WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF IRONY?
Walking around on the ice of a frozen lake for an hour with no difficulty, and then, after you get home, slipping and falling on the stairs. While carrying a mug of hot chocolate, which ended up mostly all over my sweater, my face, and my hair. I had to take another shower! Though I was fortunate and didn't break anything, and only got a couple of bruises. I did feel humiliated all evening.I haven't posted my Saturday Winterlude pics, or the ones from the other Saturday for that matter, but I might as well post the Sunday Winterlude pics right now.
As I wanted to get back in time for the Sunday evening Fox cartoons, I didn't go to downtown Ottawa, just Dow's Lake, but I went there via Preston Street's "Corso Italia", since I was hoping, once again, to see a Ferrari.
I didn't see a Ferrari, but I did see the following.
A giant drill, on the back of a truck.
City of Ottawa Fire Station #2.
A cool blue Ford Mustang GT convertible.
An interesting-looking block of businesses, including Compiano Bakery, Casa Nicastro Deli, Night Club Paraiso, Pasticceria Reggina, and, of course, that most authentically Italian of all eateries, Domino's Pizza.
"Corso Italian" mural artwork in the Preston Street underpass under the Queensway.
The Ottawa headquarters of Open Text Corporation and a garage with the rather non-Italian name of Krishna Auto Repairs.
Stoneface Dolly's, a restaurant that seems to be especially popular for brunch.
Beer Art Treasures, a store selling beer paraphenalia (but not beer, because of the LCBO's Beer Store's monopoly in the Ontario market).
I don't know what the food's like, but Ristorante Il Piccolino has a very charming exterior.
There's other stuff on Preston, but a lot of it I've photographed before. Check my Flikr photostream for more.
I crossed Carling and reached Dow's Lake.
Prince of Wales Drive was blocked off to traffic... you can sort of see an Ottawa police officer directing traffic.
Meaning, of course, that there was a Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor car parked nearby, so I was obliged to take yet another Crown Vic pic.
Anyway, my primary interest in going to Dow's Lake wasn't to photograph skaters, it was to photograph horses being used for calèche sleigh rides around the lake. I took a whole roll of film photos of horses on Saturday, but I took them from the shore using the big-ass zoom lens of my Nikon F65 SLR camera. I also took a few digital shots with my Kodak EasyShare C643, but the horses were out of range of that camera's relatively paltry mechanical zoom, so I had to use digital zoom, and the pictures came out looking much too grainy and pixellated.
On Sunday, I got a little braver and actually ventured out onto the ice of the lake itself, to get close enough to the horses to take semi-decent digital shots.
I can't post every single horse picture that I took, but here's a good sampling.
A line-up of three of the four horses (no, I don't think their names are "War", "Famine", "Pestilence", or "Death").
I'm no equine expert, but I'm pretty sure at least one of those horses is a Clydesdale.
Here's the fourth, my favourite, returning from a trot around the lake.
It was getting colder, so the horse driver put on one of those horse-sweater things.
Another interesting thing about this particular photo is that it's the only one of the lot that even has a hint of horse penis. I was kind of hoping that I could get just one horse schlong shot, since a picture like that would likely be "Favorited" dozens of times at Flickr within a day or two. (The most "Favorites" I currently have for any picture at Flickr is a paltry six for my Piccadilly Circus crayon drawing, and that's been up since June.)
I suspect the horses have been trained not to pee while on duty, as I didn't see any tell-tale yellow snow in the main boarding area. Either that, or the horses just thought it was just too freezing cold to "whip it out".
The horse was licking the post. I think he was trying to eat it.
Here are a few shots of the horses trotting back towards the boarding area.
All four horses together.
All in all, I hung around for maybe 45 minutes, taking horse pictures.
I could have stayed for at least another hour and still made it back in time for the 7:30 p.m. Simpsons rerun, but I was beginning to get really freaking cold, so I left the ice before the sunset.
The steps back to "terra firma".
On the way to the bus stop to get the #3 bus down to Meadowlands and Fisher, I got an unexpected photographic bonus.
The O-Train (with a Bombardier Talent BR643 locomotive), going through a trench towards the tunnel under the Rideau Canal. These shots are rather different from the usual shots of it that I take from station platforms or the Scott Street bridge, where it's only surrounded by fields.
Finally, a shot of the sunset over the Experimental Farm and the corner of Baseline and Prince of Wales as seen through the filthy, sludge-encrusted front-side window of an OC Transpo New Flyer Invero bus.
Labels: Ottawa, photos, Winterlude
posted by Steve Brandon @ 7:30 AM
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