Thursday, June 2, 2011 Lethbridge

5:50 am

The temperature is +8 C, with a high predicted of +12 C.

From the Environment Canada website:

Today Cloudy. Periods of rain beginning this morning. Risk of a thunderstorm this afternoon. Amount 5 to 10 mm. High 12. Tonight Periods of rain ending near midnight then cloudy. Risk of a thunderstorm this evening. Amount 5 to 10 mm. Wind west 30 km/h gusting to 50. Low 9. Normals Max: 21°C Min: 7°C

3:00 PM Literature

I have finished reading "Autobiography of Mark Twain" while on the airplane to Montreal. This is the first time that I have travelled without taking any real books.

As Mark Twain reminds us a few time in his autobiography, the idea is not to provide a typical autobiography by selecting the vignettes and stories that chronicle important or noteworthy events but instead to simply write whatever occurs to one on the day, and then to leave instructions that the notes are not to be published for 100 year so that no one could possibly be offended by anything that is written.

The result is an interesting experiment. It is wildly disjointed, and makes no apologies for this. The idea is to provide a sense of the person by noting what interests him at the moment. However many of the passages are carefully crafted to be humorous and thus it makes for interesting reading. There is very little reflection on the signficance of the stories or commentary.

10:00 PM Musings

We had a bit of rough ride across the country with the "fasten seat-belt" sign on for much of the time due to possible turbulence. The actual runway approach reminded me of a similar one many years ago as I approached Canberra with the plane really pitching and yawing as we came in. It is nice to have good pilots who can handle a plane under these conditions.

It took us a few tries before we found the counter for arranging to rent a car next week. But once we found the counter the rest was very easy. We compared the rates and times for a shuttle bus versus taxi and opted for the taxi. I liked the system for handling this. There were 8 parking stalls and the taxis for all 8 would arrive at the same time, then 8 groups of riders would all load up at the same time and leave. Thus the overall speed was almost 8 times as fast as if the taxis arrived singly. It was all organized by a man who directed each group to the appropriate stall. Smooth and efficient. I hav not seen this type of approach before but I like it.

The driver was a delight. We started chatting and soon told him that we once lived in Montreal. He then took us for a little tour of the downtown area so we could see some of the changes and new buildings. The fare is a set rate from airport to the downtown zone so there was no change to the cost. This is another feature that I like. In Toronto the taxis all run on meters and the price can change dramatically depending on traffic flow. The Montreal system caters to the customer, the Toronto system caters to the taxis.

The hotel we are staying at is on Sherbrooke street and it is less than a block from the McGill University bookstore where I intend to spend some quality time.

It was only a short walk to St. Catherine street where we found a new restaurant with a 1950's decor. I had a Montreal smoked meat sandwich with a couple of Molson Export beers to wash it down. The perfect beginning to a Montreal visit.