The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

Tomorrow at 730 AM I have to be at the Calgary International Airport to get ready for my flight, which leaves at 1030. That will be the end of my Pre-Departure, and the start of a new section of my life, let alone my blog. I want to say something sweeping about how tomorrow my life will change drastically, but really it changed drastically when I started uprooting my apartment and stuff, this is just another step on the road.

Speaking of roads, here are some fun Driving Anecdotes!

Jen managed herself pretty well on the ride. She's upset, and I am not surprised, but she's tough and holding together well. I have my extreme excitement and trepidation to keep me from being too weepy, but I choke up a lot too, particularly when I said goodbye to my mom and sister. The drive out to Calgary was miserable in a lot of ways, particularly regarding traffic. We got stuck behind a semi-truck which apparently had some kind of vendetta against us. He was driving at about 60 kph in a 90 zone, but as soon as he reached any kind of passing lane he'd accellerate to 120-130 kph, and try to block us from passing him. The, when the lane ended, he'd slam on the brakes and drop back down to 50-60. Eventually Jen passed him at something like 140 kph, and I gave him the finger as he well deserved. Later, on a long two-lane segment, he started racing up to us and tried to cut us off, forcing us to drive behind him for the rest of the way until the next two lane! We went neck-and-neck for a while, then with cunning driving and better maneuvrability cut in front of him and took up the passing lane, while a particulalry slow van occupied the slow lane. We got rid of him and he never passed us again. There were other bad drivers, but he was the only outright malicious one. Another noteable fellow was the guy from Manitoba I call "Goatman". We were driving out of Golden, through a windy mountain section with about two feet of shoulder on the right before a steep cliff to a river far below, and a double-solid on the left with traffic going by. Goatman saw a herd of mountain goats... "HOLY SHIT," he thought. "MOUNTAIN GOATS IN THE MOUNTAINS!" and slammed on his brakes, nearly causing us to rear-end him. He just stopped, ignoring us honking at him, and didn't seem to notice when we finally managed to slip past him illegally. He was too busy looking at the goats. Jen and I were discussing how much we wanted to graffiti the back of his car to say "I <3 Goats".

When Jen and I arrived, we had a fun time eating Barty Bott's Every Flavour Beans with my dad and Zdenka, while sharing a few beers. My personal "favourite" was the rotten egg bean, I could barely choke it down. Zdenka's reaction to the sardine one makes me wish I'd got to taste one of htose, though. The dirt flavoured bean was strong but palatable, at least for anyone who's had for some reason a mouthful of potting soil (or nice topsoil) during their wild youth. I was rather disappointed by the vomit bean, it didn't taste like anything.

Today I met the JETs from Calgary and area. There are three of us going to Miyagi, one going to the Matsushima area (Nicole) and another going to Ishinomaki (Jeremy). Both of them seemed very cool, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with them when the Miyagi JETs do whatever it is JETs do when we get together - judging by Bill's blog, ski and drink. Nicole and I went to hang out and have some Tim Horton's coffee with some of the other JET's. I somewhat foolishly pointed out that it was probably the last time we'd eat Tim Hortons for a while.... I think one girl cried a little when I said that. I felt bad.

We found out, or at least I and some others did, that the size restriction on our baggage was 10 kilos less than expected. I lucked out: my baggage was not too heavy anyway, as I'm not packing much more than clothing, but I feel bad for anyone else who packed everything carefully at 32 kilos and found out it was only 23.

Jen spent the day visiting my friend Jon at work while I was at the seminars learning very little about JET that I didn't already know. He invited her to go to an airshow tomorrow after I leave, which is pretty much the most stand-up thing I can think of. He's a great guy and a good friend, Jen will need a bit of a distraction and that's a great idea.

Saying goodbye was about as hard as I thought it would be, and I don't think any more really needs to be said about that. Dad made an awesome goodbye supper for me, and an even more awesome goodbye desert (fresh fruit platter with a white chocolate / cream cheese dip), we all had some beer and wine, and that was it. We stayed up pretty late, which was maybe a trifle unwise... but then again, a guy can catch up on his sleep any time, and I won't be getting to share a beer with my dad again for quite a while. In retrospect (I'm writing this from the hotel in Tokyo now) I almost wish I had stayed up later. Yeah I'm tired, but that's trivial.

On to the next entry in my blog, and a whole new section (or series thereof? I dunno, I hadn't really thought it through beyond this point. More on that in our next exciting episode!)