tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47748983989769542642024-03-13T06:49:36.630-06:00A Harty MealObservations and exaggerations, all of which are true.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-73402122256798662432013-01-15T19:39:00.002-07:002013-01-15T19:39:41.837-07:00TumbleweedHello, friends. I appreciate you stopping by, but don't hold your breath for any new content. I'm focusing on some other writing projects for the time being, so things here will remain quiet for the foreseeable future. Thanks for visiting, though, and please feel free to peruse older posts. As always, I can be found at hartshouldice@hotmail.com or on Twitter @Hartamophone.<br />
<br />
Peace,<br />
<br />
HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-672380521790835892012-03-05T05:38:00.003-07:002012-03-05T05:44:12.277-07:00Back in AprilWith precious few weeks remaining until I leave South Africa, and a healthy backlog of journal entries waiting to be turned into blogs, I have decided to put posting on hold until I return to Canada so that I can remain fully in the moment as time winds down on this particular adventure. There are stories to be told, though, so please check back in April.<br /><br />In the meantime, I highly recommend <a href="http://longreads.com/">Longreads</a> for, as they accurately put it "the best long-form stories on the web." <div><br /></div><div>See you in a bit.</div><div><br /></div><div>-Hart</div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-76475460481203006002012-02-20T01:59:00.001-07:002012-02-20T11:01:21.956-07:00Checking In and Setting Out<div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; line-height: normal; "><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Continued from <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2012/01/gates-of-johannesburg.html">here</a>.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">With visions of Johannesburg squarely in our rear-view we started making our way out of Gauteng province and through Mpumalanga, towards Kruger National Park. As multi-hour car trips go, this one has to rank among the most underwhelming in my life. The landscape was flat, vast and unchanging. The only notable breaks in the monotony were nuclear power plants at regular intervals and a packed, very Westernized shopping mall in perplexing proximity to absolutely nowhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">We had booked a guided sunset drive at Kruger to start at 5:30, and as the afternoon stretched out and the drive took longer than we had anticipated, we started watching the clock a little more closely. We pulled into the parking lot at Kruger's Crocodile Bridge entry gate at around 4:00, and with only one other family in the office getting their permits and paying their entry fees, we thought we had plenty of time. We were wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">The long rectangular office was sparse and silent, with three largely uninspired South Africa National Parks employees sitting behind the counter. Dated posters hung on the walls, while brochure racks sat empty and ceiling fans waged a futile war against the stifling afternoon heat. The simple act of paying our entry fee for the week and confirming our in-park accommodation and pre-booked game drives turned into an hour-long ordeal thanks to the woman who was “helping” us, whose attitude could generously be described as disinterested.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">As we were getting sorted out, a mini bus crammed with fifteen or so native South Africans pulled up, its passengers excitedly spilling out while a few spokespeople came into the office.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">“We have come to see the animals!” one of the group excitedly declared, while others stood next to the vehicle and sipped liberally from bottles pulled out of the cooler they had with them. More than one of them were unsteady on their feet, and the park's employees didn’t seem too keen on letting them in to the park.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">“You don’t have enough time to come in on a day pass,” the most senior among them explained. “The gates close in ninety minutes, you can’t get across the park in that time. And besides, you have been drinking.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">“But we paid a lot of money and came a long way. We just got lost.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">“You should have looked at a map.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">Some of the passengers were clearly drunk and not bothered, while others were disappointed that their adventure to Kruger seemed to be ending at the entry gate, especially after they had shelled out for the mini bus ride and come some distance. South Africa is full of born and bred locals who have never seen its most iconic sights. It is rare for someone selling animal sculptures in one of the country’s towns to have seen the flesh-and-bone versions of the cheap, mass-produced likenesses they are hawking. I thought it a shame to see this group of residents get turned away.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">“OK, we will come back tomorrow,” said one especially deflated young man. That prospect seemed dim.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span lang="EN-ZA">By the time we finally had our accommodation and permits sorted out and drove to the dusty and seemingly post-apocalyptic free-for-all camping area, we had less than ten minutes until our guided game drive was set to start. I threw the tent up in record, frantic time (with no assigned campsites, we needed to assert our space) and we each took a quick bath in bug dope after donning our long sleeves - malaria being a bitch best avoided.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; ">We sprinted the hundred meters from the campsite to the meeting point for the game drive, on the wide swath of road in between Crocodile Bridge rest camp's<span style=" ;font-size:100%;"> modest gift shop/restaurant and even more modest two-pump gas station. We arrived frazzled and sweaty. "Slow down, you're in Africa," a fellow guest told us. "You're throwing off the balance." Realizing that we were in no danger of missing the boat, so to speak, we both took a few sheepish and calming deep breaths as we climbed into the back of the game vehicle: an oversized, deep-green pickup with a canopy over several rows of benches in the bed, an aisle running down the middle, and no glass behind the cab. We plunked ourselves down on the right hand side, halfway back.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; ">While they are an added expense, guided drives are a near-necessity in Kruger. Park roads are closed to private vehicles before sunup and after sundown (at nighttime, overnight guests are confined to Kruger's rest camps, which are the only parts of the park that are fenced in), so the guided drives are the only way to get around the park at those times when the animals are most active.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; ">Our fellow passengers consisted of three small groups of people. One was led by a wordy forty-something mother who would wear two different hats over the course of the drive, each of which perfectly matched her club-ready teal tank top - a garment which left little doubt as to the volume of her two most prized assets. She was adamant that she ride in the cab of the truck next to our driver and guide (whom she insisted move his rifle so that she could sit down), rather than in the back with the sinners and gluttons. She made it known almost immediately that she had become bored with the large number of lions she was seeing in the park, and she came equipped with a novel and iPod, I suppose in case we suddenly changed course and decided to take a family road trip to Des Moines rather than spend the evening wildlife watching in Kruger. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; ">The driver and guide she cozied up next to was named City (yes, City): a tall, young, black man, whose crisply pressed, short-sleeved khaki uniform billowed off of his slight frame. City was soft spoken and to the point, but it was clear to see that he loved his job, and he would prove to be as passionate about the park's animals as anyone we would meet over the coming days.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span style=" ;font-size:100%;">On the first row of benches in the truck's bed sat the busty mother's similarly-endowed daughter, and the daughter's camera happy boyfriend. A few rows behind them were Sarah and I, while a couple similar in age to us was immediately across the aisle on the left. In the back was a family of five. Near as we could tell, we were the only foreigners on the drive.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; ">City rose in the cab and turned to address the passengers, giving the stock "hands and feet inside, no littering" speech that is common to roller coasters, school buses and, evidently, sunset safaris. The excitement welled in Sarah's eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks as City <span style=" ;font-size:100%;">listed the animals we could expect to see, speaking </span><span style=" ;font-size:100%;">matter-of-factly and without a pandering enthusiasm. He then fired up the engine and took us slowly through Crocodile Bridge's towering gate and out onto the silent roads of the park, while the fading sun feebly breathed the day's last warmth onto the stunted landscape. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;font-style: normal; "><span style="font-family:Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:85%;color:#2a2a2a;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-9443050735263294242012-01-18T06:51:00.010-07:002012-01-19T11:05:23.320-07:00CSI JamestownWhen our landlord saw the smashed car window and noticed that our front door was hanging wide open in the still summer morning, he thought we'd been killed. He knew, of course, that we'd been robbed, but when you live in a country as prone to violence as modern South Africa is, you quickly accept the petty theft and begin to rationally fear for the worst. He scurried down the backyard hill from his house to our cottage, calling out to us with panic in his voice.<br /><br />"Sarah and Hart?! Sarah and Hart?!"<br /><br />It wasn't our typical seven AM wake-up call on a Sunday morning, so we knew something was up. I said a groggy hello as I jumped up and made my way to the door.<br /><br />"Your car's been broken into," he said, "and your door was open. I think they came into your house, too. They probably took your computer."<br /><br />By this point I had pushed past him to look at the car, but Sarah was still inside.<br /><br />"Yup," she said. "Harty, the computer's gone."<br /><br />I walked around the back of the cottage, knowing what I would see. Or rather, what I wouldn't see. My bike had been stolen.<br /><br />Son. Of. A. Bitch. (That is the family-friendly version of what I actually said).<br /><br />It would seem that the thieves came up from the river out back, hopped the locked, chest-high gate and approached the rental car that sat beside our cottage. Sarah's parents are visiting for a couple of weeks - though they aren't staying with us, due to a lack of space - and the car is theirs. The thieves smashed the driver's window and then reached in and rolled down the other ones, so as to have access to the goodies inside without tripping the alarm by opening a door. And what goodies were inside, you ask? An iPod, two pairs of binoculars and some smaller odds and ends. We have been vigilant about taking everything from cars inside at night, but when we'd returned home late Saturday night, exhausted after a day of wildlife viewing in and around Table Mountain National Park, we omitted to bring some things in.<br /><br />After helping themselves to what was in the car, they tried our front door and found it unlocked - again, we'd been tired and complacent after a long day. I have previously posted about the size of <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-treehouses-and-cottages.html">our one-room cottage</a> (comparable in area to your basic kitchen/living room combo in a small apartment), so for someone to have come in while we slept is as brazen for them as it is unsettling for us. Once inside they made a quick sweep and did quite well for themselves: laptop, camera, another pair of binoculars, my shorts (including, as a special bonus: cash, credit cards, my driver's license and passport) and our jar of change which had swelled handsomely in the past few months. <br /><br />Apparently the white noise from our fan drowns out more than just our neighbour's rooster, and neither one of us heard a thing.<br /><br />After cleaning out the apartment, they grabbed the bike and a pair of my trail runners that were sitting outside (kindly leaving me with my dirty socks that were inside them), hopped the fence out back and made their way across the river and through the lemon grove on the other side.<br /><br />Obviously, there is some self-blame here, as we'd been told to always keep our valuables out of sight (something that falls squarely in the "common sense" category) and my landlord had explicitly told me to keep the bike inside. "It <span style="font-style: italic;">will </span>get stolen" he had told me. But bringing the bike into our modest digs made things just a little too crowded, so every so often I deliberately forgot to bring it in. Truth be told, we had just gotten a little too comfortable. Our neighbourhood is friendly and people of all stripes - shack dwellers and those in gated single family homes alike - have welcomed us with open arms. A quick walk down the street always involves stopping to chat with people we may or may not have met previously. Amid all of this warmth, it was easy to rationalise easing up on the exhausting level of vigilance which we had been warned to exercise at all times.<br /><br />The police came relatively promptly, and took quite a while following the bike tracks on the other side of the river until losing them at a paved road. My shorts and passport were found down by the river, as was my bike helmet (gee, thanks) and the empty change jar. The police then spent over an hour taking detailed statements, before a forensics officer came and lifted prints from the car window. I am aware that most of this was an effort in pacification, but to a modest extent, it worked.<br /><br />As is always the case when things like this happen, the biggest losses are the things that can't be replaced. Among other things, a good chunk of our once-in-a-lifetime pictures from our recent stint in Kruger National Park are gone. Beyond that, we lost all of the pictures from our post-Kruger country-wide road trip, and most of our other pictures from the past couple of years (the recent pictures were on a memory card in the camera, while older ones were on the laptop's hard drive). Sarah gets a real joy from the pictures she takes along the way, and they help to frame her memories, so they are a major loss for her.<div><br /></div><div><div>As for my community of Jamestown, I still stand behind it as a great place to live. Our neighbours have been all too willing to help us out, with one of them anonymously naming names of likely suspects, while another helped the police officers follow the bike tracks through the lemon grove on Sunday morning. One of my friends in low places has told me that he knows exactly who to talk to in the neighbourhood about stolen electronics, and offered to check into it even before I asked him to. I choose to define my neighbourhood not by the tiny minority of people whose desperation manifests itself through bold and frightening criminal acts, but rather by those who stop and offer us rides on sweaty walks home from the grocery store.<br /><br /></div> That being said, my anger runs deep. More than once over the past four days I have circled my neighbourhood in a car, looking for someone riding my bike, with visions dancing in my head of shoving it so far up his ass that he has handle bars coming out of his ears. But below the violent anger - well below, but rising ever so slightly each day like a persistent, compassionate tide - my heart goes out to the people who did this. These are people who are likely addicted to methamphetamine, or <span style="font-style: italic;">tik</span>, as it is known in the townships here. It is a drug with a grip so tight on a segment of marginalised South Africans that when people run out of things to sell to support their habit, they will part with beloved pets for a pittance just to get their next high. Tik has made its way into Jamestown, and property crime has followed.<br /><div><br /></div><div>And even if they are not addicted, we are talking about people who come from a set of circumstances so drastically different from my own that it would be absurd for me to pass judgment on them. Naturally, if they had the same access to education, social services, family support and other opportunities that I have been presented with throughout my life, they would not be taking the immense risk of waltzing into someone's house in the middle of the night in the hopes of getting a few dollars richer. And notwithstanding the heartbreaking sentimental losses and the fact that I currently lack the resources for material replacement, it's tough for me to rage about the loss of material goods when every day I am surrounded by people living in shacks. Surrounded by people without running water, reliable health care or the means to turn their lives around. Surrounded by people, all too often, without hope. And while impoverished South Africans are not a meek and helpless people to be pitied, circumstances such as these help to explain - though not excuse - what happened to us.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>At the end of the day, when I look at the dire circumstances of literally millions of the people around me it is very difficult to feel sorry for myself. I hate what happened to us and wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I hate the Petri dish of injustice that breeds these sorts of crimes even more. And while solutions are complicated and hard to come by, my resolve to work towards them - personally and professionally, in Canada and abroad - grows unabated. </div><div><br /></div><div>More road-trip posts coming soon.</div></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-47597404464045881632012-01-11T05:30:00.010-07:002012-01-13T02:51:12.070-07:00The Gates of JohannesburgIf travel is supposed to be about opening doors, then this was not a good start. Nor was it an apt metaphor for breaking down barriers or crossing some sort of symbolic threshold. No, by any analogy this did not bode well. Less than 24 hours into what was supposed to be an epic, three-week pan-South African odyssey, and there I was in Johannesburg with a metal security gate just having t-boned my mint condition rental car. I stepped out to assess the damage, while the apologetic wince of the woman who had her hand on the gate's open/close button did little to smooth things over. I was not feeling pumped.<div><br /></div><div>The trip had started smoothly enough the day before, with Sarah and I driving from Stellenbosch to Capetown and then flying from Capetown to Joburg. There, we picked up our rental car: a shiny, scratch-free four-door silver hatch-back with just enough bells and whistles to make me feel extravagant. The plan from Joburg was to drive to Kruger National Park in the country's extreme northeast for a week of wildlife viewing, and then take a two-week drive all the way back to Stellenbosch - in South Africa's bottom southwest corner - via the coast, covering a significant chunk of the country's bi-oceanic waterfront in the process. Previous lessons having been learned, the car was rented from a trusted international agency and at no point did I have to <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-one-waiting-on-rasta.html">meet a suspected dope runner in a parking lot</a> to trade vehicles. Movin' on up.</div><div><br /></div><div>Before making the 6-hour drive to Kruger, we spent that first night of the trip in Joburg, enjoying dinner on a quaint second-floor patio and drinks at a buzzing two-room bar with fellow expats who, like me, are a part of the Canadian Bar Association's <a href="http://www.cba.org/cba/idp/yiip/">Young Lawyers International Program</a>. My social life in and around Stellenbosch had been uncharacteristically quiet to that point, so it was a real treat to see some familiar faces and compare notes at the halfway point of our South African experience. Funny, though, that at a table full of human rights lawyers working abroad, the conversation more than once turned to concern about the human rights ramifications of new legislation being passed back home. But while the topics weren't always pleasant, it was nice to be able to talk Canadiana with actual Canadians, rather than trying to piece together the current national consciousness by reading comments below articles on the CBC website (an exercise which can lead to no other conclusion than that we are a confused nation whose public school system eschews grammatical instruction in favour of name-calling and the indoctrination of politically extreme schools of thought).<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I also appreciated getting a take on the city we were in from a semi-local group of people. While this is always something I seek out while traveling, it was especially appreciated here, because at first glance I had a hard time getting past the architecture of violence which pervades Johannesburg. By any measure, crime is an atrocious problem in South Africa: over 30 murders per 100,000 people annually, and sexual violence (most rapes per capita in the world, according to the United Nations), assault and property crime occurring in equally jarring numbers. Being the country's major commercial, cultural and industrial center, Johannesburg is also a lightening rod for criminal activity, and the towering security walls, spike-topped wrought-iron gates, and super-charged electric fences that fortify even the tiniest swaths of residential or commercial real estate in the city - many of them topped with gleaming coils of razor wire - serve as constant reminders of that. (I should note that tall gates and razor wire are common in Capetown and Stellenbosch as well, but the walls seemed that much thicker, taller and sharper on even the prettiest of Joburg's streets). As such, hearing my colleagues wax enthusiastic about the city and its people served to remind me that the fortresses the city's residents build for themselves do not tell anything close to a complete story of life in Johannesburg.<br /><br />Owing to those security concerns, once our post-dinner drinks had wrapped up and I was ready to make my way solo back to our room (Sarah had called it a slightly earlier night than I did), I took the locals' advice and flagged a cab to get me the four blocks back to the guesthouse where we were staying. A walk home in the summer breeze is usually a highlight of warm-weather nights out for me, but apparently for an out-of-towner in Joburg it is a dangerous luxury best not undertaken.<br /><br />When I returned sober after only a handful of evenly spaced Coronas, Sarah was still awake. I was glad for that, as our room was quite lovely and I wanted to enjoy it before falling asleep. Character furniture was scattered throughout, including a sizable, ornately carved armoire with mirrors on its doors. A bricked-over fireplace with plush chairs facing it and a nearby antique writing desk oozed a classical energy. I felt like I should have been dipping my quill in an ink well and signing the Declaration of Independence as I sat at the solid wood desk next to the armoire to make my day's journal entries, and the en suite bathroom with sunken tub only added to the room's aura. In the daylight hours, birds chirped in the garden outside the room while the resident cat chilled on the roof.