FERRARI FEST... HELL YEAH!
Select your music.
Passing Breeze
Splash Wave
Magical Sound Shower
I don't have much time, but here's a sampling of digital photos I took yesterday of Ferraris on display on Preston Street (Corso Italia) in Ottawa's Little Italy neighbourhood courtesy of
the Ottawa chapter of the Ferrari Club of America.
A Ferrari 550 Maranello!
A Ferrari 328 GTS!
A Ferrari Testarossa (as featured in Sega's
Out Run)!
A Ferrari F355 Spider (as featured in Sega's
Ferrari F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa)!
A Ferrari F430 Berlinetta (plus my 1/16 scale radio-controlled Ferrari F430 Berlinetta from Silverlit).
And the rear ends of a Ferrari Dino 308 FT4, a Ferrari Testarossa, a Ferrari 360 Modena, and a Ferrari 308 GTB (panorama assembled in
Autostitch).
Here's a link to
my Ottawa Ferrari Festival album at Flickr. I'll add a lot more pictures after I get back from Mont Tremblant.
Bonus:
It's not a Ferrari, but this car was also parked near Preston street.
A DeLorean, as seen in
Back to the Future. This is the first DeLorean that I've seen in person since about my 17th birthday in 1991, when I spotted one in the parking lot of the Complexe Pointe-Claire strip mall.
CARS AND GIRLS...
You can tell that summer is practically here already. I've spotted a lot of classic cars over the past week.
First, I spotted this 1937 Ford "Tudor" (Two Door) on Meadowlands Drive near Merivale Road while waiting to take the OC Transpo 86 Elmvale bus home after work.
Then, on the weekend, there were several classic cars on display in the central atrium of Billings Bridge Plaza that were somehow being used to promote
the Billings Estate Museum.
An honest-to-god 1958 Ford Edsel (or, more precisely, since "Edsel" was a marque like Mercury or Lincoln and not an individual model, a Canadian-made Edsel Ranger with white "Teletouch" automatic transmission buttons on the steering wheel).
A 1929 Ford Model "A".
And a "Supercharged" Auburn 852 Speedster, one of the few true sports cars made in depression-era America.
And, finally, on Thursday, I spotted this 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS in the parking lot of the Food Basics supermarket on Merivale Road. 1970 was the absolute pinnacle of the Chevelle's existence, when the engine was upgraded to a 454 cid V8 engine, making this one of the most powerful of all the muscle cars.
This car was polished so shiny that my camera caught all sorts of glare.
But I'm going to have the mother of all car-spotting experiences this weekend with the only make of automobile that truly matters. First of all, it's
Italian Week here in Ottawa, so the
Ferrari Club of Ottawa will be displaying some of the most beautiful cars in existence on Preston Street in Little Italy this weekend. I'll have the opportunity to photograph these cars on Friday evening. Unfortunately, I'll miss the other events, like seeing the cars actually being driven fast on an impromptu circuit on Preston and Carling, not because I'm working, but, rather, because I'll be on my way to see the
Ferrari Challenge race on the
Mosport International Speedway in Mont Tremblant, Quebec. It's been 5 years since I last saw a Ferrari Challenge race at the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix, back when they were still racing Ferrari 460 Modena Challenges (
here are some of my photos from the Montreal races in 2000, 2001, and 2002). While I couldn't quite afford to go to the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix this past weekend, I received quite a nice tax refund, and, in addition to the money I'm making from my job, I was able to scratch together enough scratch to take the bus to and from Mont Tremblant, as well as finding cheap accommodations there for one night (technically, it's still considered "low season", so a motel room can be had for only about $70 Canadian at the cheapest). Though, the fly in my perfect weekend ointment is that I have yet to actually get accommodations... I tried to book online, but the motel didn't get back to me, so I'll have to make a couple of phone calls tomorrow or, at worst, stay in the youth hostel (which is a little risky since I will have my camera equipment with me). I'll post a few pictures here, but the bulk of the photos will only be displayed in
my Flickr account, though I'll create a couple of new albums and link to them from this blog.
Changing subjects, I saw something weird at Billings Bridge Plaza last weekend:
After doing a little shopping for film and another SD card for my digital camera (and taking the photos of the classic cars), I went to the Billings Bridge Transitway stop to take a bus downtown to go to the University of Ottawa Anime club. Just as I crossed the pedestrian bridge from the plaza to the Transitway stop, I spotted a police officer talking to an OC Transpo security agent girl, and the officer told her to get in his Ottawa Police Service Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor for some reason. I snapped the picture seen above and then walked through the Transitway station to get to the platform for the northbound buses. As soon as I walked out on the platform, the same Crown Victoria sped by as though it was on its way to a crime scene. A few minutes later, I got on the 97 bus towards downtown, and, between the Billings Bridge and Pleasant Park Transitway stations, the bus slowed down. At least two more Crown Victoria police cars plus an OC Transpo security Chevy Impala had pulled over a bus, one of the long New Flyer D60LF articulated buses, and I spotted a police officer leading a handcuffed man, who looked to be in his 40 or 50's and of Canadian native extraction (presumably Mohawk), to a waiting Crown Victoria. The whole "perp march" made it look like a serious arrest, but I didn't see anything about it in the news or on Google News, so I guess it was probably for some minor infraction, like pick-pocketing.
Changing subjects again, as to why I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks, I'm getting out of the house more, and, when I'm home, I'm usually too exhausted to be too creative to do much more than play videogames, and I've had a lot on my mind, especially girls.
Eh, seriously, I had all but forgotten what it's like to be infatuated with a girl I (am trying to get to) know in person and not just from chatting on the Internet. It's been several years since I've even had a remote chance to get to know a girl well. The last time was with this Vietnamese-Canadian girl I had a class or two with at Concordia University in the autumn of 2000 (and that was a girl that actually seemed to like me, but I was too gutless to make any serious move, and that was about the same period when I was really slipping back into serious depression that lasted on and off until I finally got proper help for it after I moved to Ottawa).
Obviously, I'm not going to say anything about what little I know about this girl, well, young woman (yes, she is an adult). All I can say is that the chances of anything beyond mild acquaintanceship happening is minimal at best, with several big strikes against me before I even get out of the starting gate (since I'm lousy with small talk and, while I indeed have lost some weight in the nearly two months since I've been working, I'm still not exactly a prize catch), but I think I might have one or two interests in common with her that I hope I can get over my usual intimidation factor and break the ice with.
Oh, I don't think I mentioned it yet, but I've succumbed to the pressure and joined a couple of social networking sites. I got a
MySpace account because a couple of people I know from online are there, but I've noticed that a lot more people that I know from real life, especially from high school, are on Facebook rather than on MySpace (or, at least, are much easier to find on Facebook), so I have a
Facebook profile too. Feel free to add me on either service (not that anyone likely will, since most people would have bailed out on this boring article long before they got to this paragraph).
In closing, I'll leave you with not one, not two, but FIVE cover versions of
Sailor Moon songs that I sung on Thursday evening just because I felt like doing it.
Me singing "Moonlight Densetsu", the main Sailor Moon theme for the first four seasons.Me singing "Heart Moving", the first Sailor Moon ending song.Me singing "Princess Moon", the second Sailor Moon ending song.Me singing "Otome no Policy", the third Sailor Moon ending song, used in the second series, Sailor Moon R.And, lastly,
me singing the techno-riffic German Sailor Moon theme song.
