Exit

“You’ve got to realize that back then I was very angry about the lab and my situation. And with Donna kidnapped I was scared too.”

Adams didn’t respond, just lit his cigarette and took a drag.

“Michael and I drove home after the police left. We had a big fight that started in the car and kept going long after we got back to our apartment. He eventually stormed out and went somewhere.”

Adams tapped some ash into his coffee cup. Leslie continued, “We’d been fighting for months. Leaving my government job was too much. Michael was against it: ‘It ruined our Life Plan’. That, and the day with Donna, was the last straw.”

Leslie paused and took a long draw from her cigarette. “When I got up the next morning I noticed that Michael had come back while I was asleep, but it looked like he didn’t stay long and left for work early.”

Leslie took a languid puff, gently exhaled some smoke and watched it drift to the ceiling, taunting the disabled smoke detector.

“That was it for me. I stuffed everything I thought I’d need to travel into my backpack and left a note. After I locked up the apartment on my way out I pushed the key under the door. I wasn’t coming back. I didn’t know where I’d go, but on my trip down to the lobby, the elevator muzak was playing Galveston. I’d never been there, and didn’t have any associations with that town, so that seemed as good a place as any to hide out. I went to the bank, withdrew as much cash as I could, and then headed for the train station.”

Leslie stubbed out the remainder of her cigarette and absentmindedly ground the ash with the filter.

She gave Adams a three-mile stare. “Do you remember the poem that starts something like ‘there are many strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold’?”

Adams put down his cigarette and replied encyclopedically, “Robert Service; The Cremation of Sam McGee; ‘the arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.’”

“Believe me, there are tales from the Gulf of Mexico that can make your blood run just as cold as those from the Arctic Circle.”

The next instalment can be found here.

Walls go up at Mel's

Drill bits and optical fibres arrived in the mail a few days ago, so work resumed on Mel's Drive-in.

After studying the main building walls for awhile I decided to extend them and put a sloped roof on top. I figured that since this Mel's was going to reside in a northern clime, it might be good to have a sloped roof to prevent snow accumulation. The extension would also help hide the fibres I plan to install in the sign. This is a picture of some early plans at figuring out what to do. As you can see, I was focused on having the roof slope towards the circular restaurant, which would give winter diners a big surprise when a snow load cuts loose! 

The new wall pieces are cut from styrene sheet embossed with brick glued to 0.030 inch sheet plain styrene. I completely replaced one kit supplied wall with a new brick one. I didn't want to just put a brick top on the kit's stucco walls as I thought it would just look like a hat on the basic structure. This way it looks more integrated, and goes with the small brick walls that make up the dinning room.

The stucco portion of the walls were sprayed with Krylon Riverstone. This colour is pretty close to the raw colour of the walls, but what the Krylon does is dull down the finish. Once dry, I dusted each wall with Krylon Gold to help emphasize the stucco texture.

The main sign was drilled out with a #74 bit in order to accept 0.5 mm diameter optical fibres. The letters are brushed painted with Tamyia White.

I cut out the floor from the base for easy access to fibre and power. The dinning room floor was sprayed with white and then dusted with gold when dry.

The dinning room doors were brush painted with Tamyia chrome paint. After the paint was dry, a line was scribed between the doors to simulate the gap, otherwise they look like a window frame and not a door.

Here the walls are partially installed. The lower parts of the walls are painted with the same brick colour as the main wall extensions. The floor holes that lock the little walls in place had to be opened up a bit with a knife as the mouldings were a little uneven and not completely clear.

A visit to the Diaz Contemporary to see the Kim Adams exhibit

[The Diaz Contemporary]

I was in Toronto over the weekend and had the opportunity to see the Kim Adams exhibit at the Diaz Contemporary gallery. It opened on 18 July and runs until 17 August.  There is also a Kim Adams exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario running until 11 August, so if you’re in Toronto, you can catch the double bill for a couple more weeks.

The Diaz show is quite different from the one at the AGO. It consists of around 10 - this is an approximation, I should have counted - small, 12 inch x 12 inch, dioramas. Each features a caboose(s), usually accompanied with a crane or two, as an exploration - often a whimsical one -  into how to use a caboose for everyday living or business. All are built from readily available HO-scale model railroad components.  Thematically, they are calmer than either the Artist’s Colony (Garden) you can see at the AGO, or the Bruegel-Bosch Bus at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

The dioramas are displayed much better in this gallery than the Artist’s Colony (Garden) is at the AGO. They are spread out along the white walls of the display room with lots of space between each one so that they don’t impinge on their neighbours. The room lighting is clear and uniform, making it easy to see all the details. Focusing on display may seem unimportant, but care on this aspect helps to show the dioramas to their best advantage. The only display improvement I might suggest is to somehow show them on free-standing pedestals so viewers can walk around and see all sides, although I admit this would require even more gallery floor space than might be practical or readily available.

I like these builds. Although they all represent unusual uses for cabooses, they all seem plausible and could be possible in ‘real life.’ If there are any enterprising GTA real estate developers out there reading this, buy ‘em all, spend sometime looking at ‘em, maybe try ‘em in different arrangements like puzzle pieces, and maybe if you’ve got your eye on some land somewhere just laying around and not earning its keep, maybe this’ll all add up to a money maker. If not, they still look great, and you’ll have some good art to enjoy - and no doubt appreciate :-) If you’re a model builder, they’re great examples of ‘what-if’ modeling. If you’re an art collector, they’ll look good in your collection - again, after you buy one, try and display it on something free-standing if you’ve got the space. Well, regardless of your interest, go see them.