<br /><br />Up early the next morning for the included full breakfast (a nice surprise, and something that didn't seem to make sense given the reasonable rate we were paying) and then out to the car with Kruger on our minds.<br /><br />The parking area of the guesthouse was tiny: a barely functional patch of brick that gave just enough room to complete a nine-point turn before exiting through the solid-metal security gate. I opted to back out at an angle rather than turn the car around. Apparently, the employee with her finger on the sliding gate's controls thought I should have moved a little bit quicker, because I was only halfway out the gate - moving slowly so as to avoid a tree on the sidewalk - when it started closing in on the car with the sort of slow-motion inevitability usually reserved for B-grade horror movies.<br /><br />The gate hit the car with a hybridized crunching noise that can only be described as the sound of a trip to Kruger being postponed.<br /><br />Sarah and I both swore in a way that can only be described as yelling.<br /><br />I took a deep breath and stepped out of the car to survey the damage, while the woman who had been operating the gate's controls stood back and let the manager deal with me. Christine, the manager, was a large, soulful woman with whom I had developed a rather jovial rapport during our 19-hour stay.<br /><br />"What happened?" she asked, not yet seeing it necessary to rise from her chaise lounge next to the pool which was down a small, grassy hill from the parking area.<br /><br />"Well, your gate hit my car, and I don't think I should have to pay for it," I responded, in a friendly but to-the-point tone. I hoped that she would agree with me and that we could all remain on friendly terms with good vibes prevailing.<br /><br />Christine rose to her feet and ambled over to take a look, her relaxed attitude helping to keep the situation mellow.<br /><br />Mercifully and owing the design of the gate, the only nick on the car was a circular scrape about the size of a South African five rand coin (or Canadian toonie) just above the rear passenger wheel well. A crowd had gathered and one bystander taught me the useful trick of buffing out scratches using a corner of t-shirt soaked in the car's hydraulic fluid. Still though, the scratch remained. If it was my car I probably wouldn't have cared too much, but I wasn't so sure that the good folks at the rental company would share my laissez-faire attitude, so Christine and I negotiated a modest cash settlement on the spot. With that, Sarah and I were on our way, cash in hand, with the scratch quickly becoming not only an endearing birthmark on the visual surface of our trip, but also a helpful way to tell our car apart from the many others of similar size and colour which populate South Africa's roads.<br /><br />Kruger National Park, here we come.<br /></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-85850175576604986882011-11-07T12:27:00.016-07:002011-11-08T03:06:37.917-07:00A Short Survey of Contemporary African Literature (likely non-exhaustive)<span style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nelson Mandela's autobiography is quite long. I'm sure there are more refined critiques to be made of <i><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Long_Walk_to_Freedom.jpg">Long Walk to Freedom</a>, </i>but that's all I've been able to glean in three months of trying to read it, first in the form of a copy borrowed from the Yellowknife Public Library, then as a second-hand edition I picked up in the small town of Franschhoek once in South Africa. I had planned for Mandela's book to start a shift towards a theme in my reading that would be relevant to this period in my life. While the book has yet to catch on with me, the theme - cleverly, "Africa" - abides, and I have had more success with other recent picks.</span> </span><div><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">After my first failed liftoff with <i>A Long Walk to Freedom, </i>I moved on to Carl Hoffman's <i><a href="http://thelunaticexpress.com/">The Lunatic Express</a>. </i>The book recounts a round-the-world journey on which the author strictly obeys a self-imposed rule to take the cheapest, most dangerous and out-of-the-way means of conveyance he can find. This is travel in the strictly utilitarian sense, undertaken among people with little or no concept of the privileged notion of tourism. I picked this one up in YOW's departure gate bookshop, and lest I dared to think of my 36-hour trans-Atlantic journey as epic, the author's tales of crammed ferries, frozen trucks and rusted tin planes put me in my place. While not at all limited to African travel, this is a favourite among my recent reads.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I once again flirted with <i>A Long Walk to Freedom </i>after finishing <i>The Lunatic Express</i>, but after the first few pages I gravitated instead towards a more everyman account of apartheid-era South Africa (which is not to say that Nelson Mandela enjoyed a privileged brand of legislated racism and inhumane imprisonment). Erich Rautenbauch's <i><a href="http://www.randomstruik.co.za/title-page.php?titleID=4331&imprintID=4">The Unexploded Boer</a> </i>unfolds on the streets of Cape Town in the 60s and 70s, before shifting to a prison in Johannesburg when the author gets arrested for selling weed. The account of everyday life during the brutal heyday of apartheid was as unsettling as it was matter-of-fact. And, naturally, the reader learns that prison in Joburg in the 70s was not exactly sunshine and lollipops, though apparently it did include more alcohol and assorted other intoxicants than one might have predicted. The book was at turns a little too self-aggrandizing for my tastes, and I find it hard to believe that Rautenbauch was as cavalier a young man in the face of a violently oppressive regime as he claims to have been (and even if he was, the fact that his primary objective was to fight for his right to party detracts from the moral high ground he claims). That said, he did exude a sort of social colour-blindness that could be commendable. If nothing else, the book offers a glimpse of life in South Africa during Mandela's imprisonment that Mandela himself would be unable to provide, seeing as how Nelson Mandela was in jail for the entire time that Nelson Mandela was in jail.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;">Half-cooked though they were, the South Africa-specific racial critiques in <i>The Unexploded Boer</i> left me wanting to follow that literary path, but in a more contemporary context. And so while perusing the highly recommended (by me) </span><a href="http://clarkesbooks.co.za/"><span style="font-size:130%;">Clarke's Bookshop</span></a><span style="font-size:130%;"> in Cape Town a week ago I was quick on the draw to purchase <i><a href="http://penguin.bookslive.co.za/blog/2008/02/18/steven-otter-on-life-as-an-umlungu-in-khayelitsha/">Khayletisha: Umlungu in a Township</a> </i>by Steven Otter<i>. </i>Khayletisha (<i>KYE-a-LEATCH-a</i>) is perhaps South Africa's most notorious black township, its colourful assortment of shacks and houses dominating the horizon outside of Cape Town as up to a million people call it home (exact numbers are impossible to pin down given that much of the township is settled informally). The book tells the story of the the white journalist author's daily life in the township after moving there for eleven months (though not, he claims, for the purpose of writing a book). While the chapters are more stand-alone anecdotes than a connected narrative, the story was especially relevant to me, having recently moved into a community that is almost entirely non-white. I expected to read about muggings, booze, and HIV - none which are sugar-coated or glanced over - but the way Otter was embraced by the Xhosa people of "Khaya" was unexpected and beautiful, even as it played out against a backdrop of crippling poverty.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I decided to sail my ship in a more epic and pan-African direction after reading <i>Khayletisha, </i>and so have just started Paul Theroux's ambitious <i><a href="http://www.paultheroux.com/nonfiction/dark.star.safari.htm">Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town</a>. </i>If the book is half as good as the excerpted reviews on the back cover claim, I can anticipate weeping like a schoolgirl and being baptized anew in Theroux's bold reinvention of the written word before the end of chapter 4. Theroux is the reigning Grand Poobah of travel writing, and smug though he can be, this one is meticulously researched and boldly lived. I have yet to follow him out of Egypt, but am excited for the journey that awaits.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I know that eventually I'll need to man up and read <i>Long Walk to Freedom. </i>Indeed, knowing that it will likely never again be as relevant to me as it will for the next five months should guilt me into giving it a few more good faith attempts until it takes. And I anticipate being richer for further exploration of a story as courageous and important as Mandela's. Meantime, I can enthusiastically recommend it as a heavy and slightly pretentious prop on the nightstand. Two thumbs up.</span></div></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-48815296898533640892011-10-28T04:09:00.006-06:002011-10-28T07:32:30.528-06:00CA Car Rental, Part Three: An Unlikely Hero<i><span style="font-size:130%;">The third in a three-part series. Part one is </span><a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-one-waiting-on-rasta.html"><span style="font-size:130%;">here </span></a><span style="font-size:130%;">and part two is </span><a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-two-grinding-my.html"><span style="font-size:130%;">here</span></a><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span></i><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Even the most agreeable of Canadians has his breaking point, and the lack of tail lights and subsequently discovered absence of seat belts in the back of the car has pushed me past mine. I call David on Friday morning.<br /><br />"David, it's Hart, how's it goin'?"<br /><br />"Good Hart, how are you?"<br /><br />"I'm not happy, man. The car has no tail lights."<br /><br />Silence.<br /><br />"What do you mean? The tail lights are out?"<br /><br />"Yeah, both of them."<br /><br />"Alright, give me a half hour, let me call you back."<br /><br />"No. Let's just be done with this. How about you come get the car, give me my deposit back and a refund for this final week and we can just go our separate ways." I have zero interest in rolling the dice on a fifth vehicle in three weeks from CA Car Rental's fleet of joy.<br /><br />"Alright, let me talk to my boss."<br /><br />A couple of hours later, he texts me (texts are reproduced verbatim):<br /><br />"Hi boss says you can return car and monies will be refunded as per lease agreement."<br /><br />I have no intention of driving the car to Cape Town, which is what he is suggesting here. Furthermore, I am not interested in conducting things "as per lease agreement," as it is skewed heavily in their favour in circumstances like these, and is so porous, legally speaking, that I could use it to strain my mac and cheese. I decide to high-road it with my response, being polite while playing a little bit dumb.<br /><br />"Good to hear, thanks David. I know this is not your fault. Let me know when you can meet me with 3950 in cash for my deposit and final week's rental fee."<br /><br />"The deposit only gets returned 7 days after the car gets returned. Let me know when you can return the car."<br /><br />"No, I will need the deposit as soon as I return the car. I have had this one for four days and barely driven it. I know what the lease agreement says, but given the condition of the cars you have given me, I will not hand the car over until I have my full deposit back and refund for the final week." David has a snowball's chance in hell of getting the car from me before I have all of my money back in my hand. Things are on the verge of getting testy, but at this point I feel entitled to draw a line in the sand, so to speak.<br /><br />"I will talk to my boss. You will have to return car and pay us for delivery as we only do free deliveries on monthly rentals."<br /><br />"This was a monthly rental until you gave me four shitty, unsafe cars."<br /><br />In response to this, David claims that all of the cars I have given back to him were immediately rented out to other customers without complaint. Given the front control arm situation of the last one, among other things, I find this hard to believe. I tell him as much.<br /><br />A few more texts go back and forth. My initial request was for R3,950 for them to come get the car. After some more negotiating, I suggest R3,500, with me therefore paying for both delivery and collection of the car. I am willing to budge somewhat in order to get my money back in my pocket and CA Car Rental out of my life.<br /><br />"He said you can bring car tomo and get R3500 refund in cash."<br /><br />I tell David that I won't bring the car to Cape Town, as we have been dealing in Stellenbosch all along, and my offer of R3,500 factors in their standard delivery costs. We go back and forth a few more times during the rest of the afternoon - with David insisting that they are being altruistic and never acknowledging that they have been giving me horrible cars - and arrangements get finalized. I will meet the driver in the usual gas station/fast food parking lot in Stellenbosch at eleven o'clock the next morning. I make a point of confirming that the driver will have R3,500 in cash for me. David says that yes, he will.<br /><br />Sarah and I awake early on Saturday to take a scenic drive along the coast and try to drain as much gas as we can before handing back the car (we even consider trying our hand at siphoning at one point). We make a scheduled stop so that I can buy a bike - something that I would be doing whether or not we were keeping the car. At twenty after eleven, I pull into the parking lot. Amid the frenetic weekend morning buzz of people and cars, I spot Rasta over by the gas pumps. We greet each other like old friends.<br /><br />"Hey Rasta, howzit?" I ask, having adopted the local slang.<br /><br />"Good. Do you have a South African account?"<br /><br />"Um, no."<br /><br />"Oh, well Boss [David] gave me his bank card, but there's a limit of two thousand. We can't give you thirty five hundred."<br /><br />"Well, that's a problem. I'm going to need thirty five hundred to give you the car back. That was what David and I agreed on." And we had. Explicitly and unambiguously.<br /><br />"OK. I'll call him."<br /><br />Rasta gets David on the phone, and quickly passes the phone over to me.<br /><br />"Hello, David?"<br /><br />"Yes Hart, do you have a South African account number you can give us?"<br /><br />"No I don't."<br /><br />"Do you have a friend's account number you can give us?"<br /><br />"No, I don't David. I'm not from here and haven't been here long."<br /><br />"Well, Rasta can only give you two thousand now."<br /><br />"Well, that's a problem. I need thirty five hundred, like we agreed on."<br /><br />"Hart, you will LISTEN TO ME," David is clearly within an inch of his boiling point. "I am sick of this and I AM NOT WORKING FOR YOU. You will give him the car, take the two thousand and we will get the rest to you."<br /><br />"David, we made a deal here. Thirty five hundred or I don't give you the car."<br /><br />Boiling point reached.<br /><br />"HART I AM SICK OF YOU JERKING ME AROUND!" He is now yelling every word. "YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME AND MY BOSS'S TIME! WE DO NOT OPERATE LIKE THIS! YOU WILL GIVE THE CAR TO RASTA AND COME TO TABLE VIEW [Cape Town] TO GET THE REST OF THE MONEY!"<br /><br />"Listen man, we made a deal. We said thirty fi-" David cuts me off.<br /><br />"DID YOU READ THE CONTRACT? IT SAYS SEVEN DAYS TO RETURN THE MONEY AND YOU GIVE ME A BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER! DID YOU READ THE CONTRACT?"<br /><br />"David, we made a deal yesterday. You agreed to thirty five hund-"<br /><br />"DID YOU READ THE CONTRACT?! YES OR NO?!"<br /><br />"Yeah, I read the contract. But I also know that we made a deal yesterday for thirty five hundred today. You agreed to that, and that is why I came here. I need thirty five hundred bucks before you get the car."<br /><br />"HART I WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH YOU! YOU CANNOT ACT LIKE THIS! WE DO NOT OPERATE LIKE THIS AND I DO NOT WORK FOR YOU! WHY DID YOU GIVE ME CASH WHEN IT SAYS NOT TO IN THE CONTRACT?!"<br /><br />"Well you were OK with taking the cash from me, weren't you? I am not giving you this car without thirty five hundred in my hand. I don't know what else to tell you. You agr-"<br /><br />"THAT'S NOT WHAT IT SAYS IN THE CONTRACT! WHY DID YOU SIGN THE CONTRACT IF YOU WERE NOT GOING TO OBEY IT?!"<br /><br />We go around in circles like this, with David acting like a child whose toy has been taken away while I firmly maintain my broken record stance. He refuses to acknowledge that he is trying to back out of yesterday's deal, and at one point threatens to call the police and report the car stolen. My scoffing response of "Fine, but the f***ing car isn't stolen, is it?" put that to bed immediately. People coming out of the convenience store start to stare as I become increasingly emphatic, and I feel just a little bit shady.<br /><br />Around and around we go. Rasta hangs out, unfazed, while Sarah watches intently from a few cars over.<br /><br />I feel emboldened, but am being careful not to get dragged down to David's level of discourse despite raising my voice every so often, and employing increasingly colourful language. Had they not given me four dysfunctional cars and been conveniently unreachable at various times, I might be a little more open to negotiating and trusting of them. As it stands, though, they haven't given me any reason to believe that I will get a dime from them once the car is out of my sight. I am sticking to my guns.<br /><br />David chastises me for dealing in cash with them, even though he was only too happy to take it on the front end. He is insistent that I take the two thousand and give Rasta the car, after which point I can either give him a South African bank account number (he does not seem to understand that I did not have one when we started this charming little back-and-forth, and have not signed up for one in the interim), or drive with Rasta to Cape Town to collect the balance owed, thus leaving me without wheels to get back from Cape Town to Stellenbosch. Not interested.<br /><br />"I WILL NOT SEND ANOTHER DRIVER OUT THERE JUST FOR FIFTEEN HUNDRED, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?! I DO NOT WORK FOR YOU, AND I WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH YOU! I'M SICK OF THIS!"<br /><br />I'm not keen to negotiate either, as it is clear that it will get me nowhere. My time in front of judges in both the formal and makeshift courtrooms of the Northwest Territories during the preceding year sharpened my skills of argument and persuasion, but clearly I am dealing with an irrational character with little regard for civility. He insists that I put Rasta back on the phone ("YOU ARE WASTING OUR AIR TIME!"), and when I don't, he hangs up, only to call back ten seconds later in an attempt to circumvent me.<br /><br />Rasta answers, talks to him briefly, and hangs up.<br /><br />"So, what's the problem?" he asks, as if he is a curious passerby only just now arriving.<br /><br />I tell him what the issue is. I say that I am sorry he is caught in the middle of a dispute that has turned somewhat nasty, as I know that he just works here, so to speak. Despite the fact that I'm not the one signing his paychecks, there is an air of impartiality in his understated demeanor that I find reassuring. He pauses and gives me a conspiratorial nod as the sun reaches its midday apex.<br /><br />"Let me see if I can find some money. I'll call you when I have it."<br /><br />Seeing no other glimmers of hope, and steadfastly refusing to hand over the car, I agree. We part ways and Sarah and I head out of town for a bit of a drive. We head due north, driving parallel to the mountains as we exchange the stunted, early season wine fields of Stellenbosch for golden brown pastures speckled with grazing cattle. I don't say much, reflecting on the scene that just unfolded and trying to figure who has the upper hand. I have their car and some stubbornness, they have my money and irrationality. The contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on, so that's a wash, and David doesn't seem to think that the fact that they have given me such brutal and broken cars is relevant. We seem to be deadlocked, leverage-wise. I wonder whether Rasta is actually trying to rustle up some cash or if he has just high-tailed it back to Cape Town.<br /><br />After driving for a half hour without much change in scenery, we turn around, opting to visit the friends who staff the hostel where we stayed when we first arrived in town. Draining another hour's worth of fuel from the car gives me a small sense of control.<br /><br />We have been at the hostel for half a beer when Rasta calls me.<br /><br />"Hello?"<br /><br />"I am there."<br /><br />"At the gas station? And you have the money?"<br /><br />"Come meet me."<br /><br />Back we go. I have no idea whether I am going to be greeted by a handful of money or a fist full of rage - though I am doubtful that Rasta himself would resort to violence - so I suggest that Sarah wait in the car. I approach Rasta's ride for the day: a dented, aging blue Camry with a </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie#Rastafari_Messiah"><span style="font-size:130%;">Haile Selaissie</span></a><span style="font-size:130%;"> t-shirt neatly splayed in the back window. He pops out of the passenger seat and immediately hands me a gangster-sized wad of mixed bills: 200s, 100s, 50s and 20s. My hands shake slightly as he watches me count it. Sure enough, 3,500 on the nose. I don't dare ask where or how he rustled it up so quickly, apparently without a working bank card. We exchange smiles and hand shakes and he mumbles something that I don't quite hear as we begin to part ways.<br /><br />"Sorry, what was that?"<br /><br />"I said don't forget us when you go back home."<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Rasta, my friend, I don't think that's possible.</span>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-55226152234133305862011-10-26T03:49:00.007-06:002011-10-28T12:28:20.809-06:00CA Car Rental, Part Two: Grinding my Gears<i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;">The second in a three-part series. For part one, click </span><a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-one-waiting-on-rasta.html"><span style="font-size:130%;">here</span></a><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span></span></i><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">The son-of-a-bitching car has no gas pedal.