Virginia notes

Before last weekend I had last visited Virginia Beach in 1972. That was my first visit to an ocean. I don't recall much of that earlier visit, but it seems to me that the hotels were smaller back then and were largely independently-owned. Now they all seem to be part of the big chains.

My relatives tell me that this winter has been colder than normal in southeast Virginia. Any amount of snow shuts down the city, which lacks the equipment necessary to handle it. I might have been more impressed by this if I hadn't been so busy enjoying what seemed to me to be warm weather.

Regent University has a beautiful campus, containing such unusual (for southern Ontario) plants as holly trees. (Palm trees are found elsewhere in the city.) In the centre of the campus is a man-made lake inhabited by various species of waterfowl unfamiliar in Canada.

The Regent campus seemed curiously bereft of people, as I saw no students walking among the various buildings. I asked about this and was told that Regent is made up of several schools, each of which is fairly self-contained and has its own building. Thus it is not necessary to walk between buildings to move from one class to another. I suppose that's not all that different from Redeemer, where a single building houses all the classes.

In downtown Hamilton one sees signs for "mountain access routes." In Virginia Beach one sees signs for "hurricane evacuation routes." The latter sound somewhat more ominous than the former.

Perhaps the lack of people walking among the buildings had something to do with the "cold" temperatures. If our weather were that balmy, it would bring our students out into the open wearing short trousers and short sleeves.