October 2005 Archives

"I can tell from the way you're mopping that you're indignant!"

"Quit looking at my chesticles!"

"Ah, the beautiful women of Walsall, whistling through their broken teeth…"

I, myself, am a touch too tired (and possibly hungover) to comment much on the above. It's been a Whirlwind Weekend of Wonders in Walsall and I am currently speeding back to London on Britain's answer to the mighty Japanese Bullet Train - the Virgin Pendolino.

On Thursday, the charming spouse and I went to the premiere of a modern dance show at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton. It was a great show and there was a reception afterwards with free food and drink and lovely dancers all shiny and happy after their performance. It was heaven.

Friday night we saw three pieces by the Birmingham Ballet. It's been a while since I'd seen any proper ballet. The girl dancers were great but the boy dancers were boring. One of them fell repeatedly during his solo, but the choreography for the men in general was a bit dull.

Saturday we went to a college basketball game and then walked around the Walsall Illuminations. The highlight of the basketball game was finding out that at the next game some of the dance students were planning to do a cheerleading routine. The highlight of the Illuminations was the giant ferris wheel. It had these big round baskets that you could set spinning by turning a wheel in the center. I loved this. It was fun and practical. You could either set the basket spinning super fast and try to make your charming spouse ill, or you could turn it more gradually and let each of you get a good look at the splendor of the Illuminations. It was like a mini battle of good and evil tugging at my soul.

The Wheel itself obviously symbolized the cycle of birth and death and rebirth. And the blinking lights could be thought of as representing the constant creation and annihilation of matter and anti-matter on a quantum mechanical level. And, if you squinted your eyes a bit and looked at the floor of the basket when it was spinning, there was a piece of chewing gum that looked just like the Hindu God Vishnu.

After the wheel, we joined a friend at a nearby pub for dinner, where things became even more metaphysical. She's a bit of a regular there and we ended up staying a touch past closing time. The woman with the stripy tights was an off duty waitress in the pub who had had a bit too much to drink. She sang a wide variety of songs while we were eating our dinner and joined us just as we were finishing dessert.

I can't remember her name, but she was extremely entertaining and was intrigued by our foreign (Canadian) accent. She demanded to know our whole life story, which she interwove with tales of her own. I simply don't have the energy to do justice to the woman so please just ponder the quotes above and ruminate on the fact that, at one point during a fierce argument about who would pay the bill, she stuffed my credit card down her underpants and dared me to retrieve it.

(More Pics of Rome)

"A bottle of your finest champagne!" I bellowed at the serving girl.

"Certainly, sir. Would you like anything to eat with that?"

"Absolutely! I want the most expensive meal you have. I don't care what it is. Just bring me the most overpriced item on your menu."

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," she said. "Easyjet only have these grilled chicken baguettes."

"Then that is what I want. Bring a chicken baguette hence that I may feast like a king!"

The orange-garbed wench seemed a bit taken aback for a moment. She soon recovered and did a little curtsey and said, "Right away, my liege! That will be £10.50 all together."

I felt a little self indulgence was in order as I had just caught the flight by the skin of my teeth and was feeling somewhat overwrought.

When I'd arrived at Ciampino airport two days ago I had taken a taxi into Rome and have been cheated by an eccentric madman. He charged 85 Euros for a trip which a trip which I discovered later should have cost 40 Euros at the most.

His name was Tony the Taxi Driver and he drove in that irritating style some people have of alternately stomping his foot full on the accelerator and lifting if off completely. He repeated the process the entire time he was driving. Every couple of seconds he stomped his foot on the pedal and the battered white station wagon gave a little lurch.

Another little foible of Tony's was that he only seemed comfortable if one of his signal lights was on and the cab was drifting between at least two lanes on the motorway.

Now this may sound like old-fogey driving technique, and make no mistake - Tony was old. He wore thick coke-bottle glasses and had thinning white hair, most of it coming from out of his ears and nose. But he did not drive slowly. The speedometer lurched regularly between 130 and 135 km per hour depending on the elevation of his foot. Or at least it did until it quit from overwork and lay exhausted on "0" as we flew past Porsches and Ferraris.

And, just in case we were bored, Tony shouted at us the entire time he drove - an improbable tale about how he had once been hired to drive a Jaguar from Rome to London by a rich man who had broken his leg skiing.

I hate Tony the Taxi Driver.

After that experience, I decided there was no way I was taking a taxi back to the airport. Instead I decided to take the shuttle bus from the main train station. This was logistically a little more complicated. My flight was due to leave at 8:55pm. I'd planned to catch the 6:30 bus, but missed it by five minutes. I wasn't too worried, though. The next bus left at 7 and was due to arrive at Ciampino at 7:40.

At first things looked fine. The bus arrived and by 6:50 it was three quarters full. And then, inexplicably, we just sat there. And sat there... And sat there...

We finally left at 7:20 and immediately became stuck in the mire that is Roman traffic. Even running 20 minutes late we should have, in theory, got to the airport by 8pm. Instead we arrived at 8:25.

Coincidentally, this was the time checkin for my flight was due to close.

Sure enough, I got to the desk at 8:27 and the lone attendant at the desk refused to issue me a boarding pass. An anxious queue of others from my bus who were trying to make the same flight grew behind me as I used all my seductive guile and subtle menace to get her to change her mind.

In the end I resorted to mind control. I wiggled my fingers at her and raised my left eyebrow and gazed at her with my psychic mind control gaze and whispered, "the gate... the gate... phone the gate..."