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I point this out to Rasta, to which he enthusiastically replies "Oh." I don't bother to ask whether or not he noticed the pedal was missing when he delivered the car to us not three minutes ago (the metal rod that the pedal attaches to is in place, so the car is marginally functional). When I ask what he's going to do about it he responds "I don't know. You should call David". So I call David, who asks to speak to Rasta, who then informs me that he is going to get the car fixed at a nearby garage and call me when it's ready. I go into the fast food restaurant to lunch on a milk shake and french fries, vegetarian options being limited. Sarah and I write postcards while awaiting his call, and I am still supposed to be at work.<br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Ninety minutes later we pick the car up from Rasta and are on our way. It turns out to be a smooth-riding vehicle, and we are so relieved to have a nicely running car that we overlook the fact that it lacks a rear-view mirror and its registration sticker is not only expired but clearly transplanted from a different vehicle. Also there is a hole where the stereo once was, patched up with a piece of cardboard that has been colored black with a marker. Like the two other cars we have been given, the fuel gauge is resting on the red when we take possession. We decide to drive it at least for the weekend, after which we will decided whether to keep it for the duration of the month, or sever our ties with CA Car Rental and ask for a refund of the balance of our rental, due to the shoddy nature of what they have been giving us. </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We are still in possession of more vehicle than our rental fee + deposit is worth, so I feel confident that I will come out ahead in the not-entirely-implausible event that CA Car Hire turns out to be a fly-by-night operation and closes up shop while I have a car of theirs. And we do have all of the freedom we were hoping a car would bring us, while paying far less than we would with any other nearby operation.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We spend the weekend exploring beaches, surf towns, and roads precariously etched into mountainsides that drop sharply into the waters of False Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The car treats us well and I move up from novice to intermediate when it comes to driving a standard. After a few days we both feel that it is safe to exhale.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Then Wednesday comes, and a tire blows.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">It would seem that the cue-ball shiny go kart tires on the Golf don't hold up so well when nudged against a curb during a parallel park. After some deliberation we decide to take care of it ourselves and avoid testing CA Car Rental's "24 hour roadside assistance guarantee" or giving them a reason to hang on to any deposit money. A further complication arises when we discover that the spare in the trunk does not fit on the car. While it proves to be an afternoon's headache, the tire is eventually fixed at a garage for R25 (about three bucks and change, Canadian). But not, I should add, before it becomes a certified gong show involving a group of homeless men, a Baptist pastor, a bag of groceries and some stolen tools.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">A couple days later we head into our third weekend of CA Car Hire patronage, feeling exasperated but grateful for a car nonetheless and making the most of it. Saturday afternoon sees us at a nearby nature reserve, hiking to some hidden mountain waterfalls and watching for leopards and honey badgers (none to be found). Coming back from the hike we opt for a pizza from our favourite take-out joint, nestled in the corner of a strip mall at a busy intersection which is on our way home. Sarah is driving, and as she turns left into the parking lot, the car exudes a grinding sound so loud that I can only assume that somewhere along the way we have run over a bag of Ski Doo parts and are now dragging it behind us.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Harty, what was that?"</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Ummm...I don't know. Pull into the parking lot anyway, it was probably just a one-off thing." I am pretty sure it wasn't.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We pull slowly into the lot, and as we make a left turn into a parking space in an empty row, the grinding comes back. It is clearly coming from somewhere around the wheel well on the front driver's side, so I get out to take a look.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">The bumper has been a little bit loose since we picked the car up (with no rear-view mirror and an expired registration that belongs to a different vehicle, complaining about a loose bumper seems like splitting hairs) so I start to tinker with it in an act of maintenance that is the vehicular equivalent of jiggling the handle. A bystander jogs over after watching and hearing us turn in.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"It's not your bumper, mate."</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"No?"</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"No, it's the wheel. It's loose. Looks like your ball joint is shot. Watch." And with that he reaches through the open driver's side window, grabs the steering wheel and gives it three quick shakes back and forth. As he does this, the front driver's side wheel wobbles like Boris Yeltsin at closing time, so I can see why it would be grinding against the bumper. This could be a problem.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We head inside and enjoy our pizza. As we emerge I make the potentially dangerous decision that we will drive the car home, slowly. It's only about ten minutes away, and I'd rather have the car at home and deal with things there than have to worry about finding somewhere secure to leave the car and getting home after dark on a Saturday (no real public transit, remember). We cruise home with the hazard lights on and the car half on the shoulder. Sarah is at the wheel while I take on the duty of shrugging apologetically to everyone who has to pass us.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">More texts and phone calls back and forth with David. I imagine he is as sick of me as I am of him at this point. He arranges to have a mechanic meet us at the gas station off the highway in Jamestown - the neighbourhood where we live - first thing on Monday morning. I am aware that he and I have different ideas of what "first thing" means, so I let work know that I'll be late.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Monday morning we get the call that the mechanic is at the gas station. We hop in the car, limp down the road, pull in to the parking lot and I spot my new buddy Rasta - everyone's favourite pint-sized, mumbling, dreadlocked mechanic - inside. He is buying two bags of potato chips, apparently having somehow worked up a hunger at this early hour. I explain to him the problem: wheel grinding against the bumper when turning and, in a new development, a sharp pulling to the left. He takes the car for a spin around the parking lot, which corroborates my story. He gets out and looks underneath the car, and is rather surprised to see a front control arm which is snapped like a twig, its now-two pieces pointing limply at the ground in 45 degree angles. I don't know much about cars, but what I know about the English language tells me that a "front control arm" is probably something that you want in one piece. </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Rasta shows annoyance at the fact that someone has clearly welded the arm back together, rather than replacing it when it broke previously. We offer to give him a ride to a garage, to which he resolutely replies "No. I need to stay here and work out a plan." </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Might I suggest finding a new employer?</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We trade cars with him and pull away in yet another VW Golf. This one is bright white, with a rear-view mirror, working radio and legit registration. I feel like a show off. This is car number four in a little over two weeks, and I am starting to think that the CA Car Rental people are just really patient scammers who keep out-of-towners in marginally functional cars as a way of pacifying them before stealing their deposits. I can't come up with any other rational explanation for how these people operate. I silently resolve to not hand back the keys to them until I have my deposit back in full, despite the fact that the contract gives the company seven days to refund the deposit after a car is returned. I am forced to reconcile my inclination to count down the remaining days I have to deal with this company on the one hand, with my desire to not wish away my time in South Africa on the other. I continue to focus on the positives at this point, as we once again have a car that will get us from point A to point B (for now, anyway). We have also realized that the occasional weekend rental from an upstanding agency will certainly suffice in the future, as we aren't using the car much during the week.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We periodically cruise around in the white Golf over the next few days. Thursday night we decide to make an after-dark run to the grocery store in Jamestown to grab a couple of things for the weekend. Sarah drives, and I open the gate at the top of our steep driveway, waiting for her to pull out so that I can close it behind us. I do a quick walk around the car before jumping in, making idle chit chat as we pull away.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Sarah, are the headlights on?"<br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Yeah, why?"</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Well..."</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Don't tell me there are no tail lights."</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Nope, no tail lights."</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">"Jesus Christ."</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">This is the last straw. I have been patient bordering on pushover with these guys, but there is now no question that I need to get my money back in my hands and end this thing ASAP. I plan to get in touch with David on Friday morning to arrange an exchange: I'll give him back the car, he'll give me back my full deposit plus a refund for the final week's rental (which I am bailing on), in cash, on the spot. I do not anticipate that he will take kindly to this proposition, but I know that I won't accept anything else. </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">To say that he does not take kindly is an understatement. I could not have anticipated just how contentious things were about to become, nor could I have foreseen the unlikely hero who would emerge to save the day.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Will Lassie save Timmy from the evil car renters? Click <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-three-unlikely-hero.html">here</a> to find out in our thrilling conclusion.</span></i>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-70475050315730380242011-10-24T12:00:00.003-06:002011-10-28T12:27:19.770-06:00CA Car Rental, Part One: Waiting on a Rasta<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">It is early on a Friday afternoon, and I am sitting on a curb in a parking lot. Behind me, a constant stream of locals flows in and out of a fast food restaurant and convenience store. In front of me, a chaotic ballet of cars jockey for position among the gas pumps and parking spots, while attendants in matching hats and jackets scurry in all directions. The sun is unimpeded by clouds, and even though the calendar says that it's still spring, I haven't felt a summer day this hot in a long time. If this weather was a person, it would be Shania Twain: hot for a Canadian. I am supposed to be at work, rather than sitting in this parking lot, waiting for a delivery. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Heat radiates upwards from the asphalt and I start to sweat in the afternoon sun.<br /><br /></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I don't know the name of the guy I am meeting, and the transaction has been set up by a third party whose business card curiously omits his last name. "He knows who he's looking for," my contact person assures me beforehand. When I call him back after his guy is late, he responds with "I'll call him and check, but he knows to look for you. If you need to spot him, he's sort of a Rasta man." And so I sit in the parking lot awaiting the delivery guy who I realize I had previously met during a meeting a few days ago, when he was introduced to me in all his dreadlocked glory as "Rasta". Clever. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">This all feels dangerously under the radar, but when you rent a car from an undercutting operation in South Africa, I suppose that sketchy deals in parking lots are the cost of doing business. Indeed, Rasta is not bringing me something weighed by the gram and sold in plastic bags. Rather, he is delivering me a car. My third car in a week from the questionable operation known as CA Car Rental. </span></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">Let's back it up.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">For a combination of financial and environmental concerns (it is really easy to be a self-righteous environmentalist when you are on a modest budget) I had not planned on using a car while living in Stellenbosch, save for occasional weekend rentals. It soon became apparent, however, that this is a spread out community sorely lacking in reasonable options for public transportation, and conventional taxis as I know them are non-existent. There are "mini-bus taxis," which I take to and from work, but they can be tantamount to seventeen-person death cans with flashy paint jobs, and cannot be relied on for consistency in scheduling, nor do they venture to many of the places I have been hoping to explore. </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We need a car.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">With buying price-prohibitive, we discover a few options for long-term rentals, some of which are budget outfits catering directly to students and international workers. Based on price, availability and online reviews, we narrow it down to CA Car Rental, based out of Cape Town but willing to deliver to Stellenbosch, about an hour down the road. The company has a generic website and a somewhat disconcerting lack of an online presence in the digital age (though it is my sincere hope to help them build their online brand identity with this post). Still, after some deliberation and discussion with their employee "David" (name that was given to me but may not be real), we arrange to have a car delivered to us one Friday afternoon for a one month rental.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">On Thursday afternoon David calls me and asks if we could move things to Saturday, as the car he had promised me would not be available until then. No can do, I tell him. We need the car in order to move out of our hostel and into our new <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-treehouses-and-cottages.html">home</a>, which is a few clicks outside of town. Fine, he says, and offers to bring me a temporary car smaller than the one I had reserved, which we can use for 24 hours and then trade on Saturday for my proper car. I say that is fine, but inform him that I will be withholding half of the rental fee until I am driving the proper car. I am already getting the sense that I have to be extra vigilant when dealing with this outfit.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">The company prefers to deal in electronic funds transfers, but those requires a South African bank account, which I do not have. I check with David to make sure that we can deal in cash up front, and he readily accepts. I have to make two ATM trips to get the combined rental feel and deposit, which total somewhere around $900, Canadian, or R6,200.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">On Friday afternoon David arrives at the hostel and we retreat to the picnic table in front of the sliding glass door in the kitchen to conduct business. Jeans and a slightly torn Springboks rugby jersey are his unconventional uniform, although with the price I'm paying I don't exactly expect an elderly man with a British accent in a proper chauffeur's get up. David is tall and stocky yet boyish in appearance, and certainly personable. He has with him with a bearded, dreadlocked and almost silent sidekick that he introduces as his mechanic, Rasta, the man who I will meet in the parking lot a week later. I resist the urge to ask Rasta where he got his name from, and he mumbles obediently when spoken to as he does some final tinkering with our short-term rental. The car is a bright green VW Golf sitting on rims with its windows tinted and a muffler that seems to do more amplifying than muffling. It looks and sounds like the third place finisher on <i>Pimp My Ride: South African Redneck edition</i>. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">After signing a contract and getting David's business card (no last name) I watch him count the money I hand to him, aligning and stacking the hundred rand notes in separate piles. This is the only attention to any detail he exhibits. The business being done, we head on our way, excited to be leaving the hostel behind for a more permanent abode. The car is a stick shift, and given that my manual transmission skills are lacking, Sarah takes the wheel. I am promptly informed in no uncertain terms that what the car has in style, it sorely lacks in functionality. We look forward to making the switch for our proper car on Saturday afternoon.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br />David and I text back and forth on Saturday and I abide a few excuses as to why he is running late. He eventually tells me he is in town and asks where I can meet him. I remind him that I have suggested multiple times that we meet at the Shell station near my house, but he insists that he is unable to find it and inquires as to why I can't just meet him at the bar where he is waiting for me. Fine.<br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">I should mention at this juncture that I was not raised in a barn, and have engaged in enough questionable behaviour of my own to develop a few street smarts over the years. I knew from the get go that I was dealing with somewhat less than a straightforward operation. Having said that, as long as they provided me with a car which I could sell for more than the deposit they had taken from me, I knew I was in OK shape and could come out ahead in a worst-case scenario. That said, selling a stolen car was a situation which I was certainly hoping to avoid.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We arrive at the empty upstairs bar and find David and his "driver," Jeff (must have been Rasta's day off) each on their second beer, smoke rising from the ash trays in front of them. We head outside to exchange cars: the VW Golf gets traded for a Daewoo Cielo, a Camry-sized four-door sedan from South Korea. My historical relations with Koreans have been generally enjoyable, so I superimpose some residual positivity onto the car. After some initial problems getting the driver's seat adjusted I hand David the balance I had withheld pending delivery of this car. "Oh shit, I forgot all about that. I guess that's what two beers will do to you." I feel it is less likely that I am being scammed given that the other side forgot to ask for my money. I also regret offering it to him.<br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">We shake hands and go our separate ways, again with Sarah driving. We pull out of the parking lot and start to cruise the streets of Stellenbosch, which are muted and sleepy on a gray weekend afternoon. We aren't long out of the parking lot before the car starts lurching like a carnival ride in a death rattle. You would think the thing had squares for wheels, the way it is jumping and pausing. Shifting into second seems to alleviate the problem, but first gear remains a challenge that, when compounded with some questionable structural issues, make for a car that is, well, not of the ilk we had been hoping for, and not really drivable. I immediately call David, but his phone has been turned off, and there are no other phone numbers to be found for the company.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">The next day I am able to rouse him, and have barely finished telling him what a joke this vehicle is when he offers to swap it out for me. This bout of top-notch customer service perplexes me, and I wonder if their motto should be "CA Car Rental: Our cars are crap but we sure are polite!" After more back-and-forths over the next couple of days, during which time Sarah and I are able to use the car but not necessarily enjoy it, David and I agree to exchange cars on Friday afternoon in the gas station parking lot in downtown Stellenbosch, where I sit on the asphalt in the hot sun, waiting for Rasta when I should be at work. He is late because he went to the wrong gas station.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">He eventually shows and presents us with a teal VW Golf (no, not the first one we had) that he has just picked up from a previous renter. I thank him and take the keys and we go our separate ways. I am forced to run back to the Daewoo and jump in front of it as he pulls away, however, after sliding into the driver's seat of our replacement car and casually noticing that one crucial piece of equipment is missing.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;">But what piece was missing? Will Rasta get all MacGyver on the car and save the day? Click <a href="http://hartymeal.blogspot.com/2011/10/ca-car-rental-part-two-grinding-my.html">here</a> for part 2 featuring the answers to these and other burning questions.</span></i></div><div></div><br /><div></div></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-56999167594133980932011-10-17T00:16:00.003-06:002011-10-17T01:49:20.040-06:00In Treehouses and Cottages<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></u></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The house was described to me as a trailer standing up on one end. It would turn out to be a rather apt description, but while on the phone in Ottawa, talking to the man who would become my landlord in Yellowknife, it was hard to conceptualize. I moved North thinking of that place as a possibility in my housing search, but when it soon became apparent that a) there were almost zero vacancies to be found in Yellowknife in September of 2010; and b) that the location, design and size of the house were perfect, we moved into the standing up trailer and called it home for the next twelve months.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was a quirky place, with a bright blue exterior and three levels stretching into the Northern sky. The first level had the bathroom, closet, wardrobe and water tank, which was in its own room off the bathroom. The tank was necessary, as above-ground water lines in that part of Yellowknife mean that in the colder months water gets delivered by truck semi-weekly and pumped directly into each residence. Heading up the steep, ladder/stairs hybrid would take you to the main level, with a living area and a kitchen that was small but had room enough for a full sized fridge and oven, along with plenty of cupboard space and just enough counter top. Up another nine steps/rungs, and you would be in the sleeping loft. On that level, I could just barely stand up at the top of the stairs against the front of the house, before the roof sloped sharply towards the back wall where it met with the floor. On perfect winter nights I could see the northern lights out my bedside window, while in summer, the midnight twilight snaked its way past the curtains and made for a disorienting presence while the leaves of birch trees obscured the view out the second and third floor windows. The landlords' part of the house, which was connected to ours via a deck out a back door on the second level, backed onto Ragged Ass Road.