Swimmers ‘ere

As you may know, for exercise I partake in the age old tradition of trying not to drown. Apparently so does every Australian. There is an outdoor lane pool about 30min walk from where I’m currently staying and it’s serving many an advantageous purpose:

1) Keeping me healthy with the brisk walk to and from the pool, as well as the swim.
2) Quickly getting me caught up on on my tan while I swim. I’ll turn my pasty angel food cake complexion to a rich black forest cake in no time.
3) Giving me the chubs. Allow me to explain… In Canada, the key demographic for swimming is fat old men who have worn out their joints working in the sulphur mines and are turning to swimming as a last-ditch effort to pull their hearts back from the brink of being clogged completely shut with bacon fat. In Australia, hot, thin, and young men and women swim to assert their sexuality. Also, they don’t smell like sulphur or leave bacon-grease slicks in the pool.

Hopefully my cardiovascular health isn’t outweighed by the skin cancer I will inevitably end up with.

~tony

Melbourne-again

That title is supposed to be a play on words, bee tee dubs. If it were a good one though, I wouldn’t have had to point it out.

So the flights… Everything went about as perfectly as one could hope. The Calgary flight left a bit late because we had to have the plane de-iced. Apparently if there is a few snow flakes on the wings, you will be able to take off but then plummet sharply to your death. The nice thing about the delay in Calgary was that it cut into my layover in LAX. So I literally cleared customs and walked directly onto my Melbourne flight. I got the nerdy pleasure of flying in an Airbus A380 (the largest commercial airliner), I even watched a documentary about it while I was on the plane! Nerrrrrrd!

As exciting as flying in a huge plane was, the actual highlight of my entire flight was some of the in-flight entertainment. An awkward teenagery girl was watching one of the “High School Musical” movies across the aisle. I happened to look up (I was watching intently) to see Zach Efron perform a passionate, over-the-top ‘angry dance’ not unlike the Kevin Bacon circa “Footloose” except it was way longer and more outrageous. It took everything I had to not burst out in the middle of airline-enforced nap time. Solid gold.

I even managed to get some good sleep on the plane and curtail jet-lag with a careful balance of Advil PM’s and wine.

The only thing that went awry was my luggage… It was sent to Sydney instead of Melbourne. I’m expecting it tomorrow morning at the latest so it shouldn’t be more than a minor inconvenience. Nevertheless, when I found out about the issue at baggage services, I did an angry dance too.

~tony

Pre Trip Post on the new Blig

So my car made it to Calgary, but barely made it through. I think I may sell it to my mom tomorrow so she can do with it what she wants over the summer, because I’m about ready to set fire to it. In the comedy of errors that was my drive through Calgary, the car kept stalling every time I stopped at a light or tight corner. Now let me tell you something; you never really realize how short life is until every intersection becomes your Waterloo. This also led to a “Speed” situation where I was taking corners as fast as I could to prevent the embarrassment of stalling. I would rather endanger lives than be embarrassed.

Also, I stopped to say bye to my dad before I left Lethbridge and he started getting choked up. Guh! Nothing gets me crying faster than seeing my dad get teary because HE NEVER CRIES. I’ve only seen it once, after The Incident. So I kind of lost my composure as I was driving out of town. I had to laugh though because it looked like a scene out of a crappy, old 80′s movie; me in my ’88 Sunbird cry-driving (cryving) out of town with some power ballad by Journey playing on the radio. 94.1 The Lounge, The music you know and love.

~tony