side tour of the large Île Saint-Ignace. Flat, duh. Many summer cottages with some age on them (small), and a few large, new ones. Considerable active farmland, especially soy, maize, and cattle grazing. And channels the river has abandoned.

You are seeing two bridges visually conflated. Makes for an appearance of strange engineering.

Haven’t seen a medieval-style city wall in a while. Welcome to old Quebec.

That statue left of center in the distance is of Samuel de Champlain. Colonialism honored.

I am becoming not-a-fan of cruise-ship towns. This mammoth vessel had a giant screen on that upper deck displaying moving images constantly, because, why look over the railing at real life? Or at the clouds above?

This is the famous Frontenac (now Le Château Frontenac), and we are standing on the Terrasse Dufferin, which amounts to a huge, high-elevation boardwalk. I expect we’ll follow up on the views we got through portals in the decking to excavated building remains below at the other end. This end has cannons and a closed-for-the-season toboggan ride with three lanes. And a fort above.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Lighthouse from afar.

Approaching.

Very backlit.

Yes, it’s very red.

Bonus shot: sunset sky reflected in Manistique River at Mead Creek.

A small sample of this water winter wonderland. Without the winter. For now.

Posted at 10:17 PM | Comments Off on Manistique lighthouse

In my youth, we’d compete (if we remembered in time) to see who would spot The Big Bridge first as we motored along from the south. Because of the hilly terrain, the tall pylons effectively “hide” for quite some time.

Were we ever glad we were northbound today. I’d been monitoring traffic info on my smartphone, and I’m pretty sure northbound had this problem about three hours before we got here. Whew!

Big payoff sign! The colorful ones aren’t referring to the peninsula, but the toll booth immediately below. Speaking of closed, the DOT is replacing a river/creek bridge* west of The Big Bridge, and all westbound (non-local) traffic had to go north to get west—only a few alternate routes in this swampy low-population** area. This closing just began this week—after the big summer-end holiday—and will continue for a mere six weeks or so. Must be a modular/pre-manufactured bridge.

* For those in-the-know, this roadwork is in addition to the seemingly unending revisions to the Cut River Bridge, where traffic can pass on one lane and is controlled with red/green lights.

** Low people density. High populations of mosquitoes and many other living things.

Posted at 7:23 PM | Comments Off on Infrastructure (bridge-talk)

Do you figure this is a household where someone says, “Hey, honey, it’s sunny out and I gotta paint those seee-ment vases today!”

Serious vase decoration, there. I have been remiss in learning architecture terms, and cannot come up with the names of these flat spots to the sides of the staircase. Seems like a term I should know.

Posted at 9:35 PM | Comments Off on Shrug

Hidden in an alley…

…and out in broad daylight.

* Title: TY to the Guru.

Posted at 4:58 PM | Comments Off on Portals*

This image makes it seem like I was out while it was still dark. Or only a bit light out. You decide; it was 7:19am.

My fitness device (FD) is dying. It can no longer properly record an “activity,” that is, an exercise session. Lasted almost 14 months. Thinking about getting an Oura. Or going FD-nekkid.

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Fading

Castle building, now part of the Bishop Museum complex. Condemned due to termite damage, so closed. Perhaps work has begun to renovate it?

I picked one artifact from this huge museum, of Hawaii, of the Pacific, of life in Polynesia: a wooden Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku surf board. Duke lived from 1890 to 1968 and was a fast swimmer as well as surfer. May his waves ever curl perfectly. Duke was named after his dad, who was named in honor of the Duke of Edinburgh. Duke seems like a perfect surfer name.

Fascinating garden on the grounds, with coast plants in one area, another zone of highland plants, and a third of canoe plants, that is, the ones the Polynesians brought to feed themselves. They brought food plants, and plants that they grew with the food plants to make mini-ecosystems that worked. These are breadfruit. Polynesians needed nutrients and carbohydrates from plant sources—they got a lot of protein from fish; this dietary situation is similar to what other traditional peoples living by rich coastal waters have had to contend with.

Chinatown. Way cool; and hot/sticky where it wasn’t air-conditioned. Like this market. A few others had AC. I’d try to shop here for fruits/veg at least sometimes if I lived here.

Loved this sign in the restaurant where we ate: Only Good Vibes, and the two gals playing pattycake while waiting for their food.

We did not have dessert, so I never found out what magic crack is.

Wending our way back to the rental, we went by the Aloha Tower. Majestic. It opened in 1926 and is a lighthouse. After the bombing at Pearl Harbor it was painted to disappear in night-darkness.

This restaurant is gone, but its historic sign has carefully been kept. The restaurant was open over seven decades, if I have it right. The building had degraded and “had to” be demolished.

I’d say building preservationists so far have been more successful with the Castle than the restaurant.

Posted at 12:43 AM | 1 Comment »

We stayed up late (as in: after dark) last night chatting on the lanai/patio. At least three of these little lizards showed up to hunt bugs around one especially bright light. I hadn’t seen these pale ones before. This one has a shortened tail.

This morning I felt like I needed fluids. I doubled up with coffee and kombucha. After two portions of each, I felt not-quite-so-dry.

Our big expedition was to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. They’ve been fixing the landing dock for over a year, and we could not land, so we motored by, with first one side of our boat facing the memorial and then the other side, as passengers were required to stay seated at all times. The flag pole is attached to an original part of the Arizona‘s mast. The white float far right is above the bow. It was a solemn visit. The 20+-minute video before we boarded the boat was excellent; visitors were instructed not to talk during it and indeed (surprise), people were quiet.

Mid-afternoon, the Guru and I entered Puowaina, more commonly known as Punchbowl Crater. More military dead are interred here, in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. I believe the current tally of dead exceeds 53K; markers are all flat, which contrasts with Arlington National, for example. We were surprised that the floor of the crater is so high.

Then, we went to the core of the civic-ceremonial and governmental section of Honolulu. This is the ‘Iolani Palace; construction began in 1879. It replaced an earlier building that dated to the early 1840s (if I have it right), built during the reign of Kamehameha III (born 1814; died 1854; reign 1825–1854). This building dates to the reign of King Kalākaua (born 1836; died 1891; reign 1874–1891). TMI?

This fenced area is on the palace grounds; it is a burial mound and super kapu (forbidden—because of its extreme sacredness). The lands around the palace, including other city blocks, was part of a royal sacred area prior to the arrival of foreigners. Behind the fence on the back side, I saw a guy shooting up and that was during an idle glance; that was not something I wanted to see (and have seared into my memory). Elsewhere people were sleeping on sidewalks and on the grass. Homeless problem here, too, in that end-of-the-road way….

Posted at 12:32 AM | Comments Off on Sacred places

I zipped over to the PO this afternoon to mail one of the few bills we can’t pay online. That’s a route I don’t usually take. And on the way back, I found this laggard. Must be in a heavy metal band?

And at the corner gas station, are they replacing the tanks or removing them? Time will tell (since I don’t have the plans).

Oh, and the crape myrtles are blooming.

Posted at 8:21 PM | Comments Off on No lies, big or little

I did not count how many times lately I’ve heard the phrase “feels like” (and its sibling “will feel like”) referring to high temps. And not in the kitchen, but in the everywhere outdoors.

I took heed and stayed indoors (except for the odd outdoor chore). I did not walk. Or do yardwork.

The photo? A three-tired retaining wall under construction along a newly built section of a miscellaneous highway in southern Appalachia. I haven’t seen one built quite like this before. A sign of the future? Stay tuned….

Posted at 7:52 PM | Comments Off on Feels like…