Rosa and took our first trip together to Montréal this weekend. We wanted to see a fashion exhibit at a museum, then shop and look around.
Detail of Jean-Paul Gaultier costume
Saturday morning we drove into Montréal. Our first destination was Le Musée des Beaux-Arts to see the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit. There were many examples of his haute couture costumes. Rosa is a fashion junky, and I’m somewhat interested. Jean-Paul, over his long career, has explored so many areas of fashion, setting trends and pushing boundaries.
Next we walked around the Saint Catherine area for Rosa to shop but she didn’t find much – the area was mostly chain stores. So we left and I dropped Rosa off in the Saint Laurent area.
I drove south to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – the Formula-1 race track. The track is actually a public road. However the speed limit is only 30 frustrating km/h. I set my cruise control and started lapping very slowly around the course. The security guards all waved as I drove by time after time. I’m sure I was not the first to do this. The circuit was split with a row of pylons, consigning vehicle traffic on one side and bikes and rollerbladers on the other.
Then I left to drive north to Lamborghini Montréal. I lost my Lamborghini hat at Mosport and wanted to buy a replacement. I went in but did not see the boutique mentioned on their website. One of the salesmen came over and asked if I was looking for something. I mentioned the boutique and he pointed to a single counter by the door. They had no hats.
Paifang entrance to Chinatown
I picked up Rosa and we checked in at Le Place d’Armes Hotel in the Vieux-Port (Old Port). The room was huge and very luxurious! We had dinner in the hotel at Aix Cuisine du Terroir. It was delicious. Afterwards, we went for a walk. It was a lovely warm summer evening. We walked through Chinatown and Rosa had flashbacks from when she lived in China. On our way back, there was a crowd of people looking down at the highway. There was a TV truck there as well. A 25-ton section of the tunnel roof had collapsed on the Autoroute Ville-Marie earlier in the day. Luckily no one was hurt.
We spent the next day window shopping. We started in the Vieux-Port at the Bonsecours Market. The weather in the morning was excellent and perfect for a walking/shopping tour of Old Montréal. We slowly wandered our way towards the Rue University shopping area. However the weather turned nasty in the afternoon while we were indoors. The rain outside became torrential. Unfortunately we left our umbrella in the car in the morning. Despite promising to never leave the umbrella behind again, we had to buy yet another umbrella just so that we could leave the mall.
Rosa shopping
During a short break from the downpour, we managed to walk down Saint Catherine towards our dinner spot. We had to stop again in the entrance of Christ Church Cathedral when the rain picked up again. We were drenched. During the next break in the downpour, we ran to the Restaurant Julien.
When we finished, we called for a taxi to take us from the restaurant back to the parking at Quais du Vieux-Port. It was nearly three hours to drive home through a traffic jam and continuing rain squalls.
It was my first time in the Mosport control tower. Unlike a regional weekend, a bank of TV monitors linked to the television cameras around the track were set up along one wall of the control room. There was also an instant reply system in the back of the room. Altogether it was a great way to view the racing.
I attended the drivers meetings for the GT3 series. The key messages were about jump starts and blocking. It was a relatively quiet weekend (clean racing) in the tower. I also watched some of the other series (such as the American Porsche GT3 Cup series).
We had a good turn out for the season finale races. There were 18 entries for the weekend, which meant the racing was great!
Saturday evening I talked with the Race Director about the year in review, and to gather feedback, which was positive. We also discussed the 2012 season. I want to be part of the series again next year.
The racing for me was over around noon on Sunday. The afternoon was reserved for the main 2h45m ALMS race. I did not go into the tower during the ALMS race – it would have been far too crowded. Instead I left for home a little early – it’s nearly a 4-hour drive back to Ottawa.
This past weekend I was working as an assistant clerk of the course for the DAC weekend at Shannonville Motorsports Park. I was working under George McCullough. I was one of two vehicle dispatch communicators. It was a busy role, but I shared it with another assistant clerk.
On the vehicle dispatch radio network, we had all the emergency vehicles, the safety car, two tow vehicles, pit lane marshals, and scrutineering. Shannonville is a good place to learn in the control tower because 90% of the track is visible from the tower. We could see nearly everything happening. At other tracks, you can typically only see the front straight and the clerk must rely entirely on the radio calls from the corners for details.
We had some issues with the radios during the weekend. The safety car in particular did not have headsets and they had difficulty hearing our calls. This means that sometimes they missed picking up the leaders when we had a full-course yellow condition. For example, we would call for the safety car to ‘stand-up’, which indicates to them that they should start the car, buckle up and be ready to roll out on the next radio call. That allows them to prepare. Where possible, we should also give them the current leader car number and car colour. Then if we do next the safety car, we can then dispatch them immediately. However, if the first call was missed because they could not hear over the noise of the race vehicles on track, they would not be able to roll out as quickly as possible.
