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So...We Thought We Could Dance
Last year around this time, my dad Jack started exhibiting some bizarre behaviour. Whenever he had a spare second, he would obsessively watch instructional dancing DVD’s as though they were a combination of cocaine and porn. Sometimes, when I got up in the morning, there he was, dancing on the spot in the living room. He might have been there all night. I’m not sure.
Now, my dad has had many obsessions over the years - guitar, baseball, apple orcharding, chemistry, Mac computers, cashews...- but this once seems to be enduring. Flash forward one year and he is still taking multiple dance lessons every week.
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One Ultimate Experience Book
Here are the ultimate Canadian experiences included in the book:
Best Road Trips -- Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island
Classic Train Trips -- Rocky Mountaineer
Most Extreme Environment -- Banff National Park
Best Adventure Travel Ideas -- Cycling the Icefields Parkway
Top 10 Boys (and girls) - own Adventures -- Cattle drive, Alberta
Best Party Cities -- Montreal, Canada
The World's Best Human Races -- Grouse Grind Mountain Run
Most Lip-Smacking Street Food -- Poutine
The Best skiing in North America -Blackcomb/Whistler, British Columbia, Canada,
Whitewater, Nelson, British Columbia and Banff, Alberta
Sea kayaking -- Johnstone Straits, Canada
Into the Deep, Dark Woods
2. Having a terrible spell cast upon you.
3. Ingesting poison.
4. Administering poison.
5. Listening to the ’80s hair band Poison (well...I think that’s frightening).
6. Being given the old heave-ho from your loving dad, who has shacked up with a warty new wife.
Hamelin’s old town is delightfully picturesque, but today I went off in search of something a little moodier than rat toys and McDonalds’ in Tudor houses. The air was thick with moisture, lending a nice gloomy touch to the area (yes!). I was headed up the mountain that overlooks Hamelin - possibly the very mountain over which the Pied Piper led the children, never to be seen again (double yes!). As soon as I started up the steep footpath, I felt so very alone. And vulnerable. And - what the HELL was that leaf noise!?!!!! - jumpy.
CRUNCH! CRACK! CREAK!
The forest has its own voice, you see. It tells you this: there is most certainly a hungry wolf lurking around the next tree. Or, if not a wolf, it’s a big fat Wildschwein that smells pork sausage on your breath and wants to avenge his cousins. No - it’s a cursed woodsman who hasn’t seen a woman for a hundred years, and boy oh boy is he ever “amorous.”
(Let us keep this blog PG rated).
Moreover, the forest reveals this secret: out of fear, humans walking alone through the woods develop wild imaginations - so wild, they start inventing stories that aren’t true. You might even call them fairy tales.
Summer Camp...in Downtown Toronto
By Reb Stevenson
Move over Algonquin Park, there's a new destination for happy campers in Ontario: downtown Toronto!
(Cue chorus of laughter from tents everywhere.)
Adopting a carved wooden bear as its mascot, the hotel aims to summon your best memories of summer camp -- in a less supervised setting, of course.
"It's an adult return to that free-wheeling, nostalgic feeling of long summer days," says manager Ana Yuristy.
Read More...
Reinventing Yourself Through Travel
You can’t afford the trip.
Giraffes scare the bejeezus out of you.
Adventure travel is for young men with six-pack abs.
Go on…make all the excuses you want. But Carol Patterson won’t buy them.
The Calgary-based author of a new book called Reinventure: How Travel Adventure Can Change Your Life, Patterson urges you to tackle risks head-on.
Why? Not so you can flaunt a stamp-riddled passport or show off a new Turkish carpet at your next neighbourhood gathering.
For Patterson, the true reward of travel is something intangible: personal growth. Read More...
Glo-Kayaking
By Reb Stevenson
FAJARDO, PUERTO RICO–Kayaking in the pitch black seems counterintuitive – idiotic, even.
Apart from the weak green strobe effect coming from the safety lights on our lifejackets, we are as blind as the bats that occasionally dart overhead.
And we keep crashing into the mangroves.
A group of 20, we glide in single file down the narrow canal.
READ MORE HERE