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Me, my bear, & the peloton! |
As much as I love roaming the world with my passport and backpack, I always appreciate returning to New York to see friends and family. I've spent seven great weeks with some of my favorite people, but I've also enjoyed one or two other aspects of being in NYC.
All the clean laundry I want!
All the Ben & Jerry's I can eat!
All the library books I can read!
While in Toronto, I made it to Canada's most revered museum: the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Upon entering the museum, memorabilia from players who have been inducted into the HHOF are featured in display cases.
Gordie Howe.
Steve Yzerman.
There was a mock locker room that I was curious to visit but had to skip. It was a locker room for the Montreal Canadiens and since I'm from Toronto and therefore a Leafs fan, I couldn't set foot in enemy territory.
Canadians will all be familiar with the Golden Goal, but I'll explain it for the sake of rest of the world and my American neighbors who may be suppressing the memory. In the 2010 winter Olympics, Canada led the gold medal match 2-1 over the Americans until Zach Parise scored a goal with just 24.4 seconds left at the end of the third period to tie the match and send it into overtime. Oh, it was agony for Canada to realize we'd given up our lead and possibly the gold medal! But Sidney Crosby, Canada's golden boy, came through to score a beautiful goal less than eight minutes into overtime! Canada won the gold medal by a score of 3-2 thanks to Crosby's overtime goal. A storybook ending indeed.
The text in the photograph below is quite small, so I'll reproduced the story of the Lucky Looney here:
A team of Canadians was hired to create the ice for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Trent Evans, a supervisor at Edmonton's SkyReach Centre, tucked a Canadian one dollar coin – a loonie – into the ice under the centre ice faceoff dot. He hoped that the coin would act as a good luck charm for both the Canadian men's and women's Olympic hockey teams who, sworn to secrecy, used the loonie as a source of inspiration. In the gold medal contest on February 21, Team Canada's women claimed Olympic gold by edging Team USA 3-2. Three days later, Canada's men defeated the USA 5-2 to collect the gold medal. Following the men's final, the dollar coin was carved out of the ice and presented to Wayne Gretzky, Team Canada's general manager, who then turned the “Lucky Loonie” over to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Hockey was more than just a sport to several Eastern European players during the Cold War. It was a path out of the USSR. Players like Alexander Mogilny and brothers Anton and Peter Stastny were able to defect to the west during hockey tournaments in Western Europe.
The Great Hall is home to the Stanley Cup.
The Stanley Cup. There are countless tales of the Cup's adventures over the decades from being lost in the basement for years to whatever the members of the most recent winning team can think of.
Hopefully we'll get to update this in the near future!
Everyone on a Stanley Cup winning team receives a miniature version of the Cup to keep.
The original Stanley Cup.
The HHOF is a great place to spend a day!
Fridays are wonderful for countless reasons, one of which being that New York City's Museum of Modern Art is free on Friday afternoons!
It was jam packed inside but I was able to maneuver around the groups of people and have a good time. I made a beeline straight for the fifth floor, home to futurism, surrealism, and plenty of my favorite artists.
Frida Kahlo, “Fulang-Chang and I,” 1937.
Joan Miró, “Painting,” 1933.
René Magritte, “False Mirror,” 1928.
Marcel Duchamp, “Fresh Window,” 1920.
Henri Matisse, “Dance,” 1909.
Pablo Picasso, “Three Musicians,” 1921.
Claude Monet, “Water Lillies,” 1914-1926.
Piet Mondrian, “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” 1942-1943 and “Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow,” 1937-1942, respectively.
Fernand Léger, “Three Women,” 1921-1922.
There's an Edvard Munch exhibit featuring “The Scream” on until late April. It's a small exhibit, but “The Scream” is worth seeing if you've never seen it and since it's such a popular painting, you may just get his other works to yourself as I did tonight.
Edvard Munch, “The Scream,” 1895. This is just one of “The Scream” series which includes paintings, pastels, and lithographs.
Munch, “The Scream,” 1895.
Munch, “Self-Portrait,” 1895.
Munch was into vampires long before Twilight. “Vampire II,” 1895-1902.
As you may have already guessed, Munch had a dark and anxious personality with which he struggled for much of his life. This is apparent in the next several works in the exhibit.
Munch, “Jealousy,” 1896.
Munch, “Melancholy,” 1891.
Munch, “Two People: The Lonely Ones,” 1914-1917.
Munch, “Angst,” 1896.
My absolute favorite sculpture, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by Umberto Boccioni, wasn't on display today much to my disappointment. They did have another of his sculptures, “Development of a Bottle in Space,” 1912.
I've got lots of other photos from the MoMA, but I'll let you see the rest of the art in person should you happen to find yourself in Manhattan on a Friday afternoon.
