Divided Loyalties in the Hammer July 30, 2008

My sister is a rabid Tiger Cats fan. RABID. If you don’t believe me, you should try sitting next to her at a game and NOT having your hearing damaged. She’s so into it that her voice actually breaks when she yells at the field (and insists that the players can hear her – from 100 yards away, with helmets on, in a stadium full of other people yelling). She & her boyfriend invited my wee bro & I down to Hamilton to watch a game last weekend.

The TiCats were playing the Edmonton Eskimos, and I was informed by my sister that I wasn’t allowed to cheer for anyone other than the TiCats. Oh, divided loyalty! I LOVE Edmonton, and in most ways I wish I was still there… but I don’t think I could have gotten away with cheering for the Eskies in Hamilton without getting a severe beating. So, I cheered (quietly) for the TiCats.

The fun started on Friday afternoon. I had managed to get the notoriously time-stingy Bossman to allow me to work through my lunch break and leave an hour early at the end of the day. I had even driven to work in the morning, so that I could just leave straight from work (in fact, I had remembered so many unusual things on Friday morning that I managed to totally forget the USUAL things. Like my phone. Yup, it spent the weekend sitting on my sink. When I got home on Saturday night, I hadn’t missed one call. Sad.).

So, the Bossman let me leave at 3pm, I bolted out to my car, jumped in and headed to the Gardiner. Mistake number one. I should have known better than to expect an already-busy highway to be clear enough for relatively speedy travel on a Friday in July. So, it was very full and very slow for the first 20 minutes. After about 10 minutes of fairly fast-flowing traffic, we suddenly stopped dead. Cue me, sitting in stopped traffic (honestly, I think I managed to get about 3 kms in the whole time I was stopped) for an HOUR. Note that’s “stopped” traffic, not stop-and-go. It was EXCRUCIATING.

Oh, and did I mention it was about 30°C? And that I have no air conditioning? And that my car tends to overheat when it idles for too long? Ya… so I was sexy, sweaty beast. I passed three people that had stopped on the side of the highway because their cars had overheated, and somewhere along the way my fan died. The only breeze I had and it was dead. Marvellous. Apparently, when my car gets too hot inside, it smells like it’s sweating. Gross. It makes me wonder: If my car gets whiney and sweats and overheats in 30°C, how do people with cars in warmer climates manage to drive around without overheating?

Eventually, I passed the cause for the hold up. It was an accident, on the other side of the highway. That’s right, people are SO nosy that they had to stop to look at the horrific accident in the OTHER side of the highway. Typical! It’s not even like they were slowing down for the emergency crews or anything. NOTHING was happening on my side of the highway except a bunch of Nosy Parkers get their good looks. The traffic freed up after that and I flew down the highway, watching happily as my engine temperature gauge slowly crept back down. Then I hit yet more traffic where two highways merge into one. It took me another good half hour to get through that, and then my exit came and I was home free!

Or so I thought. Apparently, the Gods had determined that I wasn’t allowed to reach my destination in anything less than 2h15m, because some Sunday-driver-mumblypeg pulled out in front of me as soon as I got into Hamilton, and I couldn’t get around him. This is the type of driver that hits the brakes at every stop light, whether the light is red, amber or green. As a result, I ended up getting stopped at almost every light behind him and racing down the street to catch the next light. Extra-special frustrating. Good thing I was handed a beer as soon as I got to my sister’s house! That helped to calm me down considerably. Hmm… I wonder if I’ve inherited any of my Dad’s road rage tendencies? As I hit each snag, I would yell, “NO!” as if yelling would cause the traffic to magically begin moving again.

The game was great – even though the TiCats lost. It was really exciting, including an Eskimo injury that had an ambulance on the field (which brought calls of “Shake it off, Princess!” from the TiCat fans). I was slightly distracted from the game though, by sitting between two noisy people – my sister on my right, screaming her head off; and a teenaged girl on my left, who sang (loudly) to herself through the whole game. Note to self: next time, bring ear plugs.

Following the TiCats’ loss, we decided to go back to my sister’s house to drown our sorrows (well, my sister was interested in drowning her sorrows. The rest of us just wanted to drink beer that didn’t cost $8 a piece). While we were in the cab (all of us drunk and my sister bitching about the TiCats and singing at the top of her lungs), my sister made the command decision that we should go to some bar in Hamilton, rather than go home. Okay with me! So, we piled out of the cab and into this bar.

On the way up the stairs to the patio, my sister’s boyfriend told me that this particular pub was a known hangout for the TiCats players after a game. Apparently, my sister wanted to hang out at the pub, wait for the players to arrive and then give them a piece of her mind (I reminded her that she could only give them a small piece of her mind, as she had a finite amount left. Ha, ha.). As we drank our beers (straight from the can like good, non-classy Canucks), we noticed that everyone on the patio had really dressed up for their Friday night out, whereas we had just returned from a football game. Hrm.

The girls were all wearing about a pound of makeup, slinky outfits and heels. The guys were primarily dressed in button-ups and slacks. And then there was us: t-shirts, shorts, sandals and sweatshirts (just in case it got cold at the game, which it didn’t. Our seats face West, so we got a face full of setting sun for at least half of the game). So… we didn’t exactly fit in. Not to mention that I’d been sweating all. Damn. DAY. First, in the morning on the way to work, then in my two hour traffic fiasco, then at the game with a face full of sun… so I was not exactly feeling “fresh”.

Eventually, I think the combined realization that my sister didn’t ACTUALLY want to confront men that outweigh her by several hundred pounds, stand a good foot taller than she does and get paid to hit other people AND the fact that we were really underdressed prompted her to suggest that we go elsewhere. So, we wandered out and stumbled drunkenly over to another pub, where we sat on the patio out front and proceeded to make friends with everyone. Well, in all honesty, apparently my sister knew one of the guys on the patio, but we all ended up talking to one another, anyway. They were entertained by my sister’s vehement reaction to the TiCats’ loss, as well as our sibling bickering (which continued well into the evening, back at my sister’s house, where my brother and I squabbled about Robert De Niro and Al Pacino – I don’t like either of them and according to my brother, I’m not ALLOWED to not like them if I’ve never seen the Godfather. Who knew there were rules about that sort of thing?).

The following morning was lovely, quite sedate (that’s what happens when the whole house is hung over) and my sister cooked us the yummiest French toast I’ve had in a long time. Then my brother and I piled into my car, stopped at Timmy’s and jumped on the highway. Cue the traffic jam. In exactly the same spot as the day before! In the exact same manner – an accident on the other side of the highway! Spooky. It was here that I encountered my first “Thank you” wave in months – and I was so pleased that I suspect that it might have made me do a cheerleader clap. Honestly, though, where did the “thank you” wave go?