Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 16. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 38 – Jasper
Today we decided on some sport, namely the sport of dodging salmon who are dodging bears; white water rafting. The company we’d chosen took the punters from Mount Robson down the Fraser River, so we had roughly a 40 minute drive into British Columbia to enjoy the icy cold waters of the Fraser. We stopped at an information centre along the way for the daily tour requirement of education, where I had the chance to read about Kinney Lake and Mount Robson. Kinney Lake was named after Reverend Kinney, the first bloke to have a crack at reaching the peak of Mount Robson (don’t know who Robson was, just assuming someone who had the awesome ability of spotting large piles of dirt and naming them after himself). Unfortunately for the Rev, it appears you have to be a Muslim (preferably with the name Mohammed) to be able to reach the summit of a mountain to talk to God, so he never did succeed in getting to the summit. He tried multiple times, with his best chance coming on one attempt when he had great weather on a Sunday. Unfortunately, as it was a Sunday his religion forbid him from climbing any further on that day (about that time he must have really felt he’d picked the wrong God). In a typical kick in the nuts from the universe, the weather never was as good again so he had to abandon that attempt. On a later attempt with a bloke named “Curly” (surely if you had to take a member from the 3 stooges you’d take Moe?!?) he reached around 3,000 metres, gave up and proclaimed he was on the summit. It was only later he admitted he was probably wrong (climbing a mountain on a Sunday, I’m tipping, carry’s less of a penalty then lying about climbing a mountain with the man upstairs).
Now with my head full of information about the surrounding land, it was now time for me to ride through that land on a river keen to throw me from a boat. In all honesty, the river wasn’t trying too hard that day as we only rode on a grade 3 rapid. Our guide was named Pierre, was from Montreal, and was a lot more relaxed than the guide I’d had in Austria who reminded me of the bald bloke out of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, Jason Statham. Sure Pierre was quite affable, but no where near as hot as the guide named Julie. As they kitted us out with wetsuits and helmets, I was somewhat insulted when the chief guide gave me a large helmet implying I had bulbus head. The chief guide was some 30 something bloke who wouldn’t have been out of place in a Pepsi Max advert, he came across as the type of bloke who didn’t do anything unless it was TOO THE EXTREME! As he’d been to Australia before, we were now officially his best mates.
Once on the river, there was enough calm water to talk to our fellow white water enthusiasts. On our boat were 3 sisters from Edmonton. The eldest sister was 30, while the youngest was 13 years old. The youngest was called “Crystal” (no doubt after the type of ball her parents wish they had to be able to foresee unplanned pregnancies). The eldest sister was ridiculously over protective of the youngest sister, to the point where you knew they wouldn’t be on talking terms by the time Crystal was 18. The water was incredibly clear, which gave us a chance to see the salmon swimming past the boat. This got me thinking of how embarrassing it would be to be a salmon with a premature ejaculatory problem. They only get one shot at the title before they die, they better be good in the sack that first and only time or they’ll forever be known as a dud root. Perhaps all salmon have a premature ejaculatory problem and they all die from embarrassment? I took a quick dip in the water after jumping out of the boat, and then thought that the salmon must also have a problem with shrinkage to compound the premature ejaculatory problem. Man it was cold!
After that adventure we headed back into Jasper and had dinner in town at a place called “Smittys”. The owner was Asian, most likely not Smitty. After dinner we headed to the Whistle Stop pub where I spent much of the night avoiding being hit in the balls by errant cues in the confined room by the pool table. We also enjoyed a couple of pints while talking to 2 sisters. One was the lifeguard at the local hot springs pool, while I simply know her sister as laughing girl as she laughed at everything, much like Dr Hilbert on The Simpsons. The lifeguard sister was an angry woman with 2 children, aged 10 and 9, with much of the anger most likely coming from the father of her children who now didn’t live with her. She had some interesting stories about the hot springs, with most revolving around people passing out from the heat and some kid who once barfed up some wieners into the water. Stories about vomiting in public places are always amusing, but not enough to hold my attention all night. We left reasonably early that night to sleep off an action packed day.
Day 39 – Jasper to Banff
I was awoken today by my bladder telling me it needed emptying. That was at 7am so I figured there would be enough light for me to make it to the toilets and also see any potential bear running at me. As I put my head out of the tent I could see a baby elk drinking from the stream just metres from my tent. Before I could finish the thought “oh, how cute” that thought was interrupted by the thought of “oh s#@t! There is most likely an over protective parent elk nearby who in an over protective manner would stomp all over my head”. Sure enough, as I turned to my right I saw the mother elk crazing just 10 metres away. We both made eye contact, and then came to an understanding (well, at least I did) that it would be best if I stayed in my tent. It wasn’t until after 8:30am that I put my head out of that tent again. The elk were now gone and I was free to walk to the out of order toilets. Thankfully, my bladder did not explode and I was able to use nearby toilets that were in order.
