Odd and Ends from Canada

Don’t ask me to be chronological here. All right, you can ask, but you’re just asking for disappointment.

The sign that read, “Trucks please do not use engine retarding brakes in urban areas.” In this case the urban area was at most ten buildings.

The time I was a capital-F Foreigner. After a little while at Earl’s in Edmonton (“We’re pricey, but we’re trendy!”), I decided that perhaps a quiet brewski or six without the silliness of a manufactured drinking environment was in order. Had there been a real bar within walking distance, that would have been a better choice, but you take what you can get. It was raining and windy and downright nasty, but there was a convenience store nearby so no problem. I dashed through the nasty weather in shorts to the Husky store to grab myself a sixer. There was nothing in the cooler, but I thought I’d better ask. “Do you have beer here?” She looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Beer? No, eh. Beer?” She didn’t have any idea where someone could come up with the notion that one would go to a convenience store to buy beer. She turned to the other guy working and said, “Is the liquor store over there going to be open today?” It was Sunday. In the end, there was no six-pack for Jerry, I just got a funny look and perhaps I provided a story for some Canadians.

A word I made up on the road from Calgary to Edmonton: Constructivitis

In Naksup I stopped by a little record store with a fairly eclectic assortment of used CD’s. What was most impressive was the amount of vinyl for sale. I was hoping to find some good Irish music and one of the first CD’s I picked up was exactly what I was looking for. It was a collection by various artists, but most of the tracks are really good, freighted with sweet sadness. That’s what got me thinking about that Solitude episode back there. (I’m going to go back and redo that one soon; I’m not to happy with how it turned out.) Listening to Irish music alone is much like drinking alone.

The Sportsman Club

Location:The Sportsman Club, Columbia Falls, Montana (map)
Miles: 5606.9

Safely and legitimately back in the US, with a tankful of crappy gas I bought in Bonner’s Ferry, I steered east toward Glacier National Park. Highway 2 is in pretty good shape up there, and now that I’m keeping the daily dose of driving down, I am better able to appreciate the beauty of the land once more. Top down, sunscreen on, tunes playing louder than was strictly necessary (Desolation Boulevard by Sweet – remember them?), I was making time.

I missed the sign welcoming me to Montana; I was trying to read all the different speed limits to make sure I didn’t get caught in the fine print. The speed limit is different based on what you’re driving and the time of day. Speed limits are not based on the size or quality of the road. I know of no other place that allows you to drive 70 on little twisty two-laners. Montana’s approach to speed law is more or less to let people drive as fast as they want, and point out along the way where people have died. There are lots of little white crosses along each side of Highway 2, sometimes in bunches. I wonder if people drive differently as the number of death markers increases. The locals have probably stopped seeing them.

I had planned to stop in Kalispell, but all the hotels were the upmarket Holiday Inn sort of thing or were crappy-looking. I would have accepted crappy if there were a interesting-looking bar nearby. There were lots of casino/lounge combinations, but I wasn’t up for that kind of thing. The sound of video poker and slot machines is not what I’m looking for when I want to relax with a beer and write. I even stopped at one crappy-looking hotel that didn’t look so bad from the road, but I couldn’t find anyone to give money to. I didn’t try that hard. Onward, then, toward Glacier.

Columbia Falls is a nice little town. I found a room that was only marginally overpriced and asked about a bar while registering. After some consultation the hotel staff recommended The Sportsman Club. It was on the main drag and I found it easily. I didn’t take any technology with me; I decided to try some conversation with the bartender and to just relax for a while.

I wasn’t too surprised when I discovered myself in a bar with both kinds of beer – Bud and Bud Light. I had a Bud and my first pleasant surprise was that the beer was pretty cheap. My Cheap Bastard genes overcame my Beer Snob genes and it became a Budweiser night. The NBA finals were on that night, and the bartender told anyone who asked, “We’ll have that on all the TV’s except this one right here. I’m watching baseball.” The bartender and I got along great, and I spent the rest of my time on the fringes of the conversations around me.

Happy hour started. Two drinks for the price of one. Patrons would walk in and Helen the bartender (her name probably wasn’t Helen, but that’s the best guess I can come up with now), would set up two glasses and pour a pair of cocktails. Three guys came in from fishing, and she immediately set to work on six glasses of booze.

