The Sleeper (part 3)

Now up in Campbell River with Kevin. Going to go tree obstacle coursing today.

July 23 - 10 hours - 1 nap
July 24 - 10.5 hours - 0 naps

The Sleeper (pt 2)

Heather's sleeping count continues. In Victoria now, going kayaking tomorrow morning. Seeing C-dog soon.

July 21 - 10 hours (1 nap)
July 22 - 9 hours (2 naps)

The Sleeper

Here, in a recurring series, I'm going to catalog Heather's sleeping schedule while on vacation. The total includes the previous night's sleep and the total naps of the days.

July 18 - 10 hours - 2 naps
July 19 - 10.5 hours - 3 naps
July 20 - 10 hours - 0 naps

She claims she needs 11 hours a day, so her average is already starting out low.

We're on vacation right now. We enjoyed Rec Beach in Vancouver today and will spend the night on the UBC campus before departing on the ferry tomorrow morning.

Top Ten Vacation Highlights

10. Heather's Grandma didn't beat me at golf this time. The fact that we didn't play together on this trip is a moot point.
9. At Brewsters in Calgary, I spilled an entire glass of stout all over myself after ordering a 5 glass sampler platter. Thanks a lot for the suggestion, JON!
8. +35 degree weather in BC everyday.
7. My Grandpa got the family a hot tub in Clear Lake.
6. Curt and Jon stayed civil on the golf course, though they did get marshaled for driving their cart up to the green on a par three. The marshal asked if they were handicapped. HA! If he only knew. Time for an orange juice and coffee.
5. Free golf. Heather's grandparents own a course in BC and my Grandpa owns a mini golf course in Clear Lake. Hell yup!
4. We didn't total our car in Edmonton this time.
3. The cherries we picked from Heather's aunt's tree in BC were later discovered to have very noticeable worms inside, every single one of them. Thanks for picking through our food, Heather! WIDKWHM.
2. Heather and I and my two cousins decided to go Blair Witch on my sister and three other girl cousins who were tenting outside in Clear Lake. We snuck up in the dark just as they were about to get out of the tent for pee time. Luckily, we were all behind slender tree and all they could see was random body parts and they FREAKED! My one cousin said she was calling the cops and then called her Mom and told her to get my uncle to come out with a bat. Then the best part... my aunt had just got back from the UAE and had brought back this singing Arab alarm clock that was loud like hell and sounded like imminent jihad. I had it with me and turned it on and I'm pretty sure scarred those girls for life. Happy camping.

And finally...

1. Whilst tubing on Clear Lake at near supersonic speeds with Heather, just as I was being tossed from the tube, her bathing suit bottoms were pulled to here ankles. To my surprise, looking back at the tube, there was Heather's bare ass staring me in the face. Classic.

Instaces of Italy

My Italy pictures are now available for display on my flickr page. Click the link below:

Soccer atmosphere

Sorry for the shitty quality.



Pay attention to how great a time Heather is having in this video.



This is Adriano's goal set up from a free kick. Some subtle things to notice: 1. At the beginning, the fans in the home end of the stadium are all bouncing up and down, causing the stadium to shake. 2. When the goal is scored, someone takes a water bottle and squeezes it while shaking it violently, soaking some of the spectators below us. 3. Everybody in the stadium is smoking, giving off the noticeable haze and the reason for Heather's apparent depression in the last video. 4. Some of the fans shake their fists at the opposing fans as a kind of "fuck you" after the goal. It appears the dude in front of us actually does give them the finger.

