Greetings, friends!
Well, about a week and a half ago I passed through border control and once again entered into the People's Republic of Madison, having sufficiently slaked my wanderlust... for the moment at least. Yes, it's unfortunate that they don't sell protection against that sort of lust, isn't it? That's a fortune waiting to be made.
Now, we haved arrived at the moment where I bombard you with self-indulgent jibber jabber about things that you may, or may not, care to read about; think of it as the horrible slide shows your aunt always invited you too, where you would sit, stuck to her plastic covered, flower patterned couch, wondering how you would ever get to the finish of the endless parade of slides showing her dog on the beach; except this time, you have the advantage of being able to hit delete at will if you so choose (smile).
I would have commeneced these ramblings a bit sooner, but putting together my tutoring schedule for this fall amounted to trying to make a cute little ordered process out of chaos theory. I'm relieved to say it's well in hand, now.
Anyway, early September, the Groth family began to prepare for an expedition to the greatly uncharted Northwestern territory known as Alberta (okay, so, every inch of it is charted by Starbucks already, but they've also charted out Mars for future expansion, so that doesn't count.)
We flew up to Minneapolis, and then jumped aboard a plane that was too big to be called a puddle jumper, but too small to be called an airliner, and sailed on up to Calgary.
On the way up, we received free airport lunch vouchers from a flight attendant who seemed to be contually impresssed with how tall I am. Now, I have no idea why my height gets me free food anywhere expect in grandma's kitchen, because one would think that people would see me and say "Boy, somebody needs to stop feeding that guy." So, go figure.
Interestingly, despite its proximity to the massive Canadian rockies, Calgary and it's surrounding area is surprisingly flat, and reminded me a bit of North Dakota. After losing myself in reverie for a few moments over how much the area reminded me of the that sweet land of my birth, I went on to discover Calgary to be a tremendously pleasant city, and that the similarity between Calgary and my native Fargo (yes, that's a seperate story) end in the midst of the city's shining skyscrapers. North Dakota has a skyscraper, but it's in the middle of a giant plain and serves the purpose of insuring the clear reception of "Praire Home Companion" to radios for miles around.
The first night brought us to a hotel on the outskirts of Calgary, across from the 1988 Olympic park. Coincidentally, the hotel also had a big old waterslide in the pool area, which the Olympic ambience eminating from across the road inspired me to hurl myself down with abandon.
I was lowering my times fairly well the first few trips down the slippery chute, and effectivley avoiding the decapitation of young Canadians wading near the slide's exit into the pool, but still rapidly reached a plateau where I was losing several hundreths of a second through the turns (a lifetime in boblsedder time).
However, I was spirited once again when I had the good fortune to meet some Olympic hopefuls in the jacuzzi who just happened to be training for skeleton and bobsled. Yes folks, skeleton is that sport that was brought back at the last winter Olympics, since strapping yourself, feet first, to a sled the size of my ice skates and hurling yourself down an icy chute at 80mph (a la, the luge) is not thrilling enough anymore; so, skeleton takes all the thrills and spills of luge and does it head first.
These girls kindly gave me a wealth of good tips on how to pick up speed going through turn #2, and the bobsled guy showed me the finer points of using the cross bar above the slide entrance to my advantage during the lift off.
What then ensued was a first rate water luge tournament, with competitors being judged on speed, splash size, and of course, the all-important style factor. Good times.
To be continued...
Take care!
Peter
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