Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 12. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 26 – New Jersey to New York City
Today was to be a laid back day, with the only objective to get into New York City as we were flying out of La Guardia airport early the next day. We awoke at about 11am, did some washing and headed for the ferry at about 1pm after our clothes took longer to dry than a random story from the Empire State Building audio old codger.
I foolishly made the suggestion of catching the ferry to its second stop at 34th street. This wonder piece of reasoning was based on the ferry docking on the Hudson River side of Manhattan, meaning only a 4 or 5 block walk to the metro station on the red line that would then take us to within only a block from our Hostel on West 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue (there you go Customs Troll, all that effort was worth it). When we crossed under the Brooklyn Bridge it became abundantly clear that this ferry was not going up the Hudson River. There was even some initial panic as the ferry headed towards Queens, before it turned back and docked at 34th street, on the East River side. This now meant we had a 10-block walk to the metro station. When you’re carrying around 20kg’s on your back for 10 blocks you notice just how slow people walk. It was becoming very frustrating, with each delay leading to more time lugging my backpack, leading to more sweat, leading to the back of my t-shirt being soaked. It became so frustrating that I was tempted to try the laws of physics that revolved around mass times speed. I reckon I could’ve done some fair damage as a battering ram as my backpack seemed to be getting heavier by the block.
We eventually reached the Metro and then the hostel. This HI hostel was the biggest in the world, and this was the only night they had not been fully booked. The size wasn’t the thing that hit me; it was the number of rules. What sort of hostel has rules that include no alcohol and no food? For a country that bangs on about freedom, it was ironic that this was the most restricted hostel I’d ever been in.
On the bus ride into New York I had a chance to read Brad’s European tour diary, which for the most part was a chronological tribute to what he had to eat and drink. Entries like:
“Had breakfast 7:30am. Saw Colosseum. Had pizza for lunch at 12:30pm. Went to Vatican and saw the Pope. Had dinner at 6:10pm”
So in a fitting tribute to Brad’s European tour diary here is a small sample of the next few events:
“Had beer at 3:01pm. Had another beer at 3:24pm. Had chicken wings for dinner at Hooters at 6:14pm”
In a rare bad moment on tour, we ended up being served by the only girl who must have been on work experience as she only said about 2 or 3 words all dinner. There was no witty by play, no flirting, no thought of “Am I a chance of sex here or is she just flirting with me to get a bigger tip?”. Truly the worst Hooters experience I’ve ever had.
From there we kicked on to Times Square for some more photos, before having 3 beers at Planet Hollywood. On the way out Brad made sure he studied each of the handprints, becoming impressed by the huge hands of Wesley Snipes. I wasn’t overly impressed and simply put it down to stereotype of black men having large extremities both downstairs and upstairs.We crashed quite early in attempt to get some sleep for our early morning flight the next day.
Day 27 – New York City to Calgary
We rose early from the “Freedom Hostel” at 3:30am to catch our 4am airport shuttle for our 7am flight. It was I that foolishly said yes to this flight when the travel agent suggested it, so it was my fault that we were getting up at time in which we should have been only starting to get some sleep.
We got to the airport at 4:45am, but Air Canada didn’t open until 5:30am (or as I was now calling them Canada’s Rubbish Airline Proprietor – CRAP Air). When they finally opened we were served by Little Miss Grumble Bum who treated us as though we’d actually come around to her house and woken her up at 5:30am.
The flight departed on time and we were soon on our way to Calgary, with our first stop Toronto. It was there we had to pickup our luggage, clear customs, and then recheck our luggage. This made me a little uncomfortable as I work on the theory the more planes you catch the more chance they have of losing your luggage. Our luggage made it to Toronto, we cleared customs and put our luggage on a conveyor belt hoping that the sticker attached to my backpack also mentioned it needed to go to Calgary. It was as we put our luggage on that conveyor belt an airport worker asked what time our connecting flight was. We told him 9:40am and he suggested we “gotta hustle”. It was still before 9am so I wasn’t overly fussed, but the airport worker gave us the chance to travel like VIPs, or old invalids, by putting us on a golf cart that took us to the domestic terminal. We got to our departure gate at 9:05am just as the plane started boarding. The rush proved unnecessary as the flight departed 15 minutes late, presumably because the pilot locked his keys in the cockpit and it had taken him 15 minutes to open the cockpit door with a coat hanger, which didn’t seem all that far fetched for CRAP Air.
