This happened a long time ago. I’m just posting about it because Mallory is hot and I was super drunk.

615. Do a body shot

…but it isn’t.

While wandering around downtown today with my gay-sian friend (yes, you CAN contract gay and Asian into one word!) and he says
“have you peed in that toilet yet”

And I say
“in what toilet?”

because Keith thinks that everyone can hear his thoughts.

Anyways, it turns out he was referring to the robot potty on 17th Ave SW, which is part of a “City of Calgary Sanitation” project. There is seriously no website about this thing or information. Useless city.

It’s basically this weird roundish box plopped on a street corner. It looks kind of like something they would protect a major electrical center in or something. I decided, as I needed to pee anyways, to make use of it! Plus, I thought it was on my list, even though it is totally not actually on it. The toilet itself is fantastic. It tells you how to use it in a robot voice and cleans itself. You press a BUTTON and a CLEAN TOILET SEAT APPEARS OUT OF THE WALL!!! It also plays calming music for you as you make your business. Rad and a great idea for public bathrooms. Clean and calming!

I’m sad it’s not on my list, but whatever. I peed in a robot today and that in itself is fantastic.

This summer feels like a complete wash. I did go to Kelowna, true, but it has mostly been spent with my nose in books and sitting in classrooms. I guess I’m putting this work in now so I can be done school earlier, but I just want to be travelling and seeing the world. One friend just finished a study in Ghana and is now touring Germany. Irma my artist friend just finished a one month stint in Montreal. Everyone is headed somewhere or just returning and I feel stagnant.

I suppose I am heading to Kingston in around a month, but I have been to Kingston several times. Hell, I lived there for almost ten years. I am desparately trying to convince my mom to go somewhere (anywhere!!) with me over a weekend or after our trip to Kingston but she is very reluctant (much to my dismay). I know I only have 60 or summers left on this planet and it depresses me to some extent this one has been somewhat wasted so far. 6 weeks left before September brings around a new semester of school, I better make the most of it. Roadtrip anyone?

Irma is possibly the best photo subject in the world. This is from our travels to NYC, the Central Library in particular. Upon finding she was actually a donor to the Library she got over excited and panned for the camera.

I don’t wax philosophical much on this blog, but in real life I’m the love child of Socrates and Plato (the gayest of all the philosophers: fact). And I’ve had a giant mental shift. The other night, laying in my super pink room, worried deeply about my future, Adam told me something that blew my tiny Stegosaurus brain.

And I quote: “Just do what you want”

Of course, I said: “ANYTHING I WANT?” (in caps, I talk in caps).

He said: “yes”.

Naturally, I replied: “okay, well I want to be reborn as a fabulous gay-sian man who can get away with platform boots in any situation”.

Apparently, though, “just do what you want” only can operate within the laws of physics, which honestly is a bigger rip off than the fact I can’t get Google maps implanted in my brain yet.

Anyways, this is something I’ve struggled with for years, the ability to just do what I want, unfiltered from my incessant worrying about what people (read: my mom) are going to think. Adam on the other hand is prone to punching old ladies in the face if they get in his way, because, yeah, he just does what he wants. All the time, doing what he wants.

In reality this conversation has shifted my internal processing, especially when it comes to my very undetermined future as a functioning member of society. I suppose most of the things I want to do (read: giant squid) break this lame “laws of physics” rule. No one has ever told me to just do what I want before. I’ve been told to go to school, to stop being lazy and get a job, and to stop wearing tiaras in public, but never to “just do what I want”. It’s an entirely new concept to me, really, and I wonder why there isn’t a class entitled “Just Do What You Want: The Philosophy of Punching Old Ladies Who Get in Your Way in the Face”.

What is this going to mean for my travels, my future job prospects, my social life? Probably all bad things after I’ve assaulted a flight attendant for looking at me funny, written my resume using macaroni and glue and then decided only to attend functions with the words “super awesome” in the title.

What do you get when you work 30 hours a week and go to school “full time”? Unhappiness!

I’ve been struggling to find time to live my life, rather than just going through the motions. Being in my fifth year of University, it doesn’t seem like the time to drop out of “regular” life to take on a life of vagabondry or backpacking. I find myself focusing more and more on the future (real or completely imaginary) to compensate for the complete lack of anything exciting in the present. I suppose this is the ascribed destiny for most of the Western world’s population; placid drudgery with a 2 week slice of sweet freedom once a year. I won’t even bring up the people working in free trade zones in the East. Doesn’t everyone dream of escaping it, especially during the idealistic phase we all go through in our 20s? Why is my life going to be any different than that of everyone else?

