Hullabaloo Quebec, Quebec

Quebec, Quebec. Where Canada's at its coldest, snowiest, and Frenchiest. None of that may be individually or collectively true, but what is true is Quebec, Quebec is the home of the BeaverTail: Canada's contribution to the global obesity arm's race. Watch out America, they got Nutella on their funnel cake. Which they then smashed out and flattened with an iron... 

 If it's two-dimmensional there're less calories right?

Perhaps just as imporant as beaver tails in ensuring Quebec's eternal awesomeness, though, is the Carnaval de Quebec. In part because they have an ice castle, in part because they have Caribou liquor in hollowed out plastic canes, and in part, a very large part, because they have human fooseball.

She kicks like a French-Canadian girl

No, excuse me. Human fooseball on ice. Just in case strapping children to metal poles in freezing wheather wasn't already a good enough idea, they then make them dance. And if they don't want to dance, that's fine. They can feel free to dangle limpy from their chains. Unfortunately we only got to play human ice fooseball twice -- and the second round was prematurely ended by a family from Bufallo who play ice fooseball as if the life of their family pet depended on it -- but it was quite possibly the highlight of my year. Regular fooseball will never again provide the same joy.

A few brief moments struggling to stay upright while people kick balls at my head is not where the Carnival de Quebec ends, however. No, no my ignorant angloophone friends. There're also ice sculptures, toboggan rides, innertube slides, late night dance parties, maple syrup on ice, hottubs on ice -- which I guess are just regular hottubs -- broom hockey, regular hockey on TV probably somewhere, fancy crepes, psychadelic light parades, and snowball castle attack -- where you throw plastic snowballs through each other's ramparts or just at each other. It was awesome because instead of saying, "brrr it's snowing outside, lets stay inside and watch some curling," they said,"brr it's snowing outside, lets strip down and roll in it!"

Lest things get too sexy...

This isn't to say the Carnival de Quebec was all fun and whiskey, though. It also involved showers without shower doors -- why do Europeans insist on this insanity? -- long lines at the border, a few surely Quebecois restaurant owners, escargot, sleeping on the ground using hotel window curtains as blankets, and an indomitable, French-Canadian snow-king-man.

Juiced by a Caribou-fueled rage.

Photographie!

The Winter of My Discontent

When I first moved to New Hampshire I was told to get my affairs in order, I would likely die this winter by snow storm. Inevitably at some point during the six months of continuous freezing maelstrom that is a Northern New England winter I would perish in a snow bank, in front of a snow plow, underneath a snow mobile, or inside a giant snow ball. The towns would all freeze over and the wilds would be no refuge. Especially seeing as how they would both be packed with blood thirsty snow men living in snow forts bent on righteous snow vengeance, the worst kind of vengeance.

Instead there was never more than a few inches of snow. Temperatures never got below zero. Only actually got to zero once the whole time. And my snot never froze to my face -- a true indicator of a good winter I am told. January was actually most notable for the amount of drizzle there was. It was an angry drizzle, no doubt, but just drizzle. I never got my chance to break a leg snow skiing, fall through the ice ice fishing, fall through the ice ice skating, fall through the ice snow shoeing, or even to build an army of eight foot tall snowman storm troopers a la Calvin and Hobbes. I was robbed. I was promised an icy death and all I got was a relatively temperate, boring waiting period between fall and spring.

Speaking of spring. It is now springing and I am told to anticipate the start of Mud Season where, from what I can gather, everything gets covered in mud. I'm not buying it, though. I come from a state where it rains mud! Unless I'm swept away in a river of brown goop sometime this April I will be unimpressed.

Not all was lost this winter. We did have enough time to build a tiny late season snowman -- err snowthing.

Part snowman. Part mothman. Trapped in two worlds, he is accepted in none. He will lead a life of tragic irony chasing the light that will one day be his demise. Coming to Lifetime this spring.

More C4

The real test of a medical unit's combat readiness comes not in their mock platoon marches or field training exercises nor in their mastering of the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) classes. It doesn't come in the twenty-four hour hutment confinement due to training being cancelled on account of freak San Antonio snow. It's not even whether they can go to the communal showers and strip naked and wash and rinse all while avoiding prolonged eye contact next to one another which successfully tells whether they can successfully carry stretchers through mine fields together. The real test of a real unit full of real men comes in the commode.

