Ultimate Lindyhop Showdown: Day 1

So the border was speedy at Buffalo, got on the plane ok, my congestion really rattled my brain though. We got in at 2:30, went hat shopping where Dean bought a boater hat and John pre-ordered a pork pie hat. We roamed around, had dinner at Coops (best jambalaya ever, oh and I stole half a piece of fried chicken when John was elsewhere). My congestion was really stuffing me up around midnight, which is the earliest I've called it a night while in NOLA, but I'd rater be healthy to enjoy the next 4 days!

Dancing was awesome, nice and fast! With the resurgence of balboa, it allowed more people on the dance floor too :). Definitely more to come too! Went for a run inthe French Quarter, I love the architecture! John's sleeping and Dean is out taking pictures. More people are arriving this afternoon, there's outdoor dancing at the French Market and some of the competitions. :) Ah yes and I plan to buy some chickoree coffee from Cafe du Monde, it's a local thing!

Reading papers and will probably do breakfast soon when Dean gets back :)

Swedish Weekend in Toronto

The weekend of September 14-16, Toronto had the plasure to host Lennart, eWa, Daniel and Äsa eho are excellent lindy hoppers and instructors from Sweden. This was a super refreshing change of teaching since I've more often gotten the North American style. They went back to more Frankie inspired stuff and really tried to stay away from patterns since it is a vernacular dance.

Lennart had the nice points that lindy hop should flow and should be relaxing, not just all energetic and flashy when the music gets intense. I know this point really made John happy because that's his dance philosophy. For others, this point would be a tougher one to implement just based on their style.

Daniel and Äsa had some nice body movement exercises to make the dance flow through more of the body, or to vary your position/mood. They also did a bunch of scatting exercises, and at first people felt awkward, but it became fun when the whole group was doin it.

The dance DCH was pretty fun and it had a lot of people who didn't show up atla often because of work/school (even Turlough came down from Montreal). I had the pleasure of dancing with Daniel a few times over the weekend and it was sooo much fun! Up there on the list of best dances including Peter, Juan, and Stefan.

Beginning of grad studies!

So this post is a little delayed, which would correctly indicate that I have been super busy (not just school but yes school's taken a big chunk of time). I'm still working for Walterfedy partime when I don't have classes, lab work or meetings. I enjoy the two types of pace, academic and industrial, I feel it keeps me grounded.

I'm taking the only civil structural grad course being offered this term called Risk and Reliability, as well as an ECE stochastic processes course in relation to signal processing. It's something different but I'm trying to get a feel for where I could take my master's thesis afterwards. So far both courses are good, had the same first 2 weeks if lectures since they have to review statistics. The ECE course will definitely be higher math, should be interesting.

So the big news is that We were finally able to nail down a date to go to Montreal to instrument MAADI's aluminum pedestrian bridge spanning 44m across a ditch in Brossard. I'm super excited because we've been planning this since June but the date would get pushed back. We're hooking up up to 12 accelerometers on mounts that will be clamped on the underside of the bridge, hook them up to a data acquisitions system, and collect data on the laptop. An added challenge is 1) we needed to bring our own power and 2) we're leaving the day I get back drom New Orleans. :P

I'm also excited because some of the coolest people from my graduation year stuck around for MASc too :)

My office has been frequently frequented by my friends/people hungry for baked goods. :P

So yes, things have been going exceptionally well, busy, but very well.

Canoe Trip in Algonquin Park

Two weeks after my first visit to the Algonquin Park area (previously for Lindystock), I headed up there again but this time for a 5 day canoe trip with Martin, Ceara, Connie, Mel, and Mohrgan. I had never gone on a multi-day hiking or canoeing trip before, so I was excited. a few weeks before the trip, I start looking for gear, figuring that I'd use a hiking pack and a bunch of the other accessories lik dry bags in the future. I was fortunate enough that my parents got this set of gear for me as my undergrad graduation gift, so it'll make every trip from now on more special!

Mimi was the grand planner of the trip, having spreadsheets and a menu planned out for the five (originally 6) people coming. I was brought on board the trip when someone had to drop out, and there were several changes to the list of people going before the trip actually happened. Martin was the most experienced hiker, so he had a bunch of the gear that possibly no one else had.

The night before we left, I helped Mimi and Ceara make trail mixes for each person and pack the food barrel in order of what was being consumed (this turned out to be an effective way to pack since going by least squishable on the bottom meant a lot of rummaging each meal time). The rest of the group showed up and we divided up the communal gear among the packs to ensure every item had a home.

The next morning we were off to the races! Picked up early by most peoples' standards, Mel got to my house around 7 and we drove to Connie's where we took the back roads (led by Mohrgan and his knowledge of these roads by bicycle) to the 400 and up through to Algonquin. I believe we put in the canoes around 3 in the afternoon and we paddled to the opposite end of Rain Lake for our first camp site. We had homemade hamburgers and hung out around the fire until it started to rain. Oh, and this night it poured, we found out the large tent, housing Mel, Mohrgan, Mimi, and myself, was not entirely rainproof, and rained onto us. Mel read a bit from '50 shades of grey' out loud before going to bed. I don't like that book, it's just plain silly hah.

