Manitoba Nights

So now I’m back on the road again, ad people have been asking me to restart my blog, so I thought I’d revive my old blog from Asia, so here it is. Feel free to peruse my ancient posts, if you want to see what I was writing about a couple years back. Keep in mind, I sometimes write this on the fly (and in true rapidfire travel blog fashion, I consider editing to be an unnecessary frivolity), so enjoy!

But now, I’m not in Asia and in fact I’m going to write about Manitoba of all places, Yay, Bisonland. I arrived here about a week ago, thru one of the most frustrating times I’ve had the airport. I arrived plenty early, as I’d emptied out my apartment and didn’t have much else to do, I hopped a bus and headed down. The adventure, however, was just beginning. First the plane was delayed an hour, because apparently there had been a medical emergency on the previous flight, so they had to redirect to a different airport. Then when we finally did get on the plane, Pearson Airport apparently had a security breach so we all just sat on the plane for 45 mins until they marched us all off and back through security, while I tried avoid giving the Airport guys any ideas about cavity searches. What this all meant was that instead of arriving at 9pm in Winnipeg, I arrived at 1 am. My sister (Christy) and her then-husband-to-be (Carl) were there to greet me, along with my long lost cousin from Vancouver (Paige) who had arrived on an earlier flight. Then we all drove back to Brandon, 2 hrs from Winnipeg, arriving at about 4 am. Fun times.

The Wedding itself though went off without a hitch (other than the intended pun of course). The groomsmen surprised the groom, Carl, with a limo on the night before his wedding, so all the guys piled in and we cruised the wild streets of Brandon trying to avoid the $280 fine for waving your hands in the air like you just don’t care out the sun roof. We hit all the major hotspots in town, the double decker (where I saw one man drink an unheard of amount of bloody caesars), the Roadhouse (One of the top 2, cowboy themed danceclubs in Brandon), the friend of Carl’s who happened to be having a barbeque, make that giant bonfire in his backyard, and all these dudes in long hair and biker duds offered Carl beer and a bus ticket out of here before the wedding (jokingly Christy, if you’re reading this). Carl of course just accepted the beer.

The Wedding itself was in our old Anglican church, which is a nice kind of prairie Victorian building in one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Brandon. My sister looked beautiful, Carl had his fly done up, the ceremony went off without a hitch (except in my ushering duties, I forgot to hand out bubble blowers to people to use in lieu of messy confetti). The reception was held at a golf course (in the clubhouse, not out on the holes), and it was my job (in addition to drinking, eating, and schmoozing with the waitresses) to make a toast welcoming Carl into the family. Basically the toast consisted of me going through Carl’s various introductions to each member of the family, and poking fun at each member as I went through, and then getting all the members of the family to chuck cauliflower at him at the end of the speech. Trust me there’s context for this—I just choose not to provide it here. My speech went over very well, people kept coming up to me all day saying I should be a speech writer, or an author, or--and this especially tickles me--a freelancer for Maxim or FHM. One bridesmaid even said I was the next Dave Barry. BTW, who's Dave Barry? Anyways, I'm just happy I got to pelt Carl (my sister's fiance turned husband) with cauliflower in front of family and friends, and it all had glorious social justification.

After the reception, and a few minutes pushing the bridal corvette to the repair shop after it broke down in the parking lot. Then there was a pool party, a backyard BBQ, and copious amounts of alcohol was consumed by all (Something like 24 bottles of wine, 42 beers, and 5 bottles of the hard stuff), then as the bride and groom had whisked themselves away to consummate the marriage, I was left to entertain the younger guests, who split themselves into two warring factions or “tents” in the backyard, who revealed debaucherous information and glared at each other like two male bullmooses during mating season, while they harangued me for showing favour to one tent over the other. Following the resolution of the tent wars, I went with the “Popular Tent” (What can I say, they had all the bridesmaids) to go to Houston’s (Brandon’s other Western themed night club) but we could not get in, despite the fact I had a flashing Sound Wave shirt on. So instead we all piled illegally into one car, throwing one valiant groomsmen into the trunk, and headed over to Christy and Carl’s abandoned house to whoop it up with their dog (Wilco) and guitar.

Following the wedding I took a few days to recover, and actually came down with a cold. Nevertheless, I didn’t know if I’d get a chance to go waterskiing again, so we went down to the lake and I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t water ski when you’re sick as a dog. It is not a good idea. Go seadooing instead.

But anyway, it all worked out (except I can do nothing but wipeout with my flu), and we all played some game called “If you had to choose…” which as far as I can tell could also be called “What Jon and Christine have a ridiculous argument about.” Apparently they’re still not talking about their differences of opinion over whether one would rather be Moses or Bob Marley or some such thing.

We also made a point of hitting up all the solitarly ethnic restaurants in Brandon. Ie the only Japanese restaurant (Tokyo Zone), the only Indian restaurant (Chilly Chutney), and the only Irish pub I hadn’t drank at yet (Clancy’s, which was new). There’s also a new Mexican place opening up called Mexican Chilly (The Chilly’s spelt this way, because its owned by the same folks as the Indian restaurant, although I still think it would be awesome if they did correct it, but instead of saying Mexican Chili, said Mexican Chile, just to give a shout out to, or perhaps annoy, the one Chilean who lives in Brandon)

A few days before leaving, I hung out in Winnipeg for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, which rivals the Edmonton one for being the biggest in North America. For those who don’t know what the blazes a Fringe Festival is, let’s just say it’s a series of really low-budget theatrical presentations in small theaters for cheap admission, and they often have crazy premises. For example, this year I saw a show about how to do CPR; a family comedy about loansharks, narcotics, and domestic violence; Beowulf; Hair: The Musical; Giant Killer Shark: The Musical; and some improv, among other things. Good times.

Anyways, now I’m back in Brandon and I have to pack. Talk to you all soon, and next time you hear from me I should be in Vienna. Talk to you then, Ryan.