I recently donated my third ponytail to Locks of Love, an organization which collects hair donations and assembles them into wigs to be donated to financially disadvantaged children with medical conditions that cause long term hair loss.
Before.
After!
Just when you thought Bollywood would never do a film about the Westminster Kennel Club annual dog show, here's a trailer to prove you wrong.
New York recently hosted the 137th annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show and Mini Bear watched a whole action filled day!
There are a few different categories in which dogs may compete. I didn't necessarily understand how the judging worked all of the time because sometimes they judged just a few dogs from one breed while a dozen more waited off to the side, but it basically involved lots of grooming, dogs walking quickly in a circle, handlers wearing unflattering and outdated outfits, handlers meticulously positioning every limb of the dog, and the judge inspecting each dog while looking totally disinterested before declaring one “best in group.” That is my understanding of the process!
It was hilarious watching the English bulldogs. They seemed much more interested in frolicking, lying down, or eating than jogging around the ring. In some ways it reminded me of watching preschoolers in a dance recital.
Grooming is serious business. Please note the Louis Vuitton neck scarf on the dog in the fourth photo below.
This woman is applying mascara to her French bulldog.
A lot of the French bulldogs wore capes, little jackets, or neck scarves.
This is one of my new favorite breeds: the Rhodesian Ridgeback. You'll see the strip on his back where the fur grows in the opposite direction. This trait just happened to develop as different breeds came together over time. To show a Rhodesian Ridgeback, the ridge must extend from the shoulders to the hips and there must be two small dots on either side of the ridge at the shoulders.
French bulldogs are ridiculously photogenic.
Dogs and humans were both exhausted by the end of the day.
While I enjoyed watching the judging, I was mostly interested in heading to the benches where the dogs would spend the bulk of their day. Many of the handlers were happy to let me gush over their dog. It was a puppy love fest and I couldn't have been happier.
One dog in particular, a huge bloodhound named Nathan, stole my heart!
During our visit to Disney World, we spent a great day wandering around Epcot where a variety of different countries have exhibits.
Since one of the favorite past times of Canadians is making fun of Canada, we made a beeline straight to the Canada section to see an American interpretation of my people.
There were some hilariously ridiculous souvenirs at the gift shop.
We went on a few rides, many of which featured dated and creepy animatronics but were still fun nonetheless.
After a couple of long days on our feet and finishing a half marathon earlier that morning, we were too tired to stick around for the fireworks show, so we watched the colorful fountain for a bit before heading back to our hotel for gigantic ice cream sundaes.
Awhile ago, my cousin and I decided to do a destination race every year and we picked the Disney World Princess Half Marathon for 2013. We even got my brother and sister-in-law to run with us and brought along a small but effective cheering squad! Completing a half marathon is a great achievement but since I've already done a few half marathons, I have to find different ways to make sure it remains challenging. That's why I did zero training for this one and had a combined total of 4.5 hours of sleep the two nights preceding the race!
The race started at 5:30 am so that all runners would be finished by the time the parks opened.
My cousin, sister-in-law, and brother and I got to our corral well in advance, which gave us time to check out the runners wearing Disney character costumes. As was expected, there were plenty of tutus and tiaras for the princess race! We also discovered that actor Sean Astin, best known for his roles in the Goonies and Lord of the Rings, was also running in the Princess Half!
Fireworks lit up the sky for each of the eight waves of runners.
Entering the Magic Kingdom around mile 5.
The Magic Kingdom was packed with supporters. Rounding a corner led us straight to the famous castle. It was a great sight after all those miles but unfortunately it was really hard to get an iPhone picture to turn out while running!
Between miles 9 and 10, I started to fade and get low on energy. Fortunately, this was exactly when I spotted a tutu someone had discarded. I've always wanted to do a race in a costume, so I doubled back to collect the tutu. It was a perfect fit and was just what I needed to carry me the last few miles!
My time was just over 2:18, a long way off my best but was still pretty good considering I had run less than ten miles in the three months leading up to the half marathon. The course definitely isn't suited to anyone looking to set a personal record as it is crowded and the majority of the entrants seemed new to both the distance and race etiquette, but Disney is always a fun place to visit and, most importantly, just look at those finisher's medals!
Thanks again to my family for making it such a great weekend!
It may not be as impressive as the Walk of Fame in LA, but then again, it would be un-Canadian to be so flashy.
We do a lot of things well in Canada, but I'll be the first to admit that Bryan Adams is our only decent singer.
A winter's day downtown.
My cousin and I went skating at the rink in front of City Hall on an unseasonably warm evening. The ice had been melting due to the sudden warm spell so the rink was a soggy mess. I choose to blame my poor skating abilities on the suboptimal conditions.
Here, Carolyn does an impression of my dad's first time skating decades ago.
