Foul betrayal

Pretty much my favourite thing in Canada is bagels. This is not to say that the skiing here is crap, or that I don't like Canadians. Rather, this should be taken to mean that I really, really like bagels. Running out of bagels is pretty much the worst thing that can happen in my day to day life, and when bagels are reduced to just $3 a bag (which is made even better because bagels are not subject to sales taxes) it's time for a change of undergarments.

I should be clear, however, that I don't just mean any old bagels. My bagel of choice is made by Dempsters (one of the big Canadian baked goods brands), and I especially like the blueberry variety.

So, imagine my joy today when I went to the local grocery store (which is fantastic, by the way) and bagels were $3 a bag. That's 50 cents a bagel - such a good deal. I check the bagel aisle every time I go to the supermarket to see if those little red "special" tags are out and when they are I can assure you that stirring music plays in my soul and my lungs are filled with the freshest of fresh mountain air. Think about that scene at the start of The Sound Of Music where Maria is singing about being in the mountains while atop a grassy knoll. That is akin to the sense of wholesome, expansive wonder that I feel upon finding cheap bagels.

But today, something was different. At first I thought it was a new brand of bagel. I was intrigued. Could these be even better than Dempster's bagels? Is that even possible? But no, both the normal bagels I'd grown to love and the new bags were both made by the same people. I thought it might have been a low fat variety, but no, that wasn't the case either. And then I saw those fateful words:

New, Improved Recipe!

I'm a hopeful, positive kind of guy (LOL), so I was ready to give the new bagels a chance. If they really were better, this was pretty big news in my life. I gave them a gentle, non-destructive squeeze. They seemed a little softer, which was bad because the density and crumb characteristic of the original recipe verge on perfection. A softer bagel is not something I welcome. But things were about to get worse.

The new bag of bagels was 200 grams lighter than the old style. 200 grams, people! What, did they think I wouldn't work it out? Are consumers all so dumb that we won't notice if you take 31 percent of our bagels away and charge us the same amount? It's bad enough that you'd meddle with what is possibly the greatest mass produced foodstuff that can't be dissolved in water for a nutritious and tasty snack (Sustagen - the sport variety, chocolate flavour). But to basically steal 200 grams of bagel from us in broad daylight? While pretending this is an improvement? Why don't you take 31 percent of our happiness and joy as well?

I have a strong compulsion to tell the people of Dempsters what I think about their "New, Improved Recipe". Stay tuned.

Surprise!

Every Monday evening I trundle home from work, thinking about the four days of skiing and general good times that lie ahead. My working week goes from Saturday to Monday, and after three days talking to people about skiing at work, I'm always pretty excited when Monday evening rolls around the real business of life in Rossland stretches out ahead of me.

I think about things like the snow, the upcoming weather, how great my new skis are, avalanche conditions, whether I'll go touring, what skiing stuff I should be practising, how great my new skis are, whether I need more bagels, whether I should make dinner for the house, and how great my new skis are.

I don't, typically, think about how a friend of mine who is supposed to be back in Canberra is hiding behind the corner of a building waiting to surprise me. Which left me quite unprepared when a friend of mine from Canberra hid behind the corner of a building and surprised me., Well played Tom Watson.

I know it would make for a better story if I freaked out. Everyone who was in on this plan is probably hoping that I shrieked and jumped in surprise, or that Tom and I ran towards each other in glorious slow motion and embraced in a manly but heartfelt way, or that I paniced and stabbed Tom before realising who it was. Sadly, the truth is that I was so surprised that it took me a while to work out that Tom wasn't actually supposed to be there, so I had already got a fairly standard greeting out before the bafflingness of the whole situation clicked. I was slightly troubled that he'd managed to work out where I lived, but I guess it's his job to work stuff like that out, so I shouldn't be too concerned.

Thanks everyone for your letters and thoughts. It's very flattering and slightly unnerving to see the effort that people have gone to to convince me that Canberra isn't an empty, lifeless hovel where hope and good times go to die. Which it probably is, but I've never been especially interested in hope and good times.

Tom and I will spend the next few days skiing and talking about ultimate. Hopefully the Kootenays put on some decent snow for his visit. Right not it's sunny and warm. Yawn.

I'll be thinking about where to go and what to do next over the next couple of weeks, so I'll keep you all posted. Thanks again everyone for your letters.

