The Bark Side

Emily pointed out that if I mention greyhounds in the same sentence as Imperial Walkers than I should give you all the reference. So, here it is.

I got this idea from a video. The video is awesome and I do not want to spoil it so I will leave it to you to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux1yEkZVeHk

Enjoy!

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away . . .

Well, I don't know that I would quite call Ottawa a galaxy far, far away, but, considering I hardly get out of Toronto these days, a five hour drive was pretty long.

On the long weekend of August 3-5, Emily and I traveled to Ottawa. It was not a "room-mate road-trip" but rather a "here are two room-mates going to the same city on the same weekend". Emily went to spend the weekend with her boyfriend while I went to spend the time with my sister. Therefore, this shall be a tale only of what I did in Ottawa.

My sister and I actually ended up doing a lot of touristy things. On Saturday morning we went to the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. I had never been and absolutely loved every minute of it. The planes were amazing and I was especially hung up in the World War II-era section. They had a British Lancaster bomber which was a thing of beauty.

Apologies for the patheticness of my cellphone camera.

 

Isn't it huge?!

 



The other exciting part of the Aviation Museum was that they had a special Star Wars exhibit on. I must confess that as well as being a Trekkie I am also a Star Wars fan.

Okay, now I really must break into the tale here and ask an eternal question that I am sure fans have been asking since the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977. Now, Star Trek fans are called 'Trekkies', Stargate fans are called 'Gaters', I'm assuming fans of Firefly could be called 'Flies', so what are Star Wars fans called?

Good, got that out of my system, now, on with the exhibit! In it we saw original props and costumes and, most exciting, the armour of Darth Vadar. They also had this thing where you could create your own Star Wars character. I ended up with a bounty hunting Ewok (not exactly the profession I have ever associated with Ewoks but I guess that is what happens when you put down Boba Fett as the person who inspires you). I have to say it was pretty cool to actually see that. They also had some of the models they used to film scenes, Star Destroyer, Imperial Shuttle, Tie Fighters, Imperial Walkers, etc.

 

The intimidating Darth Vadar

Anakin's pod racer from Episode 1

 



An Imperial Walker that always makes me think of greyhound dogs :)

 

A Star Destroyer somehow still looking intimidating though it could easily be stepped on

 

Han Solo preserved in carbonite, hopefully they let him out occasionally

We also went to the Diefenbunker, which I had also never been to. I was amazed at how big it was! They really were preparing for every eventuality during the Cold War when they built that place. It had everything you could possibly need in there, except for a view of the sky I suppose. There were offices all labeled for the various government departments, dormitories, conference rooms, a big cafeteria and on the very lowest level there was a huge vault with an enormous thick door.

 

 

An important room for important people

 

 

An even more important room for even more important people

 

 

 

The enormous door, turns out the vault was intended for Canada's gold reserves should the need ever arise to transfer them to a safe location

 

Another interesting, and rather creepy, part of the Diefenbunker was a room meant to house people who, having moved down there after a nuclear attack, found the strain of living underground and thinking of the fates of the loved ones they had left behind too much and had to be placed under restraint. These people would be put in a small room with a few bunkbeds and no door handle on the inside of the room. Food was pushed through a small opening. If the people were not already under strain when they were put in the room than being in there would certainly do it.

 

We also went to the War Museum, which I had seen before, so we didn't go around the whole thing. But I had to revisit the World War II section to see if there was anything new. There wasn't.

 

Besides the museums we also toured around Ottawa a little, went to the parliament buildings and were in time to see the changing of the guard which was really neat. We also got to see the changing of the sentry at the war memorial. Ottawa is such a military oriented city, I hadn't realized quite how much until that weekend.

 

I didn't see Emily until late Sunday afternoon when we met up to drive back to Toronto together. This was our first real longer drive together and we started out with much enthusiasm and excitement. I don't know quite how we managed it, but we were able to fairly well maintain those good spirits for the whole five hour drive. Though, we did discover one thing which should be a lesson to everyone - carrots do not go with peanut butter. It's actually rather gross. As to why we were trying this combination in the first place, Emily had some food with her and as neither of us really wanted to stop for a full meal we were snacking on what she had brought. However, both of us are gluten-dairy-sugar-grains-and-various-other-foods-free and therefore finding food to snack on is actually a lot harder for people who have such dietary restrictions.

 

It was a fun drive though and, as we are both easily amused, it was not hard to entertain ourselves. For instance, at one point we found a good ten minutes of funniness out of the fact that the Enterprise looked like it was wearing a sombrero. (As to how that was possible I will leave it to you to figure out.)