Let's talk about my diet, shall we? See, lately, it sucks. More precisely, it lacks deliberate choices. More than half of my dinners in the last week have been a) nonexistent or b) napkin-wrapped leftovers from a colleague's focus group, consumed at my desk (only once did I neglect to actually remove the napkin 
before biting into the sandwich). The rest of my lunches and dinners all came out of random tupperwares in the freezer which I'd vaguely labelled "curry", and have primarily featurd beans, eggplant, tomatoes, and too much cardamon. It's a good thing I had that pressure cooker obsession a while back
Given such a haphazard approach to nutrition of late, you would think that I'm going to start stressing about it, no? Except, not, because you see, there's magic in the form of kefir in my fridge, and every morning, I have a glass of it. I mean, google it, will you? (But ignore the third link down, counting non-indented links, because that site has repeatedly helped themselves an image from my archives, using my bandwidth, nice, no? The first time, I politely asked for it to be removed. Last month, I replaced the image with this and it stayed on the site for a couple of days before disappearing - which was nevertheless a much faster response than when I politely emailed. What? I know I'm childish and petty and all that, and I never do anything so blatant to all the myspace users who love to steal the Quebec City in December pictures - popular lot, those, go to December 2004 in the Archives if you want to see them - and I've happily signed copyright releases lately, and even given permission for entire stories and pictures to appear in print without compensation because this is just a hobby, not my job, but still! You have to ask! And preferably not have a fad-oriented site that tries to sell stuff! And use your own damn bandwidth, not my brother's!) (what, you think I have a server sitting in my basement? I don't even have a basement.)
Ok, that parenthetical aside (is it less petty if I hide it in parentheses? I'll go ask Lynne Truss) got away from me, go back to the kefir google results, and look at the picure(s) below... Anything that will make the majority of my blog 
readers go "gross!" has got to be good for you, no? (did you get to the part where it's considered a hangover cure because, you know, fermentation, alcohol, hair of the vodka bottle?) Look at it! curds, whey, alive! When you put it in a plastic bottle with a tight screw top lid (like, say, an empty goat milk bottle), the bottle starts to swell! And then, I put it in my gut, where all those bacteria do... something, I guess. Hey, I would think my stomach bile would kill those suckers, but I'm not going to mess with the propaganda here.
Truth? You couldn't pay me enough if I didn't like it. It would be like that time I bought a big container of powdered Greens +, because, well, I'd walked by it a million times in the health food store and I was curious and the per volume price on the *big* container was so much better. The first three times I 
had some, I pretended I liked it. I tried to come up with something better to pretend, to make me like it, after that, but I drew a big blank. Then, I started using it as an incentive: go to the gym, escape the Greens +. Point being, I wanted to like it, I hated it, and I should have bought the small container, because even that, I would have chucked most of it.
But for months now, I often have a jar of kefir working away on my counter. I got my first culture from Kevin in November sometime, but I managed to kill it. (If you read the googled stuff - *I know*, okay? I don't even have chlorinated water, so it takes a special talent. I know you can't kill it by drying it, freezing it, or ignoring it for ages, but it died, ok?) Fortunately, in the meantime, Kevin acquired a different culture that not only survived three weeks in bicycle saddlebags (there's something so fitting about a kefir culture living in saddlebags, no?), but the belly of two airplanes, and sometime in January, he gave me some. And it's still alive!
And living on in my gut, I guess. I don't understand how these things work. I do know that I buy into this idea of not using antibiotics unless absolutely necessary because I think they'd mess up my own balance. My sample is just one: me. I've never had antibiotics (first luck, then conscious choice and an understanding physician and of course more luck), and no (sorry! I know you don't want to know!) yeast infections either, ever. Yeah, I know, quick, change the subject. Ok... ummm... ok, enlarge that picture on the left, of the kefir grains. At the size I uploaded the picture, you're looking at the grains about five times actual size. Canon Rebel XT, baby. Not mine. But whatever. Cool camera to play with (not that I've yet found any substantial differences from the Rebel yet, beyond location of some controls and post-capture image handling - and that particular one, I think the original is better but perhaps more battery consuming).
WRT subject line of this entry: also true. Tasty.
"I'm slipping a little bit. We'll have to put on klister. Kilster is the last resort", Sarka said within about five minutes of starting on the trail at Horseshoe Valley. We stepped off the track, and she pulled out the gunked up ziploc baggie containing said klister and continued "And if klister doesn't work," (here she paused talking for a second to carefully peel the baggie away from the sticky tube, and I held my breath waiting for the magic solution for situations when klister doesn't work) "we'll have to suck it up and slip".
Ha! Bailing? Not an option. So, even though we'd just had a waxing lesson for Johanna (Sarka thought we'd try hard wax first - though there's nothing particularly "hard" about the special violet we had put on) in the wax room, we now had a klistering lesson. Klister is not for klutzes. But it works! Or, at least it did yesterday - we went most of the way around on the green in the West Trails, and while there was a bit of extra work involved in the wet granular, we had ok grip. And I got more lessons on kicking and gliding and Sarka expressed her opinion on my pole length (too short! they always sell you too short poles if you 
ask their advice!) and my skis (they seem to have good glide - but once again, I just had what the man at the ski store sold me when I confessed my "but I don't know anything!" skill level)
We came to a point where the green, red and blue trails all went off in different directions. Sarka eliminated the blue from consideration, because it was labelled "back to chalet", and puzzled over her (two year old) map - she was convinced that the powers that be had re-routed the trails to eliminate the spot she was so 
fond of, heart attack hill. Apparently, this was not just a cute name - you go "straight up" for a long time, and then you are at the top "and then, you go up and down over all these hills, which is good. Now, there are no hills, and it will go back to the chalet, which is not good". Hills good, back to chalet, not good. I wasn't sure if I entirely agreed with this, but I don't know anything. After a bit, we pulled out my (new) map, and figured it out - and Sarka wanted to do the re-routed bit that would take her back into the good hills, while we agreed that I would take the rest of the green back over the not-good little hills to the chalet, and futz on the flatter trails.
