Hitting the slopes...hard

So there we were, in our ginormous ski boots that weigh a ton and are virtually impossible to walk in, with our poles and our skis over our shoulders, trudging off to find our ski pro.

Word of advice: when holding your skis over your shoulder, don't turn around to look for something as you will more than likely knock someone unconscious with said skis as they whip around like helicopter blades. It's still okay if you knock a stranger unconscious... You just make a run for it (read as: awkward slow shuffle in ski boots) and hope the blow to the head has erased their memory by the time they come around, so they don't immediately come after you to give you a snotklap in return. But knocking your ski buddy unconscious is a no-no. You will need your wits about you during your lessons as you both suck equally, and are likely to do damage to each other as it is.

We finally found our ski pro, who enquired as to our level of expertise, to which we replied, "We are as skilled as two year olds". Lucky for us, a few two year olds chose that moment to go skiing past us at absolute pace while ramping a few hills, so we could change our answer. Otherwise the pro would have taken us to the highest mountain and pushed us off. Those bloody ankle-biters are ridiculously good! Really smug too, which is why we might have 'accidentally' tripped three of four of them...an hour... just to show them who's boss.

The pro taught us how to put our skis on and take them off (though we found that falling was a much quicker way of getting rid of the pesky things), how to get onto the magic carpet without blikseming over, how to turn and how to come to a stop. Then he pushed us off the bunny slope which is a lot more scary than it sounds (even though the previously mentioned two year olds kept making their fingers into L shapes and yelling "loser!" at us from more advanced slopes).

Of course, the slope was made a million times more treacherous by the fact that it was full of not only other students doing their lessons but even worse... GORBs who had no effing clue. That kind of extreme learning is not for sissies, I tell you.

We finally graduated from the bunny slope and headed for the undergraduate slope which is quite a bit steeper. On my first go, I discovered the method the pro had taught us of stopping (squeezing your knees together and forcing your toes inward like you desperately need to pee) only works on slopes that aren't that steep. Excellent. From my observations, most of the GORBs thought the best way to stop was to grab hold of the nearest person, but I refused to take any innocent people down with me. Except the smug two year olds who are too quick to grab hold of. So I had my first bad fall as I was heading for a row of pine trees at tremendous pace. It was either fall and stop or wrap myself around a tree. And though various members of my family have accused me of being a tree hugger at one point or another, I made an executive decision that the tree and I did not need to be surgically removed from one another.

As bad as that was, it wasn't as bad as Bron who went bombing down the hill, and without being able to stop, went sailing through the car park. A big SUV slammed on brakes a mere few inches from her, as I wondered how on earth I'd explain to people that Bron was hit by a car while skiing. You can imagine how much I confused the driver by banging on the hood and telling him to watch where the hell he was going!

After a lot more falling, starfishing, bombing and swearing, we finally made it to the graduate slope. Woo Hoo! Where we used the proper ski lifts for the first time and I was almost taken out at the starting line by moering off the thing, almost breaking a leg and causing a ten skiier pile-up while being heckled by more two year olds.

Eish. As I heard another South African mutter to his friend as he went limping off to the medics, "Hierdie fokken sneeu is vol kak".

Indeed it is, but there's nothing quite like the rush of barreling down a hill that's covered in ice with two planks strapped to your legs. You just gotta do it!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Blue Mountain Resort

Goofs on Rental Boards

So those of you who have followed this blog for a while (your cheques are in the mail!), will know that Poodle and I tried snowboarding a year or so ago and failed dismally at it. We fell (a lot), swore (a lot), crashed (a lot) and thus gave up and went to the pub to drink (a lot).

 

So you can imagine our trepidation when we headed out to Blue Mountain Resort with the sole purpose of learning to ski. Well actually, our real sole purpose was to watch our friends learn how to ski, and to point and laugh at them (a lot) as they had a lot of nasty spills while learning. And to take pictures while pointing and laughing because humiliation is nothing if it can't be shared on social media.

 

Alas, the sneaky buggers went for lessons in South Africa before arriving in Canada (which they forgot to mention to us) and so they arrived, suited up and went shooping off into the sunset looking very professional and experienced. Bugger!

 

So since pointing and laughing was off the agenda for the week, we had to find something else to do. Besides drinking. You guessed it - we decided to learn how to ski. We rented the equipment, signed up for lessons and started with learning 'slope terminology' which we will share with you here.

