Noir City

[the_siobhan]

My sister signed up for a website where people trade their houses to live in while on vacation. It's a brilliant idea; save the cost of a hotel while abroad and not have your house sitting empty while your plants die and the mail piles up on your porch.

The house she stayed in turned out to be a cottage near the town of Haliburton. Axel, Jenn and I drove up for the weekend. It's early enough in the year that it's still cold and there are traces of snow around, but it was still pretty nice to be getting out of Toronto.







We visited the Haliburton Wolf Centre while we were there and admired their wolves. Holy crap but the boss male was frigging huge. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but I swear he was the size of a small pony. His name is "Fang" of all things.





Wolves are a lot like cats in that sunny days are designated for lying around and chillin'.





Obligatory picture of Axel in the woods.





Apparently this is a porcupine den. The reason I know it is a porcupine den is because somebody helpfully put a sign on it that says "Porcupine Den". If they are lying to me I will never know.






And then on Sunday when we got back to Toronto and finished dropping everybody off, we passed this guy climbing around on the street furniture.





I gotta say, to me the most hilarious part of this picture is the guys under him going, "OMG LOOK! AN AVAILABLE PLACE TO LOCK YOUR BIKE! ON QUEEN STREET! "

Comments

[greylock]

It's a brilliant idea; save the cost of a hotel while abroad and not have your house sitting empty while your plants die and the mail piles up on your porch.

Except it puts strangers in your house.

[the_siobhan]

Yeah, but you're in their house as well.

[greylock]

Which works if everyone is equally good and respectful of stuff.

I just don't have that much faith in humanity, and to be honest my brief every day interactions support me. But hey, humanity is a spectrum. Or virus.

(Also, I am now wondering if Haliburton is named after the Family Halliburton or not.
Apparently, maybe, but probably not given the double L).

[the_siobhan]

Well, you kind of have to be if everybody is equally vulnerable. I'm not going to trash your place if I know you could trash mine. And realistically your home is at risk if it's sitting empty for a long time, so you're trading one risk for another.

It's also a trade that's organized through a third party, so I imagine there must be some feedback mechanism. And people pay to be members, so there is an incentive not to be kicked off for misbehaving.

[greylock]

I'm not going to trash your place if I know you could trash mine

Ha.That's not how people work.
(People, they work badly. Really badly.)

And realistically your home is at risk if it's sitting empty for a long time, so you're trading one risk for another.

I think about this every time I leave my house.

imagine there must be some feedback mechanism.

I just assume every Uber/AirBnB transaction involves a rapist/murderer/sadist, and I have zero trust in the "sharing economy", but so far it (and this website) seem to be working out for everyone (well, mostly everyone).

Just because I could never do it (I get twitchy having strangers in my house) doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And, hey, you got a holiday.

We did have friends who did a house swap a few years back, with a family in the UK. They have never done it again, though,