At one point an attractive woman settled onto the stool next to mine. Two drinks appeared in front of her almost immediately. She didn’t seem to be in a conversational mood, so I just nursed my beer and wished the fishermen would take at least a short break between cigarettes. I talked baseball with the bartender. Two younger woman came in and once they had a drink in each fist they started talking to the woman next to me. The bitter, angry girl turned out to be the woman’s daughter. At that point my surreptitious ring check was out of curiosity more than any personal interest in the woman. Ring finger empty. The two girls went down to the end of the bar and the woman ordered another pair of drinks.

Alcohol in quantity attracts a pretty good crowd, and soon the place is getting pretty loud and my eyes are starting to burn from the smoke. I was still having fun talking to people, however (except the guy who refused to speak with me after I told him I was from San Diego) so I ordered another beer. During that beer I learned that a happy, scruffy drunk around the corner of the bar was the woman’s husband. He was drunk, she was drunk, the daughter was getting rapidly plastered and increasingly angry. One big happy family. About to get happier – the woman told me her daughter was pregnant.

Happy hour ended after – get this – an hour. People stayed in the bar, however, having got their drinking momentum going. I chatted a while longer but it was time to get out of there. I went up the street to the supermarket and got supper, then headed back to the hotel. I was so throughly impregnated with smoke that I took a shower when I got back to the room. My clothes reeked so badly that after I got out of the shower you would never have guessed that I was in a non-smoking room. Thick smoke aside, however, it was an interesting and educational evening at the Sportsman Club.

Customs

Heading out of Creston, I grabbed a deli sandwich and a coke at a convenience store and headed south. It’s not far from Creston to the border, and I was there before I knew it.

Was it the beard? Was it the Deli sandwich? I spent quite a while in customs. I pulled up to the window, happy to see that there was no line. The customs agent started very politely asking me where I had been and what I was bringing back with me, and asked me for ID. I pulled the shirt from the passenger seat where I had had my passport. It wasn’t there. Hm. I pushed the winnebaggo out of the way to check the seat for the passport. Not there. Uh oh. Wait a minute.. it’s in my pocket. Whew.

The sandwich has beef in it. It’s not coming into the US. I’m hungry. “Is there a place I can sit and eat my sandwich here?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “park over there and bring your sandwich into the office. You can eat it while we search your car.” So there it was. I was in secondary. I wasn’t in a hurry; I knew that getting searched was likely. I suppose if I was a customs agent I would send people like me into secondary. This way I got to eat my sandwich as well.

In the office another guy gave me a more intensive grilling. Where I’d been, and so on, then a very long list of questions about what I was bringing back with me. In the end, the sum total of the things I had purchased in Canada and brought back over the border: a deli sandwich and a coke. “No souvenirs?” No. “Nothing?” No. Finally I’m allowed to sit and eat my sandwich. Mmmm. Good sandwich.

From where I sit I can see the agent outside, pulling the bags out of my car. Out comes the bag with everything from my bathroom. (I’ll do an episode on packing soon). I hear the echo of the customs officer: “Any prescription drugs?” “No,” I had said. But what if there were prescription drugs in there? At such times, the most inconsequential worries are somehow magically magnified. Like they’re not going to let me back into the country if there was some old penicillin I missed when I was throwing everything away. so I was nervous for no reason. But did they notice I was nervous? Was that suspicious?

The woman searching the car moved on to another bag, and I returned to my sandwich. Finally she was done, but I had to stay for a while longer. They were running some kind of check on me in one of those new-fangled databases of subversives and no-goodnicks.

Lighter by one sandwich, I pulled out of customs and into northern Idaho. Now I’m back in the good ‘ol USA, and it’s nice to be here.

Pepper’s

Location:Pepper’s Pub, Creston, Canada
Miles: 5400.2

Just another drive through beautiful country amid scattered showers. I thought about stopping in Nelson, but I was in the mood to travel, and Nelson seemed too “shoppy” for my mood. I drove the downtown and stopped at the Civic Pub for lunch – burger and a beer for $5. The burger was excellent.

Pepper’s is the lounge attached to the cheap-ass motel I’m staying in tonight. Across the valley the rain is falling on the hills, lit from behind by the setting sun. There are railroad tracks paralleling the highway outside the window, but no trains while I’ve been sitting here. The bartender when I came in, Diana, turned forty today. She must not be too bothered by that if she told me. She stayed for a while after her shift drinking with two girlfriends who I assumed were a couple until I heard them talking about their kids. I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not a couple.