---

Postscript

The Diaz Contemporary gallery is located on the corner of Tecumseth and Niagara, just a short walk from the intersection of King and Tecumseth - which is also a convenient streetcar stop. The AGO and Diaz are pretty close to each other - well, relatively speaking - and smack dab in the part of the city that’s criss-crossed with a dense network of streetcars, so you can ride the rails and check out the art. Although I must admit I usually walk everywhere when I’m downtown. The terrain’s dead flat so the walking is easy; there’s lots to see and do on the street: food of all kinds, gawking at buildings, as well as people and streetcar watching. 

[I clipped this ad from the weekend Globe & Mail. It was interesting to see the old TTC PCC streetcar still in use in popular media.]

Reading with a side of ham

At least there wasn’t a line to stand in to get out of there. One hour to kill. Adams wouldn’t appreciate me calling him for an update, so I decided to cool my heels at the drug store near the end of the food court.

I heeded the ‘Please Seat Yourself’ sign at the drug store’s entrance and headed to a free booth across from the far end of the counter. I dropped in the seat and reached for the menu. I was starved. 

The waitress came by as soon as I had studied the menu back. She pulled out a note pad from her apron and a pencil from behind her ear.

“Big Al’s big breakfast please.” 

She scribbled down my order. “Anything to drink sweetie?”

“And some black coffee thanks.”

“Just be a few minutes.” With that she turned to the next booth for a new order.

There was a rack of magazines opposite the end of the counter. I could see the new issue of Thrilling and Amazing Analog Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy right at the top. As well as proclaiming it was still only 60 cents, the cover boasted a new story from Isaac B. Clark. I grabbed it and dug in while I waited for my eggs.

By 2081, settlement of the far reaches of the solar system definitely had one adverse affect on Earth civilization: the holdings of the royal and ancient - but unfortunately long disbanded - Scarboro Public Library were scattered all the way from Mercury to Pluto. Colonists could just not part with their beloved tomes and carried them jealously wherever the whims of fortune took them. So, to right this wrong and reclaim the legacy for a new generation, many long retired library board members, along with sympathetic supporters from the underground rebel book alliance, convened to consider their options. They needed a ship - a fleet of ships actually - to go to those distant places and collect those treasures. And collect them with punishing over-due fees.

A laconic “Here’s your breakfast sweetie” roused me. I made room for the big plate and steaming mug of coffee.

“Can you put this on my bill?” I waved the digest at the waitress.

“Sure sweetie” And with another scribble added to her note pad, the waitress left me to my eggs and spaceships.

Professor Emeritus Vincenzo Air reported on a long forgotten chapter in propulsion technology: the curvilinear j-Fforde drive; an interplanetary drive named in honour of the author Jasper Fforde, discoverer of Book World earlier in the century. The basic principle behind the drive was a targeted seeking of the 'spine' in local space that, once found and accessed, allowed a spacecraft to jump to any location in space via 'pages' in a matter of seconds. After an immodest allocation of funds, and a number of years of development, the first prototype book retrieval spacecraft outfitted with a curvlinear j-Fforde drive - the s.p.l. Bendale - was ready for testing. Many hardcore due-date ignorers were on Mars, so the shakedown voyage was to Cydonia for a face-to-face showdown. Prof. Air insisted on being the test pilot, but he was a little too fast on the draw and gunned it so hard that he kinked the main drive unit. When later asked by reporters how fast it would go, he replied, "It's a real page turner". Among the stacks back on Earth, his title of Professor Emeritus, was quickly replaced by Lead-foot - well, at least outside the range of his hearing aid. And what about those fee dodgers? Some tricks of illumination allowed them to avoid facing-the-music on this sortie - but there is always next time!

And so ended the story along my eggs, bacon, beans, sausage and pancakes. The hour wasn’t quite up, but I hurriedly paid at the cash register and headed back to the black door.

The next instalment can be found here.

Three trolley stops, a bike, and some planes

[Trolley stop #1]

The intense heat broke over the the weekend and Sunday turned out to be an ideal summer day, which I started with an early morning bike ride. My destination was the Rockcliffe Park airport, and my route followed the eastbound leg of the bike path along the Rideau River, then snaked through some streets to the governor-general’s residence at Rideau Hall, looped through the streets along its back border to meet up with the leg of the bike path running along the shore of the Ottawa River, and then followed the river to the yacht club which marked the intersection where a right turn, and a short climb up their service road, took me to the airport’s back field for some plane watching.

[All that's left of the trolley tracks.]

There’s a stretch of the bike path that parallels the Rockciffe parkway that used to be the right-of-way of a trolley line that ran from the mansions of Rockcliffe Park to downtown Ottawa in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. All that exists today are a few metres of track preserved in an approach to the bike path, and some of the private trolley stops that bordered the track. I’ve ridden by these odd pavilions many times over the years and wondered what they were. Well, it turns out they were shelters built by homeowners whose properties bordered the trolley line so they could be a little out of the elements while they waited for their ride into town.

[This is the view looking back towards that track remnant from trolley stop #1.]

[Trolley stop #2. This one's in much better shape than #1.]

[Trolley stop #3. The bike path is still being renovated here; hence, the orange construction fence.]

[And finally some planes.]