Regina is a pretty city, but as far as I can tell there is zero geek action here. I spent my evening walking around their man-made lake, which is a great way to unwind after a long day of driving. Flickr Set. Then the next day I drove to Winnipeg, which is a shorter drive.

I had a blast with the Winnipeg Geek Girls (need Facebook link), they enjoyed my scrapbook of hackerspaces, and I enjoyed having some geeky people to hang with. We played pool (badly) and talked about archiving, programming, finding like minded people, and lots of other stuff. Cheers girls and keep up the good work, it'd be awesome if you could grow your little Geek Girls events into a cultural force in Winnipeg! Flickr Set

Unfortunately, while this was going on, my drivers side window was smashed and my car was searched. Fortunately, they seem not to have taken anything except for a few american quarters (not even all of them!) and my bag of bagels. This proves of course that everything I own is fully worthless :-). Seriously though they did pass up on all manner of stuff like my weapons, some computer stuff (mouse, keyboard, power strip), towels and blankets, 10 North Paw kits, nice Chinese scrolls, my iPhone->FM radio dongle, etc. The really valuable stuff like my laptop was in the hostel, not in the car, of course, so my downside was limited, but even so I'm super glad they decided not to trash my stuff.

The ironic thing is that I went to special effort to try to park in a safer area. They offered me free parking at the hostel, but warned me not to keep valuables in the car, and I agreed: the area was far too sketchy. So I drove 6 blocks away and found a nice(r) garage and parked there, but apparently I didn't go far enough! At least my car was covered though so that the rain didn't get in my window hole. The final indignity is the cost of window replacement: $420! That's about twice what I was hoping for, and about 100x the value of what was stolen from me...