Not so much a gallop as a trot

When I was a youngish girl, not quite a teenager, it was my almost daily habit to walk a long length of railway track behind my house. I was young, vigorous, and unafraid, and I would cross the middle of a unsided trestle high above Helmcken Road, and then stepping on the ancient railway ties, go for miles, although it probably wasn't much more than a kilometre or so. Did this for three years, and although I met with a handful of adventures, only met one creepy guy and got one tick - not at the same time.

That's the Bay Street Bridge through the berries

Some years later, they transformed the old unused line into a network of paved trails, leading from Vic West all the way to Sooke - easy for walkers to do sections, and safe cycling, as well.

A few years before we left Victoria for Hades, they rebuilt the old Selkirk Trestle, which links Vic West with the neighbourhood of Burnside across the Gorge Waterway.

Southern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

And yet, despite returning to Victoria for seventeen summers, I never made it over to the Selkirk Trestle, although I'd seen many beguiling pictures of it.

I was determined to right that omission today. CBC Radio informed me that it was "perfect autumn weather", and I had carefully checked my route, because Vic West is one of a handful of Victoria neighbourhoods that is unfamiliar to me, even though I lived in Esquimalt for years.

For the first time, I made my way over the new, silver Johnson Street Bridge, which, amid much controversy, has replaced the blue one. I turned right on Harbour Road and six minutes of trotting past industrial areas brought me to the winding path that hugs the shore looking out over the Upper Harbour, just below the Bay Street Bridge.

Harbour taxi

Pick-up points for the tiny Harbour Taxis double up as look-outs; they seemed to be doing a reasonable business taking Japanese tourists to and fro.

And kayakers were having a lovely time, ignoring the roar of machinery near Rock Bay and a pile of crushed cars sparkling in the clear October air.

I noted the locations of restaurants for future reference, and was grateful for a clearly indicated and well-timed public washroom, but on the whole, I was startled at how residential this leg of the Galloping Goose is. It's lined with colourful condominiums and apartments. Every picture I've seen of "the Goose" is quite rural-looking, and there have been a few news reports over the years of muggings and sexual assaults in the quieter areas.
I, however, was surrounded: by dog-walkers, stroller-pushers, cyclists, young families, snow-haired seniors, tourists and, of course, joggers. It wasn't crowded, y'understand - just not isolated.

Northern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

I reached the Selkirk Trestle much sooner than I'd expected. It's a long foot-bridge which curves across the Gorge, and has a hump in the middle to permit boats to pass underneath. You do have to watch out for the bikes - just as on any shared pathway. The bicycles do come zooming through, including one gentleman, who was old enough to know better, with his eyes glued to what I swear was his cell-phone in a special holder. He seemed to be swerving toward me, and he sort of glanced up casually, and frowned slightly, as I flattened myself against the railing.

The Gorge Waterway stretches way into the west

From the south end of the trestle, I could peer west into my own past. As a nine-year-old newly arrived in Victoria, I lived a couple of bridges down the Gorge, in the Craigflower area. (You can't quite see that from the Selkirk Trestle, but I know the Gorge quite well.)

From other angles I could gaze back to towards Victoria itself, shining behind a dazzling reflections of the sun in the water, or I could simply look down at the odd scales created by the shadow of the chain-link sides of the bridge.

Ancient arbutus

I had resolved to return home via Gorge Road, and had used Google Maps Street View to find the off-shoot from the trail on the Burnside side.

You can click on this to enlarge it.

As I climbed the rather steep path past yet more apartments and condos, I was confronted with this whimsical mural. (It wasn't until I got home that it occurred to me: Oh, yeah! A galloping goose!)
Take a closer look at it, yourself. One of the crows is real.

The keystone and the over-arching arch

Yesterday, I woke up grumpy. No, I was grumpy; there wasn't a dwarf in bed with me. Not so far as I remember. What I was trying to remember was why I was feeling grumpy. Oh yes. Field trip today.

Now field trips are opportunities. For a non-driver such as myself, this is a chance to go somewhere without wanting to blow up OC Transpo (Ottawa-Carlton, for those of you outside the area), or strangle one of their drivers. I can see younger daughter's class in action, and share in her day. I can learn something.

Unfortunately, this involves getting in a school bus with at least 50 kids. It also entails being partially responsible for said kids. Oh gawd...

The afternoon's excursion was to the Museum of Science and Technology. Now, as science museums go, this is... an okay museum. I've been there. Never particularly feel drawn back. It's in one of the ugliest areas of town, and doesn't have the pizzazz of Science World in Vancouver nor the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto which are both really, really nifty places and well worth the detour if you're in either of those cities. However, CMST does have a nice school programme and younger daughter's school, which despite being public (that means for the general unwashed, if anyone from Britain is peeking in), still manages to raise funds for frequent field trips.

We had a nice lady who enlisted several young sparks to illustrate which aspects of simple machines go into bridge making. So one young girl discovered she could lift the instructor on a teeter-totter affair by moving the centre closer to the load. Another boy found that he could easily pull down the centre of a flexible beam between the instructor's hands, but not if the beam was held in an arch, and this was something to do with the push and pull forces being switched to the ends. I spent this time being a comforting presence behind younger daughter and being rather loudly shushed by her when I attempted to confer with another mother on scientific principles.

Then we had to break into smaller groups to tackle a bunch of bridge-building kits. Most of the kids made a beeline to the impressive set ups for beam bridges and suspension bridges. One little girl, bless her heart, approached younger daughter to partner her and we headed for the neglected arch bridge kits. Using a diagram, we had to assemble blocks labelled A to F. Each letter represented a different shape, so there about a dozen rectangular "E's", about four oddly-shaped "B's", and mysteriously, only one "F", which went in the dead centre. There were exactly as many blocks as needed, and we only had a diagram for one half of the bridge, so it took us two attempts to get them in the right pattern. These were not interlocking blocks; it was rather like building something out of pebbles from the beach, and I didn't see how they could possibly hold together. The first time we tried to stand it up, it tumbled down like the Frank Slide. However the second time, we removed the prop, and a lovely and tiny little arch stood there, and miraculously, both girls took turns holding an arabesque in their snow boots on it!

We watched the others finish tying up their suspension bridges and have them blown with a high power fan while a toy truck rolled across, while across the room, others piled their boots on precariously balanced beam bridges. By this time, younger daughter was zoning out, and I was grateful that the afternoon was nearly over.

But not before the bus trip home with loud choruses of "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" (every damn field trip, I tell you...) and a particularly nasty ditty that goes: "This is a song that gets on everybody's nerves..." And it does. "Speed up the bus," howled someone behind me. My feelings precisely.

I'd taken the precaution of removing younger daughter's packsack from her locker just before the field trip and took her directly home through the mercifully muffled and deserted snowy streets. But I meditated on that singular "F" block in the arch. It's called a "keystone", and it completes the arch and permits it to carry vertical loads. The weight on the keystone forces the other blocks in the arch together, which is why our tiny higglety-pigglety arch was able to bear the weight of a girl in snow boots. Considering that the arch bridge is the strongest of the three types of bridges, that's saying a lot for the keystone. The single thing that takes the pressure and forces everything else to stick together. What is the keystone in your life?