Which I did. The unspoken word of the day was "considering" - the conditions are good, people kept saying (considering it is the end of March and south-facing slopes are bare). My speed was good (considering that I don't have much experience). The grip was good (considering we were skiing through slush and melting ice and water). The most succinct summary of the day came when I was herringboning my way up a hill on the blue in the east trails (Sarka was still off on her good hills red adventure) and stepped to the side when a skater came up behind me - "it's spring skiing!" he breezily called out. It was a great day out, considering it's spring skiing. I was doing well, considering I suck.
I found Sarka in the chalet having lunch when I returned from my east blue loop (having had to walk around two muddy patches on golf courses), and she finally solved the heartbreaking loss of heart attack hill by asking all the staff members until she found one who had been around long enough to not look at her like she was strange when she wanted to know what they did to the hill. Something about a golf course, and loss of access. After lunch, we did the west blue one more time, but re-klistered first. Sarka told me to go ahead while she finished her skis, but of course she caught up to me fairly quickly. And right around that point, it started to rain (this was also the point in the loop furthest from the chalet). But there was no complaining, seeing as we'd not used all this anticipated sucking it up karma when the klister actually worked, and we just sloshed through the puddles.
And then, on the way home, I agitated for stopping at Sojourn in Barrie - I wanted to see what they had in stock in terms of drytops (not much - looked like last season's leftovers) and check out the end of season sales. I am two toques richer now! And ende of season clearance longer poles. And a Massassauga Park map - mine went missing sometime in the last year, did I lend it to you? No matter now, I have a new one. Because in June, I am doing a GLSKA new members trip with Keith and Jim (this the direct result of concern expressed that it's sometimes difficult for new people in the kayak club to get on trips). You should come.
I am really, truly shifting focus now. Today, the sun is streaming in, there are only the smallest crusts of snow in the shadows of buildings here, and I might go for another bike ride and do a little bit of post-winter cleanup in the garden. Winter is over.
Confession: I love the stage of discovering something when you're still in the steep part of the learning curve, but not so steep that you could slide right off. Right now, all things connected to my x-country skis is exciting. Especially the waxing bit - because, you see, I don't get it at all!
And something you should know about me: there are two qualities I look for in people above all else: humour, and skills. More specifically, a sense of humour compatible with my own, and skills that I don't yet possess. Because then we get magic: I learn without being afraid to laugh at myself, because I'm already laughing.
So, I love all the colours of the hard wax, and the mystery of it all. I have my cork and my wax scraper and my glide wax and my klister. I can finally put a pile of waxes in order of stickiness: I know that special green is less sticky than green, for example, and that red is really sticky. And I've finally clued in that when in doubt, wax colder, because you can always put stickier wax on top in a hurry, but you can't go the other way as easily. And, here's where my cool friends come in, Sarka explained the idea of putting special green down in the grip zone while at home, and doing a good job (and thus I finally discovered a use for my blow dryer!) - and then using the stickier wax once I've evaluated when I get to the trail. But there are so many mysteries, like this one: Ernie told Sarka that, a lot of times when spring skiing, it's appropriate to put hard wax *on top of* klister. My mind is spinning. I must ask Ernie (I miss Ernie. I haven't seen him in so long, it is so my fault. When he tried to teach me skiing stuff - and you don't get a better offer than that, when a man who has coached national-level skiiers is willing to spend time with you - I was only receptive to the skate-skiing. I was quickly overwhelmed with classic, and I didn't enjoy it that year - and thus, I never really made use of the rope-pulley thing that he gave me, to help me with the upper body movement. I had it in my hand when I reorganized my outdoors gear the other day).
I used to call myself an adventure slut, though one must be careful when saying that - it is much less innocent sounding than geogeek. But you see, if there is an adventure, I want to go! That's how you end up doing things like caving for a while before admitting to yourself that you really don't like it that much - by that conditioned response of, sure! I'll come! But I am still adventure slut - it is still ridiculously easy to sell me on adventures, and if only I didn't have so many non-negotiable time constraints. But, to be honest, I went through a couple of off years recently (lots of reasons, including some bad group dynamics, deteriorating fitness and attendant increasing girth which makes movement less fun, and a gardening obsession when I learned the names of all these plants while HP sat in an adirondack chair handing me another beer when mine was empty. I miss HP too.) And now, ass size notwithstanding, I am so back! my fitness has picked up again (thanks, in part, to a beer bucks deal with John*, and in more parts to the return of the cyborg trainer chickie), my garden is happily perennialized and thus much lower maintenance, and HP is devoting his life to being a responsible husband and businessman, and across an ocean at that.