"Just one second," she said. "I'll call the gate."

After a flurry of telephonic Italian, she put the phone down and said, "yes, you can check in now, but you'll have to run. They've almost finished boarding."

Foolishly, I believed this. I ran through the airport, mind-controlled and bludgeoned my way through the security queue, then ran again.

And found myself at the end of the longest queue in the world.

They had announced boarding but hadn't actually let anyone on the plane yet.

Right, well admittedly I didn't have much of a punchline there, but you can see how a fellow might feel both stressed and relieved in such a situation and be prone to making self-indulgent demands.

The champagne was bubbly and wet -- if a little warm. Fortunately, they gave me a full cup of ice which helped cool it down and made it even wetter. The chicken baguette was fresh enough and not too dry. I would rate it higher than the last chicken baguette I'd ordered from Upper Crust.

The big challenge will be how they fare against other budget airlines. Next time I fly Ryanair I'll have to order their finest meal as well. It will be a culinary battle of the air.

(More Pics of the Tour de Tutu)
(How to Donate)

Last weekend I completed the Tour de Tutu: 350km from White City to Dalston via Oxford and Cambridge.

I was getting a bit behind on the mileage for the Tour de Yanda and I spotted that the annual Oxford to Cambridge charity ride was approaching so it seemed a sensible way to force myself to clock up some extra km.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the geography of middle England, the distance from Oxford to Cambridge is roughly the length of 665,000 hedgehogs laid end to end.

But then, how to get to the start? And how to get home to the finish? Well, the sensible solution seemed to be to cycle so that's what I did.

On Friday I left work and cycled 43km to Maidenhead where I'd booked into what sounded like a lovely B&B, the Sheephouse Manor B&B. The owners weren't home when I arrived. I was greeted by the babysitter, a teenage boy. He showed me to my room which was supposed to have an ensuite.

"Thanks," I said, "But where's the bathroom?"

"I dunno," he replied. "I guess there isn't one?"

"Well, is there a shower or something I could use?"

He looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well, I mean, the rest of the house is private..."

"Don't you think it's a bit odd that there isn't a bathroom?" I asked. "Is it all right if I have a look around?"

He just shrugged, then turned around and left.

After a fruitless search during which I encountered several locked doors and several others all marked "Private" I left my special separate B&B entrance, walked around to the front of the house and knocked on the door (which was also marked "Private"). There was no bell.

The boy wonder answered the door. "Hi."

"Hi there," I said. "Look, I can't find a bathroom up there."

"Well, I guess there isn't one," he said.

"I suppose it's conceivable that they wouldn't provide me with a shower -- but a toilet? Surely they don't want me to piss all over the garden gnomes?"

"Oh yeah. I guess you're right. I'll give them a call."

And so it turned out there was a bathroom with all the usual amenities. It was behind one of the doors marked "Private". From that point on the evening was far more pleasant.

The next morning I cycled 67km to Oxford via Marlow and Watlington. The distance should really be about 15km less than this but I took a couple of wrong turns along the way. Still, it was a gorgeous route and a gorgeous day with a very big, not so gorgeous, hill in the middle.

Vicki met me in Oxford and we stayed at the very swish Hawkwell House Hotel. Our room was in the Elm House and had a bathroom which was much easier to find than the one at Sheephouse Manor, floor to ceiling windows, beautiful furnishings, and paperthin walls.

Sunday was the day of the official Oxford to Cambridge ride. The first half hour or so it poured rain but the rest of the day was sunny, yet fairly cool with no wind -- perfect conditions really. Despite riding on my own, I teamed up a couple of times with some other faster riders in mini-peletons and managed to finish the 85 mile course (133km by my odometer) in 5 hours, 13 minutes, 49 seconds. I got to Cambridge much earlier than I expected -- at 1:30. I had arranged to stay at my friend Matthew’s Mother’s house and had told them I would be arriving around 6pm. I lay on the grass a bit, ate some fruit, had a massage, and then popped around to Matt’s Mom’s.

Serendipitously, I arrived just as they were eating lunch. Matthew’s sister had invited six of her friends over and they plied me with food and wine and apple crumble and coffee. I LOVE being plied with food by strangers! I felt like a king. I think showing up in the tutu helped.

After lunch, Matthew’s mother, Rosie, took me to visit Matthew. He had crashed his motorcycle into an oncoming van while in France and was now in hospital with a broken femur and wrist. Despite (or because of) his near-death experience, he seemed extremely chipper. I am reluctant to recommend smashing one’s mototorcycle into another vehicle as a way to brighten one’s outlook on life, but it seems to be working for Matthew.

The next day I cycled 98km home to Dalston. Sweet Mother of Evil Thor and his minions! There was an evil headwind all the way down! About 10km into the ride I used up my remaining stores of glycogen and it was a horrific struggle to make it home. It took me six hours of cycling time.

All in all, it was a good experience and so far I’ve raised about £100 each for the British Heart Foundation and Children in Need. The Tour de Yanda has raised a little over £500 so far for the British Red Cross. I also had some folks make local donations in Canada. Godo, Shantu, and Asmus donated $65 CAD to the Livia Stoyke Foundation and Pidge and Eric donated some random amount of money (I can’t remember how much) to the Canadian Red Cross.

The Tour de Yanda continues, though. It is still no means certain that I will finish it by my deadline of November 3rd. Any encouragement you can spare will help enormously. For “encouragement” read “money”.

(How to Donate)