Another weekend, another spree
17 November 2003It just wouldn't be a weekend if we didn't go spend a pile of money, but this one was like Christmas come early: skates! skis! shoes for the kid! fabric for living room drapes!
I'm beginning to suspect that my obsession with sporting activities and equipment is growing perhaps a little ridiculous. On Saturday morning I went out on my commuter/training bike (the old silver rigid-fork mountain bike that used to run street tires, now has some cheap centre-bead things for commuting on the weird mix of ice, snow and asphalt that we have to contend with here) and joined the masters' ride. It was five below (C) at the start, creeping up towards zero by the end. The roads were bare but the fields and mountains covered in snow. Blue skies, per usual. Just gorgeous, and you feel like a real hard man for getting out there and riding no matter the temperature. A pleasant sight en route was a freshly dead antelope by the side of the road, with a dozen crows pecking away at its steadily enlarging anus. Put me right off my powerbar.
I endured yet another dipshit-in-a-truck episode during the ride. Because of time constraints I'd planned to leave the group and return home directly on Highway 8, skipping the coffee stop in Bragg Creek. Coming up the left turn on Highway 22 there was a big gap in traffic so I arced over to the other side of the road and began riding up the opposite shoulder for the last hundred yards or so. Technically that would be the wrong way, but it's an eight-foot shoulder and there was nothing coming towards me. Not a problem, one would think. But no, I hear that wonderful Doppler-effect descending horn note, and the inevitable pick-up sails past with the inevitable Albertan dork waving his fist and giving me the finger. And I am delaying you or endangering you or inconveniencing you exactly how? I gave my stock cheerful wave and giant smile, which is the best response to both assholes and distant relatives who thoughtlessly honk in greeting. I really can't stand the drivers here, they either want to kill you for being on "their" road or they are so courteous as to be life-threatening. I've found myself waiting at a side-street to cross a busy six-lane arterial while some goddamn Rotarian in one of the middle lanes stops for me. It not a cross-walk. I am not a pedestrian. You are not required to stop. And while I appreciate the gesture, one lane in six really isn't doing me a hell of a lot of good; quite the opposite. I know it's rude and probably not good public relations but I usually ignore them at first then gape incredulously and wave them past, shaking my head at their idiocy.
What makes it worse is that the cyclists round these parts are far too respectful of motorists (the old farts I ride with anyway, perhaps the younger guys assert themselves). Out in the middle of nowhere on some tiny country road with one lone car prowling along every five or ten minutes, they'll hug the shoulder (which is usually full of sharp gravel laid down after the last snowfall, and therefore bad for the tires) so as not to force any passing vehicle to divert more than a few feet. I hate this. It's actually more dangerous because it doesn't compel the driver to get out past the centre-line, so he or she is tempted to stay in the lane and skim past you with only the smallest of margins. It's much, much safer to ride a few feet out into the roadway. I've begun lecturing my faint-hearted companions but they seem terribly reluctant to inconvenience or anger the SUV set. I finally lost it on Saturday: "Jesus Christ, I've been shot at training in Chicago, I can take whatever these white-ass rednecks can dish out. I'm taking as much road as I damn well want, the law allows me." (That did happen, sort of. Running the gauntlet on Garfield to get across the South Side and ride in the forest preserves west of the city, I heard a car slow along side me. The passenger leaned out, said "Rodney King, motherfucker!" in a most menacing tone - it was the summer of 1992 - pointed a starter pistol at me and squeezed off two shots. I remained strangely calm, probably because I'd just come from D.C. and had heard the real thing enough times to know the difference. Okay, calm until it was time for the return trip along Garfield a few hours later, at which point acute post-traumatic stress disorder set in and I nearly shit myself.)
After three hours in the saddle I returned home for a fast shower and lunch, then threw Mads in the car for a string of sport-theme errands: to the bike shop to drop off my road bike and have a broken rear spoke and other minor things repaired - after two weeks I'd not managed to get in and do it myself, so it was time to request a favour; to the skate shop to look for longer bolts and consult on the mounting of the clap blade to my new long-track boots, which finally arrived on Friday; to a ski shop in Banff to pick up my new skis - more on this later; to McDonald's in Canmore for dinner; to the bobsled track to watch skeleton training.
Dealing with four sports in one day - a bit silly. But it keeps me busy, so I don't think too hard about what life in Calgary would be like without winter sports.
