Yep, yep. Yesterday. Pretty eventful day, actually. First thing in the morning as I opened up my garden storage bench thing, I felt something squishy and looked inside.
This thing was.. uhm, not really looking at me since I couldn't see its head, but..
You be the judge. What the heck is that?
Anyways, took a photo, did some yard work, and went off with my mom for lunch at Chilis. Great place. The waiter earned himself a ten dollar tip. Really nice guy. Congratulated him on being able to retire early, and scored myself a chocolate chip cookie on a skillet with ice cream for desert.
It was a great start.
After all that was done, my impromptu trip to Jasper commenced. Took about four and a half hours to get there, good thing I had a few three-hour long podcasts on my phone to listen to.
Had to take a picture of this mountain here.
And fought off the strong urge to sculpt something similar out of a plate of mashed potatoes. That's Close Encounters, in case you didn't know.
Then, I saw this guy on the side of the road.
Coyote, right? I was tempted to open the door and give him a lift, but I didn't see a raised thumb, so.. (shrugs) plus, he might have been up to something sneaky. I've watched enough Looney Toons cartoons to know how coyotes can get.
As I pulled into town, I kind of chuckled to myself at all the NO VACANCY signs over the place. Why? Because I had an ace up my sleeve...
That's Tracy. She's from Nova Scotia, and works as a housekeeper in a cabin resort ten minutes from town. She was this random girl who messaged me a few days earlier on POF, and when I noticed she was in Jasper, I mentioned having thought about taking a trip there, to which she made the offer of giving me a place to stay overnight. I thought about it for all of six minutes, and told her I'd take her up on it.
So, we went to what was really the only reason why I'd want to go to Jasper in the first place. For the first time in six years.
Wood fired pizza courtesy of Jasper Pizza (TM). I got some modified monstrosity, where I took out the asparagus, replaced it with pepperoni and left the spinach and garlic.
It was.. okay. Nothing special. Until about twenty minutes later, where it felt like a curtain rod was traveling sideways through my intestines. Ugh! I don't get it. Am I just sensitive to gluten? Ot was it the meat? Whatever it was, I had to take frequent stops at park benches and openly groan out loud at passerby as if I was auditioning for the next Mummy movie.
Tracy and I wandered around town, checking out everything, and I was pretty disappointed at what has changed in the six years since I've last been here.
Pretty much nothing. All the prices were marked up higher than usual, and there was a ton of franchises there like Subway, A&W, Tim Horton's, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc.. There was a decent number of independent places, but man, why spoil a tourism area with businesses that already exist all over the world? What would be the appeal of going for a Chubby Chicken burger at A&W while on vacation? Isn't the point of going to new places, to experience something new? I noticed a lot of Asian tourists going around, and I'm pretty darn sure they're looking at these stores and not feeling enough of the "uniqueness" of being in one of the most beautiful parts of Alberta. Or even Canada.
And the gift shops.. Bleh. Over-priced trinkets. Mostly Native American stuff that I find kind of boring to look at (except for the Tomahawks) and the rest were fridge magnets and hoodies that said "Jasper, Alberta" on them. I was really disappointed in the creativity of the merchants who choose to stock these particular items. I struggled to find anything worth buying, other than a fridge magnet with a bear getting kicked in the nuts. And I didn't even bother getting that.
We wandered around all night, and I got to hear Tracy talk about sports, the locals, the tourist attractions, life back home, her past relationships, etc. It was alright. She was a good conversationalist and I had an easy rapport going. Especially since she liked horror films, and we got to discussing Cabin in the Woods, It Follows and the VVitch. Heh.
At night, was when the uhm.. fun started. We go to her cabin, and I expected something completely different than what I saw.
All she had was a single, twin-sized mattress, in a room shared by another girl, in a cabin holding over ten people.
*THIS* is where she expected me to crash overnight? Hrmph. I'm no prima donna, and I had no intention of getting into a relationship with her, but she seemed to want me to sleep with her. On that small mattress.
So, I did. Well, I tried.. and..
