If I was organized about things, I would surely have these ready a couple of days in advance instead of just writing them on Tuesday. I mean, that way, I could actually edit them and what not. That will be my goal for next week.
In unrelated, yet related news, I have made it one of my goals of January 2010 to declutter my life. I have so much stuff, and I need...not to. So, I've decided I am going to gather all the stuff I no longer have any use for, sell it on Ebay or Kijiji, and then hopefully make enough money to pay for Matador U Travel Writing Program. This seems like the perfect solution because I have no extra money at this point to pay for it, and all this stuff is just sitting around anyway. We'll see how it goes. So far, I've made $10. So just $340 more. I'm giving myself until the end of Feb.
Anyway! Today's Travel story takes place in my university town, London, Ontario.
The Boler Bump
We both got on the elevator with all our ski gear. We had decided to take the bus to the ski hill because it seemed like a direct route, and neither one of us had a car. It didn’t occur to us at the time that this would perhaps be a hassle both for us and the other people on the bus. People cursed at us as we got on and jostled for space with our bags and skis; and then they all stared at us like we were completely crazy.
After about a 15 minute ride downtown, it turned out we had to transfer buses. We hopped off and trudged over to where the connecting bus was supposed to come. We waited, and waited, and waited. Our eyelashes began to freeze as our eyes watered from the wind, and we became increasingly irritated.
“Do you think the bus is ever going to come?” We whined and freezed and whined and freezed. Just as we were contemplating giving up and taking the bus back home, a lady in a sedan pulled up.
“You girls going skiing?” We stared at her and then stared at our skis. Clearly we were.
“Boler Mountain’s quite a bus ride from here…I’ll give you a ride!”
We hesitated for perhaps 10 seconds before we agreed that this would be a great idea. We followed the lady to her car, and helped her as she packed our skis and bags into the truck. We looked at each other once before getting in the car, as if to say, “well, she very well could be taking us out to the woods to hack us to bits, but at this point, it beats standing in the cold”. She drove us all the way out to Boler Mountain, which indeed would have been an eternally long bus ride. She dropped us off and we thanked her profusely, and then went to get our lift tickets. It was at this point we realized we had just travelled a total of what added up to several hours to come skiing at a place where there was one chair lift and something that barely passed as a mountain. We stared at the hill in disappointment for a while, but we went to ski and that was exactly what we were going to do.
We rode the chair lift up and skied down the hill in about 20 seconds. We repeated this about 10 times before deciding to head in for dinner. As we sat in the cafeteria style room with our french fries and hamburgers, a girl with long blond hair came up to us.
“Are you Megan and Kaitlyn?” she inquired.
“Yes…” Kaitlyn replied, “Ummmm, how do you know?”
“My mom told me!” she chirped, “she said she had given two girls a ride to the ski hill and I just figured it was you! I work here!”
Apparently for some reason we didn’t know, we stood out.
“Oh, well it was so nice of your mom to drive us!! We probably still would have been waiting at the bus stop if she hadn’t!” I smiled at her.
She smiled back, said “nice to meet you”, and was on her way.
“Wow”, Kaitlyn said, “that was random”.
We finished our dinner and went out for a couple more rides up and down the ski lift, before deciding to call it a night. There was only one bus back to town and we sure didn’t want to miss it. We packed up all our gear and headed over to the bus stop. It was frigid out. An hour later, the bus came. We made it downtown to catch our connecting bus, and were standing awkwardly with our skis, leaning against the bus shelter. A man wandered up to us, looking slightly…tattered.
“You guys just go skiing?” he said, slurring slightly. “Where abouts did you go?”
We told him about Boler Bump, and it was at this point that things went slightly downhill. All of a sudden, he was shouting at the top of his lungs,
“I USED TO DO THAT SHIT!! I had money once! Do you think I’ve always been like this, do you??? I used to do that shit! I did!!”
Kait and I stared wearily/fearfully at each other as he continued on his tirade. People passed by in the street and shot us looks that said, “we feel for you, but at no point will we be intervening in this situation.”
As the man continued to yell and get increasingly in our face, we both were just kind of frozen onto the sidewalk. We had our skis leaning on the bus shelter, so it wasn’t easy to just walk away. We shrugged at him. Eventually his yelling turned to disgusted muttering and he walked away from us.
