First Ride of the Year!

We did our first outdoor ride of the year this morning! Awesome weather, given we've had one of the worst winters in memory in terms of snow accumulation.

Gilles, Rolf, Kelly and Paul R (on a hybrid!) went around 65k to Oakville and back. As Kelly pointed out later, it wasn't exactly a leisurely ride, as speeds sometimes got up to 40km/h and more.

I can't believe I only got my first road bike last February. Comparing my first road ride last year with today's ride, I'm obviously way ahead of where I started, which bodes well for this year.

Remy the Thief

The girls and I had the rats out last night - we block off the family room doorway, bring down the cage and let them run around the family room downstairs.

Robbie was sitting cross legged and she had a big raw carrot that she was eating in her hand. She kept picking up Remy and I kept telling her to put Remy down until she was finished eating her carrot because I didn't want rat germs getting on her carrot.

So she was arguing with me blah blah..., she puts Remy down and kept talking, arguing...

Then Remy came over, snatched this huge carrot out of her hand and ran away with it under the couch!

Abby and I were killing ourselves... Robbie started crying. Then she says:

"I hate that rat!"

then....

"She's a little f*ck!"

Then I washed her mouth out with soap....

Winnie's Story

Girls,

This is a story of your Great Grandmother Winnie (Winifred Bourassa), as told to Gram:

Marie Winifred Theresa Blais Bourassa (08 October 1912)

“I was born in Wolf’s Cove (Quebec City) in 1912. From there I was put in the Jeffrey Hale Hospital in Quebec City because I was 2-l/2 lbs when I was born (I was premature). At that time, I think my father (George Augustus Blais) was working for V.Z. Boswell. He was a bear brewer, and sold Boswell’s beer in Quebec City. Dad was looking after their horses, and riding as a jockey for them in horse races. Mr. Boswell had cars which they only used in the summer. In the winter, they used coaches – which are sleighs, drawn by horses. You would cover yourself with fur blankets and my father would drive the sleigh.

"My father was born in Quebec City. His father was a carriage maker, and his mother was Irish and she came from one of the Eastern States (USA). Her name was Ellen Barrett and they could never find her background history. My father had many siblings: Theophile (brother), Frank, Ned, Alec, Josephine (sister) and George (my father, who was the baby of the family.)

"My father’s mother died young, and apparently the kids went wild. They ran around barefoot in the cold spring weather in Quebec City. My father threw an inkwell at the religious brother who was his teacher because he got angry. The brother gave him the strap. When the other siblings heard about their brother being flogged, they all beat up on the religious brother and they were all expelled from school. This is the reason they could barely read and write.

"My mother, Alicia Winifred Baker was born ~ 1887 in Liverpool, England. (She was named “Nonney” by Grams’s sister, Louise {Batchelor}. Louise also named Winnie’s father, George Blair, “Daggy”.) Her mother came from Ireland (Kathlene Keily) and her father was an Englishman, Fred Baker – whose career was the British Army. He met my grandmother in Ireland when he was stationed there and they got married in a Protestant church. Horrors!!! My mother had several siblings: Sisters Louis, Elizabeth, Clara, Florence and a brother Fred. Nonney’s mother died while she was in final exams in High School. She died of the “dropsy” which is a disease not noted in any medical dictionary. Nonney went into Nursing after she finished high school, but was expelled for fraternizing with the doctors. (She told Denyse that she used to go with the doctors on the ambulance runs, which were horse-drawn carriages.)

"Nonney was a rebellious child so the family arranged that she take the boat to Quebec City (the boat was called the Lucitania) and from there she went to see the parish priest (St. Patrick’s in Quebec City) and he got her a job as a governess for the Boswell’s because she had an education. She taught the 2 Boswell children (Jimmy and Margaret) school, went to tea parties, and worked as a Nanny. In those days children from rich parents didn’t go to the public schools. They were tutored at home.

"That’s how my mother and father met: they both worked at Boswell’s. Nonney became pregnant with Winnie, and they got married. After Winnie was born, they left Boswell’s and Daggy went to work in Montreal for the Campbell family. Winnie moved to Montreal before she was 1 year old, because she remembered seeing a photo where they used to carry her around in a basket. In the summertime, the Campbell’s moved to Mont- St-Hilaire (Quebec) and Nonney and Daggy moved with them. My mother and father used to talk about the St. Lawrence River, the boats, etc. Daggy did not like Mrs. Campbell but Nonney loved her. The brother of the man Daggy worked for was Sir Bruce Campbell, who was the Engineer who designed the Quebec City bridge. (the 1^st bridge collapsed, and it was rebuilt).

