Notes: Back from Spring; Train Travel Tip

I took the train to Toronto on Friday so I could be there for the Brass Band Festival. Sadly, I have very few photos due to a battery mixup.

I think this young woman was playing some sort of wargame on her laptop while waiting to board the train. Later when we boarded the train, she tried to get a seat at the back of the car, but they'd all been assigned.

After she moved up front to her seat, the young man next to me, a self-described veteran, told me that the back of the cars had the only outlets you could plug a laptop into. It didn't click until we were almost in Toronto that that is why the young woman had wanted to sit back where she might be spending the whole trip with limited foot room and someone across from her the whole time.

I want you to notice two things about this hydrant.

1. It has no hydrant marker. This means that nobody expects it to be covered with enough snow that firefighters would have trouble finding it.
2. It is surrounded by grass. Not by snow and ice.

See. Toronto.

Doesn't it look warm? People were walking around without coats. No toques. No mittens.

Meanwhile this is what it looked like in Ottawa when I got home. I've been good in recent years about accepting the weather. You know, that Serenitas thing "accept the things I cannot change, blah, blah, blah". But the cold 70kph winds today bugged me.

If you saw me in my Hawaiian shirt and wondered about it, I'm just lashing back at the weather. I'll get my serenity back and be wearing winter-appropriate shirts soon.