 

1. GORBs - GORBs are "goofs on rental boards" who come to resorts, don't know how to ski, hire equipment and then hit the slopes. You're probably thinking that makes us GORBs but you'd be wrong. Ha! GORBs are people who don't sign up for any lessons at all, and think they can learn to ski by watching other people's lessons. Madness! We could barely learn how to ski watching our own lessons.

 

GORBS are all over the place. You'll see them dressed in jeans or long flowing winter coats that reach their toes on the slopes, yelling meaningless instructions ("Use the steering wheel" and "Falling is the best way of stopping!") to one another as they go barrelling into trees. It would be incredibly entertaining if they weren't also crashing into you every other second or falling on the ground, laying immobile while being covered in falling snow and thus creating ramps to launch you into orbit.

 

2. Bomber - a bomber is someone who has no skill or control and who goes racing down a hill at idiotic speeds.

 

3. Starfish - this is worse than a bomber, because a bomber comes down on two skis. The starfish comes down the hill looking like they're doing a series of cartwheels while still attached to their skis and poles.

 

During your first lesson, you get told that you don't want to be these 3. And I can tell you categorically that we weren't these 3. We were only 2 of the 3 which is not too shabby at all.

 

To be continued....

Feeling Irie in Jamaica

Right, since this is a travel blog, I guess we should post some stuff, every now and again, about travelling. It's only fair. You people have paid good money. Erm, actually,  you've paid no money at all, but let's not split hairs (or dreadlocks) over that. We will give the people what they want. And by "we" I mean me. This blog will be called "B's Excellent Adventures with a Non-Blogging Toss Fuck" from now on. (This is to be noted in the minutes of this meeting and executed by the person in charge of blog names. Unless that is said-toss fuck).

 

So, we recently went to Jamaica for a few days, and from what we can remember of it, we had a wonderful time! Between the rum punches and erm.. other stuff... it's hard to keep track of things on the island.

 

Now, when most people think of Jamaica, they think of Kingston or Montego Bay (mostly because people aren't very imaginative or well-educated), but we decided to head out to the cliffs of Negril. You would think because Negril is high (pardon the pun) on the cliffs, it wouldn't get hit by tsunami waves, but you'd be wrong. Rick's Cafe, which is world famous for its cliff jumpers, had to be totally rebuilt in 2004 when 80ft waves crashed over the cliffs and destroyed the joint (pardon the pun again) during Hurricane Ivan.

Luckily, Hurricane Sandy missed Jamaica completely, or else we wouldn't have had as many bars to go to while we were there.

 

From our 4 days there, this is what we can tell you:

 

1. Marijuana is illegal in Jamaica. I know, right? How is that possible? Everywhere you go, and sometimes even when you haven't gone anywhere and are asleep in your bed, you can smell it: weed, ganga, spliff, MaryJane, doobie, etc. It is the signature-scent of Jamaica - it wafts on the breeze and leaves you feeling very chilled and craving chocolate cookies. It gets offered to you everywhere, and I mean everywhere, by everyone. Your waiter, the barman, the gardener (especially the gardener because he's growing the shit, isn't he?), etc. Each person will tell you they're the person to buy from and how their grass will leave you feeling the most irie. It's illegal to grow, possess or smoke it and yet everyone is dealing and smoking it everywhere. In public. Go figure. That explains why everyone in Jamaica is so damn relaxed and happy.

 

2. The standard response to anything you ask a Jamaican is, "Yeah mon. No problem, mon" This can be in response to any of these variations:

 

• Could you call a taxi for me please?
• Could I please have another rum punch?
• Would you help me bury this pesky dead body I've been carrying around in my luggage?
• Could I have relations with your goat?

3. The best food in Jamaica is "jerk" flavoured. And just like a group of housewives in Bloem will compete against each other at the church bazaar to see whose brandy tart is the best during a bake-off competition, Jamaicans will compete in jerk-offs. I kid you not. Now, what is jerk? It's a form of cooking where chicken/beef/seafood is dry-rubbed or wet-marinated by jerk spice (made primarily from pimento and Scotch bonnet peppers). It is out of this world. It will tear you a new one, so be prepared.

 

If you haven't been to Jamaica yet, why the hell not, mon?

