Point Pelee Part 1: The Bus Trip From Hell
May 17th, 2010
Male Red-Winged Blackbird photographed at the Thickson Woods marsh. Also, what my mood looked like around midday Thursday.
I'd call the trip to Leamington a "comedy of errors" except that there was nothing funny about it. It started in the parking lot of Lincoln Fields. Our driver discovered a problem with the brakes on the bus. It was a dangerous enough problem that we couldn't leave without getting it fixed. We ended up waiting over an hour before the replacement bus got there.
Then, some hours out of Ottawa, the air conditioning broke down. And the driver refused to go on without it. I didn't think the temperature was that bad--it was mid-May, after all, not mid-July--but apparently at least a few people did and the matter was not put to a vote. The replacement bus had to come all the way down from Gatineau; as you can imagine, that took awhile. In fact if I remember correctly it was something like five more hours before we finally boarded bus number three.
The good news is, our excellent leaders came up with an excellent "plan B": while we were waiting for the second replacement bus, instead of standing around in a parking lot, we would go to nearby Oshawa Marsh and bird it. We had a fine time there and some good birding, including my first two lifers of the trip: House Wren and Trumpeter Swan. Then, when the replacement bus still hadn't arrived, we stopped next to several fast food restaurants and had dinner.
We finally made it to the hotel, tired and bedraggled, around 10:45 pm. And I promptly turned in for a 4:15am wake up the next morning. As is my wont anytime I'm spending the night in a new location, I got not a single wink of sleep. (Didn't help that something in the sheets gave me an allergic reaction.) Add to this the fact that the night before, at home, was also virtually sleepless, and that was some pretty impressive sleep dep I racked up. I had serious doubts as to how well I would be functioning on this trip and particularly on the next day.
As it turns out I did just fine, more than fine, I did great. Throughout Friday, on zero sleep, I burned my candle at both ends--not merely a solid morning of birding, not merely a solid morning and solid afternoon of birding, but a morning, afternoon, AND early evening of birding! About twelve hours all in all, twelve hours with breaks but still twelve hours. By the end of it, a double whopper and onion rings were only just enough to fill the hole in my stomach. I think I got to the point where I was substituting food for sleep.
The following two nights I slept well. I never even began to make up for the sleep dep, yet I thrived in spite of it (except for a lingering bronchitis, which came back on me with a vengeance during this trip.) And there were no more snafus, for the rest of the trip.
May 17th, 2010
Male Red-Winged Blackbird photographed at the Thickson Woods marsh. Also, what my mood looked like around midday Thursday.
I'd call the trip to Leamington a "comedy of errors" except that there was nothing funny about it. It started in the parking lot of Lincoln Fields. Our driver discovered a problem with the brakes on the bus. It was a dangerous enough problem that we couldn't leave without getting it fixed. We ended up waiting over an hour before the replacement bus got there.
Then, some hours out of Ottawa, the air conditioning broke down. And the driver refused to go on without it. I didn't think the temperature was that bad--it was mid-May, after all, not mid-July--but apparently at least a few people did and the matter was not put to a vote. The replacement bus had to come all the way down from Gatineau; as you can imagine, that took awhile. In fact if I remember correctly it was something like five more hours before we finally boarded bus number three.
The good news is, our excellent leaders came up with an excellent "plan B": while we were waiting for the second replacement bus, instead of standing around in a parking lot, we would go to nearby Oshawa Marsh and bird it. We had a fine time there and some good birding, including my first two lifers of the trip: House Wren and Trumpeter Swan. Then, when the replacement bus still hadn't arrived, we stopped next to several fast food restaurants and had dinner.
We finally made it to the hotel, tired and bedraggled, around 10:45 pm. And I promptly turned in for a 4:15am wake up the next morning. As is my wont anytime I'm spending the night in a new location, I got not a single wink of sleep. (Didn't help that something in the sheets gave me an allergic reaction.) Add to this the fact that the night before, at home, was also virtually sleepless, and that was some pretty impressive sleep dep I racked up. I had serious doubts as to how well I would be functioning on this trip and particularly on the next day.
As it turns out I did just fine, more than fine, I did great. Throughout Friday, on zero sleep, I burned my candle at both ends--not merely a solid morning of birding, not merely a solid morning and solid afternoon of birding, but a morning, afternoon, AND early evening of birding! About twelve hours all in all, twelve hours with breaks but still twelve hours. By the end of it, a double whopper and onion rings were only just enough to fill the hole in my stomach. I think I got to the point where I was substituting food for sleep.
The following two nights I slept well. I never even began to make up for the sleep dep, yet I thrived in spite of it (except for a lingering bronchitis, which came back on me with a vengeance during this trip.) And there were no more snafus, for the rest of the trip.
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