Scarefish

Sometimes you hear people complain that nowadays food doesn't look anything like what it was made from. Examples that are customarily given consist of French fries, hamburgers, and so on. Although I do agree that a ground beef patty that looks nothing like a steak, even less a cow, can be considered, at least by some, edible, I am compelled to argue that if bread resembles flour, wheat grain or the actual plant, something wrong gone down during the making process. This is especially true for animal-based food. Even before I became vegetarian, carbonised carcasses of chickens roasted entirely never looked very appetizing to me. There are warrior-like gourmands, who like to stare their dish in the eye while they are consuming it. The picture below, that I found on the kitchen counter today, confirms it. 

Unfortunatly, I spent the night before playing Silent Hill, and the gruesome image of a disembowelled caged fish, with its white eye, mouth full of teeth and vegetables sticking out of its gut had distinctly ungastronomic effect on me. The dark wood background also matched the color of rust-covered walls of the "hell" levels of the said game. Also, once I noticed that the cage is not merely fish-shaped, but has a decorative fin and eye, I couldn't help but wonder, where do such peculiarly made objects come from. A giant, with a grim smile wielding a hammer over the furnance and a gloomy cold hall with blue-grey walls filled with cages of all sizes and shapes turned up in front of my mind's eye. Even if I slept fine the night before, today I will probably be dreaming about being squished between the two layers of bars, on which someone's dark humor produced the images of hands and added metal rings in front of the face; a fish with sharp claws from Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland will be creeping up, with quite clear intentions...

Crossroads

The more I ride in Montreal, the more a thought of getting a cyclocross bike becomes appealing. We got it all - climbs, mud, holes in the ground, obstacles, you name it. All the pretty leaves lying around make it rather difficult to detect the irregularities of the road on time, forcing you to demonstrate the miracles of maneuverability and expand the lexicon of curses know to mankind, all while praying to the cycling deities for that last cling not to produce a pinch flat. Leaving the house at noon and coming back after sunset also requires you to carry 2-3 extra articles of clothing, to make sure that you are prepared for the temperature to drop from +17C down to +4C.
Another interesting observation is the increasing annoyance of drivers. In summer they seemed to just accept the invasive cyclists and clinch fists in silent rage inside their AC-ed vehicles. In winter drivers are the nicest - take up the whole street and nobody will honk. My theory on that is that they just don't want to mess with "crazy" people; oh well, their loss. The fall time, at least this year, seems to be the polar opposite - our sworn enemies seem to be vexed by us not being in a rush to hang those Raleighs and Giants on the garage wall, especially when the weather is absolutely summery. Honking and overtaking with revving engines seem to be the new... well, new honking and revving, just the number of the incidents has increased recently. Or may be I just ride less carefully.
It seems, however, that a number of cyclists take the dangers of commuting rather seriously. Lots of pedal-propelled commuters live with the USSR Pioneer motto on their lips - "Always prepared!" Thus the observed increase in the aggressive driving behavior is supported by the surging preparedness of the cyclists:
It's great to see the dedication. Ride no matter what!

Once out of the streets, end of October is probably the best time to ride. The "urban mountain" that us Montrealers are so proud of, but that we so rarely visit, is something worth having a one-day pilgrimage to. Once out of the wide gravel road and a hundred meters into the "woods" you can actually forget, only for a couple of minutes, about the civilization that is about to jump on you from around the corner:
If you care for geology, the Mount Royal actually has a couple of fun rocks to look at.
Here's an igneous rock, formed by magma solidifying underground, with a xenolith (from Greek: xeno: alien, lith - rock) - the white spot in the middle. When magma was moving under ground, a piece of the vent broke off and entered the flow, but did not melt. When magma solidified, the rock remained imprisoned in it:

On the picture below, in the left top corner, the coarse-grained igneous rock that cooled from magma underground, is neighboring the preexisting sedimentary rock (bottom right). Along the border traces of contact metamorphism can be seen. There the hot molten magma came in contact with sedimentary rock and changed its mineral structure.
The cemetery is also a great place to visit. The background is rather peaceful than grim, so you don't have to be an adept of black humor to enjoy the tour. For the sake of style however, here is a color-accented depiction:
You can also witness such marvels as snow at +14C and a rural scenery. The latter I suspect is some kind of specially designed decoration, something like a Christmas village:


That, amici, is all. Now get out there and see what can you find yourselves!