Vancouver...Terry Foxes and Ronnie Raccoons

(This post was meant to go up on the 28^th of December, but after arriving to Whistler to meet up with the boys and celebrate New Years Eve, I was basically either drinking, or snowboarding, or both. I then thought I’d be able to catch up on some posts with some downtime in Shanghai but among the websites banned in China (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter) is innocent little blogspot. So these accounts are a little late, but don’t think of it as being ripped off, think of it as a cheap version of time travel, back to a remote and distant time known as “two weeks ago”).

With a beauty of a white Christmas behind us, we flew out of Toronto on the 27^th December to start our two week holiday on route to landing back in Australia on the 8^th January. Vancouver was our first stop, and knowing we had about 24 hours to soak all that Van City had to offer, we made a beeline to our hotel as soon as we got off the train downtown. I don’t really know if a beeline is a good thing, or a fast thing, or exactly what it is…every bee I’ve seen seems to just buzz around petty aimlessly, perhaps stopping for some nectar every now and then. So yeah I guess beeline is the correct term, as we struggled to find our hotel with our already-too-much luggage, bouncing around the city aimlessly.
Once we arrived, we noticed we were right across the road from BC Place, Vancouver’s football stadium, which was hosting a music festival / rave, meaning our room vibrated with every annoying pounding of the bass. The brochures described it as having the most talented DJ’s around…which is as is an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one…I guess they are pretty talented at simply pressing buttons those DJ’s…but I’m good at pressing buttons too (I have ninja PS3 skills, and are pressing keyboard buttons as we speak! Maybe I should be a DJ). But I digress…

The night was spent at a bar, trying to drink enough beers to sedate us and get a good night sleep in spite of the annoying doof doof going on across the road.

This led to a bit of a hangover the next morning, but not enough from deterring me from a good ol’ fashion yog around a new city. At 8.30 I got my gear on and headed outside to a leisurely 5 degrees…with absolutely zero snow on the ground and the hottest temperature I’d felt in weeks, I was like a pommy on Bondi Beach in winter, displaying my pasty white pins for the first time since summer.

My starting point was at Terry Fox Place, which had a statue and plaque dedicated to the great man himself. Terry Fox was a young man diagnosed with a bone cancer and was an above-the-knee amputee at age 19, and attempted to run across Canada (on his prosthetic leg) at age 21, in 1980. His cancer got the better off him about 1/3 of the way along his journey and he never finished his goal, but his legacy lives on, especially in Canada. I’d first heard of Terry a few months before our Melbourne to Sydney run. I won’t give you the full details (as I’d like to in more detail in another blog), but you can read about him here.

After a few snaps with Tezza (or T-Fox to some), I headed off, inspired and motivated. Inspired from Terry, and motivated by the fact I was kind of hungover and pretty hungry.

Terry Fox Plaza. Place of legends

 

 

I headed towards to famous Seawall, which is, as the name suggests a wall by the sea. But the cool thing about it is the fact it is a cycle and walking path that surrounds just about the entirety of Downtown Vancouver, meaning you can run for 30-40kms with the city on one side of you, and the Pacific Ocean, or the various bays on the other. And it seems it’s no secret. Every man and his dog were out walking or riding along the scenic seawall (ok, so only half the men had dogs, but there were a lot of mutts).  The people I was passing was as varied as the scenery…couples with prams, running groups, serious cyclists, lots of fit looking people, and even a guy jogging along in his jeans and dress shoes who looked quite hungover, in turn making me feel relatively good about myself.

Surprisingly, some people aren't aware this famous seawall even exists...the captain of this boat was clearly one of them

 

The scenery was abundant, as was my love for the countless female Vancouver hotties jogging along the seawall this beautiful city. I caught a glimpse of the ocean after a while and noticed a bunch of rocks on the shoreline. Not any old rocks, but six strategically placed rocks to form the equivalent of a 15 foot “rock man” known as an Inukshuk. Inukshuks hold a special place in Canadian’s hearts, as they represent their useful rock-man-making skills, or something like that.*

Inukshuk. Very Inuk-y shuk-y

 

 

*Ok, so it's more than just rock-making skills by the looks of it

 

Moving on from the Inukshuk, I noticed I was entering Stanley Park, the massive forest-like park adjacent to downtown. I don’t know who Stanley is (maybe he was an Inukshuk) but I like his park! Countless trails, hills, stairs, lakes and of course the Seawall surrounding it, makes for a pretty neat and accessible playground for the locals.

I ventured away from the Seawall and into the belly of the park, and soon realised that without the water to my left to guide me, I didn’t exactly know where I was going. I came across the beautiful and aptly titled Lost Lagoon, which made me feel a little better about not knowing exactly where I was.

Getting lost at Lost Lagoon

 

And just then, in front of me I saw an animal that I semi-rarely come across while on a run-a raccoon! He was about twice as big as a housecat (or once as big as one morbidly obese housecat), and leisurely waddled across the path a few metres in front of me to the lakeshore to grab a drink. I paused, and tried to get a photo of the little fella, but he was camouflaged in the shrubs and branches and weeds. I crouched and waited for him to come into view and within five minutes he was on his way back to the path. He eyed me up and down as he came towards me, and I tried to remember if raccoons were aggressive or how bad the damage would be if he decided to claw my face off…Rabies? Mad cow disease? Herpes? I couldn’t remember. By the time I remembered it was rabies, he was three feet away and I thought that jumping back and shrieking like a teenage girl at a Katy Perry concert probably wasn’t a smart idea, and with not much more than a sniff in my direction, little Ronnie Raccoon waddled back off into the bush with as little urgency as he had waddled out of it.

Ronnie Raccoon grabbing a drink at his local...

 

 

...and then doing a dine-and-dash

 

I continued along the lake hoping to see some of Ronnie’s family, but only came across swans and geese and Asian people…that’s not being racist, that’s just telling it how it is.

 

 

I veered out of Stanley Park and onto the northern side of downtown, joining back up with the seawall again. Instead of being lined with beaches and parks and Inukshuks like the southern side, the northern side was home to high rise buildings and wicked views over the bay to Northern Vancouver. The most interesting building I ran by was One Canada Place with it’s distinctive sails on top, which is where the seawall ends. Running by One Canada Place, I passed under a banner saying “The Canadian Trail”, and as I did, I noticed the bricks under my feet were engraved with the names of various Canadian towns in B.C, it’s most western province. Within 20 metres, a large coloured strip declared that I was now passing into the next brickwork province of Alberta, with the bricks now representing Alberta towns. This continued for all 13 provinces and territories, from west to east until I had run across this brickwork Canada in about 30 seconds…Terry Fox eat your heart out!

Crossing brickwork Nunavit, a Canadian territory at Canada Place

 

With the seawall coming to an end, I again headed inland, and dashed and darted around the downtown area known as Gastown, a neat little district with old red brick road and old school shop fronts, before returning to our hotel a little over an hour after I had left it. 12kms of photo-snapping, scenic running in and I was ready for breakfast, a coffee and to explore the rest of this sweet city.

As I draft this post up, it’s 5pm and we’re sitting on the bus headed to our next stop of Whistler, which will be our home for the four days...on the agenda is snowboarding, and catching up with mates from back home, meaning if today was my last run for 2013, it would have been a cracker of way to end it off! 

The time I ended up naked on the side of the road while out for a run

I’m sorry for the visuals so early on. I know the side of the road isn’t always the most eye-catching or pleasant thing to visualise but, to share the story properly all details must be shared.

I’ll set the scene…picture a typical Sydney stinking hot and dry Sunday in mid-January with the temperatures well into the 30s. Most people would be happy going to the beach, or watching the cricket inside their air-conditioned house. Although I spent a lot of time at work, as it was BridgeClimb’s peak season, our Melbourne to Sydney Run concept was about two months old, and I was increasing training, month by month. In my days off between work and general summer shenanigans I managed over 250kms in training in January.

Perhaps one of more peculiar of those kilometres was about to take place on this day though.

I had planned a 30km run from Heathcote to Cronulla and back to Sutherland. I threw a $10 note in my pocket in case of emergency (emergency being code word for food, and food being code word for Maccas), put my earphones in my ears, grabbed a water bottle for the road and headed out.

All was going well, and after 7kms, getting past Engadine, instead of running on the shoulder of the Princes Hwy, I had the slightly nicer option of stepping up off the road and following a neat little dirt trail, flanked by gum trees on either side, but still only a few metres off the road, running parallel to it for about a kilometre. Any excuse to get an extra few metres gap between myself and from the cars zipping by at 90kph sounded like the safer choice, or so I thought…

With a new visual stimulus in the form of the gum trees, I didn’t happen to notice that a little further down this narrow track there would be a thick Orb Weaved spider’s web stretching from tree to tree right across the track, about five feet in the air. Needless to say, within seconds of crashing through the web, strands covering my face, neck and chest, I began flailing, grabbing at my face with my free hand trying my best to get the sticky web off me while continuing to run. Looking down to inspect my shirt, I noticed the spider on my chest, who seemed to be making its way up to my neck. The flailing quickly turned to swatting, which turned into pure panic and with my focus having to be split between staying upright on my ever-running feet or flicking this big spider as far as possible, I guess the fact that I absolutely wiped out and ended up lying on my back in the dirt (with the spider now nowhere to be seen) means that I chose the latter. That was the safer choice, or so I thought…

I’ve taken a tumble a few times during my running days. And as old clumsy Grandpa style as that sentence sounds, I guess the more you run, the more chance you have of falling, and although I’ll generally be up on my feet within a matter of 10 seconds or so, you’re a bit rattled, you want to dust yourself off and check that everything is alright before getting up. That was the safer choice, or so I thought…

As I lay there, within about two seconds my body told my brain that the ground beneath me wasn’t flat, and that I was lying on a distinct and rather large mound. Within about five seconds, my body told my brain that my skin was tingling. Within about 8 seconds, as I lifted my neck and checked myself out, my eyes told my brain “ummm…body is a freaking moron, we’re lying on an ant hill and that tingling sensation is us being covered in hundreds of red ants!!!!”