And I'm learning new stuff again.
*The beer bucks for butt moving deal... here's how it works. You shamelessly take advantage of someone's new year's musings by proposing you *pay* each other to exercise, and at some point in the future, you spend all the accumulated money on beer. You start with $1 for every 30 minutes of activity the other person does - whether you run or walk or ski or play frisbee with the dog, it doesn't matter, only exception is that you can't claim time spent walking to the pub or ummmm horizontal activities (because of too much information rules). You kick the other person's ass. When he catches on that he can do these long bursts of activity on weekends and catch up to your slow and steady plodding, you change the rules on him: now, you only get $1 for 30 minutes if your heart rate consistently stays above 120, otherwise it's 60 minuts for that loonie, and you must log time four times a week or face deductions, and if you don't work out *at all*, you lose $20. And you must keep an eye on this formula, because the second it stops fitting your patterns better than his, you need to change it again, so you stay ahead of him. And you probably shouldn't admit that, not when your being-fleeced fitness quarry knows your blog address. But I'm tempting fate. Something about hubris.
I just love it when I get all high and mighty and become a self-declared expert on something because I somehow identify with it: I lack a Y chromosone, therefore, I am far more qualified to discuss all the problems of patriarchical systems than any male; I was once on an farm, thus I am the Voice of Farmers; I live in Canada, consequently, I am representative of All Things Canadian.
Yeah. Pushes your buttons too, doesn't it?
Recent messes such as this one have prompted me to re-evaluate some parts of my cultural/national identity. Or, to be a bit more fair, consider said identity again, after years of "it is what it is" dislike of collective navel-gazing. I would argue that many of us have defined ourselves in reference to what is outside our borders, not inside them. What Anglo-Saxon conservative elite that we may have can lay claim to its origins in the United Empire Loyalist movement: that is, an explicit rejection of the American Revolution. Despite being considered country-bumpkin colonials by the Brits, Canadians spent decades and centuries with all this thistle-shamrock-rose entwined days of yore from Britain's shore malarkey. The official orientation to Britain and the Commonwealth was as much about what the country was not, and that was illustrated abundantly in the big things: who goes to war with whom when.
But the constitution has been brought home for over 20 years now, and those reporting ethnic origins only in the British Isles account for less than 10% of our population (in comparison, almost 20% are foreign-born - though this includes Britain; and 38% of the population gives multiple responses to the "ethnic origin" question on the Census). More than ever, we are a nation of minorities, though perhaps you still don't see that reflected on Bay Street. The point is, though, that we no longer identify with an orientation toward Britain (which is a good thing for our cuisine, I would argue). We still define ourselves by what we are not: we are not American. We proudly sew the maple leaf onto our backpacks when we travel, we are irritated to bits when we are assumed to be American, and a large number of us gape with growing disbelief at what's going on south of the border. We come by it honestly: what high school student of Canadian history does not know Trudeau's 1969 "in bed with an elephant" quote?
But we don't have a unified voice - about anything, really, including gay marriage, aboriginal issues, the military, the place of religious education in schools, and so on. Why should we? We have always pounded our chests and puffed on about multiculturalism. What we do have, though, is a Charter of Rights and Freedom, and what we should have is mutual respect and love for one another (Trudeau again, 1976). And it pleases me to no end that we've consistently placed the Charter rights above what individual groups want. That is the role of the state, as far as I'm concerned. You don't leave the big issues to referendum, or popular opinion. This is not a schoolyard, with the popular kids dominating the agenda. We are a liberal democracy with a (currently healthy) capitalist economy and a strong (though, sadly, it sometimes seemed threatened) adherence to the principles of a social welfare state. Those two are not incompatible, in any way.
I don't want to live anywhere else. There are climates that appeal to me more, if I'm writing this in southern Ontario in March (you won't hear that, though, after a day of glorious skiing, or at any time during our northern summers). There are many, many wonderful things in the world out there, and I love them too. And there are countries with comparable quality of life and better skiing, but I think this one, it's the one for me. It surprised me, this growing partriotism.
So all of that being said, there are two points I need to follow up with:
1. There are many Canadian voices, and sometimes, they overlap more with things beyond our borders than they have in common with what's inside. Take, for instance, Canadian literature: I think there is a very distinctive voice in post-war Prairie literature. I also think that Margaret Laurence and Sinclair Ross and even W.O. Mitchell have more in common with Willa Cather, Louise Erdrich and Garrison Keillor than they do with Michael Ondaatje. Similarly, for me, all that I feel about landscape and meaning is captured in the work of Lawren Harris - but that's not the dominant theme you'd walk away with if you spent a while at the National Gallery. During our recurring phases of trying to define the essence of Canada, we resort to maple syrup-igloo-totem pole-poutine-group of seven generalizations, and the common element there is terribly elusive.
2. So, we continue to define ourselves more by what we are not. And that is troubling me again.
Take, for instance, this story. Your stance on sealing is irrelevant here, by the way (and I refuse to engage in a discussion about it. I think the people who are qualified to discuss it are those whose livelihoods are intimately connected with it, and I've been privileged to spend time in a northern community and I am so very, very tired of people who will recognize that the pope has no say in reproductive rights but in the next breath condemn a culture they don't understand on the basis of an ecological understanding that is informed by special-interest group pamphlets, but I digress, because I already said: stance on sealing, irrelevant!) My issue with Senator Hervieux-Payette is not even about political correctness and Canadian politeness. It is about putting blame for one entity - federal policy - onto an individual that may or may not have anything to do with it.
