The Lengths You Go To...

Where: Icefields Parkway, Alberta

When: August 2013 (The slow journey home)

What: Refusing to let a downpour get in the way of a good campfire.

Less wild than it seems

Canadian Rockies... a highlight of our 10 months in North America. With a hire car (sorry, 'rental' car) and two weeks to go and do whatever we wanted, the freedom was enticingly good. Too bad the rest of the world have the same idea... but more on that another time.

There are so many awesome options for back country camping in North America. I quickly learnt that back country means walk-in, walk-out and camp basically wherever, not in the regimented allotted sites that national/provincial parks seem to be big on. I also learnt that back country camping is not an option for a couple of backpackers travelling with a year's worth of stuff and a $25 tent.

We reached the Icefields Parkway midway through the road trip. By this time we were used to showering every four days and eating whatever we could cook in our one pot. This campsite didn't actually have a name. Unless 'Overflow' was it's official title. After an entertaining and occasionally awkward conversation with the ranger, we learnt that the campsite was opened to hold all the summer travellers but had been opened this year due to another site further north being completely wiped out by the Alberta flooding. (Didn't hear about it? It was worse than Superstorm Sandy but you know, NYC is very important.)

Nothing like RVs to ruin a great shot

The best part about 'Overflow' was the walk-in section (100m, not 10 kilometres). Finally we got to leave those smug RVs behind! And we could take uninterrupted photos of the *choose your own superlative: stunning/breathtaking/staggering* scenery and pretend we were more wild than we really were. We got a pretty good fire going considering all we had were damp logs and a rule forbidding kindling collection. Thank you hairspray! (It doesn't serve any other purpose on a camping road trip)

I do love making a fire (not in a criminal sense). I especially love the achievement of getting a fire cranking against the odds. Then the rain came.

Why did we even build a fire in summer? Was it particularly cold? Not overly*.  But we'd paid the honesty box $8 and we had marshmallows for dinner. Plus it seems to be the thing to do in North America- it ain't camping unless there's a fire (even if you are wearing singlets and shorts).

I refused to let the rain ruin my hour of poking, blowing and splinters. I took matters into my own hands.

After twenty minutes of getting quite wet, I retreated to the tent, ready to concede defeat. 

If you've sensed there is a fairy tale ending to this story, you won't be disappointed.

Thumbs up!

On the down side, the umbrella was left reeking of smoke. As were all my clothes and everything in the bag the umbrella was later shoved in. 3 months on and after a hose down and being left out in the sun, the brolly is still a scented memento of an interesting road trip.

E.A.

* Apologies for seeming like I'm interviewing myself. I slipped back into the North American style of asking myself a question then answering it.

Photobombing Vintage Style

Where: Navy Pier (Chicago, IL) 
When: June 2013 (extended route back to Toronto after Bonnaroo festival)
What: Possibly the world's first photobomb.

I'll save you the time... according to Wikipedia, Navy Pier is a 3,300 foot pier on the Chicago shoreline of Lake Michigan. Built in 1916,  Navy Pier is Chicago's number one tourist attraction.

Perhaps tourist trap is more fitting but what the hey, it was a beautiful early summer's day on sparkling Lake Michigan. Of course we were going to hang out at the water (particularly as Toronto's waterfront is so cleverly blocked by condos). 

There was quite an interesting historical element to Navy Pier, if you looked hard enough through the overpriced memorabilia. I was particularly taken by the following photograph from 1921.

A few headlines sprang to mind when I saw this picture...

"Woman wins Apathy of the Year Award- Rewarded with bouquet shoved into sash"

"Wind changes during I'm a Little Teapot recital"

"World's first recorded Photobomb"

It's not until you read the caption closely that a whole new level of intrigue arises.

Mayor William Hale Thompson (that's the teapot guy) with Evelyn Slader, Queen of the Stockyard Districts (must be the cardboard cutout on the left), and one of the contestants for Queen of the Pageant of Progress, 1921. Who...? I must have it the wrong way around. Perhaps it's this way:

Or maybe the caption writer was as short changed for time like the content writers at my work who have been known to write "human not included" in a catalogue disclaimer.

E.A.

Tennessee: Twang and Tornadoes

Toronto to Tennessee: the first leg of the 'Fallopian Tube' road trip

When I told my mum I was driving to Tennessee, she casually asked (in that downplayed frantic mother fashion) about tornadoes. "Oh no, it's not a tornado region," I reassured. I wasn't just making her feel better- I really did think tornadoes were only in Tornado Alley.

Down the I65 we cruised, full from a surprisingly decent White Castle meal where after six attempts at saying, "Combo 15" we'd had a nice conversation with the cashier who, like everyone else we met in Kentucky and Tennessee, insisted we all have a good day now. I found the southern niceness pleasantly cliched, but coming from the North-East, I was almost suspicious of such frank friendliness: were they really just making fun of my accent?

We were an hour outside of Nashville when we saw the storm clouds: a huge mass of indigo with white wisps to show just how dark the rest of the clouds were. We marvelled at how we'd driven straight onto the set of Twister. We summoned our best Bill Paxton buffoon voices, "Dorothy's gotta fly!"

"They don't actually get tornadoes down here to do they?"
"Nah, she'll be right."

In Nashville, we checked into one of the crummiest hotels I've ever seen. I'm still chasing the money that they offered to refund because they let somebody else in our room, leaving us locked out at 1am. It seems their idea of a refund is an accidental charge of the refunded amount. Gotta love paying extra for the experience!

Our room was on the ground level of of three storeys. We drew the curtains to hide from the loitering permies * and checked out some local TV. All the stations were crossed to special weather broadcasts, tracking the tornadoes that had touched down where we'd just driven through. "If you know anyone driving on the I65, tell them to get off and seek shelter." We gawked at the TV. Nashville was now on tornado alert for the evening.


