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 ?

I’m speechless. After everything The Main has gone through in the past two years. What all the merchants and citizens of that area have gone through, it’s unimaginable that Gaz Met has just woken up to realize that they now need to rip the street open again.

Unbelievable.

I’m surprised, but not really. The Achilles heel  of all of these DSL outfits was that the last mile is Bell Canada. And Bell Canada being what they are, have a tendency to do things the way a monopoly feels it should. I am proud to say that for the past two years, not one Bell bill enters my home. I am completely free of them. I’ve been scorned once too often by that company and therefore have sworn them off.

This latest move by them only reinforces this idea.

So the battle by all these 3rd party ISP’s now begins. Bring in the lawyers, the government lobbying and everything that goes with it.

It’s a shame but it’s a perfect example of why we need Net Neutrality in Canada.

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.

It has snowed 80% of the time this winter. Which is to say, 8 out 10 days this year, there’s been some snow falling. And take it from a guy who rides his bike into work, I can believe it. One thing I plan on doing next fall is getting another frame that actually makes for proper mudguard clearance. I am fed up with having my feet and shins coated with salty water. Luckily I invested well enough in decent cycling boots and shoe covers but still.

So what’s gonna fall today into tomorrow? 30cm? That leaves us another 30cm to break the record. Ha! We’ll do that in a few days with the way it’s going.

So listen Montreal, hang tight, stock up on scotch, wine, and cook up something great for dinner and then sit back, look out the window while watching the Habs sit atop first place.. Spring will arrive. I swear.

St-Patrick’s parade is next week BTW. Just thinking about it cracks me up.

Oh, and don’t forget to move your clocks forwards tonight.

As time ticked on, despair began to set in.

“That’s it?!?” One coworker who had tickets to Tuesday’s game said he didn’t feel like going.

Another who had tickets to Saturday’s game said he too felt like staying home. When I queried them for their tickets, their tune quickly changed..

Listening to CKAC and the radio show hosts predicting complete disaster. “Stop treating us like idiots when you say the Habs are a better team now, then before the trade deadline” I believe is how one put it.

Huge dissapointment from so many calling in.

Fast forward several days later and the Habs sit atop first place. All alone. Carey Price played spectacularly. Higgins is scoring goals again. Lapierre is back in excellent form. The team looks absolutely fantastic.

I tuned in again to CKAC. One thing is for sure, people who call, call-in shows after a win tend to be rather drunk. It was as if the Habs had won the Cup. Who would have thought the habs would be sitting atop alone in first place with how many weeks left in the season ?

What was that guy’s name again that the Penguins got and we didn’t ?

Les Chaise Longues at Crappy Tire are no longer reduced in price.

They will be located on 345 De La Gauchetière West (between De Bleury and St-Alexandre).

A fantastic idea if you ask me.

On my new street, they actually clear the snow during the day. Something they never did were I previously lived.

I went through the 7 known stages of grief:

1) Shock and Denial – No, I am SURE I parked the car on the other side of the street. Yes, I can remember now.. Coming home from snowboarding and I thought “they’ll clear the right side first, I’ll park there”.

2) Pain and Guilt – Oh WHY did I park on the wrong side ? Ug, this is going to be hell. I’ll never find a place to park. It’s all over. They’ll tow my car, I’ll go into debt, they’ll Denver Boot it and I’ll lose everything. I hate winter.

3) Anger and Bargaining – Ok, maybe if I call the city, I can get them to change their minds. Ya, those blue collar worker types, they’re a cool bunch. They always look so relaxed. They’ll move the signs for me. I know it.

4) Depression – Who am I kidding? Oh I so long for the days when I lived at the other apartment when they cleared the snow only at night. There’s no spots now. There will be no spots tomorrow. Where did I put that bottle of prozac ?

5) The upward turn – I slept horribly. Tossing and turning all night worrying about where I would put my car in the morning. I woke up, grabbed a bowl of Cheerios (did you get that? upward turn.. Cheerios) and camped out on my front porch.. Listening and looking like a hunter trying to catch his elusive prey: the Montreal parking spot. I could hear cars starting.. there’s hope!

6) Reconstruction working through – Hang on! Someone IS leaving.. and they are on the right side of the street! I dropped the half eaten bowl of Cheerios on the front porch and raced out to grab the spot.

7) Acceptance and hope – Sitting in my car, pieces of wet cheerios stuck to my t-shirt, I sat for a while in silence admiring my new spot. Montreal in the winter isn’t such a horrible place. It’s actually quite fantastic. I love winter. Really, I do.

Wait, don’t they normally clear the other side the night after clearing the first side ?

Speeds are reported to max out at 50mbps. But as others have mentioned this comes with a 50gb download limit per month. After which, there is a penalty fee to pay.

Anyone who has a relatively fast connection to the web knows that the bottleneck isn’t from your house to the provider. It’s elsewhere. Even with just their Super Ultra Fast package it’s difficult to max out the pipe coming into your house.

So what’s the bleeding point ? If there was no cap, you could become a local reseller and just offer up Wifi to your neighbours. But really, I don’t get it.

Do you ?

More and more I find that cable and tv suppliers are becoming less and less relevant. At least in my life. I dumped cable tv over a year ago. We have a TV that we bought at Crappy Tire and a DVD player that my girlfriend bought from Jean Coutu.. It serves us very well. She rents Sex in the City and I buy European Bike racing DVD’s from the states.

My original plan was to get an unlimited connection, nice and fast, and download TV shows. Bah. Never bothered. Too much work for 60 minutes of blah. I don’t miss TV and in all honesty, when this contract with Videotron runs out, I’m going back to Teksavvy with no contract and dropping my monthly internet fees.

I’ve been using a fixie, basically a converted road bike, which was the first road bike I ever raced on, into a bike with one front brake and one gear that is fixed. There is no free wheeling.

This turned out to be an advantage in the winter as I can brake with my feet by back pedalling and not having to rely on my front brake. Because of all the snow and ice that had accumulated, the front brake, on many days, was nearly useless .

I won’t begin to tell you how much I spent in terms of clothing to keep dry and warm. But I probably could have done it for much cheaper then I had.. But I figured, if I was going to ride in the snow and slush, I might as well do it in semi-style.

For the most part, it’s as I remembered it. Not as cold as some might think. Nowhere near as dangerous as the people that I work with think. Yes, there are days where 10+cm of snow has fallen and it’s tricky as all get out to steer straight. But for the most part, the roads are relatively safe and sometimes even dry.

Motorists too I found are much more forgiving in the winter then in the summer. Of course 2-3 times a week I get some meat-head boomer driving an SUV who hasn’t quite realized that I have as much right to be riding the roads as he. Hell, even more if you factor in the costs to the environment.

The trick to riding in the winter is you have to take up whatever space you feel you need to be safe. This is generally where some motorists get their knickers in a bunch. If the side of the roads have deep packed snow, riding in it would most likely result in a crash and ending up under someone’s wheels. So I have to take up a little more of the road then I would in the summer. This means that cars have to drive around me. They can’t always just drive past.

But you’d be surprised at the care most drivers take. Trucks go very wide, as do city buses. When I arrive at a light, I make sure to stay behind them and not wheel in front. They showed me the courtesy of not riding over me, I’ll let them stay ahead so that they don’t have to come around again.

Three days ago, after getting 10cm, I had to ride up Amherst to get home. From Viger to Sherbrooke it was packed solid. I was able to casually pass all the cars and trucks and get up in less then 10 minutes. Arriving home, I flipped on the radio where Radio Canada’s traffic reporter stated that it was a 45 minutes from Viger to Sherbrooke along Amherst.

Suckas.