Well toenail, you’ve had a good run. For 32 years you’ve done your job well and it was just too much to ask that you hang on any longer. The Oxfam Race way back in August was the death of you. You were swollen black before that race even ended and I was surprised that you didn’t simply leave me then and there. For three months, you battled to stay attached to me and you nearly did it. I’m proud of you for hanging in there as long as you did. I probably should have stopped running for a bit and kept you neatly trimmed. Instead, I kept training, neglected you and let you grow too long. This ultimately forced your departure by getting you caught in the bed sheets every morning only to see you tear away, millimetre by millimetre.

My tender toe skin is exposed and only now that you are gone do I truly realize how much I’ll miss you. Cliché indeed. A stiff breeze now causes me to wince and when I accidentally kicked a bar stool I nearly passed out in pain. To represent my shame, I will wear a single black sock to bed as a symbol of how horribly I’ve treated you. I will wear it until I get a new nail although I expect that day is quite some time off. I can only hope that when that day comes I have learned my lesson and will give it the attention it deserves…the attention you deserved.

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Before last weekend, I had only been to three countries. Canada, USA and Australia. A few months ago, the buddies that I ride with invited me to a race in New Zealand and I jumped at the chance. The race was the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge; 160km of grueling cycling followed by a pretty good party.

We had trained hard leading up to the race and were grateful that it was scheduled for November and not January because we had started to crack mentally. You can only train at race pace for so long without questioning if you cycle as a fun hobby that ends with a coffee or because you enjoy the torture.

The five that headed over from Sydney got delayed at the airport for two hours and everyone but me knew the secret handshake that allowed you into the Qantas Lounge. The privileged four flashed a card and sneaked me into the mysterious lounge that I had heard so much about but assumed was a myth that millionaires told common folk. For the first time I enjoyed a flight delay, perfectly comfortable enjoying my free breakfast and glugging freshly squeezed orange juice.

Because the other team members had raced here before, logistics were a breeze. Our (painfully) disciplined leader Carl had organized everything. With military precision we moved from the airport to the rented SUV’s and on to Taupo and our rented house for the weekend. I quickly realized that although this weekend was planned for a bike race, it was really a guy’s long weekend that happened to have a bike event on the Saturday. The true purpose of the race was to provide ammunition for conversation (read: taunting) for the next 12 months.

The pre-race verbal sparring and mind games were epic. The trash talking reached a high the night before the race and admittedly, my confidence was wavering. The target for the 160km was 5 hours and it was going to be close. That pace would require everything to fall into place and to possibly sacrifice of a kidney to avoid a piss stop.

The race probably deserves its own blog entry but I’ll summarize as best as possible. The start line could only be described as controlled chaos. The 11,500 riders completely engulfed the Main Street that normally catered to Taupo’s 22,000 residents. Everywhere you looked there were riders within 3 inches of one another. Making things even more nerve racking was the rain that poured down making the roads slick and the sunglasses foggy. It didn’t take long for the first ambulance to come racing past and every 10 minutes or so a rider was on the side of the road with either a flat tire or road rash. Our team managed to navigate the crowd pretty well for the first half and then everything blew apart and I was separated. I hammered the pace up the hills (that’s what skinny guys do) and that seemed like a good idea at the time but proved to be my undoing. Sure, I set a blistering pace to the summits but was completely shattered and couldn’t keep up with the tempo riding on the flats afterward. By the end of the race I had gained about 9 minutes on the hills and lost…damn near 25 minutes on the flats!

With 7 kilometres to go, at the base of a small hill, my body was not pleased with me and I had lost focus when a huge sign came into view and cheered me up. “This hill is a bitch!” The part that made it so funny was that the sign wasn’t handmade or chalked on the road – the organizers (who clearly had keen eye for detail) had it professionally made. I crossed the line in 5 hours 12 minutes and couldn’t have pushed any harder. Next year though, it’s on. Thanks to the guys for a great weekend and the race organizers for running such a fantastic event.

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I am sick. Aiva is sick. Together we are a big pile of miserable. Our current rate of snot production is about two litres per hour. That’s not entirely accurate as that measurement is only what makes it into a tissue. It would be impossible to estimate the amount that goes down the back of our throats while we sleep. Not that we are getting much sleep.

