Québec (2)

Ice and Snow

It is still quite winter-y here. Watching large ice sheets float up or down the St. Lawrence at considerable speed is an impressive sight.


Up or down you ask? Well, the St. Lawrence is tidal here, so it'll flow backwards twice a day. The tidal difference is up to four meters! This picture was taken at low tide from about two meters below the high-tide water line (note the person - and the water level - in the background):

I've been told by locals that they know it is spring when the snow doesn't completely cover their ground floor windows anymore. They were joking of course - but still, there's quite a bit of snow around here.


So much of it in fact that you should check really carefully if that small hill you are about to climb to get a better view of something really is a hill. Most of the time, it won't be - and you'll end up knee deep in snow as soon as you step on a soft spot in the frozen surface. Happened to me. More than once.

Notable exception: The Sugar Loaf of the Chute de Montmorency. There, you know it's ice:


The Loaf is the big hump of ice in front of the waterfall. During summer, there's absolutely nothing there - the fall ends in a lake. This ice hill forms every winter out of the frozen mist the fall generates. While it is forbidden to climb it, it has been a very popular spot for a very long time, which means this is mostly ignored. And as tradition does count for a lot in Québec, those ignoring the prohibition are traditionally ignored too. So of course I had to join the ranks of those being traditionally ignored, and I have the pictures to prove it.

While getting up there isn't too easy (jump a "closed during winter" gate, walk across the frozen lake and leap an ice rift - and then climb the Loaf itself) getting back down is very simple and loads of fun: Sit down and slide. This got my back side very wet, but my front side even more smiling.

[Nerd Talk]

Non-nerds: If I suddenly stop updating this site or keep ignoring all email, this won't be because I've vanished, but because I will finally have lost a battle against my computer. OK, now you're excused. Skip the rest of this entry.

Non-journaling file systems really don't like to be switched off without a proper umount. And ext2 apparently has the additional "special feature" to wildly shuffle inodes around - even if their files aren't in use at the time the system stops.

Having /bin/ls turned into one of the ntfs-3g binaries is not funny, especially if the system's backup is over 6000 kilometers away. While this is still easily fixable even "on the road", suddenly disappearing window manager libraries aren't.

Thank FSM for text mode - and a hotel that actually offers free internet access on two computers in the lobby. Finding the right RPMs (xfce4-session for Fedora Core 8 anyone?) and managing to install them without interfering with some obscure dependencies then was a piece of cake. Who needs a battery monitor or the automounter anyway?

Québec (1)

After those huge cities, I'm now in what I would call a nice mid-sized town. Québec is considered the oldest permanent european settlement (note all those conditions ;-) on american ground, and is the only fortified town in North America north of Mexico.

It is 401 years old now and is on the UNESCO's list of world heritage sites. It actually has an Old Town that deserves the name, although all of its landmark buildings - the fortification included - are much younger. Some, like the Château Frontenac, even are there for just over 100 years. It's still very nice though:




And the view from my room on it is worth being looked at for a while: