Shitty XCan Post II
It's 11:10 am in Edmonton, which means it's been perfectly light out for about six hours. After our short, vertical hike to the top of Whistler's Peak yesterday, we needed all the sleep we could get. I lied awake thinking about how I love cities, I just fucking love cities, and I wanted to get up at dawn with the camera and photograph Edmonton waking up, but I slept until 10:30 or so (after waking up at 9 eastern, which I'm still doing).
The Rough Guide to Canada says to ignore Edmonton. But after an article I read in the shitty Globe and Mail about a year and half ago, I decided that I had to see it. A boom town on the northern prairie, fueled by oil, coal, and wheat wealth, home to the largest mall in the world and a huge university. Passing through on a Sunday night, it looked brand new and excellent. These young cities have the advantage of having been designed after we learned from lots of urban mistakes. Poor Queens.
But I don't want to skip ahead. It took a lot to get here in our rented Momivan. There are probably about 10,000 insects splattered in splotches of gray, yellow, and pink across the once immaculate white hood of the van. It's amazing how matter reinvents itself into millions of little annoyances in the summertime, specks that dissolve back into dust around October or so.
On Saturday, we took a break from smashing insects to stop in Kamloops, BC. The Rough Guide trashed it as "determinedly functional," so we expected to find an industrial railroad city and spend all the daylight shooting there, but we found an incerdibly vibrant, young river city. In the riverside park, almost a dozen sprinklers soaked dozens of kids, while a few hundred others bathed in the river or jet skied or water skied (pic below). On the shore, a fat kid biked by and his fatter mom followed on an electric scooter, proudly exerting no energy whatsoever.
I called to check in with my mom. She said, "I don't understand how you can be going to the Colorado Rockies if you're in Canada?"
We stayed in a little independent inn in Blue River (pic below), a town not serviced by cable or fast internet. Sunday we woke up whenever, had a mountainous breakfast of egg/sausage/green onion scramble, and drove to Jasper.
I tried two years ago in the Badlands of SD to conjure up what you [cityfolk] feel in the presence of magnanimous natural majesty. I haven't eaten anything in 12 hours and I don't have the energy. We took the tram up Whistler's Peak, met some "lodgies"* named Mary Ann and hiked to the top with 'em. At the top, where ice and snow slowly melted, someone had trudged through the last patch of snow in the outline of a giant snow cock-and-balls.
On the mountain, we encountered yet another World's Fattest People scenario. An obese mother, child, and son had stopped halfway up the exhausting hike. The son sobbed. The mother told him that he wanted to get healthy, he had told her so, and this was how. "Now you can live a short life, or a long healthy life," she said. "SHORT LIFE!" he sobbed. It was pretty funny. I think he made it to the top.
We gave the Mary Anns a ride into town, then got out of the mountains and into the Albertan oil flats, where Halliburton trucks lined the hotel parking lots, resting before another day of exploration and necessary earth-rape. Every restaurant and hotel in Hinton displayed a "CREWS WELCOME" sign, as did the Smitty's we stopped in. This was a Canadian Denny's-level chain that was run down, had no bacon bits, 8oz steak, steak sauce or ice cream in stock. One look at the people inside and you could tell you were in meth country. What looked like a 30-year-old, 10-year-old girl was clearing tables and shooting angry glances at everyone.
We made it into Edmonton around midnight, and it was bangin'. We figured the Rough Guide was wrong again--how could a prairie ghost town be so happenin' on a Sunday?--as it said we shouldn't drive this far north. We settled into our bizarre hotel, which turned out to be the second and third floor of a strip mall, paid $5 for the internet password, and slept until 10:30 or so.
Now, on to the world's biggest mall.
________________________________________
*kids who work for the summer in the rich resorts
The Rough Guide to Canada says to ignore Edmonton. But after an article I read in the shitty Globe and Mail about a year and half ago, I decided that I had to see it. A boom town on the northern prairie, fueled by oil, coal, and wheat wealth, home to the largest mall in the world and a huge university. Passing through on a Sunday night, it looked brand new and excellent. These young cities have the advantage of having been designed after we learned from lots of urban mistakes. Poor Queens.
But I don't want to skip ahead. It took a lot to get here in our rented Momivan. There are probably about 10,000 insects splattered in splotches of gray, yellow, and pink across the once immaculate white hood of the van. It's amazing how matter reinvents itself into millions of little annoyances in the summertime, specks that dissolve back into dust around October or so.
On Saturday, we took a break from smashing insects to stop in Kamloops, BC. The Rough Guide trashed it as "determinedly functional," so we expected to find an industrial railroad city and spend all the daylight shooting there, but we found an incerdibly vibrant, young river city. In the riverside park, almost a dozen sprinklers soaked dozens of kids, while a few hundred others bathed in the river or jet skied or water skied (pic below). On the shore, a fat kid biked by and his fatter mom followed on an electric scooter, proudly exerting no energy whatsoever.
I called to check in with my mom. She said, "I don't understand how you can be going to the Colorado Rockies if you're in Canada?"
We stayed in a little independent inn in Blue River (pic below), a town not serviced by cable or fast internet. Sunday we woke up whenever, had a mountainous breakfast of egg/sausage/green onion scramble, and drove to Jasper.
I tried two years ago in the Badlands of SD to conjure up what you [cityfolk] feel in the presence of magnanimous natural majesty. I haven't eaten anything in 12 hours and I don't have the energy. We took the tram up Whistler's Peak, met some "lodgies"* named Mary Ann and hiked to the top with 'em. At the top, where ice and snow slowly melted, someone had trudged through the last patch of snow in the outline of a giant snow cock-and-balls.
On the mountain, we encountered yet another World's Fattest People scenario. An obese mother, child, and son had stopped halfway up the exhausting hike. The son sobbed. The mother told him that he wanted to get healthy, he had told her so, and this was how. "Now you can live a short life, or a long healthy life," she said. "SHORT LIFE!" he sobbed. It was pretty funny. I think he made it to the top.
We gave the Mary Anns a ride into town, then got out of the mountains and into the Albertan oil flats, where Halliburton trucks lined the hotel parking lots, resting before another day of exploration and necessary earth-rape. Every restaurant and hotel in Hinton displayed a "CREWS WELCOME" sign, as did the Smitty's we stopped in. This was a Canadian Denny's-level chain that was run down, had no bacon bits, 8oz steak, steak sauce or ice cream in stock. One look at the people inside and you could tell you were in meth country. What looked like a 30-year-old, 10-year-old girl was clearing tables and shooting angry glances at everyone.
We made it into Edmonton around midnight, and it was bangin'. We figured the Rough Guide was wrong again--how could a prairie ghost town be so happenin' on a Sunday?--as it said we shouldn't drive this far north. We settled into our bizarre hotel, which turned out to be the second and third floor of a strip mall, paid $5 for the internet password, and slept until 10:30 or so.
Now, on to the world's biggest mall.
________________________________________
*kids who work for the summer in the rich resorts
posted by Rob at 1:45 PM
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