Note: Gram went to Mont-Saint-Hilaire on business while Winnie was still alive and described to Winnie that she had stayed in a wonderful chateau-turned hotel called “Manoir Rouville-Campbell”. The hotel turned out to be the estate where Nonney and Daggy worked!

"From there Daggy worked for the Davis’s on Drummond Street, in Montreal. (PS: The Davis House was still standing when Denyse went to McGill to register for Physiotherapy – the Davis House was the same house in which Nonney worked.) My sister Eileen was born in February 1914. Her name was Eileen Gertrude Blais. She was born when my father was working for the Davis’s.

"That’s where Nonney and Daggy made all their money. The Davis’s were friends of the Molson’s, and the Molson’s had a cock fight pit which may have been illegal at the time and they got Daggy to get the roosters (Bantam Roosters) to fight. He trained them to fight. He also organized the fights for the bosses. The fights took place at Molson’s house in Montreal!! (This period was probably shortly before prohibition.) The “big shots” would bet on the fights. Daggy also bet on the fights because he probably knew which cock would fight. Nonney used to act as hostess during these parties.

"Then Nonney saw an ad in the newspaper for land in Daytona, Florida for ~ $200-300. She wrote away, and bought the land that they were going to grow bananas and oranges on. Winnie was about 2 years old and Eileen was 1 year old. This was probably 1915 which was the same year the 1^st World War began. I think we took the train to Florida. They took a boat from Jacksonville to Daytona, and Daggy got very sick on the boat.

"We stayed in Florida for 2 years until my parents went broke. Daggy had blacks working for him, and Nonney told Winnie that he used to love listening to their music and that’s how he learned to play the mouth organ and tap dance. They traveled to Boston and they rented a cottage at Lake Winnipesoki (Mass, USA) and that’s where my brother Reginald (Reggie) was born. Daggy was working for a doctor there, and Nonney was put in the hospital to have her baby (born in 1915) – in Boston. He weighed 12 pounds, and won a prize for being the biggest baby. There was a picture taken, and he was in the middle of the picture. He was fat, fat.

"While Mum was in the hospital, some rich people took care of Winnie in their home. They had a large home, with 2 large dogs. These people wanted to adopt Winnie, because they didn’t have any children. (named Hill) They had a huge summer home at Lake Winnipesoki.

"One time, Winnie and Eileen were sitting on a rock by the lake and she had a little rubber horse which she always kept with her. She dropped the horse in the water and she started to cry. I said don’t cry, I’ll hold you and you can reach down and get it. Winnie held her, but the horse kept riding further away with the waves. Winnie lost her strength, and said she would have to let her sister go and went to get her mother. She screamed her lungs out, and Nonney went into the water up to her chin (she couldn’t swim) and pulled Eileen out of the water. Winnie remembered this well. The doctor came and pumped water out of Eileen.

"The Hills wanted to adopt Winnie. They wouldn’t bring Winnie back to the cottage. Daggy kept saying “when are you going to get her!!”. So finally Daggy told Nonney to get Winnie. The Hills kept coming to the cottage in their big car (convertible) and they offered a lot of money to Nonney and Daggy for Winnie’s adoption with the proviso that Winnie would always know who her parents were. Daggy said NO – even though they didn’t have a cent!”

Note: Unfortunately, Gram didn’t record any more stories about Winnie and her life. Winnie’s sister, Eileen, died during the Spanish Flu epidemic, while they lived in Thetford Mines, Quebec. Reggie was in the Royal Air Force and worked as a navigator on a bomber. He died during World War II when his plane was shot down. Brothers Brian, Gerry and Gordy were a close-knit trio, who loved to work on their cottage at Lac des Piles (Quebec), water ski, and party! They took great delight in stirring up arguments with their sister.

Gram’s grandfather, George Blais, had his name changed to George “Blair”. All Winnie’s siblings had their last names changed to Blair as well. We don’t know why the name was changed, but this apparently was arranged by Nonney.

Graham Food Brigade

Dark Clouds on the Horizon

In the morning, I went wandering around the village, and there didn’t seem to be anybody around. I heard a familiar sound and searched around for its source. I found them – all the girls form then night before and other women and boys were huddled around a black and white TV, watching some dubbed Chinese kung fu/love story movie. Map strikes again!

