It wasn't all bad... 11 new experiences of 2016

2016 was a bit of a rubbish year in lots of ways, but rather than mull over the increasingly terrible collective decisions the world seems to be making, or the long list of famous people who passed away last year, I have decided to focus on the good stuff. And for me there was a lot of good stuff. This post is about all the things I did for the very first time last year. A lot of this happened on our big holiday in pre-Trump North America, so I'm going to start there...

1) Went to Canada
There are loads of things I did for the first time in on our road trip to the USA and Canada, in terms of visiting places I'd not been to before (like Niagara Falls, or the Baseball Hall of Fame), but I'm going to lump all of those things in under this heading.

2) Ate fried pickles
Just one of the new culinary experiences of our road trip. We also ate at a Vegan Diner and on another occasion had poutine. But fried pickles were the new food of the year.

3) Went to a Baseball match on a giveaway night
'Star Wars night' made seeing the Boston Red Sox even more special. We also saw a baseball game in Toronto, with the Rodgers Stadium dome closed - the first time I'd ever seen baseball "indoors".

4) Saw a moose
OK, it was in a zoo, but it counts.

5) Checked into a hotel then checked straight back out again
The lowlight of our road trip was a disastrous hotel booking in Albany, New York. But it was a totally new experience for me.

So, enough about our road trip, here are some other things.

6) Saw Shrewsbury Town finally beat Cardiff City in Cardiff. 
It had been a long time coming, but I was finally present (in one of Cardiff's record lowest crowds at their new stadium) to see Shrewsbury beat them.

7) Got on a plane unaccompanied
I went to a conference in Glasgow and flew there from Bristol. It was the first time I had ever travelled by plane on my own, having always had Cathy, or family, or colleagues with me on previous flights.

8) Saw Celtic play
A childhood ambition ticked off

9) Went to Spain
Again, this was for a work conference. I took plenty of photos of Valencia by night. I loved it.

10) Rode through a bus wash
Seriously, this was one of the best things I did last year.

11) Going to a cartoon festival
I love cartoons and one of our favourite cartoonists was at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, we decided we had to go. We met her again a few weeks later, in her studio in Massachusetts.

USA & Canada 2016 - To Canada! Exploring Kingston, Ontario.

We left Cooperstown in the rain. I think this was the first time I had driven in America while it was raining. A short while into our trip we discovered that the bottle of lemonade we had put in the fridge of our hotel room had semi-frozen. We discovered this the explosive way, when Cathy opened it and the remaining unfrozen liquid rapidly left the bottle. We pulled over to clean up. I thought the bottle had become over-pressurised somehow and didn't realise it was frozen. So as Cathy had dried off and settled down, I thought I could open it gently and we'd be OK.

This didn't work and I managed to soak Cathy with lemonade all over again.

After 'The Lemonade Incident' the journey was without much incident. We stopped at a services plaza as we headed North. It was called Mapleview. It didn't look like much from the outside. Inside it was classic American diner with great food.

We carried on North. The landscape got quite wild and eerie towards the border. There were still farms, but they were more spread out. We were heading for the border crossing in the Thousand Islands, a scenic region in the St Lawrence river, that, yes, did provide the name for Thousand Island Dressing.

It's become customary on Facebook for people returning to Wales to post their pictures of the Severn Crossing. But there are bridges and there are bridges.

This one went on and on.

After the border checkpoint we passed the 1000 Islands Tower, where you can apparently get amazing views up and down the river.

And then another bridge and we were in mainland Canada.

Next stop was Kingston, Ontario, where we were staying for the next couple of nights. After a very brief stop to take some photos downtown (more on that later), we found our motel. It looked like a motel in a movie.

When we checked in the guy on the desk was very excited to hear we were from Cardiff because he was a huge Doctor Who fan. He even rolled up his sleeve to show us his TARDIS tattoo.

Kingston was the first capital of the united Canada, but people were afraid it was too close to those rebellious Americans to the South, so they moved the parliament to Ottawa. They'd already built the parliament building in Kingston, so the town has ended up with this massive municipal building right in the centre.

The town is on the shore of Lake Ontario, which looks like the sea. Cathy got to pretend she was on a boat.

Meanwhile I found a massive train to look at.

There is a real mix of interesting buildings.

And, of course, very different flags everywhere.

