Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse this weekend, after weeks of hot and sunny weather; just as I got there on my bike, the skies opened and the rain started to pour down!

My redheaded childhood

There must have been around 50 or so people there at the time, many of whom stood out from the crowd because of their fiery hair. Even though there weren’t as many redheads there as I’d originally expected, still I’d never before seen as large a number of gingers gathered together in one spot, at one time.

I noticed the filmmakers wandering through the different groups of people, microphones in hand and cameramen in tow, interviewing various subjects for the doc, and I would’ve stayed longer myself (I wouldn’t have minded having a cameo role in the film, to quickly talk about my experience growing up as a redhead) if it hadn’t been for the crappy weather. We redheads are, after all, supposedly a dying breed, so it’s only fair to document us for posterity while we’re still around!

Once it started raining, however, I noticed a growing number of people making their way out of the park. So I decided to leave too, and stopped instead at a local coffee shop to seek shelter, write this quick post, and ponder our potential extinction.

I can definitely say that the first two divinations were in no way true, but I’d like to think she got that last part right! Either way, I guess I was always skeptical about such things, but I was at least willing to reserve judgment until having tried it.

As you can no doubt tell, my skepticism remains.

Some people unfortunately believe what they’re told by these so-called tellers and psychics, and the results can be very unpleasant indeed – as Leilani dos Santos found out the hard way.

They may be considered pests by most people, but they are damn cute at that age. I managed to capture them on video.

Here I go…

Walking down King Street West over the weekend, we saw what appeared to be another such training exercise; one of the biggest we’ve seen so far. I managed to record some of it on my phone, but I only thought to do so halfway through the procession of cars and motorcycles, so it was way more impressive at the time than the actual video depicts.

We eventually did find the trail, after searching for 30 minutes or so and having asked a very nice young lady for directions. It ain’t easy to spot, let me tell you that…

As we were riding around, we came across a cordoned-off street named Shirley. We could see residents walking up and down the street, bending down every now and then to arrange something on the ground, so we decided to get off our bikes and walk along to see what was happening. It looked like some sort of local festival, maybe a religious one of some sort, as people went along the whole stretch of the street pouring multi-coloured petals into wood frames, before patting down the petals and removing the frames to reveal a series of stylized patterns and shapes.

It looked very nice, as we walked the length of the street-long piece.

Martin started a blog to record his journey from the West to East Coast, and in it he writes about his experiences, as well as uploading photos taken at various points along the way.

He’s hoping to get 7,300 km under his belt in around 3 months! Good luck Martin, it’s a great cause.

Martin Pilar

I enjoy walking through a city where artwork like this is available for all to see. I think this particular piece is quite cool and worth posting photos here.

My mobile sunbathing technique took me along King East and down Front Street, keeping to the south side. As I was heading west, I noticed clumps of people here and there up ahead of me, all looking up. As my gaze followed theirs, I was surprised to see a huge plume of smoke in the distance, just beyond the CN Tower and towards the lakeshore. At this point I had no idea what was happening, other than the obvious fact that a large fire was underway. Almost immediately, sirens started to sound and fire crews began to speed by in their trucks.

I took a picture. Actually, I took a few. It was the least I could do as my more dramatic side kicked in and I began to imagine this day going down in Canadian history as our very own 9/11!

Thankfully the terrorist scenario turned out not to be the case. When I got to my local pub closer to home, I found out that the top floor of a condo on Queen’s Quay had caught fire and the resulting plume was what we all saw. The smoke, however, was quite short-lived as the city’s emergency services went into action!

There were reports of no fatalities and only two injuries in the fire.

Click on the pictures below to see how exciting my life is on the way home from work.

The whole street is flooded right now.