Another issue was having two people doing the same vehicle dispatch role. We kept stepping on each other. I understand that it was because George already had a vehicle dispatcher when I asked if I could clerk as well.
Overall, I enjoyed the weekend as an assistant clerk of the course. I could see how other clerks operate, how important clear communications are for running an event, and about the interactions between the different groups (clerk, timing, vehicles, pit lane, registration, and so forth).
And I began to think about how incredible that was. The Sun is 150 million kilometres away. Only the most inconceivably small amount of photons that the Sun produces reached across that distance to alight upon my drowsy form.
Because I like numbers, here’s the deal. My arm is about 70 square centimetres, or 0.07 metres square. The total area of a sphere is That means that the area of the sphere of solar radiation at the distance of Earth’s orbit is 4 x π x 149,598,000 kilometres x 149,598,000 kilometres. That’s 2.8 x 10^17 square kilometres or 2.8 x 10^23 square metres. My arm was therefore receiving 0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,024,89 percent (2.489 x 10^-23 %) of the photons that the Sun is producing, and even that infinitesimal amount was enough to warm my arm and wake me from my slumber.
As a customer day, the instructors were asked to dress with black pants and shoes. We were all given black Cadillac hats and white golf shirts. We looked great! And we were all given magnetic nametags, which looked classy.
There were 16 drivers attending the event. The Ontario Regional Director of Marketing represented Cadillac. There was a full team of photographers and filmmakers were recording the event for a video that should be available later.
The catered lunch was really delicious, and it provided a good time to relax and talk with the participants. They all were enjoying the day so far; I knew that the afternoon was going to be even more fun than the morning exercises.
The afternoon was dedicated to tracking their high performance vehicles. We used the stadium track at CMP, which was a blast. Some of the customers were driving CTS-V coupes with supercharged V8 engines producing 556hp! Wow!
At the end of the day, the drivers had a wonderful gift bag, including a large framed print of them and their cars, a group photo, and the Cadillac logo. It looked great. And it was done so fast – the pictures were taken at lunchtime.
It was a pleasure to work with the team and to provide a special day for the Cadillac customers. I would like to participate next week at Mosport, but I am not going to have enough time due to our upcoming trip to Europe.
Firstly, the Chernobyl experiment was only supposed to cover the 75 seconds from SCRAM to the point when the generators would have been supplying full power for cooling. Secondly, the 1986 disaster was actually the fourth time the experiment had been attempted – it had failed the previous three times. Which would lead one to conclude that it is not possible to bridge the loss of power by using residual steam pressure to continue to spin the turbines.
Next, the design of the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors had flaws that would have defeated my suggestions. During the massive quake, the active reactors were SCRAMed. The diesel generators were brought online and were functional until the tsunami hit. The facility had 5.7 metre seawalls and the tsunami was estimated to be 13-15 metres high. This flooded many of the buildings. The older reactor buildings had their generators in the basement of the reactor building. The newer reactors at least provided external generators that were stationed up a hill. But all of the electrical switching components were still in the basement. As were the turbines. Even if steam had been available for the turbines, the turbines would still have been lost when the tsunami hit nearly an hour after the quake.
Finally, my suggestion would not have helped at Reactor 4, which was already shut down and could not supply any energy. The spent fuel pool next to the core contained 1,331 fuel rods. Alternative methods were used to cool the spent fuel in the pool.
I can feel the emotions, the opening up of the soul to joy. It is one of the most powerful expressions I have experienced of pure joy.
The evening started with a shorter piece by Canadian composerMalcolm Forsyth. It was the world premier of his “A Ballad of Canada”. It was a special performance by the NACO as Malcolm’s daughter Amanda Forsyth is the Principal Cello, and the conductor is her husband (and thus Malcolm’s son-in-law) Pinchas Zukerman. It was an emotional moment, as Malcolm has been ill for some time. At the end of the performance, Malcolm was in one of the box seats and weakly stood up to acknowledge the applause.
NACO standing to take the applause
After the intermission, the “Ode to Joy” began. The symphony is about 65 minutes long in four parts. One of the major innovations of the piece is the use of voice as one of the instruments.
One of my favourite sections is the start of the second movement. I feel it is so openly and energetically joyful. It gives me goose bumps.
The final movement brings in the full chorus. The sound of the wall of vocal power of a chorus full-on song is amazing. One of the four soloists was sopranoArianna Zukerman, daughter of Pinchas Zukerman.
With such emotions and power, I cannot imagine that it was created by someone who at the time was completely deaf. It is heartbreaking to the point of tears that although Beethoven conducted the first public performance, he was unable to hear the standing ovation of the audience at the conclusion.
