For a paltry 350 Euro (plus airfare) you can go ride and party with the Forum team for a solid week.  I think i may have to shrug off my aversion and go to France…

Forum in France 2010 Summer Camp

My win, your loss.

Dropping the western face is highly recommended

The next time I gathered my gusto and ventured forth into the great white north the stalwart and smarmy gate guardians were ready. Coated in black garments from head to foot, sporting poofy “utility” jackets and bearing intimidatingly shiny gold badges they had prepared themselves for battle.

I was not unimpressed by the cunning of our foe, though their tactics seemed unnecessarily underhanded given the situation. Our car rolled slowly to the small guardhouse disguised as a booth. That’s how they move you into position for a broadside should you answer their questions incorrectly. The automaton gave us a honey yellow slip of paper with the mysterious number 77 scrawled on it and told us that if we would “just pull over to the side where that patrolman is, park and go inside, you can pick up your license” (re, the license of our friend that was seized the prior visit). Lulled into a false sense of safety by her warm expression and soothing tone we foolishly complied.

The assault ensued anew. Threats of throwing people in cells, threats of arresting the entire party should any narcotics be found in the car, seizure of Calvin’s license (who had nothing to do with the first incident), seizure of cell phones. Calvin was enraged and yours truly was irked by this nonsense. The DnB Kid shook his head in confused disbelief and moaned “this is what I get for trying to visit Canada! This is only my second trip here…” I assured him that not all Canadians are NAZIs, in fact 98% of the ones I have encountered are quite chummy. The automatons of justice searched each of the males in our party and then requested our presence. The diminutive asian in charge asked me if I knew why I was here today. I thought I would attempt a joke but diminutive asian has no sense of humor. He attempted to order me empty my pockets and such. At this point my mind was hit by the cataclysmic wave of realization that the enemy was inciting a fight and disregarding our attempts at peaceful negotiations. I fought back.

Come to find out, diminutive asian robot was not accustomed to intimidating female foes. I suspect him of being a submissive. With a few steps back and a few stutters he acquiesced to just having me display that my pockets were empty and ran off to go search the Hellement. We waited. We watched the hockey game on tv, the hockey game we were on our way to see prior to these shenanigans. Diminutive asian returned looking downtrodden and chagrined. No narcotics in the car apparently. He returned Calvin’s license and only then did he inform us that our other friend’s license was now in the possession of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, but he didn’t know which unit.

We spent the next 2 hours driving around lower British Columbia from one police station to the next on a wild license chase only to finally discover that the license had been mailed. We finally made it to the Olympics just in time to not see a damned thing. I concede that this round goes to the gate guardians but frankly I am fired of attempting foreign diplomatic efforts with these fools…..

Today’s valuable lesson, brought to us by Captain Snuffalufagus (Snuffie to his colleagues) is:: dont smoke before going on the lift, unless your goal is to vomit all over people riding beneath you.

Thank you Snuffie for the entertainment, Lights Out for hitting the hill with us and pushing himself to keep up, the Wake and Bakery for the frequent drinker card so I can get more delicious coffee, and whoever brought the fat fluffy snow. Good times.

- Hobbes

The inside of the Canadian border patrol offices has a post modern feel completed by clouded glass in every direction, an indoor patio umbrella, and a line of aluminum bricks set into the floor which divide the building lengthwise. At the end of the silver brick road sits a cluster of chairs, and in those chairs sits moi et al. Why are we in this maw of Tartarus? I’m glad you asked.

Imagine an arbitrary male friend, we’ll call him X. Imagine now that you are on your way to the olympics and X has graciously offered to drive Calvin’s Hellament. Next, imagine that X had smoked a bowl that morning, unbeknownst to the other passengers. Ok now that you have that firmly in mind….pretend you’re in a car at the border where the border guard asks X to get out of the car and slaps him in cuffs. You’re just trying to read your olympic map in peace (which by the way is TERRIBLE and totally unhelpful) and in a sudden turn of events you’re being ushered into a building to “wait”. They didn’t even let me bring the bloody map.

So here we are sitting. “waiting”. By waiting they mean searched and questioned. In front of the assembly of border guards and “waiters” in the large room we were asked to lift shirts, turn out pockets, display socks (I wish I’d worn more fanciful ones) and answer personal questions. The not so subtly implied threat that the car would be seized and we ourselves arrested if X was found to have been carrying narcotics was just ridiculous. It played out like a bad episode of Starsky and Hutch. I attempted to retain my appreciation for the fact that these people were just doing their jobs and on the whole weren’t being rude. My patience was tried when they told me I should have known better and attempted to control X (because law students exert a magical control over all they survey), and asked whether or not my law school should be contacted about this. Mentally I conjured an image of a vibrant red line painted, and smudged on the floor behind the interrogator. Mentally I punched that #&@(% in the chest so hard she fell back across that line she crossed.