“Wow”, Kaitlyn said, “Just wow…this day is ridiculous!”
We had just started to laugh it off, when we noticed the man was rounding the corner and now coming back towards us. We looked at each other, grabbed our skis and took off across the street for the safer pastures of McDonalds.
“Hey!!!” he shouted after us, “heyyyyyy!!!”.
Clearly we ignored him and huddled down inside the entrance to the fast food restaurant.
“Should we maybe call the cops?” Kaitlyn said, picking up the receiver of a pay phone.
“I dunno”, I said, as I peered out the window at him. “Maybe we should just get on a bus and get the hell out of here.”
We stayed in the alcove until a bus came, and then ran across the street to hop on. Never in my life have I been more thankful to get on public transportation. We sunk down into the plastic seats, and took up two more with all our ski gear. We finally made it back to our residence safe and sound.
That was the first and last time we skied the Boler Bump, but to this day, it remains the most random day of my life.
Fini.
Okay, so it doesn't take place in the most exotic of locations, but thinking of that day now makes me crack up. It was just a series of one random event after another. One of those things that is hilarious now, but was really not so funny as it was happening. Ohhh boy.
Showing posts with label crazy people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crazy people. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Travel Tuesday-The Crazy Roommate
I've been slightly MIA from the blogging world lately because I have been super busy, but I'm going to do my best to continue posting three times a week. The rest of November is still pretty busy, and then I"m heading to NYC at the beginning of December for a couple of days (yayyyyyy!!)
Anyway, enjoy today's Travel Tuesday!! This story took place during my first trip to Europe (different trip than Paul).
“Excusez-moi monsieur, mon ami, ummmmm, she needs to know her ummm how do you say, her exit, no, no, no her, departure gate! Oui, oui.” Jess started off in French and eventually trailed into speaking with a fake French accent.
The employee behind the desk gave us both a weird look, and said in a flat voice,
“It’ll be up on the screen shortly”.
We laughed, said “thanks” and went on our way. Jess had decided earlier in the day she really enjoyed French Canadian accents, and therefore was going to talk in one for the rest of the day. This didn’t shock me; nothing shocked me with this girl.
We were in London, England, getting ready to fly home to our respective Canadian cities of Toronto and Edmonton. My departure gate number finally flashed on the screen, and we slowly made our way to the waiting area. Our gates happened to be right next to each other, so we stalled and talked for a little bit longer. When it was finally time to board, my eyes welled up, and I pulled her into a hug.
“I am going to miss you so much!!!”
“I’m going to miss you too!!” We broke apart, gave each other a weak little wave, and tried to stop crying. I settled into my seat for the 8 hour flight back to Toronto. What a trip.
Three weeks earlier…
“I told you!” the girl shouted, “I wanted a private room in the hostel, not a fucking room with 8 fucking other people!!” I glanced over from where I was seated in the internet café. The girl was a tiny bit of a thing, and she had on a black hoodie with cat ears on top. She continued yelling. Whoa, was all I remember thinking. I left the café, stepping as far away from the girl as I could, then wandered back to my hotel and got ready for bed. I had to be up at 4am the next day to meet up with the tour group. We would be leaving at 5am sharp, and for the next three weeks would be making our way around Europe.
I got up in time, and although I wasn’t looking so hot (it was 4am, what do you want?), I was beyond excited to get the adventure started. I got to the meeting spot with the group after dragging my luggage down the street, and boarded the bus. As I got on, I recognized her, the girl in the cat hoodie, which she was incidentally still wearing. Yeah, friggin, right, was all I remember thinking. I sat far away from her, in a seat by myself, and shortly after that, the bus was en route to Dover, where we took a lengthy ferry ride across the English Channel. After that, we were back on the bus, and would be arriving in Brussels within a couple of hours. The girl in the cat hoodie had become a mere blip on my radar; there were so many people on the tour, I could likely avoid her the entire trip.
We made it to our first hotel and the tour manager gathered us all in the hotel lobby, where she would call out our roommate situation for the rest of the trip. Numbers dwindled until it was only Cat Hoodie Girl and I.
“Megan and Jess, you’re together!” Lou smiled brightly at the both of us. You have got to be kidding me, I thought.
