Haiku 2 Welcome on board 09/29/24

Qulliq burns welcome

Flame dances in champagne glass

Two worlds caught in warmth

 

Former Primeminister of Greenland 09/29/24

We were supposed to do a landing this afternoon but MJ made the call that we would stay in the shelter of the fjord. Fine by me. I’d decided to stay on board and loaf anyway. We are now underway, making for the mouth of the fjord. The weather looks like it will be better tomorrow and the hope is that we’ll be able to get to Nuuk. The former prime minister of Greenland, Aleqa Hammond,  is onboard, she will be giving a talk shortly and she is to leave the ship at Nuuk.

Aleqa left

[Aleqa's talk was very interesting. It sounds from her telling that she's a bit of a maverick. I wish had taken better notes on one of the stories she told about Denmark not wanting to fund a project for Greenland. I didn't even note what the project was, got too caught up in the tale. Anyway, having met a closed door there she went to the Americans and no joy there either so, she started courting the Chinese who were very interested and all of a sudden the Americans were talking to the Danes and Greenland got its money. What we didn't hear anything about on the ship were the spicier parts of her financial dealings which, according to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleqa_Hammond included two cases of misuse of public funds. From my perspective she was an interesting storyteller and enjoyed sharing her knowledge of Greenland.]

It’s a little bit annoying not to be able to set my watch to the proper time. I really do look at my watch a lot. My phone got the message so I’l just have to look at that. The e-sim I bought for Greenland seems to be connected but I’m not getting anything even though I have 3 bars. I’ll see what happens in Nuuk.

On another technology front, I carefully wrote down the instructions for getting photos off my phone and onto the computer. It

My messy part of the cabin on OE

 all sounded very straightforward and I practiced a bit before I left home. When I tried it just came up with blank rectangles where there should have been photo thumbnails. I guess I’ll do what I’ve done in the past, hope that all the data on the phone remains and then sort it out when I get home. Sigh!

We are going for a zodiac cruise in the morning down one of the fjords and then we are sailing onto Nuuk the next day. There are going to be bus tours but I think I’ll skip those and walk into town and just putter around with my phone and my camera. The last time we were there I was madly searching for a camera charger for the Olympus mirrorless (no luck). I’ll hit the museum again and the stuff around the old town and then go in search of some qiviut for Richard. 

Arrival at the Ocean Endeavour 09/29/24

Well this is a whole new experience! I don’t have internet and I assumed I could work in Google docs offline. I do think this is possible. I just don’t know how to do it and, of course, because I have no internet I can’t Google it to find out. So, here I am using Pages for the first time. I have no idea how this works and my sense of it is that it is somewhat cumbersome and it probably does not play well with Google docs which is what I normally use to write my blogs.

So let’s back up a bit. I’m currently on the Ocean Endeavour anchored in Kangerlussuaq Greenland. There is a storm brewing outside the fjord. Even here in the shelter of the fjord MJ [Matthew James Swan, expedition leader] clocked the wind speed at 37 knots. That doesn’t mean much to me so MJ said to multiply that number by 1.76 which gives us 65 kmh. I can see why we don’t want to be out in that. We are going to hunker down today and try to make it to Nuuk tomorrow. There is an excursion scheduled for this afternoon if the seas permit and I said I would go on the photo walk. Now I’m thinking I might just stay on board. I’m still feeling quite tired and maybe I need some time for my soul to catch up.

Yesterday we were late leaving Toronto because the plane was late arriving. When we got here it was dark and the ship stood glowing offshore with its lights reflected in the water. I used my phone to capture some photos and a video as we took the zodiac to the ship. I’ll have to try downloading the info to my computer a bit later on. I think it turned out not too badly. The phones now are certainly impressive. Did I mention that it was raining when we were out in the zodiac? Good thing we had our trusty AC jackets although I don’t think these are quite the quality that they have been other years. I noticed that parts of the jacket were wetted out even though it wasn’t a hard rain, just a steady one and we were only out in it for maybe an hour max. Like I always say, two choices in the rain, wet from condensation on the inside or rain from the outside. My trusty Grimsey sweater served me very well on this occasion. I will be very sad when it wears out. It’s one of those items of clothing that is going to be hard, if not impossible, to replace unless I take up knitting myself and I don’t think that will happen anytime soon.

I was lucky on the zodiac ride because I was right in the bow and nobody else seemed crazy enough to even try to take photos. I wonder if I can put a link to the video in my blog. There must be a way to do it. One more thing to figure out. [I couldn't get it to work but there is a link in the last blog post I made to YouTube where I eventually decided to place it.]

This morning we had a safety briefing and a lifeboat drill only this time we didn’t actually have to put on the lifejackets. Maybe because it was rather brisk outside and normally when we’ve done this it has been the middle of the summer. I wasn’t exactly crying briny tears that we didn’t put on the lifejackets but it is curious how the protocols change from one voyage to the next or, more properly, from one year to the next.

There are a handful of people that I have met before and it’s almost like coming back to a summer camp where you know the kids from last year.

Riding in the zodiac at night was very cool.

Saturday September 28

Night rain soaks my head

Hot chocolate laced with booze

Through the dark, ship glows

https://youtu.be/g1MDR_7yNOo

And I'm off to Greenland

I think this may be a bit of a mishmash and I’m going to try it anyway. I took many many photos and I can only use a few of them in a regular blog post so the plan is to do some posts the regular way and some that are mainly photos with captions. 