The sky had finally cleared over the Rockies today which would have meant we could’ve finally used the fire pit that had cost us an extra $7 a night. Happy to drop $100 a night on alcohol, shattered when I don’t get my $7 worth of burnt wood. We headed back down the Icefields Parkway and again stopped at that massive chunk of ice that Brad had missed the first time, the Athabasca Glacier. This time we decided to go for a walk on the Glacier. It wasn’t the crevasses that would prove the biggest danger; it was my near bald shoes walking downhill on the Glacier. Somehow I managed to say on my feet, took in the awesome views and was thankful that I had had a chance to walk on the incredibly shrinking Glacier. At the foot of the Glacier every 50 to 100 metres were signs posts indicating where the Glacier had reached in that year. The Glacier has retracted about 500 metres in the last century, you’d think enough to convince most politicians of the existence of global warming.
Surviving the Glacier with a dry pair of pants, we got back on the road again. As we got close to Banff we took a small detour to check out Moraine Lake. You’d think you’d never get tired of the beauty of an emerald lake with the Rockies in the backdrop making it nearly impossible to take a bad photo, but I think I was now growing tired of emerald lakes in the Rockies. They are as common as a crack head yelling at another crack head in Calgary. I took in my daily tour requirement of education by reading a sign at Moraine Lake describing the history of the lake. It began with “If these rocks could talk…”… what an incredibly long and boring tale it would be. Picture it; “Day 1: sediment. Day 2: sediment…Day 500,000: still sediment.”
Educated on yet another emerald lake, we were back on the road and soon in Banff. As we were only staying the night, we decided to stay at the HI Hostel so we didn’t have to put up our tents for only a 1 nights use. The HI Hostel was a beautiful new complex that was just like being in a big timber chateau in the snow. It was like they had knocked down all of the surrounding trees and put them to a better use by building an awesome hostel. We dropped our stuff in our room for the night where we met our roommate for the night. He was a bloke named Dave from somewhere in Australia who told us of some very eventful nights in this room. The first tale was of some Chinese bloke who would talk in his sleep about killing women. That nut bag was somehow trumped by an even bigger psycho in a Turkish bloke who came back to the room drunk and hopped into bed with the chicks in the room. As you would expect, women don’t take to kindly to unwanted sexual advances, so the Turkish nut bag was taken away by the police and spent the rest of his time in Banff discovering what sort of accommodation the local jail provides.
After dumping our stuff I decided to take a shower. It was then I confirmed my left armpit was the smellier of the two. I’d had a hunch over the last week that my left armpit was the smelliest as it would stink up around 4pm each day, while the right armpit could last until 6pm or 7pm. It’s amazing the profound learning’s you have about yourself when you’re on the road.
We had dinner at the hostel before catching the bus into town. Our first stop for the night was at the Rose and Crown for a few pints. There was a live band playing whom I quickly dubbed the “Shitty Hawaiian Shirt 5”. Pretty much everyone in the crowd were friends of the band, a fact made all that much easier to identify as they were all hippies with beards. I haven’t seen that many beards in the one place since I last saw a Biblical movie. 4 out of 5 of the band members had beards, while the lone one without the beard had accumulated large amounts of blonde bum fluff on his face that was masquerading as a piss weak excuse for a beard. This band was a true stoner band which played the longest songs in the history of rock music. Without a shadow of a lie, they played a couple of songs that were so long that 60% of the band would leave to take a smoke and then return mid song to finally finish it. As I stood amazed by this, we got talking to a friend of the band whose name was Crystal. I didn’t get her last name, but I’m pretty sure it was Meth. I was certain she had dropped something earlier in the night, she had her wits about her but she just didn’t stop talking. Charlie is supposed to give you the gift of the gab so I just figured he’d paid her a visit earlier in the night. The hunch was pretty much confirmed as I headed downstairs at the end of the first set where I found her sharing a cigarette with Brad. The first thing she said to me was “You don’t think I do drugs do you?”. The voices in my head yelled at me to say “YES!” but I sensed it wasn’t an answer she wanted to hear so I said “No way”. She then proceeded to rattle off all of her various drug experiences with the scariest being “The first time I did crack I didn’t even know it was crack. My boyfriend passed it to me to smoke. I said ‘is this crack?’ he said ‘no’ so I smoked it”. What a tremendous individual that young man must be. She finished her stories and the voices in my head just had to ask how long had it been since she used anything, so I asked. She said “<pause>…about 3 months”. The voices in my head again yelled, this time to shout “BULLSHIT!” but I thought better of it.We followed the band and their friends into a nearby park where 2 semi-circles were formed where 2 joints were passed around. As Brad and I didn’t have beards we of course were easily identified as not being from the tribe, so we let them know we were Crystal’s friends. The Aussie accent also helped prevent any confrontation that could come from some random stranger taking a toque on your joint.
Back inside the Rose and Crown for the second set Crystal went about doing her best to get us invited to the after party. She excitedly came back and told us we were invited, only to later come back and say we were uninvited by her ex-boyfriend who was organising the party (what a shame, I really wanted to see what possibly the biggest asshole in the universe looks like). She then tried to sell the party as being awesome as there was going to be a lot of heroin there, so she went back to her ex-boyfriend and tried to get us reinvited. Brad and I weren’t overly keen to spend the night with a bunch of junkies (I think my exact phrase was “Let’s get the f#@ out of here, I don’t want to spend the night with a bunch of junkies”). When she came back we thanked her for her effort and then told her we had to go. We headed to Hoodoos which was practically dead, yet somehow stayed until closing time. We got the taxi driver to do a pizza stop, then headed back to the hostel and to sleep sometime after 2am.
Comments