maple leaves

maple leaves
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

So we took Shabana's advice and went to Le Parc de la Gatineau. It was truly a French experience what with all the French signs in the windows, and those pain in the ass bike riders in the streets of the park (oops, parc) riding like they owned the rue. Lucy, our GPS, wasn't able to find the route for us because parks don't actually have addresses, and I'm as technologically advanced as a broken frisbee, so I didn't know how to find parks on the device, so we used an ancient method of navigation, you've probably never heard of--something called "a map," if I spelled it correctly. A map is kind of like a schematic diagram of places, only much much smaller so it can fit on a sheet of paper. Thasneem was the navigator and I was the pilot, and Doug was, and still is, the car.

We found the park without too much difficulty and went to the information booth. There was a French family of three ahead of us, asking for information about the map they were given by the information maven, and the discourse seemed to go on for hours. French question after French question and finally Thasneem realized that on the other side of the little Question Hut was another French person answering more questions. We got our own map of the park and found out that the closest lake, pinc lake, was fairly far down the road. Oh, I forgot to mention that when I opened Doug's trunk to get my camera gear, I had left the backpack opened and my 60 mm macro lens fell out and got bruised on the edge so that I cannot use a filter on it anymore. Now of course, this is sad on one hand, but gives me leverage about getting another cool lens as a replacement, on the other hand.

But I digress.

So we got back in Doug, drove into the heart of the park, and found Pinc Lac or Lake or whatever. I was as disappointed as the little British girl next to us on the observatory platform as she asked her mummy, "Mummy, why isn't the lake pink?"

"Well, it says here that a man named Pinc discovered it, so I guess they named it after him."

"Boy, that sucks," I said, much to the shock of the British mummy, who put her hands over her daughter's ears and scooped her up and away from me.

So I shot some photos with Steve, my Nikon D 300, and we got back into Doug, and headed for more park to shoot.

The photo above, called "Maple Leaves," is my symbolic concept of the drugs being used in this area of Canada by its citizens. Who paints a house mauve anyway?
Before long, it started to rain. It was a gentle rain that fell, and some of it fell into the back of my shirt, down my back, into my underwear. It was uncomfortable and I decided it would be a good thing if we would go home and see my wonderful photos of this glorious Labor Day in Canada.
So Thasneem and I put Steve away, got into Doug, and drove home to Ottawa. We were one big happy family.
The end.