Larysa Harapyn

It was about a year ago that I joined my brother at the Fashion sCares event at the Metro Centre. I was eager to attend as I figured it would be a chance to meet the lovely Miss Harapyn!

Years ago, City Tv used to have a segment where they asked people on the street their oponion about a particular subject. Larysa used to do these live in the street. One day while downtown, passing the old Sam the Record Man, I saw Larysa doing the bit. She literally stopped me in my tracks with her looks. It was later in the year, so she was wearing a puffy silver winter coat. And she looked amazing!

So, when James got the chance to go to Fashion sCares, i figured I had my chance to meet her.

We arrived, and were quickly told where we couldn't be. But better to be told that then told "stay here", because we pushed the limits of that approval! At one point, we were right at the edge of the red carpet, when we were spotted by two staff members. There was conversation, and then one pointed right at us. Busted. The non pointer came over and said "sorry, can't be here". We asked where we could go, and it turned out to be the first location, the one we were not allowed to be at. Well that was great, cause that's where all the media was.

Jim was the first to spot her, seeing her hair. I saw a pair of boots that just kept going up. Put them together, and there she was, ready to work for City.



I was nervous as hell as I approached her, and asked if I could take her picture. She smiled and said "mind if I take off my coat". As I've said to anyone I've told this story to, my response should have been "take off anything you want", but I knew it would come out as "blah", so I just nodded my head. She knew how to "work the runway", and went into pose mode. After I thanked her, I headed back to James, then thought that no one would believe I actually met her, so I went back to have my Bro take a picture of the two of us. So I asked her if it would be ok for another picture, and again she smiled and said sure, but it would cost me five bucks! Later on in the nite, I gave her that five bucks by buying her a drink ticket! Oh ya, coolness personified!
Here's a shot of her in action:



After everyone had cleared the red carpet area, they let in the general admission people. One of the women who came to the show wanted to walk the red carpet, so we agreed to treat her as a star and "paparazzi" her!
She loved it!

TORD

Sunday the 21, searching the internet, I found a site for the Toronto Roller Derby league.
That nite, they were having the final event of the season, so I thought hey, why not check it out.
I looked around the site, and saw that it took place at a gym in the Hanger, at Downsview Park. Looked like sight lines would be great, as they had a good crowd, but not a big crowd.
The site advised that tickets were available at a few site (all downtown), or at ticketmaster. The problem with that was that they also added a service charge.
So, I arrived promptly at 6:30, gathered up my camera, and headed inside. After waiting 5 minutes at the front (I'm sure that the phone call the attendant had wa important, but maybe should have been on their own time!)She finally hung up and told me I was in the wrong location. Went back to my car, circled around the place and found the right location.
Once inside, I was about 10th in line when a volunteer advised that the place was already sold out!! Very dissapointing. I felt suckered by travelling all the way there to find it already sold out, but hey, good for them!
I will get to an event there one of these days!

murder on the waterfront?

On Sunday the 14, I headed down to the waterfront at Col Sam Smith park, to check out the local bird population. Unfortunately the promised sun was no where to be seen. Once again, all I can say is damn you Kuss!
Once there, I saw two Canadian Geese start a big battle in the water....


These guys were even diving under water to battle it out!




Even the other birds were hiding their heads in shame over this ridiculous display!

Festival of Lights

Well, took a trip with my bro to Niagara Fallslast weekend. We've been there a few times in the past, and its been pretty good.
This year, not so much.
It was very misty, but the worst part was that the fireworks lasted a grand total of 2min and 10 seconds. 130 seconds in total. Since it was about 120km from Acton, thats pretty much a km of travel per second of fireworks!
So it quickly went from this:


to this:


Again, with all the mist, even the light show on the falls wasn't as spectacular as it was previous years.


We also hit the casino, and I kind of got ripped off. I played a 15 buck minimum roulete, and the guy took my 20 bucks, and said "inside or outside". He explained outside was colours, while inside was numbers. So I went with red on the outside and lost. What I found out later was that I could have put 20 $1 bets down instead. Kind of pissed me off when I found out!

oh well.....

Decew Falls

Sunday promised a partial sunny day, so I picked up James and headed for a waterfall in the St Catharines area, namely Decew Falls. (link for mill).
The famous Laura Secord adventure of the war of 1812 involved Decew’s farmhouse as her final destination to warn that the Americans were coming. The site has an operation Mill, but my favourite part was that the mill had always used a turbine to produce power, but everyone who came would ask why there wasn’t a water wheel. So, in 1995, they built one just to make the tourist’s happy!!

Anyways, it’s a long way down, and as a result, a kind soul has put in a climbing rope to help you get to the Valley floor. Its still a tough ascent and descent, and my thighs are still feeling the burn! But it really is worth it, as it’s a beautiful falls to see. Unfortunately, Saturdays wind had pretty much stripped the trees of colour, but it did make for a nice valley floor.







We then headed to Balls Falls, specifically the upper falls. Man, the conservation authority has really confused people with the parking. It used to be you used this lower lot for parking, but now it’s a “token system”, so you drive down to what looks like a ticket gate, but it says you can only use tokens, and no credit cards. So, you back out of the driveway, drive back up the road and go into the building, where your told you can’t park down there, as its handicapped parking only? So you pay your money, and take this long switch back path way (which probably cost a good amount, and required the reconstruction of a large portion of a hillside) to end up at the same location we used to park in at the bottom! Oh well….

The upper falls had some good flow, but was very murky water, with the classic pollution foam “stuff” floating in the air. We thought it looked kind of like Niagara Falls. On the east side, the water fall was not coming over the rock, but through it, so it wasn’t as nice as the major portion of the fall. So we said that’s like the American Falls in Niagara. Nice, but no horseshoe falls!!




Since we were there already, we also went to the lower falls. The last time we were there, you could stand on the edge of the falls, right in the middle of the river. Nothing was really flowing, and anything going over was also just through the rocks rather than over. This time there was a good flow, so unless you were on the bottom, it was difficult to get any interesting shots. So I didn’t take any!!

Windy Day at the beach

The first day of November came in on a big wind on Saturday! A big wind usually means that the local lake surfers start heading out to the shoreline to get some action. It was a SW wind, and unfortunately, I don’t know what location would be best, so I cheated, and went as far as Ashbridges Bay. Before that, I checked for windsurfers at Marie Curtis, but at both, no one was there. So I settled for Cherry Beach. Over the time I was there I saw about 6 different windsurfers.





and about the same amount of kite surfers.







They all head to the north side of the Leslie Spit, and wearing black wet/dry suits, the pretty much all blend into the background, but occasionally they came close enough to get some action shots, including one guy who attempted a flip of some kind on his board, but finished in the water!






Also, the po-po were playing with their boat out in the rough waves, going out and back a few times. Hate to be on that boat as it was jostled by the waves!!

The dead walk the streets......boo!

Well, for the third year in a row, I joined the Acton Hamilton’s for a trip to the Toronto Zombie Walk, which takes place on October 24, just in time for Halloween!
Again this year there were some great costumes, and many participants really take the extra effort to zombie-up! I especially liked those that put in the freaky contacts which colour their eyes!
We usually check out the initial gathering at Trinity-Bellwoods Park, and then we zoom up the road to intercept their march on a side street to get pictures.
I noticed this year that the police redirected the route (off of Bathurst St), but were not doing a great job stopping the cars, as some tried to plow through the undead!! Kind of dangerous, considering everyone knows that a car hit won’t kill a zombie, only a head shot, or a decapitation!!


There were also lots of media around, including CP24 which did a live remote about 20feet from our picture taking location. They interviewed this guy, who had a great glass themed zombie look!