The Greatest Show on Earth: The Calgary Stampede

Well my first full week here was during the highest point in Calgary all year.  The Calgary Stampede. It is a 10 day rodeo, agricultural exhibition, and festival.  Basically it is an excuse for the whole town to party, wear cowboy hats and boots, and eat a ridiculous amount of pancakes.  The city, local communities, businesses, and organizations all host FREE pancake breakfasts the whole time.  I am not talking about some frozen pancakes thrown into a warming pan; I’m talking about fresh hot pancakes, bacon, sausage, ham, eggs, etc.  It is crazy.  I digress…

The Stampede starts every year (this is the 99^th) with a big parade.  This year was no exception.  And to top it all of the Duke and Duchess were here!  Almost half a million people showed up lining the streets downtown.  We arrived downtown at about 6:45…completely unprepared.  Everyone down there had their camping chairs, coffee, breakfasts, snacks…cowboy hats and boots.  We had ourselves and a Ziploc baggie of cereal…to be fair, at this point we didn’t even have any camping chairs.  In fact all we had in our house was one beach chair, a TV, and a queen sized bed.  We had NO idea what we were doing.  So we basically stood on the side of the road right behind this nice family.  It was obviuously NOT their first rodeo (oh yes I did).  They had a ton of chairs, cameras, food, drinks, blankets, hats, boots, the whole thing.  The close the parade got the more people started to fill in and we realized we were going to have a problem.  The crowd got about 10 deep and with us standing, no one could see.  In true Canadian fashion, the family in front of us shuffled kids around and offered us two of their chairs…RIGHT in front.  How nice?!  They also chatted us up and invited us out to the resort they own.  We sat right down and got ready…this was at about 7:30.  Little did we know we had a long wait.  The streets were packed and everyone was so excited to see William and Kate.  Finally commotion starts at about 9, police start coming through,  car with flags, the whole nine yards.  Cameras poised…here we go!  Wizzzzzzzzz!

Here is the picture I got:

Yep.  That was it.  They FLEW through.  I mean are you kidding me?!  I had been waiting for over 2 hours to get a good glimpse and all I got was a split second view of them in the backseat of a Town Car and a picture of Prince William’s hand.  Not. Cool.

Before I get to pictures from the parade and snarky commentary let me say one more thing.  It was COLD.  Like COLD COLD.  I was freezing my butt off.  I had on jeans, boots, a long sleeve shirt, and a North Face jacket.  I was cursing the whole time that I should have thrown my down liner in.  The temperature wasn’t so bad…maybe low 50’s (still cold) but the wind was out of control.  It was whipping down the streets between the tall buildings.  So while I was bundled up and praying for warmth most everyone else was dressed like the were going to the beach.  There were 65415 girls in cutoffs or sundresses, most with cowboy boots, a lot with flip flops.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  A man actually said to me; “It’s pretty clear you aren’t from around here…what you have on is what we wear when its about 40 below”.  This statement got to me for a few reasons:

·         Is there even clothing in existent that will keep me warm in winter?  Or in fall for that matter?

·         FORTY below?? 

·         Surely he means Fahrenheit?!

·         Wait…FORTY below?  He has to be kidding.

·         Are we going to die up here?

Ok, on with the pictures and videos.

Here is how it started.

A marching band playing Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" AND girls in pink glitter shirt and pink tassel chaps doing tricks??!  SIGN ME UP!  I was already telling Britton how next year I am going to be one of them.  Never mind the fact that I am scared to death of horses...and committing to anything.

Next, Mounties!  I honestly have no idea what they are or what they do and how they differ from other police or whatever but they do look quite dapper in their red uniforms atop their trusty steeds, no?

Scottish bagpipe players...I have no idea why in a totally Western themed parade there were bagpipe players but this was one of MANY so apparently there is a Scottish tie here somewhere.  I don’t know and I don't feel like looking it up.  Can we have a side chat here?  Is it me or does basically ANYTHING played on a bagpipe seem sad?  They could be playing Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and I would still think it sounded sad.  Conversely, the accordion...that thing makes everything sound happy.

