Harlem

I just got back from visiting my sister in Harlem, NYC. She lives at 116th Street and 2nd Avenue, up the corner from a new taqueria and grocery with an old banner: "Hot Sandwich, Cold Sandwich, ATM, EBT, WIC."

My father Tom, a farmer from New Hampshire, my boyfriend Michal, a Czech from a spa town on the German border, and my sister Katie, a textile artist trying to make it, and I (whose spotty blog you're currently perusing) huddled into the three-chair- counter-window-spot, and ate tacos con pollo y tacos con bistek.

A couple Latinas blew in and ordered some food as we drowned ours in green salsa. "Como esta?" asked the man behind the grill. "Que frio!" said the lady, shivering. "It's cold!" We looked out at the blustery December day--a pale sun shone and the bare trees bent and scraped at the air when gusts of wind came off the East River. Hah! We said to ourselves. We're from the north after all, and there was no snow, no sleet, no temps below freezing. It was hardly a winter.

Later, on a journey towards the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, we passed a street booth selling scented oils and ceramic holders where the oil sat and burned beneath a tea light. "How you doing?" asked the man, who finally emerged from somewhere after we'd stood around sniffing the burning oil--cocount breeze--for about five minutes.

(By then, with the wind whipping though our hair, we were eating our words. "Que frio," we said. My sister had just broken down and bought a hat)

"I've got Jasmine," said the seller, opening a bottle of whiskey colored oil so that we could sniff. "I've got Tahitian Vanilla." Katie asked about aphrodisiacs, and the seller looked bashful. He offered her a few other bottles to sniff, which is when he said, "and I've got Michelle Obama." "What?" I asked. "You've got Michelle's scent?" "Oh yeah," he said, and opened a bottle of pink liquid. "Smell." Michelle smelled like Gardenias; She smelled like baby powder and Chanel. Michelle smelled wonderful so we bought her. The guy was $20 richer by the time we continued our chilly stroll down the wide streets of Harlem.

Pemberton, BC to Montreal, QC

Grenfell, Saskatchewan

The drive back East was sticky. With no air conditioning, we developed a sunroof and left-side back window aeration system, which left us saying things like "What did you say?" "Come again?" "Co?" (That's Czech for "What"). Up and through the Rockies, we catapulted into Alberta and then drove for endless hours in the flat, hot sun of the prairies. We hit Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on evening two. A campground had been erected on a grassy bank not far from the highway, and we drove in after dark, a group of Latinos sitting, chatty but watchful, outside the laundry room. We put up our tiny tent, and then fed quarters into the hot showers, the water metering out fairly over our burnt skin in 25 cent increments. Then we went into town for food.

"Where do you guys go to eat?" I asked two girls my age who were licking soft serve outside the dairy bar. We'd driven around for a hunger-stricken 30 minutes, past the vacant store fronts and neatly kept downtown. All we'd seen was a restaurant advertising "Chinese and Canadian Cuisine" void of customers. "Oh," said the girls, friendly enough. "Yeah, the downtown doesn't have much. You have to go to the service road. They have McDonalds and Taco Time and stuff." They gave us directions, and we were on our way. In a deep, late August night with few stars, the Swift Current service road was like entering a neon tunnel. Petro Can Signs glared, next to Tim Hortons' red and brown lights and Taco Time's jazzy green. Sweeping headlights cut through the asphalted black like bursts from Mars. We went to Taco Time for our microwaved dinner, and sat shivering in the air-conditioning, amid the palm trees and orange stucco.

Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan

The trip continued. From grassy, Saskatchewan towns baked by sun, we hit Winnipeg, with its tree lined streets and aging cement apartments and were met by friends. The next day was my birthday, and after bidding my friend Suzy goodbye, we maneuvered our overstuffed car to the bookshop in a shopping plaza. It was nine in the morning in Winnipeg, and the plaza, complete with brown tiles and tiny food court was overrun by the elderly. Drinking coffee, sitting on benches, shopping at Zellers; we had found Winnipeg's epicenter of old people. The only shop with clothing was Zellers, a Canadian K-Mart, and I tried on a few back-to-school specials that Michal bought for me. We threw them in the car and got out of town.

Then the long Ontario leg began, another three solid days of northern Pines, big lake views, poor nutrition and dodgy camping. We were still sticking to the seats but not as much, the lull of the drive had made us almost mute. We put on music and watched the scenery go by. After a few good luck campsites, privately run but near real bodies of water, with birds and breeze, we landed in Montreal.

Pemberton BC, to Montreal, QC: Seven days.

Adieu BC!

