One had dyed black hair and was wearing tiny black Lycra. I know her hair was dyed, aside from the slight purple tinge, because she was joking about it running on the floor among her sweat, and boy she was sweating. We all were.
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| Arch Hole (around the bay) |
The purple headed madwoman took the second half of the class and led us through the '7 minute mountain' with a stream of unsubtle, dominatrix comments like 'faster, harder, you know you can give me more', made more alarming to the men in the room I'm sure, by her habit of pointing a finger at them as she shouted. It was a little tongue in cheek, well she certainly knew she was being cheeky with statements like "you have to get off your motorbike and onto a real ride if you want to catch a woman like me...". Despite my being in deep anaerobic pain by this stage of the session, hot and breathless to the point of dizzy, I was distracted and amused enough to keep the work effort on to the end of the session. Her co-presenter seemed a little embarrassed, but then, she had literally been foaming at the mouth as she barked out her orders for the first half. Suddenly Newfoundland seemed more like California, with a level of whoop, whooping that I don't think would go very far at home. At the end as we disinfected and mopped down our bikes the man next to me, who must have been around my age said, "I think I kinda hate them right now".
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| Open Hall |
I was still beaming bright red when I went for another round of meet and greets and self-promotion an hour later. I figured, it's a conversation starter.
But I need to work hard after the volume of food I consumed over Easter. I went 'around the bay' which seems to be a generic, in the way we might say 'up north', somewhere rural and a bit out there where possibly you still have family and a longing to live but can't find employment or population to stay. The weather was finally double digits for the day, and then returned to snow for Easter Sunday.
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| St John's |
Frances, who looks after John's cabins took me round and cooked lunch for everyone. As she was serving she asked , "do you just want a bit of everything?" so I, foolishly polite, said yes. Well, the plate of food was as big as Signal Hill that marks the entrance to St John's harbour. I now know Jig's dinner consists of roast turkey, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, gammon, pease pudding, stuffing, gravy and god knows what else was lurking under the pile - possibly an entire rabbit. Actually I think the jig's dinner bit was everything but the turkey, because it really means, whatever you can cook up in one big pot.
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| Signal Hill, entrance to St John's harbour |
I had to give up. I really couldn't get it all down me, not least because she'd already given me a massive slab of Blueberry Fluff or Flan or something laden with whipped cream and custard - to keep me going to lunch. I had to sit and chat and drink a lot of tea over the next 3 hours before I could even think of driving back to St John's. And am I fed up with 80s and 90s rock music. A land that has the most fabulous live music has shocking radio. The BBC has spoiled me forever. There was a very cool programme on CBC however, called "Three Years of Provisions and two French Horns - Music of the Moravian Inuit". It documented a tour by Memorial University brass of Inuit Labrador, (tempting to type resurrecting) the once common brass band music that was central to Moravian religion. It was quite marvellous to hear hymns being sung in both English and Inuktitut, simultaneously.
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| Old St John's, Battery Hill |
Easter Monday in St John's was once again sunny and warm, 11C, so I picked up my trails map and headed out about 30 minutes to La Manche provincial park where there is a walking route down to an abandoned village. La Manche means, the sleeve. It makes sense when you see the geology of the place.What a pretty, pretty place to live, though winter must be a different story. The bridge across the gorge must be a good 40ft about the water and it was washed away once storm and had to be rebuilt. The trail was not much used south of La Manche and I found myself walking in mud with only moose scat and prints ahead of me. I started to get myself a bit tingly closed in the thick woods, because the radio has started reporting moose sighting by the roads and we'd seen caribou 'round the bay'. I heard a scrabble of branches and stopped in my tracks, just as a tiny squirrel ran across in front of me. Hmmmm, think I was letting myself be a little paranoid.
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| The bridge at La Manche |
Well it is the big RW on Friday. Surely he hype here tcan't be as bad here as at home, but it is bad enough. I will be on an aeroplane heading to Halifax and on through Nova Scotia. I'm sure the airport TVs will be showing all the highlights and I won't miss her dress for longer than the morning. I hope they get better weather than us. After yesterday's sunshine we are back to snow tonight, ice pellets tomorrow.
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| 'Top' of the sleeve at La Manche |
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| La Manche - The Sleeve |
PS Why does Lycra have a capital?
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