Calgary is of course a Gaelic word meaning "he who has ruined his life through excessive smoking of crack cocaine". Our first impression of Calgary was the 20 or so homeless people camped out the front of the hostel, followed by around 10 intellectually disabled people on a field trip being led by 2 attractive chicks. I’m tipping this was not part of the advertising campaign that won Calgary the 1988 Winter Olympics. Our hostel had a delightful little park out the front, so delightful that 20 homeless people had decided to reside there and put it down as their residence when they filed their tax returns. That said, the Calgary government does have an active program to remove the homeless people; it's called winter. To help win the war on drugs they put a syringe box on a nearby power pole.Once checked into the hostel, we walked into town to get our bearings. We also did some homework on car hire prices. In the Avis rental we gave up on them before getting a quote after the poor service the bozo behind the desk was giving some Austrian couple. Apparently the extent of his training was to perfect the words “that’s not my responsibility, you’ll have to call the head office””. When the Austrian couple asked he called as they weren’t confident with their English, he expanded his dynamic skill set to use the words “no I can’t do that”. The best quote we got was from Budget, who said we could rent a midsize car for 3 weeks and leave it in Vancouver for $1700.
After that we had dinner and some beers at an Aussie pub called the “Flying Emu”. They had real Aussie beers, with Brad ordering a VB and myself a Coopers Sparkling Ale. The barman offered to roll my beer, which I returned with a blank look of “did I just order a beer or a joint?”. He informed me the beer had sediment in it and that he would roll it to lift the sediment. It showed great restraint on my behalf to refrain from informing the barman that I was born and raised in Australia and he would do best to f#!k off and not tell me how to drink a beer from my homeland. I didn’t say it, I was just happy to not be in an English or Irish themed bar. While the beers were authentic, the same couldn’t be said of the food, which was essentially Canadian just re-badged under the random name of an Australian animal We settled for the chicken wings, which were most likely called possum on the menu, and settled back with a few more quiet beers.
It had been a long day so we headed back to the Hostel at about 10pm. This was the first truly cold night on tour, but thankfully I was so liquored up the effects were reduced.
Day 28 – Calgary
I awoke after a pleasant 12 hours sleep and the body thanked me for it. Brad got up at 9am and was keen to do some research into car sales so he took off and did that. So there it was, for the first time in 27 days we had more then 10 minutes apart. It was Brilliant! Don’t get me wrong, Brad is a top bloke, it’s just that I would’ve struggled to spend 27 consecutive days with a playboy bunny. It was nice to wander aimlessly for a few hours through out the city and not have to confer with anyone on what they wanted to do.
I strolled around for a few hours, had some lunch, and then chilled in a park for about 20 minutes updating my tour diary and simply doing nothing. The park I had chosen was quite nice, with a small water feature running into a circular pool. In the centre of the pool was a statue dubbed ALBERTA FAMILY, presented to the City of Calgary by The Devonian Group of Charitable Foundations in 1981. In a confused moment of inspiration, the city must have told the sculptor, Stanley Bleifeld (a name that clearly ignores the “i before e, except after c” English convention, so you know he had to be good) that the city of Calgary was in the running to host the 1988 Olympic Games, and if he could somehow incorporate that with a family concept that would please the city. What they must have failed to mention was that they weren’t bidding for the Summer Olympic games, as the statue essentially looks like a mother and father trying to hammer throw their children out of the park. It reminded me much of a sculptor in a park off of St Kilda road in Melbourne of an actual hammer thrower, except he has an actual hammer (well, a track and field hammer, not to be confused with the hammer a tradesmen uses. Try putting a nail in with one those track and field bastards and you’ll struggle for accuracy). The park closed at midnight, no doubt to keep the homeless people out and ensure they returned to the correct residence, namely the park out the front my hostel. What is the deal with homeless people and the need to yell in every conversation they share with each other? Each morning in this hostel I wasn’t awoken by the sweet tune of birds singing, but rather the constant shouting of profanity by one homeless person at another. I know life is tough when your homeless, with the day to day business pressures of the rivalry to beat the next man to that can on the ground, but show a little respect to that person standing only 2 feet from your face, you might need to share his blanket and crack pipe one night. Jokes about homeless people; I’m going straight to hell. I’m screwed if poetic justice finds my address.