Since I’ve just finished downloading all the photos from my phone I thought I’d start at the beginning of the Greenland to Newfoundland trip. As I think about it I might do one of these short ones for each day and then longer ones to talk about various aspects of the trip. At this point, I haven’t got a clue so hang onto your hats, or skip a bunch, whatever appeals to you.

It took me a while to actually find the hotel in Toronto even though I landed in terminal 3 and the hotel was in terminal 3. First I tried Google maps and ended up outside where one of people working at the cab stand told me I'd have to go back inside and up one floor.

I did that and wandered around not seeing anything that even remotely looked like a hotel. I wandered one way as far as I could and then started back the way I had come. I saw a sign for, I think it was terminal 2, and I thought I couldn't be going the right way. Just then I glanced to my left and there was a very small sign saying 'hotels.' It pointed up a set of steps. I went up the steps which looked more like a fire escape than a hotel entrance. By that point it was after 11:00 pm and there seemed to be no-one around. I kept following the signs through more back corridors and eventually arrived in the hotel lobby. I was happy not to have to find my way back again! When we went back into the airport to depart for Kangerlussuaq  we went out the front door of the hotel, across the street and into the departures area.

A warm day in YYC

Bye bye Rockies for a while

Not bad airline food

Where or where has my duffle gone? Don't panic. That was before any of the luggage came off.

Toronto hotel room. Lots more space than on the ship.

Images of fall

Larch tree with cones

As I noted in my last blog post, fall is my favourite time of year. It’s not too hot, not too cold, and there aren’t any residual icy surfaces like there are in the spring. I’ve been trying to get out for a walk every day and each day I notice more and more yellow leaves on the trees and on the ground. At first there were a few yellow leaves on the odd tree. Then there were more trees that sported their fall colour. A few days ago I noticed the first yellow leaf from our Manitoba maple had fallen onto the lawn.


Since this is a different kind of year for us and we don’t have any camping trips planned, I thought I’d take photos of some of the signs of fall that are within blocks of home. While I like to go to the mountains to see the larches, it turns out that there are several larch trees in the neighbourhood. Today they are still green, turning colour later than their cousins in the mountains. I’ll be watching for their needles to turn yellow and, for this year, once they turn, I’ll be satisfied with seeing the neighbourhood larches.

More yellow than not

One of many

Mountain ash berries

Red leaves in a hedge

Flowering plants

Ornamental grasses

Sunflower

Larch just beginning to turn

It's raining

It’s raining today which is a good thing. We are on the highest level of water restrictions again. Apparently the pipe that broke in June has other issues that need to be repaired so it won’t break again. Calgary is getting all of its water from the smaller of the two water treatment plants. The birds will like the bird bath filling up with water and the lawn and the trees will like the rain. We didn’t get a rain barrel earlier in the year so we aren’t collecting that water. Maybe next season we’ll get one.

Rain drips off one of the deck lights

I don’t mind the rain as long as I don’t have to be out in it for very long. I’ve done my share of cycling, hiking, and paddling in the pouring rain and it isn’t my favourite thing. Today I’m fine with it. It gives me a chance to drink tea, put on a fuzzy shirt and hunker down,  I don’t feel guilty about taking the car to an appointment this morning rather than riding my bike. I have another appointment this afternoon that is a few blocks away and I can walk there. Even if I get soaked it's a short time before I can get home and get dry again.

Reflecting puddles

I’m enjoying the cooler weather. It hasn’t been overly hot the last week or so and I really do like ‘sweater weather.’ It’s currently 9°C which makes it perfect for a light wool sweater and a breathable rain jacket.

With cooler weather comes fall, my favourite time of year. The leaves, though not like the red maples of Central Canada, are lovely enough for me. The nights are cool and one of the things I like to do is camp in the fall when I can reach up from my sleeping bag and turn on the furnace to take the chill off before I crawl out to face the day. Pretty luxurious camping and I love it. We won’t be camping this year but I will call to mind the fall trips we’ve taken in the past. Last year we camped at Writing on Stone provincial park and got to hear and see a rattlesnake at fairly close range. A couple of years before that we spent a week at Tunnel Mountain Campground in Banff and had a lovely time wandering into town for lunch or dinner and then returning to the van. Often we have left Little Elbow Campground in Kananaskis Country on the day it closes for the season and we have watched in our rear view mirror as the park staff tip up the picnic tables for the winter.

While it isn’t fall yet, the signs are there. I spotted the first yellow leaf on our Manitoba maple today. The wasps are super annoying and nighttime temperatures are dipping toward freezing although tonight is the only one forecast to be in the single digits for the next week.

A sign of fall

Then there’s the fact that the kids are back in school tomorrow. I hardly even notice that milestone anymore, this being the beginning of my 17th year of retirement, and also of this blog.

So what’s the point of all this? Nothing earth shaking, except to say that it’s a good day today. I’m comfortable with my cup of tea and Odie beside me whistling softly. I have work to do on my latest ukulele and I’m looking forward to actually having a reliable source of heat in the shop as the days grow colder. For now, I’m going to sit in the quiet of the house, drink my tea and admire Odie. Today I am content.

Odie enjoying a snack