Farewell Dave Pitchford

I've just found out that Dave Pitchford died last Friday.

As one of the leaders of the outdoor ed program at Narrabundah College, Dave was part of the community that got me into the bush and contributed to the life I'm living now. His enthusiasm for the outdoors and his insistence on safe, smart practises and a conscious and deliberate approach to risk has shaped the way I and many of my friends climb, hike, ride and ski. The opportunities he gave young people to experience the bush have and will shape many lives for the better.

I will never forget the time I climbed with him on the Narrabundah wall, and he mistook my terrible climbing after months of training for the moves of a novice with natural talent. If only.

Thanks Dave. Rest in peace.

Dave is survived by his partner and two children.

The wrong kind of sausage festival

Dear readers, I have two pieces of sad news. The first is that I have just broken up with my partner of many years. This is, of course, sad news for me, but it's great news for anyone that wanted to date her and was worried that I'd knife them in some kind of soft, important body part. Potential suitors, your important and unimportant body parts are safe from me.

The second piece of sad news relates to the town of Rossland. You see, adding another single man to this town means the sausage factor here is just that little bit higher. The town is now teetering on a statistical precipice beyond which no place that isn't a gay bar should ever go. If so much as a minivan full of single men should drive down the main street of town, our sausage ratio will be tipped over the edge and the entire town will turn into an enormous cylinder of dubiously nutritional "meat".

The sausage factor that I'm referring to has two forms. The first compares the number of men to the number of women in a region. A high factor means lots of men, and not many women. But often the more telling statistic is a sausage factor among single folk.

Sausage factors that indicate a predominance of men compared to women seem to be a feature of ski resort life. At Broken River, the absence of women was so acute that the unofficial slogan of the ski hill was "Not Gay", and the story of The Time The Guy From Mt Cheeseman Stole Our Woman was still told in vivid detail some weeks after the unfortunate lady was whisked away by the bearded patroller from the ski hill next door.

In Rossland, the pool of people is much larger, but the sausage ratio (especially when limited to single folk) still seems to be stubbornly low. It is not clear from casual observation whether there actually are any single women in Rossland at all. However, casual observation will immediately reveal a plethora of single men. And their beards. Of course, my addition to the pool of single men is of statistical value only. I do not represent any competition for those men looking to leave their current sociological category, either by pairing with hypothetical single women, or (in especially desperate times) with each other.

French Colonisation

My house is a complex mix of nationalities and languages. Maud is French and speaks French, Spanish and English, Robi is German and Fleur is Dutch, they both speak German, Dutch and English, and I am Australian and I speak English. I would like to take this moment to point out that I resent not being raised bilingual.

Thus far, the common language in the house has been English. And life as an English speaking house has been good. Admittedly, Maud speaks a somewhat unique dialect of English, but on the whole, we all understand each other and when anyone except me wants to talk to someone in private they simply speak in a language that only they understand.

Just like a marginal electorate full of bogans, this simple, homely life is under threat from immigration. But recent immigration has completely changed the dominant language of the house.

Our first immigrant was Maud's father, Serge. Serge is a French extreme skier with worn out knees, which makes him the second coolest thing you can possibly be. Unfortunately for me, Serge speaks no English. Serge's arrival tilted the linguistic balance strongly in favour of the francophones - Fleur speaks a little French, so in politeness we have all tried to speak French.

Speaking French is a good opportunity for me to refresh my limited French. I can ask where the pool is, recite some of the bus stops in Chamonix, and wish people a happy day's skiing. Believe it or not, this has been suprisingly useful.

But it turns out the Serge is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Maud's sister Marie arrived. And within days we expect the arrival of more francophones from a ski hill north of here. Soon we'll be overrun with French people, and we'll all be forced to eat baguettes, wear berets and enjoy mime.

This mass immigration presents more than just a threat to our language. The new housemates are already displacing the previous inhabitants. I usually sleep in a massive room, so I have vacated that to give our guests some space. I have in turn displaced Maud, taking her nook at the top of the stairs. Maud has ended up sleeping on the couch. There is perhaps some small justice in this outcome.

Originally, I though there would be numerous advantages to being the subject of French cultural imperialism. I was expecting a dramatic increase in croissants, arrogance and extreme skiing. Sadly, none of these has occurred. So far, all we have seen recently is a significant rise in middle aged men walking around the house in underpants.There may be an rise in the rate of fondue, but on the whole it appears that my stereotypes of the French are less accurate than television has led me to believe.

