Downtown Vancouver after Canada beat the US in Men's Hockey

And now that it has been more than a week since the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony, things are returning to normal. Classes have started back at UBC and the grind of assignments, lab expectations, long term projects, and midterm exams has provided a nice break from the breakneck pace of the Olympics. Moving to Vancouver in August of 2009 has yielded an interesting perspective for living in an Olympics host city. I haven’t known a Vancouver without Olympic hype, dread and emotion. I thought Granville Street was always pedestrian only. I thought that Translink was always planning to open new rail lines. I thought Canadians were always patriotic. (Although up here, it isn’t called patriotism, it is called, “Loving Canada”)

After hosting fourteen friends from the United States in our 900 sq. ft apartment over the period of 17 days, I gained a fresh set of eyes on the city I’ve learned to live in. “Transit is so good here” and so I responded, yeah it has been ramped up during the Olympics but it actually is pretty good (especially if you’ve ever been to any other city in North America). “Everyone is so young here”, and so I responded that I didn’t realize this fact until I went back home to Charlotte, NC for the Christmas holidays as was shocked at the demographic contrasts. “People here are in such good shape!”, and I responded that you realize this fact whenever you leave the United States, even if Canada isn’t that much better as a whole on obesity rates. That’s not to say I take Vancouver for granted now, I swear I never will. But all the awesomeness just kind of grows on you until you expect awesomeness. When awesomeness becomes the everyday does it ever reach the status of the mundane?

At first, my daily activities consisted of going downtown and gaping at the large crowds of people doing nothing but walking around. Sure, the street musicians were cool but what was there really to do in downtown Vancouver during the Olympics? Stores were crowded, the cultural houses were crowded and the zip line I wanted to experience so much required a 4+ hour wait. Walking around admiring the insanity of it all got old after a few nights and I decided to check out the O-Zone (lame). Around this time I was already starting to get burned out. I’m afraid Jenn and Jason suffered the most from my exhaustion as I often couldn’t do more than just stare at the constant Twitter deliveries to my phone from VANOC and Translink. I entered Olympic overload. Showing friends around in a city I didn’t really know that well had its additional problems. “Let’s go find a bar” … “everything has a huge wait and is overcrowded” … “let’s walk around” ….  …. 20 mins later … “ok here’s something”.

Walker on the drums downtown

Sleeping nine people in the apartment during one night might sound like a feat of gymnastics but was really a joy. My favorite part about the whole experience was hosting friends and showing them around, I bemoan the cost of eating out so much but revel in the fact that I got to try so many amazing places in such a short period of time. I know Vancouver’s East Side better, taking Jane to Commercial Drive for her birthday and later in the week with other friends for bowling. (Not to mention other adventures to Dan’s Homebrewing and a Cheese shop on Hastings). I think Jane was the real gold medal winner, she somehow agreed to let me host five of my old roommates at once (all guys) immediately after all the other guests. When three friends came up from Seattle for a night, she said, “sure, bring ‘em on”. Somehow I got all my assignments for UBC done on time, sneaking away to complete them.

The Olympics brought a lifetime of memories in just a short period of time. I even learned all the lyrics to “O, Canada” by heart. However, If I have one regret from the whole experience though it is this: I didn’t watch the Olympics enough. Sure, I saw all the key moments live, along with all the biggest events. But it is not taking the time to sit down for a full curling match or failing to watch the entire two-man luge that stings now. Going to more of the actual events would have been fun but the cost was prohibitive and so much other cool stuff was going on I don’t regret passing up opportunities to do just that.

So if you ask me to sum all that up, “What was it like to live in the Olympic host city?” It was basically like normal Vancouver but with a big party downtown. Outside of Downtown Van you could barely tell the Olympics were happening.

I’m not sure I’d ever want to travel to an Olympics. Vancouver is a rare bird, equal parts civil and beautiful. If the Olympics were in Chicago I don’t think the 24/7 street party down town would have maintained its rate of zero casualties. People here don’t ride around with machine guns on motorcycles like they will during Rio 2016. Vancouver was one amazing host city that far an exceed my expectations but I could never justify spending thousands of dollars on tickets to uphold nationalistic values. Apparently British Columbia has turned me into such a hippie I think the athletes should have their favorite songs played on the podium instead of national anthems. The Olympics are a great excuse to be a tourist but without all the slow paced things I enjoy about my brand of tourism: relaxing in fun restaurants, exploring cool local shops, relaxing at local music and leisurely conversations with residents. In a city I didn’t already know, all these things would be inaccessible as a one-off tourist in a foreign land. At the end of the day, I’m thinking: wow, that was a lot of fun, hope it didn’t cost too much… oh it was $8 billion?… in the US we just put that on a credit card.