Skeleton was cancelled on account of the generator failing, plunging the track into darkness. (Personally I thought "blind skeleton" would be more of a challenge.) Mads was already packed into her snowsuit by this point so we went out for a late-night romp. I took her back into the Ice House to remove a few layers and then we saw a pair of sliders practicing starts. (The Ice House has full bob and luge starts, indoors, for year-round training.) She spent the next hour gawking, climbing railings, running up and down the sprint track and having high-energy fun while I chatted. I was happy to see that the two athletes were women - I want her to grow up believing that she can do any crazy-ass sport she wants to, that gender will never be a barrier. (Excepting hockey, in which case the feminist virtues of the women's game are far outweighed by the need for lots of expensive equipment plus getting up at four in the morning to drive to practice in a freezing cold rink, hugging a large Tim Horton's double-double, surrounded by dickhead hockey parents.)
We now own skis. Last month we both bought boots, closeouts from past seasons (Lange AC80 for her, Tecnica Icon DP for me). Late last week Annette picked up a closeout pair of Völkl G3s. I can't believe she spent that much money, but then she currently does two sports to my four (one of which is running) and earns more than I do, so I shut my mouth and let her treat herself to what are by all accounts a really spectacular set of boards. I might have done the same and totally blown the budget but they didn't have my size. I made some calls on Friday and found a demo pair of Völkl G2s at a shop in Banff, so I said to hold them and barreled out for a look a day later (the drive isn't much over an hour and so gorgeous I don't mind at all; Mads slept for the outbound leg, sang along to "Madeline" for the inbound leg). In the end we spent what we'd planned for two new pairs of G2s, so Annette gets the better ski in exchange for my taking some lightly scuffed demos (both equipped with rail-mount Marker Motion 12 bindings). Eminently fair.
It's going to be so fun skiing this year. It better be - all told it's going to cost us at least four thousand for gear and lift tickets and hotels. I haven't really skied for ten years, the equipment is almost unrecognizable. Fatter, curvier. The boots higher and raised an inch off the ski. Thank god my parents started a college fund for the kid.
On Sunday morning we passed another milestone in our lives: we became our child's chauffeur. We took Mads to her first swimming lessons. These I deemed necessary back in the summer when we'd gone to a pool in Vancouver and the child had displayed such confidence and lack of fear that she was a good candidate for drowning. Jumping off the side of the pool into water well over her head when I was at least ten feet away, that sort of thing. I signed her up for the first available class after her third birthday. She wasn't the most cooperative pupil, though she at least appeared to be giving polite, detailed explanations for her failure to cooperate (we were too far away to hear, but we could read the body language and knew she was launching into one of her long, complex sentences, doubtless a carefully argued rationale for not doing exactly what the other kids were doing). Though we'd brought all four inches of the Sunday New York Times with us, we spent the entire half hour watching and laughing. This was the first time we've just dumped her at a lesson and disappeared, and the fact that she felt very comfortable with the instructor augurs well for skiing and skating and all manner of things.
The only funny thing Maddy said this weekend came late on Saturday night. After the usual stalling she had finally "made a deal" and agreed to go to bed and stay there and stop making petty, delaying-tactic requests. After five minutes' silence she made some additional, random demand. I said no, we had a deal. "I don't like this deal I made," she hollered through the door.
After swimming a pricey brunch (there is no cheap but edible restaurant food here; it's one of the things I miss most about Berlin) then a trip to the mall for long-delayed birthday shoes, courtesy of grandparents, other assorted errands and a long afternoon of dehydration grumpiness (it's so dry here, it happens) before I left for training at the Oval. The first session on the new skates went about as well as can be expected. Teething issues are perfectly normal. By the end of the year I'll have the boots broken in, the blade position fixed, and should hopefully be going a lot faster. The boots are much less restrictive (i.e. much less support). I can already sit lower and roll onto the outside edge with less trouble; I look like a long-track skater, not an inline skater on ice.
I'm not sure why, but in my few spare moments I've been reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, an intensely horrid novel written as a series of letters by a woman to her estranged husband, discussing the history and fate of their teenage son, currently imprisoned for shooting up his high-school classroom. (I might as well complete the post-Columbine troika: next up, Coupland's latest, Hey Nostradamus! and the Booker winner, Vernon God Little.) It's given me a new perspective on my daughter: no matter how nasty she might behave, Maddy still looks like an angel.
On Sunday evening, worn out after an early start and nap-free afternoon, she fell asleep next to me on the couch, watching some ancient German cartoon on tape. I didn't move for half an hour, I was too in love with the sensation of having her lay against me, head on my chest, breathing softly. I miss the naps we took together when she was tiny, curled atop me like a big furless cat. (Incidentally, this past year Vita has taken to sharing my pillow, wrapping herself around my head during the night. We both seem happy with this arrangement.)
And then it was Monday and time to go to work and pay for all the sports equipment.