Reminders and creative juices

Apologies that there hasn't been a blog post in ages! I normally use our blog for an outlet for all those creative juices, but now that I'm studying creative writing, all my creativity goes into writing my assignments and getting my course work done.

 

Of course, I tried to bully Poodle into pulling his blogging weight with the old: "This blog is not just mine, it has both of our names on it, Mister. When last did you post anything? This is not fair, I can't do everything. It's your turn." This whining nag-rant would have had a lesser man in tears, but not Poodle.

 

Poodle proceeded to put a post-it reminder on his computer. Two weeks ago. With all the other reminders that go on there. And never get executed. Poodle is a firm believer that if the post-it reminder has been written, the task will finish itself.

And when I nagged him about it again this morning, he said he was super-busy and didn't have time to come up with an idea to blog about. I then pointed out that he was on his way to gym, and couldn't he possibly use the time, while gyming, to think up an idea.

 

To which he replied in absolute horror, "You want me to think while bench-pressing?"

 

Men. I rest my case.

 

It might be a while until the next post.

The highlights post

So... we have a blog. I use the term "we" loosely here, because even though this blog is meant to be a team effort, apparently there is no "Steve" in "team". And most of what we blog about, has been the more memorable events since we've arrived in Canada. But there are a lot of little incidents that occur on a day-to-day basis that make us laugh - most of which can't take up a blog post on their own, so generally don't get mentioned.

 

So every now and again, "we're" going to throw in a "highlights" post -  something that includes a few anecdotes/memorable moments that we've had along the way.

 

Here are a few of them:

 

1.   A lot of Canadians will listen to you speak, and suddenly go, “Oh my God! I love your accent”, and while you swell with pride, they go on to say things like: “I just love you Brits/Germans/Albanians”. We were on a guided boat tour one day when the tour guide told us how much she loves our accent, and how she has a Scottish friend, and she’s always making him read the newspaper or adverts to her because she loves our accent so much. Ooookayyyy. So after that, Stephen and I have taken to speaking to each other in Scottish accents. Abysmal Scottish accents, it must be said, but still. So the other day, in a shoe shop, Stephen said something and I replied, in my best guttural accent, with, “I kannee awurreee abooot that nooo.” I thought I was so good, it was a pity I wasn’t wearing a kilt. And the woman in the shop turned around and said, “Oh my God! I love your accent. You from Australia?” Bollocks, we've been banjanxed!

2.  We’ve had quite a few memorable moments on subways and buses besides the crazy soup lady that I blogged about. Stephen sat next to a black man on the subway, who spent the entire journey muttering under his breath how much he hates the whites and how he plans to kill them all. When Stephen asked, “Julius, is that you?”, the guy replied that his name was Africa, and what kind of black man has a name like Julius? I kid you not - you can not make this shit up! Then, I had an older gentleman (must have been in his 70s) tell me, also on the subway, that I look like a frisky young Demi Moore, and would I like to join him for dinner on his boat. When I asked if his boat needed Viagra to stay afloat, he burst out laughing, called me “sassy” and then shiftily put away the bottle of pills he’d been hopefully clutching. Considering that I’ve seen the activity sheet for a nearby retirement village, and that most of the scheduled talks are about geriatric sexuality and how to use a sex swing without breaking a hip, the old codger is clearly the poster boy for his generation. You go Grandpa!

3.   We went to Awenda National Park for camping, and there’s a stunning beach there on the lake that’s just for dogs. Stephen and I went for a walk to have a look at it, and we got chatting to a woman and her partner, who had their dogs on the beach. I was just telling her that we had issues getting Muggle to come back when we let her off leash and called her back, when she said to me, “I have crack cocaine”. What the hell do you say to that? “That’s great, can I have some?” or "Your mother must be so proud! Is she your dealer?". If you don’t know someone very well, it’s hard to assess if they’re being serious or not. I’ve had moments here where people say things like, “I really love Justin Bieber”,  and I burst out laughing only to establish that they’re being serious, and are now very pissed off with me for dissing a Canadian treasure. Off topic, I got chatting to a young Irish hairdresser one day, and after five minutes of us talking, he said, “Darling, I love your sense of humour, but I tink you’re going to piss a lot of Canadians off”. Apparently Canadians have a very PC sense of humour and are easily offended. I look forward to properly investigating this and letting you know. So when a Canadian woman tells you that she has crack cocaine, you kinda think it isn’t a joke and you’ve attracted the weirdos once again. I think I muttered, “That’s nice”, before starting to sidle away, when she reached into her pocket, pulled something out, shoved it at me, and said, “Here it is”. Turned out to be freeze-dried liver which the dogs love and will do anything for. She was suggesting we  use it as bait for when we’re calling Muggle back to us. So much for my first Canadian experience with drugs.

