Well, this commentary is being on the road in quite possibly one of the flatest areas of North America, the praries of Canada. I'm once again going to write this one in sections as we travel from town to town, and hopefully it turns out to be a good one. I'll warn you know, this will probably be a long Juggerstories, so get comfortable.
April 25, 1:45pm (Central Time):
Today is actually day 2 of the adventure. Yesterday I was supposed to be picked up at around 8:00am, well, at 9:00am, I was still sitting in the living room waiting. Finally at 9:25am the Chemical Queerboys (actually Chemical Cowboys, but Queerboys is funnier **note** not actually queer, but funny to rib them about it). The drive was looking to be about 13 hours to Winnipeg. I have to applaud Johnny Handsome, he got quite the raw deal having to drive with myself and Rockjaw for that long, you see, neither one of us like driving AT ALL!! In fact I absolutely despise it. Like a champ, Johnny drove the entire 13 hours by himself with no complaining, well with very mild complaining, something about being tired, but I really wasn't paying attantion. If anyone reading this is a fan of ridiculous weather, I highly recommend heading to Saskatchewan. I stepped out of the van at a gas station and the wind damn near threw me off my feet, it wasn't any normal wind, it felt like the kind of wind that may be coming directy from the Artic, the kind that you instantly feel in your bones. We rolled into Winnipeg at around 11:30pm (Winnipeg is one hour ahead of Calgary), so almost excactly 13 hours with a few stops, not bad at all.
Today I woke up at around 9:30am. I was under the impression that we were leaving for Dryden, Ontario at 11:00 (even though we didn't leave until damn near 1:00), it's about 4 hours to Dryden. I was also under the impression that there would be 4 of us travelling in the mini van. Well, I was sadly mistaken. The van only has the two front seats, and one two seater bench seat since that's all we figured would be needed. Now we had 2 more people added to the equation, with brought the total to 6 people in a 4 seat vehicle. Thank god some of the guys on the trip are a bit smaller, so they can ride in the luggage area of the van. So that is where we are right now, travelling down the road, with 6 people in the van, I think we only have about 3 hours left to go until we get to Dryden Ontario for tonights show. I am expecting the good Dr. Luther to be at the show today, which will be fantastic since I haven't seen Doc for about 6 months now, and I think it is about time for a Team Playaz/2 Big 4 U Reunion, all we need is Skag Rollins to be around and the boy band reunion would be complete, alas, the 2B4U reunion tour won't be happening any time soon.
I am going to take this opportunity to write a top 10 for this week, it just came to me as we were cruising along the flatlands. This week's top 10 is being based all the times I have travelled acros prarie lands in the USA and Canada.
Top 10 things to look at while driving across the praries:
10. Road Signs - the prarie road signs are some of the most interesting signs you will ever see. They have to be, they must make everything look 10 times better than they actually are.
9. Sunsets - As boring as the praries are, the one thing they really have going for them is the sunsets. The only place I have seen a cooler looking sunset was Arizona.
8. Corn/Wheat - One or the other, depending on which praries you happen to be driving through, Canada is more wheat and the corn seems to pretty much stay in the US, when I was travelling across Iowa a few years ago, I had never seen so much corn. Every time I see a corn field, I want to build a baseball field.
7. Nothing - The majority of the driving time in the praries is spent looking at absolutely nothing. The road and a bunch of dirt....pretty damn exciting.
6. Rotten/Broken down barns and houses - It seems that ever 10 or 15 minutes you see at least one abandoned house or barn. Usually the abandoned building has a brand new nice looking replacement building within 100 feet of it. Why don't they just knock the old one down?
5. Prarie towns - I'm not talking about any place that has more than 1000 people living in it. I remember once again in Iowa, there were some towns where I was damn sure it was legal for brothers and sisters to marry. You can be sure that anything you want to buy from a gas station is about 5 bucks more expensive than anywhere else.
