Upon departing my local train at Freiburg main station, I spotted this circular building, labelled Radstation (bike station). Each of the three levels connected to a different street (ground, second floor exits to the right of the picture, third floor exits to the bridge overhead through the left of the picture, and there was another bridge on the far side of the structure.   The bike garage was on the second level. The building is like a donut, hollow in the centre with criss-crossing staircases.   There were 300 bikes there that day; of a capacity for 1000. The … Continue reading Radstation Freiburg

Dildo, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland:  This weekend past marked Dildo Days here in Dildo, Newfoundland. A dildo is a wooden object about six to eight inches long, cylindrical in shape, about one and half inches in diamenter, inserted into a round hole til it jams. You wap your hand around … The oar  attached to it, and presto, you have a second class lever, like this: Surely you didn’t think it was anything else? Alternatively, the town is named after a Captain Dildo. A boat parade is an essential part of community fun. Saturday morning, as the overnight rain and fog clears, … Continue reading Dildo Days

This photo was taken from the pathway on the north side of Dow’s Lake, along the Queen Elizabeth Driveway. With the forest of high rises Mr Watson wants to put at the Preston-Carling intersection, late evening summer sunsets will just be a memory. Instead, the sun will set an hour earlier, and you’ll have to crane your neck looking up to see it. Continue reading Last call for sunset at Dow’s Lake

Cyclists along the Ottawa River pathway pass by this Aboriginal medicine wheel laid out on the grass.     It looks home made. Or hand made. No fifty thousand dollar concrete pad. No careful manipulation of space by a Registered Landscape Architect. Just some rocks, some paint. Definitely not a NCC approved installation. There is an interpretive sign though:   The sign has all the ancient and modern conveniences: Continue reading Will the NCC take their medicine (wheel)?

Ottawans love grass.  The NCC sometimes seems all about grass. Fortunately, their fetish about frustrated hayfields along the Parkways is yielding to economic pressure and the grass grows more naturally longer. West siders can easily identify large grassy areas that seem somewhat hopeless. There’s the Centennial School playground (even when re-sodded courtesy of a developer, and watered with an irrigation system, it quickly got tramped to death), or Devonshire, or Hillson School where some locals refer to the lawn as “concrete”. Plouffe Park suffers hugely from wear and tear, and was extensively reworked recently. Will it last? Will any of … Continue reading Time to say goodbye to the green green grass of home?

  My tree recognition ability runs to a half dozen tree types. I didn’t realize there were as many ash trees in the city until they all started dying. This parking lot behind Archives Canada is all ash trees, and no matter how you view it it’s a death bowl. But it’s not just the ash trees. I see dead and dying trees everywhere. This oak tree is about 20 years old. There used to be a mate on the right side of the doorway, but it (the tree, not the door) died off six or seven years ago, and … Continue reading It’s not just the Ash trees

Continue reading Danger zone on Bronson

The City is currently seeking confirmation for their suggested new names of Stations along the Confederation LRT line. See www.OCTranspo.com. The only one that really bugs me is the Tunney’s Pasture renaming. It might be more accurate to call it Tunney’s Desolate Wasteland. But to simply shorten it to Tunney’s strikes me as wrong for several reasons. First, the historic reference (presumably to an early settler) is obscure. Second, Tunney’s has an apostrophe, which runs into issues with our other official language. Remember Eaton? Or Tim Hortons? Let’s just avoid apostrophes completely. Third, OC transpo claims their first choice is … Continue reading Renaming LRT Stations

I cycled out to Carleton U this week to “inspect” the platform changes at the station there, and to see if there was trackwork of interest. The station platform is getting a new leading edge, like the other stations. The new parking garage on the north side of campus has pile-driving going on. These piles are on both sides of the OTrain track. The eventual garage structure will extend over the track. The track is covered with a tarp, presumably to keep dust and dirt out of the ballast, since it wouldn’t protect the track from impact damage.   I … Continue reading OTrain and new parking garage at Carleton U

  I do like the new mountain built over the National Gallery. It’s so very Disney: what you see is not what you get. This view is from Bayview Station. Throughout the Public Advisory Committee consultations on the new LRT station to be built there, I encouraged the designers to use the building to “frame” a view of the downtown so that transit users could have a WOW moment every day. Such framing wouldn’t cost (much) extra, it’s just a matter of designing it in. This didn’t generate much excitement during the PAC process, but at a recent meeting with … Continue reading A new “vancouver” skyline in Ottawa

I was cycling on Albert Street just west of Preston when I spied a young lady hunched over, bike laying on the grass. Accident? Mechanical trouble? It turned out to be rather more interesting. There was very young baby skunk, a bit larger than a chipmunk, stuck on the edge of the road, unable to climb the curb. When approached, it raised its tail. Hmm. It was squinting, so it didn’t like the daylight. Solution: a large-ish plastic bag in hand, I walked up to it and sort of rolled it into the bag. Female.   Walked over the taller … Continue reading Skunk at Bluesfest