It's vacation time!!!!

 Today is a marvelous day because I have finished the day at work (not much to do though) and I am now on vacation until April 12. Vacation is without a doubt the best part of work. A lot of the guys at work want as much overtime as they can get, they work the holidays and just live to make more money. I am different. I live for time off. The way I see it the more time I spend away from the morally bankrupt, ethically challenged corporation the better. Thankfully I will be retiring in the not so distant future and as much as I will heave a sigh of relief at leaving I am sure there will be management and some others at work who will be overjoyed to see me walk out the door for the last time. I think the phrase goes "don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out" which it won't because I will be sprinting. OK, I haven't sprinted for about 20 years so let's say I will hobble, shuffle, limp out the door with alacrity.
  But none of that matters now because I am off to Beaver Creek in a couple of days for 6 days of skiing and gasping for thin air. Altitude also makes me gassy. My first time in Colorado the thin air had my stomach doing flips. One day we were in a liqour store and I was feeling queasy. I sauntered to the back of the store so as not to disturb anyone. I won't go into details but I got some dirty looks when I made my exit. Last year we went for Mexican food and Lori had few margaritas with the salt rim. The next morning she looked like she had gone 10 rounds with George Chuvalo. I also had a couple of margaritas that night and my face wasn't puffy but I had fat sausage fingers the next day. By the time we start adjusting to the altitude it will be time to come home. On the bright side when I got home from there last year I hopped on my bike and felt like Superman after breathing thin air for a week. Sadly I still looked like Perry White. Beaver Creek here I come. Cheers!
 

 

Football funnies

  I have always enjoyed just about every sport I have tried and football was no different, Canadian football that is. I was a big Ottawa Rough Rider fan when I was a kid in the 60's mostly because of a running back they had named Ron Stewart. He was quite small for a running back but he was as tough as nails and a great little back. I wanted to be just like Ron Stewart so in junior high when the opportunity arose I signed up to join the one of the four teams in our school league. I was small so I had to get a note from my mother saying it was OK for me to play tackle football, something I had been doing for years with my friends. The school supplied the jerseys, pants and helmets back then and they were very well used and made for bigger boys than I happened to be at the time. I remember swimming in my football sweater it was so big  and having to use a rope belt to hold my pants up. I could have spun the helmet 360 degrees while wearing it on my head. It was so big when I was running I had to run as smoothly as possible so the helmet wouldn't drop over my eyes and blind me. I got on a team though and because I was fast and a good athlete I made the team as a running back and a linebacker, albeit a small one.
  My memory of that first game is sketchy and I hardly carried the ball because our other back was named Hercules Faga and he fit the name. Really big, really strong and fast as well. Finally a play was called for me to run with the ball because the other team was keying on Herc. I don't remember how I got through the line but before I knew it I was on my way with only one player between myself and the goal line. His name was Doug Galea and he was about the equall of Herc, big,strong and fast. Doug came at me and hit me high, a little too high and I was able to spin off and when I looked up there was nothing between myself and the goal line 20 yards away. It would be my first touchdown ever while playing organized football and there were even a couple of hot girls from my class watching so this was going to be big. I put my head down and made for the end zone but after only a couple of steps fate had its way with me. The rope belt loosened and my pants dropped to my ankles. I had two choices, try to waddle in my undies and a jock strap to the end zone or drop to the ground. Common sense said that I would have a tough time beating the slowest kid in the school with my pants down around my ankles so I bit the bullet, fell to the ground, grabbed the pants and wiggled them back into place while lying on my back. The next thing I remember was the referee who was also my gym teacher (Mr Thomas) looking down at me, grinning from ear to ear which is amazing because I think that was the first time I had seen him smile in 2 years. That moment is frozen in time for me. I will never forget that smile. I remember nothing else, it's all a blur. I do know we won the championship that year and I am pretty sure I didn't carry the ball again. Mr. Thomas also had a little smile for me every time I showed up for gym class from then on. At least my misfortune made somebodies day.