I called Brad after having my head shaved for $20, leaving promptly from the barbershop not sure whether I was supposed to tip so if I left quick enough I’d be out of earshot of any abuse about foreigners not knowing how to tip properly. Brad’s numbers, namely around the cost of compulsory car insurance didn’t really seem economically viable to me. There was also a fair chance that the cars in his price range weren’t going to be overly reliable, and given we both knew bugger all about car maintenance if the car died we would’ve been stuck pushing the thing to the next mechanic, throwing even more money at it. We agreed to rent, which would have been a car only a year old which would be replaced if it died, and the associated economic factors made it a better option. So with this new accord struck, we headed to Budget to get the finer details sorted. In the continued tradition of misinformation that was this tour, we must have got the work experience guy the day before. Today we were being served by the woman who ran this particular store (judging by her looks and personality she didn’t sleep her way to the top) who quoted us $2900. We pulled out the crumbled piece of paper ripped from a Budget notepad and showed her the $1700 we were quoted the day before. Reluctantly she said if that’s what we were quoted then she’d have to give it to us for that. God bless incompetence. We sorted out some of the minor details before she mentioned that her boyfriend was looking to sell a grey Jeep Cherokee which had done roughly half the miles of the Apollo 13 mission. It was parked out the back, we gave it the once over, and settled for the rental car.
As this was Friday night we were primed for a big night on the town with the locals. He headed for the Flying Emu for starters, but judging by the crowd on this night it would have been better named “The Retired Emu”. We had a beer, noticed we were the only ones without a walking frame or wheelchair, and decided to try and find another venue. As we left an English bloke the same age as us named Mark ran us down to ask us if he could tag along. He was a like-minded individual, so we agreed it was a good idea. We walked past Ceili’s and the place was pumping so we went in. Inside the place was huge, with 3 floors and a massive rooftop patio. We setup shop on the busy rooftop, standing in a place with a high traffic flow with the added bonus of letting us check out any chicks walking down from the second level of the patio. We were saying G’day to every woman that walked past until we finally got a nibble. Two absolutely maggotted women who had struggled to walk in a straight line started talking to us, pretending they were flight attendants. Talking to drunken women is always amusing when you’re sober as you fire a wisecrack at them and watch them try to process it with a look on their face that says either:
a) that was a serious comment
b) that was a highly amusing comment
c) did he just say I have a fat ass?
The conversation didn’t last long as they headed off to most likely find somewhere they could vomit.
We continued saying G’day to every woman that passed until we finally got a bite. Two quite affable women, looking for a small Asian woman, invited us to spend the night with them, so we did. We eventually found the small Asian woman who had held a table with chairs so we sat and chatted for a while. The party then moved to the dance floor as the beer began to flow and the night became a blur. At some point in the night we followed the chicks up and down the 3 flights of stairs on what must’ve been 4 or 5 occasions. Either they were looking for something or trying to lose something. Either way, we lost them some time during the night, eventually leaving the bar at closing time at 3am. It was at that time when it got ugly and we were making one last attempt to find some girls. We met a chick whose boyfriend had just left earlier in a car full of girls. We pointed out this abominably to her to see if she knew how wrong that was. She agreed, but said she was staying with him so that she could meet Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie Vedder as apparently this fine fellow had connections. We offered her the once in a lifetime opportunity of a threesome with 2 Aussie blokes, letting her know it should be completely guilt free knowing that her boyfriend was probably making some love stains in the back of her car as we talked. In a tight fought contest, the chance to meet Eddie Vedder was just enough to sway her, there would be no 3 way boosting of international relations tonight.
She did, however, give Brad her phone number before she left. Brad then attempted the difficult task of texting and walking while drunk on the way back to the hostel. This proved a feat too difficult so he constantly stopped to finish off his 180 odd character sonnet. This was pissing me off as I wanted to get to the hostel to sleep, so each time he stopped I would keep walking as a subtle hint to keep moving. The subtle hints wore off after 3 or 4 stops, at which time he didn’t keep walking with me. Topped up with alcohol it wasn’t until I walked 2 blocks and stopped to turn to realise Brad wasn’t following. I waited what seemed like 5 minutes, but given I was drunk it was probably closer to 15 minutes, before giving up and going back to the hostel. Not really a wise decision to walk home after 3am in a city full of crack heads but the alcohol gave me enough confidence to think I could kick their ass. I’d left him on 7th Avenue meaning all he had to do was walk a straight line back to the hostel. God only knows which route he took to get home, led by his alter ego “Little Brad” which comes out after a few cans of personality. I was asleep when he barged into the room abusing me about how I’d left him and how he’d somehow walked through a park where someone offered him crack. Apparently he’d been calling my name, but I didn’t here it, most likely because I was in bed and hadn’t taken a route home that included a small stop over in Banff. He wanted to have it out with me citing a real mate would have come to his defence. I told him it was a little hard for me to come to his defence when I hadn’t heard him calling my name. After he’d woken everyone in the room, I told him to calm down and we’d sort it out in the morning. He eventually settled and we got some sleep at about 4am.
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