Sara, Conrad and Max have a dog called Rolex, who I managed to get to come running with me a little although he only accepted on the condition that we stop at every street corner for a breather. They are possibly the most relaxed people I’ve ever known and were incredible hosts, I stayed there until last Thursday. So, I then made my way back over the Lions Gate Bridge to the north shore and bivouacked out for a couple of nights. On Saturday evening I went to north Vancouver to read my short story, which meant that I then had to sit through an incredibly dull book-read afterwards. I don’t remember the author’s name but I hope I never read her book by mistake. On Sunday I had to cycle the three hours back to south Vancouver (it’s a very spread out city) to Cici’s house. Cici, Dallas and Cheryl hosted me (through couchsurfing) until last night. It was cool to meet people my own age again, as it has been a while. We got drunk.
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This morning I cycled the three hours back to the north shore because this is where my new bike parts are coming in to. Hopefully I will be able to make my bike new and beautiful again, collect all my things from the places I’ve left them in Vancouver, and be ready to leave here by tomorrow afternoon. I am going to cycle back down to the states, then I’m not sure where yet. I could head back to Seattle for a couple of weeks, or (more appealingly) go and stay with my brother’s friend, Peta, in the San Juan islands.
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Since my appearance at Gage’s lecture I received a number of emails from attendees who disaproved of me and then was proverbially forcibly removed from their email list. I know it’s for the best, the long-distance would have been a strain and it could never have worked, but it still hurts.
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Who wants to learn? Okay, here are a few fun facts from a book I just read:
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Humans have 4 nostrils. The highest mountain we know of is on Mars; the tallest one on Earth is in Hawaii (Everest is the highest on Earth). The largest living thing is a mushroom in Oregon. No man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon. The telephone was invented by Antonio Meucci. (Bell happened to work in the lab where Meucci’s sketches and models were later sent; the models and sketches mysteriously disappeared.) Kilts, bagpipes, whisky, haggis, tartan and porridge are all from somewhere other than Scotland. Chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow. It is Britain’s most popular dish; in a recent survey of different CTM recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken. The English invented champagne. And the guillotine. And baseball, although US baseball authorities were so paranoid of this fact that in 1907 they fraudulently invented a US inventor in Abner Doubleday. Mary Antoinette never said ‘let them eat cake’. Thomas Crapper sadly did not invent the flush toilet. The moon smells like gunpowder. Earth has seven moons. Marmite has been suggested as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the middle east. The largest diamond we know of is ten billion trillion trillion carats; it is eight light years away in the star ‘Lucy’. This nickname ’Lucy’ came from the Beatles’ song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was named after a picture drawn by John Lennon’s son of his friend Lucy Richardson. The speed of light varies, in 2000 scientists brought light to a complete standstill. The majority of tigers live in the USA. The European earwig has two penises incase one snaps off. Napoleon was once forced to retreat by rabbits. You are more likely to die from an asteroid impact (1/6,000,000) than from being struck by lightening (1/10,000,000). According to the newest translation, the number of the beast is 616; this will upset Russians who renamed the 666 bus route as route 616. The universe is beige. Mars is butterscotch (-coloured). Water is blue. Your brain is pink. There is no word for ‘brown’ in Welsh. Light is invisible. Chameleons don’t change colour to blend with the background (changes reflect emotional states). Nome in Alaska is so called after a ship’s officer scribbled ‘Name?’ next to a point on the map, which was later mis-read. Edison invented the word ‘hello’. The hottest part of a chilli is in the central membrane, not the seeds. The hottest chilli known of is from Dorset, called the ‘Naga’. The crack of a whip is created as the tip breaks the sound barrier, making the whip the first man-made object to reach this speed. If a cat falls from a window, it has a better chance of survival if this window is on the 7th floor or higher. Dogs don’t mate ‘doggy style’, this is a dominance gesture, they mate tail to tail. Stomach ulcers are caused by a bacteria, not stress or spicy food. Henry the black was the first man to circumnavigate the globe. The flat Earth theory is fairly modern, originating in the nineteenth century; today’s International Flat Earth Society claims NASA’s lunar landings are hoaxes. Columbus thought Earth was a quarter of its size and pear shaped, he died convinced he had reached Asia. Columbus’ preferred nickname for himself was Colon. Teflon was discovered by Roy Plunkett, in no way associated with NASA. Hitler was not a vegetarian, nor was he an atheist. Shrimps are the loudest things in the ocean. There’s no such thing as a panther. Red does not bother a bull, but movement does. Today’s carrots are orange because we eat a type patriotically bred in Holland to match the Dutch Royal House of Orange; the first carrots eaten by humans were purple on the outside and yellow on the inside. St. Nicholas, among other things, is the patron saint of murderers. Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer is female. The late elephant bird of Madagascar layed an egg nine litres in volume. Mosquitoes have killed around 45 billion people; marmots have killed over a billion. Marco Polo, from Croatia, almost certainly did not bring pasta back from Asia. The United States of America (named after Richard Ameryk) has 46 states.