The Greyhound Bus - Chapter 1

This adventure is known as the time we wanted to save money and take a 16-hour bus ride from Vancouver to Calgary. Also known as the time we lost all ability to think rationally as human beings and thought this was a good idea. (Trust me, it isn’t. Fork out the extra couple of hundred dollars it takes to buy the plane ticket and thank me later.)

Let me tell you right now, there is nothing romantic or poetic about catching a midnight bus out of town. Whoever it is writing songs with this notion in mind has clearly never travelled this particular route. I think the realisation it was to be a hellish journey occurred inside the terminal as myself and my good friend Gilfred sat weary after a spectacular four days in Vancouver with Loqui. The screening process to get on such a shitty bus was incomparable to anything I’ve ever witnessed. So many rules and regulations just to travel on what I believe was the prototype of buses.

Firstly, my main bag was too heavy, so I had to take some things out (very convenient in the middle of a bus terminal) so it met the criteria. After getting it down to an acceptable weight, I then immediately packed everything back to where it was before, my bag once again overweight. But, it already had it’s tag on so it made it on to the bus without any issues. Suck on that, Greyhound! After the strenuous checking-in process, we sat waiting for our steed to arrive. It was around this time we observed some of the other people who would also be making the journey to Calgary.

You know when you’re in a line of some sort, either waiting for public transport or in an airport terminal, and you keep seeing the same person or having to listen to their inane dribble about how many split ends they have, or you’re in the vicinity of someone who is quite clearly mentally deranged? And you think to yourself, “I really hope I'm not sitting anywhere near that person when I get on the bus/plane/train.” And you know then of course, because you've thought that thought, you will definitely end up sitting next to or close to that person? This is what I refer to as the Cosmic Joke.

So picture, if you will, the Vancouver version of the Shegogs*, a brother and sister combo probably in their mid to late 50s. The man was wearing high pants, a woollen jumper, one of those hats with a brim that is straight across, no curve at all, and I'm fairly sure he also had on a bum-bag or money belt of some sort, probably both. He had also made a trip to McDonald's  and in between his sister yelling at him in her long, button-down chambray dress, he had started to eat his chocolate sundae. This bearded bastard was hoeing into that sundae like there was no tomorrow, and just by watching him I was hoping there wouldn't be a tomorrow and that I would wake in heaven surrounded by sunshine, puppies and angels serenading me while I eat strawberries hand-picked from the fields by strong, strapping gentlemen.

Instead, I got to look on in horror, as he ate his sundae without a spoon, and ended up with half of it dripping from his chin, soaking into his beard as if he had been part of a food fight. Never has there been a better advertisement for celibacy.

So naturally, we get on the bus, and these two, smelling like piss and bickering at the top of their lungs are seated quite near us. Hooray! The bus driver we had for the first leg of the tour was anything but pleasant, but in his defence he did ask these clowns to quiet down as other passengers were trying to sleep. Because, you know, we caught the bus IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

So we are on the bus, I have my pillow, Gilfred has my pillow pet, for comfort. We endure a fitful night of rest and stop in Kelowna for breakfast and a change of drivers, and hopefully a change in luck as the Canadian Shegogs have reached their destination. You would think the only way was up.

TO BE CONTINUED…

*Those playing along at home will only understand this reference if they are from Victor Harbor. If you don’t understand it, consider yourselves lucky.

Junk About A Trunk

Ever since I have known her, and it hasn't been very long though it feels like a lifetime (in a good way), Giggles has had a trunk issue. Not a trunk issue of the Black Eyed Peas variety, wherein if the problem was too much junk inside her trunk, all she’d have to do would be get you drunk, love drunk off her hump and it would be fixed. No, this was more of an issue where the trunk of her car would close, but not the entire way so it would appear to be open. The latch was rusting away and it meant everyone who had ever ridden in her car would ask if it was closed properly, forcing Giggles to explain the entire situation nearly every time she drove her car.

Recently, things came to a head, when we set out on an adventure to get an oil change for her beloved Alero. We dropped the car off in Canmore and while we waited, went to find food. We stopped in at a bakery where we were fortunate enough to receive a microwaved sausage roll and spinach triangle. There’s just something so delectable about soggy pastry, isn't there? And when we went to pick the car up, the elderly gentlemen at the counter pointed out what Gigs and I already knew – her trunk doesn't shut properly.

