Disclaimer: joke.
Moving on from potential hate mail and law suits, this weekend can be summed up in one word: wicked.
We decided to break with the tradition of getting drunk in the admittedly warm and comforting ambience of our front room and actually interact with other human beings! I feel that this momentous decision was probably the key to the immensity of the whole three-day period.
Had a bit of a quiet one on Friday, the culmination of which was another epic Scribble session in which I was scandalously denied the brilliant musical double whammy of jovi (noun, to be of Bon Jovi) and ej (proper noun, "the ej", overrated guitarist with U2) while goosie slipped through the rules net. Clear bias, as I hear on the grapevine that two of the other competitors - or rather, the two other competitors - are sleeping with each other.
Saturday night was infinitely more lively. My awesome work mate and general sexpot Eric is leaving the smoothie confines to earn a shitload of tips at a piano bar, and we felt a celebration of this new chapter in his life was in order. Off the Liquid cru piled to his house for many drinks and general merriment - a party with a bartender and an ex-mixologist is always going to be messy. I said something allegedly funny and Andrea, the new girl, laughed her drink all over my face. We also found out that vodka works as rubbing alcohol, which isn't exactly Ray Mears news but might be useful info in future!
Anyways after that I met up with Tom, Lou and their friend Andrew who's staying with us til he finds a place (he only got into the country on Wednesday) at a party thrown for Australia Day! Lou met another Aussie in Esprit and he invited her to his buddy's party as penance for having mistaken her for a Brit, and the rest of us did a bit of crashing. It turned out to be a great party full of really cool people, one of whom runs a group who do snowboarding trips from the city to Blue Mountain, a place about 2 hrs north of Tronno (phonetical spelling) which is awesome for me! Bad things happened too though - I was a drunken mess, and I left an almost full bottle of Jack there. Boo indeed.
On Sunday morning, pointedly hungover, we headed off to Barrie to partake in some snow tubing. Let me walk you through that sentence: Barrie is a place about an hour away from TO that has big snowy hills, and snow tubing is when you get in a big inflatable tube (like one of the ones you use down water slides) and they chuck you down the aforementioned hills, in lanes. From the top it looks like this:
You get to the top by sitting in your tube, and they attach you to a big pulley rope thing. When you get to the top you go up and over a little ledge and then slide down the other side backwards, which is almost funner than the actual tubing bit. In case you're wondering, the world looks like this when you're being pulled up a hill backwards:
It is as much fun as it sounds - this kid's bubbling over with joy.
The first run was individual, but then we started to team up and go down in fours, which makes you go ridiculously fast. I lost my hat on the first go, and eventually got it back when it'd been run over a few times and generally abused. I did find someone else's hat though, so swings and roundabouts (NB: I keep finding cool things here; a Roots camera case when I'd just lost mine, a good hat, a comedy scarf, another good hat...) You end up covered in water from all the spray or covered in snow and its freezing when you go down but its amazing nonetheless. For the two best runs we got two teams of six and raced each other; cue hilarity. I should be able to post of vid of that up here soon. I'd definitely recommend it and hopefully we'll be renting a car at some point to go again.
We were a little bewildered by some of the signage in the area. For example, the one below seems to be warning chefs not to read whilst snow tubing.
There was no horseplay allowed, and we played with some horses in the manner of running and sliding around paths on our tubes which was NOT ALLOWED, and we got done.
Anyways we hopped back to T dot via Timmies for a muffin and a coffee, then spent the evening listening to Triple J's Top 100 countdown (Triple J's being the best Australian radio station, or so I'm reliably informed) while watching the NHL All Star game and eating the Best Spag Bol ever made by Louise. Fairly successful weekend all round says I.
In other news, I have my flights back home booked! There was a bit of a cock up on the old return flight front which has worked out pretty well for me in the end. I'm coming home Feb 26th for a week - a week, a hasten to add, which I plan to fill with as many fun things and miniature reunions as possible. Be there or be oddly perpendicular.
Why not honour Australia Day today by learning a new fact about our far-flung friends? I'll start you off:
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
Interesting stuff.
Hevs out.