I don’t want to be a cynic who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. The collective experience shared in Vancouver was immensely valuable. If companies can possibly re-locate here the economy will benefit. Outside of downtown, businesses saw little to no upside and will experience much higher taxes. Many artists and educators will have their funding slashed dramatically hurting the local experience dramatically for decades to come. Local transit is running a huge deficit and faces the reality of significant cutbacks or canceling much needed rail projects. How shallow is modernism that it’s pinnacle is gambling the future by throwing a massive party for a few days? Could it really all be about private profits driven through socialized debt?

Life and society isn’t always about doing the rational thing though.  Maybe after watching grown men sweeping on ice for several hours at a time I’ve realized that’s what made the Olympics so much fun.

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Post tags: canada

My voicemail starts at the 1:28:30 mark:

MU308.mp3

If the embedded player doesn’t work, you can always use the one on the MU site.

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Through Self-Hypnosis techniques I learned from Adam Eason’s book many years ago, I’ve been able to wake up with out alarms for quite some time in most scenarios. I’ll be interested to see if I can meet my target of 7.5 hours in bed or if my body likes to meet a different quota for sleep.

tracking my sleeps with YawnLog

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As Emily Bronte wrote: “I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”

My job was to deliver pizza to an upstairs apartment. I did so and the lady was so depressed. She told me that my sign promised for an, “interesting” year ahead and that her sign guaranteed her a very bad one, she was headed out so at the least she could deal with it while having fun traveling. I was a little skeptical at first but encouraged her to travel because it was great. Then her mom came out and starting speaking in a strange language pointing at me and smiling. I thought she was hitting on me at first, or found me attractive or something. The whole place smelled like cigarette smoke, it was awful and there were black cats walking around. I realized that they were talking about my aura or something like that. I thanked them for their advice and I started to walk away but the pruney mom followed me. She was talking louder and louder. The lady was old and wrinkly as well and her glasses were round and ill-polished. I felt like the subject in a freak show. She re-iterated her comments about the upcoming year and I got a little freaked out.

I walked downstairs and I was in the sunny green grass around the apartment complex. There was a family, a mom and a dad. The dad had black hair and the mom was really tall and had blonde-red hair. They were playing with their two boys and I decided to sit down and watch them for a while. It was absolutely so beautiful. I had to watch non-chalantly because otherwise it would have been weird. But I sat there watching, looking at the joy in the parents faces and the joy in the childrens faces.

I contemplated what all this meant and I heard the voice of the mushroom in my head, it told me “you have to keep your species alive you idiot” and wondered if that was because of some grand eschantonic plan, a goal for history, some cyclical evolutionary cycle or maybe all of that in between. Whatever it was, it was all so grand. And then the pure beauty smacked me in the face. I broke down crying from the glorious nature of it all. The human experience is truly the most beautiful thing, the fact we can express art and beauty… the tears were partially joy and partially lamentation for the vast reaches of humanity that would never embrace the beauty of their triumphs and their suffering. By cutting ourselves off from the realities of the world, we missed out on the beauty of human existence. [Note: I woke up at this point crying; that’s one helluva dream]

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Post tags: dreams, emotions

A Cree Native American storyteller and teacher told me: “According to my tradition, from the beginning of creation, every morning, when the sun comes up, we are each given four tasks by our Creator for that day. First, I must learn at least one meaningful thing today. Second, I must teach at least one meaningful thing to another person. Third, I must do something for some other person, and it will be best if that person does not even realize that I have done something for them. And fourth, I must treat all living things with respect. This spreads these things throughout the world.”

This has been added to my about page for the blog as a continual resolve to do these things.

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On the way out of Sioux Falls we stopped off at the towns namesake. The falls were intriguing but underwhelming because we were used to the massive waterfalls from North Carolina. However, for people accustomed to the rolling prairie-land I’m sure this was quite a sight.

Perhaps the single most awesome (non-nature related) stop on my summer 2009 road-trip was at Porter Sculpture Park along I-90 through South Dakota, between Sioux Falls and Mitchell. I had marked the Sculpture Park as a must-stop but was about to pass it by on the interstate. However, the massive cow sculpture was hard to miss and we caught the exit just in time. Driving across the large corn-field and into the parking area we realized that we’d just ran short on cash. Fortunately, Wayne Porter cut us a break on admission because he said it was all about fun anyways. We set out about the mysterious sculpture with their cryptic descriptions after we signed Mr. Porter’s guestbook which required us to write the most important thing we knew. I think I paraphrased Arthur C. Clarke by writing, “Either we are alone in the universe or we aren’t, either possibility is terrifying.”

