In this one I liveblog a cricket match from Lords

Starring in this live blog is Mr. KB and your lovely brown blogger. Come join us as we take you on an adventure through the mecca of cricket, Lords Cricket Ground.

These events are largely based upon factual events. (Sort of)

In this one I rock it in W8

Hello my lovely peasants,

As I type this, I am sitting in a lovely living room on top of a mansion block (also known as a penthouse, dah-ling) in the prestigious Kensington neighborhood of London. As my impoverished fans know that I am a down-to earth-person, who has his feet rooted to reality, so really this kind of top upmarket neighborhood does not really swell my head too much.

Now where is that goddamn butler with my badger infused macchiato that can only be served in a gold plated skull. Ugh, serfs.

So my little plebs, you might ask, how was your day, you handsome yet humble blogger? Well, children, day one in London was spent going to Brunch and then watching cricket. Brunch is an interesting experience in the motherland. In Toronto, where a certain handsome bald blogger lives, Brunch is a yuppie, fun experience to catch up with friends. However, Brunch in London is more of an upmarket dining experience. I had something called Prawn Omelette, with coriander, green chillies and Sambal sauce. Yea, kind of makes my badger infused macchiato sound normal now, huh?

KB just pointed out that my Badger infused macchiato joke is not funny. I took this to mean that the Butler could not prepare it, and consequently told him that he was fired. Bloody peasants.

Tomorrow, we actually go to Lords and hope to have cucumber sandwiches served to us on silver plated gold platters.

Toodles,

@damookman

In this one, London. I am in you. Again.

So here we are my lovely Gerdie-root hunters (I am on a Harry Potter kick, shut up). I have begun my travels again.  Armed with nothing but a general idea of where I will be waking up tomorrow morning, I have hit the road.... well first, I hit a person, then the millenium falcon and finally the road.

As I escape the monotony of running entire cities (added megalomania plus dictatorial aspirations to my list of mental health conditions), I find myself in my happy place. My happy place just happens to be London, England. Why this place? Well, as I type this, I am chilling in a cafe, where people are nice and friendly to me. In fact, to paraphrase a luminary of the 21st century, Homer Simpson, they call me sir, without adding the words "you are making a scene" right after it. It is warm but not too warm. Test cricket is being played live in this city and Tour De France is happening in the same timezone. Yup, this is my happy place. Also the cafe is a Starbucks because they have unlimited internets.

So how did I end up here you may ask, oh aspirational dementors?

A few aeons ago (it might have been last year, come to think of it) I went to the beautiful island of St. Lucia with my friend KB. KB, if you recall, is a man who is blissfully unaware of technology. Well, KB and his lovely wife V recently moved to London. Since they left me, I decided to follow them and impose myself throughly upon them. Consequently, they now have the good moderate some kind of fortune of hosting me for the next 8 days. During this time I hope to detail why, I am in love with this city. Stay tuned fellow Aurors.

Love,
@damookman

P.S A thought strikes me. I should not be insulting the person who is offerring me shelter. Right?

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.