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It sat across the street from the edge of Great Slave Lake, and came with landlords and neighbours who embodied a generosity of spirit that is rare even for a tight knit community like Yellowknife. In a word it was perfect. We were spoiled in that tall, skinny home that I nicknamed The Treehouse, and it made for a tough place to say goodbye to with the knowledge that finding a similarly ideal spot in South Africa might be a challenge.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Yellowknife has since given way to my new home of Stellenbosch. "Stellie" is a multi-faceted small city, with two of those facets - wine money and university students from affluent families - making for much higher rent than I had anticipated or budgeted for. Despite two weeks of house-hunting that was assertive bordering on all-consuming, we were still living in a hostel without any solid leads when a friend of a friend of a friend suggested we take a look at </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">her</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> friends' place in the community of Jamestown, 6.5km from downtown Stellenbosch. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Jamestown is a curious community that sits off one of the main autoroutes that crisscrosses this part of the Western Cape. Immediately upon turning off the highway, one is greeted by a gas station, BMW dealership, gated community and small, indoor shopping mall. Hardly the stuff of the African immersion that I came here seeking. But immediately upon passing these roadside commercial sentries, a very organic community presents itself. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The gated community sits on the left hand side of Jamestown's main road - Weber's Valley Road - and is the first thing one sees when turning off the highway. One step further into Jamestown - and almost spooning with the gated community - is an informal settlement, or what one might call a shanty town, for lack of a better term. Here, shacks cobbled of wood, brick and scrap metal cascade down the hill from Jamestown's main road, but their patchwork appearance does not paint a fair picture of the permanence and resilience of either the structures themselves or the neighbourhood which they comprise. It is a small settlement, only stretching about two city blocks down from the road and one across, but is a centre of activity throughout the day. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Continuing on past the informal settlement, Weber's Valley Road stretches for another kilometer. On the right hand side, a half dozen equally spaced roads rise abruptly uphill and connect with secondary roads to form the small, irregular grid of residential streets where most of Jamestown lives. Single family homes abound. On the left hand side of the main road, individual families own plots of land rolling downhill towards a modest river. Most of them have crops planted in fields that, size-wise, fall somewhere between "Canadian backyard" and "small farm." There are a few very basic convenience stores on either side of the main road in town, where you can buy individual cigarettes, kerosene lamps and the usual assortment of empty calories and toothpaste. The last convenience store before the end of the road features a dusty pool table and two aging arcade games that are many years older than most of the children who pump them full of coins. It also sells hot, handmade vegetarian samosas for R2.50 apiece (around thirty five cents, Canadian). Aside from the three convenience stores there is no other commerce once you get past the shopping mall, which feels like a world away once you are safely out of its shadow. Near as I can tell, its primary clientele isn't Jamestown locals, anyway. Mountains, modest in stature but harsh and jagged in appearance, keep the community hemmed in on multiple sides and cast shadows of their own. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Just before Weber's Valley Road peters out into unpaved private drives, there is a modern looking white house on the left hand side. Like the others on that side of the road, the land unrolls lazily from the road, making its way downhill toward the tree-lined banks of the river, with large gardens dominating the yard. Unlike many of the others, however, this one has a small cottage in the backyard. The cottage is the rental property we were brought out to look at by a friend's friend friend after two weeks in the hostel, and it has since become the home that I am writing from tonight.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The cottage is small. Tiny, really, nestled where the land levels out before reaching to the river. There is a single room for living, sleeping, cooking and eating, plus a bathroom. No shower, but an old-fashioned claw-foot tub with a shower wand does the trick nicely. On workday mornings I kneel next to the tub while leaning over the side and hosing down my brown mop, although every so often I'm up early enough for a full bath. The main room has a small wood stove in the corner, which we have needed on a few of the cooler spring nights. Those nights are becoming fewer and farther between, however, as the African summer and its merciless heat (from what I've been told) fast approaches. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is plenty of outdoor living space that serves as a functional part of our one-room estate. Brick patios extend the living room out dutch doors front and back, with the front patio guarded from the sun by ground-to-overhanging-roof bamboo shades. Out back, an old-fashioned half-sized kitchen table under the overhang serves as my breakfast nook, as I crunch on cereal and watch the morning sun on the mountains. A small, old portable fire pit - for cooking or ambiance - sits on the bricks, while a hurricane lantern dangles from the wooden beams. Given how small our place is, the outdoor living areas are crucial. Indeed, without them we likely would have passed on the place.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The landlords have supplied some furnishings - kitchenwares and a few tables and chairs in a meticulous-but-retro aesthetic - but we are still trying to find others. There was no fridge when we moved in, but we were immediately able to find a waist-high fridge/freezer combo. It's just big enough for the two of us, so long as we are willing to head to the grocery store a couple of times a week. It should keep us eating fresh, which is a good thing, and we have already made friends at the Saturday farmers' market nearby.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We are still without a bed, and will likely need a futon or sleeper couch because of space issues. Meantime, we are roughing it on our camping mats on the floor. One of the first nights we were here, I awoke to a rather chilly cottage at 4:30 in the morning. I rose from my sleeping mat to crouch by the wood stove, stoking the fire and coaxing its warmth out to the four corners of my new abode. Sleeping on a concrete floor and stoking the wood fire in the pre-dawn darkness on a workday...this lawyer business sure is fancy.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is wildlife aplenty, both au natural and domesticated. The landlords have four cats and three ducks that wander the property at will, and helmeted guinea fowl and Egyptian geese spend lazy afternoons snacking in the gardens. Otters have been known to come up from the river and prowl around at night, which is why there are three ducks when there used to be four. A spotted eagle owl sleeps in one of our bigger trees by day and makes the fields his grocery store by night. Our noisiest neighbour is a rooster belonging to the family next door, who every morning has me contemplating an end to my vegetarian ways.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We have been in the cottage for two weeks now, and despite a few crucial missing pieces of furniture - a bed and a dresser, most notably - are feeling nicely settled. It's 10:30 on a Sunday night now. The crickets are providing their own brand of white noise and the owl sang us his haunting tune a few minutes ago as we stepped outside to bring in hand washed clothes off the line. For now, this is home.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DMkrBUitAjM/Tps2Vy-udrI/AAAAAAAAAPU/vMvxpzoi2YU/s400/P1170648.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5664180704438548146" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-83846346463128525912011-10-02T01:22:00.007-06:002011-10-04T14:24:52.335-06:00Down to the Crossroads<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Two and-a-half weeks into my six months in South Africa and I am feeling unsettled. This is at least partly due to the fact that I am still living out of a suitcase, as long-term accommodation has proven harder to come by than anticipated, and until this past weekend I was sleeping in a hostel. And of course there are massive cultural adjustments that have to be made, regardless of how “westernized” the community where I'm living is. But unsettled doesn't necessarily mean unhappy, and a few early highlights have proved, if nothing else, to be welcome diversions from the decidedly unromantic drudgery of getting my bearings.</span></span></span></div> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A few such hours of diversion happened last Friday night, when our new friend Tina - a warm and social 28 year-old Namibian who, when she is not running safaris, works at the hostel we were living out of - invited Sarah and I to see some live music. We didn't need to hear who was playing before we accepted the invite, but for the record it was a performance by Karen Zoid, the reigning goddess of Afrikaaner rock. Her music could rather accurately be described by a lazy critic as a cross between Ani DiFranco and Alanis Morissette, except almost entirely in Afrikaans (that Dutch offshoot being the dominant language around here). She was backed by three local guys with some serious blues chops.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We had anticipated an indoor, soft-seated venue, so were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find the show happening in an entirely open-air courtyard with bleachers at one end, an elaborate stage at the other and a bar along one side. We set up shop at a picnic table near the bleachers, under a persistent musky charcoal cloud being churned out by the </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">braii </span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(barbecue) that was a few feet away. The man operating the barbecue and selling the sausages cooked thereon was a friend of Tina's, so introductions were made promptly upon our arrival. When he said "nice to meet you" in Afrikaans, I thought he was telling me what his long and complicated name was.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Sorry, what's your name?" I asked, seeking clarification.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Barney," he said, looking rather like a Barney, with his patchy beard, and cigarette dangling from his lip. The chatter of the night out had started to pick up, so I wasn't sure I had heard him right.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Did you say </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Barney</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">?"</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Yeah, Barney," he offered, taking a long, slow drag off his cigarette, "like the purple f***ing dinosaur." He provided this nugget of clarification with the defeated disgust of a man who has long since accepted that the best way to get people to remember his name is by aligning himself with the twentieth century's most grating children's character (with all due respect to Sponge Bob).</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The music began shortly thereafter, and was really quite good. Tina and her friend Lise - the owner of the hostel - had introduced us around to their friends, and we were quick to join the team towards the front of the crowd, off to one side of the stage, dancing on the grass and even on top of a picnic table as the night wore on. The band rocked hard, but with a measured intensity that left plenty of room to impress, and Karen had the crowd in the palm of her hand. I followed the cues and cheered and laughed at the between-song banter along with the crowd, even though most of it was Afrikaans and went a little deeper than my burgeoning six-word vocabulary (thank you, you're welcome and tractor-trailer).</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The company was great, the music entertaining and the wine flowed like beer. As we were bulk-buying, we went with it by the bottle, which is rather cost effective when you are in the heart of wine country. By the time I made my way up for the final round, the bartender apologized that all she had left was the expensive stuff, which would run me about R85 (85 rand). I decided to suck it up and fork over what is the equivalent of twelve Canadian dollars for their top shelf bottle of red, and happily accepted the unexplained free shot of Jagermeister that came with it. (I should note here that wine is the only thing I've noticed so far that is fill-your-suitcase cheap. Most other food, services and consumer goods are comparable to typical Canadian prices).</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">When it came time for the perfunctory encore, the evening's star gracefully retreated from the spotlight and let her backing band shine as they ripped their way through what was really a cover of a cover: their rendition of Cream's </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Crossroads, </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">which is itself a reworking of the great Robert Johnson's </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Cross Road Blues</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. It didn't quite fit musically with the rest of the night, but was my favourite tune of the evening, and in title alone has served as a theme song over the past week as I have navigated the geographical, personal, professional and cultural intersections at which I find myself.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The music over and the last bottle drained (I made sure not to waste any), we retreated, stopping for milkshakes before heading home. As we pulled up to the hostel – greeted by the unwavering enthusiasm of Lonwabo, the 22 year-old local who works the night shift – there was a touch of a premature come-down mixed in with the usual warm glow that follows one home after a successful night out. Our hosts at our accommodations had certainly been good to us, but by that night we were well past the point of “just a few days while we find something else,” and a return to the hostel was a reminder that a weekend of full-time home-hunting – likely with a headache for at least one of the days – awaited. I make no bones about how settled in one can get in just a few months, but it's hard to move significantly in that direction without a place to live.</span></span></span></p> <p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Stable housing has since been secured, but still I remain unsure of what shape these six months will take. I am grateful for this uncertainty, for if I felt totally settled in by this point - contentedly in sync with the customs, climate and currency of this faraway land, and decidedly headed in one particular direction - then it would mean either that I was being disingenuous in my assessment of my situation, or that my South African experience wasn't shaping up to be as far outside of my comfort zone as I had hoped. Since, however, I am still finding my way through a sort of transitional fog, I can be certain that I have travelled far, and hopeful that there are great things around the bend.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The new accommodation is a one-room cottage on a pseudo-farm outside of town. More on that to follow.</span></span></span></p>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-46603047732218516272011-09-18T08:41:00.010-06:002011-09-22T13:11:58.113-06:00Ten Thousand Miles From Winnipeg<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I think I am going to have to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. This may seem like a bold undertaking, but after spending the past week flying from Yellowknife to Calgary (three hour layover) to Ottawa (three days) to Frankfurt (12 hours) to Johannesburg (60 minutes of sprinting and cursing) to Cape Town, the thought of getting on a plane ever again is enough to make a grown man weep. A first world problem, to be sure, but at this point I'd sooner try to hitch a ride on a dolphin than endure one more fellow traveller's attempts to colonize my leg room by reclining the seat in front of me when it's time to head back to Canada in March.<br /><br />The journey started in Yellowknife, a place that's tough to get to and even tougher to leave. I was choked up as I flew over the rocks and reflected on a year that seemed to alternate between the stereotypical and the unpredictable. Sure, there were pond hockey games, midnight sun swims and trippy late nights spent gawking at the Northern lights. But there were also art openings, multi sport races and French cuisine. Throw in landlords and neighbours who took us in as their own and redefined community, as well as professional challenges that were both inspiring and heartbreaking, and I found myself on the YZF tarmac saying goodbye to what was a beautiful and complicated year as an articled student. But this was my second tour of duty in the North, and I take great comfort in knowing that, with friendships carved in permafrost and stories that will be high in my cocktail party rotation for quite some time, Yellowknife will remain a part of me whether I want it to or not.<br /><br />Ottawa was a much briefer stop than I had hoped for, but with professional obligations in Yellowknife and South Africa leaving a very narrow window, I had to deal as best I could. I have reengaged with Ottawa over the past few years, since shifting my operations from my childhood home in Nepean to my sister's house in Westboro (where the script tells me I am supposed to be hanging out, what with my beard and penchant for micro brews). While it is not the hometown of my youth, my new relationship with the city has me excited for visits home in a whole new way.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Sarah had left Yellowknife before me, so we met up on Wednesday afternoon in Ottawa before grabbing a bite with our respective (and supportive) families and heading to the airport. We hopped on the red eye to Frankfurt, which allowed for a few inconsequential fits of sleep, but presented us with twelve daylight hours of a Bavarian layover.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We found a train into the city for a modest round trip price, although we soon figured out that tickets don't get checked and we could have saved some bread. Either way, we arrived in the center of town at around 10:00 and set out to explore. I couldn't tell if the archetypal European architecture was a natural part of the landscape or as legit as Whistler Village, but that's what downtown Frankfurt looks like, so I chalked it up to authenticity as we strolled amidst the coffee shops, bars and offices. By mid afternoon and with no sleep for close to 30 hours, we were both thoroughly exhausted to the point of disorientation, so we strolled over the River Main (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">mine</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">) and found a patch of grass that hadn't been laid claim to by the resident goose population. We laid our heads down and drifted off, so tired that the busy drone of the city on all sides of us served as soothing white noise.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">At around five o'clock we dusted ourselves off, crossed a bridge pierced with thousands of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_padlocks"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">love padlocks</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and boarded the train back to the airport. Upon emerging from the train, we were met by a boozy man who asked if he could have my ticket (which was good for the whole day). Sensing that I was being used as a middle man in the underground economy, I offered to sell it to him, and collected a few Euro before we were on our way. He tried to cajole Sarah's from her "for my family," but we opted to pass hers off </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">gratis </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">to a less intoxicated passerby who wasn't going to resell it. We found our gate and boarded South African Airways, bound for Johannesburg.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We had to clear customs in Jo'burg (he said, pretending to be a local), which proved a slightly less rigorous process than buying beer in Ontario. Customs was such an unencumbering experience that I assumed there was another checkpoint deeper in the airport maze. There wasn't. What we found instead were ten different answers to the question of where to re-check our bags, and the only people really eager to help us were the porters who work for tips (we passed). After zooming around the airport like two pinballs with checked baggage, we blasted through security and made our gate with literally not a minute to spare. On the bus from the gate to the plane I chatted up locals in rugby shirts about the World Cup, and was the recipient of numerous high-fives thanks to Canada's upset of Tonga that day. When the subject of hockey came up and I told them that I played a little, there was adulation for being involved in such a rough and violent sport. Tired as I was, I didn't bother to explain the subtle nuances between the professional game and the brand enjoyed while drunk on the rink in front of my buddy's house boat in Yellowknife.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The flight from Jo'burg (try to keep up) to Capetown was mercifully short, and we were greeted upon arrival by my boss for the next few months. I will be working with </span><a href="http://www.lhr.org.za/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lawyers for Human Rights</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, a pan-South African NGO with a self-explanatory name. I'll be stationed in Stellenbosch, about a thirty minute drive inland from Cape Town International, working on the </span><a href="http://www.lhr.org.za/programme/security-farm-workers-project"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Security of Farm Workers Program</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Near as I can tell, I'll be doing a mix of legal research, client visits in the townships and anything else that will make me useful. It's a six month internship organized through the Canadian Bar Association's </span><a href="http://www.cba.org/cba/idp/yiip/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Young Lawyers International Program</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, and I look forward to being able to recommend it to my peers once I've actually started working.