pyat | Entries tagged with exploration

It was a huge building, the former offices of the Toronto Telegram, which closed in 1971. It was four floors, with 4 or 5 large suites on each floor.

Wandering around inside reminded of dreams I've had, walking through room after room in a shabby warehouse, finding odd bits of debris and treasure. And dreams of climbing up ever higher. Even, in the case of the roof, up very narrow stairs to a tiny loft, and finding yet another door..

( More photos below! )

On Monday I took the new camera into work to give it a whirl. I took images at various points of the day from the moment I left the house until my final walk home.

6:20 AM - view from my front porch, looking east. The Haunted Police Car is parked in front of the house. Just over the school there was a fabulous crescent moon, which was unfortunately lost in this shot. I actually went back inside for the "good camera" to get a shot of it, before walking up the street to the bus.
( Follow Pyat on his exciting adventures )

I arrived at the Hamilton GO Train Station this morning, and there was no train. The platform was empty. A switching problem meant the 7:04 AM train service from Hamilton was canceled. Bus services was being offered to the Aldershot station, but a quick examination of the bus platforms revealed a great many people and a scarcity of buses. Rather than battle the crowds, I elected to take the 7:20 bus.

To pass the time, I ducked into the Time Out cafe in the station and ordered a bagel and tea from Renee Luffman, the charmingly optimistic author of Fairy Kisses. I say that about her because she self-published a children's book about where freckles come from, and sells it from behind the counter while working at a bus station coffee shop.

7:15 rolled around, and I finished off the tea and ambled back to the platform. It was still packed with people, and not packed with buses, and visible clouds of commuter rage were rising here and there. So, I studied the schedules and decided to take the 8:05 bus to Aldershot. Please note that the 7:20 AM was the last scheduled direct bus to Toronto, or certain facts that arise later in my tale will not seem wonderful or strange at all.

To fill the gap in time, I directed my steps outward once again to downtown Hamilton. Downtown Hamilton at 7:30 AM in late December is not a very exciting or hospitable place. There are perhaps four or five establishments open at that hour downtown, and one of them is a peep show.

There are a few spots of light and warmth and nourishment for respectable sorts, and one of them is Christopher's, an all-night (last I checked) diner. Once the haunt of bus drivers and cops, it is now mainly frequented by middle-aged people on social assistance. The interior is battleship grey and the cutlery is plastic.

But, the coffee is hot, and the food is perfectly edible.

I got back to the bus station around 7:50 AM, and found a bus sitting at the Toronto platform. I assumed it must be the 8:05 shuttle to Aldershot and hopped aboard. I thought it odd that it pulled out before 8:00, but didn't really care. I fell asleep shortly after, and awoke to find myself on the 407, well past Aldershot, and en route for Toronto.

This express bus exists on no schedule... a mystery!

So, I see everybody doing this dragon egg thing, yeah, so I wanted to do it too. I went out and looked for a dragon egg at lunch. It took HOURS. Finally, I found one on the sidewalk up near Eglinton in Toronto.

I clicked it for ages, but nothing happened. This game sucks.

Today was finally the day.

commanderteddog and I went on a very special lunch time adventure. There are photos!

But first... yesterday

sassy_fae and

nottheterritory showed up at my office door, and demanded I go to lunch with them. I tried to resist, but we ended up dining in the Officer’s Mess of the Nautilus.

I had a pulled pork sammitch!

( Exciting Photos of Pretty People )

Right, so, back to the very special lunch adventure. While I was at the convention,

commanderteddog messaged me to tell me about a marvelous, magical new restaurant.

A restaurant that sold only poutine.

( O wonders! O Brave new world! )

But our adventure did not end there, no sir! We still had to make it back to our respective offices. And there were things to explore en route. We zipped into the Eaton’s Centre, and decided to go to the highest publicly accessible spot, a strange little gallery set all by itself, apparently inaccessible.

( Like the forest fight for sunlight… )

After a hard day of Christmas decorating and cleaning and making a mess of the cleaning, I took Claire and Elizabeth on an impromptu trip to Niagara Falls to look at the light festival.

BEHOLD! The SKYLON TOWER! The big lights are hologram generators. The Falls actually dried up in 1977.

Elizabeth attends The Electric Kindergarten.

That's the American side.

Claire regards every obstacle as a jungle gym.

Tinkerbell wearing a bunch of different wigs.

As promised to

paka, some photos of Hamilton's downtown core, taken at 6:30 AM on a misty November morning. This morning, in fact.

North side of Gore Park, looking west toward Stelco Tower and Jackson Square. Look, a cheque cashing place, a government employment office, and a tattoo parlour!

( More! )

commanderteddog took advantage of the sunny warm weather (the sun always shines on Obamaday!) to explore some nooks and crannies downtown, and photograph them.

Our primary destination was the old Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Building. It is a huge old structure, festooned with carved heads and idols, representing progress and industry and empire. It was the tallest skyscraper in the world, outside of Manhattan and Chicago. Once, there was a big public viewing area on the 32nd floor. We wanted to get to it...