After breakfast, the elephants arrived. We figured the elephant ride would be pretty cheesy – like cheap circus attractions, but we had a great time. Map went off – we would meet up with him later – and we mounted the elephants from a platform built off of the medicine man’s hut porch. Beth and I were on one elephant, while the other three were on another. We started off, working our way out through the village farms. Our elephant (quite obviously male by casual inspection) was hungry and kept tearing out corn from the fields, only to be hit on the head with a heavy metal pipe by the “driver” – it looked and sounded quite painful! It was amazing how good the elephant’s balance was. Just the day before, Beth and I were slip sliding down the slick mud hill to get to the “showers”, but the elephants handled it with the greatest of ease. River crossings were a bit intense, but again no problems.

After about thirty minutes, we were in the middle of the jungle when abruptly the elephants stopped. The “drivers’ looked at us and immediately I thought “this is where we get robbed”. Horrible to assume something like that, but that’s what happened when you heard too many bad stories/rumors and had a wild imagination. Moments later, the other elephant in front of us took the most enormous piss I’d ever seen and proceeded to shit huge cannonballs all over the place. Who knew?

It took us just over an hour to meet up with Map and banana man on a newly built road. Map said the road was put in three months before, and in six months the surrounding villages would be “electric town”. Some people were happy about it, others were not. The Thai government was trying to integrate the hill tribes into the main population mainly because the tribes were sitting on vast amounts of resource rich land that the government wanted to get at. The North American Indian situation was happening all over again in almost every Asian country we visited.

We’d been lucky with the weather, but just then it started to pour. Beth and I were well equipped, but the other three got soaked. Luckily we were walking on a hard, earthen road and not on the slippery clay paths of the hills. After about half an hour, a truck picked us up and drove us to the rafting jetty.

We had ant filled noodle soup for lunch – we were so hungry that we casually picked the bugs out and continued eating. We laughed – a couple of years before, we would have complained to the waiter and pompously demanded a new meal, and afterward we would have spread the word to family and friends about the restaurant’s cleanliness or lack thereof – OK, I’m exaggerating a bit! Now, we just picked the bugs out and got back to business.

The rafting, although fun, wasn’t the excitement packed adventure that I’d expected. It was the rainy season, yet there were no rapids. Still, sitting (and occasionally poling) on a small raft made of lashed together bamboo poles that barely floated above the surface of the river was pretty good fun. I wouldn’t have been so keen on excitement had I heard the story a woman we met in Nepal who told us about her raft breaking up, killing one of the other rafters and forcing her to hike through the jungle for two days before finding a village that helped her out!

Map wanted to take us to a butterfly and orchid garden, but we vetoed that, so instead he took us to some waterfalls in Doi Suthep National Park. The ten-stage waterfall was pretty nice, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit them.

The Thai people say you haven’t seen Chiang Mai until you’ve seen Doi Suthep pagoda, but we opted to sleep in the next day before our flight to Myanmar. We got a tuk-tuk to the airport for 60 baht – the first time we’d been in a tuk-tuk since our initial Bangkok experience two years before. The airport had a post office, free Home Country Direct phones, a good book store, and even a Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut. We blew our remaining baht on Blizzards and pizza. As we were waiting to board our flight, dark clouds were blowing in over the western mountains…….

Jungle Trek

We lucked out again. Our trekking group was small – two American girls (Amy and Elizabeth) and a Brit named Richard. We all got along really well, but what made the trek was our “Map”. We left our packs at Ben Guesthouse, and put our valuables and some supplies in packs that Map lent us. We had just the right amount of stuff:

ü Raincoat

ü Shorts

ü 1 Pair of socks/day

ü Long pants

ü Hiking boots

ü T-shirt/day

ü Flashlight

ü Squeegee towel

ü Underwear/day

ü Pack of cigarettes/day (to give singles to the hill tribe men)

ü Zip lock bags to waterproof everything

ü Plastic laundry bag to waterproof our clothes

ü Soap, toothbrush, toothpaste

ü Valuables, film and camera

*Depending on your personal philosphy, some people brought candy and pens for the kids

**This was during the rainy season – you wouldn’t need rain gear unless you went at this time

Map’s position on keeping valuables for trekkers was – he didn’t. He guaranteed to take people to safe areas, so there was no need to store valuables. It was also important to check if the guide you were using was licensed (it changed quickly, due to drug testing – so we were told not to rely solely on recommendations from books or other travelers) and whether or not the guide registered with the police before and after the trek like they were supposed to.