What to do when your plans for a birthday bender** in honky tonk bars are looking grim? You sit in your hotel room and drink beer of course. To quell my silly notion that drinking probably wasn't the safest thing to do under the circumstances, we practised hiding in our safe place under the sink (not a typical household bathroom sink). The beers came too.

The threat eased eventually and we made it out where I discovered:

a) honky tonk doesn't mean Jerry Lee Lewis
smashing out on a piano

c) "Burgers and chips" means just that: potato chips, not fries

d) You shouldn't stand on Elvis

E.A.

* permies = people who live permanently at the hotel
** the use of 'bender' is to insinuate that I am somewhat cooler than I am.

What I Learnt at Bonnaroo Part 1

June 23, 2013

It's a week later than all the other Bonnaroovians*, but I've finally had my 12 hour post-festival sleep. After 3500km and two weeks on the road, my crawl into bed was luxuriated by the air-conditioning kindly installed by the landlords during our absence.

What’s the best way to write about a four-day festival (turned into a marathonic seven days by volunteering)? I had a long time to think about it on the drive home and decided it was by sharing what I learnt (thereby creating a convenient segway into my recently published article A Monkey Could Do It: Lessons Learnt as a Temp).

Things aren't as they feel...

1. Tennessee in June is HOT

Der! Obvious, I know. And yes, you’d think growing up in Australia would be good preparation. But arriving on a farm and pitching a tent two days before a festival starts, with no shade or amusement is bloody hot. Before leaving Toronto, I learnt about a fantastic combined measure of heat and humidity (why doesn’t Australia have this?!). Humidex (a reverse of windchill factor) tells you how hot it feels, serving to qualify your moaning about the weather.


On the Wednesday before the music began, we laid in the pitiful shade of a golf umbrella and the car, heads practically under the exhaust in feels like 47C (116F). In a desperate effort to beat boredom and sunstroke, we hiked into town, stumbling upon the oasis of an air-conditioned O’Charleys restaurant and would you believe it, on Free Pie Wednesday (a dessert, not a meat pie). “Yay, the hippies have come to town!” our server said excitedly. It sure made me feel better about sitting unshowered in a restaurant with bed hair and dirty clothes.

Sun safe whilst advertising Peta Panned
on some questionable graffiti- did you see it?

2. Only the Australian sun must give you skin cancer

So much exposed skin at Bonnaroo! I wasn’t exactly wearing the collared long sleeve shirt the old man would approve of but I was definitely adhering to the rest of the Slip, Slop, Slap routine ingrained in us as kids. Perhaps it’s the ozone hole over Australia/New Zealand or those unlucky twenty-somethings dying of melanoma. Maybe I just know how crap a sunburn is at a festival. I’ll admit though that the tan I got even after regimental sunscreening is quite nice. It’s so good I was a little disappointed no-one commented on it on my return to the office today.

3. Americans and/or Bonnaroovians are extremely patient... unless it’s to charge an iPhone.
Bonnaroo: Welcome to the Line Ride. There was a line for everything: the cinema tent, the comedy tent, the water station. It took two hours to even get into the festival on the first day. It might just be that they squished 80 000 people into an area that would comfortably hold half that. But everyone cheered along the way, high-fiving as we snaked along the fencing like cattle. Amazingly, the only places that didn’t have lines were the bars. Perhaps selling the same beer for $4 in the campgrounds and $7 in the festival just rubs people the wrong way.

Yes, Bonnaroovians were patient- the crowd happily hung around for Empire of the Sun, forty minutes late and starting close to 3am. They were patient, unless it involved an iPhone. Call me old school, but I tried to charge my camera battery in the staff shower trailer (where the sulphur in the well water had it smelling as if a hundred people simultaneously farted). When I returned, it was unplugged with a sheepish and rather strong stomached iPhone user concentrating on his facebook profile. I considered explaining that I didn’t even have phone service but it seriously reeked in there.

4. Even a blood clot on the brain isn’t a good enough excuse to pull out.

FUCK MUMFORD. I wish I’d taken a photo of the spray paint across the Portaloos (just can’t make myself say Portapotty...). The rumours had been spreading around the grounds and it was eventually confirmed on Twitter (camping festivals in the modern age!). Mumford and Sons had to pull out because the bassist hadn’t recovered from emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot. What a slacker. Lucky Jack Johnson was already hanging around the festival to cover. Also lucky that I am part of the 2% of the population that does not like their music (that’s putting it mildly). Since when were banjos cool?

(1/2) We were informed yesterday that Mumford & Sons have to cancel their #Bonnaroo appearance due to bassist Ted Dwane’s medical condition
— Bonnaroo (@Bonnaroo) June 14, 2013

TO BE CONTINUED...

* Bonnaroovian = a special term to describe attendees of Bonnaroo, making you feel part of one big inclusive group at the expense of excluding those who did not attend.

Hot town, Summer in the City!

May 8, 2013

Well, not quite summer but after a long winter, the 20°+ has felt just like that. And we’ve had a ten day stretch of it! It’s a welcome break after winter dragged its heels to the last week of April. In fact, in four months the temperature barely changed, except for the odd day here and there.

On a gorgeous 8° day (?!) I unzipped, yes, unzipped my coat and pumped my old man’s ‘Summer of Love’ album on my ipod.

From winter flowers to...

“You came at a good time,” everyone joked on our January arrival. I still think we did. I’d much rather arrive in winter and see the progression into summer than witness the reverse. I loved winter– the snow, the slush, the ice. (Strangely enough I was colder living in Manchester. Even an Australian winter without heating is more intolerable.)

Winter left me wondering,