In one of those, "Can you be here tomorrow" type situations I'm suddenly in London to work for a few days. I'm always a bit shell-shocked when I land in a city like London after the mountains and Canmore--so many people from so many different places, the bustle, the cars, the noise. It's oddly enervating and and draining at the same time. The main reason I agreed to come over in the midst of a lot of other stuff going on was to eat a massive Vindalloo curry. Found one last night, a mind-blowing quantity of red fire in a bowl... I've yet to find a good curry in Calgary or Canmore, any suggestions?
Today I'm going to go and shoot in a climbing gym somewhere here, fired up. All the kayaking, running and general not-climbing have left my elbow in good shape. Even though I'll be on plastic warts in the middle of one of the world's great cities it's gonna be great to PULL a bit. I've taken climbing for granted for a long time, it's a treasure. Maybe I'm a freak for being psyched to climb on plastic, but I actually really like it, the moves are clean and I also enjoy seeing the local scene. I feel reasonably strong after all the kayaking I've been doing this spring, trying to learn all the new play tricks. I haven't paddled much except the occasional river run for the last ten years, it's been fun to jump into the Kan in the evenings and playboat like mad in in my old X ("Dude! Vintage boat!" is a common comment, but it can still do more tricks than I can so I'm not upgrading).
The Ice Mines movie is about done, there will be some podcasts up in the next week or so, I'll post a link to those. This latest film is again done with Emerge Media in Calgary, good people to work with as always if you need some professional assistance with anything video related.
Right, into the fray of London, feeling a bit out of place in my shorts and T-shirt, lots of ties, suits, mod clothes, I always forget that this is "normal" and we're the freaks in the mountain towns...
4 comments:
Go to Ellis Brigham (shop) in Covent Garden and laugh at the ice wall in a fridge. It is at the back of the shop. Neil Gresham set up and M9 on it.....
For a decent climbing wall in London, there is the Westway (http://www.westway.org/sports/wsc/climbing), mile-end (http://www.mileendwall.org.uk/) and the castle (http://www.castle-climbing.co.uk/frameset.html).
All of them can be got to on the tube if you don't have a car available.
I don’t know about Canmore, but one of my colleagues was on business over in St Johns and managed to get an industrial strength curry made for him.
It started out as a Phaal, but had several journeys back to the kitchen with requests to make it hotter. It finally came out as something which if not eaten quickly would have melted the bowl it was served in.
The chef was so astounded that anyone wanted something this hot, he came out of the kitchen to see who was eating it. He looked in amazement to see the guy happily eating his curry, not even breaking a sweat!
I bet the place to find good curry is in someone's home. There is a family in our building that cooks. You can smell the curry as the elevator passes by their floor. I became friends with one of their kids, but never got invited for dinner. Pity.
Re: Curry.
I've heard good things about Puspa in Calgary. It's up northmount past where the old YMCA used to be.
1051 40th Ave
Daniel Hanson
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