Game #6 - City of Ottawa Bonspiel (Ottawa Curling Club)

On Saturday, we only had one game to play. It was a do or die scenario where we had to win to stay in. At this point, we have been pretty tired of playing in the tournament and was looking forward to some birthday celebrations in the evening. If we had won, we would have to play at 9am Sunday morning.

We played a team from the RCMP curling club. They were a seniors team and were very friendly gentlemen. Before the game, we were delayed slightly by my teammates' tardiness and I had a chance to chat with a couple of their players. It was a very nice way to break the ice and have a very friendly game of curling.

We controlled this game. The team from RCMP had given us a lot of credit for "not giving them a chance" to get back into the game. This was not completely true. The team had a great chance to have one big end, but my team escaped that threat due to a key miss from their skip.

It was very nice to curl out of the Ottawa Curling Club. This was my second time curling there, and I have been considering joining the club for next year. It is about a block away from my newly purchased home, and would like to be involved with a club with many competitive teams and a rich history. I also really like the fact that they have a kitchen and draft beer. This will be quite handy as I will likely be working a lot of hours and may not have the time to prepare meals for myself.

Anyways, we won the game and we had to play at 9 am. We were quite relaxed and played a much better game than we had been having. It was unfortunate that we would have to play so early the next day. We were going to go out for 4 of my friend's birthdays (Robert, Kyle, Tyler, and Derek) and St. Pats day. It was going to be rough.

Late night ticker - City of Ottawa Bonspiel - Game #2

We lost 7-2 after 7 ends. We fell behind early and we were chasing the whole game. It was a very frustrating game. We had at least 4 rocks that picked. We certainly could have played better, and could have done ourselves a couple of favours, but the picks were certainly demoralizing. Tomorrow, we play two games. The first is in Kemptville at the North Grenville Curling Club. We expect another tough game as the team we are playing against had just taken the defending champions to their last rock in their game tonight. Hopefully, our luck, confidence, and shot-making ability will improve for the next game.

Late night ticker - City of Ottawa Bonspiel - Game #1

It's pretty late, but I thought I would mention that my team had won tonight. The game was out of hand early, and we never faced any real threat from our opposition. The final score flattered the other team from Rideau 9-4. We had built a 7-0 lead after 3 ends of play, and a 9-0 lead after 5. The other team had very little experience and continued to want to play. Instead of playing a clean game the rest of the way, we played things messy to allow for the other team to get some points. We had discussed quitting after 6, but continued for a 7th end because the other team wanted to play some more. It was agreed that the game would be called after 7 regardless of the score, so the other team was able to get additional points and the final score would flatter them a little more.

Our next game, Wednesday night (7pm) at Cityview Curling Club should offer a better challenge. I do not expect to have any more of those games going forward.

City of Ottawa Bonspiel

Next week, my curling team will be curling in the City of Ottawa Bonspiel. I don't know how well they update the website, but I assume that you can track our progress through the website. I will be curling with Michael Dean, Robert Dean, and Ryan Cox. Hopefully, we will do the HCC proud.

Parking

My house only comes with one parking spot. I thought that I had better check to see how much a downtown spot costs for a month. To my surprise, a pass will only run about $50. For some reason, I thought it would be more expensive especially considering that it costs about $8/day around my house.

This is obviously a nuissance, but it means that it is still affordable for someone to rent a room and rent a parking spot. As a landlord, this is music to my ears. What is not music to my ears is the grumblings that have been happening at City Hall.

Recently, the City of Ottawa has had its share of budget trouble. The councilors are getting desperate for ways in order to raise revenue for the City. They are proposing to increase the number of parking meters in the city, raise the rates per hour, and reduce the number of hours of free parking.

For me, my largest concern is the number of hours that the City is planning to administer parking. Currently, there is free parking after 6pm on weeknights and free parking all weekend. I have no beef with the city increasing rates during business hours during the week. The role of the City in this case is to control the downtown traffic situation and the increase in rates will encourage people to avoid downtown during this time. Downtown in the morning is chaotic (in relative terms) and any relief to the congestion will make this a better city in which to live.

The reason I am opposed to the changing of the hours is the fact that the city does not provide adequate transit services on the weekends to justify charging extra on weekends. In addition, downtown is visited by tourists that want to see the likes of downtown and many of them are commuting in their vehicles. This parking ban would hurt business that rely on this weekend business.

For selfish reasons, I have just bought a house downtown and now my visitors may have to pay for parking. They will have to pay in order to visit me. I'm not going to have any visitors! I think it is retarded to make the city life less enjoyable by changing the hours of parking. This does not make sense to me for a few extra dollars. I'd rather pay a little extra in property taxes for the extra convenience.

Therefore, today, I contacted my local councilor and wrote him a nice little e-mail conveying my thoughts. I really hope that the city looks at other ways to make money other than changing the hours of parking. I can think of a few, and I can think of a few more reasons for why the hours should not change. I think the City is on the wrong path here, and I will pay close attention to who is voting against the parking and who is voting for.