I’ll take the blame for this one because I got sick first and passed it along therefore it’s pretty hard to deny that I started it. We shouldn’t be surprised though because Aiva is going through merger hell at work; I had a vicious month end and am over-training for my cycling race in two weeks. All this undue stress eventually takes it toll – and the currency used to pay that toll is snot.

Our nutritional daily intake is now reduced to gelato, juice, vitamins and Sudafed. Sometimes I shake things up with an Extra Strength Tylenol before bed just for fun. Generally, Aiva is handling being sick with more grace than I am. With the exception of the sneezing fits that make her look like an Epileptic with Tourette's, she just sounds congested. I on the only hand, require anyone that will listen to fully understand the extent of my suffering (hence this entry). I’m splayed out across on the bed with the back of my hand of my forehead like some 40’s crime movie victim. One look at me and you know immediately that I have a set of lungs filled with gunk, two ear infections and judging from the glassy eyes, it’s possible that my puppy just got run over. I just don’t do “sick” gracefully. I do, however, do “victim” pretty convincingly.

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Going to open houses has to be one of the most frustrating activities. The whole process is terrible because it consumes at least half the weekend. Going from one open house to the next seems easy but in Sydney, most open houses are only open for 30 minutes. Some are as short as 15 minutes. We were trying to see as many houses as possible on Saturday morning. It was a lot like the bushland compass training at Kingfisher Lake I received when I was twelve. There were nine checkpoints to locate in a reasonably small area called the maze. The goal was to plot the most efficient way of hitting all nine in the tight time frame. As a twelve year old, you quickly learned to cheat by partnering up with a buddy to halve the time. This guaranteed victory while the rest of the class was still lost somewhere in the Northern Ontario bush.

Aiva and I partnered up with our GPS and real estate printouts in hand and entered “the maze” that is Sydney’s inner west. Unlike my adolescence, she wasn’t keen to seal the agreement with a spit enclosed handshake. After snooping through four homes that were all approximately $500,000 each, you would think that we would be brimming with excitement as we compared notes about “the mahogany in the west wing library and how the pool tiles match the marble kitchen countertops nicely”. However, Sydney housing prices are quite different to Thunder Bay.

Half a million bucks will buy you a 2-bedroom apartment located directly under every Qantas 747 flight leaving Sydney. If the noise doesn’t drive you mad, banging you knees repeatedly on the corner of your bed surely will because every bedroom is rectangular. Somewhere in your shoebox sized home, you will also smoke your head on the low ceiling so hard that your eyes water and take your mind off the jets. If you managed to survive the concussion and bruised joints, the kitchen will likely drive you straight to the asylum. Full sized fridges are unheard of and counter space is as rare as an albino panda. On a positive note, in the summer heat it could be helpful as you would be able to sit in your fridge and chop vegies on the counter at the same time.

I guess that’s just the way it is in Sydney. You are paying for the weather, beaches, nightlife and big city living in general, not simply a mortgage. I’m sure that if you solely wanted a nice house you could find one in a place like Nipigon for $50,000 but when it rains the air smells like wet dog and going out for a nice dinner provides only two options: the Poutine at the Husky Gas Station or a meatball sub from Subway. Don’t get me wrong, I like both those dinner options so Aiva and I really need to decide on whether we prefer a spacious pulp town or a cramped city.

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I checked my email to find a comment request for this blog from “Damien”. His comment was related to an entry that I posted about an evening out at the Sydney Opera House. Before you read his comment, it would probably be best if you read my entry first if you haven’t already.

"I’ve cried before on reading a review of one of our shows but not tears of laughter. Your eloquent description of the music is beautiful – we should get you to write our press releases. Do you mind if we quote you on our website? Anyway, we’re really sorry we gave you a headache, but I’m sure its nothing an ibuprofen and a good backbeat didn’t cure. Thanks for coming." - Damiem (Co-Artistic Director, Ensemble Offspring)

Well Damien, if you thought you laughed upon reading my blog, I damn near pissed myself when I read your comment. I immediately showed everyone in the office and even accused a few friends of faking it. Next thing I knew, the office was filled with curious staff with earphones plugged in and your YouTube video on their screens. I’m sure their curiosity was partly (read: mostly) driven by the hope that I would be slapped with a defamation lawsuit but either way, you now have an office that all know of Ensemble Offspring.

Feel free to quote or link this blog if you believe that it will help. Send me the link to it and I would be happy to post it here for you.

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