And finally the flight to Calgary....sweet baby cheeses. It was as if heading to Canada people became 'normal' again. The Springer Show had been replaced by the audience from Temptation. The flight crew were polite, spoke to you like a human being and not a visitor from outer space and I managed to get an hours sleep...ahh the serenity. And just to top things off there were 5 efficient Canadian Customs officers to greet us, a plane of about 80 people, so 15 minutes later I was waiting for my bag which appeared 5 minutes later. To quote the lads from the U2 concert 'f*cking bang'!! And Raj was at the aiport to transport me back to Calgary for a reunion with his lay-deez, Devina and little Nyah. Sweet fancy moses!!
And so here I am in a very balmy Calgary (10 below zero and heading down to minus 15),
Anyone care to swap some 25 degree sun for a dumping of snow or a bucketing of rain because you sure have come to the right place. I can plough you up some snow before you can say "Where the hell have my nuts disappeared to", the guys that is, ladies. In fact my handiwork here at the Citadel in Calgary (Suburban Cowtown to the locals) is quite a sight to behold. A better ploughed driveway and footpath I have yet to see but then again I may be slightly biased. And that was after my virgin plough on Dec 27 went above and beyond the call of duty.
I still blame the instructions which I distinctly remember as "Plough the snow to the post in the middle of the lawn", which I carried out to perfection. Driveway ploughed, tick. Footpath ploughed to post, tick. Lawn ploughed to the post, tick. Yep I ploughed half the damn lawn much to the amusement of Devina, Raj, Nyah (18 months old and still mouthing those words "Oh Daz!"), the neighbours, anyone who knows the Sharma's and Kumar's in Calgary and believe me that accounts for at least 15% of the population. Live and learn boy, live and learn. I must say there is something therapeutic about shovelling snow and de-icing the driveway, although when the temp is 22 degrees below and you start to lose an sensation in your fingers the fun slightly goes out of it as the words "So is this what frostbite, the silent killer feels like?" enter your head.
My first three weeks out of Oz have seen me spend the first and third weeks in Calgary and the second in Vancouver. My first week highlights went something like this:
Arrived in Calgary Boxing Day evening, jetlagged but damn glad to see Raj and Devina (my upstairs neighbours from Weewanda St in Glenelg from Sept 01 to March 04 for those not familar) after nearly three years. The cool thing was you just pick up right where you left off and 3 years feels like about 3 weeks.
Awoke at midday on the 27th to be greeted by an 18 month old cutey named Nyah. Over the week my toddler experience increased dramatically. Forget Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when you have such toddler anthems as Baby Beluga, Mister Sun, Daddy's Old Grey Whiskers and the dancefloor classic about Mr Donkey, you know it as Timbalayo. And not to mention round the clock "Timby, Timby" which you all know as J Timberlake bringin' Sexy Back. And believe me I brought Sexy Back more times than I care to remember, not to mention cutting some pretty fine moves with little Miss Nyah on her giant alphabet floor mat.
And can Nyah cut the moves or what, especially when she shakes her butt on cue to Timby! I also learnt the power of putting kids on shoulders and swinging kids through the air....look folks no more tears. Well that is until you lose your grip and the 'real tears' begin to flow! Only joking folks there were no such accidents that a few stitches didn't fix. No seriously, I think I won Nyah over with my humour, wit and charm and constant supply of Cheerio's. Lets face it, it was the Cheerios that sealed the deal! And I can still hear Nyah utter those magic words "Hi Daz", to greet me in the morning and "Ohhhh Daz" whenever I unsuccessfully tried to 'bring sexy back'. I usually need a few vodka red bulls before sexy even thinks of comin' on back!
Thursday night saw us all venture out to the burbs to friends of Raj and Devina's for dinner and you know when two former chefs are preparing the meal there will not be a dry as a nuns grated cheese and carrot salad or balled watermelon basket with raw onion in sight. Try steamed mussels for entree and salmon for main...after airline food this was culinary gold. Then the men split upstairs to check out the TV room and a bigger freakin set I have yet to see as it took up over 3/4's of the wall with the speakers stretching up just as far. And then I went for a ride in the truck, which was a legalised version of a monster truck that even I struggled to get into as it was so high off the ground. The words 'Why?" kept going through my head as we cruised along steamrolling over other cars, any pedestrians that dared to take us on and the occasional suburb the merely got in our way. Did I mention the in car DVD players? This was a house on wheels not a way of getting from A to B. On disembarking I managed my first faceplant of the trip as I tried to unsuccessfully run on snow in my 'whoops no grip' Rossi's. And no, snow covered bituman presents no soft landing as you quickly make your way through the powder snow and come to an abrupt halt as your knees and elbows meet the bituman in one mighty thump. The bruising has diminished but the pride still hurts!
Spent most of Friday downtown in what is possibly the best outdoor store ever, Mountain Equipment Co-op. You could get lost for weeks in this superstore that has everything covered from skiing to hiking to climbing to camping and everything in between. The sort of store where you walk around for half an hour in the shoes you are considering buying to see if they feel ok, that is after you have tried them out on the rock wall for grip.
When your hosts are Indian you know you are in for some awesome food and between Devina and her mum my stomach has been treated to duck curries, mud crab curries for New Year, vegetarian curries, chocolate fondue with fruit (the molten chocolate you could consume on its own, that stuff was goooood!) and a guacamole dip with enough fresh chilli to blow your socks off.
New Years saw Raj working so the rest of us tucked into the Crab Curry and red wine as the temperature plummeted to about 15 below outside. Was a really weird sensation sitting around in the morning watching New Years fireworks in Sydney knowing there was still about 16 hours before the clock ticked past midnight in Calgary.
What is a trip to Canada without coming face to face with giant over-sized beaver I ask you...and Calgary Tower was just the place to make that happen. The tower has the obligatory glass you stand on that looks down to the street hundreds of metres below, the kind that kids love to jump up and down on in the hope that it might break, (and unfortunately the piece of the puzzle they have not worked out yet), send them plummeting to an untimely death. And yes at the bottom of the Calgary Tower in the gift shop was to quote Leslie Neilsen from Naked Gun, "nice beaver". A giant oversized and stuffed beaver ready to take centre stage with the obligatory buck teeth. No-one does beaver to the size and scale of these zany Canadians I tell ya!
And them before you could say goodbye brass monkeys, Raj, Devina and Nyah were jetting off for Australia for a month of extreme heat and I was headed to Vancouver to meet up with Susan and a 323 cm mother of a dumpìng of snow at Whistler, Blackcomb.
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