In this one I stand by helplessly

I am going to break the fourth wall today a bit. As many of you may or may not know, my Mother was diagnosed with Hogdkins lymphoma a few years back.  We went through the necessary treatments which included an open biopsy, a series of Chemotherapy and Radiation sessions. Eventually she went through complete remission and was declared healthy as a horse. While, normally, I object to my loved ones being referred to as farm animals or large bovines, I figured this was a good proclamation. The last few years she has been in tip-top shape. Thankfully.

A few months ago that old sinking feeling returned. They discovered new nodules in her neck. Thankfully, we are linked up with one of the best cancer treatment hospitals in the world. As I type this, she was just wheeled into an operation theatre where they intend on going inside of her in a tiny ship and extricating a nodule. Obviously, the tiny ship is a joke, but it feels better than saying that they are going to make an incision and extricate a lump from inside her.

Neither of us are overtly emotional people. In fact, most of @damookman's ex-partners have described him as cold and emotionless. She is strong and I am trying to be as logical as possible. To a great degree both of us have good coping mechanisms, mostly because worrying about an unknown never helps. This  system does break down though when faced with a particular road bump.

The wait

The wait feels like the worst part of this journey. You feel like yelling, screaming, snapping at things, people, objects and pretty much anything that crosses your path comes across as an obstruction to the answers that you need. The wait is like the Black Knight, it just refuses to move aside.

As she was wheeled into the theatre about 20 minutes ago, I stood there, helpless. Fully aware, that I should let the experts do their job, I stood there.... rooted to the spot.

Once this interminable wait is over, we will have to wait again for the results. Once again, Princess Margaret Hospital is amazing and they have treated us amazingly. Their turnaround time for things like this is spectacularly fast. But moments like this make you want to shake people just to make things go faster.

Still waiting @damookman

P.S. Humorous observations will commence in a short period of time. I just figured this was a journey of a different sort and wanted to talk about it a bit. 

An open love letter to Lake Placid

Dear Lake Placid or Misty,

Can I call you Misty? I think I shall. Where do I begin, Misty? I think I shall begin at the top. (Get it, hills, top, mountains... geez I kill myself)

As you well know before the wonderful weekend, that I was a sophisticated traveller who had experienced many different cafes and cities. I have been smooshed into trains in Delhi, I have been chased by ruffians in London, I have cried on the side of mountains, and I have laughed on the shores of oceans. But during all of those trips, I had never travelled to the 'Land of the Free' (Miami airport notwithstanding).

What I thought was that everyone in your part of the world hated cyclists? Turns out that you had a cycle lane from the border of your country to the heart of your city. You know what Misty, that means that you have a cycle path into my heart.

Your mountains, your marathons, your bike routes, your beautiful people and your roadies, they all conspired to steal my affections away from my true love, Londres (Fear not London, I am still yours, and soon I shall be in you).

I think both of us agree that this weekend while less than perfect (your rains, Misty. They need to not happen when we meet), was wonderful. Brief though this visit was, it was full of passion. I shall be coming back to you soon, Misty. So just make sure that the coffee is brewing, and the rain stays away. This time, I promise you, I shall be there longer.

Love,

@Damookman.

In this one raindrops keep falling on my head

Good evening my adorable Parameciums,

Let me tell you a story about little @damookman. Little @damookman was an avid sprinter and loved to read about physics. He learned at a very young age that when when one travels close to the speed of light, the traveller gets tunnel vision due to the vagaries of physics unicorn blood-magic. He also learned at a young age that running down a hill meant running way faster than his body could ever manage on a flat surface. It was during one such run that he started to experience Tunnel Vision. Instead of stopping like any sane living creature would, little @damookman assumed that he was nearing the speed of light and then wondered why he was lying on grass with red liquid secreting out of new orifices in his body. Needless to say it was confusing. Through careful study of unicorn blood-magic, I chalked it up to the fact that running at the speed of light causes your blood to freak out and it wants to run away from your success at mocking mother nature.

In this one I... ROAAAAADDD TTTTRRRRRIIIIPPPP

Ah, hello. I did not see you there. Welcome back, my lovely baby-lampreys. So as I promised, I have begin my journeys once again.