I dislike what I see as some of the dominant themes in American policy in the last five years. I deplore a shift to fundamentalist religion, I do not support non-UN sanctioned military action, I am not in favour of the death penalty, I don't think the state has any say in the bedroom, I am appalled that a country that is so wealthy on so many levels cannot provide the world's highest standard of health care and education accessible to all regardless of socio-economic status. None of this is news.
However: I do not make the assumption that a U.S. passport is synonymous with all of that. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I am distressed that we, as a nation, have started shifting towards transferring our dislike of broad foreign and social policy to individuals. Just like Margaret Laurence has more in common with Willa Cather, so do I share more views with many of my American friends than with voters for the Christian Heritage Party, some of the boys on Bay Street, or the anti-sealing activists who have no concept of reality beyond Toronto.
I make a distinction between Carolyn Parrish's actions and those of Senator Hervieux-Payette (I choose to accept the clarification that Ms. Parrish's comments were directed at George Bush and his administration, and not the population generally. She's not exactly the apologetic, packpedalling type).
We pride ourselves on diversity, tolerance, mutual respect and all those other lofty goals. We ensure that these goals are met as well as they can be while safeguarding individual freedom of expression. So why are we okay with this? Do we really need to reinforce our self-definition that badly?
(for the record, I would chortle with glee and wholeheartedly agree with the point if that exchange had been between, say, a senior member of the Bush administration and the Prime Minister. Keep issues at the level where they apply.)
1. I have had a new desktop for a few weeks now. I made this grand resolution that I would *not* clutter it up with mystery files, and I would keep the desktop clean. If I had it on my computer, it would be in a proper directory, with directory trees and all that. Of course, I didn't have time to go through the two years of accumulated files on my old computer, so I'm constantly pulling out the CDs on which I backed that whole system up. Somehow, it's taking a lot longer than just typing keywords into google desktop! And, to top it off, I've never been impressed with the official work-sanctioned server-level spam filters - they let a lot of crap through, and filter out many important messages if I have it set on any level of security. So I keep it on low, and work with Thunderbird's spam filters. That means I first need to train them, and in order to do that, I have to have it set so that it just marks the crap, not deletes it - and that makes my inbox even more overwhelming. I live in constant dread of opening my work account. There are definite drawbacks to using the same address since the days when having an account on the mainframe was a big deal and required a special application.
2. I am feeling guilt over my coffee habit. Not about the coffee drinking part of it - I think coffee drinking is no big deal. But it's the annual Roll up the Rim to Win promotion from Tim Hortons, and I don't get my response to this: *every year*, I end up buying endless cups of bad coffee in paper cups, for the chance to roll up the rim and win... another cup of coffee, or a donut. Not only that, but the big prizes aren't things I particularly want: an SUV, a new BBQ, or a plasma tv (though I'd take the $1000 cash prize without complaint!). Furthermore, it's now well-documented that the prizes are unevenly distributed with loading of big stuff in regions where market dominance is still to be achieved. Given that there are no fewer than three Tim Hortons outlets within three minutes walk of my office, I think the market has been sufficiently penetrated around here. (For the record, I have no issues with the prize loading in areas of competition - the whole gimmick is a marketing strategy, not a fair-play lottery. Get over it already.) And I feel doubly cranky about buying this admittedly crappy coffee (I switched to dark roast a few months ago, and I've always liked my coffee about twice as strong as the donut shops make it) because it means that I am contributing to the piles of waste. Every morning as I drive to work, I am annoyed by the inevitable paper coffee cups I see littering the roadside. A couple of weeks ago, when it was so unseasonally warm and I went for a big bike ride on a Saturday, I debated going back and getting my camera and a notebook, and documenting the density of coffee cup litter along my cycling roads - and illustrating that report - and sending it off to Tim Hortons (by the way, did you know - another random fact - that Canadian and American sizes don't match up? Our medium is their small, and our small does not exist on that side of the border). I want Tim Hortons to start putting in much stronger incentives for *not* taking the disposable cups - they currently function on a "not my problem what happens with it after it leaves our site" model. If only I were supreme dictator of the world.
3. Speaking of supreme dictator of the world aspirations, another thing I would change: carry-on baggage rules on all flights. I like to fly with carry-on only as much as the next person, who wants to stand around a luggage carousel? But there are limits, and the constant jockeying for getting on first and overhead bin space is getting old. A couple of days ago, I was on a flight where the gate attendants enforced the carry-on rules. It pissed off a lot of people, but man, did it make me happy!
4. And while we're talking about airlines... it's bad enough when you have to cancel something that fell into the "big fun" category, which just makes the cancellation fees that much more annoying. Still, though, does nobody else notice that cheap ticket + (cancellation fee OR change fee) < flexible, refundable ticket?
5. Gear lust is rearing its head. My list of things I want is always long, but the section of the list I actually bother buying isn't always. But I've decided I want a full-on drytop, to go with the drypants I already own. This so I can do cold-water paddling in comfort. I have never liked neoprene; actually, my dislike for it is so great that a couple of years ago I simply ditched my full-length wetsuit (I still have various other bits of neoprene, but no thanks on the wetsuit). I like the idea of wearing my expedition-weight fleece under a waterproof shell, even if I think it will take me a long time to be ok with a neck gasket. But maybe this weekend, I'll start haunting the gear stores.