They searched the car, they took Calvin’s iphone, they harassed the hell out of the DnB Kid, and for all their trouble they let us all go (I want to say “I told you so” on that note). Released X sans license and shook the metaphorical finger at the rest of us. Ok…lesson learned. Whatever that lesson may be. I’m still confused. I was unimpressed with the stark change in attitude of the border patrol which had previously been efficient but chummy.

Thanks to the border patrol we missed puck drop on the Slovakia/Belarus game and didn’t get seats. To add whipped cream to this sundae of fail, Vancouver is out of bubble tea and it rained heavily for the rest of the day. Hope you enjoyed your first time in Canada DnB Kid!!

If you thought Burton’s line of boards depicting nude women wasn’t enough…


Here’s something way more badass:

Greyscale controversy turns the Forum ride into a work of art. It’s a good way to bring publicity to the 2011 line which seems to be entirely geared towards jib rats. Still…if the women’s line compares at all, it may be time for me to get a new park board.

- Hobbes

Calvin and I traded Lady K for the DnB Kid. We made the handoff at seattle airport 12 hours apart. Have you ever been stuck in Seattle for 12 hours with nothing to do? Anything you might want to do closes at 5. It’s as though the whole community of “attractions” got together and decided in one voice, that they wont tolerate the sort of heathen merrymaking that results when people have things to do post dinnertime. Mr. Flow joined us in drowning our sorrows in dim sum dumplings. I died a little inside when I discovered that “soup dumplings” are apparently not a staple of northwest dim sum. Shenanigans. Several shotgunned scotches and Shutter Island came next, and then…it’s Lights Out in Seattle.

I woke up on the Orcas island dock. Buzzards began to circle and the odor of rotten fish assaulted me like 5 year olds in a snowball fight. I hate ferries. Cramped, full of cars, full of tourists, full of seagulls. The San Juan island ferry seemed a little more upscale, a little more “with the times”. I still hated it.

Forget the ferry for now. We spent the day on Orcas Island in the San Juan Island chain. Munched on shrimp, hunted for weird shells and hiked up Mt Constitution to enjoy on the best views of Mt Baker available anywhere. Pictures are worth more than my words in this case….

We were deep in the heart of the mob when the aleve took effect. Utter madness surging and churning around us. Lurching to one side then swaying back to the other in a rhythmic display of Newton’s 2nd law. My forehead’s throbbing began to slow. The lingering effects of a wicked bad faceplant at Brighton aggravated by wearing my goggles too tight at Baker. All around me teems the chummiest herd of wild animals I’ve ever come this close to contacting. Blue and Yellow blondes; Red, yellow and black faces dotting the dank urban harbor landscape. Brightly colored plumage of Germans and Swedes. In some spots the air smelled of the beer on their lips, its sweet pungent smell released into the atmosphere every time they yelled indecipherable rallying cries in some foreign tongue.

Lady K called them “deutschy” and “sveedy” peoples and snapped shots all around, hoping to capture the maniacs on still images. Horns rattled the recesses of my sinus cavity and suddenly the throng broke free from its restraints. Like cows through slaughter pens we trudged forward as group and then tried to squeeze our mass through the single space doors of Canada Hockey Place. I was reminded of an overweight woman in a corset with different parts of her squeezed through an unforgiving funnel only to billow out again on the other side.

Hockey is serious business. Under normal circumstances its exciting. In an olympic setting it becomes loosely controlled madness. Five rows off the ice and right next to the Sweden bench we sat and watched. Whirling dervishes on ice, sliding and slamming. Big Horn sheep jockeying for position in a herd that shifts members every few minutes. Wunderbar! Lundqvist, Forsberg and <3 Backstrom <3 on the same team makes my head spin, though that could also have been from the head injury and the sinus infection.

Sadly, a couple of stellar plays by Sturm captain of the German team and member of my own Boston Bruins was not enough to save team Germany from defeat. The Bruin in me was angered, but any time spent up close and personal with N. Backstrom is time well spent. I felt satiated. Content. The monster within my belly that hungered for the burning thrill of conflict had slowly recessed back into its cave, lying patiently in wait for more bloodshed (or at least some noodles). I think my compatriots shared my enthusiasm for our first olympic experience. Amazing.

- Hobbes