( More photos below )

commanderteddog and I just went on... an adventure. There were boats, and a maze, and animals, a giant head, a dragon, an abandoned town, and a nude beach!

( Photos Below )
And then we went back to work!

"...Newport climbing wraithlike from its dreaming breakwater. Arkham is there, with its moss-grown gambrel roofs and the rocky rolling meadows behind it; and antediluvian Kingsport hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and overhanging gables, and the marvel of high cliffs and the milky-misted ocean with tolling buoys beyond.

"Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lands in Portsmouth, twilight bends of rustic New Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse walls and creaking well-sweeps. Gloucester's salt wharves and Truro's windy willows. Vistas of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills along the North Shore, hushed stony slopes and low ivied cottages in the lee of huge boulders in Rhode Island's back country."
- The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

After leaving the Shunned House, we got in the Haunted Police Car and drove southwest to Newport, a town perhaps older than Providence, one surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. The drive was slow and meandering and as we proceeded the surroundings changed from the blue collar homes of Providence, getting larger and often older, and more ornamental. We actually saw gambereled roofs. In Newport itself, there were entire neighbourhoods where every single house predated Canadian Confederation - all occupied and in good repair. In some places, there were rows of houses older than America.

I described the drive down as "cripplingly picturesque."

We were in Newport for two reasons. First, to visit the "mystery mill," a sort ruined stone tower that, at the very least, is more than 400 years old. No one is sure who built the tower, or when, but the best guess is that is served as a mill around 1650. However, there is apparently evidence to suggest it may have been constructed a century or more earlier, or even in Pre-Columbian times by wandering Vikings.

( Newport at Sunset )
After peering at the stone tower for a bit, we wandered around Newport on foot, trying to reach the ocean. This was fairly easy, but we could not find any beach - only docks. So, we gunned up the Haunted Police Car once more, and pointed ourselves southward.

We soon discovered Ocean Drive, a scenic stretch of road sided on either side by the famous Newport Mansions, a series of 19th century and early 20th homes built by the barons of American industry. I took no pictures, but we were both suitably awed.

As the stars began to appear we found a stretch of clear, rocky beach, and disembarked.

( In these realms where the Pole Star shines high )

We returned northward to Providence and paused for supper at the Newport Creamery, a local chain. After resting in the hotel for an hour or two, we hitched up our resolve and headed back to downtown Providence to see what night-time diversions the city had to offer.

First of all, we discovered that the city core is much livelier at night. During the afternoon, the downtown had been nearly empty. At night, we had trouble finding parking, and knots of people were everywhere. One wonders if it is a city.... of VAMPIRES!

In any case, the highlight of the evening's jaunt was our visit to the Haven Brothers Diner. This establishment is significant for two reasons. First, it is the oldest diner in the world - founded in 1888. Second, it is a diner in the original sense of the word, which is to say that it is a portable structure. It has been parking in the same spot since 1892, though of course the original vehicle was a horsedrawn cart. Today, it's a trailer hitched to a truck.

I loved it.

After downing cheese dogs and coffee at Haven Brothers, Alex and I walked along the river, looking at things.

( Lovecraft has no good quotes about diners )

We got back to the hotel around midnight... and came home on Sunday. The drive home was fun, but I didn't take any photos.

This concludes The Great Lovecraftian Pilgramage of 2007

"I shall find mixed with my relief a queer regret when it is torn down to make way for a tawdry shop or vulgar apartment building. The barren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, and last year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs."
- The Shunned House

Having addressed our primary reason for visiting Providence, we were free to wander more or less at will. I had identified a handful of interesting sites to visit within an easy walk of downtown Providence, so there we ventured.

Our first stop was the Westminster Arcade, the oldest enclosed shopping mall in North America. In most places, the "oldest enclosed mall" would be some run-down strip mall constructed in the early 1960s, home to a coffee shop and not much else. In Providence, "old" means "Built in 1828."

Unfortunately, though the 179-year-old Westminter Arcade was a pleasant building and interesting to explore, it also contained mostly empty storefronts. Alex and I were very nearly the only shoppers on Saturday afternoon. Significantly, the only store showing any particular sign of life was the one that sold RPGs...

( The Game Keeper )

Our next stop was "The Shunned House," a real house built in 1786 that served as the inspiration for a Lovecraft story of the same name. The real world house had a bad reputation in the 19th century, it seems, with tales of madness and death surrounding the early inhabitants. However, since that time it has apparently been quite respectable.

( ...people died there in alarmingly great numbers )

Following this visit, we stopped for sandwiches at an excellent little place full of cool, exciting university students, free newspapers, music, and a barrel of fresh dill pickles. There were dozens of sandwiches on the menu, all excellent - including one called the "Margaret Trudeau." We then went for a walk around the downtown core.