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Stellenbosch is a complicated city of about 200,000 in the heart of South African wine country. It is by turns a vibrant university town, elitist tourist spot and cluttered, fast-talking African urban area. It is my hope to be able to connect with each of theses sides of Stellenbosch's reality, and embrace the city for all of its beauty and inequality. We shall see.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We have spent this first weekend perusing the town on foot, with highlights being a sidewalk cafe for lunch and following our ears to a smoky shoebox of an attic bar on our first night, where university bands laid down some heavy blues grooves while we sipped on R10 (10 rand, or about $1.40) Jack Daniels. We stopped at one apiece, but it's nice to know that a little snake bite at the end of the week will be doable even on an intern's modest stipend.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I have done my weekend's exploring through the mixed lens of tourist and transplant. I will certainly only ever be a visitor here, but the initial excitement of being in this new, strange place is tempered slightly by logistical residential chores of having to buy groceries and aggressively seek out a place to live. And there has been some of the mundane and grounding as well, despite the new surroundings. The dog shit I stepped in while out for a run tonight was no more endearing than the myriad piles I would find at the end of my driveway on Bryson Drive in Yellowknife, in the shadow of the treehouse I called home. I have not, of course, been here long enough to shake a feeling of disorientation, and said to Sarah tonight that I wish I could see a live shot of us walking down the street from outer space, all the better to comprehend our new co-ordinates.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So now it is Sunday night. Spring has been late this year, so it feels more like October in the Adirondacks than September in Stellenbosch right now. There's a fire in the common area of our temporary abode, and I am listening to The Weakerthans sing about their </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF_MdYNGkD8&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">hometown</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Winnipeg's greatest contemporary rock and roll exports have me missing a city in which I have spent all of about 18 hours in my life. Funny how when you are far away from anything familiar, every sensory experience can be a Trojan horse for an unaccountable nostalgia. Naturally, I am looking forward to creating my own sense of place and routine here in the days, weeks and months to come.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Work starts tomorrow.</span></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-51994771592519434972010-10-04T21:05:00.001-06:002011-09-22T13:12:58.684-06:00Fall<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It's Fall in Yellowknife. A time of transition.<br /><br />Autumn has been my favourite season just about everywhere I’ve lived, and the North seems to be no exception. The leaves in the birch-dominated forests have changed a million glowing shades of yellow. Brilliant sunsets are a warm-up show for the early-season green aurora, and after-dinner walks are crisp affairs. </span><p> </p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">That having been said, the narrative that takes us from summer to winter is not strictly linear. A few days ago I put shorts on for an afternoon hike – more of a scramble along the Canadian shield than an even-keeled stroll through the forest – and the morning’s frosts are often forgotten in the warm afternoons. People are still making weekend trips to their cabins on summer terms, the canoeing is prime right about now, and even the geeky kids aren't wearing their snowsuits to school just yet. </span></p><p> </p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The seasonal transition is most apparent for me in the mornings. Ice coats the car as I walk out the driveway at the start of the day, and we have already had a few morning dustings of snow (though our proximity to the lake means that we are just a few degrees warmer than the rest of town, and have yet to see any accumulation). There is often a layer of dew on the beard as I leave any seasonal awareness behind and check the day’s first e-mails under artificial light. </span></p> <p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I am grateful for the walk to work. At fifteen minutes it is hardly a workout, but the cool air in my lungs gets the heart pumping and gives me a caffeine-like jolt. I head up the hill on Franklin Avenue, leaving behind the shacks of my Old Town neighbourhood as I approach the tall office buildings of the city center in a daily transition ritual of my own. I start the day in brief concert with the elements, even if I spend most of it in isolation from them. </span></p><p> </p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A layer of fog hung over town one morning last week, mingling with the sunshine to make for a dream-like blur of muted colours as hazy figures shuffled along the avenue. It was like walking towards a dream sequence, or into a faded sepia photograph. Funny, I thought, that I am walking away from Old Town and towards the decidedly more modernized city centre, yet the morning mist is making for a back-in-time trajectory. Perhaps there's a metaphor in there about the development and future of Yellowknife, but I haven't been around long enough say.</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Winter will be here soon. We are getting noticeably fewer hours of sunlight with each passing day as the darkness gradually uncoils. Stiff breezes are knocking the leaves loose. As one such wind caught me the other day, a friend who grew up locally looked at me and took on an uncharacteristically cautionary tone. "Do you feel that?" he asked. "It's coming."</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The impending season will be long, dark and cold. Inspiring on its own terms, but harsh nonetheless. As a calm before the storm, though, it would be hard to do much better than Fall in Yellowknife.</span><br /></p><p> </p>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-16744238826390943602010-09-16T17:38:00.001-06:002011-09-22T13:13:19.672-06:00Friday Night Lights<div style="text-align: left;"><pre style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The burning torch on Dog Island would let us know the show was<br />on.<br /><br />Having to look for a beacon in the twilight may have given the<br />event a speak-easy vibe, but it was as necessary as it was romantic.<br />Paddling out into the middle of Great Slave Lake is a bit of an<br />undertaking, so it was imperative that we know the event was a go<br />before pushing off. By the time we had carried our borrowed<br />canoe down our dirt road, through the squatter's shacks at the<br />lake's edge and dipped it into the cold September water, a crowd<br />had already formed around the island and the torch was indeed<br />burning. The Dog Island Floating Film Festival was a go.<br /><br />The lake was glassy and quiet as we set out towards the island, a<br />modest 10-minute paddle from where we put in. The sun had<br />gone down but visibility was not a problem in the nine o'clock<br />dusk. The films had already started as we approached, and when<br />we were within a few meters I whispered to Sarah that she could<br />stop paddling. My parallel parking expertise might be hit and<br />miss, but my dormant canoeing skills from summers on the<br />Miramichi River came back quickly as I wove our way amidst<br />the other boats and towards a desirable vantage point.<br /><br />Dog Island is a one-night festival with an inimitable Northern<br />aesthetic that makes the films themselves rather secondary. The<br />movies are projected on a screen set up on the tiny Island (and by<br />"tiny" I mean the size of a suburban lawn), while locals converge<br />in canoes, kayaks and silenced motor boats, dropping anchor or<br />rafting together to take in regional fare from the comfort of their<br />boats.<br /><br />After a few minutes of manoeuvring and the realization that we<br />needed to raft up with others lest I spend the whole night working<br />to keep us in place, we made our way over to a row of other<br />canoes and tied on to them. The neighbour we met at a party the<br />week before tipped her beer to us as we slid past her boat. It was<br />the fourth time - in three different places - that I had seen her that<br />day.<br /><br />The films may be secondary to the experience, but that is not to<br />say they are second-rate films. The content was mostly local,<br />and entirely from North of 60 (the line of latitude, that is). They<br />all came in under the ten minute mark, and ranged from<br />contemporary music videos to animated Aboriginal legends to an<br />art house piece that I don't think I understood. Or maybe that was<br />the point. Anyway, there was a mix of the silly, the serious and the<br />sublime, but while some of the films took place in the bush, there<br />wasn't one that could be described as bush league.<br /><br />I pulled on my toque as dusk gave way to dark. Other canoes<br />joined our flotilla, and at one point we were in the midst of a<br />group nine-wide. Some people were holding on to other boats,<br />some were tied to each other, while others were simply wedged<br />into the middle. We were mostly silent, save for chuckles,<br />applause and the occasional shout-out to a friend on the screen<br />when appropriate.<br /><br />The torch on the island continued to burn.<br /><br />While some were transfixed on the films, others lay down in their<br />boats and cast their gazes skyward, as with this being a clear<br />Yellowknife night in the Fall, there was another show going on.<br />While the aurora were not at their brightest or most active, the<br />muted-yet-glowing streak they cut across a black screen of their<br />own made for an appealing side-show. Star power, indeed.<br /><br />There must have been at least sixty boats assembled before all<br />was said and done, but my counting abilities were hampered by<br />the darkness. The lake was just beginning to move in the<br />midnight breeze and water lapped at the gunwales as we turned<br />and headed back to shore, glowing and gliding with the peaceful<br />headlamp navy headed in all directions. Houseboat dwellers had<br />the shortest commute.<br /><br />Rugged exterior notwithstanding, this town is long on culture; we<br />had to decide which of two gallery openings to attend before the<br />festival. That said, things happen here on the town's own terms,<br />with climate and isolation often factoring in. And so Dog Island<br />was not Toronto or Cannes, but then again nobody wanted it to be.<br />This town does red canoes better than it does red carpets, and those<br />who embrace Yellowknife for what it is seem to reap its finest<br />rewards.<br /></span><br /></pre></div>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-16384671109226358862010-08-03T21:08:00.001-06:002011-09-22T13:15:04.809-06:00A Triumph of the Spirit, A Failure of the Kidneys (or: The self-indulgent boastings of an Ironman)<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(Note: This one is written just as much for my own record as it is to share with the masses. I hope you read it/enjoy it/pass it on, but I know that most people have better things to do than read through this whole thing. Here's the short version: I did an Ironman. It was pretty tough, but I crossed the finish line.)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br />3.8km swim<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">180km bike<br />42.2 km run<br /><br />It may have been smug of me to feel prepared for numbers like those, but at that point if I couldn't tell myself I was ready then I might as well have gone back to bed. It was 5:30 on race day morning, and as I walked into transition to get suited up, Sarah asked me if it felt surreal. "Not really," I said with a shrug. "I've put my time in and this has been a gradual process. Feels pretty appropriate, to be honest with you."<br /><br />I don't think either of us totally believed that, but we were happy to live the lie.<br /><br />I walked solo into transition to scurry among the field full of racked and ready bikes with my peers for the day: 2,499 emaciated-looking athletes sporting the bare minimum of body hair, and then yours truly. I fit right in. With Phish in my ear phones I was able to zone out and pretend to check on my bike ("Yup, that looks tight..let me just wiggle this around...better spin the wheel again, just to make sure") until I wandered over to meet Max.<br /><br />Max is a close friend from my days in Victoria. He and I started doing tris at around the same time, exchange e-mails about training in the off-season and race together whenever we can. And by "race together" what I mean is that we start the race standing side-by-side and then Max waits for me at the finish line, showered, wearing street clothes, having eaten dinner and gotten in a light post-race workout.<br /><br />We finished checking our bikes and dropping off our transition bags (bike and run gear that we would change into when needed) and, along with our co-competitors, made our way through the funnel of assembling spectators and towards the start line </span><s><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">like pigs to the slaughter</span></s><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> in a sacred act of pilgrimage.<br /><br />An ironman mass start is really quite something. I would call what happens once the gun goes off "organized chaos", but in Max's words "rats escaping from a sinking ship" might be a little more apt. Here's a video of our race I borrowed from YouTube:</span><br /></div><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/F1HPm0jWQwk?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/F1HPm0jWQwk?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The gun goes off at thirty seven seconds. This was shot from right around where I started my swim, so feel free to play "Where's Waldo" and try to find me, even though I don't know if I'm in the video.</span></span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I started my swim wide, wanting to avoid the massive congestion, shoving and clawing which occur as people try to swim on the inside of the loop (it's a two-lap, rectangular course). After a few minutes I knew that going wide would not make for a good swim, as I was in a mass of spray and limbs and having a tough time spotting the buoys to orient myself. I moved over to get a little bit closer, and soon found myself staring at the buoy cable right underneath me, which meant that I was as far to the inside as possible and right in the war zone. I readied my elbows and prepared for a physical two laps.<br /><br />Despite my willingness to drop the gloves, however, I found my swim counter-intuitively peaceful. Oh, I got kicked, scratched, yelled at and shoved, but for the most part it was easy to maintain a steady rhythm, with only occasional disruptions and contact. It was a soothing thing, being able to take ownership of my swim and steadily glide along amidst the bedlam surrounding me. Progress was marked by the fading of the announcer's voice as I swam out the long side of each loop's rectangle and its increasing volume as I made my way back in. One hour and twenty two minutes was almost exactly what I had been hoping for, so I was feeling good as I had my wetsuit stripped off by a volunteer and made my way to transition, grabbing my run gear and ducking into the changing tent.</span><br /></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWRmxNvENI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/UGeSwH_3LEs/s1600/2Swim.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWRmxNvENI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/UGeSwH_3LEs/s320/2Swim.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5513973414017044690" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;">Feeling good getting out of the water. Rod MacIvor photo. (If you want cool pictures of your Ironman, I highly recommend having a step father with media credentials and extensive photojournalism experience.)</span> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I hope to God that the inside of that changing tent is the closest I ever come to a combat hospital. It was dark, it was muggy and there were body parts all over the place. I was still a little dizzy from the swim, and to add to the confusion people were shouting their numbers out so that volunteers could run and get their bikes. At one point I just sat down and laughed for a few seconds, taking in the absurdity into which I had wedged myself.<br /><br />I had been looking forward to the bike. My training rides in the Rocky Mountains (Boulder was the ideal place to live while training) had been exercises in the epic and sublime, and had put me in a good place to hammer through North America's hilliest Ironman course. The rain came down hard during the first forty-five minutes or so, but it let up by the time I had made the ten kilometer descent into Keene on lap one, leaving us with cloudy skies and little wind. Ideal racing weather.<br /><br />Like the swim before it and the run after it, the bike was a two-loop affair. This is great psychologically, as it allows the athletes (and me) to think of each distance in smaller increments. It also means the bike course goes through town twice, at which points we pass amidst the thousands of fans, locals and revelers who have assembled.<br /><br />Right. The fans. Sarah and my sister had rallied the troops in a big way, and I was equal parts humbled, motivated and confused by the pack of 40-strong who sported the red t-shirts and held cutouts of my head on sticks all day.</span><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWXRo5caUI/AAAAAAAAAOw/ZdjYvVbnnTs/s1600/emcrop.TshirtgroupO9861.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 208px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWXRo5caUI/AAAAAAAAAOw/ZdjYvVbnnTs/s400/emcrop.TshirtgroupO9861.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5513979648076966210" border="0" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWU0BMKueI/AAAAAAAAAOY/xcXatsE9wPA/s1600/emcrop.TshirtgroupO9861.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><br /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;">The Shouldice/Hart/MacIvor families (both immediate and extended) and family friends. The Fitzpatricks represented in equal numbers, and also had the best tailgate party of Ironman day, <a href="http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/514502.html">according to the local paper</a>.</span> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWU091v1NI/AAAAAAAAAOo/Ic1jlY_5esI/s1600/1Design.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 217px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIWU091v1NI/AAAAAAAAAOo/Ic1jlY_5esI/s320/1Design.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5513976956459144402" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">A close-up of the t-shirt design, courtesy of my sister's immensely talented friend </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.mchenwears.com/">Emily Chen</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />The bike ride is a long and solitary endeavour, so knowing that I would have warm faces and familiar voices waiting for me in town was a much-needed boost as the winds picked up and I grimaced my way through the winding, rolling Wilmington notch and started the final 15km climb back into town on each lap. Approaching the village I was fully in my glory on the "Papa Bear" hill at the end of both laps, yelling "That's right, baby!" as I kept a high cadence and blasted my way up and through a narrow valley created by the thick line of spectators on both sides of the road. I passed a good chunk of other riders on the first time up especially, but knew full well they would probably catch up to me once the course leveled out (lap 1) or we started the run (lap 2).<br /><br />Everything you read about Ironman racing - especially on a course as hilly as Lake Placid - says to not go too hard on the bike. There's no sense being a hot shot on the bike, as the conventional wisdom goes, and having nothing left in the tank for the run. While that advice holds true, I know now that, Papa Bear notwithstanding, I was too conservative on the bike. My rides in and around Boulder had gotten me used to climbing, and I knew I wasn't going to be strong on the run anyway, so there would have been no harm in leaving a little more on the course. My time of seven hours, forty-five minutes was slower than I had been hoping for, but I was feeling alright physically and mentally as I pulled into the transition at the end of my ride. I was a little over nine hours into my race.<br /><br />I had stopped to pee two or three times on the bike, in addition to slow-downs for food at any of the five aid stations along each loop, and one much-needed stop at an ambulance for safety pins after a wardrobe malfunction had left me a little more exposed than I would have preferred. Fortunately, I had thus far avoided the dreaded "sloshing" of excess fluid in the stomach, so I was striking a good balance. The nutrition part of the day can be a challenge, as taking in enough fluids and calories is hugely important, but it is almost equally important to not take in too many and risk cramping or vomiting (both of which are common sites along the course). After another port-a-potty stop in transition, I exited the oval and started the marathon.<br /><br />Here again, crowd support was huge. My legs were feeling strong but certainly not fresh, so to have my crew on both sides of the street giving me huge love while I emerged from the tent and started off was, well, necessary. I can not overstate what a tangible difference they made at every encounter.<br /><br />My plan of running for the first 5k before taking a walking break went great for the first kilometer or so. My then-modified plan of walking at the aid stations (which were found at every one mile, or one-point-eight km) and running between them was also highly successful for the first thousand meters or so before falling apart.<br /><br />So it didn't take long to realize that the tank was running low, and what had started as a comfortable jog out of transition had turned into a run/walk relying heavily on inertia. I had envisioned a daylight finish, trotting into the stadium with a respectable marathon time and a bona fide sense of accomplishment. Instead, I had to accept the reality that I would be among the stragglers; a late-in-the-day finisher whose time on race day was perhaps not a fair representation of the training hours spent getting to the finish line. I took solace, though, as the kilometers slowly faded by, in knowing that even if I walked pretty much the whole marathon, I would still be in by the midnight cutoff. My goal for the run then changed again, this time to a simple binary rule: never, ever stop moving forward. No matter how slow I was going, how much of a joke my run had become, there was no way I was going to stop putting one foot in front of the other. I was tired, demoralized and more than a little pissed off, but the decision to not stop at all gave me the sense that one small part of the day was still entirely within my control. Let the death march begin.