I have taken the day off because I have a sore throat (it is 2pm, and I am slowly getting better). So that means I have actually got a couple of hours to update this blog while listening to some
Katchafire. A lot has happened so bear with me and I'll try and remember all the way back to December before leaving for New York City. Just a quick mention before I getting into it, we have had 420cm of snow in the city of Ottawa - that is 30cm short of the all time record for a Winter (record was in 1971!). Last week was crazy - Wednesday we had 30cm, Friday night, a further 20cm and Saturday 40cm! That is almost a meter of snow in a week. I'll talk about that more a little later (pics above).
Check News here.
New York City. Yes way back in December we made the trip (by car) down to New York City.
The Drive: We printed out the directions - from our door in Ottawa to the door of the parking lot (in which we registered with online), in NYC - we used mapquest for this - just type in your address and the end address, and it gives you the quickest route to your destination. So Miriam was the navigator and I was the driver. I was warned at work to get past the Great Lakes region - especially
Waterton, as there was a good chance of
Lake Effect Snow. So we drove just past Waterton, and stopped at a truck stop for some gas.
The truck stop was huge - with over 300 18 wheelers parked up and as much fatty takeaway foods as you could eat before having a heart attack. Now everything in America is big, and this truckstop was no different. The truck drivers were huge, Burger King had triple whoppers and you could supersize that - pay an extra $5.00 and you could also get the 4 litre gulper filled with your favourite 'pop' drink, such as Coke - refills only 3 bucks! Our car (a Subaru) looked like a
SMART car in the parking lot - the other vehicles were massive (saw a few 'utes' -
International CXTs, and
Ford F650s ) - I was afraid that we were going to get run over while still being in the car! The truck stop also had showers for the truck drivers - hundreds of them. You would hear over the loud speaker, 'Shower 192 is ready for trucker with number 541'. 'Everything big' was a good indication that we were now in the Unites States - another was the sign on one of the truck stops gas station window - it had the current
terrorist threat colour coded level indicator - which was set at yellow - 'elevated - significant risk of terrorist attacks'! Sorry (for saying this) but WTF - on the window of a convenient store!
Oh yeah - forgot to mention (another WTF, sorry). When we handed our New Zealand passports to the American officer at the border (a guy in his 50's - looked like a guy who knew his stuff), he looked at the passport and said to me, 'do you speak English'! I said ahh yes I do, I am a New Zealander. Then he let us through. Come on, I know New Zealand is a small country in the SW Pacific, but surely an immigration officer would know that we speak English!
OK, we left the truck stop, made our way past
Syracuse and stopped at a hotel just off the freeway. The next day was a pretty much uneventful drive into NYC over the Lincoln bridge into Manhattan and thanks to mapquest and Miriam, to our parking lot on 95th street. Then after dropping the car off, we made our way to our hostel (stayed there until the 26th) on 96th street - the hostel was a dive (think it was a half-way house), but it was cheap and we were only using it to store our stuff and sleep (although as I'll mention soon - I used it for a whole day more than I wanted to).
NYC - Miriam and I went for a walk down to 42nd and Times Square - had a look around the place before heading back to the hostel to meet our friends Hamish and Karen, who were arriving from London. While we were waiting I went down to the hostel's staff christmas party - I was the odd one out - everyone was speaking Spanish and dancing the flamingo (every day in NYC we heard a different language - awesome place).
Now forgive me (actually you won't have any idea) if I miss out many details, because December was a long time a go and my memory is not as good as when I was a young lad.
The next day all 4 of us went for a walk through Central Park, down to Times Square and had a look at the ice skating at the Rockefeller Center - there were so many people it was hard to move - check out this video:
Us in NYC. Later that day we all tried a hotdog from a side street vendor near 5th ave. I said earlier that I spent a bit of extra time in the hostel, and it was because of a bad 'dog'. Yep later that night and most of the next day I had a severe case of food poisoning. So while the other went out to do a bit of a tour, I was using more than my quoter of the one toilet roll we were given daily for our 'ensuite'. Bugger eh! But the next day I was back - albeit without an appetite (even though I lost a few kgs - well it felt like it).