4.  Our pet sitter is called Lois, and every time I’d call her to check if she’s free, she’s answer the phone, “Hi there, this is Lois Lane”. I’d kill myself laughing, even though it got tired the third or fourth time, but I wanted to humour her as she clearly got a kick out of impersonating Superman’s girlfriend. Last weekend, we arrived home to a note she’d written to us about the dogs. And it was written on her business card which stated “Lois Lane”. As her real name. I mean come on! Who names their kid that? I wanted to die thinking of how rude she must have thought me to be every time I called her and laughed at her! The last time I did that was in SA, and the guy’s name was Blackie Swart, which I also thought was a joke. Especially since he was racist. It's like being called Sakkie de Kock and being homophobic!

5.  I have a very sarcastic sense of humour – some of you may know that about me. So when I walk my very pretty Golden Retriever, and she’s wearing a pink collar, a pink harness and a pink lead, as well as having shiny pink bling around her neck, and some woman asks me, “Is that a boy or a girl?”, I’m gonna get sarcastic. “It’s a boy,” I said, “He’s just gay and we feel we should allow him to express his feminine side.” I did not expect her to exclaim in all seriousness, “Oh my God, how did he tell you?". It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been stopped two days later by another woman with a very butch-looking Alsatian on a green lead. She sidled up to me and whispered, "I hear you're the one with the gay dog. I think my Jodie is a lesbian. Got any tips?".

 

Ah yes. Never a dull moment in Canadia :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part two - run for your life!

So where was I? Oh yes, there I was in the Don River valley, walking along one of the trails with Muggle (might have forgotten to mention Muggle in the last post). Stephen and I generally walk the dogs together, but if he’s working and Muggle starts getting psychotic (launching herself from the kitchen counter onto the TV ninja-style), I’ll take her out by myself. I used to be able to walk both her and Dobby together, but once Dobby discovered the squirrels, she started pulling on the lead so hard that one day she pulled me right off my feet. Which wouldn’t have been too bad if Muggle hadn’t spotted the river and pulled me in the exact opposite direction at that exact moment, so that I ended up lying on the ground crucifixion-style, hanging onto two dogs. I now understand why being pulled apart like that was considered a really cool form of torture in the middle ages.

 

 

 

Hmmm, wonder if that’s where chiropractics began?

But I digress.

I was walking along the trail with Muggle, marvelling at the beauty of the day, when there was a loud crack to my right, a large bush snapped aside and a huge figure materialised. It all happened in a split second, and I only saw the figure out of the corner of my eye, but it was big and coming directly at me.

It’s amazing how the mind and body work under these conditions. I know some people who are literally paralysed with fright under these circumstances and can not move for love nor money. My mind generally does a weird Matrix-type manoeuvre, and my thoughts will diverge into a multiple-choice set-up in which I think each thought very clearly and consider each option simultaneously. Which sounds pretty cool, but which is very, very annoying.

These are the things that went through my mind at that split-second:

1. Oh. My. God. It’s the crazy guy that’s been killing people and chopping them up and running around Ontario, scattering body parts like confetti. He seems to like hands particularly. I should be safe then. I don’t have very pretty hands. Unless he cuts them off because they’re ugly and he’s offended by them. Then I’m in shit.

2. If he says, “Hello Clarice”, I can just tell him it’s a case of mistaken identity. Hopefully he’ll step back into the bushes and wait for Jodie, and I can be on my way.

 

 

3. Muggle will save me! Bwaa ha ha, I’m so funny! Muggle will not save me. Unless her rolling over and peeing herself will distract him or make him point and laugh. In which case, we can buy some time. But I’ll have to carry her while I’m running and that will slow us down. Who am I kidding? I can’t run and carry Muggle. I can even carry Muggle. I’ll have to drag her. Why didn’t we get a smaller dog? Or a hamster. It would have been way easier to escape a psychopath with a hamster! That sentence’s structure needs to be relooked at. It makes it sounds like the psychopath has the hamster, not me. Oh my God, what’s wrong with me? Assessing sentence structure as I’m probably about to be murdered!

