At any rate, my goal for this week was to, as promised, report on the Outdoor Adventure Show. I actually wasn't 100% sure that I was going to make it out this weekend, but my schedule ended up lining up with it perfectly. Paul was heading to New York on Sunday morning for business so I said I'd give him a ride to the airport, which put me just a couple blocks from the International Centre just an hour before the show started. It should be noted here that showing up a few minutes before the beginning of the morning's show on a Sunday is a GREAT strategy if you're going to some kind of expo at the International Centre. The parking there can best be described as "insufficient" if you feel like being polite about things. I rolled in at about 9:50, got a great parking spot, had no line to buy my ticket, and stood in a small queue for about 5 minutes before getting into a showroom floor that was comfortably un-crowded. Unintentional strategic win!
I think that The Outdoor Adventure Show is a decent name, but they could easily have called it Cramming All Colin's Hobbies Under One Room Show. The acronym CACHUORS doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, but people will get used to it. I fully expected that I'd head over there, take a quick poke around and then meander casually out. I spent 3 hours in that building... most of it slack-jawed. My wanderings took me past some camping-gear vendors and people selling various granola bars and other such hiking foods, but then I started to get into the scuba diving section. I didn't know there was going to be a scuba diving section! Many pamphlets for people organizing diving trips accompanied me from the expo hall that day.
I then spent the better part of twenty minutes chatting with the girl at the Olympus booth about the myriad of cameras they had on display. No, the fact that she was incredibly good looking had nothing to do with that, and I'm shocked at the suggestion. What they call a Micro 4/3 camera, essentially a DSLR without the mirror giving you a physical viewfinder, seems pretty appealing to me after seeing them in action, although the price point seems comparable to that of an entry level DSLR. It's the small form factor that really makes them stand out though. Even the new line of Stylus cameras (shock proof and waterproof, essentially the descendents of my camera) were really impressive to see. They've made HUGE progress on the menu system and overall user interface, which has always been the Achilles heel of my camera.
After that I (reluctantly) took my leave of the cameras (not their spokesperson) and made my way over to the kayaks. Please forgive the quality of the photos I'm about to link, they were taken with the less-than-impressive camera that's built into my phone, but I've got to throw these up there if only for Dad's benefit.
It's at this point that I realized I'd covered about a quarter of the total showroom floor. There were representatives from all manner of outdoor sport. I picked up pamphlets, flyers, and business cards from people doing camping/survival training, mountaineering training (gotta go out to B.C. for that one), skydiving, dirt biking, specialized kayaking skills, etc, etc. It was a smorgasbord of adventure! I actually had a really good chat with a guy who does dirt bike training, which is something I'd meant to do this past summer but didn't get around to.
I was amazed at the presence of Quebec on the floor. There was the better part of an entire isle dedicated to various kayaking and camping adventures to be found along the St. Lawrence. Some of it looked pretty amazing! Yup, more pamphlets. I actually went and bought some granola bars at one point so that I could get a bag to put all my reference material in. I might actually start going through some of the items that I got at the show, use them for research, and flesh individual items out into their own blog posts.
I've been in a bit of a lull lately with not much travel on the horizon, but I felt reinvigorated after the show. Spring is right around the corner, and I'm starting to build up this Summer's wishlist of fun outdoor activities.
At this point it's 10:00 and I've done naught this evening but eat and workout, so I'm going to go play some video games and relax a bit before calling it a night. I hope you're all doing great, and I look forward to providing you all with more information on the variety of fun things I saw at the expo!
2 comments:
Sounds like the show was a raging success. I was considering going now I regret not going.
One thing is with local adventure providers is you can do it on a week end. Sure a whole week is better but don't ignore your backyard.
Do a post about the whale watching tour you told me about!
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