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Calgary (from the plane)
Actually, looks more like the outskirts of the city. But its pretty anyway.For inexplicable reasons, other than “why not?”, Teddy and Yuriko bounce over to my house and we get drunk the night before takeoff. After a murderous week (in terms of academics), we were finally free for a week…choosing to pointedly ignore the massive pileup of work coming after the break.
After Teddy and Yuriko sloshed their way home at 3am, I’m left with a choice…go to sleep for 3 hours, or stay up. I decide to stay up…watching youtube videos of the NPB in my underwear…
…and then wakeup to incessant knocking on my front door. Huh? Figuring it was about 4am, I stagger to the door expecting some drunkard to be laying on my doorstep under the starry night, and I open the door to Teddy framed in a stream of sunlight.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Its 7am motherfucker!”
I rapidly blink twice and inhale in surprise, rush to my room, throw on some random clothes, grab a hat, my jacket and my bags and run out to the idling taxi. The driver tosses my shit in the trunk, I remember my snowboard, hustle home and grab it along with gloves and my
keys, toss it in the backseat and we’re gunning down to Dorval Airport and suddenly I’m putting my seat into the upright position and reading the safety manual and I’m flying 10,000 feet above the rapidly disappearing skyline of Montreal off to some city called Calgary.
The seat belt sign pings off, the monitor tells me I’ve got 5 hours in the plane, Yuriko and Ted on either side of me are collapsed asleep and I finally, finally,
exhale.
And I start grinning and grinning and grinning as people’s heads droop off and the shades close the plane into darkness. No school, no work, snowboarding and girls?
Jackpot.
After a 5 hour flight where the highlight was watching basketball highlights on the 5” TV, I was feeling sluggish. After the crazy 30 minutes of adrenaline before getting onto the flight, I was now feeling the exact opposite. Tired, cramped from the flight and fighting exhaustion, I drag myself from the plane into the terminal.
Even though it's a new and exciting city, in my exhausted state, Calgary’s airport is just another airport. Fighting yawns and closing eyelids, I follow a jacked up Teddy
Calgary's Airport
So Fresh and So Clean. onto one of those moving walkways prevalent in every airport. Not having to move for about ten seconds, I summon up some energy to wearily look around.
Pristine. Living my life in the dirtiness that is the East Coast, every Midwest and West coast city looks clean. This is what I expected from Calgary-white, clean and nice. On the opposite moving walkway is a college student who fulfills the stereotypes: tall, sun bleached blond, hot…
…and staring at me and smiling…
…Huh? Being a 5’7” Asian who’s forgotten Calculus and doesn’t have a TI-89 Silver Edition Limited Plus, I bring nothing to the table for some tall, blond, corn-fed girl who gets hit on by tall, blond, corn-fed boys. But there she is staring at me, as the two walkways push us closer and closer. Maybe it’s my exoticness? Asians must be hard to find in the Prairies. I try to rack my mind for a good line I could use for the 1 second window in which we’ll be in talking distance…
It’s then that I remember my one other experience with the Midwest. I went to Minnesota my senior year and I remember during
The House!
The House! with Ted's dad looking cool, as always those two days, complete randos greeting me on the streets. “Hi.” “Howdy” “How you doing?” All of them smiling like maniacs with perfect white teeth and flawless good looks and absolute purity in their souls as I debated whether to punch them or join their wonder bread white robot army.
… this blond girl in front of me is just portraying the Midwest image and clearly has no (physical) interest in me whatsoever. But she’s made me realize…this trip is about sex! Girls are flying in from Japan to meet your puny ass! What are you doing being tired?! Get prepped! Get ready! Get going!
This blond airport girl (which I will now refer to as
BAG), a perfect picture of the Midwest, has awakened the inner fighter in me and removed all traces of exhaustion. It was probably more for the better as I would’ve looked like a complete fool in front of Teddy and Yuriko by uttering whatever garbage line I came up with.
I showed my thanks and my newfound energy by flashing back a huge, Midwest style smile (instead of flashing a huge, New York style finger) as we cross.
Yuriko's tour!
Yuriko shows us the second floor of the House! in the only way she can After this 3-second event, the three of us grab our luggage, meet Yu and then drive to Teddy’s house.
Teddy’s house is enormous. Or rather, its probably the size of most suburban houses, but having grown up in the inner city, the only “house” I had ever seen before was one made out of gingerbread with candy cane lawn ornaments.
While staring at the massiveness of the House!, Teddy went to grab the J-Poppers (their flight touchdowned a little later). I talked to Teddy’s mom, Jayne, for a bit and like all mothers I knew, she pushed us into seats and fed us.
As the clock ticked closer and closer to their arrival, I nervously nibbled at a sandwich while I tried to think of what I would say for a good first impression. “Hello?” “What’s up?” “How you doing?” “Hey?” “I’ve only met you for five hours, and we almost got laid if it wasn’t for your cockblocking team, let’s be friends?” It didn’t help that my mind was clouded by the prodigious size of the House! and the smiling, 3 second clip of the BAG constantly looping in my head.