Before Christmas Day, we managed to go up The Empire State building (massive queue - the queue was very long outside - then it zig-zagged inside to the ticket booth, then another zig zag queue to another room, with a zig zag queue to the lift, to another room 6 floors below the viewing deck, which had another zig zag queue through two rooms to a lift to the viewing deck); had dinner with Miriam's boss and wife near Wall Street; and we took the Stanton Island Ferry out to Brooklyn at night - a clear night with absolute amazing views of the NYC skyline.
Christmas Day in NYC. It was amazing how many people were out and about on Christmas Day. We queued up in the morning (after going to our local diner for food - nice food) to go ice skating in Central Park - awesome experience, what with the Christmas songs, the crowds of people on the ice, and the NY cityscape in the background. It was my second time on ice skates (the last time was in Quebec City, while Miriam's mum Anne was sitting watching - Miriam was going backwards and doing twirls, I was on my arse) and I actually almost got the hang of it - more on ice skating later. Later that night we went to Little Italy and had our first pizza Christmas dinner - it was a classy pizza though and nice wine.
Boxing Day - or shall I call it the drive from hell day. We took Karen and Hamish to Washington on Boxing Day (spent a few days there before heading back to NYC for New Years) and boy was it a long trip - kind of a mistake. There are road tolls heading in and out of Delaware - a tax haven State in between NYC and Washington, where half of the
Fortune 500 reside. Boxing Day the roads were mad - we were doing 10kmh tops for miles before and after the road tolls. It took us 9 and a half hours (normally takes about 4) to get to our hostel in Washington DC. I'm not going to talk about Washington DC - as it was mentioned in a previous post - except to say we were in a room with a madman, who would stomp in at 5am walk around the room and then ask another person who was sleeping to get up, because he had to check the wires (that he planted earlier) under the mattress!
The drive back to NYC took us just over 4 hrs on December 30. We stayed in a cheap hostel in Harlem. Awesome place. Not many white people. In Harlem, we tried soul food for breakfast at
M & G Soul food restaurant - which consisted of waffles, Southern fried chicken, bacon and corn grit - hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, it was good. Just off Malcolm X street, on Martin Luther King street were many shops selling hip-hop clothes. The colours (and sizes) of the clothes were amazing. It was hard to find a medium (a size small was out of the question), but there were many XXXL's.
New Years Eve. We were told to avoid Times Square because of the crowds. People were getting spots for the midnight ball drop, at 7am! The police would block off city blocks once they were crammed full of people. Once in there it was almost impossible to go for a pee! So instead we went (a few days earlier - we emailed this bar to get on the list for guaranteed entry) to a Brazilian white party, where everyone had to dress up in white. It was a massive night, heaps of people and great dancing, as well as
capoeira. We counted down to the New Year with party horns and glitter etc and watched the people crammed in Times Square get wet (it was raining) on the big screen. I was still recovering from the bout of food poisoning - but still had a massive time.
The next day we, Miriam and I went down to the financial district and had a look at ground zero. It was a nice day so we walked around the area and had coffee etc. Jan 2nd we said our good byes to Hamish and Karen, and headed back to Ottawa. BTW, Hamish now has a book out about his travels in Japan when he was younger:
Under the Osakan Sun.
The second weekend was along weekend for me because it was Martin Luther King Jr Anniversary (I get the Canadian as well as the American stat holidays). So I decided to make a quick trip across to
Fernie BC , to see my friend of many years - Ben and his fiancee Heather and kid Spencer. So I finished work on the Friday, Miriam took me out to the airport and I flew WestJet (4 hrs) to Calgary - where Ben picked me up. It was 10pm local time (1am Ottawa time), and we drove the 3 and half hours to Fernie (through parts of the Rockies - couldn't see much - but it was spectacular on the way back (during the day). Arrived at Ben's house just before 1:30am (4:30am Ottawa time).