The two of us, dipping in and out of various forms of employment, sampling a handful of adrenaline here and there, hitting up the cheap burger nights and driving a hunk of a Honda to and fro on the splintering mountain asphalt of the Sea to Sky corridor, are about to say "adieu" to BC. "Ciao", "sayonara", "auf wiedersehen!" But BC, I love you.

It doesn't matter that a tub of nice yogurt costs an hours wage, or that CBC interviews the highly normal (read horridly boring) parents of BC's own Carly Rae Jepson, Canadian Idol winner of 2007, for TEN whole minutes during the morning commute. And it doesn't matter that the resort town of Whistler sports the biggest collection of classic Ray Bans this side of Seattle, in fact, the mountain itself could be resculpted in hip sunglasses. (OK, I admit, mine included). BC, I love you.

Because we're in the middle of a vacation, somebody's vacation, and if you put yourself in the right mind frame, if you forget about your Swiss ESL students who will, you can be sure, ask you if you can use a separable phrasal verb in the passive voice, or why you don't yet know who Usain Bolt is, AND it's an Olympic year. If you forget about your duties for a minute, you're smack dab in the middle of your own holiday. And you didn't have to go anywhere at all.

Walk down a road to a glacier lake and go for a swim. Hike along a throbbing, white and green river, eat poison-red thimble berries and roast sausages on the shore. Go to a deep pine forest and find a couple of rocks to boulder on, bike down mountain-sides surely better suited to goats. Thrill yourself by looking down from the bungee jump suspension bridge, go to the golf-course and look for bears. There's lots of other stuff to do of course. Things you can shell out cash for, paragliding, rafting, ziplining, pub crawling. But the pleasure of finding your own program, paddle boarding into the lilly pads and tanning on the pond.

That's what the summer in BC is made for.

The Lillooet Nation Rodeo

It was a misty day at the rodeo. Five bucks got you through the wooden gate, and we parked under the shadow of Mt. Currie next to the rv selling "Property of the Lillooet Nation" t-shirts. A couple of concessions stands were underneath wooden lean-tos advertising "Hamburgers, hot dogs, Indian Tacos." Apart from three tents with blow-up dinosaurs, there was a serious lack of the commercial. "Whoever parked their car near the toilets, the fire truck has asked you to move them," said the announcer from the loudspeaker booth.

The rodeo is in the town of Mt. Currie on first nations land, and perhaps this lack of sponsors (and lack of advertising) is a first nations style. Nothing flashy, nothing expensive, just real cowboys and cowgirls roping baby steers. The young boys even rode some cows. As in, cows. With udders. Kind of weird. But a what a relief, because if you go to Whistler Blackcomb's Telus Festival for example, sponsors swarm you, throwing raw-nut protein bars, blue perfume or strawberry milk samples from their branded tents. You have to duck to avoid a concussion. At the rodeo, the only time you'd have to duck is if the horse's hoof sent out a dollop of sand from the ring, which it did from time to time.

"Mt. Currie, are you asleep?" asked the announcer. "This is one of your own, put your hands together for Shequila!" And the crowd clapped and whistled while a fourteen year old flew out into the ring and lassoed her hat instead of the calf that was charging ahead. "Ah well," the announcer chuckled. "Thank you anyway." We watched adults on bucking horses, and a few calf wrestlers who fell from their saddles onto the freaked out babies and tried to pull them to the ground. No luck. "Well ladies and gentlemen, we're now moving to what we call intermission," said the announcer. The mist had moved to tiny rain droplets, and people pulled their blankets and umbrellas closer. "We'll see you back here in one hour and a half. Stay tuned for bingo." The crowd mumbled and began to disperse.

Behind the bleechers, the mountain seethed green and kids ran wild through the tall grass while riders exercised their horses. A woman's voice was calling out numbers on the bingo chart, and a collie was running to and fro nervously, looking for something to herd. "So let's go?" I asked. Michal was eating a hot dog with relish and he shoved the rest in his mouth. "Asi Jdem," he said. "So let's go." And we did.

A false start: The horse that didn't want to get out of the holding tank.

Life Goes On, Surprisingly.

There have been a few surprise developments in moving winter to spring and then spring to summer in Pemberton, BC, Canada. One is, that after a dull and listless gray sky all winter with a low cloud cover always, and the chance of precipitation (think rain, not snow) hovering around usual, we've had nice weather. No, not nice weather, STELLAR weather. Mountains radiate their purple mountain majesty (oops, is that copywritten only for the States?) and their snowy top coat like gorgeous rocky divas showing off their assets. People skip around town in perpetual peppiness, biking and hosting garage sales and supporting children in their lemonade stand enterprises. We went to a garage sale yesterday where Michal picked up a fishing rod, and I bought a colander. Michal was carrying both, and an older fellow drove by on a bike. "Looks like you've bought both a rod and a net," he said.