A carriage I am pretty positive was a replica out of Cinderella.  WHY were the Dude Duke and Duchess not riding in THAT?  Town Car?  SNOOZE.

And then...the army.  Normal.  Followed by 3 tanks...HUH?  I can safely say I have never seen 3 giant tanks in the middle of a parade.  Leslie, this is for you.  Please note the name of one of the tanks.  You're welcome in advance.

Wagon and horses...yeah yeah.  There were about 76934 of these. 

Next up and BULL.  And a man riding atop him.  Yeah, I didn't stutter.  A man riding a giant bull down the middle of a parade route lined with innocent bystanders.  Horns a blazin'.  I swear to God I think we were the only ones who thought just MAYBE that was a risky move.  Especially since this is a Western, rodeo thing and everyone is pretty aware of their behavior.  Call me a bull hater or what you will (a city girl who knows nothing of bulls, farms, bull riding, farming, whatever) but it is my understanding that bulls aren't exactly lap dogs.  All of my encounters they seem to be snorting, trying to buck someone off and basically trample them to death, or charging you with their horns down.  Not this one.  He was just a clop clopping (that's a technical term) down the street with a saddle and a big man riding him.  Oh Canada...you are nothing if not full of twists and turns.

Draft horses!  There were tons of them and they were SO pretty.  Some examples below.  One thing I learned is there are more than just Clydesdales in the draft horse family...I blame Budweiser.

My favorite horse of the parade...look at that mane!  And that flowing ankle hair.  Brown, White, Black.  J’Adore.

Mini team of horses...proof that anything mini is entertaining.

All in all a seemingly nice parade...and then...this happened...

Yes.  That’s right the Ferret Rescue and Education Society.  Complete with mini ferret floats.  Look, if any of you are on board with this we need to talk and reassess our friendship or maybe you need to move to Canada.  As far as I am concerned the only education needed about ferrets is that they are gross and they bite.  Get a dog and let's call it a day.

You see this one?  It says 'Surrender'.  I gathered it was in reference to turning over your ferret if you felt unable to care for it because you realized what an asshole you were to get one in the first place and it probably bit you and now you have rabies.  But me?  I now have nightmares about giant ferrets showing up, in snappy western wear, at my house and taking over forcing ME to surrender.  Not ok.

Lastly remember how I said I was freezing my rear end off and was wearing boots, jeans, long sleeve shirt, and a jacket?  Here is how most other ladies were dressed for the balmy 50 degree and fiercely windy day...

Make your own snarky comment.  However, if it is about me please be polite and say it behind my back.  J

Hold the phone…I know have a cowboy hat.  Write your own jokes:  

Rebecca ____________________________________________________.

Yeehaw!

Love, Rebecca



One Week Later...

And here are my thoughts:

1.       Canada is CLEAN.  Like no random trash on the ground anywhere clean.  You know when you get to a stop light and then you look out and it is covered in random trash and cigarette butts?  Yeah, not here.  NOTHING.  NOTHING is down there.  I have missed green lights because I am staring out at the ground at the cleanliness.  Which leads me to my second point…

2.       Canadians do not honk, flick you off, scream and yell, etc when you make bonehead driving mistakes.  I have literally missed lights and not one honk.  Insane.   And let’s be honest; if you have been in a car with me I make plenty of those moves.  Add that to living a new place and having no idea where you are going this could be a recipe for full on road rage in Atlanta.  I would have been shot by now for sure.

3.       East, West, North, South…nope.  Don’t get it.  Just tell me if I am turning left or right.  I can’t wrap my head around directions like that.  Don’t tell me to go west on so and so.  I am libel to just call a cab.  And get this:  In Calgary the city is laid out in quadrants, SE, SW, NE, and NW.  We live in the NW quadrant.  Centre (yep that’s right) Street runs through the center of downtown and streets around here are numbered and repeat.  So if you are looking for 443 9^th Street you better know the quadrant because there are likely 4 different places with that address.  Fun times!