The conversation went a little something like this:

Oil man: “Your trunk isn't closing properly on your car, you know.”

Gigs: “I know, it has been like that for a while now.”

Oil man: “You wanna get that fixed, because the thing is, when you’re driving on the highway the gas that comes out of your exhaust swirls around and with your trunk open like that it will get into your car.”

Gigs: “Oh, right.”

Oil man: “So one of two things will happen, you’ll get a headache, or you won’t know what’s happening.

“Because you’ll be dead.

“You don’t want to commit suicide, do you?”

And the Oscar for overreacting in a mechanic shop drama goes to…

This conversation got Giggles thinking. It was time to try and repair the trunk and make it close properly once and for all. As she dropped me home after our day out, we retrieved some items from the trunk and then attempted to close it. But it was then the mechanism that latches the trunk closed decided to rust out and fall off, leaving Gigs with 20 kilometres to drive with an open trunk.

“Wait, I've got my emergency string!” Giggles cried. So, in the dark and bitter cold, she lay on her stomach and reached through from the back seat with a flash-light in her mouth, and tied that bastard trunk down. But emergency string can only hold for so long.

PJ pimping. 

Enter PJ, and his faux reality program ‘PJ Pimp My Trunk’. On a cold Thanksgiving weekend afternoon, the trunk was finally to be fixed. Sparks were flying, from the handheld circular saw, as PJ worked his magic. Giggles was stressed out and wondering if this was going to work out. Would the trunk be fixed or would there be something in the way to stop this goal being reached? A hole was drilled and a bolt put in place – but would the trunk finally close? Clunk. Obviously not. Returning to the drawing board, another hole was drilled and another bolt put in place. Success! The trunk closed, and even better than before, you could barely tell there was anything wrong with it. It was like a brand new car, until we tried to put something in the trunk and close it again. Much like a carefree vagabond, the newly bolted latch hook would not stay in place.

The story is not complete without a final stroke of genius. Gigs remembered the cable ties she had been hoarding in her room. Perhaps it’s to do with her crafting addiction, but you have to admit the woman is very resourceful. She used the cable ties to secure the newly bolted hook down, and just like that, the trunk would open and close, open and close as if it had just rolled off the showroom floor. 

Now if only the interior light would stop falling out of the roof and the rear-view mirror wouldn't fall from the windscreen... 

Sample Dialogue

Me, jokingly, to a Hooters waitress in Calgary: “Do you take Australian money?” (I had a solitary $2 coin left in my purse coming to Canada.)

Hooters waitress: “This brown guy tried to give me rupees last week.”

Hooters - Delightfully tacky and uneducated. 

That Time It Took Us Four Hours To Get Home From Calgary

We had gone to Calgary to have dinner at a mall. (Please refrain from questioning me about my life choices at this point. As this story unfolds it will become more than evident that my life on this day followed a path that can only be described as ‘seedy’.)

After dinner with a most eclectic group of people, we set off on our journey home (‘we’ being me, Granger and Crayola). A journey that should have taken about an hour ended up taking more than four hours. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Getting out of the city shouldn’t have been hard, but with two Australians and Cray, an Ontarian, in the car, there was always the potential we would get lost. I’d like to say we were intrepid explorers discovering the final frontier, but sadly, we were more like a teenage boy during his first sexual encounter. Trying really hard but not having a clue what we were doing. There’s no point trying to jazz it up by saying we were exploring the greater Calgary region to get the most out of our experience abroad. We just got really fucking lost.

After we had been driving for about an hour, we found ourselves in what could have been a scene from Desperate Housewives, if Desperate Housewives consisted of many Indian families cavorting on the side walks of suburbia enjoying a balmy summers eve. As we wound our way through the maze of sub-divisions trying to find an exit, it became clear we were out of our depth. What made the experience all the more frustrating was the fact we could see the Trans Canada Highway, our ticket to freedom and the path home, off in the distance. But how to get there? If only it were that simple.

With light, and spirits, fading fast, things weren't helped by me laughing in the back seat about how completely and utterly lost we were, despite being able to see where we needed to go. Funny, right? Wrong, according to our driver Granger who only wanted to get home and wasn't having a bar of it.

