In which Gary Robbins gets through the holidays without beer and learns the perils of shaving cream

January 10, 2006

By Gary Robbins

So I just spent the better part of half a day taking my house apart, or rather putting it back together. My girlfriend and I live in a town home complex and somehow managed to get into a home decorating competition over the holidays. I would like to tell you that I was an innocent by-stander who was pulled into this contest, but I feel you would all know otherwise. My girlfriend, Donna, and I only bought here seven months ago. What better way to show our neighbours love over the holidays than by challenging all of them to a Christmas light showdown. Donna and I were on a limited budget, due to a certain race that I am taking part in, and we acquired most of our decorations at the dollar store. For just one hundred dollars we were set.

The contest became a two horse show, between my direct neighbour and us. We eventually called a truce and declared it a tie. This was only after I nearly killed myself on the roof while installing a ten-foot-high homemade tree of lights, and decorated and placed a second (real) tree on our lower roof, complete with presents and a Santa Claus, and hung lights and candy canes from every possible corner. Our neighbour countered with a homemade bent over Santa mooning us, a light projector on the side of his house and light strands outlining his truck in the driveway. I was told that this complex has never seen so many units decorated before, so it was nice to help spread some Christmas cheer. My neighbour and I were still trying to up each other until late Christmas eve, before we finally agreed to share a drink and start plotting for next year.

I am deathly afraid of heights, and my girlfriend could feel the ladder trembling as I was installing all of our holiday lights. While on the roof I nearly broke down in tears and had to concentrate on deep breaths for most of the experience. Today, while removing these decorations, I paid off my teammate Mark Fearman, with beer, to get up on my roof and take the stuff down for me…I had already proved to my woman that I was man enough (i.e. dumb enough) to get it up there in the first place.

My fear of heights has not stopped my from bungee jumping, sky diving and the occasional cliff jump, but those simply involve closing your eyes and taking a leap of faith. I can not climb a rope more than 15 feet without starting to freak out. When it comes to our fixed ropes section of PQ, I will spend most of it staring at the rock and concentrating on my breathing. I’ll have to look at pictures of the views at a later time, in fact I would not be the least bit disappointed if we ended up doing this section in the middle of the night…with no headlamp, or light from the moon. Just a repetitive motion in a big dark room not five feet off the floor…that’s what I’ll be telling myself.

I hope Santa was good to all of you, because he was rather questionable to me over the holidays. Officially I received a vacuum cleaner and a sewing machine…or as I have come to appreciate it as…relationship happiness! I guess I have PQ to thank for this one, for when I tried to make a compelling argument for other ‘necessary’ household items, such as a home entertainment system, a new bike trainer (I found my present trainer at a garage sale for ten dollars), or some new music, Donna had but to reply with,

“You are spending two and a half grand on a RACE! We are getting a vacuum”.

“Yes sweetie, what color would you prefer”?

Her mother wrapped up two big boxes, one for each of us, and placed them under our tree. On the big morning, I looked at Donna and insisted she go first.

“A sewing machine! Mom you shouldn’t have”.

I could tell by the similarity of box sizes that I would be going boxing day shopping this year.

“A sewing machine storage container! Mrs. Turner, you really, really shouldn’t have”.

I managed to salvage the holidays, by arising at 5am on December 26th and driving for just over an hour, to line up for two hours, to fight little old ladies with high flying elbows to save twenty dollars on a few items, while putting thirty dollars of fuel into my vehicle to get home.

I was quite happy to go home with a new television, to help with my bike training during hockey games, and some new tools, to over-compensate for what I had actually received under the tree this year.

This was the first time in my entire life that I actually trained on Christmas eve, Christmas day, New Year’s eve, and even new year’s day…I’ll be completely honest here, this is the first time in my life that I wasn’t drunk for the entire holidays…and I learned that making it through without alcohol is a lot tougher than I would have thought. Much respect to anyone else who managed to accomplish this feat. On a positive note, this is also the first time in my life that I escaped the holiday season with a single digit weight gain.

On New Year’s day I was a participant in a 50k run followed by a polar bear dip into the Pacific Ocean. I was born and raised in Newfoundland, which is as far east as you can go in North America, and until you have actually been there for yourself you will never understand why so many people consider it to be heaven on earth, even though it gets some of the worst weather in all of the America’s.

What I am getting at, is that I find it hard to justify calling a dip in the ocean on a day when the temperature hits 10 degrees Celsius, A POLAR BEAR DIP! I’m sure there are polar bears somewhere in Northern Canada that are already organizing a petition against this. Sorry but I have no idea what 10 Celsius is in American? I think the conversion rate from Celsius to Fahrenheit is fixated to the daily exchange rate of the American dollar verses the Canadian dollar, so check with your financial institution for exact numbers.

The run itself was beautiful, taking in the better parts of Vancouver’s Stanley Park and seawall trails. Vancouver would definitely be the only place in Canada where you would get 101 people out for a run and dip on the first day of the New Year. I was content to take 90 minutes off my time from the previous year, which basically equates to ten minutes for each beer I that I abstained from versus 2005. I was the sixth overall finisher, but I think there were only three sober people in attendance.

Team MindOverMountain.com has now officially met each other. After replacing our original navigator with a guy by the name of John Barron, we all got together over wings and beer…I know this seems to be the only theme I am consistent with, but it is still kinda the holidays, so it’s alright!