At least no one has tried to take my job, although Serge did offer to help out at work after we gave him the corporate ski pass for a few days. Duurka Derp!

Handshake rituals

Shaking hands should be simple. It's supposed to be a gesture that anyone can take part in without needing to think about in advance. Put hand out, grasp other person's hand, shake, release, continue life. Yes there's always a bit of confusion if one of the people is left handed - do you adjust for them, or stick with right handed convention, but all in all it's pretty clear what you're supposed to do and if we just drowned all the left-handed babies like I keep recommending then we'd be fine.

Unfortunately, the skiing community has taken this simple, time honoured ritual and made it confusing and difficult. So far I have experienced 5 types of binary (as in involving two people) hand gestures, and there are probably more out there. These are:

The Standard Grip (or Low) Handshake:

The standard grip handshake is a common form of greeting across the English speaking world. Both parties face each other and each extends a hand with their palm facing across their body and their thumb pointing upwards. The extended hands must be compatible: Either both right hands or both left hands. A right-hand-to-left-hand standard handshake will not work.


Each party clasps their partner's hand so that their fingers wrap around the side of the hand closest to the little finger. The thumb should be wrapped around the back of the partner's hand at a comfortable angle. Once this grip has been established, the clasped hands are moved firmly up and down through a 10-20cm range for between 1 and 3 oscillations. There is considerable variation in this shaking action, even beyond the parameters set out above, but shaking too vigorously or too many times is considered creepy. A particularly weak grip or a complete failure to shake your partner's hand at all is also considered wierd (see also: Jeremy Codhand).

The Reverse Grip (or High) Hand Handshake:

Both parties each extend one hand at roughly chest height with their thumb pointing toward their own face. They then clasp their partner's hand so that their fingers wrap around the region where the base of the thumb meets the wrist. When done correctly, this should mean that the two thumbs involved in the handshake are adjacent, facing each other and interlocking. This handshake does not actually involve a literal shake.


Similar in form the the standard grip handshake, the reverse grip handshake allows each person involved to use the handshake to pull their partner towards themself and use their spare hand for a brief platonic embrace. This is also possible with the standard grip handshake, but the reverse grip has the important advantage of keeping the clasped pair of hands at chest height during the embrace. Using the standard grip, the clasped hands tend to be directed downwards towards the naughty bits as both parties are drawn together and this can make for an awkward moment mid-embrace.

The Bump:

Current sociological research suggests that the hand bump in the skiing community arose from the need for a convenient gesture that could be completed while wearing ski gloves and holding a ski pole. Both parties involved in the bump form a fist with their desired hand. They then move their fists towards their partners with the aim of gently bumping their fists together. After contact, both parties retract their fist and return to normal hand activities.


Sources tell me that there are a number of variations to the bump, including (but not limited to) the "explode", the "explode-implode", and the "go with it". Needless to say, this simply confuses the situation even further.

The High Five:

Made famous by music videos from the 80s, the high five is a slap-based hand gesture. Both parties raise one hand above shoulder height with their palm facing away from their own body and towards their partner's hand. Each person then moves their hand towards the other's, producing a mutual hand slap. It is customary to follow through by striking a glancing blow that moves past the partner's hand towards the thumb side of your own hand.


The Pole Tap:

This requires each party to have a ski pole. Grasping the handle of the ski pole, each person swings their pole towards their partner's pole in a gentle and predictable arc. At the completion of this arc, both poles meet, with contact occuring in the bottom half of each pole. This should produce a gentle pinging noise. Pole taps are not intended to indicate superiority or damage equipment and care must be take to exercise appropriate force.


The inability of snowboarders to participate in the pole tap is considered exclusive and the gesture is now considered discriminatory. For this reason, pole tapping is increasingly uncommon and frowned upon.

The problem with having five binary hand gestures is that it's never clear which gesture to use. This breakdown in conventions has made greeting new people awkward and alienating. I have found it best to make a clear hand gesture that makes it obvious what greeting is intended, but in situations where the other person extends their hand in an ambiguous way, it is difficult to avoid awkward hand groping. I suspect I may have recently high-fived a person who was only intending to wave to me, and have since spent several hours considering this possible faux pas. This is truly a strange and troubling world.