I started working in landscaping, and nothing was as surprising as learning I was totally and hopelessly out of shape. Not that I'm alone. Carolyn, our boss, complained about the wimpiness. "I'm there putting soil into wheel barrows and managed to make four or five trips while some of these boys did one," she scoffed. "I mean, they're twenty years old." She's like the terminator, the woman version. Half the boys are scared shitless. Like Christian said, a Kiwi dude who lasted all of a week: "I bet Carolyn is on a lot of people's don't fuck with list." The awe in his voice was audible. As for me, with the enthusiasm of someone who half-relishes and half-dreads the boot camp experience (and quite frankly, using a power broom conjurs up images of a North Korean prison camp as read about in the Guardian) I am building muscles in places I didn't know had useful muscles. Lower left hand side of the back. Between thumb and forefinger. Neck.

Lastly, and perhaps not too surprisingly if one thought hard about it beforehand, dog-sitting is an incredible amount of hard work. I had it in my mind that I would have this cute doggy (he is cute, for the record) and we would frolic and play, go on long walks and generally have a good ol' beast and human fabulous time. We'll give Ash credit here, my lovely friend Kerry's lovely Collie dog, because something was up with that Kibble. He wolfed it down, acted a bit nervous, frolicked and then did a big doozy in my car. Like a big sloppy shit which got into the tiny cracks of the plastic door casing and all over the upholstery. Then there was some more nervous eating and some pooing inside our house. I'll spare the rest of the details, but it went on like that. "Wow, your car is really clean," said my friend Carolyn. "Well," I said, "You shoulda seen it last Saturday." We did do some very nice walks however, me and Ash, which suited him just fine cuz he could run into the dandelions if the stomach-going got rough.

Last but not least (You always say "last but not least," said my Swiss ESL students)I am surprisingly giddy with anticipation at returning to the States in some months time. I'll leave you with a quote from a story called "Letters to Caitlin" by Dylan Thomas who had been in San Francisco and then Vancouver, Canada. (1950)

"Vancouver is on the sea, and gigantic mountains loom above it. Behind the mountains lie other mountains, lies an unknown place, 30,000 miles of mountainous wilderness, the lost land of Columbia where cougars live and black bears. But the city of Vancouver is a handsome hell hole. It is, of course, being Canadian, more British than Cheltenham. I spoke last night-or read, I never lecture, how could I?--in front of two huge union jacks... The pubs--they are called beer parlours--serve only beer, are not allowed to have whiskey or wine or any spirits at all--and are open only for a few hours a day. There are, in this monstrous hotel, two bars, one for Men, one for Women. They do not mix.... And thank God to be out of British Columbia & back in the terrible United States of America."

I can't say there are still segregated beer parlours in Vancouver, though BC, which still has some of the strictest liquor laws in Canada, was probably not the ideal place for an alcoholic. But that terrible United States....it's calling my name.

Pow--Not just for knocking people out in cartoons.

There are a lot of words that I have learned since coming here. They fall into two categories: embarrassing and words for the Cambridge English Test. Let's start with the first category. Anyone who has lived in/near a ski resort or has ever chanced to sit in a gondola with four young Australian snowboarders might have come across the word "pow." Short for powder, and usually paired with "sick", (as in "it was the sickest pow I ever saw mate,") this is a well used word in Whistler, because of its heavy coastal precipitation and consequently pow making abilities. The next word, which is promoted in numerous publicity campaigns by the Whistler Blackcomb corporation, possibly to show a chummy, we-know-what-you're-all-about relationship to its mainly young, Australian employees, is the verb "to shred." Shredding is almost synonomous to skiing or boarding, but not quite, cuz when you are skiing or boarding you might be doing it awesomely or unawesomely, the nuance is left open to interpretation. Not so with shredding--when you shred, you are doing some fucking awesome skiing or boarding, dude.

"I work safe cuz there is so much shredding to do."
Whistler Blackcomb poster, in the lodge staff room.

I'm missing umpteen other exceptionally cool words for riding up a large rock on a lift and then getting back down on variously shaped pieces of wood and metal. But I've had my ears and eyes full of teaching English to eight Swiss guys who are studying for a Cambridge English test. Their favorite words in English are either "Fuck" or "you're useless," both of which they say with giggly enthusiasm. The more scholarly words we have been reviewing (and honestly, some of which I have been learning for the first time) will have to wait for another time.

Today though, there were blue skies. Fresh snow had fallen on the previous day's fresh snow. It was sick dude, all that fresh pow. And I don't mean I skied sort of awesome--I shredded it.