This month was the tail end of our Europe trip, visiting Grenoble for a few days, before going to Canada. That involved some time in the Montreal suburbs, and then the Beaver Valley Climbing Festival in Ontario. But it turns out that the Air Canada flight attendants went on strike after all, delaying my return to New Zealand. And, a trip to Auckland to referee at the North Island Championships.
Professionally: my student Vinayak finished his master’s. Also, way more service and volunteering than in previous months.
Here is the flora & fauna sighted in August, as opposed to the one below, which is that processed in August.
Health news
On the COVID front:
- Long COVID risk reduced by vaccines, now about 3.5% of infections
- COVID vaccine news from Absolutely Maybe, including a phase 4 mucosal vaccine trial in China
- “Immunity debt” isn’t a thing
Professional
Worked on 18 days. August has 20 work days.
- Vinayak’s thesis seminar
- edited that for the SCAM presentation
- VSTTE reviews
- Onward! paper discussion
Teaching
Still nothing here. Still really should work on SE465 updates, but need to do Discovery Grant first.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
I did see my grad students in person when I dropped by and bought them dinner at my place (didn’t have time to cook). Talked to mentees, students and collaborators on 9 days. And a prospective grad student as well as someone who was soliciting reference letters.
Collegiality/Service
In addition to the VSTTE reviews, there was also FAUW governance work, including a meeting that I attended in person.
Trips
Yep, more travel in August.
Trip: Grenoble (August 1–5)
The last bit in Europe for the year was in Grenoble. We were curious about its location right near the mountains. For the four days we were there, it seemed like a reasonable urban place with a bunch of students. Though, it being August, most people were on vacation. Went to the markets (excellent takeout), the Bastille up on the hill, a bunch of museums (the museum is different from the musee), and the via ferrata. Climbing was too much of a pain and the weather was too hot. We stayed in the Resid’hotel, a pretty affordable hotel with a kitchen, for about 60EUR/night.
Trip: Canada
As the last part of this long trip, I got to Ottawa, Montreal, Waterloo, the Beaver Valley, and Toronto (more times than I would like).
Ottawa (August 6)
Straight off the flight, we got a ride back to Brossard, picked up our car, and drove to Ottawa. MP unsuccessfully went shopping at the Rideau Centre. Intersected with some friends from Waterloo who were also in Ottawa at the time and went to the Museum of Civilization, er, Canadian Museum of History.
Montreal (August 6–14)
Mostly did remote work as usual but based in Brossard. One trip to see birds at Ile St Bernard, where I found my mirrorless camera to be at 0% charge. The RX100 works much less well. Also a visit to Bromont again. We have two bikes stored at my parents’ in Montreal and I used this trip as a chance to bring one of them back to Waterloo.
Ontario (August 14–20)
I hate the 700km drive to Waterloo, but I dropped off MP at the airport, stopped in Napanee (with lots of Canadian flags), stopped in Toronto where I went climbing at the gym, and then continued back to Waterloo.
Did all the errands and selected meetings. Submitted a final version of a paper on Friday/Saturday at 3AM. Then went to the Beaver Valley Climbing Festival. Figured I was unsure about whether I’d be able to in 2026, so this was the chance.
Of course, that meant that I got caught in the Air Canada strike. I was supposed to leave on Monday. In the end, getting out on Wednesday wasn’t too bad.
On my way out, I stopped by the Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver.
Trip: Auckland (August 28–September 1)
A couple of days after arriving in New Zealand, I had back-to-back trips to Auckland for judo, the South Island for skiing, and then back to Auckland for the SCAM conference. MP came with me on the first trip.
We did a good part of the Auckland Coast-to-Coast, and I made it to Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill as it was getting dark. It did rain on us, though we ducked inside for the rainiest part. Maungawhau/Mount Eden is nice too. The closed Epsom campus of the University of Auckland is a bit creepy/postapocalyptic.
Travel was not completely obvious on this trip: storms.
Travel Planning
There was a lot of last-minute travel planning when there was an Air Canada Flight Attendant strike. Also there was some logistics for the Craigieburn Haute Route (for which there was a last-minute change to a glacier ski tour around Mount Cook), and flight + hotel for SCAM in Auckland.
Movement statistics
Clearly I wasn’t going to get as much hiking as in July where we did the Tour du Mont Blanc, but still had 60% as much hiking in August as in July.
I was getting really antsy in the Montreal suburbs until I got a bike out.
Movement statistics:
- 🚶 Walking: 130km on 24 days
- 🚲 Biking: 75km on 6 days
- 🚗 Driving: 1824km on 12 days (essentially the same distance as July, but this time Montreal to Ottawa roundtrip; Montreal to Waterloo; and Waterloo to the Beaver Valley)
- 🚗 Taxi: 31km (Kitchener GO 2×; from AKL; Ellerslie to aquarium in Auckland)
- 🛴 Kick e-scooter: 3km (Waterloo)
- 🚆 Train: 395km on 6 days (Annecy to Grenoble; Grenoble to Geneva; GTA; Auckland)
- 🚌 Bus: 454km on 11 days (Chamonix to Annecy; Ottawa; Montreal; unsuccessful Toronto roundtrip (sigh); Toronto again; Wellington; around Auckland)
- 🚆 Metro/subway: 31km (Montreal, Toronto)
- 🚆 LRT: 1km (Grenoble)
- 🚇 SkyTrain: 20km (YVR)
- 🚠 Cable car / gondola: 3.6km (Planpraz; Grenoble; Wellington 2×)
- ✈ Plane: 21570km (GVA-YUL; YYZ-YVR-AKL-WLG; WLG-AKL)
Transit was 905km, which was way up based on a bunch of bus and train rides.
