Torres! Torres!

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On Saturday, I went to the Grand Bazaar and I bought a football jersey (no. 9, Fernand Torres, of Spain).

The owner of the shop asked for 45 TL (about 22 Canadian dollars). After waiting a long time and discussing it with Mom, I then offered him 25 TL. He said yes and he kissed me twice and told me that I was a good businessman. 

The next day, I went to a local futsal court. Futsal is like football (soccer), but in a tennis court with screens on the outside, artificial grass and tiny nets. when I got to the footsall court some boys saw my Torres jersey and started saying ''Torres! Torres!'' and I realized they were talking to me. I started to play footsall with then even though I couldn't speak Turkish and they couldn't speak Englesh very well. It was fun. 

Go Play on the Road!

These first two legs of our trip have involved a lot of driving: over 2,000 km so far as we Orbited Ottawa for about four weeks, and now as we sojourn in Southern Ontario. This has given us plenty of time to take in the scenery, play Minecraft and catch up on our Vinyl Cafe stories.

But when that gets a bit repetitive and/or the battery tanks, we usually resort to car games like:

• 20 Questions: Hint, if it is Isaac's turn, always ask, "Is it a soccer player?"
• I'm Thinking of an Animal -- an inversion of 20 questions in which you trickle out clues about the identity of secret animal and the players have to guess each round (e.g. has four legs, is a mammal, is not a soccer player....)
• I Spy With My Little Eye...something that is or sounds like....
• Name 5 Soccer Players: in which we each take turns naming five soccer players until Isaac wins. 

Recently, one of our favourite ways to pass the miles is to play a no-holds-barred, smack-down game of "Cows, Flags and Graveyards". The objective of the game is to tally up a total of 100 points by being the first one to spot and call out either:

• Cows, either solo or in herds, for 2 points;
• Flags of any type -- national, provincial, municipal, used car lot --  for 1 point;
• Graveyards, which means that you add everyone else's points to your score. 

Sometimes we play in teams, but it is usually best to break up Zoe and Trish because they are both extremely competitive and they cream the rest of us. 

As we've played this game on different roadtrips, we've developed our own expansion set by adding in:

• Horses -- 3 points per individual or group;
• Train tracks: we add up everyone's points and share them equally;
• Renewable energy sources -- either windmills or solar panels for 5 points each;
• Regional variations that reflect what might be more common in that area (e.g. a casse croute stand in Quebec, espresso stands in Washington State, gunshops in New York...) for 2 points. 
• Something unusual: you have to call out something that would be widely considered "unusual" in that location, (e.g. a giant fish statue, a parrot looking out of the back of a pick up truck); however, everyone in the car needs to agree that this is in fact "unusual", which often precipitates an impassioned argument and a vote on whether we grant the proponent an additional 5 points. 

Our most recent mod, however, has literally been a game changer: if you spot and call out a convertible automobile, everyone in the car has to flip the two digits of their score around. So for example, if you have 19, your score changes to 91; or if you had 72, you'd then have 27.

This innovation has added a surprisingly fun element of cunning and skulduggery, guaranteeing that we'll probably never run out of miles before we get to 100. We are also looking forward to how we will adapt this game in the various countries we'll be visiting soon. 

What are your favourite road trip games? Please tell us the rules below. We'd love to play them. 

A Blessing of Friends

As keen as we are to go #thataway for the next year, we know that we will miss our friends and neighbours while we frappez la rue. So it seemed fitting  that we throw a party ere we depart. 

Trish and I have been married now for something like 19 years, which I suppose is long enough to call some of our odder habits "traditions".

One of these traditions is to open up our house for big parties. This started back when we were grad students with the De-Alienation From Your Labour Day Salsa Making Collective Party, and it continued with Monster Potlucks of 70+ people when we lived at The Blob, a two-year experience of living in intentional community.

More recently, our fetes have included the Biannual Waffle Extravaganza on New-Year's Day, and a super-secret-surprise party for Trish's 40th party in which we demonstrated our great love for her through skullduggery, deception and covert acts of catering.

Through these exxperiments and double-blind, randomized control trials, we've discovered that the formula for a great party is really quite simple:  good lighting, a great playlist, an electic mix of amazing friends of all ages, some simple but yummy food, a wee bit of something to drink, and a Grandiose Title -- preferably with a #hashtag :-) 

This time for our #thataway bash, we invited singer-songwriter, Craig Cardiff to play. Craig tours all across Canada, peforming at bars, concert halls, churches and festivals, but in between he loves to play smaller private functions like this. I first heard him play at our neighbour's house concert and his songs have been on high-repeat on my shower-serenading set-list ever since. 

Craig's poignant songs, solid guitar work, sing-along-choruses and father-daughter dance smack down competitions, together with technical, logistical and moral support from some friends, turned our back yard into a Mid-Summer-Night's Dream. It was lovely to see so many folks together and to say goodbye; we will miss you.

Ahh, yes, to misquoteth the Bard, Partying is such sweet sorrow. 

Here are a few pictures from the bash. 

Tourists in Our Own Town

 

We are lucky to live in Ottawa. It is a both a nice place to visit and you really want to live here!  

As the capital of Canada, it boasts the usual buildings-of-national-significance like the Parliament,  and the Supreme Court, many tasteful national monuments to dead white guys -- and one to dead white women -- and an array of world-class museums. In fact, when we hit the road in 24 days -- zoiks!!!!! -- it may come as a shock to our kids that not every city has a "Museum of..."

• Agriculture & Food at the Central Experimental Farm
• Science & Technology
• Aviation & Space
• Canadian History -- formerly the "Museum of Civilization", before the Conservatives made "Civilization" "History"
• Nature (something else that I fear they are trying to make "history")
• War (something that we all hope will stay in history....)
• a National Gallery featuring paintings, sculpture, photographs and some inexplicable, but artfully-arranged modern artifacts from someone's basement; &
• the National Arts Centre that showcases live music, dance and drama performances. 

(BTW, in lieu of summer camps for July and to kick-start our "road-scholars" project for the kids, I picked up a Canada's Capital Museum Passport that let's us visit up to 8 of the above museums in 7 days. It's a great deal, even if you don't manage to see them all).

Connecting all of these sites is either the Rideau Canal -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site that we can  skate on during the winter -- or a network of green-space and bike paths run by the National Capital Commission. It is a great city to experience on a bike. 

Ottawa is also home to a staggering number of festivals for just about any topic that you can think of: music of all types, animation, films, buskers, poutine, children, winter, tulips!  Although perhaps not as edgy as Toronto or as hip as Montréal, Ottawa is far from being the "city that fun forgot", and there is a burgeoning independent, hipster scene. 

So even though our year-off adventures don't officially start until August, we don't have to go far to be tourists in our own town. Come on up and visit Ottawa soon. Here are a few recents snaps to hold you over until then....

tulip festival

tulipfest

tulipfest

#pieproud

Canada Day Fireworks

A trip back -- waaaay back -- in time