Cars and holidays

It's the holidays at last! Hoorah! Now that Victoria is working as a classroom assistant in a school in the South of Calgary we have the same holidays, so we are both free this week, and what a packed week we have planned! Currently Vic is round at Donna and Bernie's house having her hair dyed so she'll look ultra-glamorous for the rest of our week's activities, as skiing and cow slaughtering should only be done when one looks one's best. More on both of those in a moment...

First, I must confess that two weeks ago on Thursday night I was unfaithful. I went out on a date with another woman and I didn't even have the common decency to feel guilty! Marco, another math teacher at St Francis had got hold of two tickets to the Calgary Car show but he couldn't go; did I want them? Did I ever! I came home all excited and told Vic what I had planned for date night that week, could we go? Now, Victoria is tolerant and kind and puts up with my passing obsession with cars with good grace, but she absolutely did not want to spend a whole evening looking at metal. After all, if they all get you from A to B, what is all the fuss about? She sent me on my way with all good blessings and planned a welcome early night and some catching up on housework for herself. I now needed a temporary partner in crime, so I asked Trish from school, a fellow math-bod if she fancied coming with me and she said yes, tempted more by the opportunity to meet swathes of men than the cars, I think, albeit petrolheads the lot. We also planned to have sushi for dinner as Victoria's not really a fan so I don't have it very often. Turns out Trish isn't really that big a fan of the delights of raw fish and wasabi either, but she does like yam tempura (deep fried battered sweet potato).
So, Thursday rolled around and we headed off straight from work to get Sushi and tempura, killing a bit of time en-route looking in Lululemon, a yoga oriented athletic wear company here in Canada. They make these black pants (or trousers, if you prefer) that are simply magic. I looked at them in detail in that shop and I couldn't fathom any special tricks or trapdoors so I don't know how they do it, but these wonderful pants do special things to any buttocks nestled within them. Most bottoms look simply fabulous in them, poor ones look good and the odd spectacular backside looks so jaw droppingly awesome as to leave grown men crying in the street in droves behind any well bummed woman who moves herself around the world in these wonder-pants. I am endeavoring to persuade my slender and beautiful wife to acquire a pair soon. They also do menswear but it doesn't seem to have the same anatomy enhancing nature.
Anyway, I left Lululemon none the wiser and chowed down on salmon, yellow-tail, scallops, tuna and soft clam in their wonderful raw states, washed down with a glass of cold tea (odd, and not recommended) as it was still lent and I was off the beer, and then we hit the car show. Allow me to summarise this geek-fest in as few words as possible while still imparting a few thoughts to those fellow car nuts out there.

Trish thought the Bentleys looked good, so did the Aston Vantage and the MX-5. Possible because they were all shown in what can best be described as 'baby-blue.'

The Audi R8 looks mean. I had lustful thoughts. If ever I have $160,000 to spend on a car it will be fight to the death between Audi and their Stuttgart compatriots' Porsche 911.

The new VW Passat Coupe was possibly the best looking car there, and coming with a V6 engine and 4WD should satisfy the drivers market it's pitched at. Prepare to be surprised by how much you want one.

I still want that MX-5. We sat in a new on and everything about it felt right. At 14,000 pounds its a realistic dream too.

American truck are too big. They are. Anything that makes a Hummer look like a reasonably sized car has no place as a personal vehicle. I swear the Ford F350 Trish and I sat in had an intercom so the driver could talk to the passenger it was so wide. Of course this may have been just to compensate to the noise coming from a) the giant six litre engine and b) the hordes of ordinary people laughing at the man with the tiny willy in the giant comedy car!

Overall American cars did not compare well with Asian or European cars. I can see why GM and Ford are losing money. Their cars were uninspiring and poorly built. The designs didn't catch the eye ,with the notable exception of the Dodge Challenger which nearly caused me to swallow my tongue. That car is a visual kick in the crotch. They just didn't have those little finishing touches and finesses: I sat in a top of the line Buick saloon with some forgettable name, the Buick Anachronism perhaps, and found that the mock wood finish looked like it had been stripped from a 70s music centre, the brown carpet was a colour Datsun abandoned years ago and the steering wheel, which was of a size more suited to a bus, or possibly a container ship adjusted for rake but not reach and left it entirely impossible to find a comfortable driving position. That this car was priced along VW, AUDIs, Hondas and such was a joke. An American would have to be very nearsighted in his patriotism to continue to 'buy-American' when the products are so substandard. Even Albertans who insist on driving their giant trucks are beginning to be drawn to Toyota and Nissan for their oversized vehicle needs, whose giant offering are just as silly as GM, Dodge and Ford but far less likely to rust, break or fail to start and give slightly better mileage to boot.

Rant over, and those of you skimming over the car bits can come back now, I'm done.

We're going back to Golden today, a 3 hour drive West of here and home to Kicking Horse resort. We went there last weekend with Gavin and Nickie and were blessed with fresh snow. We got up on Saturday morning to discover that they had had nearly a foot of fresh powder overnight at Revelstoke down the road so we headed off there to make the most of it. I skied so hard and pulled so many jumps I pulled some muscle in my back and so on Sunday I had to sit out and watch the others ski. Still, I did get to do it at the Eagles Eye restaurant 8000 feet in the air right at the top of Kicking Horse mountain, one of the most truly beautiful places I have ever seen. Sat in the cedar framed lodge enjoying a medicinal high-altitude beer (it WAS a Sunday; it's allowed) looking at the majestic peaks of the Rocky mountains the view compared favorably with sights like sunset from a hammock under palm trees on a beach ion the Sesse Isles in Lake Victoria, afternoon drinks from a bar in the middle of a pool overlooked by the Pyramids at Giza or a long slow drive though the myriad colours of Autumn in New York State. If you have to spend a day not skiing, I can't think of anywhere finer. Still, it was a little frustrating so I am very glad that my back is ticketty-boo now and Victoria is going to show me the wonders of Kicking Horse resort tomorrow. 13cm of snow yesterday and more forecast for today and tomorrow! We're going to stop along the way at Canmore for a bit more cross country skiing to replace todays jog, Calgary's weather having switched from 13 degrees yesterday to snow today. Getting fit again after a fat winter is a long slow process.