I had the privilege of being a guest in an authentic traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony, hosted by a student of the art who has received years of training abroad by the Japanese masters.

The ceremony slowly transformed from the tranquil, ancient ritual to an engaging conversation, teaching the culture and lifestyle behind it.

I was quite entranced at how everything in the ceremony was executed with precision and care. Nothing was secondary and every step is done for a very specific reason that was to reveal its self by the ceremony’s conclusion. Each of the tasks that were carried out had a deeply contemplated meaning and nothing in this “tradition” is done simple because ‘That is how it has always been done’.  As I was becoming aware of this it started to reveal a key to the Japanese cultures of which the Tea Ceremony reflects.

There’s a fantastic cliff to the east of Skyline from the top of Camp Fortune. I found this place a while back as I was hiking in through forests. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to come back to this exact spot for a picnic.

We hiked up and across the hills then through the trails to this bench overlooking Gatineau park.

The chair lift at the ski hill was running for the mountain bikers, so we got to take a scenic ride down the hill on our way back from lunch.

It was 6 feet tall and he ate my sandwich

Hide ‘n Go Seek … FAIL

Check out the FAIL BLOG. Hopfully you’ll see this guy posted there soon.

This weekend was Doors Open Ottawa

The busy bees were working hard at the SunTech Green house.

I Had a lot of luck with the macro lens.

The only problem with taking shots of bees with the macro is you have to get a little to close for comfort to the hive.

Tomatoes are much less prone to attack. Unless they’re of the killer tomato variety. As you can see these ones were forming a swarm.

Then from the macro to the binoculars. We watched the kite surfers on Britannia beach after visiting the water purification plant.

This weekend we had a good hike through the McCarthy forest all the way across to the Rideau River. On our way we came upon this modern artifact of Ottawa’s civil engineering history.

Geodetic Survey of Canada

This survey point was set into the stone over 40 years ago. It was used as a reference in the original assembly of the hydro towers that run across the Rideau River and over the entire Riverside area.

Thanks to the research done by one of our local Geo-Cachers I was provided with this Map published by the Geodetic Survey of Canada.

The triangle in the Map lines up with the Triangle on the Marker and presumably runs parallel with the power lines.

On a more personal note; This survey marker was probably installed here the same year that my father started to work for the Ottawa Hydro municipality. It was a good day for hiking and we got a couple of good photos out of it.

This weekend we spent a clear Sunday afternoon doing a photo shoot at the Prince of Wales railway bridge near Bayview station off of the Ottawa River Parkway.

We walked down the tracks and across the bridge to find our first GeoCache of the new season. It was a good place for cache and hopefully everyone will agree that the photo turned out great too.

After crossing the bridge and taking some more shots we headed back. On our return we saw the police waiting on the other side, giving tickets out to the folks ahead of us for trespassing on the bridge. We didn’t want to press our luck so we turned around and started walking north. We crossed both stretches of track over the Ottawa River to the Quebec side. We took the long walk back in to Ottawa at the Booth street bridge.

Keeping our eyes sharp and having a telescopic lens kept us out of trouble this time. I’d say it was worth the risk and we got a good story out of it.

HEAVY METAL

Have a Look at My Photo Page to see a couple more pictures from the bridge.

Here’s a Google Map of the Price of Wales Railway Bridge. Lemieux Island is the location where Ottawa’s water is purification and distributed. You can see the water distribution pipes on the south west side of the Island.

This Week I went up to Mt. Ste. Marie with a photographer friend of mine. He wanted to do some shooting and since I’m very familiar with the area, I brought him around to see some of the more out of the way scenery. This included the Abandoned Hotel.

The Mt. Ste. Marie hotel and conference center is an urban explorer’s jack pot. Sitting right in the hart of the ski resort, the entire place looked to be the remnants of a post apocalyptic movie.

The main lobby and the larger meeting hall were absolutely coated in ice, as you can see from this eerie photo taken while explored.

^{©Mike.Geiger.ca}

Here is a Silhouette Photo that Mike took of me in the Conference Center

In it’s prime this place was one of Canada most high tech conference centers with video conferencing in every room and a computer infrastructure that would rival any small company. Now, 25 years after the meetings have ceased and last guests have all gone, what’s left of the place has been turned into a dark, cold, condemned structure.