We made our way up to our room making awkward conversation. She talked all about her boyfriend, and then she told me about all the boys she intended to sleep with on this trip. Her speech concluded with “What happens in Europe, stays in Europe.”
I was less than thrilled to be stuck with this girl as my roommate; I couldn’t imagine spending the next three weeks with her. It soon became apparent though, that I would be the one that was going to have to adjust, because she clearly wasn’t going to.
We had a break through in Amsterdam; up until that point we hadn’t really hung out. We saw each other at night obviously, but during the day we went our separate ways.
“What are you going to do today?” she inquired the first morning we were in Amsterdam, as we were getting ready.
“I’m going to go check out the Anne Frank House for sure”, I said, my inner nerd jumping with complete joy and excitement.
“Anne who?” she said, “Mind if I tag along?”
I was kind of floored she had never heard of Anne Frank, but I said of course I didn’t mind. Four hours later we were making our way out of the Anne Frank House and she was bawling.
“That was fucking amazing. Thank you!” she said.
That night our tour group was taking a group outing to a sex show (Hey, what’s more awkward then watching live porn with people you just met two days prior? Not much!) This place seemed pretty sketchy, but looking back, I’m pretty sure it was tame considering what could have been. At one point, some of the performers wanted members of the audience to get up on stage. Who was the first and only person to volunteer from our group? Jess. The audience volunteer portion of the show started with people eating a banana out of a ladies vagina and ended with a masturbating gorilla. The lights went on, and we all got up with the same sort of shell shocked look on our face. Except Jess, she was ecstatic.
That night I was slumbering away peacefully when Jess came into the room, stumbled on my bed and drunkenly slurred, “hey, do you have a condom??” I did have one, but I was pissed she woke me up so I pretended to be asleep. Eventually she went away. Then she came back an hour later, shout-whispering, “I totally just had sex with a random guy on a park bench!” The pretend sleep continued. My brain was saying, lalalala, so don’t want to hear this!
By the time we had made it to France, I was used to Jess’s antics. I loved the girl to death when she was sober, but when she was drunk, look the hell out. She was hilarious, she was always up for anything and she was just as excited to be travelling as I was. But she woke me up every single night of the trip; inevitably I was always in bed before her, no matter how late I was out. Sometimes when she got back to the room, she would grab the phone and proceed to have the longest, loudest conversations with her boyfriend in Alberta. She fell drunkenly onto my bed more than once. She fell down and smashed her head on more than one occasion, and I heard about way more rendezvous in random European parks then I ever cared too. She danced naked on our balcony in Nice, waving and screaming at cars while touching herself (I shit you not). I made a fast exit from our room and went and found my other friends.
“Jess is dancing naked on our balcony!!!” I told them. They just nodded and laughed, and told me I could totally sleep on the floor of their room if I wanted.
I could handle all this though, I mean, she really wasn’t hurting anybody. She was annoying the shit out of me, but it made for some pretty amusing phone calls home. There was only one time I wanted to throttle her. We were in Italy, just outside of Venice, and by some miracle we both ended up back in the room at the same approximate time. We were just going to sleep when we heard the door open. She was drunk and sleeping topless, and was completely out of it. I shot straight up in bed, and called out weakly, “who’s there?” I could hear people approaching the beds. I flicked on the lights, and standing before us were two Italian men in their underwear. One in boxers, one in briefs.
“Ummmm”, I stuttered, fearing slightly for my life. This is not how I want to die!! I was inwardly freaking right out.
“Did you want something??” I continued. They came closer still, and one of them bent down and picked something up off the floor. Jess’s bra. Around his chest it went, and he fastened it shut. He proceeded to dance around the room with her bra on. I think this was the one point of the trip where both Jess and I were equally shocked at something that was happening. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry (I laugh now, because that shit is hysterical!! But while it was actually happening? A little bit scary!)
“Who the hell are these guys??” I hissed at Jess out of the corner of my mouth.
“I think I met them in the bar…maybe they followed me up??”
“You think?? Jesus...” I trailed off and turned back to the men.
“Could you leave now? Please? Please leave!!” my voice became higher and more desperate with every word I spoke.
Naturally they spoke little to no English. The word they did know? Kiss.
“First, we must have a kiss”, one of them said, the other one nodding in happy agreement.