As many of you might already know, thanks to some lovely long term planning, I never legally got my license. Yes, despite my advanced age of 978 years, I never got around to getting one of those legal things that allows me to drive a big thing with four (sometimes 12) wheels. To the rescue comes my good friend Eric "Fatal Seige" C. As an avid cyclist who was once dropped by a lycra clad retiree (the same one who constantly dropped me last year. Click here if you need reminding.) Fatal Seige was totally up for taking a trip to... wait for it... Lake Placid, New York. 

"Lake Placid?" Yes,  my lovely upstream swimming Salmons, Lake Placid. Nestled up in the Adirondacks Mountains in Upstate New York is this athletic paradise. The site of two, yes count them, two winter Olympic games. But that will come in the next post. 

I should point out that Mr. Fatal Siege lives in the hamlet of Kitchener. With barely 200,000 people, it is sometimes literally minutes before the Seige sees another soul. Mr. Fatal, as he is known to his friends, also decided that working before driving 10 hours was a great idea. So Fatal comes over to Toronto whereupon we strap two bikes on his trusty steed (also known as a car). Install a G.P.S (stands for Guppy Placing System) which on top of placing Guppies should theoretically also tell you how to get to point B from A. After a brief food break, we left. 

During the journey we discovered things which I shall now insist that you know and memorize or I will beat you... with sharks.  

1) The GPS, is pretty bad at placing guppies but is even worse at telling you how to get from point A to point B. Mostly because it assumes you are starting from point C which is nowhere close to point B. However, it insisted on guiding us from Point C to Point A to Point B. Due to the piles of dead guppies and it's insistence of wanting us to start from Point C, it was soon abandoned and shot with a murderous tiger which had been expelled out of a howitzer. 

2) Enroute to the land of the Free, we decided to get some caffeine. To facilitate the flow of said goodness, we stopped at a Tim Hortons and were served by a person with one eyebrow. It turns out that Unibrows hate devilishly handsome bloggers with a killer smile, and Eric. Insults to the Siege aside, Unibrow-Man took the same approach to coffee as Jackson Pollock to painting. By which I mean, coffee was not only in the cups, but on the cups, counters, co-workers, lids, small children, the elderly, and my mother (really surprising since she was not actually travelling with us). Unibrow-Man handed us cups that were leaking and covered in brown syrup. Origins of the brown syrup were not immediately recognizable  but it was quite tasty. 

3) Dick-Punching is a good way of showing how much you respect a person and should become the new way of greeting old friends. Enough said.  

4) After 12 hours of driving, everything seems funny, but you are also prone to bouts of spontaneous crying about cats. 

Next post: Oh god. So much RAIN. 

In this one I talk about Food and me. Foodies, might want to look away.

My dear lovely baby Anacondas,


It has been a while, has it not? I apologize for this my lovelies, but I can promise you this, as I am embarking upon my next set of journeys I shall post a bit more frequently. Ok, frequently is a lie... more sporadically?!?!


But first let's discuss food. Yes, food,  in a blog devoted to factual truthiness (thank you Stephen Colbert) about travel. Food,  FOOOODD, Fewd, no matter how you spell it holds a special place in people's hearts. Which is strange considering food goes in the stomach. 


In my alter ego as a mild-mannered guy, I have been interacting with people in my immediate surroundings (I like to call them normies) who get shocked when I tell them that Food and I have a troubled relationship and that I do not care for it much. This invariably leads to people assuming that   I do not like to eat good food. Normies are not good listeners. Apologies to any normies reading. 


Yes, it is true, I will frequently forget to eat. I eat to live, not live to eat. Yes, my dear cute adorable nautilus (nautili?!?). It may be simple semantics, but it makes all the difference in the world. It simply means that I will eat when I need to. This does not preclude the need to eat good food, neither does it prevent me from recognizing good food when I see it. Simply, that I will eat it when hungry. Enjoyment is an aftereffect. I do not fixate on it, I do not chase it, I simply do not care that much for it. If there is good food there, I will eat it. If not, well I will keep it down and move on. 


In the case the world ends tomorrow, and I should know having survived four apocalypses, seven raptures and nineteen asteroid collisions in my 975 years of existence, "good food" will cease to exist leaving us with grey goo. Turns out that was my lunch in fourth year of monastery schooling. Guess who's ready for the new world order? THIIIIIISSSS GUYYYYYY