A little rant

  As some of you out there know I enjoy reading and because of that I have become a bit of a stickler for the English language. I am very much against changing the meaning of some words to suit today's societal values. I will consult my Concise Oxford Dictionary to support my argument. I'll give some examples.
  The first one has been driving me nuts for years. It was about 10 years ago when I started hearing the pronunciation of the planet Uranus change. It was pronounced for hundreds of years with the long "a" sound but I suppose some idiot out there was offended because 10 year old kids were making jokes about your anus so they decided to change the sound of it. I am not sure but I believe it may have started at the BBC but don't quote me on that. I am sure that if I ever meet the twit I will look him (or her) straight in the eye and say uranasshole. Seems fitting doesn't it.
  The second example is the use of the word pregnant. My Oxford describes pregnant as a female having developing children which was always my understanding of the word. In the past decade I have heard the word used by couples who now say "we're pregnant". I have a pretty good idea why this change has been made but I will reserve comment other than to say there are a lot of men out there who need to grow a pair. I think what should be said is "Yahoo, my wife is pregnant, I have a DD for the next 5 or 6 months". I'm all for equality of the sexes but she is pregnant and you helped. Period.
  The third example is the word marriage. Oxford defines it as a union between a man and a woman. Today the word marriage is also used to describe gay unions which drives me nuts because that is simply not what the word has meant for hundreds of years. I think the perfect word to define gay marriage should be garriage, a combination of the two words. It perfectly describes the union as the same but different as well. When questioned about their relationship a gay couple could say they were garried............................after some sober second thought...............................forget everything I have said about a new word for gay marriage.............you're getting very sleepy........forget......forget.

Spring has spru...disappeared

  Today I was hoping to say that tomorrow was going to be my last day skiing at Blue this season because it was getting too warm and I am now getting ready to pull the new road bike out. Instead I am forced to say that tomorrow's forecast is for winter like conditions with no real warm weather on the way for several days. Damn. I have had a great time skiing (and snowboarding) this winter but I am ready for some spring weather. Last Thursday was a fantastic ski day and sunning on the deck at TSC was as good as it gets (except for the unwanted advances by Mr. Orange Car) but it looks like it will be lunch indoors at Jozo's tomorrow. Lori and Cam will be up so regardless of weather it will be a fun day and our last ski day before heading out to Beaver Creek.

  As for my new road bike it's a full carbon fibre Trek Madone 5.2. Trek is the company, a Madone is, well I have no idea what a Madone is, they just pulled a word out of a hat it seems and 5.2 means it is for someone who understands decimals I guess. I believe it holds the world record for the most times a company can advertise itself on it's product. There are 14 Trek stickers on my bike. 14! I had my first road bike crash on the Madone as well.......in my basement. I was on my rollers training on the bike. I tried to check my new heart rate monitor/watch while pedaling like mad and it seems I'm unable to do both simultaneously. The front wheel veered off the roller, the back wheel followed and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor with a sore hip. Guinness thought I was mad. Guinness thinks I am mad. Guinness knows I am mad.

                             
  And now Guinness has proof that I am mad because it has taken me 25 minutes to get that picture of the bike onto the page. I tried first to take pictures of the friggin thing downstairs but for some god damn reason the photos were all out of focus so I then downloaded this picture but then I couldn't get the friggin thing where I wanted it on the page. Pardon my french but fuck fuck fuck. I hope my neighbours weren't outside because they would have had a lesson in cursing. One of these days I will figure this damn computer shit out. There it is though, my bike. I am now going to go to my happy place; if I can ever fucking find it.

Bowling, Skis

  I think a good time was had by all on Saturday night at Georgian Bowl on Saturday night. Susan Lee got the ball rolling so to speak and it was a bigger turnout than she expected because some folks out there didn't answer their emails. Come on, how tough is it to send a reply, yes or no. She could have booked a couple of more lanes so everyone would have had the opportunity to see just how lousy they really are at something that looks so simple. On the bright side the 2 lanes we had  were right beside the bar so I'm not sure if my pictures are blurry because of the low light or because of operatoring a camera under the influence. I thought it was great with the lights turned down and the tunes blaring in your ear. The automatic scoring and cartoons for spares and strikes were also something I have never seen before. I would do that again. I think they should also try to do something like that at the curling club although head injuries could become an issue.