An Army Strong platoon in today's Army of One can sit down, relax, and watch each other go number two. That's the short of it. That's the test of a unit's combat grit. And in light of that profound military truth, we, collectively, failed. The test as it was ingeniously crafted comes from the bathroom's design as all the stalls, which are for whatever reason already spaced unusually tightly together giving you little in the way of elbow room, were, to perhaps make you forget you had nowhere to place your elbows, also freakishly close to the opposing row of stalls immediately across the way. And lest you pause to think too long about the fact that you could probably touch knees with the guy across from you were he to be a particularly tall individual, you realize that in fact you could touch his knees -- and perhaps gently caress them -- because there are no doors to any of the stalls. There is nothing but open space seperating you from the guy and white cinder block walls of the toilet across from you. A real hero -- I believe the Army was suggesting -- will sit across from his battle buddy, stare him deeply in the eye, and engage in friendly banter while taking a dump. He may even whistle a patriotic tune. Discuss the latest tourniquet application techniques maybe. Thumb wrestle. Whatever exactly is supposed to take place while two dudes respectively sit across from each other in a race to finish their business first, the end result is inevitably a crisp salute and a new level of unit cohesiveness.

Finding this to be the worse of two options were the other option to be small bowel obstruction followed by colonic perforation from never using the restroom again, we collectively came to an unspoken modus operandi. As there were four stalls in each row of the livestock pen the first person would use one of the stalls closest to the far wall while the next person would use the stall furthest from the far wall. Each successive soldier could use neighboring stalls if facing the same direction and feeling friendly, but this was known to be discouraged. Under no conditions was it acceptable to sit immediately across or immediately diagonal to another toilet user, and it was punishable by death if you accidentally sat on someone else's lap. If you were to arrive and find the maximum occupancy of four out of eight stalls in use you would politely return later, you didn't need to go that bad. If you did need to go that bad, congratulations you now know four people who hate your guts. In the end it proved successful -- I never had to watch what God never intended for us to watch -- but our esprit de corps suffered as we lacked that I've-seen-you-poo level of commitment that only veteran, battle tested units ever possess. We may have technically passed the training but we failed each other. C4's most dangerous landmines were truthfully not the literal landmines but the I-don't-want-you-looking-at-me-like-that landmines deep inside ourselves.

We were then forced to do jumping jacks in gas masks and hazmat suits, which -- coincidentally -- is a good way to induce fainting and general claustrophobia-related freaking out.

Snowy or Extra Snowy?

Portland gave me the finger.

Actually they were much more polite than that. No one gave anyone the bird. I just got an apologetic phone call and a formal letter a few days later. And that was that. I was not going to Oregon Health Science University (OHSU).

By then I had also visited the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCoW) in Milwaukee which, I learned, is not spelled with an "a" after the "l", and received word from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) that they too would like to invite me out for a quick chance to turn me down. The Milwaukee interview was standard as far as interviews go, and the program was myeh. In short: it was snowy, the people were nice, I flew home. I was going to say I finally saw the Great Lakes, but then I remembered that I had seen them the year before in Toronto. Truly a remarkable experience.

Milwaukee from a snowy pasture somewhere.

Dartmouth, on the other hand, was something a little different. The obvious name recognition aside, the program had an explicit global health focus in addition to a sound foundation in the infectious disease basics: HIV, wound infections, and beaver bites. They additionally made no apologies for the snow instead boasting of the numerous winter activities you could partake in virtually year round. The staff were similarly friendly, the hospital remarkably modern, and the city was charming in the sense that it was roughly the size of a small truck stop assuming it was a small truck stop run by affluent, well dressed white people. And, to top things off, their anticipated call rotation the next year was once six weekly. Truly a magical place. Both institutions offered me a job.

Hanover from... well... anywhere.

The next week I signed the dotted line over the phone and began the process of separation from the Air Force culminating in much paper work and even more merrymaking. Of all my three options, OHSU included, I believe I lucked out with Dartmouth as I was only informed of their availability literally a day or two before I was to sign a million dollar, multiseason contract with MCoW. It is the best combination and balance of education, interest, and free time. A place I look forward to going to. Shortly thereafter I got an email from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City -- an institution that had arguably been my number one choice earlier in my search -- stating that they too had spot and were wondering if I wanted to visit for an interview....

God sure gets His jollies in weird ways sometimes.

I just hope that when they dig my body out of the New Hampshire snow hundreds of years from now they find some interesting things in my pockets.