Italia

I thought this might benefit / entertain everyone, so here we go with:

The Top Ten Things That May Surprise You About Italy

1. The food SUCKED! Friends of ours recently came back from Italy saying food was the best part of their trip. First of all, their pizza sucks hard goat teat. It is like a tortilla crust with some regular sauce and cheese and 2 pieces of pepperoni on it. Apparently they don't like toppings. Also, I ordered a steak and it was rarer than rare, in fact, they didn't even ask me how I wanted it cooked, I guess they only like their red meat red. It was ~40 dollars Canadian, huge, and tasteless. I ate about a 1/4 of it. Biggest waste of meat ever (insert witty comment here). When my parents went to the grocery store, they couldn't find orange juice, but pear juice, for sure! For breakfast in Rome, we were served toast, prepackaged dry toast. Didn't see a toaster the entire time we were there. Finally, they eat very differently than we do here. The menu has the food laid out like such: first course is pasta, second is a meat dish, and then there is sides like veggies and salad seemed to be served last. And at different restaurants, the serving sizes were so inconsistent you might end up super stuffed or barely full (and we only ever had 2 of the four courses). I would be hard pressed to find anything I would say was better than anything we eat here.

2. Italian soccer is awesome, even if you don't like soccer. I'm sure it can be interpolated to European soccer as a whole, but I've seen Italian soccer on TV and their fans are nuts, nuttier than I've ever seen anywhere else (other than the racist Spanish fans). The game we went to at the San Siro in Milan to watch Fiorentina and Inter had one of the Inter players hit in the head with a projectile coke bottle as he was about to take a corner kick. Although this was the most violence we saw, there was plenty of crowd activity to keep everybody entertained. In Turin, for del Pierro's 500th game, the opposing fans set off loud firecrackers and smoke bombs in the crowd and climbed on top of the hockey-like plexi-glass dividers that attempted to keep them separated from the rest of the home fans. In Rome, the Siena fans charged at the Lazio supporters as they exchanged projectiles launched at each other after Siena scored a late equalizer, despite the fact that security officials divided the two groups. In all cases, the fans at these games were constantly active either waving giant flags or singing or bouncing up and down (in Milan, this bouncing shook the 82,000 seat stadium). The pictures tell tales of the adventures at the games.

3. Bum Washers! In 3 of the 4 hotels we stayed in, we got a bidet tub. It looks like a sink / toilet mixture. You run some water into the basin and then sit your ass down in it and wash your asshole. Needless to say, I skipped this portion of the acculturation process.

4. Italians are slim. It was rare to see an exceptionally overweight Italian and even slightly chubby Italians were few and far between. Either this is because they do so much walking, which seemed to be the norm in places we stayed, or because their food sucks so much that they wouldn't want to eat much. I guess it wouldn't hurt that fast food was basically non existent. There was the odd McDonald's and a Burger King or two in Milan.

5. Traffic was insane. They drive like crazed maniacs. Anytime you cross the road as a pedestrian, you risk your life. They often don't drive in lanes and there are tons of scooters that will weave around anything to get to the front of lines of stopped cars. In fact, you can stand at a cross walk and no car will stop for you unless you inch your way onto the street.

6. They drive on the right hand side of the road. They drive the same way we do, I guess it is just in the UK and Australia that they are backwards.

7. There doesn't appear to be such thing as a double / queen / king sized bed. All the places we stayed in had two single beds pushed together to make a double. This often resulted in one of us sleeping in the "crack." Heather said she liked it, so apparently she is addicted to crack. Everything makes sense now.

8. Late night TV. It's all topless girls advertising for sex lines. Nearly every channel changes to this, maybe even the church channel. I might have been tempted to call if I could ever figure out their screwed up phone system.

9. Liquor. You could buy wine for 2 Euro at the supermarket (and we did!). I only tried beer once, they didn't seem to drink a whole lot of it, and it was not very good. Obviously underaged drinking is not as taboo as it is here, kids that were at the Universiade curling games on a school trip were buying and drinking beer with classmates.

10. Watch out for the tax collectors. Armed guards at all the soccer games and at the Universiade games and at any other big event had "Guardia di Finanza" written on their backs. These dudes look seriously ready to bust some ass. However, translating their Italian names from my dictionary revealed that they were "tax officers". Somehow, this doesn't sound right.