Off The Beaten Track Archives

Axe Throwing In Ottawa Makes The Perfect Office Party

December 7, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

Every November feels the same way: as soon as Halloween is over, it feels like the end of the year is creeping up on you faster than last year, and you’ve got about a million things on your mind, from your own holiday plans to where you’re going to host the annual end of year party for your team. Hosting a great office party at the end of the year is an important way to recognize the great work your team does and create a better, more collegial environment at the office.

There are better ways to do office holiday parties than a formal dinner and drinks – something people inevitably complain about or make fun of every year for being so awkward. Even though these are people you see and work with every day (in fact, about 50% of all professionals spend more time with their colleagues than their friends and family), water cool conversations get stretched a little thin over a formal dinner. However, you should be careful when choosing a more active party idea, as it should be accessible to everyone in the office and still in a casual atmosphere.

If that sounds like a lot to manage, never fear – in case you missed it, axe throwing is now in Ottawa and it has quickly become one of the most popular alternative sports in Canada with the emergence of leagues and private venues in cities across the country. The former Tommy & Lefebvre warehouse on Lancaster Road has been converted into the Ottawa branch of the Backyard Axe Throwing League (BATL), a popular alternative sports destination that originally brought this sport out of lumberjack competitions and into cities across Ontario. They designed a unique way to play that was easy for amateurs and started hiring instructors to teach private groups how to safely and accurately throw axes.

After an hour of instruction, you start competing against other people in your group in a round robin tournament before you move into “playoff” rounds, meaning everyone gets plenty of time to both throw axes and relax, talk, and drink a beer or two. Almost anyone can go BATL axe throwing in Ottawa, too; it’s an accessible sport that rewards technique, and it’s completely accessible to people in wheelchairs or with limited mobility. The emphasis on technique over strength may be one of the reasons that their league is co-ed, and why people from all kinds of professions and backgrounds decide to blow off steam after a long day on the job by throwing axes.

You don’t have to complicate things either by booking an axe throwing venue followed by a casual place for dinner and drinks; BATL’s Ottawa location is licensed and has a partnership with Milano’s Pizzeria, meaning you can kick back, carefree, with a few beers and finger foods and enjoy the night. The end of the year is hard enough on everyone; don’t let your hair go grey trying to plan an elaborate or expensive holiday party. Axe throwing is the hit new destination in Ottawa that everyone is sure to enjoy, just make sure you book in advance.

Brood II – the Countdown

April 17, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

Off-the-beaten track almost universally means a place and activity too far or too difficult or dangerous or damp to appeal to the middle-class, two-weeks-in-July-and-a-week-at-Christmas traveler.

But on rare occasions it can mean a particular slice of time and place that occurs only every 17 years and on the east coast of the United States from New York down to the Carolinas and involves a billion horny flying insects humming in harmony an uncanny impersonation of a subway train passing at close proximity.

The famous cicadas of the Eastern Seaboard mate every year in Spring and the show is an annual aerial spectacle of males of the species emerging from their nymphal stage and underground lair to molt and mature in the sun before soaring to the trees and producing their unique mating call. Soon enough, hopefully, they attract their soulmate and pick out names, find a little privacy, and set about the business of fertilising about 600 eggs, after which the male duly dies.

However each subspecies of this bizarre creature have varying life-cycles and the Magicicada breed every 13 or 17 years. Brood II, though it sounds like a delightfully bad sequel to an even worse horror movie, is the most numerous and densely populous variation for whom this ritual occurs once every 17 years. It’s breathtaking and terrifying and unique and unlike any other vacation activity you may be considering this Spring.

Unfortunately, it’s also tremendously difficult to predict. The cicada begin tunneling to the surface when the ground temperature reaches 20°C (68°F) and so they tend to start as early as the end of April in the more southern habitats and as late as the end of June in New York state. So planning a trip around the magicicada’s brief mating cycle is going to be an adventure in itself. There are, naturally, cicada fancier organisations to help you with an educated guess, particularly this handy historical database which will at least give you the best known previous sightings. Possibly even more helpful is this map of predicted occurrences colour-coded by likelihood.

Once you’ve selected your destination or, ideally, destinations, you might consider camping in a tent to get the full effect. You might also want to educate yourself about what you’re witnessing and, for full immersion, learn some simple cicada recipes like cicada enchilada and cicada stir fry.

If it needs to be said, placing oneself among hundreds of thousands of swarming insects isn’t to everyone’s taste and many locals plan their vacations to escape the cacophony and the rotting corpses and general ickiness of the otherwise completely harmless little bug. But if you’re not squeamish and you’re serious about your unique vacation this is an opportunity that can’t be repeated anywhere else on earth and not again for another 17 years.

Abu Dhabi Dune Bashing

March 19, 2013 By Phillip Fitzsimmons 1 Comment

If you’re in Abu Dhabi and you’re not a menial labourer from the subcontinent then you’re in the oil business and, likely, bored out of your mind.

Abu Dhabi has a nice harbourfront and some beaches, some very posh hotels with maybe slightly too fancy restaurants and a very few licensed bars and clubs where foreigners (and locals who dress as foreigners) can get a drink. You can visit the spectacular Sheikh Zayed Mosque most mornings and the lush Khalifa Park whenever the mood takes you. And then that’s about it unless you leave Abu Dhabi for the desert.

Several tour companies offer variations of dune bashing, the practice of driving a 4×4 at breakneck speeds into sand dunes as big as houses and being launched almost vertically into space, but the best are the comprehensive packages of which dune bashing is merely the highlight.

A comprehensive tour means an overnight stay at a Bedouin encampment in the desert, complete with dinner, quad-biking, camel rides and, naturally, belly dancers. The Bedouin experience is a little contrived and touristy but it’s tremendous fun with the right attitude and the quad-biking alone is worth the trip.

Then everyone — about forty of you — are invited to climb into the ubiquitous white trucks for a roller-coaster ride through the desert. It’s hectic and a little frightening but there are roll bars and seat belts and drivers who at least give a very convincing impression of people who know what they’re doing. If you can, try to get the passenger seat. There’s no bad seat and you won’t be disappointed regardless where you sit but at the front the spectacle is complete and the surprise when you hit the dunes is in no way lessened by the fact that you clearly see it coming.

Don’t bother trying to record the experience. You likely won’t be able to hold your camera steady and in any case you’ll want to concentrate on the physical sensation that really won’t translate all that well to your photo album. Above all you won’t want to miss an aspect of the ride that you may not have considered — the endless, seamless, awe-inspiring expanse of the desert. You can’t capture that feeling with a camera but in real time it’s like no view you’ve ever had, unless, perhaps, you’ve ever been lost at sea.

So far as I know all of the available tours, which typically start by bus in the centre of Abu Dhabi or will pick you up at your hotel, have sterling reputations, particularly with regards to the value/price ratio. They typically charge about dh250 (roughly €50) and it’s cheap at twice the price.