For Frequent Fliers, is Paradise a Parking Lot?

"Getting away from it all" is one of the main reasons for travel, and "it all" normally includes work, urban sprawl and the weather. Human Canadians who annually escape the harsh northern winter for sunnier climes are known as "snowbirds," and just like these natives, they always come home to roost. Canadian geese are found all over North America, but their adaptability makes them one of the most recognizable urban birds. Migrating flocks are a common sight in spring and fall, noisy v-shaped formations reflective of the order and free discourse of the Canadian people, and its willingness to stay in queue.

Picture of the Moment - Avoiding World Record Traffic in Toronto

There will always be an argument about what city has the worst traffic. But Highway 401 (officially the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway) running between Windsor, Ontario and the Quebec border is the busiest roadway in North America, and it is arguably the world's busiest, with locally more than 18 lanes of idling cars. If you like superlatives and travel to Guinness-book sites, it's a must-see vacation destination.

When traffic is flowing, it's a poor man's thrill ride.

An office transfer off the direct mass transit routes made taking the GO train system an impossibility for me last year. Heavy city congestion meant a creative commute and work-from-home hours, and I learned from experience that driving from the city during peak rush hours (not shown here!) could make my 42-kilometer commute from Etobicoke (north-western Toronto) to Burlington take over a hundred minutes on the less-heavily trafficked Queen Elizabeth Way. That was on a good day. Google Maps tells me I could cover the distance in 32 minutes without traffic, but there's no sense in waiting for the Apocalypse. Torontonians are aggressive drivers as a whole, and not enough would be taken up in the Rapture.

To use pivot tables and breakdown statistics by weekday or route; that thought makes me weak-kneed. Since I left a regular technical role for Management, I am now absurdly pleased when I have the opportunity to make a chart or X-Y plot of anything, however banal, on personal time, hence my daily commute illustrated here. To decide between a linear trend line or the third order polynomial, that's a moment of near nirvana.

But independent variables like weather, accident, school-year traffic, teenagers, dubious third world driving licenses and sunspots wreak havoc on the best of plans. I modelled my commute in both directions over a calendar year with 3rd-order polynomial regressions, and both have very poor correlation coefficients below 0.35. But I dared not tread the main rush hour waters (4-7 pm) for a better spread of data, particularly in the afternoon, based on the hard lessons I learned before I started plotting.

Now I travel the lonely highways of northern Minnesota, and my commute is a unvarying flat line at any hour. Perhaps the end is nigh?

A Day at Toronto Zoo

Zoos are controversial places these days, though not to the same extent as theme-park aquariums. For me, the benefits of a well-managed zoo outweigh the negatives. Without them, many species that are critically endangered or extinct in the wild would be gone forever. Modern civilization may be better than asteroids at killing off other species, but late 19th and 20th century creature comforts conversely gave us time to develop conservational values that are unique in human history. Ancient peoples living communally in nature didn't try to save the moa, the mammoth, or trees on Easter Island. At least we feel guilty about extinction now when clearing habitat for malls.

Toronto Zoo is divided into a separate Discovery Zone for children and six loosely-themed "zoogeographic regions" or domains representing regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Eurasia, Indo-Malaya, Tundra Trek, and the Canadian Domain. There is a lot to see, but the typical visitor--who doesn't read every informative sign in depth--can get through most of the displays in 5-6 hours. Unless bear connoisseurs, North American visitors who have been outside of a city may wish to skip much or all of the Canadian domain. I've seen enough deer looming in my headlights.

Flying Off the Travel Plan - Murphy's Law on an Airport Commute

http://theaveragechicagoan.com/

My last business trip to Marquette, Michigan was a comedy of errors. I'm determined not to repeat that travel experience this time. I plan a longer layover in Detroit and a rental car better suited to the UP winter

It's the night before, and my wife Stacey checks the local forecast for me. There's a winter storm warning for overnight through tomorrow in the Toronto region. "You should leave extra early in the morning for the airport," she suggests. I've thought through all the scenarios. "I've got a good commuting buffer built in," I reply. Besides, it looks like the worst of the storm will be south of here, near Niagara and Buffalo. They always get hit hard.

I don't sleep well. That's typical before flying. My mind races through contingencies, things to do, conversation outcomes I want to ensure. My hand swats off the alarm almost before it starts.

I look outside. There's new snow, but it doesn't appear to be very much. Stacey checks the school network. District schools are open, but buses are cancelled. The kids are staying home. "You should check in online," Stacey suggests.

Nah, I think, I don't want to figure that process out now. "It's not snowing very heavily," I reply. "They keep schools open because they really think it's safe, but they shut down the buses to avoid liability." But I shower quickly, for me, and hurry through breakfast.