Johnny and I have been at Yankee all week, meeting with our colleagues and talking about things like “tagging moon phases.” We head off this afternoon up through Vermont back to Montreal where we’ll spend the weekend with brother Steve before flying back to the Island on Monday morning.

We’re here in the heart of the foliage season, but it has been raining and foggy every day, so we’ve not had much chance to experience it. Somehow soggy leaves looked at through drizzle don’t inspire one to rapture.

On Wednesday night we popped in to Boston to see Johnny’s childhood friend Trevor along with his wife Amy and their new daughter, who is considerably adorable. We had a good dinner with them, and headed back to Peterborough the same night.

Our lodging at the Jack Daniels Motor Inn has been as clean, plain and welcoming as ever; I’m sad to report that Twelve Pine, my usual breakfast place, is having customer service problems, with two of our three morning visits plagued with “the fruit salad isn’t ready yet” episodes. I’m not ready to condemn them yet because their fruit salad is so tasty, but they need to focus.

More from the Quebec frontier as the weekend rolls out…

Charlottetown bus route #2 starts tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 12th). This route runs from downtown out North River Rd. ending up at the West Royalty Industrial Park and stopping at the Atlantic Superstore, Ellen’s Creek Plaza, Maypoint Plaza and the Queens Arms corner along the way.

Something I didn’t realize until I had to type in the entire schedule was that the different routes all intersect at the Confederation Centre of the Arts at the same time, allowing transfers from route to route. So starting tomorrow you could travel from, say, Queen Charlottetown School to Sears by taking route #2 and then route #1.

And starting next week, you could travel from Winsloe Petro Canada to Mel’s Petro Canada in East Royalty by taking route #1 then route #4. The possibilities are endless.

The Interactive Charlottetown Bus Map stands ready to help you get mobile.

Welcome back, cbc.ca/pei — nice to finally have news of home again. We missed you.

With most flights to the outer world routed through Montreal these days, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the Halifax International Airport. But with a hundred dollar difference between an indirect flight through Halifax and a direct one, I opted for the savings and a return to Halifax.

This airport has been under construction for most of the 13 years we’ve lived in the Maritimes — right now it’s the Air Canada jazz passageway that leads to the departure area for the Dash 8s, which appears to entail demolishing areas that were only constructed a few years ago. I’m happy to report, though, that there’s free wifi in the Air Canada lounge, which means I don’t have to use the aging IBM PCs in the business centre to get online any longer.

Mom phoned early this morning to warn that southern New Hampshire, where Johnny and I will be at the end of a long traveling day, is experiencing the worst flooding in 20 years; the worst-hit area seems to be Keene, which is only 30 minutes from Yankee. Several Yankee employees live in Keene, including Nat Stout, whose house I visited on primary day last year. I recall Nat’s house being on high ground; I hope all my other Keene colleagues are as fortunate.

Our hotel, the Jack Daniels Motor Inn, is right beside the river in Peterborough, NH; I talked to them this morning by phone, though, and so far the river is bahving itself.

I’m off to Montreal in a few minutes; rendezvous with Johnny mid-afternoon for a drive south. I’ll report back from New Hampshire once we arrive.

I’ve updated the interactive bus map to include the schedule for all four routes. Remember that routes 2, 3, and 4 are being rolled out over the next two weeks — they’re not all running yet.

I’m heading south to Yankee tomorrow, by way of Montreal. In preparation, I did the usual clean-up of my wallet (nothing like entering the USA with a clean wallet, I say). Here’s what I found:

I’ve done a little tweaking of RubyforPlazes so that it now works properly under Linux (it used to be Mac OS X-specific). I’ve also posted some notes about RubyforPlazes on Zaurus, the result of which is:

Next stop: Ruby/Qte.

In anticipation of the roll-out of routes 2, 3, and 4 of the new Charlottetown public transit system, I’ve been working on geocoding the new routes, and I’ve been updating the demonstration page and the source code to match.

The route and stops for the new routes are now in place; I’ll add schedule information as the new routes come online. I’ve done some reformatting to accommodate the multiple routes (still playing with the colour scheme), and I’ve modified the pop-up boxes for each stop so that they display all of the scheduled stops, not just the next one.

I’ve also updated the schedule based on some feedback from Trius Tours: Route #1 now stops at the Charlottetown Mall and Wal-mart on all runs.

The World, a cruise ship that bills itself “a ship that carries our luxury vacation residences across the ocean and seasons to the four corners of the earth” is in port here in Charlottetown today:

Expatriate Islander, bassist Ross Macdonald was a musician/resident on the ship, and has a collection of photos in his gallery if you want a look inside; you can also follow his adventures on his blog, starting last January.

The gates are drawn pretty tight down at the Charlottetown Marine Terminal where it’s tied up, so there’s no “wandering down just to have a look.” The parking lot is full of onlookers in their cars, though, even though it’s driving rain outside.

There’s an interview with Stefan Kellner, Felix Petersen, and Christoph Maire of Plazes in the eHub.