A Day In The Life

I'm sitting in the Vancouver airport, trying to quickly inhale a draught and a couple shots before a flight to Montreal, which boards in fourteen minutes. I was going to do a quick Facebook status update, something generic like "today was hectic" and then I figured that something that generic didn't tell a story. And since I'm a fast typist, and bored, let me tell you about a random day in the life of Scooter, in excruciating detail ...

Background: I just finished a tree planting contract in Alberta yesterday. So today was my "in transit" day on my way back to the East Coast. The past week was interesting - 80 km/hr winds, crazy ranchers, pre-daylight safety meetings every morning, eating gas station salads for a week, and I may have even run into KD Lang in town.

4am: Up early to hit the road from Consort, Alberta (beside the Saskatchewan border). Side note about Consort - you know how some towns have creative and uplifting slogans like "our people are our best asset"? Consort's is "really rural." No kidding, it's on the sign coming into town, which also says that the town's population is 679. I didn't see that many people though.

6am: Quick stop at a Tim Hortons. Tried their soup with bun. The bun was amazing. I went up to ask how much it would cost to buy another. Fifty cents. I was tempted to buy twelve, to see if I'd get a baker's dozen, but I only had $5.00 in change left. Besides, the last thing that I needed for today was a distended belly. The steering wheel on my truck wasn't adjustable.

7am: Had to pull over to put pants on. I was driving the 5-ton, and the heater was broken, and a couple hours of seeing my own breath in the cab was too much to take. Mental note: always wear pants in October before the sun comes up.

9am: Just past Calgary, heading to a nursery to drop off the truckload of flat garbage tree boxes for recycling. That took about 45 minutes. The nursery probably didn't recycle them, probably just burned them for heat, but who am I to be hypocritical?

2pm: Saw a coyote, and shortly afterwards, two wolves.

3pm: Saw what I think might have been a blue heron, but not positive.

4pm: Lots of domestic llamas and alpacas on the farms that I've been driving by.

4:15pm: Saw three brilliant white mountain goats. Those things are pretty odd-looking (although not as odd as an alpaca, come to think of it). Weather getting nasty - I hope they don't blow off the cliff.

4:30pm: Blizzard in the Rockies. Snow sucks in early October.

5pm: Just before Jasper, saw about eighteen elk. I also saw a retarded tourist, decked out in full camo gear, taking photos of the elk with a tripod and a telephoto lens that was also camo'd, who was taking his pictures from BEHIND a big white suburban. Idiot! Does he not realize that the camo gear does not help if there is already a two ton white gas-guzzler hiding him? I was tempted to pull over and go stampede the elk off into the bushes, or some other tom-foolery, but I was on a tight schedule.

8pm: Arrived in Prince George, had a few minutes to drop off my truck at the office and empty the quad and all of my other gear out of it, then bolted for the airport.

8:44pm: Arrived at check-in, one minute before my flight started to board. And by the way, there was a time change in there, so this was actually about sixteen hours on the road so far. Cutting it close, but really, they even let me check my back-pack, so I guess I still had several minutes to spare before I would have missed the flight.

By the way, I wasn't alone in this whirlwind tour. There were seven of us in a convoy of five trucks making the voyage - myself, Jackie, Nate, Kyla, Al, Matt, and Dana.

Anyway, I'd like to embellish this post with a lot more of the fun details along the way, but I have one minute to finish my drinks and run to gate C38 for boarding.

PS: God bless YVR - best airport in the world for free internet, lots of sushi shops, and one of the cleanest airports that I've ever been in.

PPS: Next stop, Montreal, then Moncton. Trying to make it to Sackville by Saturday afternoon so I don't miss my cooking shift at the Olive Branch at supper, and then my bartending shift at the Pub on Saturday night. Can't miss the Pub on a Saturday night! Kati, if you read this, please have a "voldka-bomb" (or four?) ready at 11pm ...

The Tequila Wave of 2001

I was just going through some old data files, and I found an amusing video. It's from the Mount Allison University Pub, where in 2001, Drew Dudley decided that he would try to set a world record for the most consecutive people taking shots of tequila. The whole point of the exercise was to be a fun & unique way to raise money for Shinerama. Everyone who participated paid $10 to join, and all that money went as a donation to the Shinerama campaign. The folks who distribute Jose Cuervo tequila made arrangements so that someone could cover the costs of the tequila consumed. Here is the video, filmed in the Pub one afternoon just before supper:



YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v8g02iREBo

There's also a page on the Pub website that has more details:
http://www.mta.ca/pub/tequila.html

Looking back, it's neat seeing a ton of my old friends and staff members on the video. And strangely enough, even though it was about six years ago now that this event took place, several of those people are still working at or near Mount Allison. Also notable: as much as Drew was able to set a lot of records during his years as a Shinerama Director, both at Mount Allison and in other parts of Canada, I think this is probably the fastest time (four minutes) that he was ever able to raise $2000.

I'm going to try to tag a bunch of the people I recognize when this feeds out to my Facebook Notes - so far, I can see about fifty people that participated and who are in my Facebook friends list. It's pretty entertaining, at least for any of us that were there when it happened, and it's making me look forward to Homecoming Weekend at the university in just another three weeks or so. I'm going to have to keep digging around and see what other old videos I can find to share around.

Socks To Be You

Well, I had a rather amusing end to my evening running the club tonight. After we had everything cleaned up and all the staff were sitting around having a beverage after work, someone started banging at the side door. One of the staff opened it, to see what the commotion was about, and one of our best customers walked in.

In boxers. Nothing else. For those of you from around the globe, this is January in Canada and it is not exactly the best time of year to be wearing nothing but boxers.

Apparently, the gentleman in question had offended his girlfriend somehow. This was not surprising to us, after listening to his alcohol-induced speech impediment for about thirty seconds. The lad was sloshed, and in Olympian proportions. The fine young lady whom he dates had apparently been unimpressed by his level of intoxication, and fired him out into the streets at 2am, sans pants. Nor shirt. Nor socks or shoes. And locked the door behind him to prevent re-entry, just to make sure the message got through.

I was humbled and flattered that in his alcoholic haze he decided that our Pub was his best refuge, but after video taping his antics for a few minutes, I paid for his cab and sent him on his way, wearing my own socks. Shelley just bought me new sneakers, so I couldn't quite part with those.

I've never given my socks to a customer before, no matter how significant the time of distress. Let me just say, however, that tonight it was "well worth the price of admission."

Zach, I'm having a big fat Jack Daniels and Coke right now. A great big cheers to you - customer of the month!