(sighs) .. I wasn't happy about it. I mean.. she was, but I wasn't. And although she knew that I wasn't interested in her.. it didn't matter. She went down on me anyways.
Yep. Not that I couldn't have seen this from a mile away.
All I could think of while this was happening, was someone who's name rhymes with Argentina. There was a song, too, that played inside my head that I forgot the name of, but remember it was significant enough to be worth reporting on. Wish I could recall what it was.
I ended up sleeping in her roommate bed that night. I should put "sleeping" in quotes, because I wasn't able to. At 430 in the morning, as I could hear Tracy snoring, and some other guy upstairs snoring (thin walls), and doors being opened and closed, with her roommate coming inside at one point, and not having any pillows to sleep on, and ... there was change on the bed, and some kind of makeup bottle and.. I dunno, but somehow a Peppermint tea bag found its way into my pocket. Plus, the mattress smelled weird. As in borderline, gross, "did someone just ovulate over this?" kind of weird.
It sucked. I... wasn't ashamed of myself, I suppose. I saw this coming. I treated Tracy well, and with respect, as I vowed to. I didn't give her any false hopes about us being in a relationship, and I made her laugh and helped her feel good about herself. She was down in the dumps, after breaking up with her boyfriend of six years. I don't think she even read my profile on POF, all she said was that she liked my eyes and this one photo of mine. Our conversation through text, was really lame. Luckily, it went much better in person.
I don't know. This experience taught me to stop meeting with strange women that I'm not attracted towards. But, I appreciated having her company, and she was really nice.. so, where's the harm, right? Plus I got a little extra something, so that was good. Not that I wanted to be getting it from her. But it's been two months since I last had sex, and so...
Whatever.
Tracy had to go to work at 9, so I was on my own. I left her a message thanking her for her company, and filled up with gas and left for home. Because I was so tired, I ended up taking short naps in various road stops over the day.
I planned on making a day out of being at Jasper, but after this experience.. and being so tired..
I didn't bother.
Even though I was seeing some really nice stuff.
Just couldn't get into it as much as I wanted to. Jasper felt like.. well, it felt like an overproduced movie is what it felt like. All these tourists. All these overpriced gift stores, and bad pizza, and young kids getting hammered and stumbling around the street. It didn't leave me with a good impression. Matter of fact, the best thing I saw there, was the sky.
The stars. I could SEE them. As I constantly left Tracy's room to go outside for a smoke, I was hypnotized by how beautiful the sky was. Who cares about the mountain, or rainbows, or geeses.
The sky, man... that's the real shit right there. Excuse my Espanol.
Since I still have a few weeks left before going back to work, I'm going to consider checking out this one park about five hours away that a co-worker friend of mine was telling me about. He's in his late 50s and something of an amateur photographer and his thing is the sky, too. Plus he and I are equally as fascinated by shows like Ancient Aliens, and are pretty much on each other's wavelength.
On the way back, I had more fun than being in an over-populated tourist trap. I made a few detours. This place was one of them.
Water so clear, that you could drink it. And then die a terrible, agonizing death by way of some microbic lifeform that liquifies your innards and has you pooping out all of your organs, but I digress.
I had so much more fun here than being in Jasper. I only saw two people on that beach, and one of them was a well-endowed young woman in a black bikini catching tadpoles with her two year old son.
I brought science to these primitive waters...
And there was even a rhino, much to my surprise. I have no idea how he ended up here or why he was motionless. Maybe he washed up on shore all the way from Africa.
No complaints. Quiet. Warm weather. The sun beating down on my back as I stood in the water, feeling the waves lap at my knees. Tadpoles swimming around my feet.
And songs like, Just Another Day by Jon Secada playing on my headphones.
It was perfect. Blissful.
Majestic.
And, it's funny, because it's so simple. Warm weather, solitude and water. That's it. That's all it took to make me forget about how tired I was, or how lonely I felt.
The world revealed itself to me, it felt like. Not through people, but through myself. Through the way it made me feel.
Alive.
And still kicking.
Date with Vanesa tomorrow. The psychologist with the four year old daughter.
We'll see how it goes.
But I have a feeling, it'll be just another day.
