Day 2 - Calgary to Banff

I have to get the jokes out early.

There's an old joke about Canada:

When it was founded they hoped to have British government, French food, and American know-how, but they ended up with American government, British food, and French know-how.

There's a new version of it for the European Union (it's on a t-shirt in Banff):

Everyone hopes for a European Union with Italian chefs, British police, German mechanics, and French lovers, all organized by the Swiss.

Everyone fears a European Union with British chefs, German police, French mechanics, and Swiss lovers, all organized by the Italians.

See, in America, we don't have to make fun of our government; we have our government to do that for us.

            LAUREN
        These people are too damn
        nice. I can't make fun
        of them.

            DIANE
        Lauren! Be strong!

But no, she could no longer make fun of a decent, polite, nice people. I felt horribly alone.

Actually, when Americans make fun of Canadians, I think it's because they're intimidated by them. Canada is clean, it's safe, and the people are nice. When the only thing you can think of to make fun of is the accent, there isn't too much there to make fun of.

Americans have exactly two approaches to the rest of the world, for the most part: they're belligerent and convinced they know better, or they're intimidated because we're always told that everyone else on the planet is nicer, politer, better educated, and speaks more languages. I think there is a third approach: we do some things okay, they do some things okay, let's not start any one-upsmanship contests. We have more nuclear warheads than you do.

Darin, Mitch, and I discussed the question of going to the metric system on the drive to Banff. ("The metric system. Like no other system measures things," Darin said.) It's not the drive was boring; it's gorgeous, actually. This is just the kind of thing we like to talk about. We all think it would have been a great idea if we'd done it the first time. Ours would have been the first generation to learn it, and everyone after us would have just adopted it. But metric is strange. Metric is not what we're used to. Metric would force American businesses to retool, and that would cost money, and anything that's bad for American business must die.

Except that now we're getting into global markets, and guess what! Everyone else uses metric. So now we're going to go through the hell of trying to move to metric again. But, as Will Durst said, everyone in America knows that a kilo is 2.2 pounds, they're just not going to admit why they know that.

Our first order of business in Banff was checking into the Banff Springs Hotel. If you're going to stay anywhere in Banff, this is the place. It's the Canadian Pacific Hotel in this area. The way I've heard this story is, Canada built the railroad across the country, including a huge open section in the middle.

            CANADIAN 1
        We've got this train, we've
        got all this land. Now what
        do we do?
        
            CANADIAN 2
        Let's build a series of huge
        luxury hotels, eh?

            CANADIAN 1
        Okay then.
        
            CANADIAN 2
        And let's make this whole
        area a huge national park.

            CANADIAN 1
        Sounds good. I'll get us 
        some beer.

And so Canadian Pacific, the train company, built these hotels, and if the Banff Springs Hotel is any indication, they're pretty darn impressive. Huge rooms. Incredible architecture. I understand the main tower building has even nicer rooms than our building.

Our first order of business was to go to the Sulphur Mountain Gondolas that go up (natch) Sulphur Mountain. The gondola goes up to an elevation of 7500 ft. -- the metric equivalent is not available here in the brochures I've got -- and you can see a long way in all directions. One of the things Darin pointed out about how clear the air is up here is that the mountains look blue in a distance, but they're still clearly defined.

Where the gondola lets you off isn't the top though. You can walk up several flights of low steps that lead you, slowly and easily, up to the top, where an old weather reporting station is.

Every time one of us (everyone except Steve went to the top) got tired, we volunteered quickly, "It's the altitude." The altitude did affect us, of course, but not quite as much as we made out. We did make it to the reporting station.

"Wow. This is really beautiful."

"Yeah." Pause. "Let's go eat."

"Yeah."

We took the gondola down the mountain. Taking the gondola down is free, so if you hike all the way up -- and many people do; even one bicyclist made it up -- you can ride down triumphantly.

We went to the town of Banff for lunch. We walked around a little bit, and Darin led us to a fondue place he'd noticed when we drove into town. Lunch was pretty good, except the chocolate fondue dessert, which sucked royally. We all ate like pigs and made a mess of ourselves.

As we headed back to our cars, I mentioned that I wanted to buy some hiking boots, and there was a Timberland store in one of the little malls. As it turned out, the Timberland store was having a sale. Mitch helped me determine whether the boots fit well or not, and I bought them.

I was stunned when I did the math of the exchange rate.

What I realized was that Canada is really cheap. Let's go crazy! Let's buy everything! And we get our GST (Goods and Services Tax) back on top of it.

I hope Americans don't find out about this.

We all went back to the hotel at about 4. Darin turned on the TV in our room first thing, which annoyed me because I was so tired. I got into the bed that wasn't facing the TV and started trying to sleep. I woke up an hour later; Darin was asleep. I went back to sleep.

At 7 I woke up and said, "Darin, it's 7." He grunted.

At 7:45 he woke up and started calling the other rooms. Everyone else was still asleep. We agreed to go into town at 8:15 and buy tickets for the 9:30 movie. We bought the tickets and then bought a couple of hot chocolates at the coffee place underneath the theatres. Verdict: pretty good, and they use real whipped cream.

We went to see Batman and Robin. My capsule review: it has more of a plot than most, Arnold still can't pronounce English correctly and Patrick Stewart would have made a better Dr. Freeze, and this being the first thing I've seen George Clooney in (remember, I watch cop shows, not doc shows) I'm ready to agree he's a babe. And you get to watch Vendela and Elle Macpherson duke it out for "Most pointless character" in film.

It's not a good movie -- you were expecting a Batman movie to be a good movie? But it was enjoyable.

At lunch Scott and Lauren told us about a new game they've been playing: One-liners That Ruin The Movie. The only rule is that pronouns are better than names, because names give it away. If there are any you'd like to add -- or any you don't get -- feel free to contact me.

• Rosebud is his sled. (Classic division winner)
• She's my sister and my daughter! (Esoteric division winner)
• Spock dies. (Popular division winner)
• They all did it. (Ensemble cast division winner)
• Soylent Green is people! (Charlton Heston division winner)
• She's a guy.
• The video store manager is the head vampire.
• They're brother and sister but in the end they don't care.
• John Travolta dies in the middle.
• He's the sixth replicant.
• Her boyfriend and his best friend are the killers.
• Darth Vader is Luke's...oh hell, everyone knows that.
• It's Earth in the future, after humans destroy everything.
• His wife did it, but she gets away with it.
• He's the KGB agent.
• There are only two characters in the movie.
• They found it...but they put it in a warehouse.
• His wife is alive and on Z'ha'dum...oh wait, wrong medium, sorry.
• Mr. Phelps is the bad guy...we don't know what he did or why though.
• Rocky loses.
• Rocky wins.
• Rocky loses, then wins.
• Apollo dies, then Rocky wins.
• Nobody escapes.
• None of the twelve survives.
• They shoot one another with blanks.