<br /><br />Back into town as I finished the first marathon loop, and the red army was still out in force, propping me up in a big way. By that time they had been supporting me for thirteen solid hours. Jesus. These people were out there all day to cheer me on, yet the total time they saw me was less than five minutes. Heroes.<br /><br />Partly to convince them (and myself) that I was feeling strong, and partly to take advantage of the boost they provided, I ran my way into and out of town. I probably should have stopped to say hello, but I wanted to make hay while the sun was shining, so to speak, so I used their energy to dial up the speed a little bit as I headed out of town.<br /><br />The second half of the run was almost entirely a walk. The sun had set, and with only the slower folks left on the course things got cold and lonely, although the camaraderie between the athletes was at its peak in these darkest hours, and the later it got the more I appreciated every single spectator and volunteer who was sticking with us. Literally every single one was making a difference at that point. My lightweight running gear was damp with the evening dew and the remnants of the afternoon's sweat against my skin as a bright Adirondack moon rose above the River Road.<br /><br />The day remained a privilege, even at its most punishing.<br /><br />I refused the emergency blanket offered to me by race officials as I plodded along. Sure I was cold, but taking the blanket seemed like a tacit acceptance that I had stopped putting in any speed-related effort. While that may have been the case, I didn't want to admit it by donning a tin foil cape.<br /><br />Max and my cousin (in-law) Marc appeared on their bikes and found me on a particularly desolate stretch of the run. Max had done the bike in a little over five hours and run a ridiculous three fifteen marathon to finish in 10:07. That's not a typo: he ran 3:15 - just five minutes off the Boston qualifying time for our age group - after averaging 34 km/h on the bike over 180km. Think about that for a second. It's absurd.<br /><br />They had come to make sure I was feeling alright and offer a bit of solidarity. I was grateful for the company, and Max humoured me as we compared notes and pretended we had been a part of the same event. After some idle chatting, and once I had milked the distraction for all I felt it was useful for, I sent them on their way.<br /><br />"Thanks boys. I'll take it from here."<br /><br />I dialed it up a bit after they pedaled away, and I started looking more like a power-walker circling the mall than a trauma patient regaining the use of my legs. It was all about the small victories at this point.<br /><br />As I approached within 5km of the finish, I knew a hell of a party was waiting for me. The Ironman organization is a well-oiled machine, and one of the things they do best is make sure there is a pumped and rocking crowd waiting for those athletes who need the support the most at the end of the day. I could hear the music as I approached, and Dance Mix '95 never sounded so good. I made my way along the village roads, striding over top of a day's worth of gel wrappers and paper cups discarded by the swifter afoot. The streets ran sticky with sports drinks and orange peels.<br /><br />No way I was going to walk into that stadium, so with about 2km left I discovered some untapped reserves and cruised along Mirror Lake Drive towards the finish line at the outdoor speed skating oval, where they set up temporary bleachers every year. It was overwhelming, after the darkness and isolation of the marathon, to be amidst bright lights, cranking music and literally thousands of people. But damn if it wasn't a glorious confusion, and damn it felt good to be a rock star. I was crossing the finish line of an Ironman. And while the time wasn't what I had hoped for, my race had long ago become a yes-or-no undertaking.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIcQFKquviI/AAAAAAAAAO4/dZN-XMNumJY/s1600/4Run.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 310px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/TIcQFKquviI/AAAAAAAAAO4/dZN-XMNumJY/s400/4Run.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514393949687430690" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, indeed<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">After I grabbed my medal, finisher's hat, t-shirt and two slices of pizza that were clearly baked in the oven of God and delivered by angels, Sarah - who had found me right away - led me to the rest of the crew. There were handshakes and hugs all-around, and I don't know that I have ever felt a deeper moment-specific sense of gratitude than I did just then. Training for and "competing" in an Ironman are such self-indulgent endeavours that the extent to which they can be glorified is a little much. That having been said, knowing that I had those people in my corner every second of the day lifted my spirits and gave me a sense of accountability. As I said, the difference it made to my day was tangible and I milked for everything I could, both mentally and physically.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />With the dust settling I collected my bike and transition bags and started walking, entourage in tow, up the hill to my old friend Jon's apartment above </span><a href="http://thebookstoreplus.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Bookstore Plus</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> where we were staying. I was feeling relaxed and lucid, though starting to shiver a little, and pretty much everyone - myself included - was relieved that I wasn't among those whose day ended in the medical tent or the back of an ambulance. That being said, my sister knew I wasn't quite out of the woods.<br /><br />"Hart, when was the last time you peed?"<br /><br />"Uuhhh...the second transition, I guess. So about six hours ago But don't worry, I've had lots to drink."<br /><br />As an emergency room doctor with a background in sports medicine, Elizabeth knew that the combination of sixteen hours of physical activity, high fluid intake and lack of urine output meant that I could be in trouble. She kept her cool, but immediately sent her partner Jordan to buy as much Gatorade as Bazzi's Pizza could sell him by law.<br /><br />And so I sat at the kitchen table while a select few watched me pound five sports drinks and a little water with the intent of flushing out my system. Before long I was in the bathroom, and despite my sister's warnings I was a little taken aback at how much my urine looked like blood. The reason it looked like blood, of course, is because it was blood (well, blood and Gatorade, I suppose). Apparently when there is so much muscle tissue breakdown in one day the tissue can clog the kidneys and the kidneys can start to fail, which is what had happened to me. I was fine after flushing them out (though I felt fine before then, too, which is a little concerning), and am grateful that my sister was on the ball.<br /><br />With my kidneys back in action I hit the pillow.<br /><br />Ironman number one: check.<br /><br />I've had mixed feelings reflecting back on the day, and the months of training that led up to it. In some ways I let myself down, in others I pushed myself immeasurably beyond where my thresholds of endurance and self-doubt were years, or even months or weeks before the race. I feel an immense sense of pride in finishing, and yet feel a little sheepish at even taking it on.<br /><br />We're a funny people, North Americans. When we're short on suffering, we orchestrate it ourselves. Then the especially ludicrous among us invite people to watch us grunt our way through it, following which we blog about it as if it is some noble thing to swim, bike and run until your kidneys fail (alright, so that part does make me feel hard core). When you think about it, the whole thing is a little ridiculous.<br /><br />Which is why perhaps my proudest Ironman-related accomplishment is not the race itself, but the fact that I largely kept it in perspective. I made a very conscious decision early on - right from the moment I signed up, bankrolled in my registration as a graduation present from my Mom - that I would not mortgage my life to this thing. Of course I made sacrifices - it would be physically impossible for anyone with family obligations and a full time job to not sacrifice things and still finish the race - but I also skipped workouts when required to maintain my identity and sanity. I also continually sought to remember where the race fit into the overall scheme of things. I tried to be careful not to make it sound like a chore to go out and train or have to plan my summer around the race, because at the end of the day it was one of the greatest priviliges I have known, and an experience I would not have traded for anything.<br /><br />I just hope that next time my kidneys are up to the challenge.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />Hart</span>Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-24544884910808103972010-07-21T12:36:00.001-06:002010-07-22T07:13:07.932-06:00The White HatMy father said that the reason he married my mother was that when they met she could name all the Montreal Canadiens. I'm pretty sure that it was, in fact, at least a contributing factor. His love of sports not only helped him choose a life partner but also raise his children, and before I could drive I had been lucky enough to attend sporting events of all varieties across North America. As a young buck I saw the Habs play at the Forum (spiritual), attended more college and pro football games than I could count (educational), and watched minor league baseball in Albequerque (random).<br /><br />But among the plethora of live events I attended, nothing was ever quite like the Ironman triathlons I've witnessed in my second hometown of Lake Placid over the past decade or so. Indeed, a full Ironman event is something that has to be seen to be understood - from the cannon going off at 7:00 a.m. and seeing two thousand people clawing and thrashing in a turbulent 3.8km white-water ballet, to the geeks in their aerodynamic helmets hammering their way through the 180km bike, all the way to the final stragglers gritting their teeth and trying to finish the full 42.2km marathon before the midnight cutoff.<br /><br />And it is that midnight hour that I find always the most inspiring. Watching a pro cruise across the finish line in nine hours is impressive and all, but there is something special about watching a grown adult on the brink of losing control of his bodily functions or forgetting her name, being cheered on by a couple of thousand pumped up spectators in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains in the middle of the night. Those final competitors are trying desperately to make it over the line in time to avoid the dreaded <em>DNF</em> (Did Not Finish) that is given to anyone who does not complete the entire 226km (140.6 mile) race before the clock strikes twelve.<br /><br />The crowd becomes an integral part of the Ironman experience as midnight approaches. Competitors who finished earlier in the day, families, friends and locals number into the thousands as they convene at the outdoor speedskating oval that doubles as the finishing stadium in the center of town. They stand on the bleachers or recline on the hill that leads up to the old stone high school that overlooks the festivities. Music pumps from the P.A. system (the same top-40 and oldies soundtrack that you are likely to hear at Uncle Sal's third wedding or watch awkward politicians dance to at a convention) while Mike Reilly - "the voice of Ironman" - rallies the crowd to cheer on those remaining few athletes who are trying to finish the run-come-death-march. And there are prizes. Not for the athletes this time, but given to the audience as the organizers rely on that universal truth of spectator sports: nothing makes white people yell and scream like the promise of a free t-shirt thrown at them by a marketing intern.<br /><br />The prizes aren't altogether lame, though. Four years ago I had a hat land at my feet. As far as baseball caps go, it seemed exotic to me at the time: made primarily of white mesh with a terry-cloth type of sweat band sewn into it and adorned with the name of one of the race's sponsors, it was probably the first ball cap I had ever seen that wasn't made entirely out of cotton or wool. It was more a piece of gear than a casual adornment, and it was of the ilk that the day's rock stars - being the 2,000 athletes competing - wore as they completed the run. Since I was twenty five years old at the time and not, say, seven, I won't recall that I was altogether enamored with the hat. But I was suitably taken that I picked it up and tucked it under my arm, deciding that while I didn't have use for such a hi-tech piece of head wear at that point in my life (I was still rocking my foam/mesh "Earl" trucker hat on a full-time basis), I might have occasion to use it at some point down the road. I took it home and tossed it onto my desk before bed that night.<br /><br />I have changed residences several times since then, and have always taken the hat with me, finding room in a bag as I've been in transit or on a hook in someone else's apartment as I've squatted for a few months. All the while I've resisted actually putting it to use, instead deciding that wearing the hat was something that I would have to earn, and day dreaming in the back of my mind of the day when I would cut the tags off and bring the hat's place in my life full circle. It may seem like a reach, but as I've found it in the bottom of my designer suitcase (read: hockey bag) or glanced at it buried on a closet shelf, the hat has been a constant reminder of a goal that has at times seemed larger-than-life, but has loomed closer as I've honed my swimming, biking and running chops over the past few years.<br /><br />And so it will be this Sunday, in that mountain town that I love, where I will be part of the early morning white-water ballet, where I will power through that half-day grind on the bike, and where sometime before supper I will slip on the crisp, white hat as I seek to be among those who finish before midnight. While there is much that will be out of my hands come race day, I can rest well until then knowing that I have the perfect piece of head gear.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-9832263865350443642010-02-14T20:59:00.000-07:002010-02-15T19:41:06.338-07:00Across the Great DivideThe reason we decided to move to Colorado can be summed up in four words: Rocky Mountain National Park. It was on a sunset drive over the spine of the Continental Divide - which bisects the Park - with elk grazing indifferently beside the road in the shadow of 14,000 foot mountains last June that we realized this was the place for us. A few months later we moved to Boulder, and a couple of recent trips back into that giant playground have reinforced to us that moving to within one CD's drive of Rocky Mountain National Park was probably a good idea. One such trip took place yesterday afternoon, when we threw the cross-country skis in the back of the car (alright, they were still in there from the last trip) and headed for the mountains.<br /><br />The drive from Boulder to the town of Estes Park and the eastern entrance to RMNP is a pretty one, as a traveler gains elevation (around 2,000 feet) and loses population. Our late start yesterday meant that we had the pleasure of enjoying the drive in the bright afternoon sunshine., and spirits were high as we stopped in Estes Park for some water and granola bars.<br /><br />After passing through town and approaching the park itself, we we noticed several cars pulled over to the side of the road about a quarter-mile shy of the entry station. When dealing with Americans in national parks, this means one of two things: snack bars or wildlife. To our delight, the attraction in this case was not 700-calorie ice cream sandwiches served up by a disenchanted local sophomore with acne and a hair net, but a herd of elk numbering in the triple digits grazing by the roadside.<br /><br />We encountered a similar site when we pulled into the park last week as well. In that instance we stood dumbfounded beside the car, speaking in hushed, revered tones and listening only to the percussion of hooves crunching the dried vegetation. Wanting to be closer to the animals but knowing that physically approaching would be an affront both to their right to enjoy their meal and my right not to be trampled, I opted to experience the animals using my soles. Off came the hiking boots and socks as I inched my way from the paved shoulder onto the same meadow grasses where the herd was grazing a few meters away. It is a most spiritual thing to stand barefoot on the same grass as creatures so simultaneously gentle and imposing, and my senses of connectedness and humility ran deep from the ground up.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/S3oEY8tG8gI/AAAAAAAAAOA/WykoZ4HhLh8/s1600-h/P1070817.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/S3oEY8tG8gI/AAAAAAAAAOA/WykoZ4HhLh8/s320/P1070817.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438664326661992962" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo by Fitzpatrick</span></span><br /></div><br />New snow had fallen since that previous encounter, however, so a similar scene would not be recreated yesterday. After sitting silently on the hood and watching a few calves approach within two car lengths, I jumped back in the car and we headed up Trail Ridge Road, towards our skiing. Trail Ridge Road is the section of highway 34 that climbs to some of the Park's highest elevations, and is the same one that we drove last summer when we realized we needed to move here. In winter, however, the road is closed at its highest elevations for the obvious safety reasons. Fortunately, it turns out that a closed winter road in the Rockies can make for an ideal skiing and snowshoeing trail, and we snaked our way up the road until the barricades, at which point we traded wheels for skis and kept heading up.<br /><br />The road-turned-trail starts off wide and heavily traveled, with skis being largely unnecessary for the first kilometer or so as one crunches over snow that has been well trampled not just by backcountry adventurers, but also curious tourists who may not advance more than a couple of hundred meters from their cars (but good on them for exploring what lies beyond the end of the road). Eventually, the trail starts to narrow. Sure, it is still almost as wide as a two-lane road, but the two-to-three feet of fresh powder that covers it make it nearly impossible to ski upward, unless you stay in the tracks that have been carved down the center by previous skiers. I have to admit to feeling a little bit hard core as the trail continually narrowed, funneling me into the middle as I skied past road signs that were buried up to their necks, and took in top-of-the world views that I had to earn by pumping the legs, rather than sitting on a lift.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/S3oE4jrHPcI/AAAAAAAAAOI/y4UjenM2vbg/s1600-h/P1070834.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/S3oE4jrHPcI/AAAAAAAAAOI/y4UjenM2vbg/s320/P1070834.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438664869698551234" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo by Shouldice</span></span><br /></div><br />We skied steadily upward for a couple of hours, gradually gaining elevation until we were probably somewhere around 11,000 feet. Our turning point was above a clearing that allowed us to look back down the mountain which we had just skirted, to the meandering river on the valley floor and the naked, jagged peaks in the distance. The sunset was just finishing its (weather permitting) daily spectacle, with its final pinks and oranges playing out in narrow strips slicing the very tops of the mountains at the far end of the valley. A chill was setting in as we started our descent.<br /><br />To take a trip into the Colorado backcountry in February is to journey into a muted magnificence as the land holds its frozen breath and waits for spring. There is a powerful silence brought on by the cloaking of snow, and the rumblings and echoes that permeate the hillsides and valleys during the rest of the year are dampened, with only the occasional nearby rustle managing to reach the visitor's ear.<br /><br />And yet, with this silence can come a stark amplification of other senses. Skiing back down the road in the post-sunset alpenglow of the early evening, there was a rare and sacred intensity in the colours of the Park. An intensity that seemed to swell as the daylight faded. The golds of the dead and stunted grasses were as bright as under the Prairie sun. The brown bark of the deciduous trees was as rich as the finest mahogany. And the purple wedge of sky that we were descending towards was woven of a fabric fit for the artist currently known as Prince.<br /><br />And then during our last kilometer or so the glow subsided. Where the afternoon snow had sparkled hours earlier, and the yellow rocks had glistened like buttered pancakes just moments before, we were now gliding through a tunnel of dusky and unsettling shadows, arriving back at the car just as headlamps (which we did not have) became a necessity. We drove down the rest of the road largely in silence as the faint outlines of elk, barely visible under the evening's first stars, dotted the meadowed landscape.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-84871349847775952042010-02-11T23:25:00.000-07:002010-02-11T23:57:26.107-07:00Covers of Songs and BooksThe bookstore sits by the edge of the highway that slows down as it arcs through through the tiny town. The building is sunken by a few feet, so the windows look out at ground level. As for the store, it consists of a main room that is the size of an average suburban living room, with a couple of smaller secondary rooms and a long hallway where they serve the ice cream, hot drinks and baked goods. The walls are lined with the the cracked spines of thousands of used books, and the familiar smell of yellowing pages mingles on the stale air with the heavy scent of dark roast.<br /><br />In a town with as much musical talent and appreciation as Nederland, Colorado, pretty much any public space can be turned into a makeshift performance venue. And so at Blue Owl Books (not to be confused with Boulder Bookstore, where I collect a pay cheque every two weeks), music happens most Saturday nights and one Thursday a month. The Thursday gig is always filled by the same duo, a local married couple named Billy and Jill who we went to see tonight. I had never seen them play together, although I've seen the husband work his flat-picking magic a time or two with his other band. You see, Billy Nershi is the singer and lead guitar player for the String Cheese Incident, and the String Cheese Incident is a band that I have traveled high and low to watch work their magic over the better part of a decade. My most recent "Incident" was this past summer in Rothbury, Michigan along with 20, 000 of my fellow Cheeseheads. Given that I am used to seeing Billy playing with the Cheese in front of thousands, I was thrilled to get the tip-off from a co-worker that he and Jill would be at the bookstore tonight.