4.       More driving fun.  You know when you are at an intersection and the arrow light turns a solid green and you happily go on your way?  Yeah, not here.  A BLINKING arrow means you have the right of way.  A solid one means watch out because someone in a giant pickup truck might be flying through and going to crush you.  Keep in mind that this runs concurrent with the regular green light.  How completely pointless is that?  Point, USA!

5.       Calgary is one of the greenest cities in the WORLD.  Sounds great huh?  NO.  You are wrong.  (Geoff, I can hear you cursing me…)  Allow me to explain…first of all you all know what a recycler I am.  This is punishment for not taking recycling seriously before.  EVERYWHERE recycles.  And they recycle everything.  Do you know how much pressure that is??  I am TERRIFIED to throw anything out lest I be scorned and ridiculed.  I am learning…slowly but surely.  Pretty soon I am going to be Mother Earth.  Secondly, would anyone like to take a stab at how much a gallon of paint costs here?  Anyone?  What’s that?  $25?  $20?  $35?  NOPE, try $45.  And then add another $.75 ecological fee on that.  Yes.  Paint is about $50 bucks when it is all said and done.  Oh did you want a plastic bag to carry your purchases in?  How many do you need because those bad boys are going to cost you $.05 each?  Round-Up to kill the weeds in your yard?  Yeah, don’t count on it.  You can use Eco-Sense weed killer.  I am pretty sure it’s just some weird oil.  Cutter Backyard spray to kill the 64897646876455 mosquitoes that are rampant here?  Light your citronella candle and shut your mouth. 

6.       They make bloody mary’s with Clamato.  Do I need to even elaborate?  Can someone please send me some Zing Zang?  Like ASAP.

7.       Mexican restaurants?  No cheese dip.  Had I known this we would still be living in Atlanta.

8.       Gas is sold in litres (again!) and the price looks like this $114.9.  That takes a few to get used to.

9.       I basically was having a panic attack when I realized in order get some deli meat from the counter at the grocery store that I would need to know how many grams of meat I want.  AHH!  Never mind!  Kraft Dinner it is!  (That’s what they call mac and cheese…America, I miss you.)  Grams of meat?  Someone figure that out and get back to me.

10.   Car washes have garage doors on both ends.  Sound harmless yes?  Well, we got stuck in one.  Like, STUCK.  Go in, wash car, try and exit.  Nothing.  We backed up and went forward.  Nada.  This went on for 10 minutes until we had to escape the side door to go tell someone to let us out.  I still don’t know if it was broken or we didn’t know what we were doing.  I’m going with the latter. 

11.   Canadians are rule followers.  Everyone follows the rules; no one puts a toe out of line.  What do I mean?  They do NOT jaywalk.  Like at all.  If the street is empty and no one is coming and that red hand is up saying; ‘Do Not Cross’, they don’t.  It’s crazy.  No one goes unless they get the ok.  On Friday we went to the Calgary Stampede parade (more on that next).  Half a million people attended.  500,000.  2,500 participants, 800 horses, 18 marching bands, etc.  Guess how many arrests there were?  Seriously…guess.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Guess how many incidents there were?  NONE.  I was flabbergasted.  Everyone came in an orderly fashion, watched the parade, and was polite.  You can’t even have a cookout with 15 people without an incident and if it’s a good night, an arrest also.

12.   Every time I tell someone I just moved here they tell me ‘Welcome!’  So nice right?  Yes.  But about 75% of the time it is followed with ‘Congratulations!’  Umm…do they know something I don’t?  Congratulations!  You are going to freeze your ass off!  Congrats!  Pace Picante Salsa (don’t even hate…you know you like it too) is $6!  Congratulations! If you want to paint your house you will need to get a second mortgage!  Congratulations!  We don’t use disposals! (Can you BELIEVE that?  This is not some second rate country.  No disposals.  It’s preposterous) 