Sadly, I heard three cell phones go off during the performance at the NAC.
[Updated Oct 3, 2011: Malcolm Forsyth passed away July 5, 2011, just over a month after this concert]
One bonus for myself is that I could practice my French. I tried to use only French any time I could, although I sometimes had to fall back to English if I could not understand.
Temporary iCar control tower
The weekend was interesting in the control tower. The three-story tower itself was built the day before. It was an enclosed wooden upper story, and the base was steel. The base had big steel wheels; the tower had been pushed into place the night before. It was a bit scary, as it would sway in the wind and provided little protection from the noise.
I had a chance to meet Wayne Pollock, one of the Quebec clerks. To gain more experience, perhaps I can try working with him next year if there is an opportunity.
The Porsche series races ran smoothly, although one competitor wrote off his chassis Saturday morning and the series leader broke his suspension at the start of the Sunday race, leaving only four cars to complete the 45 minute race.
Terry Dale, Steve Sewell, Wayne Pollock and the tower operators
I snuck up to the control tower to watch some of the NASCAR folks, and it was chaos. They all had hoarse voices as if they were long time chain smokers. I think it from yelling over the noise for season after season. The noise from the cars was overwhelming. There were times I was standing next to someone and could see their lips moving, but could not hear them at all.
During the weekend, I crossed paths with former Formula-1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve. Someone told me that he was a good friend with one of the announcers covering the race.
[Updated Sept 19, 2011: Sadly, Wayne Pollock passed away in his sleep overnight]
We arrived at the track Friday evening around 8PM. After a quick BBQ steak supper, we started to prep the car, as we were the first group on track Saturday morning at 8AM.
Steve working on the wheel studs
Trouble started immediately. Two aluminum lug nuts on the left rear wheel sheared off. The torque face against the rim was still there, but the hex head broke off. The only solution we had was to drill out the remnants, at the cost of breaking multiple drill bits. Once the nuts were finally removed we had to replace the wheel studs, as the drilling had destroyed the old ones. We had spare studs, but they were longer than the original studs. To gain enough space to thread the longer bolts through the axle hub, we had to remove the ABS sensor and rotate the dust shield out of the way. The next challenge was to seat the new studs. We borrowed some steel washers and a steel wheel nut from the Krikorian’s and torqued them down, which slowly pulled the studs through. It chewed up all six battery packs we had for the air wrench.
We finished around midnight and retired to Jay’s RV for the night.
We were up at 7AM. Steve was the first on track. He and I split the morning 30-minute practice session. I set the best time – 1:43.393.
After lunch, Jay took the 30-minute qualifying session. We finished in 15th place on the grid of 17 with a time of 1:46.376. We had classified the car as GT-4 with hopes that with fewer cars in the class we might stand a better chance, even though our lap times were well off the GT-4 pace.
In the mid-afternoon, a rain-squall passed over Mosport. As I watched the puddles form, I knew our car had been set up for dry conditions. I grew more and more anxious as race time approached. A dinner consisting of only strawberry Twizzlers didn’t help either my anxiety.
The race started at 5PM; we arrived at mock grid around 4:40. Mentally I prepared for the start by focusing on just staying on the track and didn’t worry about positions. The rain had stopped, but the track was still wet. We had three hours to make up any lost positions.
As we came around to start the race, I was on the inside of the 8th row (14th place as one of the competitors did not start). When the green came out, I saw a big gap down the middle of the track. There was some risk, as I would have nowhere to go if the was an accident in turn-1. But it paid off handsomely – I made two positions. Everyone was cautious and it was a clean start. At the top of turn-2, Mark Gawronski was slow on the inside – he might have started on slicks – so I passed on the outside of 2.
In turn-5, I went to the outside again and went around two faster BMW’s, but lost the positions on the race up the back straight.
Up into turn-8, I was behind a red BMW when he started to lose it in the wet. Would this be a repeat of my big crash at Calabogie in 2008? He started to spin right, then corrected left before completely losing it around to the right again. I had lifted and stayed basically center track behind him until I could figure out which way he would end up. When he finally lost the tail, I saw the opening to the left and went for it. I quickly glanced in my mirror and saw that his spin had basically bottled up everyone behind him – I was the only one who had gotten by cleanly.
By the time I came around to the start line, I was already up to 10th place overall.
Working turn-9
This gave me a breather to chase down the next car ahead of me, a Porsche GT3 driven by Roberto Sabato. What a thrill it was to hound down a GT3! It was obvious that Roberto couldn’t get the power down on the wet track. I tried at the bottom of turn-2 and again in turn-5, but each time he made his Porsche as wide as possible. At the same time, one of the Sentras was also trying to get by me and we traded positions a few times but I was able to get by pull out a gap on the Andretti straight.
