I’ve been talking with a few landlords over the past few weeks and they have all told me that this year, the phones are ringing less and people are taking their time in choosing.

My current landlord, who owns two other apartments, told me his phone barely rings at all for the 2 places he has for rent. And when they do arrive to visit, they say they like it, but will think about it.

He has the same apartments for rent last year and he claims the phone wrang off the hook. People were willing to sign right away. Some putting considerable pressure on my landlord to sign right then and there.

What he has also noticed is that the amount of scams has increased considerably.. The favorite of course being someone from Russia claiming to be moving to Canada. They send over first month’s rent but it’s a cheque for $10,000 and promptly claim they made a mistake and ‘would you please return the rest’… Of course the cheque then bounces.

If you are looking for an apartment for July 1, have you noticed that there is more choice and that you have more time in choosing ?

    Yes, I know. It was Easter weekend. I should be writing about how warm it was and how my second weekend outdoor ride went.

Mont Tremblant is in an alternate universe. At least, I don’t think it’s in Quebec. We ran up Friday (big mistake) to ski Tremblant. First time in close to 20 years. I had seen the changes, just never skied there since. What a zoo.

1. Wait in line for a bus to take you to the hill.
2. Wait in line for 40 minutes to buy your lift ticket (70 bucks)
3. Wait in line for another 40 minutes to get to the top via the gondola.

It wasn’t like that 20 years ago! When I first skied Tremblant as a kid, I remember the single chairlift on the North Side. I even remember taking it..

Chalk full of tourists.. Lots of Americans and British. All the staff speak to you in English with accents. It’s so bizare. It’s Quebec, yet not quite.  Tourists who routinely ask you how you are doing.. Whoa, again, we don’t do that in Quebec!

Winds at the top were insane. If you slid down with your arms out, the wind would stop you from moving. Conditions however were still excellent. Mid winter stuff, yet on Easter Weekend.

Sunday was a quick trip to Sauveur. No one there. No one. Skied all morning without having to wait for a chair. Conditions there too were the best I have seen all year.

Next weekend is the famous Pond Crossing at Morin Heights.  If this weather holds up, they are going to have a hard time keeping that water from freezing.

Despite all kinds of reports, today’s snowstorm made me immensely happy. It took me double the amount of time to trudge into work, and at lunch I battled a furious western wind that made a point of hurtling sheets of snow crystals painfully into my eyes. I was ecstatic. Nothing stokes the spirit like the Montreal elements, I say.

On the way home, I passed many neighbours digging, shoveling and snow-blowing their way through the snow, remarkably all with gleaming smiles on their faces. The most heartening sight was a father taking a break from shoveling his sloping driveway to drag his gleeful toddler up in her toboggan as the older daughter squealingly sleighed her way down the hill. I paused and thought: despite global warming, it is still possible for today’s kids to encounter those ridiculous snowfalls of my childhood again. Thank goodness.

Better enjoy it while we can, we’ll all be complaining non-stop about the “frickin’ weather” come February.

Mid-November feels like a strange time of year in Montreal these days. The weather feels like it’s not quite Fall-ish yet not quite Winter-ish. Do you wear a spring coat with layers or just go for the all out winter jacket? Time keeps marching on nonetheless and to keep things exciting, we have several interesting developments taking place in and around the city.

I think I’ll just curl up with a nice hot cup of chocolate and wait out this lunacy limbo period. Meanwhile, don’t forget to head downtown and catch the annual too-early-to-be-happening Santa Claus parade taking place today.

Has this not been the most gorgeous couple of October days you’ve ever seen? For me it has. Downtown yesterday was like the first warm day of spring with everyone outside “taking sun”. I don’t think I’ve ever worn just a tshirt this late in the season. So imagine my disappointment this morning when I checked the long range forecast. Sigh. It’s all over but the crying.

Out doing intervals yesterday on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, and as I was finishing my last set, the sun was dipping behind the mountain and the city’s skyline was lit up in the foreground. The sky was of a glorious orange/red.Tthe lights from the boats docked in the port were giving off a calming glow.

Rollerbladers, fellow cyclists, joggers, all outside taking in what is summer on borrowed time.

Riding through Old Montreal, and I watched the post 5 a 7 crowd of 30-40 somethings dressed to the 9’s.

In town, people outside having dinner or having a glass of something, in shorts and summer wear, people watching.

Come home and check the weather forecast and this looks to be it. The last day of summer is today.

Take the day off work, call in sick or at least take a long walk at lunch and try and skip out early. Take out your bike, rollerblades or take the kids to the park and kick a soccer ball around.. whatever it is that you do on a nice sunny day.

This is it. This could very well be the last day of summer until next June.

Get outside and enjoy it.

This entry first started out as a comment on Andre’s reposting of my “Day at the Office” story from last year, but I apparently had more to say than I first thought.

So far today the college is very, very quiet. I haven’t been this bored at work since early Summer, just after classes and exams had finished. What this tells me is that teachers are taking it easy in their classes today (they had no or little printing and/or handouts to give out - I work in the print shop). Some teachers even canceled classes altogether or are cutting them short.

