Danielle in a Kayak
>This weekend I went to Bowen Island.Ý
In the 1930s and 1940s, Bowen Island was the place for rich people to
vacation.Ý Boats would take thousands
every weekend to the beautiful resorts on this large island.ÝÝ The islands popularity dropped when it
became cost efficient for everyone to own a car.Ý The island today has a population near 3000, which skyrockets to
4000 during the warm summer months.Ý
Most of this population works in downtown Vancouver and makes the 20-minute
ferry ride part of their hour long daily commute.Ý The locals are willing to drive this far for the beauty of the
island and the laid back pace of life.Ý
For visitors, hiking is the main attraction these days.Ý
ÝÝ When I arrived on the island, the visitor's center people pointed me to a trail which would take me to Durmont Point, which was supposed to be a 30 minute round trip and near the top of a mountain.Ý Although the view at the top was gorgeous, it was not worth all the trouble (I'm still not totally an outdoors person). I took many pictures to prove that I had hiked. Then, I realized that I had to get back down. It was a little better down because I followed the trail better.
Then I ate the
lunch I had packed while walking over to the kayaking place. I was fitted
with all kinds of kayaking stuff and changed from boots to tennis. To
clarify, this is sea kayaking, which is different from river kayaking. You have
to paddle the entire way, or you will flip over and not go anywhere. The
kayaks are a little longer (mine was plastic not fiberglass because it was my
first time) and thus significantly more stable. Mine was an individual
kayak. I got a few quick instructions, adjusted the foot thingy that
control the rudder, and got into the kayak in the water. The kayak felts as if
it was about to tip over, and I have just been hiking so my legs are falling
asleep.Ý In addition, I know I am not in
good enough shape to paddle for so long. When we first get going, I look
over at the guide and say, "This is a three hour tour, eh?" Not
realizing where I am going with that comment, the guide says, "Yeah."
"Kind of like Gilligan's Island?" That did not go over too big with
the guide, but I thought it was funny.We got going and then realized that we were in the middle
of a sailboat racecourse. Aside from the sailboats, there are the ferry
boats (which we came over on), motorboats, yachts, and tons of other boats
which all cause a wake that almost tip me over. The sailboats are also
concerned more with winning that with sparing the lives of the people in the
kayaks. The guide pointed out a few bald eagles, the names of some of the
huge mountains, a few seals, and told us some local legends on our trip around
the island. Coming back, we were fighting the wind and more sailboats
were finishing. That means that the guide wanted us to stay between 5 and
10 feet from the jagged cliffs on the side of the water. I did not flip,
was relatively dry, and the guide complemented my paddling style. He even
let me put in a pin in his map at Atlanta. It was about a 4 mile trip,
and I will do lots better when I go again at the beginning of July.
After a nice dinner at the local restaurant, took the ferry home, then caught the bus, and then got on a taxi.Ý The buses are still not running in Vancouver, but I really did not mind at this point.
ÝÝ
In the area of research, we worked more on recurrence relations and
continued along the same lines as previous weeks. When we walked into Anne's office on Friday, she told us that
somebody else has already solved a problem similar to the one that we have been
working on. Barry Cohen and Steve Skiena developed the algorithm that we
were working on and implemented it with 12,000 lines of C++ code. That is
a lot of code. We are going to try to get his code (I hope he used
comments, or else it's going to be horrible to look though) and change it a
little to do what we want it to do. But, our idea and algorithm are
unoriginal now. This also means that I have to learn C++ in the next 2-3
days.Ý Whether or not this will turn out
to be good or bad is yet to be seen.Ý If
his code is written really well, then we will have saved ourselves from writing
12,000 lines of code.Ý On the other
hand, if his code is totally unusable, then we are just unoriginal.The most recent
copy of my notes can be downloaded in PDF format here.