6. Except, Sarka called last night, and wanted to know if I wanted to go x-country skiing with her this weekend. And of course I do! Now that I have decided I'm ready to go with people who are good at this (I don't expect to actually ski with them, I am just receptive to coaching now that I've done what I need to do to get there. I'm funny that way - I don't like to be overloaded, and I know when I'm ready for advice. It always surprises me, how many people can't read the room when it comes to unsolicited advice). I am having a hard time admitting that winter really is over and mud season is beginning. In an ideal world, I would have winter, then go away to *somewhere else* during the transition, and come back for paddling season (see point 4 here). It's times like this that I miss playing squash. I need more indoor sports. Treadmill running is dreadfully dull, and the fitness classes I've been going to are difficult to fit into my schedule. Plus, it's fitness for the sake of fitness, which is important only insofar as it means that when I do fun activities, they *are* fun. But if the gym was all there was in my life, I think it wouldn't take long before I decided that the couch was more fun. Good thing I don't have cable television.
There's a not insignificant list of things that a lot of people I know take for granted but I think are mystifyingly challenging. It's like when I was 16 and failed my driver's test and kept looking at all these people who drove, and thought, am I really stupider than *all* of these people? And that's pretty much what cross-country skiing felt like, for a long time.
It just seemed everyone in the whole world was better at it than I was (and I was into sweeping generalizations - I included people who had never left the tropics in my list of people who were better skiiers than me. When I suck, I like to really suck. Or at least blow it out of proportion.)
We lived in a rural part of northern Ontario. No public transit. No soccer mom attitudes either. So, if you wanted to go anywhere, you had to learn to drive. Just because you felt dumber than all the people who had licenses didn't mean that you could just say, no! not doing that! drive me! And a driver's license ensued. I didn't really see why I couldn't do that with skiing. I'm ok with not being very good at it - they'll sell me the trail pass without a skills test. I just haven't yet been ok with going with other people - I'll slow them down, they'll overload me with advice, they'll realize I'm so terrible that they'll conclude I'm an outdoors fraud... long list of excuses. I really only agreed to go with Lorenz earlier this winter because if it wasn't that, he might have made me slide to my death on downhill skis. That, and he promised he sucked too, and he showed me his waxless skis as evidence of sucking.
And of course, I had big fun - and that day, everything was perfect, and there was gliding and there was swooshing past other people and sure, there was probably a lot of sucking, but I didn't care. And shortly after that, I continued not to care in Norway. But that's about it, with my careless attitude this winter, because it's been the winter of no winter. So I took the opportunity to go one more time this past weekend (minus Lorenz, he was back to throwing himself down the mountain). My first attempt was at Scenic Caves, site of my previous triumph (read: whining about potentially dying on very gentle downhills, realizing, hey, I didn't die, gleefully skiing back up and sliding down again). Problem is, Scenic Caves really does cater to beginners (like me!). And conditions were not good - icy, deteriorating tracks. Worse, people had walked and snowshoed on the tracks in places. There were no grooming goons to enforce anything! There were, however, many small children, and parents who liked to ski *beside* said children. Which is understandable, but somewhat dangerous for me when I'm hurtling down an icy hill, and it made it difficult to pass. (Did you catch that? I *passed* people. I don't care that they were three feet high, on average, they had skis on, and I passed them.)
Day 2, I tried Highlands Nordic, aka Duntroon. I was on my way home, and I was just going to do a quick loop. I settled on the yellow. How hard can it be to follow yellow arrows? Except, there was one spot where there was a cluster of people. And I think they were clustered around the trail signage. I don't know, because my response to clumps like that is to run away very quickly. And there was this conveniently big hill to ski down. And I did that, and I didn't wipe out, though the tracks were icy and I picked up a bit more speed than I cared for.
But then, the next trail markers I came to, they were red and orange together. And I realized, the orange is not much longer than the yellow, and no way am I going back up that hill (I was wax challenged. 
Temperature indicated violet. Conditions indicated klister in many spots). So, on I skiied, I was having fun. Until I realized, I haven't seen a trail marker in a long time. And I no longer see other trails. And I don't see other skiiers either - in the next half hour, one skater passed me, that was it. I wasn't exactly surprised to see a lone red trail marker at some point. Sigh. How hard is it to follow a yellow - or, failing that, an orange arrow? Seriously! I bet it's easier than passing a driving test! Somehow, though, I skiied the big loop. And, somewhere on that loop, I was on another long downhill, and I didn't step out of the classic track onto the skating side, and on the ice, I got too fast. And then I got a little bit faster. And then there was a curve. And then the lone skater passed me and was very concerned about me being ok. I think the head first in the snowdrift position I was in prompted that. I spit out the snow, and I smiled (relieved to have all my teeth, and no bloody lip) and sent him on his spandexed way. And then I did what I should have done all along: I got onto the skating side, and I practiced the inelegant but highly effective braking on steep icy slopes that "the man who introduced sit-on-poles braking to Canada", as he would like to be credited, had told me about. No more faceplants, and I didn't have to resort to the sit on my bum braking technique either (I suspect on the ice, that would have hurt considerably more than it did on powder).