I wish I was more of the risk-taking type. My personality, my complacency, my unwillingness to attempt anything remotely scary will be my downfall. This list was a first step towards actualizing a thought I had. That I didn’t want to be 80 and have memories of working in a cubicle. I wanted to have awesome memories of drinking with rockstars, climbing mountains, and seeing everything this planet has to offer up. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion I am wasting the best years of my life on the same kind of drudgery I want to avoid later in life. People I know are doing awesome things: volunteering in Peru for a semester, going to Ghana and South Africa for classes, three month long trips to Europe. I sit instead and plan out how to do this stuff later because in all honesty I am scared shitless of going off the beaten path, of going it alone, of being by myself in the vast spaces that fall outside of my comfort zone.

I need to get over that. It’s a requirement. Fear is not something you can take with you. So! My goal for the next semester is to find something travel related (working abroad, volunteering in a third world country, etc.) that scares me and just DO IT. Hopefully I can work something out for this summer or for Fall 09 semester that will jolt me out of my middle class suburban safety.

Have you ever done anything that made you uncomfortable or scared just to say you had done it?

There is really no other way to describe my trip to NYC except as a whirlwind of adventure and maybe a little misadventure.
First things first: the city prevented me from seeing Bon Jovi. Cool points lost = 29

Aside from obvious sadness over the loss of seeing “The Jovi” (though I have to admit I later compared seeing Bon Jovi to finding a cockroach in our hostel), New York was one of the most amazing places I have ever been. I think I mentioned before on my quick post from Irma’s house that it was already on the list of places I need to go back to. There was so much to do and see, there was no time to do anything but have assloads of fun.

I think one of the primary reasons we were able to enjoy ourselves so much is that we sketched out a rough schedule of things to do, based mostly on area and distance from the hostel. We didn’t plan out every minute (neurotic is not fun), but we planned it well enough that we were never at a loss for things to do and we managed to get everything we wanted done with the least resistance possible.

We left on Thursday night, 11pm out of Toronto’s Greyhound terminal. We barely squeezed onto the bus, leaving about another bus and a half load of people standing in the line wondering if there were more buses coming to cart them into the U.S. Lucky for us, we managed to get seats together, albeit they were right beside the washroom facility, which stank. Word the wise, if you’re taking the overnight Greyhound between Toronto and New York, go in early to make sure you get a seat, especially if you want to sit with your travel companions. The ride was alright, though my sleep was lacking. I had finally fallen into a deep sleep when we got to customs. I was shaken by my previous experience of being yelled at on the way to Niagara Falls when the customs agent was screaming at me, but going through was a breeze. They were a bit annoyed we didn’t have our return tickets on hand (considering I had no choice but to pick them up at Penn Station…), but they were quite nice on all fronts. We actually got into NYC over an hour early, since we skipped a stop in Syracuse.

We got on the subway pronto and went to our hostel to see if we could check in or at least drop our belongings off. It was about 11 in the morning and we didn’t want to be lugging backpacks to the Met and Guggenheim all day. We were staying at the Royal Park Hotel and Hostel on 97th and Broadway. We couldn’t check in but for a $2 fee we could check our bags, which we of course opted for. We made our way directly to the Museum of Natural History, sticking to the shaded sides of the streets of course! The Museum was packed with groups of summer camp kids, but I suppose that’s what we get for going on a Friday afternoon, right? Overall we found the MoNH to befairly confusing, with really poorly done maps, but we had a blast none the less. The planet-arium show was particularly awesome. “Hello, I’m Robert Redford, here to give you a non-creationist view of the Universe”.

The rest of the day was occupied by hostel checking in and going to the Met (which I loved and strongly recommend). We noshed on some delicious pizza from this tiny joint, allowing me to cross off #124 on my list, eating a slice of authentic New York pizza. We hit the hostel early in the evening, as we were both exhausted from our trip and walking around in the heat all day. We still had two days to get through, but my first day had given me a high opinion of the city.

Being from Calgary, the celebration of pride is not something I am used to in huge doses. Calgary does have an annual pride parade that is usually fairly festive, and this year even secured itself a public park to hold a day-long event with booths, music, and revelry. This pales in comparison to the week long, devil-may-care-hell-breaking-loose pride celebration that Toronto is host to. I love it. A week of events, parties, clubs open until 4 am. What a way to celebrate the GLBTQ community!

I had missed a bit of the week coming in on a Wednesday and wasn’t sure what events would be happening, so I settled on the Pride Parade to satisfy #360 on my list.
On Sunday, we headed out from Guelph in order to get there for the 2pm parade start time. It was a bit of a drive into Toronto, but we made it with a little time for some lunch and a pee break. We walked through the baracaded streets to the parade route. The streets were filled with revelers and it was a fight to get up the streets to find a good place to view the parade. We waited a bit before the parade got to us, about 40 minutes after it left it’s starting point.