13.   Everyone takes their shoes off when they go in someone’s house.  I know some of you do this.  That’s great.  I think you are weird that’s nice and very clean.  I know all the reasons why apparently it’s good and blah blah.  I don’t care.  My shoes are part of my outfit.  I didn’t wear them to cover my feet to get from place to place.  I wore them because they are cute and if they are heels (which they most certainly are 98% of the time) they MAKE my outfit.  I am not excited about coming in your house and wandering around barefoot with my jeans dragging around like a 7 year old.  If you have a party around the holidays and I am wearing tights with my cute dress and heels I am not going to be thrilled to be in a cocktail dress and tights with no shoes.  Britton (of course) is extremely bothered by this (hello…this is a person who after a long night of drinking when I can barely lift my head is up and dressed fully the next day.  Belt matching shoes and all).  He said, “Rebecca, how can I sit and have an intelligent conversation with another man who I may have never met before and look down and see my socks…one of which says New Balance.”

14.   I still don’t know how far a kilometer or meter is.

15.   I still have a hard time with 24 hour time.  It’s too much math figuring out what time 17:35 is. 

16.   EVERYTHING is in French and English.  No biggie right?  It’s really not but it’s really hard to get used to.  Labels on anything are very very cluttered and it takes a minute to read through and figure out what something is.  Signs in parking decks get really confusing.  It’s a lot of extra words to filter through.  No, I am not an idiot.  But you try getting through something like this on one glance;

17.   I can’t find Miller Lite here.  And don’t give me your; “Canada has great beer!  Drink Molson or Labatt!”  It’s not that great and it is EXPENSIVE.  Much like everything here.  18 beers with run you about $30-35.  We have been drinking a lot of Pilsner and Kokanee.  Both pretty good but I still miss my Miller Lite.  Side note:  They LOVE Bud Light Lime up here.  Its nuts.

18.   As an addendum to my post on our house.  The bus that comes through our neighborhood and right by our former pot growing house is number 420…I cannot make this stuff up.

19.   Hell has frozen over.  I know not only own a pair of cowboy boots but a…COWBOY HAT.  And I look damn good in it too.

20.   Tomorrow I am going to a rodeo and chuck wagon races.  I will also see, barrel racing, calf roping, and steer wrestling.  Try and pick your jaw up off of the floor.

More on the Calgary Stampede and pictures later this week.  If any of you have any specific questions you would like me to answer please shoot me an email and let me know!

How Did You Spend Your Fourth of July?

I spent mine moving to Canada.  The irony is almost too much.  Brilliantly, my flight was booked for 6:30 am, so guess who got to the airport at 4:30 am?  THIS girl.  And if any of you have been around me lately you know that I basically cry approximately every 6.8 minutes.  I was such a mess that when I got to security and the lady was checking my passport and boarding pass she ended up having to talk to me for about 5 minutes to calm me down and then she gave me a hug.  A TSA agent hugged me?  That just added to things to cry about; All the years that I have spent saying how uninterested and frankly mean government TSA workers are and then the last hug I get when leaving the country is from the nicest woman ever.  GAH!

At 6:30 I took off and landed in Dallas for a 3 hour layover (FYI, you cannot fly to Calgary direct from Atlanta.  Crazy.)  The three hours in Dallas only added to my anxiety for a few reasons:

·         I am moving to Canada for Christ sake.

·         I was STARVING and it is so hard to find decent breakfasts in airports.  Does it weird anyone else out that when you are walking through places like T.G.I.Fridays are serving breakfast?  Umm, PASS.  The lady from some barbeque place basically was chasing me down to try and get me to eat breakfast there.  Listen lady, I don’t like barbeque anyway so I certainly don’t intend to eat a pulled pork omelet. 

·         There was a Tim Tebow Jockey undershirt vending machine.  W-H-A-T?  I literally stood and stared at it for half an hour and took an embarrassing amount (happy Mom?) number of photos.  I was praying that someone would come and buy one just so I could see it in action.  I was imagining some inspirational speech to be played as you were purchasing your t-shirt.  Maybe even just a bible verse.