As darkness fell, we pulled into a service station to ask for directions. The freshly emigrated young man behind the counter was no help. Another lady in line was more than happy to help our plight, however, and soon we had found the Trans Canada and taken a right turn on the voyage back to Kananaskis.

It was shortly after getting onto the highway that I asked if we had turned in the right direction. I believe my exact words were, “Are you sure we are going the right way?”

This was the way the lady had said to turn, so still trusting a complete stranger we continued along the highway. Now, this went on for close to an hour, until we all realized we didn't recognise any of the signs that would usually be there on the way home. “Well, why didn’t you just look for directions on your smart phones?” I hear you asking. Well Cray, in a state of what can only be described as madness, had left her phone at home in Ontario as she thought no technology was allowed in Alberta. Granger hadn’t paid her bill and had been cut off and I was only using my phone with WiFi, which we weren’t anywhere near whilst driving around in circles.

We saw on some signage we were approaching a town named Strathmore, and I suggested pulling over somewhere to access some free WiFi to find a map and, once and for all, the way home. This proved to be a most fortunate decision, because had we not stopped in Strathmore, we wouldn’t have seen the thunder-thighed, cellulite-ridden hooker in her short denim cut-offs providing her services to a tired and lonely trucker on the side of the highway.

With that mental image in your heads (you’re welcome), you’ll be happy to know we then discovered we were now about two hours from home. We had turned right (which turned out to be wrong) instead of left onto the Trans Canada and had been driving away from our destination for hours. Granger was still not seeing the funny side of things, but then our old mate Gotye popped up on the iPod which managed to lighten the mood somewhat. Mainly because we changed the words to his understated and never-played-on-the-radio-ever-before hit Somebody That I Used To Know to suit our evening. The reprised version (not featuring Kimbra, although the three of us did quite a good job) featured witty lyrics such as “Calgary, Calgary, Calgary, now you’re just a city where I’ll never go”. Sing it with feeling and it will be as though you were in the car with us.

The best thing about this night, though, is now we can all say, “Remember that time we went to Calgary and it took us four hours to get home? Wasn’t that a laugh?”

Well, it was for me at least.

Getting Into The Spirit

My journey to Canada began with the safety demonstration on board a Qantas flight to Sydney. The flying kangaroo, in all its ingenuity, has capitalized on the fact this is an Olympic year by roping in some of our favourite Aussie Olympians to be in their safety video. Perhaps the most inspirational part of the video was pole vaulting hero Steve Hooker demonstrating the use of the plane seatbelt. It went a little something like this: “In the lead up to the Olympics I always like to get excited by getting into the team spirit. You can get into the team spirit too, by always having your seatbelt fastened when you are sitting down.”

That’s all it takes to get into the team spirit? Shit, Steve, where can I sign up?! The video did get me thinking, though, about how pole vaulting is perhaps one of the sports with a higher level of risk attached to it, and although Hooker is probably classed as a national treasure, it might be better to have a lawn bowler in an air safety video. And nothing says ‘team spirit’ more than an individual sport like pole vaulting. You know what I’d like to see next Olympics? Synchronized pole vaulting. That would require not only team spirit, but it would also put a firecracker underneath those synchronized swimmers. They’ve been resting on their laurels for far too long. I mean, can’t they do it without the nose clips by now? Hasn’t technology progressed far enough that we should somehow be able to swim without shoving a piece of wire covered in rubber fair up our nostrils?

From Sydney, the delightful staff of United Airlines (no hot towels) ensured our arrival into LA was delayed by 2.5 hours, meaning I was left with one hour to get off the plane, go through immigration, customs, baggage re-check, transfer terminals and go through security again to board my connecting flight to Calgary. I had managed to make it this far into my journey without having to talk to anyone I didn’t want to, except a lovely Indian gentleman who part-way through the Sydney-LA flight decided he wanted to relieve me of the three seats I had to myself, and promptly sat down and fell asleep at the end of my row. It made what was already such a pleasant journey all the more cramped and enjoyable.

The adventure across the barren LAX landscape had set my heart racing, but I can assure you it was not in a good way. The good news is I made it to my connecting flight with minutes to spare, and happily, I was able to relive my last visit to Terminal 2 at LAX where previously I had the privilege of waiting six hours to board a delayed flight to Hawaii. These warm and fuzzy memories were short lived, however, and I was soon on my way to The Big C, also known as Calgary.