“SSSSSS**********@@@@@@@TTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!”

As I freaked out and jumped quickly to my feet, the ants freaked out and just starting biting at whatever this fleshy thing was they were now aboard (I can’t actually confirm if the ants were in fact “freaking out” as their facial expressions are so tiny and I couldn’t tell, and I had other important things to worry about…maybe they were just having a bad day or were hungry? I haven’t consulted National Geographic on this but I’m guessing them freaking out is the most logical explanation).

The pain from each bite was INTENSE! And the worst part was they were biting me EVERYWHERE! It was unlike any other hurt I’ve experienced before. REM thought they had it right when they sung “Everybody Hurts”. No. That’s not true. It should have been called “You haven’t felt hurt until you have hundreds of red ants covering your body biting the crap out of you”. A catchier title, and more scientifically accurate.

I didn’t know whether to run, to stand still or to jump up and down like a maniac. And to be honest, with my brain going at 100mph I wouldn’t be able to recall just which one I did. Although looking back at the comical GPS data (below) you can be the judge yourself.

In any case, simply flicking the ants wasn’t working-they wouldn’t budge-their vice-like pincers were so big and had such a good grip flicking them just seemed to enrage them more. I had to literally squeeze them one by one to eradicate each one. Seeing that I was losing this battle, I decided the best way to get rid of a good number of these six legged demons was to whip my shirt off. Without hesitation I threw it as far as I could. I continued bouncing around in pain, battling away, just a few metres from the road, now shirtless. Before too long I had most of my arms and upper body cleared. The battle was swinging in my favour until all of a sudden and with the worst bite of all, the immediate thought in my brain was “HOLY HELL THAT ONE BIT MY NUT!”

The profanities yelled that day were countless, but at this stage, none of that really mattered. All that really mattered was that my privates were becoming a red ant buffet and that is what I would happily classify as “not cool”. Just as my shirt had been whipped away, off came my running shorts. The fact that the shorts have built-in underwear meant that I was now completely butt naked (minus the running shoes) jumping up and down, trying to kill each of these little critters. As cars whizzed by, I’m sure that the majority of them kept their eyes on the road and had a normal, pleasant day without seeing any strangers in the nude in their peripheral vision by the gum tress. Unfortunately I know for a fact that at least two people didn’t have their eyes on the road when a series of gleeful honks came my way as they passed my sorry naked butt.

After five minutes of pure mayhem, once I had rid myself of every single last one of those damn red ants, I had to wander over to my shorts, and decided before putting them back on to inspect each and every square inch of the fabric, so I didn’t get any nasty surprises when I put them back on. I’m not sure which would have been stranger sight to a passing car- seeing a naked man jumping up and down as if he is doing a tribal dance, or seeing a naked man lifting and inspecting running shorts so closely like he was some Neanderthal who had never seen clothes before.

After inspecting my shirt, and pulling countless ants from it, I put that back on safely, and then had to find my Ipod which had been flicked away in the trauma, and my water bottle which was a good ten metres down the track. My emergency ten dollars was nowhere to found and I deemed it a causality. The next person to find that 10 bucks will have no idea how it escaped my possession, and I doubt they will want to.

I continued the run, stepping down off the track and back onto the road. Cars flying by me at 90 kph seemed like a better alternative to what had just happened. That was the safer choice, and this time I knew it.

That night was spent Googling remedies for ant bite pain, as my lower back in particular was peppered in bites and when turning up for work the following day, I had to be put on “light duties” for two days because I couldn’t wear my climb belt! I guess the ants and spider combo won this round!

I guess the moral to the story is “don’t jump to conclusions about naked men jumping up and down like a constipated gorilla on the side of the road”. A good life motto for anyone, and would be even catchier as an REM song title.

 

The GPS data showing me "freaking out" rather than running in a straight line. Bloody ants

 

Pretty evident to tell where I fell victim to the oldest trick in the book-the ol' "spider web/ant mound" one-two punch.

 

 

Orb Weavers-not so bad when they are on you. Definitely bad when they are on you

 If still saying no to animal cruelty when one of these are biting you in the nads, you need to give your head a shake