During a long weekend one winter, I was having a meal at the kind of restaurant where patrons dine off plastic plates while sitting in rows of cafeteria tables. The woman behind me was complaining loudly about her dressing-on-the-side, hold-the-croutons salad, and her companion was equally disappointed with his vegetarian pizza.

Given that this was a back-door barbecue joint, and I was elbow-deep in ribs, brisket, and baked beans, I wondered: what was she expecting? A smokehouse is a terrible place to order a salad. From top to bottom, the menu listed barbecue ribs, country ribs, spare ribs, baby-back ribs, and a rib combo platter before reaching the chicken section (including the chicken ’n’ rib platter), and the beef section (featuring a beef ’n’ pork rib platter).
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The menu ended with a brief mention of pizza and salad, which looked like a footnote for wayward vegetarians who wandered through the wrong door.

​We’ve all been there. It’s five days or fifty hours into a road trip, and you’re stopped at the only town for miles, in the only restaurant that isn’t McDonalds. The coffee-stained menu is split between types of hamburgers and a hodge-podge mix of “steaks”. Swiss steak, chicken-fried steak, hamburger steak, country-fried steak, and “special” steak. It’s been days since you’ve had something that isn’t deep-fried and this place has french fries listed as a vegetable. Somewhere on the second page of the two-page menu, right below the “Senior’s Specials” you spot it: the only thing on the menu that can ward off the deep-fried-road-trip-scurvy. Nestled between “chicken fingers with fries” and “fried chicken with fries” is the one fresh vegetable dish on the menu.

It’s tempting, but don’t order it. Like a culinary Where’s Waldo, you’ve spotted the anomaly on the menu and I guarantee you it’s a mistake to order. It looks like an oasis in a desert, but it’s really a flavorless landmine.

The routes of my past road trips are a connect-the-dots of disappointing entrees; evidence building the case for a life lesson.
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The dishes are unforgettable. A terrible donair I ordered at a fried chicken place. The stale beef dip at the pizzeria. The gummy rice pilaf at the roadside fish stand. If it’s the odd-one-out on the menu, it will likely be the least-fresh, most poorly made item you can order. After all, the locals would never make that same mistake twice, and the unique ingredients are crammed in the back of the restaurant fridge waiting (for days) for the next tourist.

The lesson is this: never order the salad at a burger joint. Sure, it’s possible Sparky’s Burgers & Stuff has a fresh and tasty chef salad, but it’s more likely week-old, store-bought, pre-mixed iceburg lettuce with a sprinkle of carrots, and a single pale slice of tomato that has seen better days. Always ordering the obvious specialty of the restaurant is the best bet you can make.

So, order pasta at the Italian place, fried rice at the Chinese take-out, and chicken wings at the bar. Just don’t order a salad at a burger joint.

Six years ago, on a brief hiatus from full-time employment, I was wrapping up my first season as ski bum. After four or five solid months of skiing, drinking, and indulging in a host of other vices, I had to make a decision of what to do next. Like so many before me, I had fallen for the humble little ski town I’d called home for the season and decided to try my hand at becoming a local and making my stay permanent.

In the great tradition of those before me, I gradually gave up a few city extravagances in favour of local ones. High heels were traded for hiking boots. Haircuts, once scheduled at six week intervals, were put on a once-a-year rotation and all my spare money became a fund for the local endeavors of ski touring and mountain biking, two new-to-me sports.

For my first day at the mountain bike park, I was riding an 11-year-old full suspension mountain bike, and I was clad in pink Victoria Secret shorts, an old t-shirt, and pair of fingerless gloves leftover from when rollerblading was still a thing. I was three turns into the first run when I heard the clang-clang of a fast-approaching rider behind me. I nervously braked, pulled over, and dismounted just in time for the rider behind me to yell “You doing great!” as he whizzed by.

In my early days of ski touring, I was the last one up the mountain. Hatless, gloveless, and jacketless, I huffed and puffed up the trail feeling like the skis on my feet were significantly heavier than when I started my trek. I would casually glance behind me, half hoping that something was caught on my skis, something that would really justify how slow I was walking. Sweat accumulated on my skin with a complete disregard for the sub-zero temperatures, and when I finally reached my friends –casually gathered, brows dry, halfway through their mid-morning snack– one of them would always announce “You’re doing great!”.

Begrudgingly, I found those three words followed me from sport to sport. Friends, acquaintances, and strangers tried to be supportive and encouraging. I was obviously struggling and they tried earnestly to raise my spirits and give me a reason to carry on. But here’s the thing — no one says “you’re doing great” to anyone who is actually doing great.

Imagine, Martha Stewart placing the last perfect marzipan rose on the top tier of a impeccable wedding cake. “You’re doing great!” the production assistant cheerfully announces.

Or imagine a damsel in distress, strapped to the rail tracks with an oncoming train fast approaching. Superman flies in at the last second completing another flawless rescue. “Hey Superman, you’re doing great!” a bystander yells.

Stephen King, writing the final paragraphs of his soon-to-be best-selling novel. “You’re doing great!” his editor emails him.

It’s like “you’re doing great” is reserved specifically for those who are clearly not doing great. For the hyper-conscious novice it’s not encouraging; it’s the verbal equivalent of an “underage” wristband at a bar or an “N” for new driver stuck to your bumper. Whenever I hear it, I know the jig is up, the clock has struck midnight and I’ve failed to look like I actually know what I’m doing. I’ve turned from what I hoped was passing for competent mountain biker back into an obvious newbie, someone who it appears will benefit from the three words usually reserved for six-year-olds at a soccer practice.

I’m hoping one day I’ll achieve a level of competence that means I can ski tour or mountain bike without a single person telling me I’m doing great. Then I know I’ll actually be doing great.

Bronze age, iron age, DIY age. Never in history has it been so possible to do nearly anything yourself. Everyone from amateur mechanics to broke twenty-somethings are madly googling how-tos on everything from minor household construction and whatever they saw during their latest HGTV binge.

Each generation has it’s decore blind spot: the fabulously popular design trend that has future generations unable to fathom how even one person, let alone just about everyone, had to have it. Wood panelling. Shag carpeting. Floral couches. They didn’t just fail the test of time, they spectacularly crashed and burned.

I won’t bore you with the details of how one can find themselves in strangely specific corners of the internet, but somewhere between pallet hacks and Ikea hacks, are furniture-ruining distressing hacks. It’s the intersection of a Venn diagram between DIY makeovers and regrets-of-the-future decore.

Under employed housewives and mommy bloggers everywhere are taking classic pieces of furniture and erasing their timeless appeal with gobs of pastel paint to create what the future will find as appealing as carpeted bathrooms and fuzzy toilet-seat-covers are now.
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