The new bartender is very pretty, friendly, and a fan of Monster Garage. Don’t get too excited, boys; I’m pretty sure she’s taken.

The Flavors of Solitude

Solitude is not simply the state of being alone, it implies active insulation from the rest of humanity. Solitude has many flavors, characterized by what is avoided and what is missed.

The taste of solitude changes dramatically depending on whether one is stationary or in motion, isolated or ostracized. When you are stationary you can form a connection to a place, even if it’s just a rock in a meadow, and even if it’s just for a short time. You are somewhere, and it is a place that is yours. Sitting alone at your spot in a bar or in your comfy chair, solitude at rest is peaceful, a shelter.

Solitude in motion has a different flavor. No connectedness, no restfulness. There is a drive behind the motion, something disquieting that prevents rest, either a quest for something unattainable or a flight from something. The mind is at work, gnawing at itself, yearning for the unattainable. The only thing harder than moving on is staying put, for motion becomes the mechanism that enforces solitude. By never staying too long in one place, no attachments can form.

I heard an interview of a guy who spent five years riding freight cars, not knowing how he was going to eat that night when he woke up in the morning. He found a way to express his thoughts as he drifted, and published a book of poetry that made quite a bit of money. In the interview he said something like “I’ve been settled down for a few months now, but I’m going back out there soon. I feel the need growing in me.” Unasked, unanswered, unanswerable, is where the need comes from. Is life in mainstream society smothering him, threatening him, or just disappointing him?

Solitude is the state that allows the mind to turn inward. Free from the obligations that come with all human interaction, you can simply think. This is the essence and the allure of solitude, and also its curse. Free to think, there is no avoiding thought. ‘Curling up with a book’ is not solitude, even though you’re not with other people. You’re with a book. Solitude is the state when thoughts are free and unfettered, and consciously you have very little control over them. It is the state of complete personal honesty, when the thoughts happen that you will never tell anyone else. It is the time we dance with madness.

Artists are the ones with the courage to tell us what they saw there.

Lists

Wildlife I’ve seen, in no particular order:

  • Bear
  • Deer
  • Birds of all categories, notably eagles, osprey, geese, and a little guy that was picking the bugs out of my radiator
  • Big horn sheep
  • Bobcat…? It was large, and had a bobbed tail, but it was pure black. Do bobcats come that way? (And yes, it crossed my path)
  • People
  • Squirrels (both suicidal and non-)
  • Mountain Goat
  • Coyote
  • Bison
  • Elk

Animals in captivity:

  • Sheep
  • Caribou
  • Horses
  • Cattle
  • Llamas (could have been alpacas)
  • Ostriches
  • One donkey
  • People

I debated putting people in the lists, but I’m pretty sure whoever was in that moose suit in Weed felt like a captive animal. Conversely, some of the bikers I’ve seen certainly qualify as wildlife. Of all the animals in captivity, I think the horses were making the best of it. I caught them having fun on several occasions.

Wing Night

Now I’m at the hotel bar. It’s a good one. A whole bunch of guys just came in, and they have a $100 bet that one of them can’t eat 30 suicide wings in 30 minutes. You know I’m sticking around for that. Usually there’s a cover charge for a show like this. The victim is drinking a big glass of milk right now. There was a brief scare that the kitchen didn’t have enough wings, but we’re go now. I have an excellent view.

3 wings in, he’s sweating. He’s doing a diligent job wiping the sauce off his lips. He’s trying to pick up speed without success. He’s got another milk. He’s using his fingers to tear the meat off the bones to save his lips, but before long his fingers are going to start burning. He doesn’t know that. He’s Canadian. My Greek Salad is so cool and refreshing. He’s starting to lose focus, but he’s still going. Deep breath, another bite.

He’s nodding now – He’s in a groove. The pain has stopped getting worse.

He’s starting to wipe the sauce off his fingers. My camera’s back in the room. Dammit.

Posture change. He’s back in his chair now, not forward over the table. His friends, who stand to lose a hundred bucks if he succeeds, are completely behind him now. Shoulder massages, a new five-minute “bump” period after the 30 minutes have expired. They’re checking his pace against the clock, giving him advice. Mostly, “eat faster.” He’s falling behind. The call has gone out for more napkins. Not from the eater; he hasn’t said a word for fifteen minutes.

