GO'ing to work

I got to "Train" in Toronto Recently, and shift my monotonous drive down to the city around a little bit. I drove to the train station and hopped on the train from Bradford to Union station in downtown toronto. From there I got onto the subway and took it to Young and Eglington. The simple process described above took about two and a half hours, meaning my daily commute times were about 5 hours a day. I did however save a whack of dough!





If I were have to driven down to Young and Eglington, it would likely have taken the same amount of time (two and a half hours each way). But I would also have to pay for the gallons of gas needed to get there, and the horrid idea of Toronto downtown parking (only 30$ daily? really?! What a steal!)





Train folk are friendly and personable it seems. Most seem to work in the bank industry, and despite my ratty clothes (hey I was on vacatio.. Training!~ give me a break!) they didnt seem to give me the cold shoulder.




My instructor for this training was impressed with the way i seemed to handle myself. All the people he has taught from the Northlands seem to be disoriented in Toronto. He told me the tale of the guy who would always arrive late at class because he was never able to get on the subways (he always used to give way to the less fortunate, and missed 3 or 4 trains before he was actually able to get onto the train).




Yes, there is a certain type of madness to Toronto Commuting. Push yourself onto the subway.. it is only there for 3 seconds. And when the doors on the go train open, BOLT FOR YOUR CAR. The first day I took it nice and easy getting to my car, and it took me 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. The next day, with a little strategic planning, and a running pair of legs I was able to drive out right away.

Minesing Delight

Took another trip into the Minesing swamp this spring. There was a discussion on the COG forums about going into the swamp in a small armada of canoes to seek out the geocaches that I had put in there. It took alot of planning and many people had to back out after the realization that it really WOULD take the entire day to canoe the 24km journey down the river.

So early morning Saturday we set off. 2 Canoes, 4 People. Scott and I shared the old red battle canoe, while Pat and Mark shared the Blue Peterborough Express canoe. Other then discovering a new subspecies of groundhog (the Arboreal Minesing Treehog) it was a rather uneventful trip with great scenery to admire. We found all the caches, safe and sound! well relatively safe.. Of the four of us, only 1 managed to stay out of the river. And a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are the pictures of the trip!


The Terrain wasn't Friendly in spots



Very Hard to get into a canoe at this angle



The Old Log Cabin



Canoeing down the River



Empty Doorway



Working on the bridge



TreeHog



FLooded Forests



Parking Lot