Another Old Post: Encounters With Possums

Every now and then I look through the old posts and drafts on the blog to see if there's anything I've missed or can delete. This time I found a post from pretty early in my time in NZ where I was struggling to come to terms with the role of possums as environmental villains. I know that regular reader Barratt likes the old posts so I thought I'd post this one, even if it is wildly out of date. Please enjoy Encounters With Possums.

New Zealand's worst introduced species is possums. They do more damage here than goats, stoats, deer, rabbits or anything else (except for people, but let's not think about that). There are estimated to be over 70 million of them in New Zealand, and given that NZ is pretty small, fitting this number of possums onto the landmass requires them to stack up on top of each other into huge towers.

In Australia, possums are cute lovable rogues that live in garage doors, walk across the electricity wires at night, belch at each other in the wee hours and try to sneak off with your food at popular campsites. In New Zealand, possums are an entirely different proposition. They eat native birds, eggs and snails, plus their selective grazing on new growth on native trees destroys large areas of forests.

In New Zealand, it is your duty to kill possums wherever they are found (like rabbits in Australia). This is a bit confronting if you're used to possums living in your garage and sleeping in someone's old suitcase on a nearby shelf while you fix bikes or do uni work. However, I am, as always, desperate to blend in so my latest encounter with a possum was less chivalrous.

There is a small picnic area where the access road to Broken River ski field meets the highway. This is a popular spot for the very stingy members of the skiing community to camp or sleep in their cars before driving up the hill to go skiing for the day. And, since this campsite is nestled within the beech forest, it is full of possums.

While camping there recently I noticed a possum coming into the picnic shelter to steal my food and pick at my leftovers. By yelling at it and shining my torch in its eyes, I backed it into a corner. Seized by my grim duty as a temporary New Zealander, I figured I should club it to death with a nearby stick.

I'm not sure if you've ever tried to club anything to death in the corner of a picnic shelter, but it's a slightly awkward proposition. Usually, when clubbing something, one swings their club in a circular arc, building momentum that is imparted to the target upon impact. But, if you swing in an arc within a rectangular picnic shelter and you try to hit the corner, the walls obstruct the intented path of the club, and you don't strike cleanly. If I had thought about this in advance, I would have approached along one of the walls, which would have allowed a clean swing into the confined space in which the possum was hiding, but that would have reduced the psychological effect of having cornered the possum, which was encouraging it to keep still.

So, the result of all this is that I didn't really hit the possum very hard. Instead, I basically just prodded it with a stick. And I've hit possums before - you have to hit them pretty hard before they take notice and stop chewing holes in your tent. In Australia, if you hit a possum (which is illegal, and I've only done it to stop them from chewing through my stuff to take my food or biting my feet - both of which have happened, and the biting on the foot thing was completely unprovoked), they usually look suprised (because they're protected and people don't usually hit them), and then keep doing whatever they were doing until you start whacking them with a water bottle or something. In New Zealand, when you hit a possum, it tries to kill you.

Of course, this was my first time hitting a possun in NZ, so I wasn't yet aware of this significant behavioural difference. To my considerable suprise, this possum responded to being prodded by lauching itself straight towards my face. In flight, it extended all four feet directly in front of it and reached its pointy claws for my delicate and handsome visage, in a fashion not dissimilar to those face hugging aliens from the Alien films. Fortunately, I was able to recover from the shock of this turn of events and, drawing from my years playing baseball with the Woden Valley Dodgers as a child, managed to club it out of the sky before it made contact.

The possum hit the ground and scurried for the doorway of the picnic shelter. I took an almighty swing at it as it reached the exit, terrified that it would come back with its friends and get even. Luck, however, went the way of the possum as the stick I swung clipped the frame of the entrance and snapped just before striking what has hopefully going to be a killing blow, but probably would have just made the possum mad enough to stand up on its hind legs and tear me apart. The possum ran off into the bush and I was left holding my broken club and thinking about what might have been.

In the end, I'm happy that things worked out the way they did. I can save face with the locals by claiming that I did my best to kill a dastardly possum, and I can save face with the possum in my garage back home by not having to think about how I disposed of the corpse of one of it's bretheren. Of course, my manhood is somewhat dimished by having been defeated in single combat by a small marsupial, but that's a small price to pay.