Not too sure why a wildlife preserve is called an 'ecomuseum', but putting that aside, this small but interesting preserve for animals that were usually wounded and cannot go back to the wild.
Mormally when you go in the dead of winter, and it's -15C outside, you shouldn't expect to see much, but of course Canadian animals are used to the cold, so outside of a couple that were hibernating, the rest were out and about :)
It was a fun 2.5H, outside of how damn cold it was and my not having enough layers to stay outside in such cold that long :)
you don't look like a red fox to me :)
The lynx were a highlight for me, they totally looked and behaved like house cats that happen to be bigger and walk in the snow :)
hard to know if they would have bitten your hand off had you tried to pet them :)
liking their paws and soft pads, just like cats
out, looking for trouble :)
There were other animals of course:
even the ducks were fine with the cold
They had a few indoor exhibits, which were great to warm me up
Despite the cold, it was definitely fun, it's a bit out of the way if you are in Montreal, but on your way to the airport, it's a perfect stop
when not going racing on ice, there isn't much else to do but ice skating and snowmobiling
We met most of our time there having dinners after a long day of driving
The first morning, we had a short class on car dynamics:
how controlled sliding through an icy turn is the quickest way compared to the sticky track line which doesn't work
the most fun you can have, driving 90 degrees or more from the direction of travel
Every day, we then took a 40mn bus from Esterel to Circuit Mecaglisse, which is in the middle of nowhere:
we then got to meet our cars
we drove 992s and 991 Turbos
someone, drove our car at 262kph, I don't think it was us :)
we had 3mm studs for god like traction on ice
Kees, our instructor, introducing the cars to us, with our assistant, Emilie
The big whiteboard on the ground made it easy to write instructions
By luck, I got paired with the best student in the group, Mathieu, so he doubled as my instructor :)
Kees, showing us how to do a scandinavian flick around a corner with a set of cars showing a snapshot of the line
Our assistants worked hard for us :)
but more seriously, they kept us on track, and cleaned our cars of all the snow we shoved into them. Poor Emily got her wooden spoon broken by all our snow
Here are a few nice pictures from our professional photographer:
driving sideways with the wheels straight
this is why the cars had snow stuck everywhere :)
we often helpded make the track a bit wider :)
yes, this is fun :)
I did my part helping clean the loose snow at the edge of the track :)
I might have done this too :)
Here are a few videos, 3 way snow drifting:
And videos of my crashing in snow banks in different ways :)
Thanks to all the instructors, also to Porsche for letting us drive their cars and make mistakes, and the great codrivers in our group (blue group was still #1 !) :)
After the program was over, we had a celebration dinner and prices for the best drivers:
Mathieu, my co-driver, won the price for best driver in our group
This was so much fun, there are no higher levels, but I'm quite tempted to go back :)
Armin's Balance tour finished in San Francisco, sold out in Bill Graham. He brought a lot of singing talent with him, it was a nice surprise.
In addition to terrible communication on the show's hours that changed multiple times after tickets where sold and were not even really confirmed until the day of, the openers were not officially announced either. To be honest, they were disappointing:
Elevven opened up, they went out of their way not to upstage Armin
Rodg was next, same thing, not an unforgettable set...
Then, Armin came after 2h30 and a quick setup to install a very cool addressable LED decor:
first time I've seen a trance duet, very cool
Video summary of Bill Graham (please forgive the bits with oversaturated sound, it's not all bad):
After a very nice 2h30 set, we ran out and went to Midway SF where Armin also arrived around the same time than we did, and he played for another while before Elevven finished the night and played better than at Bill Graham:
Midway Video Summary:
Definitely a good night, first time we see a double Armin set on a single day :)