<br /><br />We arrived just as they were warming up in the main room - two musicians, two guitars and one completely unnecessary microphone. Benches had been brought in to handle the crowd, though the event turned into standing room only once the eighteenth and nineteenth spectators arrived. We positioned ourselves on the second bench back, with Sarah sitting right next to the bed where the shop's resident cat slept during most of the show. After a quick warm up and friendly greeting (more "Hi there, friends" than "Hello Cleveland!") the Nershis settled into two wonderful sets of bluegrass and country standards, folk songs and a couple of String Cheese favourites. I have been in dorm room jam sessions that have had more people in attendance, and the intimate setting lent itself more to the vibe of friends picking in a basement than a formal performance. Granted, formality has a way of going right out the door as soon as the performers start passing their bottle of tequila around among the audience.<br /><br />There is magic to be seen in watching someone play music for the sheer joy of it, and there was to be no questioning of Billy's motives tonight. He could have been playing to a hundred times more people down the road in Boulder, but you could tell there was no place he'd rather be than in front of fogged windows in a drafty bookstore with his wife singing harmony and twenty friends chiming in whenever they knew the words. The man's smile was as contagious as it was natural, and when he sang "I've been spinning 'round the wheel of life, and I've made one more night," you could tell that he was grateful for it.<br /><br />After a loose second set, Billy and Jill thanked everyone and put their guitars down. Billy took a seat on the first bench, sipping his beer while he struck up a conversation with our mutual friend Ryan. Ryan was quick on the introduction, and I soon found myself in a lengthy chat with Billy about some of his favourite people to play music with, and the road that led him to Nederland over the past thirty years since he left the East. I sat back and let him do most of the talking, so as to make sure it was a natural conversation between two bearded dudes in a bookshop, rather than an awkward interaction consisting of a longtime fan pestering a great musician. After a few minutes, Billy picked his guitar back up and strummed quietly while the half dozen or so of us who remained shot the breeze. Deciding this was a good time to leave, we zipped up our down coats and lowered our heads to soften the blow of the mountain wind as we slipped out the door.<br /><br />Billy played on as the lone employee switched off the outside lights.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-84766455108682781112010-01-04T00:21:00.000-07:002010-01-04T10:10:55.132-07:00This Must Be The PlaceI am living in Boulder, and Boulder is in Colorado. At least, I'm pretty sure it is. Some days, I'm not quite sure where Boulder is.<br /><br />Seminal U of T geographer <a href="http://www.cag-acg.ca/en/edward_relph.html">Edward Relph</a> defines placelessness as "the casual eradication of distinctive places and the making of standardized landscapes that results from an insensitivity to the significance of place" (Relph, 1976). So a placeless landscape is that which can - and does - arise anywhere, oblivious of or indifferent to any inherent human or geological variations which should make the landscape unique. When you picture your friendly neighbourhood commercial strip - complete with a Denny's, Staples and Canadian Tire - you are picturing the epitome of placelessness. It is the phenomenon of getting out of your car in Surrey, taking a look around and knowing that you could just as easily be looking at Truro and not know the difference.<br /><br />The longer I am immersed in it, the more apparent it becomes to me that Boulder - in all of its residential, post-1970s boom glory, and notwithstanding its overabundance of yoga mats, dreadlocks and self-righteous liberal bumper stickers - is a study in placelessness if there ever was one. While my daily bipedal commute to either of my jobs starts off on Folsom Street and takes me West towards the mostly unique businesses of the Pearl Street pedestrian mall (set in the shadow of the Flatirons), a trip East of Folsom into the bulk of Boulder sends one into a labyrinth of chain stores, strip malls and everything else that is average and common in North America.<br /><br />And while some thinkers - most notably geographer <a href="http://www.brinckerhoff.org/JBJsite/index.html">J.B. Jackson</a> - speak to the authenticity that can be found in these seemingly inauthentic spaces, a placeless landscape is not what I came to Boulder seeking. I thought I was making a break for the mountains, but the suburbs seem to have gotten here first and have acclimatized to the altitude just fine.<br /><br />So with occasional exception, Boulder hasn't quite provided the Colorado experience that we moved here looking for. We would have rather moved to a tiny mountain town, but the need for immediate employment forced our hands when we arrived, so we settled in and on Boulder: bigger than the mountain hamlets, but much smaller than Denver. The mountains are nearby, but they require at least a little bit of time and money to enjoy. Given that we don't have an abundance of time (because of our jobs) or money (also because of our jobs) right now, we have found ourselves lamenting the fact that we feel so close to, yet so far from everything we came here looking for. And so we made an unofficial New Year's resolution to make sure that we actually take the initiative required to live in Colorado while we are living in Colorado.<br /><br />Step one was last Thursday night (12/29), when I invested my Grandmother's Christmas money into the local economy in the form of tickets for Sarah and I to see the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Yeum4AaDw">Yonder Mountain String Band</a> at a theater down the street. Yonder has been in high rotation for me since 2001, and all four band members make their home in the nearby mountain town of Nederland (<span style="font-style: italic;">NED-er-lind</span>). The band plays fast-pickin', hard-drinkin' bluegrass music, and they do it with airtight precision that can blow the roof off a room. The last indoor show I saw them play was in Montreal to less than a couple hundred people, so to be able to dance atop the Boulder Theater balcony and watch them captivate a crowd more than ten times as big in their own backyard was quite a treat. This was a Colorado band singing Colorado songs to a Colorado crowd within a ten minute walk from our house. The show ripped, and was about as subtle as a kick to the teeth in its reminder of where we are living.<br /><br />With a shared day off today, a few days removed from a Yonder show that we are still humming along to, we decided to just get in the car and drive for the mountains. We were unsure of where we were going to end up, but hopeful that it would be, well, Colorado-y, at least in terms of our romanticized notion of what that means.<br /><br />We headed due east for 20 miles and reached Nederland, a mountain town we fell in love with shortly after arriving in the state. We wove through the dirt roads and rickety-yet-mountain-tough homes of old town Ned at an elevation of almost 9,000 feet (Boulder is at about 5, 400), turning south on the Peak-to-Peak highway toward Rollinsville, ten miles away.<br /><br />Picture the smallest settlement you have ever been to. Now divide it in half. Got it? Rollinsville, Colorado could be a suburb of the town you are now envisioning. We're talking a tiny crossroads tucked into the mountains, where you couldn't pretend to not be in Colorado even if you wanted to. There is a post office where people who work at the watering hole can get their mail, and a watering hole where the people who work at the post office can drink, and not much else save for a smattering of single-floor residences. The pavement runs out once you get about fifteen feet into town. This isn't a problem, though, as town itself only extends about another five hundred feet. The detour into Rollinsville was a scouting mission for us, as we will be returning to town to see our current bluegrass favourites - Michigan's <a href="http://myspace.com/greenskybluegrass">Greensky Bluegrass</a> - play a show at the town's bar on January 23rd (no, really).<br /><br />Back on the highway, now at over 10,000 feet we headed for the town of Black Hawk. "Oh, someone I met in Boulder was telling me about Black Hawk," Sarah said. "She told me how charming it is and how much cooler she thinks it is than Boulder." We arrived in town and parked just past the welcome sign. Sure enough, it seemed unique, charming and pretty small from what we could see although we couldn't understand why this tiny town had its own police force (a cruiser had passed us by when we first rolled in). We got out of the car and started walking.<br /><br />"Hey look, a casino," I said. We laughed, thinking we were somewhere about the size of Nederland or Rollinsville, and yet there was a casino just up around the bend...and another down the street...and another around the next bend.<br /><br />Wait...what?<br /><br />Yeah, so Black Hawk is a major gambling center in the absolute middle of nowhere. We're talking a mini-Vegas, where every business we saw (at least 15) was at least mostly a casino, there were multi-level garages or valet parking on every block, and a fifteen-story mega-hotel and casino overlooked town. This was a total and complete non-sequitur and was a little much for us to take on our day in the mountains, so we skipped town pretty quickly (but not before making an offering to the blackjack Gods and snagging a comped Diet Coke like the high-rollers we are).<br /><br />From Black Hawk (son of a bitch that place was weird) and the equally gamblo-centric and neighbouring Central City, we descended in altitude back to around the 8,000-foot mark and found our way to the Interstate. We followed I-70 West for about 20 miles, stopping briefly in Idaho Springs (Colorado still) and then ending up in Georgetown.<br /><br />Georgetown. Sitting on a valley floor flanking Clear Creek, wedged so sliver-thin between the peaks that the air was painted a premature dusky gray in the late afternoon, even as the skies above were a bright blue.<br /><br />Georgetown. Where on this afternoon a keen naked eye could spot a herd of big-horns (<a href="http://nitch.ca/BlogImages/goulet-ram.jpg">Nature</a>!) grazing on the slopes bordering the town to the North, and the mountain lions sometimes visit from the hills to the South. Town's main street makes a feeble and insignificant border between the two sets of mountains.<br /><br />Georgetown. Where mining has left and the interstate has slowed things down (easier access to the nearby ski resorts means fewer people stopping over in the winter), yet none of the 1,800 residents seems to mind. The tourists still come in the summer and the locals are content to have the run of the place in the winter, so long as the jobs at the resorts keep coming.<br /><br />Georgetown is the sort of place I want to come home to some day.<br /><br />After chewing the fat with a few of the locals and staying for a couple of hours and a plate of nachos, it was time to get on the road. We jumped back on the Interstate and headed East to Golden, turning North just before Denver to head back to Boulder. I'm back in my apartment now, feeling a little down to be back in my placeless new home, but grateful for the day I just had and the fresh eyes with which I can see my current situation. For the city may be where I sleep, but my living is done in the mountains.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-4209534629550045242009-11-20T10:27:00.000-07:002009-12-21T18:48:37.456-07:00Wheeeeee!While the packing of my clothes before heading to Boulder was a process so hasty that it bordered on negligent, the decision of which of my two beloved bikes to bring was not an easy one. While a mountain bike makes more sense for winter in Boulder, my current athletic pursuits more frequently involve the skinny tires of my road bike. Back and forth I went, until I decided that leaving either bike back home would be a grave injustice both to the neglected bike and also my mother, who has been trying to get my stuff out of the garage/basement/living room for the better part of a decade. So it was that both bikes found their way to the roof of the car for the cross-country journey.<br /><br />I had been out on the roadie a couple of times, but only in the past week did I head out onto a few modest dirt trails outside of town and rediscover my love for mountain biking. Last Friday I decided I had graduated from the trails skirting town itself, and took a drive into the mountains proper with my bike riding shotgun, looking for a little more excitement.<br /><br />The ride at Betasso Preserve is a 3 mile (5 kilometer) loop carved into the mountains of the Front Range about a ten minute drive from town. It was near-freezing at an elevation of around 6200 feet (1,890 meters) when I parked the car, tightened my helmet's chin-strap and wondered whether wearing shorts had been the best idea. It was a bleak-yet-beautiful November afternoon. I was mostly alone on the trail and had stunning views of surrounding peaks, rocky and snow-capped set against the cold grey sky. I could see the city of Boulder six miles (ten kilometers) in the distance, neatly tucked onto the valley floor just beyond Boulder Canyon. Off I went.<br /><br />I am riding my mountain bike on the side of a mountain in Colorado. Awesome.<br /><br />I planned to do the loop two or three times and felt especially vigorous early on my first lap. I screamed through the downhills and thought "Hey, this isn't so hard," until it occurred to me that since this was a loop and I was enjoying so much help from gravity on the first half, I would be in for some serious climbing on the second half. The lungs burned shortly after passing the midway point and starting the climb, not used to either the elevation or having to grind my heavy mountain bike up hills. Round about the start of the second loop, a few errant flake fell from the clouds that were starting to sock me in. Not really a bona fide snowfall, but enough that I could say that it was, in fact, snowing.<br /><br />I am riding my mountain bike on the side of a mountain in Colorado. And it is snowing. Awesome.<br /><br />I entered the second loop and took it a little bit quicker, having scoped things out the first time around and feeling a little more comfortable in the saddle, even with some sudden drop-offs beside the single-track trail. I let myself bank a little higher in the turns and unlocked my bike's rear-suspension so that I could more comfortably bounce over rocks. As I did this, I noticed that my views of surrounding peaks were disappearing quickly as the snow fell heavier.<br /><br />And heavier.<br /><br />And heavier.<br /><br />Wait a second, this has gone from novelty to gnarly pretty quickly. What had been a few errant flakes ten minutes before had turned into a real-deal, holy-shit-grab-your-skis-type of snow fall. It was coming down hard and I was right in the middle of it, with the dried browns of the elevated landscape turning to bright whites before I started climbing my way out of the second loop.<br /><br />I am riding my mountain bike on the side of a mountain in Colorado. And it is snowing. Hard. Awesome.<br /><br />With my smile growing as the snow accumulated the ride became a little trickier. Rocks became slick. The trail was tough to find in wide-open spaces where the snow was piling up the most. And in every turn my tires would spray a stinging batter of gravel, snow and mud, like someone had taken the egg beaters out of the mixing bowl. Snow was so thick on my watch that I couldn't see what time it was as I was riding, and the white stuff was piling up on my glasses as well. Thinking it to be somewhat unsafe to not be able to see, I paused for a second to clean off the ol' specs. The problem was, gear-head that I am I was wearing only non-absorbent technical fabrics at the time. So rather than sop up the snow and clean my glasses off the way a cotton t-shirt would, my wicking top simply served to spread the wealth, so to speak, smearing the snow and mud all over the lenses ensure only the soupiest of visibility.<br /><br />I am riding my mountain bike on the side of a mountain in Colorado. And it is snowing. Hard. And my glasses look like the before picture in a windshield-wiper commercial. Awesome.<br /><br />I spent the rest of the ride alternating between trying to see through my cataract-simulation lenses (dangerous because I couldn't see much of anything) and peering over the top of them, wincing like I had just taken a shot to the groin as my eyeballs were pelted with the icy snowflakes (dangerous because I couldn't see much of anything). The snow continued and I finished the final climb of the ride, my heart pumping and quads furious with me as I arrived back to the car, hoping that the snow caked to my bike would stay there so that I would look hard core as I drove down the mountain, through the canyon and back into town.<br /><br />I often seek elements of the spiritual or sublime in my outdoor endeavours. Indeed, that search is what frequently calls me to the woods in the first place. And while there were flashes of the sacred in that high country bike ride, the best part of it was that it was, well, fun. I got dirty. I yelled "woo hoo". I went too fast and I loved the fact that it seemed like a bad idea to be out riding as the snow fell against my bare legs. If I can come away from every bike ride, run or hike with no greater insight than an appreciation of how much joy is to be found when traveling a dirt trail on a cool afternoon, then my debt to the mountains shall be endless.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-57469549251462492442009-11-13T09:27:00.000-07:002009-12-21T18:50:28.290-07:00Run Like the Water<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />You should run like the wind, they've told me, fierce and untamed.</span><br /><br />Our east-facing bedroom window framed a piercing Colorado sunrise as I slipped out of bed at quarter after six. A few years ago there would have been no question that seeing the sunrise on a Saturday morning would have meant I was coming off a hell of a night and looking forward to a hell of a headache. While all-nighters still happen from time-to-time, it is my inner athlete - rather than outer drinker - who now more frequently sees a day's first light.<br /><br />Having been in Boulder for a few weeks, and despite a couple of modest hikes, a one-off cross-country ski and a lung-burning climb of a bike ride, I had yet to feel that I was taking full advantage of the outdoor life that we had come here seeking. So last Friday afternoon I went online and looked for any upcoming races I could do in order to kick start my active life here as I train for some physical challenges I have lined up for next summer. Sure enough, there was a 3.5 mile cross-country race in a nearby community the very next morning. Despite never having entered a cross-country race and not being entirely sure what I was in for, I promptly biked to the local running shop and plunked down my fifteen bucks for registration in the Twin Peaks Rotary XC Challenge.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You should run like an antelope, they've told me, out of control.</span><br /><br />Though the sun had now fully emerged for its daily pilgrimage to the west , our new neighbours remained largely dormant as we pointed the car north toward Longmont, Colorado under a cloudless sky (not the rarity in Boulder that it is in Victoria this time of year).<br /><br />The starts of the men's and women's races were staggered, but I huddled close to the start line of the women's wave shortly after arriving and registering, listening for any race-specific instructions. Despite my lack of cross-country experience, I figured I was in for a simple trail run, which would have been nothing new to me. Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard the race director squawk over the megaphone, "Alright, make sure you jump over the hay bales and go into the ditch. That's <span style="font-style: italic;">over</span> the hay bales and <span style="font-style: italic;">down through</span> the ditch. This is a cross country race, people."<br /><br />Excuse me? Sorry, I'm here for the race, not the journey to Grandmother's house.<br /><br />Apparently obstacles are commonplace in cross-country races, with this one being no exception. This was all somewhat foreign to me, but given that I am built more for comfort than speed and enjoy the equalizing properties of a course that doesn't have straightaways where skinny bastards can sprint (and there were skinny bastards a plenty on the course that morning), I was prepared to hop, skip and jump as necessary.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You should run like a caveman, they've told me, chasing something like your life depends on it.</span><br /><br />There was a forty-five minute gap between the starts for the women and the men, so Sarah and I took some time to walk around the course - a three-lap beauty on grass and trails, running alongside a stream then flanking a dam, weaving in and out of some light woods. As Sarah wandered around and took pictures, I headed over toward the stream and thought about the race ahead.<br /><br />I crouched beside the water, appreciative of its soothing gurgle and mesmerized by its flow, something we've all experienced at one time or another. I watched bubbles gather in a slow-moving spot on the surface, only to dissipate when they tumbled over a short ledge and into faster water below. I chuckled as the scene reminded me of runners at a start line, collecting as one until critical mass is reached, then the gun goes off and we all disperse at our own pace. The longer I experienced the stream the more metaphorical it became, its flow striking me as possessing the very same qualities that I strive for every time I set out on a run.<br /><br />I have never been one to run fierce and dominant like the wind, nor out of control like the antelope, nor possessed like the prehistoric hunter. Indeed, not being terribly blessed with either a runner's physique (like I said, comfort not speed) or an attitude that is conducive to being fired up and intense for sustained periods of endurance, I have often struggled when looking for an appropriate muse. But as I crouched beside that stream and watched its flow in the minutes before the race, the inspiration that has eluded me became as clear as the high country sky.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I will run like the water, I told myself. Smooth, yet unflinching. Placid, yet interminable. Effortless, yet powerful. </span><br /><br />And so I ran like the water, and the race became a joy. I set my own pace early on, scarcely slowing from start to finish as I made my way over the roots, stumps and hills that made up the course. There were a few moments where I thought about walking, but told myself that if I couldn't keep a steady pace for 3.5 miles cross-country on this morning - even with my recent change in altitude and current lapse in training - then I had no business looking forward to a busy season of triathlons next summer. A few recitations of my new mantra - <span style="font-style: italic;">run like the water, run like the water</span> - helped me regain focus during moments of doubt as I flowed over the dried leaves and burnt grass. With the <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/visit/downloads/desktopimages/flatirons.jpg">Flatirons</a> in full view, I fist-pumped across the finish line in thirty-six minutes, including fifteen hay-bale hurdles and three trips in-and-out of the ditch.<br /><br />Athletically speaking it was an achievement of rather modest proportions (indeed, not really an achievement at all), yet I left with a strong sense of satisfaction and renewed focus and motivation as I move ahead. I could not have asked for a better introduction to this new chapter in my inner athlete's life, and am looking forward to embracing all of the challenges and exhilaration of of running like the water from here on out.