4. Hitchhikers - You are always bound to find alot of people trying to get as far away as possible from prarie areas of North America, possibly en route to someplace where the local TV stations cover something other than cow tipping or mailbox baseball.
3. Prarie Lakes - I have to explain this, I am from the mountains, when I think of lakes, I think of a lake nestled in the mountains and surrounded by trees. Apparently the people in the praries think a lake is any amount of liquid that just happens to be deeper than 2 feet. I have seen some "lakes" that look like a sewage treatment pond, but they have a sign explaining the history of the lake. The signs should at least tell the truth; "Lake Wanna-be - The horrid putrid brown lake was created in 2001 when it rained on a manure pile for 3 days straight. After the rain stopped the lake was only 1 foot deep so local farmer Billy Bob John Jimmy-Joe Franklin carried buckets of human and cow urine back and forth for the next 3 months until it finally reached the 4 foot depth you see today - Feel free to jump in for a swim."
2. Landmarks - It seems that the flatter the land, the more ridiculous landmarks you will come across. I have seen giant Moose (anatomically correct), huge balls of string, life size Dinosaurs, giant chairs, a tiny church, the world's biggest beetle, a giant teepee, corn mazes and damn near anything else you can think of. Of course I always feel the urge to stop and take pictures.
1. Wildlife - Prarie wildlife is usually seen in about 75 pieces splattered across the highway or they are seen eating the animal that is splattered across the highway. It really makes me wonder how you could possibly not see an animal coming when you can see for 50 miles in any direction.
April 26th, 10:53am (Eastern Time)
This is officially the time change tour, we started out in Mountain time, then to Central and we just crossed into Eastern Time. Luckly my phone changes the time automatically, because I couldn't be bothered to change my watch. Last night was the first show of the 3 show tour. We were in Dryden Ontario at the Eagles Landing Curling Club. The show seemed to go pretty well, even though I wasn't completely happy with my own match, I think the crowd got their moneys worth over all. Crash Crimson is pretty good, so I have no idea why things just didn't feel right but tonight should be better. After the show, we were supposed to go get a deal on some food at the local McDonalds, but when we got there, the place was closed. Eddie Watts jumped out of the van and convinced the manager to open up and give us all half price, so after some Chicken McNuggets it was off to the hotel. A few of the boys were heading out to the bar, but I decided to stay in and try to catch up on a little sleep.
Now we are on the road between Dryden and Thunder Bay Ontario. Apparently, the shows in Thunder Bay are usually pretty good, so they are expecting somewhere between 800 and 1400 people. It's always nice to wrestle in front of a bigger crowd in the Indies, sometimes you can actually feel the ring vibrating. Sabu, Jerry Lynn and Shane Douglas are all wrestling on tonights show as well, it'll be good to see Sabu again, as well as Jerry (who I haven't seen since 1998), and of course it'll be good to meet Shane Douglas for the first time. Those three should put on a fantastic show in Thunder Bay tonight and in Winnipeg on Sunday. I think we are still a couple hours away from Thunder Bay, Johnny Handsome is still driving, which now after today will put his driving total up to 21 hours in 3 days, pretty damn impressive for a musclehead.
April 27th, 11:33am (Eastern Time)
Back on the road, leaving Thunder Bay on our way back to Winnipeg. Last nights show was absolutely fantastic. There were about 1200 fans in attendance and they were loud. I was much happier with my match last night, but that damn Crash Crimson ended up beating me by taping my hands to the bottom rope as I was draped across the second rope backwards, then nailing me with a top rop guillotine leg drop. Damn Him! Oh well, I will get my revenge on Sunday at the already sold out show in Winnipeg. Sabu made his way to the show last night, you have to respect Sabu, the amount of abuse he has put himself through all over the world for many years, and he still goes out and gives 100% every night. Terry Taylor was also on the show last night, he is so smart about the wrestling business that it's always a pleasure to talk with him. I met Johnny Swinger for the first time last night, he turned out to be a great guy, he's in fantastic shape as well, so I would imagine it will be only a matter of time until we see him on TV again. I was mistaken, I thought we would be seeing Jerry Lynn and Shane Douglas on last nighs show, but I found out they are going to be on the Winnipeg show.