Shots of Fernie:
9am we were up, and went up the mountain - where I was Dave someone for the day (borrowed someones season pass). The snow and mountain was amazing - some of the best conditions I've been in - although it took me a while to get used t the powder and the trees. One of Ben's mates was kind of our guide for the day - he knew every part of the mountain, and his boarding skills were unreal. The trick to going through the trees is to not get too close to them - 1. so you don't hit them, and 2. because of the
tree wells that form around the evergreens. The avalanche risk was also very high (in fact it has been one of Canada's worst seasons for the number of
avalanche related deaths), and some of the runs were closed - not that we were on the main trails - we spent most of the day off piste. At the top of one of the lifts, we saw some dude holding his coffee and board, then all of a sudden he dropped the board - the guy dived to try and catch it (while still holding his coffee) but missed, and the board went all the way down the mountain by itself, through trees and open runs - it could've seriously hurt someone if it hit them, as it was going at a fare pace, as you could imagine. Later on we spotted the board while we going up the lift, and yelled out to the guy, who was walking down the mountain - eventually he heard us and all was good.
The next day, after having a night in - Heather was on a girls night out - and we looked after Spencer while watching Superbad - we went to meet some other mates of Ben's who work up at a ski lodge - where clients pay $1000 a day to go
cat skiing. The two dudes - one an Aussie, the other a Swede - took us up the only way possible to the lodge (apart from going up on the Cat) from the car park - and that was by
ski doo - check out the video:
Wintershots, Canada. The ski doos were unreal. We went up the mountain at 110kmh - snow bank on one side, side of the hill and trees on the other. We took blind corners at speed (apparently, people from the lodge radio ahead to before heading down the trail - to make sure there is no one on the trail - but we came across a few ski doos - let's say it was a bit dicey when we came around the corner and saw them coming down ahead of us). I've never been so fast on snow and the time it took to get from zero to 100kmh was a few seconds - carzy but heaps of fun. Once, we were up at the lodge we all had a game of pool, then Ben and I headed out around a lake cross country skiing (
classic skiing as opposed to skate skiing) - a little bit nervous, as we were told by the guys that there had been cougar sightings around the lake. The ski doo down the mountain was even faster as you could imagine - wicked.
The next day Ben and I made the trip back to Calgary for my flight back to Ottawa. I must say Ben , you are one lucky fella living in Fernie - it is amazing - awesome scenery, heaps of snow (they have already had about 9 meters this season!), and a relaxed town that has not been over taken by tourist operators and tourists.
In January, the canal opened (which is across the road from our apartment) for ice skating - the worlds '
largest' ice skating rink - not longest - that title now belongs to a
rink in Winnipeg. I can now say that I can skate almost as good as Miriam. I am so confident that I have told the kiwis in Ottawa (there are a few that we have met), that next season we will start a kiwi ice hockey team in Ottawa - we will use the ice hockey sticks to balance! Ice hockey is huge over here - there are little rinks all over the place and many turn up in the weekends to play shimmy (non-contact ice hockey). Anyway, the canal was awesome - all 7.8km of it. They had
beavertails,
maple taffy and other food and drinks along the canal. The canal is now closed because of the warmer weather and all the snow we have (which insulates the ice - not allowing it to freeze properly).
Winterlude was on for a couple of weeks in February when the canal was open. There was a lot going on - ice sculptures by the world's best, music on the canal, ice skating, Inuit demonstrations (music, language and tools), ice slides, ice fishing, husky dogs etc.
We celebrated Waitangi Day in Ottawa at a pub called the Earl of Sussex. There was a good turn out of about 50 kiwis. We keep intouch with a few of them - in fact we had a -12C bbq on Friday night, just before the snow storm. In Summer, one of the kiwis is going to have a Hungi.
So much to write, and I'm only giving you the brief version! I have to go snow boarding now (yes it is the evening now, my sore throat is a little better thank-you). Will write more soon - when I get back. Also will add pics.