I was the only member who had met John before this past weekend, and overall our team had a very solid first experience together…we’ll see how it all goes when no one has slept for three days, and we’re lost somewhere in the western USA. Anyone can get along when they are at their best, it is when people are at their worst that you truly get to know them.

John will be a very busy man in the coming months as he is not only training for PQ, but also studying to take the medical school entry exam! After a brief career as a teacher he will be pursuing a new field in the coming years. At least we know that our first aid certification will be covered!

John lives the furthest away, being located on Vancouver Island. The distance is not the issue, but travel costs add up in a hurry. Unfortunately that will mean that our newest team member will also be the person we see the least in the months leading up to the race. Although we are not sure as of yet, I believe that John may be the strongest biker on the team, as he will also be competing in La Ruta De Los Conquistadors, in Costa Rica later this year. John will be the oldest team member at the ripe old age of 39, although I would still I.D. him if he tried to buy cigarettes off of me. He has more total race experience than each individual, however he has not yet competed in an expedition adventure race, which helps to bring our team’s total expedition race experience to a whopping ZERO.

The average age of our team is just 31 years, helped along significantly by our youngest member Mark Fearman, at just 25 years old. Although Mark is a solid athlete, his greatest asset is his endearing personality. No one that has ever met Mark will ever forget him, and very few people have ever seen him anywhere near being upset.

Mark and I went for a ski touring training session today, and while I was cursing the foul weather and cold temperatures, Mark kept it in perspective,

“C’mon man, this is fun! This is adventure! What did ya expect, we’re ski touring dude”!

I have known Mark for five years now, and have only heard one story of him being seen without a smile on his face. A few years back while he was sharing a house with his university buddies, he was resting for an early exam. His house mates had gone out to party for the evening and when they returned, they unanimously agreed to sneak into Mark’s room and cover him in shaving cream.

As the cream began to seep into Mark’s ears, he leapt from his bed and chased the main culprit out of his room. As his friend fled for his life, he was forced to lock himself in the bathroom.

You have to understand that I really mean it when I say that Mark ALWAYS has a smile on his face. I’ve actually seen him fall asleep with a smile on his face. When Mark responded to this situation with such aggression, all involved were frozen in fear. Mark ended up kicking the bathroom door in to make sure that he got his point across…he does not like to be ripped from his sleep by shaving cream in his ears, when he has an exam the next morning…so as long as we leave the shaving cream at home, and don’t throw a surprise exam at him, I think we should be fine during Primal Quest.

I already know that I will be the first person on our team to have to bite my tongue due to sleep deprivation. Mark will point out my aggravation and laugh at me, Aimee Dunn (Betty Crocker) will undoubtedly do the same, and we have yet to see what John will be like at his worst?

I have surrounded myself with Aimee and Mark because quite simply, I know they will force me to be a better person when my emotions try to get the best of me out there. Something I have been working on for a few years now, is to do a better job of keeping my emotions in check, and to not let lack of sleep erode my patience so easily. When things go wrong, and undoubtedly they will, I can not seem to let go of the issue until I have yelled a bit, usually with a cuss word thrown in for good measure. Once I do this I have officially vented and it is over and done with. Mark already knows this, John and Aimee, I will now know if you are actually reading my blogs, ‘cause this is your only warning!

Anyone competing in the 2004, Sea 2 Summit (www.sea2summit.com), Squamish to Whistler, two day stage adventure race will undoubtedly vouch for this. Mark and I were competing as a team of two, in our first ever adventure race of more than a sprint distance. We were holding our own, late on the second day. With just 10km to go on the final bike stage, my chain skipped, ripped off my derailleur hanger, and threw the whole set up into my rear spokes! I could not even make a single speed bike with what was left. As each team and individual passed my then prone bicycle, I became more incensed. I had to unleash and did not hold back. It was my first experience with a serious gear related problem during a race, and something that at that moment in time, I could not accept. I believe I heard avalanches on far away glaciers as I shared my disgust with the world.

I sucked it up and we battled through. I would run my bike up the hills, coast down them and grab onto Mark’s pack for a tow on the flats. This was going great, until we crossed handlebars as we were entering the transitional area. We were on the main road, and after about a twenty foot superman slide down the pavement, the traffic stopped in both directions to make sure we were still alive. I don’t think a word was said at that point, not even to the kind people that had stopped to check on us. We simply peeled ourselves off of the road and ran the final kilometre to the transitional area and onto the races final section, a 20km trail run.

Mark and I hammered away and fought back from 20th to 9th, but we ran out of race course. It was not until I decided to try and stretch following the race that I noticed a strange pain in my calf. When I lifted my spandex pants it exposed a gash from our collision on the pavement. I ended up with my first ever stitches, a dozen of them in my leg. Cool, It was all worth it, I had my first official race scar!

The one thing adventure racing really teaches a person is that when things go wrong, it will always make for a good story, and the worse the situation gets, the better the stories in the end! I’ll just have to remind myself of that when we are 500km into PQ and I somehow manage to forget to repack my food, or we run out of toilet paper and are forced to use the ‘organic’ version, or someone forgets the maps…ahhh, too many variables…I guess that’s why we all love it so much.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Gary Robbins
Team MindOverMountain.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 5:05 am and is filed under Archive, News, Teams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.