The morning consisted of hanging a lot of things to dry; clothes, sleeping bags, and tents. Of the tents, we all got wet, but ours most-so. After our first night of hilarity and silliness, we were still able to get up early enough to pack up and get ready for the next leg which included 4 portages, the longest of which was 550m. I was paired with Mimi, Mohrgan and Mel were another team, and Martin, Connie and Ceara made the team of three where one person got to sit regally in the middle and watch the others paddle. Mimi was a fun canoe partner, and we got to be in charge of the food barrel, which was stupid heavy going into the park. If others said a path was clear from the rocks or trees under the water, we ended up scraping them! I had never portaged a canoe before, so I let Mimi go first, but on the second portage I gave it a try (with my pack!) and it was cool. I had thought portaging was a 2-person thing but we got the light-weight canoes. After the 4 treks through the lakes, we got to the site where we'd stay two nights. It was a great site with a nice clean rockface to enter the water or lie in the sun. Lots of swimming was had, though the water was cool. Mel and Connie only made it in on the second day at the site because it was warmer that day.

I soon realized that Mohrgan and I were the early birds of the group, frequently hanging out on the rock or going for a morning swim or canoe paddle together. I hadn't really known him much before, but he's a really interesting person. I mean, I got to learn a lot about Ceara, Connie, Mel, and Martin too but I feel I may have known them better/longer already. I like Ceara's sense of humour :)

On the full day that we were at that camp site we had pancakes in the morning (yum!) and then went on a day trip further into the park onto a portage route that was labelled 'unmaintained'. It was a nice hike but I'd rather not do it with a canoe on my head, it's just quite shrubby. We found a nice little bog with a log to sit on and have lunch. Connie and Mel were snapping away taking pictures of all sorts of trees and plants, which was awesome for memories after, I just don't have the patience for it, or is it that I just want to experience it in person and not through a camera? I don't know which. I believe that night we had spaghetti with sauce and TVP which was awesome. This is the night that I acted on my 'I can eat anything with chopsticks' and successfully drank a bit of wine by slurping it up with my chopsticks.

Heading back out of the park, we did two of the four portages and stayed a nice site that had a lot of little corners on the rock by the water for us to sit as a group together and just chill. That night was pretty cold, but we went away from the fire to watch the stars (so many shooting stars!). For some it was one of the first times to have seen them that clearly, and I had missed seeing them that well.

The last morning, most people slept in. It was super cold, and even though I toughed some pretty chilly nights in my capris and canoe shoes, I finally had to change into pants, long sleeve shirt, sweater, and running shoes. The lake was so still it was like glass, and Connie and I saw a beaver peacefully swim by.

It was an awesome trip in every sense; we got great weather (I consider the fact that we got all types of weather the best), great people, and lots of new experiences for me. Plus, being outdoors is awesome :D

Lindystock 2012

A little late is better than never, my recap of Lindystock!

On the civic holiday in August, a group of lindyhoppers from Toronto and the surrounding areas trekked north toa round Hunstville where we spend 3 nights at a retreat-type lodge doing camping and dancing activities. This year the sign up was intense because the passes sold out in 117 minutes, less than two hours! Waiting on the internet for the registration was worth it because the weekend was a blast.

I drove up with Mark from Waterloo and we got in the craziest cottage traffic on the 400. Not being one to tolerate traffic, Mark had some choice words and was visibly perturbed like a caged squirrel. Eventually we made it, unpacked our bags (into very nicely kept log cabins). We were then greeted to dinner and the Charlie/Phil Hawaiian shirted duo running a tiki bar. Not sure how many cans of coconut milk or pineapple juice they went through but they were a really hilarious team.

Every night there was dancing on the top floor of the main hall, and man was it hot and stuff up there! Not only does heat rise, but people added to it on a weekend that was pretty warm to start with. The venue and atmosphere were great and that's why we continued to dance regardless.

The first day we had a chance to go on an interpretive hike, led by one of the people who lived at the lodge year-round. It was much of an ecology hike with a bit more story telling, so it was something new for me, and neat. A bunch of people walked out to Ragged Falls and climbed the rocks to get to the nice pools to swim in. Having wished I bought canoe shoes, I was pretty precarious with my walking in scandals. The water was deeper and faster than some people expected so we had some close calls of people getting too close to the edges of the falls area. My apprehension of moving water is thanks to my hydraulics course and Bill Annable's rule of thumb for water while surveying. The rest of the day could be spent however we pleased, so I believe I had my laptop to do some work, a lot of people had books, and some brought knitting supplies. Oh and we had a stream nearby to swim in, oddly enough I ended up swimming there mostly at night.

On the Saturday and Sunday nights I got to DJ for a while which was neat but I didn't know what kind of reaction to expect since I had never DJed for Toronto dancers before. I've danced with them enough peoples' preferences, but yes whatever I did they really liked. I ended up doing a gigantic shift from midnight until 3 am on Saturday of blues music because up until then it had been all fast lindy. This makes me laugh because I didn't consider my blues repetoire enough (though I found out later at the late night dance at the Kitchener Blues Fest that I could run a dance until 6 am on my repetoire no problem).

On Sunday morning I went for a run with Martha, Jaime, and Mark, though I didn't have my normal runnings shoes so I had to turn back early (they were doing a 20km half-marathon prep run). It was still really nice scenery to run by, though it was a bit damp/rained when I returned.

Oh I have to say, the food was really great but not only that, they catered to every food allergy, intolerance, and eating choice possible, it was unbelievable!

On Monday right before we left, we did gunnel bobbing (tradition form last year). This is where a person stands on the gunnels of the canoe on each end and jumps up and down. The first first to touch the water loses. I did my once but had to stop after because while the other person was setting up, I tumbled into the canoe, my knee landing on some rivets, so it was a little bruised and was kinda bleeding. But I still did it, darn it! and it was a blast.