Balancing bowling ball on shoulders.

  I had the opportunity to get out on my new skis again on Sunday evening for about 15 runs. The conditions were better than on Friday, still not great but the skis still performed wonderfully. I almost feel like I'm cheating because they are so easy to ski on. They don't quite carve like my SX9's and aren't as quick edge to edge but I'm sure they will be fantastic out west. I think Sunday was also my 18'th time out to Blue so that means skiing cost me about $10 dollars a day which you have got to admit is a real bargain. Thirteen more sleeps and then it's off to Beaver Creek-Vail with the good folks from Kenmark Ski's. I am bringing my computer and will be keeping you up to date on how many times Lori and Cam had a good laugh at my expense. I am also hoping that the Chophouse is going to be serving complimentary champagne at 3 pm everyday. Like they say; Beaver Creek, not exactly roughing it. Cheers!

New skis

  There they are, my new skis. I bought them yesterday from Skis and Bikes in Collingwood for a pretty good price. They are Dynastar Legend Sultan 85's and they are an all mountain ski which I believe will be great when I head to Beaver Creek in 2 weeks. I was originally going to get the Head Titans which I demoed a couple of weeks ago and loved but there were 2 problems with them. Number 1 was the price, they are quite expensive and number 2 was they are a little too close to the Atomic SX9's I have now. No doubt about it though, they are a fantastic ski. Kenmark still has a pair of 170's left if anyone is interested. The Dynastars are 172's and wider underfoot than the Heads and they have a little less shape to them. I read a lot of reviews before I got them and the only bad reviews were from intermediate skiers. Instuctors and other strong skiers really liked them so I took a bit of a chance and bought them. I went to Blue yesterday around 5 pm and I was very happy with the results. The conditions at Blue were awful at best, the hill being skied out, soft cruddy conditions with lots of bumps and varying terrain. The Dynastars flattened out the bumps and rode through all the crud with ease. I was really surprised how easy they were to ski in these conditions. On the way back in Happy Valley was freshly groomed and they were great on that (that's not much of a test though). I haven't had them going real fast yet but all the reviews said they like to be pointed downhill and run hard so I am looking forward to that. I will say one negative thing about them, they're not the nicest looking ski around but hey, the skis should match the face. Cheers! 

Hugs and Kisses

  When I started coming up to Collingwood 23 years ago there were 2 things that took me quite a while to get used to. The first was what to do with those six foot planks attached to my feet. They would cross themselves half the time and the other half they would go wherever the hell they wanted. I remember speeding down the hill one day yelling at them "Would you make up your fucking minds". I had better control over situation in the Middle East. The other thing that took me a long time to figure out was when and who to hug. There was no hugging going on in my family when we were growing up. Cape Bretoners, in particular the men don't hug and if they did there was usually a whole lot of clutchin and grabbin happening immediately afterwards. When I got to Collingwood it seemed I had to hug a lot more (women, not men) and so I had to learn things like which side does my head go (I bonked a few women with my thick noggin), and what to do with my arms. I now figure my head goes to the left and I use the 3 pat method to time the event. The other problem is when do I know someone well enough to give them a hug? I still have a bit to learn. As for men hugging I just don't get it and I don't want to do it. A firm handshake should be good enough unless it's with Randy Meyers. With Randy it's a handshake, then a feint to the right to elude the shoulder punch followed by an exit stage left to avoid that hockey story.

  As for kissing women, who could be against that but if I am watching TV and 2 men are puckering up I have to turn my head because I don't care what 2 consenting adults do but I don't want to see it. This brings me to a disturbing event that happened yesterday at the Toronto Ski Club. Check out the video.

