september 8 2009
Look how red I am. Each night the ship goes to all red lighting, because red lighting preserves your night vision.
The bridge (the area you drive the ship from) is lowly lit only in red, and someone told me, “if someone comes onto the bridge at night and they don’t trip or walk into something, it’s not dark enough”.
Today:
september 8 2009
7:30am – Board the ship. When you do you must salute her right before stepping on deck. See my face there on the left? Taken shortly after I boarded and I’m like, “how in the world did I end up here OMG”
9 – 10am – An extensive tour of the ship. I inhaled a ridiculous amount of information. There will be no lack of footage and how I’m gonna fit this into my usual 3 minutes will be challanging
10 – 12pm – After the tour I was informed, “off you go, you can explore wherever you like, the ship is yours, have fun” what??? Sick
12 – 12:30pm – Lunch. There are 3 dining areas on board and depending on your rank* is where you eat. I enjoyed lunch in the Officers area, where, and this floored me, I sat down at a table, was given a menu and asked what I would like. The food was amazing, especially the soup. I’m not sure where the reputation for bad food comes from in the Forces comes from, certainly not here, and I’m picky
12:30 – 5 – More exploring. Went through 8 locks today, including the Welland Canal, the first time for this ship, and 4 in a row which was the equivilant to climbing the height of Niagara Falls. You zoom up faster than you think, those things fill up fast
5 – 6pm – Dinner in the biggest dining area with the non-commissioned crew (oh boy I hope I’m getting this terminology correct… if not, please correct me in the comments). Again, a menu is posted and my omlette was made-to-order come ON. Delicious
6 – 10pm – Kicking it around the ship, more filming, chatting and a little editing because my camera is full and I’ve got to dump some footage so I can fill it up again tomorrow
10 – 11pm – I drive the ship
11 – 11:30pm – Back to ‘The Cave’, the dining/hang-out area where I ate dinner and where there’s also a bar. A little editing and then fall on my face asleep in my bunk
* I’ve posted the rank hierarchy in the comments
OMG, okay SO!
I’d twittered that I was off to see one of our Navy’s most important ships, the HMCS Ville de Quebec, which was here on a PR tour for the past few days. So I’m talking to some of the guys, they said if I waited they could maybe get me on board for a quick tour, then long story short we are off tomorrow at 7:30am for “Exploring the CDN Navy” and I can’t believe this is happening.
We’re sailing to Sarnia, a 2 day trip, and I have no idea how I’ll get home from there but really how hard can that be. Wait, I’m gonna map that and see where I’ll end up, one sec…. easy, it’s 3 hours away.
Then I had a beer with the gang in the boat’s basement and was designing the episode in my head… we’ll explore how the ship runs, the radar, the weapons, we’ll be going through several locks including the Welland Canal one, which will be the ship’s first time ever doing that, sleep in a little bunk (I saw one already, it’s tiiiny), I might get to drive it, I’ll ask if I can swab a deck, I hope the helicopter is there on the back, and that’s all I’ve got so far.
There’ll be no online access for me but I’m allowed to Twitter from my Blackberry, and I’m sorry Keith, but “Exploring Diamonds” will be a few days out now.
Maybe you’ve seen a giant red canoe from the Gardiner Expressway near the Spadina on-ramp:
There’s some fantastic colourful sculptures back in there, too, and today I noticed giant tents being put up, so I investigated and turns out there’s a big party being thrown to open Toronto Park, a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the Mayor will be there too.
And I’m really hoping Douglas himself will be there, because I’m going to try to crash said party and meet him since, as I’ve said, he’s been in my top 3 authors of my life. Really though, I’ll probably get all star struck and reticent, so here’s hoping I don’t.
Here’s some photos I’ve taken over the past weeks but didn’t fit into other posts, so I put them all together:
september 6 2009
– you look through that thing and see the image in the circle in 3D
– that satellite farm needs to be explored, I found it not far from here . It’s part of Telesat, the world’s 4th largest satellite service providers (it operates 26 satellites), carries Bell stuff and 200+ of our TV channels
– there’s a second Chinatown in Toronto, East Chinatown, on Gerrard Street East here
– Toronto’s largest movie studio down by the water changed it’s name to that from Filmport
– my friend’s phone needs more people texting it
– kinda the design I have in my head for my team’s jerseys next year
– haircut day
– that’s where the ghost lives, this one
– I found the ‘Cirque de Soliel’ tents going up the other day, the show will be here on Commissioners Street
– HOW are the leaves changing already?
– that’s how I measure things in Photoshop
– I’m not scared of that
– that sculpture, here, is not squishy. Finally recently touched it after a year of wondering
– official Olympic Jewellery from Birks, click that link to view the collection
– that’s just for me, so when I again forget the code to unlock my radio I can look it up