After the show there was a strip club sponsor that we all had to go to. You would think that Thunder Bay, having over 100,000 people living there, would have some decent strippers, well, you would be thinking wrong. The employees of the bar were all very cool people, and I have to give a big thanks to them for re-opening the kitchen for all the starving wrestlers, but, most of the dnacers made the night look like 3 dollar skank night at the nudie bar. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems that the qualitty of dancer talent decreases every couple years. I suppose it's alot like the wrestling business, a few years back it was a profession reserved for a few people, but now, every Tom, Dick and Harry (no not Smith) think they can do it by practicing in their living rooms a couple times a week. A couple of the girls looked alright, but it's like watching dancing clones, they all do the same thing on the stage, it's like you have to graduate from whore dancing 101 to be a peeler, and they only teach 5 different moves, the palms up airplane spin, the grab the pole and do laps thing, the boobs on the pole, the one hip to the other leg spead, and the skipping toe walk. Come on girls, use your imagination. I have to say, I am amazed at what the strippers are allowed to get away with in Ontario, it's like once they take their clothes off, they wander around butt ass naked, mingling with the customers for the rest of the night.
As I search through my picture archives, I am going to do this week's pictures of the week. The first one was taken in Surrey BC last year. It was a 6 man street fight that had myself, Dr. Luther and Abaddon against Johnny Canuck, Michelle Starr and Steve Corino. The picture was taken while I was grinding a large fork across the head of Mr. King of Old School himself.
This next picture was taken back sometime in 2000. I was wrestling Leatherface in Kamloops BC. I have him down on a door that I have on top of 2 chairs, then I came off the top rope with a leg drop.
April 29th, 10:58am (Central Time)
Well the little tour is now over. We just left Winnipeg on our way back to Calgary. Last night's show in Winnipeg at Coyotes Nightclub was another great one, I think they had a total of about 900-1000 people jammed into the Club. My match was a gore fest, I haven't had a match where I got busted open in a long time now, and last night made up for any lost time. I left so much blood in the ring, that one of the boys asked if we were throwing up in the ring, I'll tell ya, I sure feel it today. There was a part in the match where me and Crash were fighting on a catwalk, the railing was about 4 feet off the top of a 4 foor runway. Crash came running at me and I backdropped him over the railing to the concrete floor, he was probably over 10 feet in the air before he crashed into the floor....ouch. The infamous Juggerforks made a special guest appearance last night, the crowd always seems to enjoy it when I bring out my old friends.
The main event was Jerry Lynn vs. Sabu vs. Shane Douglas. The match was great, there is something to be said for true professionals going out and busting their asses. Jerry Lynn is one of the nicest guys in the wrestling business, I was completely suprised to hear him remember the show we did together in Tampa back in 1998. Not to mention he has fantastic taste in music.
So as we travel back along through the flat boring praries, I am happy that I have a computer play around with or I may just go crazy. The trip over all has been a pretty good one. Making money is always a benefit, good thing too, I needed to make enough to pay the rent this month, and I am happy to say I was successful. It's definitaly nice to work for people that actually appreciate the wrestlers, instead of kissing ass to whoever they think is important and taking everyone else for granted. If anyone is looking for a place to train out in or around Winnipeg, I highly recommend checking out Don Callis's NHB wrestling training centre, they have some fantastic talent coming out of there.
Well on that note, I think I am going to wrap up this edition of Juggerstories and play some video games on the good ole laptop.
So, until next time, Chicks Dig Scars, AlliIjustwrestledinyourhometown, skanky strippers are bad, summer is coming soon so please wear shirts with 2 shoulder straps and R.I.P. Lou Thesz!!
Juggernaut