So, shall we sum up:
Johanna. Aged 34. Ontario driving license, Class G. Owner of a set of waxable nordic skis, and blue, violet, red and, since Sunday, end of season sale green wax, plus klister. Unaccomplished skiier, but better than at the beginning of this short season. Still terrified of downhill skiing. Desperately seeking excuse to not have to work on that next weekend (this weekend's excuse? "It's March Break. There are a lot of people on the hill. It's not *safe* for them to have me learn today!". Previous excuses already used: "I'm gonna die", "it's too wet", "it's cold and I don't have goggles".)
You know, it does occur to me that I get to go to some pretty cool places. Beyond that, it's also occurred to me that the only plane trips that I've taken in the last... oh... five years that weren't somehow related to work were one from London to Stuttgart (I think unblogged) 
in 2005 sometime, and the Charlottes adventure last summer. I pay for my own fun, and when I travel after work commitments are done, that's out of my own pocket, but mostly, I just add time to existing trips (or neglect the sleeping thing). So, it would be fair to say that I've had some pretty cool work trips.
But you do realize I foster this image, yes? That for every picture of whatever caught my short attention span and I thought cool, there are many untaken pictures. Of the inside of airplanes, trains, subways. Of my feet on subway platforms, just standing there, waiting for the train. Of meeting rooms. Of my computer, which looks the same no matter where I am. And of views like this one, that I took just to illustrate this point. This, folks, is the view from my room in Regina. And while I like the work I've come here to do, and I like the people I'm here to meet... well... I am in the midst of an endless sea of flat prairie. In a city with a grid. The last time I was here, I was done at 6 p.m., and the flight wasn't until the next morning. I asked four different people what there is to do - I was in the downtown of a provincial capital! - and all of them either laughed and said, you're in Regina, or they gave me directions to the mall. So, I went to the mall, and because I was cold and there was a sale, I bought a down jacket. And I didn't blog about that trip either!
And now, I'm boring you to tell you that a big chunk of my life is boring! I think we need to get to other topics quickly, don't you? Ok. How about this one: a picture of the back of the menu in middle of the road ordinary restaurant in Oslo. Yeah yeah yeah, I know, packet of pub peanuts, $5, expensive city bla bla bla... no, do you see the fact that this section of the menu is "snacks and cigarettes"? And that, for 87 cents, you can buy a single cigarette? You're not allowed to smoke it inside, but that's ok - first of all, I don't smoke and don't want to smell it, so I support no inside smoking rules, and secondly, this is a city of heated outdoor patios and blankets at sidewalk cafes in February!
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On the plane today, I read a gardening magazine (it was free! and I like gardening! even if I just sneer at the grandiose projects that turn a fun outdoor space into a second mortgage). And you should know, this season's trendy garden accessory is the gnome. That's right. All of you who sneered at me for lusting after a gnome, take that. Of course, this guy cost all of about $10 at Canadian Tire last summer, and is nothing like the $700 vintage plaster gnome in the magazine, but - trendy!
But if the magazine is right and suddenly gnomes start sprouting in gardens all over the neighbourhood, and they're the new tacky accessory that is so trendy that it really *is* just tacky not "I like it, ok? get over it" tacky (does that make sense?), I might not love him so much anymore, because I think what I love best is defending him to those of you who think he's the equivalent of acid wash jeans (he's not! he's cool!). I mean, once upon a time, tattoos were edgy and alternative (and I didn't want one then either), and now look at them, they're an "expression of individuality" along the lines of Levi's 501 in the late 80s and Uggs about five years ago...
Point?
Yeah. I know.
Hey, I'm in Regina!
(and I only had three hours of sleep)
I had Fred Eaglsmith tickets for last weekend. I love Fred Eaglesmith shows. I've been stalking him for over 12 years, after all. I have *every single album*. Even the old ones from the 80s. Even the Paradise Motel one. So, you should know, it's gotta be something pretty good, in terms of competing offers, for me to not go to a Fred show, and one that I already have tickets to, at that.
Enter something really good: I was working in Oslo for a week, and I could easily have flown with just carry-on bags, and, on Friday, when we were done with the working thing, gotten into the airport express train to Gardermoen and been on a plane before nightfall. But! My Oslo contact - one of the world's coolest people, in my books - emailed before I picked my flight, and casually said something along the lines of, if you can stay for the weekend, bring your skis, we'll go to a log cabin in the mountains.
Let that run through your head for a second, will you? You're sitting at your desk, you've done a lot of bitching about the rain and freezing rain crap outside your window, you've not had a chance to use your skis because winter has been sucky non-winter this year. And then your computer beeps and tells you that you can go to a log cabin! in mountains! to nordic ski, in Norway! with cool people!
Yeah, you would have let concert tickets go too.
So. We worked hard all week, we made a lot of progress. By Friday morning, though, we were on the unfocused side. My eyes kept going to my ski bag, casually propped into the corner of the meeting room. By early afternoon, there were three adults, two big dogs, our packs, our ski boots, and a big bowl of lamb stew crammed into a Volvo (the skis were on the roof rack), and we were off. Excitement.