Kingston has lots of museums. I felt we should go to at least one while we were there. We chose one of the smallest - the old pumping station.

Mainly because I heard it had a big model railway display. It did.

At Harper's Burger Bar we had another encounter with fried pickles. I'm not sure why I look so startled by it.

We also got the opportunity to try a fabled Tim Horton's doughnut. Tim Horton was an ice hockey player who set up a coffee and doughnut shop after he retired from hockey. We saw Tim Horton's everywhere we went in Canada. They do good doughnuts. I recommend the Maple Dip.

Next up: the real reason we went to Kingston.

The Tragically Hip – Live at Manchester Academy 3

It’s been a week now since I saw my favourite band live in Manchester and I feel I ought to write it up even though no one has heard of them or could care less really.

We arrived in Manchester and checked in at our hotel really easily. After a short wander round the Christmas markets and tea at Pizza Express, we walked about a mile south to the University Campus.

Academy 3 is a small room on the top floor of the Union Building. It had a low ceiling, a bar, a sound-desk, and just about enough room for 400 Canadians. Hip singer Gordon (Gord) Downie described it as “a bunker” during this show. It sure felt like that, particularly as the sound came at us like a wall of noise.

The reference to Canadians in the previous paragraph was intentional to reflect the ethnic diversity of the crowd. Basically, it was full of Canadians. They had an unofficial Canadian uniform on – beards, check shirts or hockey jerseys. I went to the loo during the interval and as I walked back to ‘our spot’ I didn’t hear a single British accent. It was like going to a gig in a foreign country like, er, Canada.

When we arrived there was a queue. I was surprised and checked with the doorman that we were in the right place. The Canadians in front of us were very interested in the fact that we weren’t Canadian. The girl in the group had been to several Hip concerts before, but all massive festivals. Afterwards she said this was the best gig she’d ever been too.

The band did two set lists, coming on as their own support act, and taking a half hour break in-between. If you are at all interested in what they sound like, you can hear a lot of their stuff on their website. However, even though I’ve listened to them over and over, they were something else again live. Gord Downie is a cross between a comedian and an utter mentalist, naturally entertaining and a little bit scary.

Trying to start the gig with a new song (Love is a First) and expecting people to know the words and sing along form the get go was ambitious, and didn’t really work. But things picked up after that with a rendition of Courage (the opening track of their stand out album Fully Completely).

They played a number of my favourite songs, including Bobcaygeon during a couple of acoustic numbers at the beginning of the second set, and an amazing version of At the Hundredth Meridian, which included a rambling monologue between Gord and the crowd, which was very amusing. He also held up a flag someone threw on the stage that had a Maple Leaf superimposed over a St George’s Cross, and had a tangential conversation with the person who threw it about nationalism that was three hundred years out of date, and also how he couldn’t use it as a handkerchief.

Oh, yeah, that was another thing. He sweats a lot. So he was constantly wiping his face and head with handkerchiefs that were tossed onstage by the roadies. Whenever he threw them, used, out into the crowd, there would be surge of people trying to get to them like desperate bridesmaids trying to get the bouquet at a wedding.

The gig ended on a high note with the band playing New Orleans is Sinking and the crowd jumping along. We bade farewell to the Canadians we’d met in the queue and who were driving back to York that night, and made our way back to the Travelodge, psyched up and ready for the next stop on our tour…

The other true religion*

*it's a paradoxical statement, but then I am disturbingly post-modern

A few years ago I was told to look after a work placement girl from Canada, who's dad worked for a fundamentalist Christian organisation. I was showing off how wise I was and quoted Jedi Master Yoda, "you know, from Star Wars..." "Star Wars?" she asked incredulously. "Yeah," I said. "It is the other true religion."

On Wednesday I'm going to be doing a talk on the spirituality of Star Wars. I don't want to give too much away ahead of the evening, but in terms of understanding concepts of God in a technological age, the cultural impact of the Star Wars films in my generation can't be underestimated. The conflict between materialism and spirituality predates post-Modernism as a popular movement, and certainly at the dying end of the Modern era, the films explore a definite yearning for something more than the world we can see.

So far I've got 12 clips ready from the original trilogy to illustrate my points with regards to conceiving and perceiving God; the duality of matter and force; and the mastery of evil within and the possibility of redemption.

Oh, yeah, it's going to be good.