He quit. There are 14 left. 16 is pretty damn good. The waitress says 16 is a house record, but I doubt she really knows. The dude is hurting, but he’s recovering already.

He’s thinking about going for it! 5 minutes, 14 suicide wings. He’s doing it! “Better get a bucket,” I advised the crowd. “Don’t bother chewing,” a friend advises. What a way to choke to death. Two minutes, one wing. He’s a black guy, but he’s looking green. He’s chewing. Chewing. He’s not looking good.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked, and got up quickly. His buddy followed with the camera. Buddy returns. “He had the door closed,” Buddy says, “but I got the audio.”

Now the remaining wings are being passed around. “I’m not eating one because I’m not a dumbshit,” the guy at the end of the table said. Someone just found “Fire Down Below” by Bob Seger on the jukebox.

Thus we learn the price of hubris. He has returned from his de-winging and is having another milk. It seems last night he had first said he could eat fifteen, but had escalated to 30 to get a bigger bet. Instinctively he knew his limit, but he had to push it. He’s smiling now, but he went through an hour of hell to be $100 poorer.

The Perfect Road

Location: Nakusp, Canada
Miles: 5235.2

I’m making my way back down to the states now, but I’m taking the scenic route, as usual. By scenic, I suppose I mean indirect, since all the routes seem to be scenic. As I studied the map for today’s leg, I had to choose between a larger road marked as a scenic route and a smaller road with no such blessing. I took the smaller road and am really happy I did. I took it because it had a ferry at one point. I knew the ferry would be nothing fancy, but it was a nice change of pace.

Let me tell you, boys and girls, that Highway 6 from Vernon to Nakusp is a great bit of driving. It probably isn’t marked as scenic because it’s too small to be noticed, but it is beautiful, and curvy, and not busy. The pavement is rough in some places, but I was happy to put up with that. I had breakfast at Waddy’s in Vernon, eggs over easy done almost perfectly, bacon, toast, and hashbrowns for five bucks, including coffee or tea. Good deal. I feel good as I find the highway and continue east.

I’m getting better at reading the isolated clouds that wander around dumping rain, and after only a few miles I decided to put the top up. I patted myself on the back as I passed through Lumby and the rain started to fall. There were signs up all over town for the “Lumby Days” celebration this weekend, which probably explains why it was raining there.

My atlas shows the road out of there as being pretty straight, but happily it is not. As the rain began to fall harder, the road became curvier, and the slopes steeper. I recognized the big, fat drops that presaged a hail storm back in New Mexico, and sure enough the drops started leaving little grains of ice behind on my windshield. I slowed down further, hoping that no one would run into me from behind, and glad that I wasn’t one of the motorcyclists I saw passing the other direction.

Then the sky opened up, flinging abuse at me like I was back in junior high. The roar of the ice crashing against my windshield drowned out my music and thunderclaps from even the closest lightning strikes. The road was immediately coated with icy spheres. I was driving on ball bearings made of ice with badly worn tires. Not good. Put an infant in the car and you have a tire commercial. I just wanted off the road. Twice the car skated dangerously, once taking me into the oncoming lane while I pointed the front wheels the right direction and prayed.

Finally I found a place to pull off, but someone else was already in it. There was no way I was going to stop if I couldn’t get all the way off the road. Solid rock was on my right, and I really couldn’t see what was down the slope on the other side. I crept on. After a couple more miles I found a spot to pull over, but by then the hail was letting up, yielding to ordinary, small-drop rain. Not far past that was a little restaurant with several motorcycles parked outside. As my adrenaline levels returned to normal I began to appreciate the road again.

The sun came out, and the wet road began to form its own fog bank, which I failed to photograph well. Once the top had time to dry out I pulled over next to a deer and went into sunshine configuration. When I stepped out of the car I was a little wobbly. I walked around a bit, trying to see the river I could hear far below me, but it was lost in the dense foliage. The deer watched me warily but was not going to give up whatever choice grazing it had found. No other cars passed while I stayed there.

crossing%20the%20lake.jpg Ten miles down the road I had to put the top back up. So much for my ability to read the clouds. Don’t like the weather? Drive a mile. The wet road and my recent brushes with four-wheel drift made me cautious, so I didn’t get the most out of the road, but it is a very, very good road. The ferry was on the far side of the lake when I pulled up, which allowed me to walk around for a bit in the gentle rain. I had a chance to read that I would soon be passing through Osprey Country, and that there would be nests on many of the power poles. I took some pictures, experimenting with different settings on the camera, then when the rain picked up I went back and put King Crimson on the stereo and studied my map. I decided that Nelson looked like a good place to shoot for.