  I did not invite that advance from Jim but he was determined. It's obvious that the camera operator (Susan Lee) found the whole thing repulsive and had to turn the camera away from the ""incident". I didn't know Jim was like this but he did just buy an orange car so maybe that was a sign. I even wonder how car companies can sell orange cars. How do you market orange? "Orange.....nothing rhymes with it". At least with my Pontiac, instead of simply calling the car black they called it..............wait for it............Mysterious. People who know me think it should have been called..........wait for it..........Confused. But that's another story. I hope everyone out there now realizes the danger of buying orange cars, even if they're great little sports cars. Cheers!

Jim's S2000

Spring skiing

  Well today on the hill was a great spring skiing day. Lori, Susan and myself started at about 9:30 and met up with Jim at the north chair of Blue. I thought the snow would have set up nicely overnight but it was soft right from the start because it was so warm. We had fun but you had to really watch out for the grey snow which was super sticky and could stop you dead in your tracks. That's a good way to hurt yourself, believe me I know. We only had one crash for the day and that was Jim's son Austin who went down on Elevator shaft. What the hell is the matter with todays youth. We skied the north end until 11:15 and then headed to TSC for what started out as a snack and ended up with a drink. The sun was blazing and it was just a great day for sitting out on the deck relaxing.
  I would also like to mention now that Jim has joined me as a member of the middle aged crazy sports car drivers. He has purchased a Honda S2000 and will soon be zooming around the area so if an orange streak passes you on the road there is a good chance it will be Jim. Yes that's right, I said orange. Orange. Really orange. It's hard to understand Bell management sometimes. Orange.
  After TSC we headed over to Gary Gasparini's for his annual end of season BBQ on the deck. It was great to see both Gary and Karen. I hadn't been over there in quite a while and the chalet has really changed since when I rented there so many years ago.

  Sometimes it takes a day like today for me to recognize what a lucky bunch we really are. A beautiful warm spring day, skiing with great friends, living a life that is the envy of many people. I'm a lucky guy. Cheers!
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Some things never change

I would like to say first that I may have given this blog the wrong name. I am going to have a hard time just writing about Collingwood sports all the time. I can't think of what I should be calling it so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.
Eureka!!!!!!! A new paragraph! You don't need an NFP key! It's the ENTER key! And now back to more mundane issues.

Eureka!!!!!!! One of the sports I thought I would take up here in Collingwood was golf. I was burned out from mountain biking and I thought golf would be a good replacement. I have golfed since I was in my teens but I never really tried to apply myself so I figured it would be a good sport to channel my energy into. I forgot to take into account that golf  has at times turned me into a raving maniac over the years and that I probably haven't mellowed that much. I have thrown clubs, banged my head on the back of a bench trying to knock some sense into myself, used God's name in vain (some of my best work) in front of the head priest of Brebeuf Catholic School and I still have a Nike Slingshot 5 iron resting high in the cedars beside the 6'th tee at Cranberry golf course. I still don't want that club back, it was a shitty 5 iron and I still hate it. The birthday card below was made by an artistic friend of mine in 1983 and I think it sums up just about every day I ever had on the course.

Eureka!!!!!!!She created this card without ever having seen me golf. She was just going by stories she had heard. She didn't know anything about golf and I know that because the fucking golf balls are floating. If golf balls floated I would probably still be out there with the longest ball retriever known to mankind. Floating golf balls my ass.
Eureka!!!!!!! I'm feeling very tired now. I'm not sure if it's from reliving a few of my many dark moments on the golf course or from cheering and hi-fiving Guinness every time I started a new paragraph. Cheers.