I folded my arms across my chest and glared at Jess. Go for it. She wrapped the blanket around her chest, and jumped out of bed, pecking them each quickly on the cheek. Then they left. I barricaded our unlockable door with my suitcase. Jess was snoring away by the time I got back in my bed.
The trip ended shortly thereafter, and somehow, Jess and I had become friends. We soon found ourselves at the airport saying a tearful goodbye. I wouldn’t miss sharing a room with her, but I would miss her. Sober her. Despite all the sketchy situations, I am glad we ended up roommates, and I can honestly say, I haven’t come across anyone quite like her since, and I highly doubt I ever will again.
Anyway, enjoy today's Travel Tuesday!! This story took place during my first trip to Europe (different trip than Paul).
“Excusez-moi monsieur, mon ami, ummmmm, she needs to know her ummm how do you say, her exit, no, no, no her, departure gate! Oui, oui.” Jess started off in French and eventually trailed into speaking with a fake French accent.
The employee behind the desk gave us both a weird look, and said in a flat voice,
“It’ll be up on the screen shortly”.
We laughed, said “thanks” and went on our way. Jess had decided earlier in the day she really enjoyed French Canadian accents, and therefore was going to talk in one for the rest of the day. This didn’t shock me; nothing shocked me with this girl.
We were in London, England, getting ready to fly home to our respective Canadian cities of Toronto and Edmonton. My departure gate number finally flashed on the screen, and we slowly made our way to the waiting area. Our gates happened to be right next to each other, so we stalled and talked for a little bit longer. When it was finally time to board, my eyes welled up, and I pulled her into a hug.
“I am going to miss you so much!!!”
“I’m going to miss you too!!” We broke apart, gave each other a weak little wave, and tried to stop crying. I settled into my seat for the 8 hour flight back to Toronto. What a trip.
Three weeks earlier…
“I told you!” the girl shouted, “I wanted a private room in the hostel, not a fucking room with 8 fucking other people!!” I glanced over from where I was seated in the internet café. The girl was a tiny bit of a thing, and she had on a black hoodie with cat ears on top. She continued yelling. Whoa, was all I remember thinking. I left the café, stepping as far away from the girl as I could, then wandered back to my hotel and got ready for bed. I had to be up at 4am the next day to meet up with the tour group. We would be leaving at 5am sharp, and for the next three weeks would be making our way around Europe.
I got up in time, and although I wasn’t looking so hot (it was 4am, what do you want?), I was beyond excited to get the adventure started. I got to the meeting spot with the group after dragging my luggage down the street, and boarded the bus. As I got on, I recognized her, the girl in the cat hoodie, which she was incidentally still wearing. Yeah, friggin, right, was all I remember thinking. I sat far away from her, in a seat by myself, and shortly after that, the bus was en route to Dover, where we took a lengthy ferry ride across the English Channel. After that, we were back on the bus, and would be arriving in Brussels within a couple of hours. The girl in the cat hoodie had become a mere blip on my radar; there were so many people on the tour, I could likely avoid her the entire trip.
We made it to our first hotel and the tour manager gathered us all in the hotel lobby, where she would call out our roommate situation for the rest of the trip. Numbers dwindled until it was only Cat Hoodie Girl and I.
“Megan and Jess, you’re together!” Lou smiled brightly at the both of us. You have got to be kidding me, I thought.
We made our way up to our room making awkward conversation. She talked all about her boyfriend, and then she told me about all the boys she intended to sleep with on this trip. Her speech concluded with “What happens in Europe, stays in Europe.”
I was less than thrilled to be stuck with this girl as my roommate; I couldn’t imagine spending the next three weeks with her. It soon became apparent though, that I would be the one that was going to have to adjust, because she clearly wasn’t going to.
We had a break through in Amsterdam; up until that point we hadn’t really hung out. We saw each other at night obviously, but during the day we went our separate ways.
“What are you going to do today?” she inquired the first morning we were in Amsterdam, as we were getting ready.
“I’m going to go check out the Anne Frank House for sure”, I said, my inner nerd jumping with complete joy and excitement.
“Anne who?” she said, “Mind if I tag along?”
I was kind of floored she had never heard of Anne Frank, but I said of course I didn’t mind. Four hours later we were making our way out of the Anne Frank House and she was bawling.