The parade was happy, colourful, fun, and loud. While many of the floats and participants were there for a good reason, such as the GTA Elementary School Teachers, and Parents of Trans Children, a lot of the floats were just there for advertising. I have a hard time believing Bacardi gives two shits about the community and was in the parade for anything other than the 1 million person strong captive audience. Those aside, the parade was festive and great. I have to say though that the water guns were a bit of a silly addition. It seemed almost every float had people with high powered super soakers spraying the audience. Well, first of all it was kind of raining to begin with, and second of all most of the people watching have cameras. I know I wasn’t the only one annoyed of constantly trying to shield my camera from the flows of water raining upon us.

I will admit that I did not stay for the full parade. After the parade had marched by for over an hour I was getting a bit weary of balancing on a little ledge in order to see. Then one of the police monitoring the parade made a comment there was still an hour left to go. That was it for me, especially since half of the floats were just advertising to begin with. I’m not sorry I left early, it took us the better part of 20 minutes to work our way down half a block in order to leave the festivities.
In all I would recommend the parade to people, but be prepared to stand for a long time and be advertised to in enormous amounts.

It seems that this summer is Chelsea’s Tour of Canadian Cities. Only four days after my feet were reunited with Calgary’s desert floors, I was boarding another flight bound for Montreal. My friend Chris and I were staying in Montreal from the 20-25th and the possibilities seemed endless upon departure. We didn’t have too much planned, though I did have a few things planned that revolved around a trip to the city of Montreal in Quebec. I figured my trip was off to a good start after seeing a land formation shaped like a penis, but our travel time took longer than expected due to our connecting flight from Pearson to Trudeau was cancelled. I admit I was peeved at first, but a few days after I received an email informing me of a $69 credit towards a future flight and my wounds were soothed. Yet one more reason to love Westjet. We did eventually arrive in Montreal, and discovered that it’s a flat fare to the downtown from the airport, only 35 dollars. Kick ass! Our cabbie was incredible to top it off, funny and giving us suggestions of what to do and where to go. I ended up with high expectations based on the evidence I had been presented with.

Well, my expectations were not exactly met. Though I have asked if I am insane because of it, I will admit that I am not a big fan of Montreal. My crank was not turned sufficiently. There were several things to cross off of my list while I was there, staying in a hostel, eating poutine, and so forth, and I did manage to get through them, but the atmosphere or something was off. I simply did not enjoy my stay there. While most people as I mentioned ask if I am insane or crazy for not liking the city, some people have professed the same odd distaste with the old French city. Regardless, we were there for 4 days/5 nights and there was not much I could do about the situation except live through it.

We arrived at the hostel around 8pm on Friday the 20th. While it had fairly decent reviews, Chris told me that compared to European hostels it was on the lower end of the scale. It did have a quaint charm to it but that quaint charm seemed to reform itself into rickety and unable to pass building codes in some parts of the structure. We were on the more private side of the two buildings that made up the hostel, as we had booked a private room, shared bath. It may as well have not had doors or walls, since our lock didn’t actually lock the door (I’ll post video later) and you could hear everything on our floor without even trying. Conversations could be had between rooms without raised voices. Glad I brought my ear plugs! Safety didn’t seem to be a huge concern to the owners or managers, they had signs saying to lock your belongings in the lockers in the basement, but provided far less lockers in comparison to tenets, which makes no sense to me, but whatever.

I suppose upon our arrival I wasn’t too concerned about the state of our hostel, I generally assumed we wouldn’t be spending much time there. Alas, there is not much to do in Montreal that doesn’t cost an ass load of money. Old Montreal is free and beautiful to a point, but the beauty is marred by all of the cars, homeless men, and tourist-shit boutiques lining the streets. The St. Lawrence is fairly beautiful but I was put off by the lack of public access beaches and parks along it, as industrial factories seemed to have precedence over everything else. Rue St. Catharine’s and rue St. Dennis provide some entertainment, with panhandlers and loads of sexy gay men, but like most of Montreal, the sleazy factor takes over, as well as the over priced tourist-shit.

I digress from my rant against the city. What did we do while we were there? The first night we were there, not much of anything. By the time we were settled into our hostel, it was after 10, and we decided to do just a quick jaunt up the main strip we were near in the Gay Village and head back to bed so we could get an early start the next day. Peep shows and gay men galore on Rue St. Catharine’s and not much else.

The next morning we got up early and headed out for some croissants and activity. The croissants were good and gave us energy to navigate the Metro system. Well, it’s not that hard, their underground subway system is actually one of the finer points of the city. Easy to navigate and quick, who can complain about that. On the first day we decided to head over to the side of the city with the Bio-dome and Botanical Gardens. Since we had traveled that far and there didn’t seem to be much to do in the way of “free”, we shelled out around $20 to get a student discounted ticket pack for the Insectarium, Botanical Gardens, and Bio-dome. First stop was the Insectarium, which was actually quite nice and fairly unique. I can imagine it would be a huge draw for kids, but luckily there was a sincere lack of children while we were there. I wasn’t that into it since I’m not a huge fan of bugs, but there were certainly interesting parts and Chris was enthralled by it. We didn’t spend that long inside, since you can only look at so many random bugs before it grows a bit dull.