The cabin is just that - a log cabin. None of this fancy cottage stuff where your "cottage" has 5 bedrooms and four baths and satellite television and all that. This was the real thing: a log cabin, with its own log cabin outhouse 
(complete with pictures of the Norwegian royal family for your viewing pleasure while using the facilities). It also had a wood stove, a propane heater though we ran out of gas on that one), a sink with a bucket under it to drain the water, a propane cook stove, kerosene lanterns and candles, and some battery powered lights, with the battery recharged by a little solar panel during the day. Lucky for us, the private roads were plowed - but there was no guarantee of that, and we'd come prepared to ski in. We got there at sunset. 
We stomped through the snow. G. made a fire, K. started shovelling off the deck. Me, I chilled the champagne (a pretty easy task when it's -15 both inside and out!) and then, when the wood stove got going, I started melting snow for water. As the only non-Norwegian, I got coddled a bit: I got the spot with the propane heater blasting at my back, I was offered blankets, my down duvet was brought into the warmest part of the cabin to pre-heat. So much for retiring the tiara...
The cabin - which is near the town of Fagernes, on the same ridge as the Fagernes airport - sits on a chain of pretty little lakes. All around are groomed ski trails - miles and miles and miles of them. And on Saturday morning, I had a look at the thermometer and when I saw the -20 after the sun had already come up, I realized that my blue wax wasn't going to be good enough and borrowed some green. And then I set out on my own. I am not a particularly great x-country skiier, and Norwegians I think are by definition, and when you're with two of them who met at a 35 km ski *race* or some similar nonsense, it only makes sense to ask which trail is the easiest and do that one on your own. At a sedate pace.
Ah but it was lovely! So lovely that, when I looked at the trail map at the second junction I came to, I decided I would do a bigger loop! And by that decision, I unconsciously abandoned my "easy" trail. At first it was fun, it went down and down. And then, I got to a spot where it was too steep for comfort - and I couldn't see around the next corner, it appeared to drop off the side of a cliff or something. I didn't want to hurtle off the side of a cliff (or something). I didn't want to break my leg at -20 skiing alone! I am a chicken! So I did what any reasonable chicken would do: I used the sit on bum method of slowing down. Which was effective (though when I later confessed this maneuvre to K., he said that I should be thrown into jail for messing up the tracks and was only appeased when I explained that this section of trail was too steep to have tracks on either side, and my bum did not leave an indent on the packed surface.)
So. After my skiing style included slowing down using my bum, the trail crossed a road - and seemed to keep descending further into the abyss! I was having no more of this, and I pulled out my digicam, 
and I called up the trail map photo I'd taken earlier and zoomed in, and concluded that the road I was crossing effectively cut off the death-defying-abyss part of the loop. Ha! I would foil them all! I would walk on the road until the trail reconnected! Which I did, for a while, but the road was so nicely snow covered, I decided I might as well ski on the road. That worked fine for a while - but when I finally got back to the trail, and I had a fair bit of uphill left, I realized that the road skiing had worn off all the green grip-wax (and remember, I don't own any green, so had none in my pocket). Oops. Oh well, a bit of an inner thigh and upper body workout, that.
That afternoon, despite a thermometer at -12 and colder, we sat in the sun on the deck, eating lunch and generally basking. It takes Norwegians to act like basking in the sun at temperatures like that is normal. I think I really like Norwegians.
Before heading out on Skiing Day 2, I spent some serious time with the topo map (and my digicam, which showed where the trails ran - there was no trail map at the cabin). I identified a 13 km loop around the chain of lakes, and then I asked G. for advice. She asked if I preferred a short time of strenuous uphill and a long glorious glide down, or a tedious slog over a long incline followed by another bum-sitting jump off an abyss (ok ok those were not her words, but my interpretation, and you *know* which direction I picked).
And that ski that day, at -15, was the best ski of my life. Glorious. The day before, there was a fresh bit of 
powder - and that combined with the low temperatures meant that there was no freebie glide (I even wondered if I'd managed to wax outside my grip zone for a bit, and it wasn't until G. confirmed that it was the temperature that I gave up on that suspicion). Now, though, the tracks had been skiied, and were so much faster the next morning. Not only that, but K. had watched me start to wax my skis for about five seconds before taking them away and giving me a gruff "you will need more than that" and then expertly waxing them for me, so I *knew* my waxing was *perfect* that day (seeing as it wasn't *my* waxing!).
It was brightly sunny and dreadfully cold, but cold is not a problem when skiing. About 5 km into the ski, I came to the long slog uphill, but I didn't mind at all. And then, for the last hour, I had that wonderful (wonderful!) glide along a high ridge, slowly descending until the last steep bit before crossing the road back to the cabin - and I didn't wipe out, either accidentally or on purpose!
I want to go back. It was wonderful. Really wonderful. I didn't once think about Fred Eaglesmith.
Man, it must have sucked in those days, I thought as I peeked inside a house of unspecified (so far, to me) origin and age in Oslo's Folkemuseum. I was in the "Friluftsmuseet" portion of the museum complex (and even my non-existent Norwegian skills managed to translate this to "open air museum"), 
which looks much like a reconstructed village, complete with village green, church, barns and businesses. Except, of course, that the buildings were from many regions of Norway, and from eras ranging from the Middle Ages to contemporary. And my "suck" thought was prompted by the building I'd just walked into - it was made of wood, it was drafty, and it had a weird 
"sleeping loft" and a "basement" underneath it. No space for a fire. What was wrong with these old Norse, anyway?