4.  Should I run at him? That might throw him off. He’s probably used to women running away, so this could gain me some advantage. Do the unexpected! Use the element of surprise! Never let them take you to the second location! Who said that? Oprah? Ah man, I love Oprah.

There were a few more thoughts, but I can’t remember them now. So, I decided to go with the element of surprise. I turned to launch myself at my attacker, let go of Muggle’s lead, yelled, “Run Muggle! Run! Don’t let him get your hands!”  and came eyeball to eyeball with a big-ass deer. Who, by the looks of it, was thinking:

1. What the HELL is this crazy-assed bitch think she’s doing coming all up in MY face with THAT attitude?

2. She’s telling the dog not to let me get its hand. Dogs do not have hands. Oh. My. God. She is the crazy person killing people in Ontario and collecting hands. She’s making the dog hide the evidence!

3. I think I will run away from her and crap as I’m doing it. That will probably slow her down. I think she’s after my hooves. Bitch is not gonna get these hooves. They were half-off at the Jimmy Choo sale.

So the deer does an about turn and bounds off through the trees, leaving nothing but deer poop in its wake. Which I briefly consider collecting in Muggle’s cute little bright pink poop bags. Not because I’m cleaning up after the deer, you understand (the signs in Toronto don’t say: “Keep your deer on a lead” and “Please clean up after your deer”), but because this will be evidence of my encounter.  To show our neighbour Jaryd who said the deers were urban myths.

But then I realise that would be weird. And also Muggle has found a new route into the river, and is starting to do backstroke towards the ducks, which will end badly for all concerned. I turn and watch the deer run away from me, and think: I hope it blogs about me.

If you go into the woods today...

One of the many, many things I love about Toronto, is that you can go from bustling urban metropolis to wild natural habitat within just a few minutes. One minute you’re on the concrete sidewalk, cars whizzing by you, the sounds of the city (construction, ambulances, aeroplanes) closing in and assaulting your senses,  and the next minute, you’re standing with your feet in the dirt, tangled vines cocooning you, giant trees dwarfing you and... nothing... silence... except for the chirping of birds and the psychotic chatter of a pissed-off squirrel nearby. (Squirrels seem to spend a lot of time pissed-off; I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is).

 

 

 

Just mere steps from our apartment lies a sprawling mass of parklands in the Don River valley, and this is where we walk our dogs every day. Trails branch out for miles in every direction, and you can walk for ages without leaving the protection of the trees and the reassuring burbling of the river. The parklands are filled with birdlife and smaller critters (mostly squirrels, groundhogs, mice and racoons). There have even been talk of deer-sightings, but this is brushed off as the stuff of urban myths. Muggle loves swimming in the river, and Dobby has become obsessed with those damn squirrels – this valley is their happy place. We literally have to drag them out of it at least twice a day when we head for home after walks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A great thing too is that I mostly feel safe walking here. I don’t want to draw comparisons between here and Joburg, but I know that I wouldn’t have felt safe walking the dogs alone at Emmarentia Dam during the week when the park is mostly deserted. It’s just one of those things.

However, no place in the world is totally safe, and you get psychopaths everywhere – Canada is no exception. All you need to do is look at the excess of body parts that have been turning up all over Canada to realise that Canadian psychos are just as active as South African psychos. And they especially love parks. Nice.

So even when I’m walking alone along a quiet trail, feeling safe, there’s always a part of me that’s a bit nervous. And this isn’t my South African part; this is the side of me that went through a hectic psychological-thriller reading phase for a few years. The side that knows you never walk past panel vans, because their doors will slide open and you will be shoved inside by homicidal maniacs. Also the side of me that knows that the excess skin that flaps under my arms when I do the YMCA can be turned into a cute little purse for some fashion-conscious weirdo with a sewing machine.

Which is why I completely and utterly shat myself yesterday when walking along one of the more isolated trails in the valley, and something large suddenly leapt out at me from behind a bush.

To be continued... Not to create suspense (I’m clearly alive and not dismembered if I’m writing this) but because this is a long story. Like most of my stories. Deal with it.