Oh, Canada. Where Have You Been All My Life?

AP/Larry MacDougal

You may already know this, but Canadians make no bones about it that they aren't Americans (doesn't everyone?). But that still doesn't change the fact that the first thing I saw kind of damned part of their argument. After all, when your urinals say "American Standard" well, you might be a little bit American.

But after dealing with army time and the metric system for a whole weekend, I still haven't figured out how to convert American numbers into metric numbers. I mean, when you use kilometres and kilograms how can two goals in Florida be worth the same as two in Calgary? It seems like there should be a conversion or something. But probably the most bizarre and yet, still interesting, question I had from this weekend trip was -- how has mankind survived in a place for centuries where the temperature is -15* with wind chills nearly double that? (I'm talking Fahrenheit here because Celsius confuses me) Man, was that place cold. And yet the people were still friendly. Quite the conundrum.

But alas, there are no pictures from the trip. I completely forgot to bring my camera. I can tell you that the train system works on the honor system, as there usually isn't someone around to check that you actually bought a ticket. You also need exact change to buy a ticket, which I imagine is probably the reason most people don't buy tickets and take their chances. I, for one, was really irritated when they actually did check tickets before we got on the train home from the Saddledome Thursday night and was, you know, forced to beg for a quarter since I was a quarter short and needed exact change. Ridiculous. Enough about how uninteresting that is.

Best bar pub in Calgary would have to be the Ship and Anchor. It's completely European. I mean completely. The worst service at a restaurant was the Den. It's a rare occasion when you have to wait 30 minutes for someone to simply take your order. And the cab drivers were all foreign, naturally, but were all really nice. Come to think of it, just about everyone was really nice. Except for the guy sitting behind me at the game who consistently yelled incoherent things about the forecheck. Enough with the damned forecheck already. And if anyone knows the girl who sat next to us at the game, let me know so I can bring her with me to every sporting event I ever go to ever. I don't think anyone has ever heckled so loudly for so long without realizing how funny they were (you can guess why). Yelling random obscenities, and lines like "get the hell outta dodge" for no apparent reason had us all crying with laughter by the second period. Although I think the parents with kids behind us weren't too pleased. I can't imagine they would be.