Well, of course, the Johanna really should take five minutes to learn something theory kicked in, because about two minutes later I found the plaque on the building. And realized I'd been standing in the hay byre of a cattle barn. Oops. From then, I started tromping through the snow to read the plaques, anyway. And the actual "cottages"; and "houses" looked like they would have been very pleasant to live in.
My guidebook is not overly kind to Oslo in its introduction: "possessed of a staid reputation and by no measure Scandinavia's most beautiful city", it says. It then goes on to list its redeeming qualities: museums, good access to outdoors, more museums, som galleries, and more museums. 
And it lists the open-air museum as one of "Oslo's premier attractions", and I for one thought the idea of visiting one of the famous Oslo museums combined with outdoor activity appealing even if I am a cultureless boor who does not join guided tours unless bullied to do so, and I stomped my way out to the Bygdøy Peninsula (home of some beaches. And a museum! And another museum! And some more museums!), and what the silly guidbook failed to mention was that Oslo has some lovely places to walk right within the city - though the stretch of walking along Oslofjord going out to the museum complexes would be nicer if it wasn't along a major highway (but in summer, there are ferries which take you from downtown Oslo to the museums).
And the museum-ing was worth it. I liked the sawmill and the stave church (constructed about 1000 years and many many kilometers apart, but still nicely situated in the same "village"). I didn't need to make it up: the sawmill is easy to figure out, what with water wheels which powered cables to pull the carriage holding the logs past the blade in two directions. 
Really, if you had replaced the water wheels with a McCormick caterpillar and the straight blade with a circular one, I'm sure my skin would have itched with old memories (and the similarity shouldn't be all that surprising, really - my dad's old sawmill was built 50 or 60 years ago by another Scandinavian).
The stave church of Gol (Gol is a place, even I figured that out, and this church used to be in that place) was 
even cooler than the sawmill, though I couldn't explore it as well because all you are allowed to do is look through a grid at the door. (I of course stuck my hand with the camera in it as far inside the door and photographed up, so that I could get a better perspective on the ceiling.) As near as I can figure it out, a "stave" church is a post church, but the posts are mounted on a sill which is raised above the earth to prevent rotting. So, you have four corner posts (in the simplest version, the Gol one has more), and a horizontal frame mounted on these at the top - giving a new platform to build onto. Then, you rest more logs for a second sill 
type thing on the higher frame (in a bit, so it gets narrower) and mount more posts, and you have the second, higher bit of the church. This way, you can get a soaring cathedral feeling with sturdy wood-only construction. This one was originally constructed around 1200 (I located the plaque!), and has lots of fairly elaborate carving and a covered walkway all around the church.
And then, I was so infected by museum enthusiasm, I would have liked to go visit some of Bygdøy's other museums (I was particularly intrigued by the Viking Ship museum and the Kon Tiki museaum), but alas, museums in Oslo shut down pretty early (at least in winter), and I had no more time. Next trip, I suppose.
My guidebook also fails to draw a lot of attention to the status of the baby carriage in Oslo, by the way. Everywhere I went that Sunday, there were small children being pushed in carriages. Everywhere. Including at the Folkemuseum. But, poking around the book some more, I find a discussion of parental leave and benefits in Norway, which is closely followed by "Norway's a great place to have a baby and start a family. Perhaps because of this reason, Norway has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe". I'm sure the book is full of many more explanations, but, you know... reading about a place as opposed to poking around it...
You know, I'm not about to self-identify as an anti-globalization activist (at least not while I'm eating bananas that cost so little that their price can be put in the "negligible" category, drive a Mexican-built German car, and act like my standard of living is my innate right for the sole reason that I was born in the G8). We all know that there is lots of baggage that comes along with the globalized economy.
But you know what? The first time I saw a Kinder Surprise egg in a Canadian retail outlet, I was ridiculously excited (it was 1989, I was in Peterborough), and I couldn't wait to get one for my sister when she visited - we hadn't seen any of those since we were very small children. These were the days before air travel became something I saw as accessible to me - the days of fuzzy memories of food items from a long ago childhood were something I assumed would always just be nostalgic memories and sometimes a stale product on the shelf of the Imported Foods store in the Sault or the contents of a Christmas parcel.
You'd think that I would welcome this current version of my world, where I can honestly say that if there is a food item that I am used to eating, I can find it somewhere within an hour's drive from me. But when I filled out my customs declaration form somewhere over Labrador the other night, I had to honestly put "$0" in the value of goods and gifts bringing back to Canada box. I have a $750 exemption! I use nothing? But I really had brought nothing back. Not a chocolate bar, even. There was no enthusiasm for chocolate featuring purple cows or tubes (not boxes, tubes) of Smarties or any of a long list of things that I looked at, shrugged, and said, well, I could get that more cheaply at home. Or, why would I lug this across the Atlantic? Maybe if I was into single malt scotch more, the duty free stores would be interesting. As it is, though...
I miss the days of lusting after things and the thrill of finding them. I mean, I have even found Persil washing powder in a local store - and my mother has been asking people to schlep that in their luggage for over 20 years. The only thing that has so far eluded me is her other obsession, Hengstenberg Gurkenmeister, in liquid (not dry!) form, in glass bottles. Me, I am left missing nothing.
Which makes travelling just a little bit less special than it used to be.
Strange things I complain about, no? But there won't be any complaining to be heard when I get around to posting pictures and waxing on about the wonderful ski weekend I spent in Norway. Sometime soon. Yep.