I confess

Okay, I have a confession to make. Not the "Father, I tapped my sisters brother in laws aunts cross eyed lisping daughter" (she thought I was good looking and well spoken)  type of confession. I'll save that one for later. I am on my knees now and I confess that......I don't know how to start a new paragraph when I do these things. It doesn't matter how many times I put the cursor on the spot to start a new paragraph and whack the touchpad with my finger, nothing happens. On my previous blog the cursor did move to the next line but as soon as I typed in a word and hit the spacer the word magically jumped back up to the line above. It did that for the rest of the blog. Wow. Did I hit a digital perfect storm where a certain number of touchpad whacks combined with the exact number f-bombs resulted in this strange event? I suspect I will never know. Maybe George Clooney or Mark Wahlberg have an idea. I have searched this computer up and down for the NFP key (New Fucking Paragraph) but it doesn't have one. It's partly due to my Scottish heritage, the tendency towards thrift that has left me aching for an NFP key. While in Future Buy looking for a computer there was a voice in my head saying "Och nooo laddie, don't buy that one, this compewtah is $1.73 less than that one over there with the NFP key. Scots don't slow down their speaking for new paragraphs anyways. Aye, there you are lad, get the cheap one". And so I did. So I don't blame you for not reading my blog because it looks like a blob of words with none of those important indentations that indicate........something. Damn.

Is exposing assholes a sport?

 Well it's my third blog and I am taking liberties with the meaning of the word sport already. I have read a couple of things recently and I just feel the need to spout off about them. The first thing that really pissed me off was an email I received from my boss. One of our cable techs was driving along in his truck when someone noticed that he was smoking a cigarette. The asshole took down the truck and plate numbers and reported him to Health and Safety people because his truck, the truck that only he uses is considered to be the workplace and smoking in the workplace is no-no. Chances are no one but himself will ever use the truck but in this idiot society we live in you are not allowed to indulge in a legal activity in your vehicle. Absurd. I hope I never have the displeasure to meet the complete asshole who reported him.  The second asshole is a black conservative senator named Don Meredith who went after Michael Ignatieff for saying "wait a cotton picking minute" claiming that "cotton picking" is at the very least insensitive and certainly offensive  to many people.  Where do we find these idiots and how the hell did this moron end up in the senate. Meredith even criticized a black liberal MP for not protesting the remarks. What the hell is the world coming to. It should be a sport to hunt down these assholes, morons and idiots and put them on public display so the world will get a good look at them and know they should never pay any heed to anything they say. Unbelievable.                                                                 

Rain

   Hi Folks, I thought I would first give a little weather report. It has been raining almost continually for 30 hours and the snow loss at the house is big. I went to the Blue Mountain website and checked out the cams and the coverage still looked good although they must have lost quite a bit as well so it's hard to say what the conditions might be like. It's my work weekend so I am hoping the rain lets up because the more it rains the busier I will be. I changed some of the photos as well because I actually had one where Lori looks in a bit of difficulty on her cross country skis. That looks more like my skiing form.  She must have been trying to avoid me after using the body brake. Terry looks like he had the same troubles that I had with that balance thing. The traffic jam was taken right beside my old chalet on Birchview. As usual Lori is leading and as usual I am lying on the ground making  an impassable obstacle. I may have collaped from exhaustion but it's more likely I collapsed from incompetence. Looking at these pictures brings back fond memories and good reasons why I don't cross country ski anymore. Enjoy the weekend, Gary

Failure

  I titled this first post failure because that's what I was as a cross country skier. I worked my ass off trying to keep up with my friend Lori but she glided away from us and made it look easy. Cam, Terry and myself struggled just to keep up. It seemed the harder I tried the worse I got. It was a great workout though and we always had a ton of fun. Kolapore after a big snowfall was fantastic because you could get completely out of control and if you really needed to stop just falling down in a ton of snow would do the trick. I could have patented that move. I remember using it once while screaming (I'm not kidding, I think I was screaming) down Red Death which is one of the scariest things I have ever done. They didn't call it Red Death for nothing. Pride goes out the window when you speed down there, arms and poles flailing everywhere, snowplowing desperately trying to slow down. I don't think I ever went down there once without using the body brake. We always had a great time although we haven't been out on the skis for quite a while. I'll never forget the laughs and the screams. Cheers!