At the end of the second lap Howard Chin took back the position he lost on the opening lap and was able to close up on the Porsche too. I was able to stay with him and eventually took the position back again on the pit straight; he retired a few laps later with a mechanical issue.
In the wet, I was able to go on the power a little earlier than the cars around me, which gave a good run out of the corners.
Eventually, as the track dried out, my wet-track advantage was lost and I started to fall back as the faster cars could start using their power and grip to get by. After a little over an hour, I was called in for our first drivers change. I had been up as high as 9th place overall, but when I pitted, I had fallen back to 11th.
Over the radio Steve asked about the fuel state and I replied that the tank was just under half. So we made the decision to just do a drivers change without refueling. Coming into pit lane I loosened the belts and prepared to hop out.
Jay got in and when out. I told him the car was great and to start pushing right away.
However, we found that the fuel gauge is not very accurate. Jay drove until the car started having fuel pickup problems after about 30 minutes. We prepared for our second stop, this time for both fuel and driver. I was still in my race suit so I was assigned to fire extinguisher while Frank did the fueling. We put in one 27-litre can and meant to add at least half of a second. I watched the fuel level, but I misjudged it and we got about 1/3 of the second can.
Steve got in the car and tore out of the pits. But he was nailed for exceeding the pit lane speed limit. He came in for his stop-and-go penalty and went out again.
After about 30 minutes he radioed in that the oil light had come on, so he came into the pits. We added liter of oil and he went out again.
A short time later, he radioed in that he was out of fuel. Since Jay’s stint was short, we decided to do a fuel stop and driver change to put Jay back in.
Frank had already changed out of his fire suit, so I did the fueling. We had to ask one of the Krikorian’s crew-members to hold the fire extinguisher. We put in a full can of fuel and then strapped in Jay.
However, he also broke the pit lane speed limit and had to come in for a stop and go penalty. He had started a scrap with Vincent from Quebec but the penalty brought that to an end.
In the rush to get in the car, Jay didn’t have time to get the radio system plugged in, so we didn’t have any communications from him. When he was slow to get around, we grew concerned. He finally arrived on pit lane, driving slowly. Once stopped, he asked us to check the tires – the car was not handling well. We checked all tires (pressures were good), brakes (one pad was well worn) and wheel nuts (all looked secure). Nothing looked too bad, so we sent him out again. Again he was late to come back around. Time ticked on and he did not complete the lap, so we checked with the officials. They radioed the control tower and they found out he had stopped at the top of turn-4.
It was 15 minutes from the end of the 3 hours.
Once the race was over and the car was towed back to our paddock we found the left front wheel bearing had failed. The only thing holding the wheel hub on the car was the brake caliper. This caused problems when we tried to load the car into the trailer. We had everyone push as hard as we could then had to use the tie-down straps to pull the car into the trailer.
After that, we had a burger BBQ for supper.
Reviewing the weekend, I felt great about my start. I really made a great run in the wet. Even the track announcer was remarking on my progress. I was only 0.3 seconds off Steve’s best laps although we are still slower than expected. Our two strategies really failed. Classifying in GT-4 was a mistake – the other car finished, so no matter what we would have done, we could not win. We weren’t even fast enough to be competitive in GT-5. The breakout time is 1:41.000, and Steve’s best lap was 1:42.706. And our pit stops were terrible. We made 7 stops, including three driver changes and two stop-and-go penalties.
We will return in September for the BEMC War Bonnet 3-hour race. Hopefully we can have more success then.
Since Papa passed away in November, Mama, Rosa and I have been discussing what we should do with his cremated remains and by extension what will happen when Mama passes away. Mama said that Papa and she had already bought a space at a mausoleum in Beijing.
After so long discussions, Rosa was able to convince Mama to buy a spot here in Ottawa, so that it will be closer to us. Rosa argued that if the remains were in Beijing, there would be no one who would visit. By having the remains nearby, Mama could visit whenever she wants.
Last week I took mama to see the Hope Cemetery Ottawa-Carleton. It was specifically chosen as a Roman Catholic facility. Mama is very picky about that, especially as she was able to convince Papa to be baptized last summer. She liked the cemetery and agreed that we would intern Papa there.
Today, she, Rosa and I went back to move papa’s urn in to the space.
A spot was chosen that has enough room to include mama’s urn when she passes away. It was inside the mausoleum – there were also locations on the outside of the building and burial sites.
We left some photos and Mama left a small bottle of holy water.
As the cemetery is on the other side of the Rideau River, it takes about 35 minutes to drive there. Once the new Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge opens, the trip will take only half that.
That means that the area of the sphere of solar radiation at the distance of 