Tim Tebow Jockey T-Shirt Vending Machine

Well that was when I decided it was anxiety medicine time!  20 minutes to boarding I popped myself a klonopin, vowed to curl up with a glass of wine, and sing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” the whole way there.  I felt a nano second of guilt for whoever got stuck sitting next to me but was over that immediately when I heard someone next to me in line talking about hockey.  I should have requested to sit next to him.

On we boar!  I flew first class because I’m rich, bitch! the upgrade fee was less than all of my baggage fees.  Luck of all lucks I had no one sitting next to me!  And let me just tell you something.  American Airlines does not mess around.  My flight attendant was on me like white on rice; I never even finished one bloody mary before she had a brand new one in front of me.  My lunch was awesome, warm towels to clean your hands, freshly baked cookies.  When everyone else got one bag of peanuts I got toasted warm mixed nuts in a ceramic ramekin.  At that point it was on.  The flight attendant was going to be my friend whether she liked it or not.  I talked her ear off, cried a little, when she was taking a break reading a magazine in her jump chair I got a hold of her on the way to the lavatory.  We hugged when I got off.  BFF.   No idea what her name was.

Snack time!



Warm chicken sandwich on herb foccacia, greek salad, pita chips and hummus...and more vodka.

When I got off the plane I went to the customs desk where he or she (I HONESTLY had NO idea) sent me to immigration…because that’s right…I am an immigrant.  I probably should have thought through my bottomless bloody mary’s because Britton said that they are seriously intense when they interview you.  I handed him my packet of info provided by Britton’s employers and he went to typing away, never speaking a word.  Finally we get to the interview portion.  I was drunk terrified.

1.       Mrs. McConathy, what does your husband do?
Umm…he works for Deloitte…in Advisory…Capital Projects…uhh…he’s an engineer?

(He stared directly at me with ZERO expression so I just kept rambling about who knows what until finally he says ok, I got it…)

2.       How tall are you?

How tall am I? 5’2”

Typing, typing, typing, typing, silence, printing, stapling, stamping. 

“Here you go.”

THAT. WAS. IT.  Meanwhile, the 68 year old man next to me who is a turf grass, golf course soil, consultant was being DRILLED by a woman who was about 20 with a thick Canadian accent.  Like REALLY drilled.  What exactly do you do?  How do you test these soils?  Who contacts who? What is in this for you?  Why do you do this?  Seriously, I would have totaled buckled and just told them never mind; I’ll head back to America where we let everyone in.  But all they really want to know about me is my height?  Perhaps there is a shortage (pun INTENDED!) of vertically challenged people in Canada and I’m appealing to bring in for some diversity?

I snatched that permit and ran before Sergeant Bitchface got a hold of me.  I still had to go to pay for it but that was somewhere else.

Fast forward.  Britton picked me up.  I wore American flag shutter shades, JUST to make sure all the Canadians around knew I was an obnoxious American.  That’s right.

So we got in the car at 2:15 and let me tell you what we accomplished by 5:15:

·         Work Permit approved and paid for

·         Social Service Card – this is sort of like our Social Security Card, except apparently they just give these puppies out...citizen or not.

·         Health Insurance Card

·         Package picked up at the post office with a line of ten people

I challenge anyone to get ONE of those things done in a 3 hour time frame in Atlanta.  It was ridiculous.  Completely insane. Everyone was fast, efficient, friendly.  The lady at the health insurance place came up to me in line at 4:55 pm when they close  and asked me to go ahead and give her my paperwork so she could get started on it since they closed in 5 minutes.  I almost fainted. 

We spent the rest of the day just driving around seeing things, seeing our house, etc, etc.  By 8 pm (10 pm EST) I was exhausted.  And it was still broad daylight here.  No kidding it doesn’t not get fully dark until 11 pm.  And then the sun is up and shining by 5:15 am. 

I will update with more entertaining stuff later tonight.  Sorry this is so dull.  But I at least wanted to let y’all know I arrived safely.  Don’t worry, not a single ‘eh has come OUUUT of my mouth yet. 

P.S. Can someone (eh hmm, Rachel) help me figure out how to create tags??