Canada

This is me and Sam I Am having drinks at the Elephant and Castle in Toronto. Out of the frame, though he was there and completely in the moment, was also Peter.

About 20 seconds after this picture was taken, we got kicked out of the restaurant. The waitress claimed that it was because they were closing early for the long weekend, but I think it was probably because they were nervous about foreigners taking pictures in their establishment, post 9/11 and all.

We later went to a place called the Devil's Advocate, where I was the resident pool shark until some limo driver showed up and took us all for a ride (on the pool table, that is).

Tonight, July 12th 2005 was the night of the baseball All-Star game. I went out to a La Cage aux Sports (a local sports bar chain here in Monteal) to watch. A plate of chicken wings and a few pints of Heineken later, and the All-Star game starts.

La Cage is playing the game in French, but that’s not too disconcerting for me. Heck, I have watched 2 Superbowls in Spanish after all. This is just an All-Star game and, despite that big banners out in center field announcing that “this one counts,” in reality it doesn’t count that much.

I have been in Montreal for 10 weeks now, and have started to learn some French. Really, it’s more like re-learning. I took 7 years of French in school, and according to all “official” standards, 7 years of study should make me bilingual. But, because I never use my French, I would call me about as Bilingual as a unilingual inanimate piece of stone. However, a few weeks ago I realized that I could understand the numbers again. And just this week, I completed a whole restaurant transaction in French without the server getting upset with me and switching to English.

This evening, at La Cage, for some reason the waitress kept speaking to me in French. What makes this so strange, really, is that 90% of patrons in the bar were speaking English, and the waitress was all speaking English to them. Perhaps it was because I would keep saying “merci” and “une autre, s’il vous plait” that she felt like she could speak her native tongue to me. Not sure why, but French kept coming my way tonight. I would understand about 25% of it. Which, given that I knew the context of the transaction (most likely “would you like another beer” or “I’m sorry, you are too drunk to be served any more”), I was pretty good at deciphering.

I have recently staggered back to my hotel. Getting into the elevator I was joined by a family. They were Scottish, and if I know my accents, from Glasglow. They were talking to each other in the elevator, and God help me if I didn’t understand but 3 words they said to each other. I knew they were speaking English, but I had much more luck understanding my French bartender than I did my Glaswegian elevator companions.

Such is the way of the world, I suppose. Sometimes, it is much easier to understand those who you don’t speak the same language with than those who speak the same language as you.

P.S. I was in the bathroom and they had a very fancy urinal in there - it was a stainless steel trough with a large stainless steel wall with water running constantly down it. Very fancy. When I was at the urinal, a man came in asked what I thought of the urinal.

"Very fancy," I said, "kind of like peeing on art."

He laughed. "Does that make you Piss-caso?" he asked.

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become
- Africa, Toto

Way back in October of 2002, I was living briefly but happily in the Bay Area of San Francisco. While there, I did a day hike of nearby Mount Diablo, which rises 3,849 feet from close to sea level, just east of the San Francisco Bay.

The view from the top was amazing. To the west was the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the Pacific, and to the east the central valley and far away the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The central valley is quite flat, and as Mount Diablo stands alone, the view is extensive. A plaque at the peak stated that one can see 35 of California's 58 counties, and from which it is possible to view the second greatest surface area seen from any peak in the world, exceeded only by Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

A seed was planted that day about Kilimanjaro. A few months later a travel show on TV was talking about Kilimanjaro, and how (along with being the highest peak in Africa) it was the highest mountain in the world that a person could climb with no special climbing skills or training required. Kilimanjaro is the highest "walkable" mountain in the world. "Some day," I thought to myself, "I will climb Mount Kilimanjaro."

And that day has come. Actually, it came much quicker than I would have imagined, really. I'm a little surprised myself that I decided to do this. But I figured that I should do it now, before I get old and not up for the physical challenge. "It's tougher than giving child birth," says the website of the company with whom I booked. Less than 50% of the people make it to the top. 1 in 100 need to have an emergency evacuation. Chances of death are 1 in 3000, rising to 1 in 300 if the weather turns bad.

Scary stuff, no? When I told my Dad about this he pointed out that he had a couple of people in his "post-cards" club who climbed Kilimanjaro. The Post-cards are a group of older gentlemen, all of whom have had some sort of cardiac event, who work out 3 times a week at the local YMCA. If a couple of retired, heart-attack victims can do this, I shouldn't be scared, right?

Today I leave Toronto on Continental flight 1991 from Toronto to New Jersey at 2:10pm. Then a quick jaunt over the Atlantic to Amsterdam, and a short hop down to Tanzania from there. If all goes according to plan (and what doesn't with airlines), I should be landing in Tanzania at 9:20pm local time on the 21st of January. That's 2:20pm eastern time, which means all told I will have spent 24 hours and 10 minutes travelling from Toronto to Kilimanjaro.

...if all goes according to plan.

Shoeless Joes on Eglington was the setting for Superbowl 36. The Patriots of New England were taking on the Rams of St. Louis. I found myself cheering for the Pats simply because I had them in my football playoff pool. They ended up winning 20 - 17, and I won the pool!

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For other experiences viewing "The Big Game", check out the rest of my Superbowls Around the World blog entries