I’ve spoken to a few co-workers and teachers and they all seemed just fine, like it’s a normal day. I haven’t personally seen any press people yet, but they’re mostly being kept at bay by the police, who have most of the streets surrounding the building blocked off. I might try to nab a few pictures of them, just for kicks.

Here’s the itinerary for the day’s events. It was brought up that, if it “felt right”, I could take some pictures of these activities (I’m typically the college’s designated photographer for events), but it seems that it’s a sensitive issue so there will be no photographs taken by this shutterbug of anything happening from withing the college. There’s a strict ‘no camera’ policy in place for today.

I will hopefully be able to attend everything that’s been planned for the day (it’s tough to leave the office when we’re short staffed with one person on vacation and another that wasn’t comfortable with coming to work today), but I’ll attempt to write another post later on or tomorrow and give a report sorts of how the day went overall.

Whether we are covering monster hurricanes, terrorist bombings or political upheaval, the many servers and writers of the Metroblogging network have often proven useful when an entire city (or country) is having a really really bad day. One year ago myself and some of the other city captains were setting up a series of procedures for what we call “crisis mode”. I never expected these to be useful.

Turns out it was Jason, one of our own writer. Once he got his emotions in check, he was able to post what was, for a time, the only first hand account of the tragedy that was available online. Needless to say, it was read by tens of thousands of visitors. I am reposting it today to help us remember how we all felt on that terrible day.

Well, where do I begin?

First, my apologies for not posting a little sooner. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon outside near de Maisonneuve/Atwater, making and receiving countless phone calls, checking voicemail, talking to people and trying to help out by getting people pushed back farther away toward Lambert Closse. I finally decided it was time to go home around 3:15PM and walked to the Lionel Groulx Metro station where it was thankfully working in my direction. Once home, I fielded even more phone calls and tried to catch up on what the news was saying.

Trying to gather my thoughts over the last couple of hours, I’ve decided that I’m not going to bother with posting hourly updates. I don’t know anything more than what the news reports are saying. I’ll leave that sort of thing to my fellow Metbloggers, unless I have something of value to add.

My intention is to relay what I saw/heard and what I know as fact. I will also hopefully be posting, over the next couple of days, stories of some of my colleagues and other people that I will be talking to… if they are willing to share.

My story after the jump. (Be warned, it’s a little lengthy)
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So it seems that the Lachine Canal (yes, the actual canal) is throwing a celebratory mass picnic party this coming Sunday, August 19th. Being a resident of the general hood, I find any neighbourhood activity to be very exciting and am swift to encourage them.

Running from 11am to 4pm, food, circus acts, chess tournaments, kids’ stuff, general festivities and yes, our very own TamTam Jam will be taking place along the canal at the crossroads of St. Patrick and Charlevoix. You can bring your own picnic or buy food on-site. They’ve promised a big chapiteau in case of rain. Join in on the fun, it’s free.

http://www.canaldelachine.com/familial.html

I, like many of you ride Montreal’s bike paths daily. I do so partly to commute to work, and partly to get to where I am going for a training ride.

As I have just moved, I am always out on the lookout for a better, safer way home without having to deal with motorists who seem Hell bent on cutting me off.

The overall winner in terms of bike paths in Montreal is the Brébeuf bike path. This is the bike path that runs you from Laurier park straight down to Lafontaine park and connects you to the Rachel bike path.

It is a very busy bike path. Stand on the corner of Brébeuf at 08:30 on a weekday morning and watch the number of cyclists whip by. Amazing stuff. These commuters are also excellent bike handlers who perform shoulder checks before switching lanes and who actually realize that they are not the only ones on the bike path.

Unfortunately, many of them then have to take the Rachel bike path. Without a doubt, the stretch that runs from St-Urbain all the way to Pie -IX is one sordid mess of a bike path in desperate need of repaving. I had to ride that path everyday for nearly an entire summer and if if it turns out I can’t have children, I know EXACTLY where to lay the blame.

Another area that needs work are the citizens of Lasalle. There is an excellent stretch of bike path that goes from Lachine, all along the water until St-Henri. This bike path however is chalk full of families taking walks. I recently came across 3 families, complete with strollers the size of my car taking up both lanes. When I passed them, causing them to have to yield a quarter of a lane to me, two of the women gave me the dirtiest of looks.

Whoa. It’s a bike path!

You would never see this in downtown or Le Plateau. Bike paths are for bikes, not strollers the size of golf carts.

Which brings me to my two final complaints. The first, is the path that runs along St-Urbain under the Rosemont train underpass. Why does this section, that protects the cyclists from motorists require that the cyclist ride up a side street, hop a sidewalk and then double back on itself in order to get behind the protecting divider ? Open up the path to give direct access from St-Urbain without having to do some BMX trick.

And finally, Montreal desperately needs a path that heads North. We have one that goes south from Laurier until Milton, we need the same going north.

Leave the car at home. Ride your bike. There’s only a month of summer left.