We drove for an hour and a half in a songthaew (like a covered pick-up where you sat on benches) northeast towards Doi Saket. We were all dressed in our boots, while little Map wore low cut Chuck Cons and knee high blue socks. We started walking. Map stepped in a deep puddle and happily exclaimed “Oh, I’m lucky”. He would do this anytime something “bad” happened!

After about an hour, we arrived at a Lahu tribe village. Map sat us down in the medicine man’s hut and we snacked on bananas while he explained about the tribe. The Lahu people numbered around 60,000, but their village was only about 150 in size. They (especially this tribe – closer to civilization) had abandoned their traditional clothing and wore a mix of tattered Western clothes and traditional clothes. We were welcomed into their village, but felt neither welcome nor unwelcome.

The medicine man in most villages was the most important person in the village – there were no hierarchical systems in place, but he was the centerpiece of the village. His knowledge was passed down to his son, and if there was no son, they usually got a medicine man from another village. Map talked for a solid half-hour on the customs of the Lahu. They were still very animistic and relied heavily on the stars to tell them if they should work or not from day to day. During the month-long New Year’s festival, there was a week of “free-for-all sex” where a man tapped any women (or girl) married or not, on the hand and they went off to what we dubbed “love huts”. These little huts belonged to the village and were built away from the main settlement in corn or rice fields. They were found everywhere in hill tribe areas. This sparked a half-hour conversation among the five of us about Western values and Eastern norms regarding sex.

Map hired a Lahu nicknamed “banana man”. He got this nickname by eating 45 mini bananas in 10 minuets, winning 500 baht off Map. Banana man didn’t talk too much, but he was full of smiles. Map didn’t really need him to carry his bag, but I think Map paid him to help banana man out.

Walking from village to village, Beth and I were surprised at the scenery – we hadn’t seen anything like it. It was beautiful – walking up and down hills surrounded by steep rising mountains. We passed through hillside corn and maize plantations, and then the scene would suddenly change to dense bamboo and teak forests.

The second village, after an hour walking (40 minutes “Map time”), was a Lisu tribe village. There are about 25,000 Lisu, and this village seemed pretty big. Map was greeted with a warm welcome (as everywhere else) and we were greeted by aggressive Ahka women vendors. The Ahka women wore the distinctive headdresses made of silver (tin?), beads, coins and buttons. They attacked everyone, but honed in on Richard – he was the greenest looking and best dressed of the five of us, and the women sensed this like dogs sensed fear. There were about 33,000 Ahka (we passed by their village shortly thereafter) and their dress was in sharp contrast to the half Western, half Chinese dress of the Lahu and Lisu.

Richard was as green a traveler as they get when we met him, and he readily admitted it. We told him about getting “ripped off” by a tuk tuk two years before. The driver drove Beth, her Dad and I to a gem store and two temples as promised, but took off without us having paid anything, leaving us in the middle of nowhere. Not exactly the worst scam in the world, but anyway…

Richard said he had a better story. He had arrived in Bangkok, white as a sheet and dressed “nicely”, and on his first day, a tuk tuk driver offered to take him around the city for 500 baht (an expensive proposition). He thought it would be a good way to get a feel for the city. The driver asked him if he was interested in Thai massage. He thought “yeah, I fancy trying that, but I wonder if he means a prostitute”. The tuk tuk driver took him outside the city to a shop, and introduced Richard to the masseuse. “When I got a look at her, I knew it wasn’t prostitution… she must have weighed over two hundred pounds”. On the islands, you usually paid 100-150 baht for a one hour massage, 300 baht tops for a 5-star hotel, but Richard dickered the price down from 1000 baht to 800 baht! He said he was pretty happy with his negotiating prowess. After just over an hour, he paid the woman and she said she usually got tips, so he toipped her 200 baht! So much for haggling! When the tuk tuk driver dropped him off, he had a huge smile and told Richard he’d be waiting for him the next day. I bet he did too, every tuk tuk driver needed a guy like Richard!.

More hiking, including passing through several streams, and we arrived at Map’s village – a Karen tribe. There were four kinds of Karens – the most famous of which were the long necks (or more anatomically correct “low shoulders”!). The other three had other distinct features, one of which we saw later that night.

Map’s parents died when he was 11, and he moved to Chiang Mai to live with Burmese foster parents. He told us that he went to a movie shortly after moving to the city. The movie was King Kong and it was the first time he’d seen “moving pictures”. He was cheering for the people to kill King Kong - “get the monkey meat!” He had grown up with a slightly different perspective than city dwellers. Hill tribes eat everything – bugs, roots, plants (banana leaf, flowers, stalk, steam, root, and oh yes… the fruit as well) and animals – including monkeys!