Walks
In the end, there was one named hike: Auckland Coast to Coast from Viaduct Basin to Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, 18km. Also did a walk at Ile St Bernard outside Montreal, 6.6km, plus a less-popular trail on Mont-Royal on a hot smoggy day in August.
Pictures
I took some more pictures in August, but not as many as July. I also somehow had less time to process pictures. Plus, there are a couple of sets that I’m not posting here. I don’t know if I dug myself deeper into a hole. Caught up a bit with some May and July photos, as well as some August phohtos. Anyway, less than July but more than June.
Picture logs available, and, as always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures processed: August=12, July=15
- Total pictures processed: August=563, July=845
- Total pictures in selection pool: August=2123, July=3354
- Accept rate: 27% (min 16%, max 58%)
- Pictures posted on this page: 80
Fauna and flora (mostly birds):
Miscellaneous
(I never know what to write here.)
Posts
There was also some messing with Hugo themes as things started to mysteriously go wrong with respect to images. I did changes so that my theme would work with Bootstrap 5. I’d rather not have, but here we are.
- August 10: Submission in favour of the Devil’s Glen (Ontario Parks) Climbing Management Plan
- August 22: Me and the Air Canada Flight Attendant Strike
- August 23: Olympus trip report
- August 24: Tour du Mont Blanc (ok, the post date is fake)
Books
I didn’t get around to any book reading this month, despite a long plane flight. Well, I did read some, but I also worked on pictures.
Acquisitions
Nothing that interesting. More pants. SAXX underwear. Electrolyte tablets after enjoying them in Greece? Memory foam mattress topper. Hot water bottle that we didn’t actually use. MP attempted to go shopping at the Rideau Centre but they didn’t have what she wanted.
I did buy probably the last pair of discontinued BD Mission LT approach shoes that I’ll be able to get. I walked into the Auckland Bivouac Outdoor and asked if they had any. I bought the last pair they had, which happened to be in my size. I notice that even the Mission LT 2.0 is on clearance. Maybe I should get that one.
Sports
Must be some sort of record since 2015 when I took a break for a year: only went to judo practice once. But I was stuck in the suburbs of Montreal (though I guess I know people so that’s not really an excuse) and generally not in places where I train. I did referee at the NZ North Island Championships, this year held on only one day rather than two, and still finishing pretty early.
I did, however, get to bouldering gyms 5× (and two gym visits where I didn’t climb, dropping off posters), plus one afternoon out at Metcalfe. Haven’t logged any outdoor climbing since early 2024, somehow. It really is not that convenient from Wellington. There was also the Grenoble via ferrata.
Food
In Grenoble (mostly):
- Paradisio Pizza in Chamonix but on our way to Grenoble. Tartiflette pizza works. I also asked the guy about his opinion about Quebecers. “J’adore les quebecois!”
- Paris Delices which is not a chain and located in Grenoble rather than Paris, despite the name. Neighbourhood patisserie near where we were stayed. Correct croissant. I think MP also got the religieuse and raspberry tart from there.
- Pâtisserie La Cymaise near the Fontaine au Lion: was OK; someone else wanted their patisserie item cut, and the staff was like “I’ll do it but it’s not really part of the service that we provide.”
- La maison de l’entrecôte: there is a 6-restaurant chain of this name which the Grenoble location would seem to belong to, but Grenoble is not one of the sites, despite having the chain-wide tagline “et sa fameuse sauce”. Weird. Anyway, lots of meat. I had a good burger, and the sauce was good too.
- Tikka fast food: it was a bit hard to find food on a Sunday but this was a tasty biryani.
In Canada:
- 3L of peaches from the Ottawa grocery store. The problem is that they are all unripe, and then they are all ripe at once. They were good when they were ripe, but then it’s a lot.
- Café Qui Pense, Ottawa: quirky spot in an independent bookstore which brought in good scones made elsewhere. Cool hangout.
- Disappointing chicken poutine at Timeout Market in Montréal. The lobster dumplings were good though maybe unnecessarily fancy.
- Vache Glacée, Montréal: Mont Blanc (soft serve on slushie)
- Kim Fung, Montréal: note the sign “Kam Fung” on the picture on their website; I guess they’re confused about their name. Anyway, have gone here since I was a kid, so hard to judge.
- Humble Coffee House, Napanee: good tea, meh scone.
- Smart and Morris Jamaica Takeout, Toronto: I’ve had good Jamaican patties from there when they’re open. Not always open when advertised.
- Pho Ngoc Yen 2, Etobicoke: one of the new-age pho places with excellent pho. Terrible location though. Came there after climbing at Up The Bloc.
- Grand River Chop House: not sure that “Best Steak in Grand Valley” is that strong a claim, but anyway, good place to stop for an enjoyable donair on the way back from the Beaver Valley. Also in the “food that is hard to get in NZ” category, though I did go to “Proper Donair” in Ellerslie Auckland, where there was a guy from Saskatchewan wearing a Habs sweater.
And in NZ:
- Chaat Street, Wellington: highly recommended “street food” place.
- La Vista: got some great patatas bravas here before going to AKL where our flight would get cancelled.
Volunteering
More than usual. Helped out at the Beaver Valley Climbing Festival (at the event and helping with the post-event survey) and also more work for the climbinparks campaign as we encouraged submissions. Attended both of this month’s OAC Board meetings (pre and post festival). And I did a pass through the Wellington Judo Academy new constitution.
Conclusion
Another travel month, though I was stationed in Montréal for a fair chunk of it and not actively touristing. Also, getting back to New Zealand was a mission, which consumed 2 days of planning time; things were changing fast.