“That was fucking amazing. Thank you!” she said.
That night our tour group was taking a group outing to a sex show (Hey, what’s more awkward then watching live porn with people you just met two days prior? Not much!) This place seemed pretty sketchy, but looking back, I’m pretty sure it was tame considering what could have been. At one point, some of the performers wanted members of the audience to get up on stage. Who was the first and only person to volunteer from our group? Jess. The audience volunteer portion of the show started with people eating a banana out of a ladies vagina and ended with a masturbating gorilla. The lights went on, and we all got up with the same sort of shell shocked look on our face. Except Jess, she was ecstatic.
That night I was slumbering away peacefully when Jess came into the room, stumbled on my bed and drunkenly slurred, “hey, do you have a condom??” I did have one, but I was pissed she woke me up so I pretended to be asleep. Eventually she went away. Then she came back an hour later, shout-whispering, “I totally just had sex with a random guy on a park bench!” The pretend sleep continued. My brain was saying, lalalala, so don’t want to hear this!
By the time we had made it to France, I was used to Jess’s antics. I loved the girl to death when she was sober, but when she was drunk, look the hell out. She was hilarious, she was always up for anything and she was just as excited to be travelling as I was. But she woke me up every single night of the trip; inevitably I was always in bed before her, no matter how late I was out. Sometimes when she got back to the room, she would grab the phone and proceed to have the longest, loudest conversations with her boyfriend in Alberta. She fell drunkenly onto my bed more than once. She fell down and smashed her head on more than one occasion, and I heard about way more rendezvous in random European parks then I ever cared too. She danced naked on our balcony in Nice, waving and screaming at cars while touching herself (I shit you not). I made a fast exit from our room and went and found my other friends.
“Jess is dancing naked on our balcony!!!” I told them. They just nodded and laughed, and told me I could totally sleep on the floor of their room if I wanted.
I could handle all this though, I mean, she really wasn’t hurting anybody. She was annoying the shit out of me, but it made for some pretty amusing phone calls home. There was only one time I wanted to throttle her. We were in Italy, just outside of Venice, and by some miracle we both ended up back in the room at the same approximate time. We were just going to sleep when we heard the door open. She was drunk and sleeping topless, and was completely out of it. I shot straight up in bed, and called out weakly, “who’s there?” I could hear people approaching the beds. I flicked on the lights, and standing before us were two Italian men in their underwear. One in boxers, one in briefs.
“Ummmm”, I stuttered, fearing slightly for my life. This is not how I want to die!! I was inwardly freaking right out.
“Did you want something??” I continued. They came closer still, and one of them bent down and picked something up off the floor. Jess’s bra. Around his chest it went, and he fastened it shut. He proceeded to dance around the room with her bra on. I think this was the one point of the trip where both Jess and I were equally shocked at something that was happening. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry (I laugh now, because that shit is hysterical!! But while it was actually happening? A little bit scary!)
“Who the hell are these guys??” I hissed at Jess out of the corner of my mouth.
“I think I met them in the bar…maybe they followed me up??”
“You think?? Jesus...” I trailed off and turned back to the men.
“Could you leave now? Please? Please leave!!” my voice became higher and more desperate with every word I spoke.
Naturally they spoke little to no English. The word they did know? Kiss.
“First, we must have a kiss”, one of them said, the other one nodding in happy agreement.
I folded my arms across my chest and glared at Jess. Go for it. She wrapped the blanket around her chest, and jumped out of bed, pecking them each quickly on the cheek. Then they left. I barricaded our unlockable door with my suitcase. Jess was snoring away by the time I got back in my bed.
The trip ended shortly thereafter, and somehow, Jess and I had become friends. We soon found ourselves at the airport saying a tearful goodbye. I wouldn’t miss sharing a room with her, but I would miss her. Sober her. Despite all the sketchy situations, I am glad we ended up roommates, and I can honestly say, I haven’t come across anyone quite like her since, and I highly doubt I ever will again.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
On Wild Animals in Captivity
Yesterday I read about the new TLC show My Monkey Baby on another blog, and frankly the show sounded hilarious. People with monkeys who treat them as though they are children. Funny on the one hand, batshit crazy on the other. I had the pleasure (?) of watching this show yesterday, and oh my god. It is quite possibly one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen on television. Ever. In my life. And I'm counting all future programming in that. One part showed a lady putting makeup on her monkey, because the monkey apparently likes it. Does she? Did she tell you that, crazy lady? Does she also like wearing that mini wedding dress? My word.