Now, every year Map took kids from the village into Chiang Mai and treated them to a movie. He did this because he thought it was fun, but also to expose the kids to other parts of life that he never had a chance to see until his parents died.

When we arrived at Map’s village, a man was stuffing large locusts into a bamboo chute, to later steam and eat. Map brought him some presents for a little girl in the village. An American couple had sent them after trekking with their son and staying in the village for two nights the year before. Map had done well for himself (he and his 3 partners own their trekking company) and the village had in turn prospered. They had a small school and a black and white, battery powered TV, all care of Map.

After another hour and a half of trekking, we came to our final stop at another Karen village – the long belt Karens. We were a little surprised that we hadn’t seen any other trekking groups, but Map told us that only two companies came to those villages. He laughed when people told him “we want to go to an area with no tourists” – he told them to go to electric town (the city) and they would see no tourists. Still, we were glad and lucky to be alone.

The village seemed pretty big. We put our stuff down in a large hut which was built by Map (he called it the “Map Holiday Inn”) next to the medicine man’s house. A little boy led us down to a river where a bunch of women were showering – when I pulled off my shirt, they all turned around embarrassed, and the kid quickly ushered us into some makeshift shower stalls – oops!

An hour later, Map called us for dinner, and we headed over to the medicine man’s hut. The dinner was awesome – by far the best meal we had eaten in Thailand, and the five of us were all sickly full. Later, the villagers who weren’t married (they marry around the ages of 13-15) sang traditional songs for us and wore traditional clothing. The long belts are made of bamboo (and sometimes silver or tin) and Map said they never took them off except to shower. I questioned this, and he laughed and said “they also take them off to …. exercise” and he giggled like a schoolboy.

The Map Holiday Inn was a fairly large hut. It was raised about a meter off the ground and the flooring was a soft bamboo weave. There were sets of blankets and pillows all folded up and placed neatly along the walls. The place was devoid of insects – flying or crawling – due to the burning of a natural citronella-like candle. We slept soundly on our thin mats, and didn’t wake up until morning.

Phad Thai ala Tyndall

The next morning we were picked up at the cooking school office. We were driven about 15 minutes out to a brand new housing development in the suburbs of Chiang Mai. Their school was a half outdoor building and an air conditioned theater style kitchen, located next to their huge, brand new house. There were 16 of us in total. There were 4 middle aged women from Canada who had just finished a 3-day trek that sounded like a bit of a nightmare – especially for the 2 Japanese guys who went with them who came back to empty “safety” boxes at their trekking office. Apparently, they’d used a simple key lock and the women had used a tougher combination lock – but I suspect that the fact that they were Japanese might have been part of the reason – the thieves knew that a) they had money and b) they probably wouldn’t raise a stink. Everything was gone – plane tickets, money, passports, traveler’s checks – everything. Of course, there were tons of warnings in every guidebook about leaving your stuff in hotels or guesthouses. The best thing to do was either rent a safety deposit box at a bank, or take your valuables with you. The danger in that was being robbed while trekking, but unless you were going to the far-reaching interior areas, it was pretty safe.

The four Canadian women had an interesting story. All six of them were nurses and they were in Thailand for six weeks. They had all agreed two years back that they would open an account and deposit a little money in it every week to save for a trip. Each one of them was responsible for researching and presenting a country – South Africa, Argentina, Mongolia and Thailand – and obviously Thailand won out.

We sat Thai style on the floor in a semi-circle and Somphon taught us about herbs, vegetables and most importantly chilies used in Thai cuisine. We then went into the kitchen and watched him make four dishes. There were chances for a little participation, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged and the atmosphere wasn’t conducive to it. Beth and I were a little disappointed, as we’d pictured a very hands-on experience - that said, the day was informative and interesting and we didn’t regret going at all. After the four dishes were finished, we went outside again and feasted. We recovered a little, and then went back inside for two more dishes and more gorging. We washed it all down with fresh in-season fruit, and abruptly, Somphon clapped his hands, said “OK, we’re finished!” and we were whisked back to town. Again, we felt it was a bit cold (especially for the notoriously warm Thai reputation, I guess Somphon had lived in England a little too long….) and we didn’t feel the need to thank him or say goodbye. As for the 2 or 3 day course – I probably would not recommend it. Going through the herb and spice intro more that once would be a total bore, and the cookbook was laid out such that all you needed was one day.