Well, Ottawa has become a hotbed of excitment to party in 2017. With all the hype of the
Canada Table shared dining top chef event, I sadly did not get a ticket. You had to buy in groups of two. Sigh! Oh well, as my daughter always reminds me,
some other more needy person probably deserved my seat….like a big corporation perhaps???? ;)
Well, last night made up for this crushing
blow. I excitedly anticipated the
arrival of Red Bull Crashed Ice and while I like neither skating, nor the cold,
the price was certainly in my visuals…Free!
I saw the canal being reconstructed into the raceway a mere few weeks
earlier and it was fantastic to imagine.
Unfortunately, I imagined it going down the other direction of the
Rideau and pretty much taking up half the city.
I guess its better that I’m not on the city planning committee because
their setup made juuuuuust a little more sense than mine.
I was coordinating with three other unrelated
friends and that’s fraught with problems and millions of texts, and emails and Facebook. I’m too old for all this social media
tracking. When I want to find a message
I received, the steps I have to go thru to find it in every single program is
daunting. Quite often, it never does
appear in any searches so I have to write the customers back requesting it
again. Ya, that’s professional. Maybe I need an 8 year old on staff to do
this stuff but I’m not sure I could handle the eyeball rolling.
Back to Ottawa! The
grounds opened around 4pm and the race was advertised to start at 6pm so get
there early. Well, I layered up- a
turtle neck, a long sleeved shirt and a hoodie, long johns, winter wooly sox,
compression sox, a parka, hat, scarf, mitts and perhaps an airline shot…I said
perhaps. It was freakin’ omg cold but I
was prepared. Then, to add a little
excitement, I caught a cold earlier in the week. A wise man would have stayed home but this
was a two day only in Ottawa event I could not miss. Surprisingly, the crush of people was warming
The roadway to walk down the hill was wet and
covered in ice, and treacherous. I’m
surprised they didn’t put gallons of road salt on that because I saw some epic
near falls. My friend was not allowed to
climb the hill on the west side for taking pictures but on the other side of
the canal, another death trap, they were all perched inside the fence. Crazy but I bet the view was good. Standing on the icy roadway was soooo cold on
the feet. I may have complained a bit in the beginning and was told to
basically stifle myself; I was being a buzz kill. How rude!
You know who you are. (see candy cane toque below)
After waiting with nothing happening but videos playing and chatter, waiting
from 5:30 until 7:30, our miss uppity manners was no longer on her game and
wanting to go home too. I just reminded
her to "remember her warm place to visit". That was fun and then I got to
warm up in the Bytown Museum store while they gave out free popcorn. I loooooove freeeeee!
It really was exciting being part of history in
Ottawa. I did see a woman texting on a
phone that surprisingly still had juice in the cold and I watched a weird gush
of fluids coming from her coat. I told
her she might be spilling her drink as she texted and she looked down to see
that her coat was toast, totally drenched. The bottom of her cup had separated and her
drink was now empty. She was beyond sad. Her only night out on the town as a mom of
three, all her medicinal drink gone and she had paid over $100 for the evening
with childcare. My heart went out to
her; I could remember it all so well with my youngin’s. I slipped her my hypothetical airline
refreshment and she got all huggy and crying and laughing. I think we both made each other’s night. Now why do you keep getting me off topic
while I’m simply trying to tell you a story?!
Watching the race was challenging. All the best photo ops had volunteer security
telling
people to move on.
Every time we would find a “great” spot, tall people
would stand in front of us. Before the event, a recon was done of Major’s hill
park but pronounced blocked by all the construction vans. The exciting end of the raceway was blocked
so really, it was just a one second viewing of a hill that we could see. Quite honestly, I was happier to see the
Chateau Laurier lit up like the Neuschwanstein castle in Germany and the crush
of people and just being there.
I didn’t really care if I saw the race; I know
that’s wrong to admit but it took too long, I have a short attention span, my
feet were frozen and I had two boots full of toes that had broken off in the
cold. I was even content to only see the
first two pre skaters zip down and then pack it in, but I didn’t.
When my friend, you remember the big complainer,
said she was going home, we walked her up to the top, and realized that
thousands of early arrivers were going home as well. My thoughts are, if you have told us to
arrive by 6 and refuse to tell us when the start time is, people are going to
get fed up and cut out early. Just be
honest with us; tell us we won’t see any action until 7:30 but enjoy the videos. If we
know we have an hour, we might go inside to warm up, spend some money and not
fear missing the action.
With that said, we walked to a sports bar on Elgin, and realized that some of the screens had the same races going on INSIDE, where it was warm, oh
so warm. I glued back on all my toes and
we also realized that the race actually has an entire raceway, not just two
barely visible humps to go over. It was
actually exciting to watch indoors and groan along with the crowds at the
stumbles and triumphs. I think I’m glad
I did both but the cold entered my being and stayed with me till late, late
into the night. So that was my Red Bull
experience. Did not try a Red Bull that
night, or ever but I overheard someone wanted to and it was frozen in the -25 degree weather. Now that’s cold!!!
Now don’t forget the next two upcoming events:
Mar
15-18- The Stanley Cup Tribute and
March 27-2 Apr- The Juno Awards
And remember to book
your rooms early or rent the whole house.
www.spoiledrottenbnb.ca
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