( The Margaret Trudeau and the Sloppy Ho are two different sandwiches )

As we walked, Alex caught sight of a very distinctive house that he recognized from the 2005 silent film production of The Call of Cthulhu.

As the sun set, we returned to the car and set our sights on ancient Newport, surrounded on three sides by ocean. We arrived there just night was setting in... more on that, later!

"You came not as one curious, but as one seeking his due, nor have you failed ever in reverence toward the mild gods of earth. Yet have these gods kept you from the marvellous sunset city of your dreams, and wholly through their own small covetousness; for verily, they craved the weird loveliness of that which your fancy had fashioned, and vowed that henceforward no other spot should be their abode."
- The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

The Stars, as they say, were finally right.

Last night,

nottheterritory (hereafter known by the mundane sobriquet of "Alex") and I returned from something of a whirlwind tour of Rhode Island in general, and Providence specifically. This trip was something I first conceived dimly in high school reading H.P. Lovecraft for the first time. The shape of the pilgrimage solidified in my first year of university, when I read Lyon Sprague de Camp's thorough (though hardly impartial) biography of Lovecraft.

Though the Lovecraftian angle interested me particularly, the journey was not one of mere literary significance. Providence intrigues me in and of itself, by virtue of being one of the oldest cities in North America, and furthermore compact enough to be easily encompassed in relatively short visit. Finally is has the quality of a "real" city, which is to say it is a living metropolis and not merely a tourist destination or collection of attractions.

I should note that

thebitterguy also hoped to come with Alex and I on the trip, but had to back down due to work obligations. His loss on the trip was regrettable! That said, Alex was an excellent travelling companion, and there was no point where our mutual impulses for the direction of the trip were out of step – no arguments about maps or stops or places to eat, etc., etc. More importantly we seem to share a certain aesthetic when it comes to self-directed tours of this kind, and always seemed happy to see the same things the other fellow wanted to see.

We left Hamilton late on a rainy Friday afternoon... (click on the images for larger versions!)

( The Trip and the Tomb )

After visting the tomb, we went for a stroll through the cemetery grounds. Alex, who is a military history buff, was inspired by the vintage of the stones to tell me his favorite anecdote about the Civil War. Almost as soon as he'd begun, I noticed a monument to one Major Sullivan Ballou a few metres off our path, and pointed it out to Alex.

"That fellow seems to have died in the Civil War," I said.

Alex, incredibly, recognized the name on the tomb. As he noted in his journal:

"Those of you who know Ken Burn's Civil War documentary well will now have little shivers running up and down your spine - for the rest of you who never shared that particular deep geekiness, Sullivan Ballou is essentially no-one. He is, as far as I know, almost completely unimportant in history, except for one thing:"

That one thing being a particularly poignant and eloquent home to his young wife, Sarah. Alex quotes a few lines from the letter, and later directed me to full reading of it from a Civil War documentary. The letter starts at 2:27 in this video link:

( My love for you is deathless )

After leaving the cemetery we headed into downtown Providence with two specific destinations - the Westminster Arcade and the "Shunned House."

I'll write about those later...

On Day Two (Saturday) of Pentacon,

normanrafferty and I were roused by the sound of "The Entertainer" as played by

vandringar's cel phone.

vandringar was in Ohio, but his cel phone travelled with

normanrafferty, it seems. We showered and then went on to breakfast in the Desoto Cafe, attached to the hotel, and ventured back to the dealer's hall for another day of battle.

Things in the hall continued quietly. We played more games of The Great Space Race with Jolly Blackburn and sold a smallish number of books. Mr. Zodo ran game events. The relative peace was broken by the sudden arrival of the Stoneburners -

halfelf and beautiful missus,

hammergrrl.

( Pictures below! )

I shot a lot of great video.

It's in Quicktime. I can't edit Quicktime. I found an AVI converter, and it made the files 12x larger, and reduced the frame rate. So, for now, you get photos.

( Day One - Hamilton, Battle Creek Slan Shack, Fort Wayne )

normanrafferty,

halfelf and

hammergrrl

"Good news, everybody! I've invented television, apparently!"

I'm back!

Everyone is asleep.

A full report will come later, with video and everything. IN brief,

normanrafferty cruelly made me sleep on the floor (okay, so I fell out of bed and stayed there),

halfelf and

hammergrrl need to visit us, The Incredible Mr. Zodo introduced me to a new kind of paper clip, Jolly Blackburn is the nicest gaming professional I've ever met, Fort Wayne is very clean and rolls up the sidewalks at 7 PM.

Seriously, people, when

pyat is walking around at 8 PM on a Saturday night and finding things quiet... you got one dull city. :)

Gamers in Fort Wayne exist in a weird bubble. There are a lot of them, and they mostly play games called Darkus Thell and Dragonstorm. Darkus Thel has been around since 1975, and is totally unknown outside of Fort Wayne. Most of the players seemed to be women, and they all had costumes. It was odd.