(Click on pics for a bigger image) I stole this pic off some other website (naughty me), but it's the best one I found of the Halifax harbourfront. If you see the sort of hazy-looking sun beaming down on the city, my building is just below it -- the bluey-green one tucked in front of a cluster of larger buildings. The naval yards are to the right, outside the frame of this pic, and the grain wharf and big cranes are to the right...and beyond them is open ocean.
This is a screenshot from the halifax webcam (click the title of this blog entry to be taken to the webcam site). You can see those big cranes in the distance and the naval yard in the forground on the right, with one very large ship at dock. (This ship would look puny next to a big container ship.)***
Commuting to work has become a real pleasure for me.
I leave the house at 8:15 and take a nearby street which leads me to highway 111. A short jaunt along there takes me to the very end of the highway, where there's a street that parallels the Halifax Harbour. One block northish (nothing's really north, south, east or west around here), and I'm at the ferry terminal. The whole drive takes about 6 minutes.
Then I park and walk into the ferry terminal. My pace is directly proportional to how close the incoming ferry is to the dock. This morning It hadn't even left Halifax yet. Usually I get to sit down for a few minutes before it arrives.
The ferry docks at the bottom of a steep hill, reached by a staircase down from the parking lot and couple of steep escalators inside the terminal. The ferry docks, a wide metal "drawbridge" lowers to cross the gap between the dock and the boat, a green light comes on inside the terminal and the people flood through the interior terminal doors, down a ramp and into the ferry.
At this time of year, most people ride inside. There's always lots of seating. I've never seen it so crowded that I have to sit right next to someone. Usually at most only two seats out of the four-seat sets is taken. The seats are just white molded plastic, and some of them are mounted uncomfortably high so that even I can't put my feet flat on the floor when I'm sitting in them. There are windows all around, so no matter where you sit, you get a great view. I seem to have developed the habit of turning left when I get on the ferry, so I'm always facing dartmouth, whether I'm coming or going, because the ferry never turns around, just goes back and forth with the same end pointed in each direction at all times.
Now and then I've seen people up top outside. It must be pretty brisk out there this time of year! I look forward to riding up there myself once the weather improves a bit. I'll have to bring a brush to work so I can fix my hair after getting it all windblown!
Ferry passengers are a fairly unremarkable group. They seem to be a better class of people than you usually see on city buses or subways. Business people, office workers mostly. I hear there's a lot of government offices downtown, so many of them probably work for the feds or the provincial legislature. People are faily quiet on the ferry. They read their books or listen to their MP3 players or close their eyes. Most of them don't bother looking around like I'm still enjoying doing. I must look like a newcomer, the way I'm always intently staring out the window at every boat that goes by, watching the opening of the harbour a couple of kilometers away where you can see the open ocean and a lighthouse at the tip of a spit of land.
I'm especially intrigued by the ships and boats and tugs I see every day. Some of them are little working boats zipping back and forth along one side of the harbour or the other. Some are navy ships, pale green and almost unmarked except for a few letters and numbers. No Canadian flag insignias or "HMS So-and-so's". I like watching for the sailors on deck in their bright orange coveralls. Sometimes they're running around doing stuff, pulling on ropes or other mysterious activities. Sometimes they're all lined up in neat rows standing at attention like they're getting their pictures taken. One day they will be, once I get my new camera phone in a month or so!
The most impressive ships are the gargantuan container ships and freighters that come and go from all over the world. Sometimes my brain simply can't grasp the sheer size of them and I stare at them, boggled and confused by something so big. It's hard to believe they can float. I can understand how a plane can fly better than I can understand how something so huge can simple float on top of the water like that and not just plummet to the ocean floor like a rock. Surely there must be some limits as to how big a vessel can get before it just won't float anymore, no matter how well-engineered it is.
These freighters carry just about anything. There's an Imperial oil wharf just southish from the Dartmouth ferry terminal where a tall, slender pipe near the water's edge reaches high into the sky to burn off excess fuel. It glows just like a birthday candle day and night. On the Halifax side, there's a grain terminal, the naval yards, the CN yards and huge, HUGE cranes to load and empty the contents of the ships. Some of the cranes are as tall as the tallest building in downtown Halifax...probably 25 stories high or more.
This morning I saw a ship that was so big that the perspective was completely off. It was looking at a real life optical illusion. On one hand, I thought I was seeing the ship directly side-on. But I could also see the stern. I watched it almost all the way across the harbour till I decided the stern must be V-shaped, jutting out rather than flat across the back of the ship. Still...had me blinking for the entire ride!
The ferry takes about 10 minutes to cross the harbour. Halifax Harbour is about the same width as the Ottawa River along the Parkway. Driving over the harbour on the bridge takes about a minute. Ferrying across takes ten times that much time. But it's a better choice for me because of where I work. Plus, there's a .75 cent toll each way and no free parking near my office.
When I get off the ferry, I head southish for a five-minute walk along the boardwalk to my office. I work at Summit Place, which was built to host the world leaders for the 1995 G7 Summit in Halifax. I'm on the fourth floor, a corner office, with windows on two sides and a beautiful view of the harbour. It can be difficult to concentrate on my work sometimes, with birds wheeling around outside, the water shimmering, the clouds moving across the sky and all the people coming and going. But I'll manage *grin*
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