These people are clearly delusional, and while I am sad for these people, my inner animal activist is outraged for these poor monkeys. And at TLC for putting such crap on the air, and probably encouraging people that buying a pet monkey is a good thing to do. Maybe I'll adopt a monkey and get my own show. Maybe I'll adopt a giant fucking hippopotamus and keep him in my bathtub, even better! It was bad enough they saddled the world with Jon and Kate, but now this? TLC, the learning channel? Please change your name.
I just, I don't get the need some people have to have wild animals for pets. Seriously. The other day I read an article about a woman who was killed by her pet bear when she went in to clean his cage. HER PET BEAR? It's tragic no doubt, but come on, why do you have a feckin bear as a pet to begin with? Get a dog, get a cat, get a turtle, but how about not getting one of the deadliest animals on earth? How it is in any way a pet, and not a sideshow? Do you walk your pet bear? Do you play fetch in the backyard? No. You keep him locked in a cement cell where he probably was slowly going insane. That is not a pet.
And remember the story from about a year ago about the lady that got attacked by her neighbours 200 pound chimp? Again...why does someone have a giant chimp who clearly belongs ummm not in a house as a pet? The chimp attacks the owners neighbour, and then the chimp ends up getting shot by the police. This completely boggles my mind. These animals are not meant to be pets; they are dangerous and aggressive. (don't click on that if you get queasy easily). They belong in the wild with other primates.
Apparently 15000 people in the United States alone have monkey's for pets, most of them buying them when they were babies. a) What happened to all the mothers of these little monkeys, and b) could you possibly use that $5000 you paid for your pet monkey for something constructive that will benefit society in some way and not make you appear mentally unstable. c) it's a monkey, it is not a child. As much as I love all my shelter dogs, I know that all they will ever be are dogs, and thus have to be treated as such.
I can only hope this show will open up people's eyes to the issue of having wild animals as pets. I am hoping people will become duly outraged by this, and act accordingly. Click here for more info. The crazy needs to stop.
These people are clearly delusional, and while I am sad for these people, my inner animal activist is outraged for these poor monkeys. And at TLC for putting such crap on the air, and probably encouraging people that buying a pet monkey is a good thing to do. Maybe I'll adopt a monkey and get my own show. Maybe I'll adopt a giant fucking hippopotamus and keep him in my bathtub, even better! It was bad enough they saddled the world with Jon and Kate, but now this? TLC, the learning channel? Please change your name.
I just, I don't get the need some people have to have wild animals for pets. Seriously. The other day I read an article about a woman who was killed by her pet bear when she went in to clean his cage. HER PET BEAR? It's tragic no doubt, but come on, why do you have a feckin bear as a pet to begin with? Get a dog, get a cat, get a turtle, but how about not getting one of the deadliest animals on earth? How it is in any way a pet, and not a sideshow? Do you walk your pet bear? Do you play fetch in the backyard? No. You keep him locked in a cement cell where he probably was slowly going insane. That is not a pet.
And remember the story from about a year ago about the lady that got attacked by her neighbours 200 pound chimp? Again...why does someone have a giant chimp who clearly belongs ummm not in a house as a pet? The chimp attacks the owners neighbour, and then the chimp ends up getting shot by the police. This completely boggles my mind. These animals are not meant to be pets; they are dangerous and aggressive. (don't click on that if you get queasy easily). They belong in the wild with other primates.
Apparently 15000 people in the United States alone have monkey's for pets, most of them buying them when they were babies. a) What happened to all the mothers of these little monkeys, and b) could you possibly use that $5000 you paid for your pet monkey for something constructive that will benefit society in some way and not make you appear mentally unstable. c) it's a monkey, it is not a child. As much as I love all my shelter dogs, I know that all they will ever be are dogs, and thus have to be treated as such.
I can only hope this show will open up people's eyes to the issue of having wild animals as pets. I am hoping people will become duly outraged by this, and act accordingly. Click here for more info. The crazy needs to stop.
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