Walking about the sculptures was like entering Wonderland as Alice. These massive metal designs were all created by Wayne Porter himself, accompanied by his thoughts which were apparently the inspiration. We returned to the car and discovered that Erby had lost his ipod on the walk. Fortunately a nearby South Dakotan family found it and we celebrated the triumphant return of Erby’s ipod to the roadtrip.

We then hit the road for Mitchell, SD and the Corn Palace. I had first seen the Corn Palace on a documentary called King Corn, regarding America’s obsession with corn. This structure was indicative of this obsession. Originally built in 1892 to celebrate the corn harvest, The Mitchell Corn Palace was rebuilt every year with a new design. This was a bizarre place, I had high hopes for the interior though which were dashed when I realized the whole thing was just a basketball court. After lunch at a local train station re-imagined into a restaurant, as our buffalo burgers settled we discovered that Mitchell didn’t have any grocery stores (that we could find) only a Super Wal-Mart… how depressing. So we loaded up, visited Cabela’s Outdoor World to get Jane some hiking shoes and hit the road for the Badlands!

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We left Chicago early in the morning, around 7:30am to allow plenty of time from driving through the rough traffic. Ensuring that Erby was behind us was the tough part. If he got lost in the sea of cars, it might have taken a long time before we could meet up again. Breaking through the traffic and through the toll roads of the Chicago metro finally revealed the Wisconsin border with beautiful green rolling hills and picturesque skies, like in the photo above. We were truly in the American Midwest now.

Our first stop was in Janesville, WI for a look at the giant cow.

Then we hit the road again towards Wisconsin Dells after a quick stop off at the Mouse House Cheese House.

Wisconsin Dells was an interesting place. I don’t know much of the history so I’m going to blindly speculate that the happy motoring culture of the 50s created this place. Much like Cave City, KY. The tackiest water slides and themed buildings I’ve ever seen, the whole place was kitch city. Probably because the nearby river couldn’t meet capacity, the nearby hotels built water parks to encourage people to continue to vacation in the area. Among the odd sights of the Dells was this Amish family going to Burger King.

We then drove through many more miles of rolling farmland until we crossed the Mississippi River and into the craggy mountain edge on the border of Minnesota. We were quite hungry at this point and stopped off in the small town of St. Charles where a local said, “North Carolina! That’s a long way from here…” The diner was full of Amish and locals, the menu had a “pop” section. This was a different world.

The only thing in south Minnesota other than farmland was a massive 60′ statue of the Jolly Green Giant.

We soon started to see our first indications that Wall Drug awaited us in West South Dakota. The road signs passed us by on I-90 every so often. Eventually we made it across the border into SD, found the cute little midwestern town of Sioux Falls and grabbed a bite to eat with our awesome CouchSurfing host who had biked from Seattle to Banff one summer! Wow! Our dinner was at a local restaurant that had a jazz band inside. My buffalo burger was delicious. Our host had to go to work at 5am the next morning for the local Sherrif’s department so he left us the keys and we went to sleep after talking a little more about Sioux Falls. I imagined that few ever passed through Sioux Falls but he said that he was going to be triple booked the upcoming weekend with travelers from Germany, California and Canada. Apparently Sioux Falls was a popular stop for people coming to and from the Badlands!

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Post tags: canada, video

Editors Note: The original intention was to post a description of my Summer 2009 roadtrip closer to the time that it occurred, but now 2010 is approaching and since I’m not even half-way through I need to get on this!

When we drove through Gary, IN fighting through the traffic and then seeing Chicago’s skyline in the distance, my breath was nearly taken away. A gorgeous cluster of brilliant lights, penetrating the night sky. I could see why Batman was filmed here. We drove through the multi-lane highways and towards the place of our couchsurfing host for the next few days: Patrick. Emerging off the Interstate and onto the road, I was shocked at the number of cars parked along the streets. There was no space for additional cars! We eventually got lucky and found a spot though. Walking up to Patrick’s place we realized we were starving. It was late, just before 10pm and a Chinese place let us order from them as they were closing. Such nice people!

We went up to Patrick’s apartment, introduced ourselves and ate the Chinese food. Patrick was a great guy that really loved Couchsurfing. He had just hosted a girl for several weeks! That’s dedication. We were exhausted and couldn’t join him on his night out with friends from the Pitchfork Music Festival so we re-arranged the living space and hit the mattresses with exhaustion.

I vaguely remember what happened, but Jane and Erby definitely did. Patrick’s roommates walked in and called friends complaining that more couchsurfers were there and that they were tired of having people sleeping on their floor. The next morning, we awoke, went out to get some Cuban breakfast and discussed this turn of events. How unfortunate, Patrick was such a great guy but it was uncomfortable to stay where we weren’t wanted. After getting some trip planning done at a coffee shop, we returned and found the roommates there. When we explained that we’d only be there for a few nights, they were relieved… they thought we would be there for another month! Apparently the last guest had exhausted her welcome.