Still debating what I
Yuriko's tour
Yuriko shows a bedroom of the house was going to say as Teddy pulled up to the house, I decided to wing it. As Teddy and the 4 J-Poppers burst through the door, my brain tried to keep up with my eyes as I saw a mess of multicoloured jackets, scarves, hats, boots, tights, pants, necklaces and skirts lugging in a army of neon colored luggage. Teddy was wearing a T-Shirt and jeans…and the J-Poppers were each wearing enough ridiculous clothing to outfit a clown convention. One of the guys was wearing army boots, a shiny bubble jacket and some crazy hoodie with zippers going all across it while one of the girls was wearing neon blue tights and nike hi-tops in Lucky Charms marshmellow colors. And then through this calamity, I saw her. My target. Chiaki. She was the smallest of the group…and the craziest dressed of them all. She had some Rastafarian hat, a lime green bubble coat, around her neck she had some gold chains with odds and ends hanging from them, a green camera (I would later find out this was in fact a
toy camera) dangling from her already overloaded neck and some leather blue boots.
Still reeling from the sensory
Yuriko, Me, Jayne
Hanging in the kitchen rape of my eyes, I looked into her face and all images of the hipster fashion show parading in front of me, all images of the House! and all images of the BAG were erased out of my mind (not that its hard to replace a female image in my memory with another one). Having only a blurry drunken memory of her face for the last 9 months to recall, I had completely forgotten what she looked like. I quickly took the mental snapshot, as she looked up at me…
…oh shit, this is where I’m supposed to say something…I nervously scratch the back of my head…my mind is racing…she’s waiting…I open my dry mouth in the pretense of saying something cool…
…and Yuriko saves the day in all her glory: “I’m Yuriko! Hi!”
...followed by Yu, racing in from the on-deck circle, with her amazing abilities: “I’m Yu! I’m Yuuuu!”
While the J-Poppers are momentarily distracted by the idiotic greetings of the two, I lean against the post of the staircase, shove my hands into my pockets and tilt my head to the side.
“Yo, 久しぶり.” <“Yo, long time no see”>.
After
Chiaki and Soon Hae
dressed a lot more sedately in Flames gear the super amazing coolness of my greeting (I’m sure anyone can look cool after Yuriko and Yu have taken a swing), they got settled and then collapsed after enduring 13 hours in the air without a BAG to get them hyped when they arrived.
After spending more time just rooted to a spot dumbfounded by the size of the House!, we woke the J-Poppers up and joined a bunch of Ted’s family and friends to a hockey game. Not knowing the difference between a fore check and a background check, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my first NHL game so I decided to focus on having fun my own way:
1. Obviously get closer to Chiaki
2. Fuck around with Calgarians and make them think I was a tourist from Japan
3. Heckle/Taunt New York style
We get to the ticket gate and I see my first chance: a bumbling small town woman who’s one encounter with a minority was probably when she mistakenly changed the channel to BET. She made small talk with Teddy as the rest of the J-Poppers silently handed in their tickets. She turned to take my ticket…
Attendant: Hi,
welcome to the Saddle Dome!
Me: I love Canada!
Attendant: Um…Ok.
Me: I love Flames! Go Flames Go!
Attendant: I love the Flames as well! Enjoy!
After which me and Teddy giggled in the corner at our amazingness. I tried this Japanese tourist shtick a few more times inside the Saddle Dome to hilarious results.
Teddy, being the baller that he is, got us a fucking box at the game. The game was also supposed to be huge because not only were Calgary and Detroit rivals, they were both fighting for playoff contention. Needless to say, the place was packed and amped.
And it got crazier as the Flames did this ridiculous introduction with flamethrowers hurtling fireballs towards the roof. The place was literally going bananas and then everyone in the crowd groaned as they started playing the Star Spangled Banner (remember, Calgary is in Canada).
It’s been about 5 years since I last sang that song. I’ve never noticed until that moment, but I’ve only sung the song at sporting events and the one time after 9/11. Needless to say, in this 2 to 3 minute interval on Posing after the win
No, the Korean didn't try to eat the dog Canadian soil, all those memories from the two things which define me: my city and my city’s sports teams, came flooding as the song started up. Lazy summer days playing little league at the Park, bitter cold evenings playing touch football at the Square, saving up money to go to Shea with my brother, uniting as a city after 9/11. I was happy, nostalgic and patriotic, there was a girl I liked standing beside me and the whole dome was silently staring at our box as we belted out lines of the song.
Compared to this sappy and emotional moment, I guess the rest of the game was incredibly inconsequential, but since I’m not sappy and emotional after one beer (which was promptly handed to me after the national anthem) the rest of the game was amazing. Channeling the amped feelings from the song (and from the steady supply of beer in my hand), I cheered on Calgary with the rest of our raucous box and got closer to Chiaki as we caught up. Later in the game, I was able to start a “Toyota! Toyota! Toyota!” cheer (remember, we were playing Detroit), but it didn’t progress past our Calgary Night Skyline
What do you think of when you see this? box.
Calgary won 1-0, which sent the hometown crowd into a frenzy and had everyone leaving happily.
On the way back to the House!, we slowly detoxed from the crazy high of the game by climbing a hill and looking back at the Calgary skyline.
Like every other person who has climbed a hill overlooking a skyline in the presence of single females, I stood, appearing to silently reflect on my life as I gazed at the beautiful twinkling lights of the city, while only one thought continually pervaded my mind.
“I better get laid soon.”
Check Teddy for his version of the first day of the trip.
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