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-453649425773128332009-11-10T13:01:00.000-07:002009-11-11T20:09:21.135-07:00Harty Needs Your VotesHello there. I am interrupting your regularly scheduled blogging to ask a small favour.<br /><br />The Globe and Mail is having a contest to add one writer and one photographer to its editorial team for the Vancouver/Whistler Olympics (here's a <a href="http://journalismdream.theglobeandmail.com/default.asp">link</a> to the contest's website). For an underemployed law school graduate with dreams of using writing to pay the bills (hey, that's me) this would be the opportunity of a lifetime.<br /><br />This is where you come in.<br /><br />My writing entry has been submitted, and is now open for public voting. I need to be in the top-50 vote-getters in order to proceed to the next round, where the decisions will be made by an editorial board. Your votes would mean a lot to me. So would your mother's vote, and your sister's, your dog's, etc. Here's where you can read my story and vote for it, should you so choose: <a href="http://journalismdream.theglobeandmail.com/entry_article.asp?id=887">LINK</a> (regular readers will recognize this as an abridged version of a previous post).<br /><br />Voting can be done daily, so please consider voting more than once (or, you know, daily). Make it part of your evening e-mail ritual, sandwiching it somewhere between writing your old landlord to threaten legal action if you don't get your damage deposit back and looking at pictures of your grade seven girlfriend on Facebook. Voting is open until November 22nd, which gives us plenty of time, although other entries were submitted weeks ago. There are certainly more noble things you can do with thirty seconds and a click of your mouse, but this really would mean the world to me. Part of why I have taken this year "off" is to work on my writing and try and do something with it, so this is an opportunity that I don't want to watch slip away.<br /><br />Once again, here's the <a href="http://journalismdream.theglobeandmail.com/entry_article.asp?id=887">LINK</a> (http://journalismdream.theglobeandmail.com/entry_article.asp?id=887), and note that you are eligable to win some sweet prizes (a fancy camera and a tricked-out laptop) just for voting.<br /><br />Thanks, as always, for reading, and thanks in advance for voting. Also, as an added bonus, every time you vote an angel gets its wings and global warming will be reversed by one year. So really, let's all do our part.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />Hart<br /><br />-----<br /><br />P.S. The site did not allow me to include paragraph breaks in my submission. Here's the story as it looks with proper formatting:<br /><br />Hockey becomes infused with a unique sense of community and geography when taken up by free-spirited Northerners. This I learned one afternoon last February, shortly after moving to Yellowknife.<br /><br />The Great Slave Invitational is a perennial tournament serious in name only. The setting is a natural rink, complete with boards and lights, in front of cozy houseboats on Yellowknife Bay. The year I was in town, six teams competed for the highly coveted, duct tape and toilet-paper roll “Houseboat Cup” (equal parts Lord Stanley and Red Green). I manned the blue line for Team Trailer Trash, proudly representing the trailer park where I was living. Our jerseys? Sleveless undershirts sporting numbers written in mustard. I took the trailer park theme one step further, sporting borrowed skates held together with packing tape.<br /><br />Scores were kept and a schedule followed. Knowing when you played next allowed maximum resting time inside the tournament host’s houseboat, with skates warming by the fire and The Hip on the stereo. With a sub-minus forty windchill outside, time inside was cherished. <br /><br />After an undefeated round-robin schedule, Trailer Trash lost a heartbreaking semi-final. The overtime winner was scored by a high-flying Frenchman from Fort Smith with waist-long dreadlocks and an anomalous competitive streak. It was a tough loss, but after three games and a potato-chips-and-water subsistence all day, I was content to head home. With the final game starting and the evening winds picking up, I trudged across the bay toward my trailer and contemplated the game in a national context.<br /><br />But what is that national context? I’ve recently grown weary of the hockey myths perpetuated by our macro breweries, telling us that hockey is our great national unifier. More Canadian children play soccer than hockey, and yet we are supposed to be 33 million obsessed with men dressed in garters and stockings looking to score. And while I count myself among the masses riveted by my home team's annual playoff march and the ups and downs of our national program, I am often left feeling that our frozen loyalties contain elements of the contrived and predictable, that we’re all just buying into exactly what we’re told to buy into. <br /><br />And yet, an organic sense of territorial pride had grown inside me during the afternoon. The scene of the natural rink set among houseboats on a mammoth lake is not one easily duplicated elsewhere in the world, nor was it scripted by a potato chip commercial. While following the NHL's fake cold war can feel routine and formulaic, that afternoon felt spontaneous, authentic and lacking a forced sense of Canadian-ness. Indeed, the climatic and social circumstances that underscored the tournament were legitimate, inescapable byproducts of life in the far North strong and free.<br /><br />Author Winona LaDuke writes of patriotism to a land but not a flag. I walked away that day feeling patriotic toward a land and a game, rather than a flag and a beer commercial.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-40776204720289855472009-11-08T10:47:00.000-07:002009-12-21T18:51:41.335-07:00And We're Back<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-11499334-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script>Word. It's been a while since I've posted 'round here. Cyberspace custom is to apologize for such a lapse, however I think that perhaps the only online activity more self-indulgent than keeping a blog like this is to apologize when it falls by the wayside, as if narcissistically keeping the masses updated somehow constitutes doing them a favour.<br /><br />Anyway, it would be a little too daunting a task to give each of my adventures since Vegas the proper Harty Meal treatment, but here's a shotgun account of the past few months. For further details on any of this, please enquire within.<br /><br />From Las Vegas, it was on to Zion and Bryce Canyons. Zion had us coincidentally camping next to the college friends I ran into in Vegas as we hiked for a few days, and Bryce's <a href="http://reezmy.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/bryce-canyon-2.jpg">topography</a> is like that of another planet and highly recommended.<br /><br />From Zion we moved to another hole in the ground known as Grand Canyon. To best explore this monster we embarked on a four-day, three-night backpacking trip down to the bottom and back up. Hiking had to start before dawn each morning so as to avoid the deadly midday sun, and I don't know that I've ever been so uncomfortable due to the temperature in my life as I was on the afternoon of our third day, when it was still over a hundred degrees in the shade at five in the afternoon. Check out the picture below, taken on the canyon floor.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcGEGjKBrI/AAAAAAAAANk/9IMU9aTRZIk/s1600-h/5065_1181105248720_1260866089_30512197_8363855_n.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcGEGjKBrI/AAAAAAAAANk/9IMU9aTRZIk/s320/5065_1181105248720_1260866089_30512197_8363855_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401792945601513138" border="0" /></a><br />From Grand Canyon we headed to Colorado. First stop was visiting an aunt of Sarah's in the ski town of Aspen. Aspen may be a ski town, and elements of it were quite charming, but it's hard for a community to maintain its high country charm when the streets are lined with the same boutiques one sees on Rodéo Drive. What's more, a shop called "Two Old Hippies" featured a rack of jeans, the cheapest pair of which cost $850 (not a typo - cheapest jeans in "Two Old Hippies" were over eight hundred bucks, with most costing over a thousand). We enjoyed afternoon beers in town's only dive bar as we watched the colours on the mountain, but given that they say "the billionaires are pushing the millionaires out of Aspen," I don't know that we'll be putting down roots there anytime soon.<br /><br />From Aspen it was on to Rocky Mountain National Park, near Estes Park, Colorado. The mountain-top drive through the park at sunset on the day we arrived is not something I think I'll ever forget. Mountain goat were grazing by the herd in meadows that we passed, and we saw literally hundreds of elk, some just a few feet away from us (check out our picture, below). All of this was set against the iconic, jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Rockies while the sunset was of an intensity that a man is lucky to see once every few years. We spent the next three days in the park and fell in love with Colorado. Hard. The mountains, animals and people all continually showed us why so many folks find it so hard to leave this state, and we left headed east, knowing that we would be back.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcGgthRmfI/AAAAAAAAANs/-M85rHXKQrw/s1600-h/10521_1262309318771_1260866089_30803340_7624276_n.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcGgthRmfI/AAAAAAAAANs/-M85rHXKQrw/s320/10521_1262309318771_1260866089_30803340_7624276_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401793437098940914" border="0" /></a><br />From Rocky Mountain National Park it was on to the Rothbury Music Festival in Rothbury, Michigan. Four days of camping, music (heavy on the bluegrass and jammy stuff) and an <a href="http://icecreamman.com/wp-content/gallery/sherwood-forest-rothbury-09/rothbury_2009_sherwood_forest_kuntz_001.jpg">enchanted forest</a>. (Andrew Teehan, given your hate/hate relationship with hippies, you can probably skip this one).<br /><br />From Rothbury, Michigan it was on to Moncton New Brunswick (getting harder and harder to call this a "Western" road trip), with a brief stop in Ottawa. Moncton was where one of my closest friends was getting married, and featured a similar cast of characters to a wedding the previous summer on PEI. Predictably, things got a little bit nuts in the best kind of way, and I say without hyperbole that it was among the five best parties I've ever been to, with quite the overabundance of "I love you, man" and Fireball. (The picture below was heavy on both of those things, and not staged. That's the groom, second from right).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcIkns_jcI/AAAAAAAAAN0/Mq_YqL4RavA/s1600-h/6480_213156745583_537945583_7739000_8014323_n.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__5ZmLXKHq88/SvcIkns_jcI/AAAAAAAAAN0/Mq_YqL4RavA/s320/6480_213156745583_537945583_7739000_8014323_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401795703280209346" border="0" /></a><br />From Moncton it was back to the Ottawa/Lake Placid/Malone (NY) area for the next couple of months. It was great to catch up with family and friends from home, most of whom I hadn't spent much time around since departing for Victoria three years prior. There were weekend road trips, a couple of concerts and the odd shift at family businesses thrown in before we packed up the car again in early October and headed back west.<br /><br />From Ottawa/Lake Placid/Malone, it was back to Colorado, and specifically Boulder, where I sit on this bright Sunday morning blogging from the edge of downtown. Boulder is renowned as a hotbed of bluegrass music, free spirits and outdoor recreation, so it seemed like the perfect fit for us over the next little while. It's only been a few weeks, but Boulder feels like a pretty good fit so far, and I'm pumped to see what the next few months will bring my way.<br /><br />So here we are. Blogging will be regular once again, and as always it is a pleasure to have you along.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-50839957532518997752009-06-21T15:53:00.000-06:002009-11-08T17:30:38.930-07:00Vegas Baby! (Part 2)<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-11499334-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script>We awoke Thursday and agreed that before we left we should poke our heads in a casino one more time. Neither one of us had placed a bet, and I didn't want to leave Vegas without spending even a couple of minutes at a blackjack table. We packed up the car, checked out of the hotel and made our way to New York New York where I quickly found a ten dollar minimum bet table (there were no five dollar tables just then). It was just the dealer and me, and as soon as I sat down the magic started happening. I was bulletproof, and eating the dealer's hands for breakfast. 19...20...21, it seemed I couldn't lose. The pit boss walked over and stared for a few hands and a small group of people stood over my shoulder and watched. (This is might be a little cooler in my head than it actually was, but please don't burst my bubble). I was at the table for less than ten minutes before I knew it was time to leave, but when I did I had turned my $10 bet into over sixty bucks. Sixty bucks which I felt I had a civic duty to reinvest in the local economy, what with the current financial climate and all.<br /><br />"Hey Sarah, what do you think rooms cost here?"<br /><br />Once I factored in my new riches, we could stay at New York New York for about ten bucks, plus get a free room upgrade courtesy of my two-years expired CAA card (shhhh). Things were turning around for us in Sin City, as in the period of a couple of hours we had gone from unimpressed passersby with our car pointed out of town, to energized revelers sipping Coronas poolside. We were living large on our sixty bucks, and looking forward to a night on the town. We got sucked in, and were loving every second of it.<br /><br />We briefly looked for show tickets in the afternoon, but we were a little naive in our expectations, price-wise. Unless we wanted to see a never-was magician on the downside of his career, we'd be looking at spending well into triple figures between the two of us to see a decent show. We figured that walking the strip, having dinner and maybe gambling a little bit would be a much more sensible way to spend money we don't have.<br /><br />Putting on our cleanest dirty clothes from the back of the car, we emerged from our room at 9:30 and the strip was in full effect, with the daytime tourists making their final rounds and the nocturnal carousers starting to emerge from the woodwork. We saw the water show in front of the Bellagio (because water is so abundant in the desert that they can just throw it around), a fire show somewhere else and talked to Elvis impersonators as we walked. Dinner was a late one, and it was nearing midnight when we were ready to have some drinks and do some gambling with full bellies. We were getting a little sleepy, though, and in perilous danger of fading away before making guaranteed financial gains at blackjack. Luckily, a quick swing by the convenience store in New York New York for a couple of tall boy cans of Miller Genuine Draft fixed that up, and feeling brave I went back to the tables.<br /><br />I found another ten dollar table, pulled twenty bucks out of my pocket and went to work. My luck from the afternoon seemed to be continuing (except for the hand where I split aces, drew another ace, split again, and ended up with a push and two losses when the dealer drew 21) and I was feeling good. I was up as much as sixty bucks on the night (the magic number) but ended up losing twenty of that, so I was up forty bucks when I stepped away. We had an awesome night altogether, cruising the casino floor, making generous new friends, playing a hand or two at a time and, well, being in Vegas. I went to bed at four o'clock, but only because I felt that I had to. I had lost all sense of time (what happens in Vegas is carefully orchestrated by the people who run the casinos) and really didn't feel like slowing down. It was time to cash in, though, and by the time we factored in Sarah's winnings the next morning (when she played her first ever hands of blackjack), and my $1.50 windfall on a Price Is Right-themed slot machine, we were up about $140 at the casinos when all was said and done (although admittedly most of that never left town, and of course I would not be so proudly crunching my gambling numbers had we not enjoyed so much dumb luck).<br /><br />I have a lot of issues with Las Vegas. It really is a ridiculous city - a paradoxical beacon of overindulgence in the middle of the desert. Even for those who don't gamble, drink or overeat (and why else would you go to Vegas, really?), simply turning on the tap is an exercise in the unsustainable, and Vegas as a whole is a metaphor for North American short-sightedness if their ever was one.<br /><br />But my biggest issue with Las Vegas is how much I enjoyed it. Sure, I'll hike into the backcountry, sit in the woods and read for hours or even days on end and feel a deep inner calm, self-awareness and interconnectedness with the world around me, but damned if I don't feel alive when you put a tall boy can in my left hand and a stack of chips in my right. I remain annoyed with the toll that Vegas takes on the Southwest's water supply, and the unrealistic culture of consequence-free consumption that it seeks to promote and proliferate, but my personal turmoil lies in the fact that I'm already trying to rationalize my next trip.<br /><br />Pleasure is Vegas's business, and they are good at it. They know exactly what buttons to push and how much of Pandora's Box to show you in order to rope you in, and it is all at your fingertips 24 hours a day. If we hadn't been able to gamble early in the day before we had planned to leave town, or buy cheap alcohol late at night from a convenience store in our hotel, we would not have spent as much money there as we did (which really wasn't a lot, even if it was more than we had planned), and wouldn't be talking about a return trip. Like six year-olds drawn to the cereal box with the coolest picture on it, we both fell for the inauthentic and fleeting satisfaction provided by a blindingly bright and placeless landscape.<br /><br />Moderation is not something that you think of when Las Vegas is mentioned, but if I tell myself that future visits can be as budget-friendly and freakin' awesome as my first one was, perhaps I can justify poking my head in again at some point down the road. If anyone cares to come along, I'll buy the first round of tall boys.<br /><br />Peace,<br /><br />HartHart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4774898398976954264.post-75152059051594341602009-06-21T15:51:00.000-06:002009-11-08T17:30:59.730-07:00Vegas Baby? (Part 1)<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-11499334-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script>The morning after our late-night brush with megafauna we were at a slight crossroad. We could either head back into California - possibly as far as the coast - and look for jobs, or continue the trip by heading to points east. Heading east would mean going at least as far as Grand Canyon in northern Arizona, and after a bit of head scratching we figured that we would be foolish not to take advantage of the chance to extend things a little bit. Plus, we would have to drive right through Vegas on the way, meaning we could cruise down the strip once just to say we did it.<br /><br />On our way to Vegas and Grand Canyon we spent two restful nights at the Grover Hot Springs State Park. Located at elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the park has naturally fed mineral hot pools in the midst of a mountain meadow, which make for a soothing cap off to any day. We had a great site - on a bluff overlooking the park, with dense forests behind us - and deer would wander through our living area at dusk. It was almost over-the-top idyllic. After two days there where we didn't do much other than relax, we were headed to Grand Canyon, via Sin City.<br /><br />The drive through the interior of Nevada is, well, depressing. If Vegas is the city that made it big gambling, then the small towns you have to pass through to get there are the ones who got addicted and lost everything. Boarded up businesses seem to outnumber those that are still clinging to operation, there are rows of slot machines crammed into every dingy convenience store, and I half expected to see tumbleweed instead of locals whenever we stopped for gas or food. All of this isolation and hardship is all the more pronounced when contrasted with a destination that is renowned for the way that people and money flow through its revolving doors at a mind boggling rate.<br /><br />We pulled onto Las Vegas Boulevard ("the strip") just after dark on a Wednesday (June 10th), much to the shock of our wilderness-oriented systems (our time in L.A. and San Francisco notwithstanding). The lights were flashing, the music was blaring and the sidewalks seemed to be one continuous line of people, three abreast, on either side of the street. We weren't sure that time in Vegas would be to the enjoyment of either one of us, but it was getting late and we managed to find a modestly priced Travelodge in the heart of the strip, so we pulled in for the night. (While we paid a nightly rate at the Travelodge, there were enterprising young women in short skirts spending time in the parking lot and going in and out of rooms with a frequency which would indicate the inn might have had some sort of hourly special that night, but I digress).<br /><br />After showers we cruised the strip, a daunting task in and of itself. Single resort/casinos take up entire blocks, so passing by only a few of them can take a while when you factor in the slow-moving pedestrian traffic. Added to that is the fact that they are all mazes on the inside (deliberately, of course) so "Let's go into the MGM to grab something to drink" can quickly turn into a forty minute side trip into a labyrinth of indulgence. New York New York looked inviting enough, so we wandered in just to spend a little time on the floor of a casino.<br /><br />We were wearily making our way across the floor, both acknowledging that we probably weren't in the right frame of mind for a Vegas trip, when I heard "Hart? Hart Shouldice? Is that you?" Turning around and drawing a brief blank I saw an acquaintance from my days at school in New Brunswick. It was as surprising as it was comforting to see someone who had been a friend years ago so far from the last place we had been in contact. He was there with his girlfriend and another couple, also from our alma mater (Mount Allison University), and we had a pleasant though brief catchup. They were on their way to Utah for some hiking the next day, so we wished them well and continued our dazed meander, as I extolled to Sarah for the billionth time the virtues of going to a small school with a well-defined sense of community and a warm social network that an alumnus never seems to be far from.<br /><br />The strip was too much to take, plain and simple, so we headed back to the Travelodge, looking forward to Grand Canyon the next day.Hart Shouldicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07686576195760040744noreply@blogger.com0