We set out and about the city, to see the Miraculous Mile. The Threadless store, The Hancock Center, the deep dish pizza, the walking around lost, the concert at Millenium park. It was all fantastic. Free classical music at millenium park was the best moment of the trip so far, and maybe even one of the highlights of the entire trip, now that I’m looking back. Amazing acoustics with the backdrop of a city. Brilliant. The rail line that would take us back to our lodging was out so we waited for a bus that was absolutely packed and we found another way home. It took us about two hours to get back and we just ended up taking a taxi anyways.

The next day we went downtown to catch the art museum before it closed, but it closed early because it was a Sunday. So we went to the International Museum of Surgical Sciences for a super gross-out experience. We closed out the stay in the Capitol of the Midwest by partaking in a movie with Patrick. We saw Food Inc., the film adaptation of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”. He enjoyed it and it gave us a great talking point for burgers and beers at The Counter afterward. We had some belgian waffles with a fun street vendor and said our goodbyes and passed on our many thanks.

The next morning we set out around 7:30am for Sioux Falls, SD to beat the worst of th Monday morning rush hour traffic but to also ensure that we left around the same time Patrick did for his grocery clerk job. We had a long day ahead of large roadside objects and nothing was going to keep us from seizing that day.

Chicago was a fantastic experience, and a frustrating one. The largest US city I’ve ever visited while driving… it was full of cars! Even taking the bus a few kilometers took an hour or more on these grizzled and gridlocked streets. A fun place to visit but because of the big business mindest, the prevalence of chain stores and the high cost of living I knew that this was one place I’d never want to even accidentally end up living in.

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Post tags: photos, summer 2009 roadtrip, travel

welcome to Kentucky!

The drive from Nashville to Chicago tied for our longest drive of the road-trip. Rarely did we have a full day of driving that was as long as this one. We started out by heading to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It is the longest cave system in the world! But unfortunately, the crowds were mammoth as well and we could only do the “self guided discovery” tour for small kids and those too lazy to call ahead with reservations. This place was a circus. Cabins were next to the cave entrance so you could stay overnight to enter the caves! A quick tour through the discovery cave and we got the idea, this place was cold and was underground. The history of Mammoth Cave was quite interesting though, early settlers even set up a hospital in one of the caves because the cool air eased the pain of tuberculosis sufferers.

mammoth cave was crazy

Just outside of Mammoth Cave National Park was Cave City, KY which was one of the tackiest places we drove through. We made a stop off at the Wigwam Hotel #2 and as we took photos, a guy driving by made native sounds by quickly waving his hand over his mouth. We giggled at this but sadly it was probably the only entertainment available in Cave City. The infrastructure of hotels and tourist traps like Dinosaur World! was a vestigal remainder of the happy motoring past of the United States, where oil was cheap and cars were plentiful, the hotels had clearly seen better days because they were mostly in disrepair.

even you can sleep in a wigwam!

Driving further up I-65 took us to the KY Stonehenge, which was in the yard of a house. Strange. Only stranger thing? A truck trailer attached to a car.

if only this was at walmart so I could put it on people of walmart

In Louisville we ate lunch at the birthplace of the Cheeseburger, Kaelin’s. However, Kaelin’s had been closed down and an Irish pub/sports bar was just opening at the same location. We had caught them on their opening day. The burger tasted great and the coffee washed down the tackiness of Cave City. After driving through Louisville to see Colonel Sanders’ grave (the one of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame and surprisingly a 33 degree mason) we lost Erby in the traffic and he accidentally headed off towards St. Louis while Jane and I saw the world’s largest bat at the Louisville Slugger baseball bat store in downtown Louisville. We were only in Louisville for a few hours but it looked like one of the nicer towns to live in.

ah, the colonel

We then crossed over into Indiana for a whole lotta nothin’. Corn and other junk for the rest of the drive. Indianapolis looked like a lifeless city. Probably like Uptown Charlotte in the late 80’s. A traffic jam due to construction kept us out of Chicago for a few extra hours, Gary, IN is a mess. We finally found a place to park in the Chicago neighborhood of our CouchSurfing host… my first reaction was, “What a skyline! So many cars!” Everywhere was a street sweeper zone so parking was limited, and so many cars…

We were famished and a little Chinese restaurant let us take some food out even though it was 1 minute before they closed. We met up with our CouchSurfing Host and slept hard, preparing for our two full days in the capitol of the Midwest.

And all it took was a little exposure to Kentucky and Indiana to finally conclude that the Southeastern US is aggressive weird. We only concluded this after speaking with our Chicago CouchSurfing host Patrick, but the seeds of the idea were sewn after the Jesus signs, the KY Stonehenge and more. I will have more to say on this soon.

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