After a quick break to sit and recoup in from the heat, we headed to the Botanical Gardens. Now, when I added this to my list, I thought that Botanical Gardens had gorgeous plant sculptures and was completely done out. Well I was wrong. I still enjoyed my time there, other than the absolutely confusing nature of the place, but it just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It was still gorgeous and very well done. The only part Chris and I didn’t like was how confusing it was to get around, we were completely lost for a while, and you couldn’t go five feet without other people looking aimlessly at their maps trying to figure out how to leave. If you are going there be prepared to have several hours to be spent lost or have an insane sense of direction!

At this point we were very hot and drained so we headed back to our hostel for an afternoon of napping and escaping the heat. The evening was fairly uneventful, as we just wandered around the streets of Montreal looking for some excitement.

Day two we weren’t expecting much out of the city, we were kind of bored of it already. Regardless, we ventured out to Petite Italie looking for some adventure. With another trip on the Metro under our belts, we wandered around seeing what we could. Little Italy in Montreal is cute, without a doubt and a very nice place to spend a morning or afternoon, maybe do a little shopping. After a quick stop in a Italian shop to grab some pesto for Chris and some nougat for me, we headed back to the downtown core to do a little shopping. We saw Mont Royal, but decided it was too hot to be bothered to climb the giant hill, and headed into a more historic section of the city, past McGill. While it was tourist-y I love the street vendors that lined the more popular streets that had been shut down to vehicle traffic. I bought myself a nice bracelet and Chris some ridiculous Kayne shades that caused me to giggle.

We headed out that night to a small cafe and had some fruit smoothies and enjoyed the cool evening air. We only had two days left in Montreal and it was a bittersweet feeling. We wanted to go, but we felt there was so much more to see, that we might be missing. Then a French guy kept talking to me in French about losing his pen and ruined the mood completely.

#361. Stay in a hostel
#448. Walk through the Botanical Gardens in Montreal

The entire trip to Vancouver and Victoria was just an elaborate birthday present from my dear Adam, but he really outdid himself when he told me that he had booked us a sea plane back to Vancouver. All based on the simple child like comment I made while pointing at the sky: “I wanna fly in one of those”. I doubt that if we hadn’t gotten into a big fight I would have ended up in one, so sometimes anger and storming 45 minutes back to the hotel has positive points. In all, it was a perfect I’m sorry present from a man incapable of apologizing for anything. A thirty minute scenic flight taking off from the water and landing right back in it, excellent!


We had spent the day in Victoria, and had been somewhat anxious all along. Spending the day within viewing distance of the harbour where the crafts were landing and taking off on about one minute intervals did nothing to ease any nerves about the procedure. We were excited though, incredibly excited. Adam had booked the ride with Harbour Air, which is one of a few companies providing air tours in the area. We chose the Victoria- Vancouver leg, but they have a variety of short trips and scenic tours available.

After we had finished sight seeing, we wandered over to their easy-to-find location next to the water on Wharf Street. We had been there already that day seeing if we could drop off our bags. Points to them for being so nice as to ship our bags ahead of us so we wouldn’t have to lug them around all day with us. I was quite nervous as we headed there, as I am not too keen on flying, but I was mostly excited. How could I not be! It’s a water plane (though I think sea plane is the proper term). We did have a bit of a wait, and the process was a bit confusing to me as a newbie to the procedures (keep in mind most things confuse me). After a bit of a wait, we were boarded onto our tiny plane. It is truly cramped in there, but our plane wasn’t even half full so we had a little breathing room. Our pilot (I believe Chris was his name) was very nice and friendly, giving us information about the trip and related matters. We sat in the water, taxi-ing for quite a bit, waiting for other planes to take off and land, but we eventually were kicked into high gear and were soon gliding in the air instead of the water. Just a tad freaky! The views were amazing from the get go, and we were provided of a gorgeous glimpse of the entire city as we circled around. The ride itself was a bit turbulent but not as scary as I imagined. Though I believe that this particular route is mainly for commuters, it provided a very tourist-friendly trip with sights you couldn’t get from a commercial airline.

Landing was smooth, but disappointing to say the least, as I could have spent several hours up in the skies watching families of otters fishing and making myself jealous over the houses spotting the numerous islands. Realizing they cater to people using the Vancouver airport, Harbour air provides a shuttle to the main airport from their location, which is incredibly convenient.
Though it may be a tad expensive (we paid about $80CAN per person) it was well worth the price. I would recommend this company for tours, commutes, and anyone wanting a bird’s eye glimpse of the Vancouver Island area.