When I got here I changed my mind. Nelson can wait until tomorrow. Nakusp is beautiful. I drove down the main drag and decided I had gone far enough this day. With plenty of daylight left I had time to walk along the lake, which is a long, well-cared-for park, with gardens lovingly tended. Unusual, I think, for a town this size. All along the walk are benches dedicated to the people who first settled here 100 years ago.

The lake is very low, I noticed. If it gets any lower the boat dock is in trouble. That can’t be good at the peak of runoff.

Now I’m at the hotel bar. It’s a good one.

Desert City Downpour

Location: Duffy’s Pub, Kamloops, Canada
Miles: ????

Drove back through Prince George (it looked like all the alternate roads were unpaved), stopping there for breakfast. There was a newsletter at the front counter that looked similar to the one I had read in Mcbride, so I picked it up. It was the first issue ever and, alas, the quality of the writing was really poor. The publisher did seem sincere about supporting the rural communities around Prince George, though, so good luck to them. The standards will probably improve with practice. That’s what I hope happens for me, at any rate.

On the way out of town I stopped off for a brief visit at the fairly lame farmer’s market, then drove up the highway I had first come into town on. Now that I wasn’t going to Alaska, I reminded myself to slow down and take advantage of photo ops, like I had earlier in the trip. “Get out of the car, Jerry,” I reminded myself often. It helped. “Stop the narrator in your head, writing about things as you see them,” is tougher. I’ll start with getting out of the car.

I took some pictures, but I’m starting to feel limited by my little camera. It’s a good camera for what it is, but I wish I had multiple lenses now. And the colors see washed out to me. I’m starting to experiment with adjusting the white balance (or something like that) to see if the colors are more vivid. Anyone know what other adjustments I should look at? I also want more pixels, but then don’t we all? What would be cool is a camera that hooks up to the computer while shooting to use the computer monitor as a super high resolution viewscreen. Not always practical, but when feasible it would be really nice.

Passed 50,000 miles on the cars odometer, passed 5,000 miles on the trip staring at the ass of a lumbering truck, and at 50140 miles my road trip was 5014, 10% of the total miles on my car.

Went through some more pretty country, then at Cache Creek things abruptly turned arid. I cruised into kamloops hoping to perhaps find a cheap place with Internet. I had passed a couple up north earlier in the day, so I had hope for the relatively large town. I didn’t look that hard for high-speed, though; I was willing to settle for working dialup.

The pimple-faced kid working the desk of the hotel where I stayed recommended a bar called Duffy’s, a short walk from the hotel. You know you’re in the boonies when you meet a pimple-faced kid who doesn’t know crap about computers, but his bar recommendation was a good one. Here I sit at Duffy’s now, sipping a good Pale Ale which purely by chance is on special tonight, watching the driving rain outside. (“Desert City my ass,” I told the waitress. “We need the rain,” she said.) I can’t take my laptop home in this weather. Looks like I’m stuck here until the rain lets up. Curses!

I think I scared the waitress. She asked me, “You want another beer, honey?” and we had gotten accustomed to each other, so I said, “Certainly, Dear.” I think I put more growl into the “dear” than I intended. It was a while before she came back and after that she called me “guy.”

Epiphany, Schmepifany, Epiphany

Location:Vanderhoof, Canada (The geographic center of British Columbia!)
Miles: 4639.6

Slept in a bit tis morning, made tea, and emerged to a wet morning. The mountains to the west I had looked forward to photographing in the morning light were gone. I loaded up all my crap and headed back up to Highway 16 and continued west. West, toward Prince George, the next step on the trip to Alaska. Potential trip. In Prince George I would be able to get all the information I needed about ferry schedules and prices. I tried to figure out what I was willing to pay for a 3 to 4 day boat ride. I guessed that’s how long it would take.

In the bar last night Amy had been surprised when she heard I hadn’t seen any bears in the area. Well, today I saw bears. Where the forest is cleared back from the road bears were munching berries off the bushes. I saw signs warning of crossing deer, elk, moose, wolves, and bighorn sheep, but the only animals I saw on that stretch actually crossing the road were bears. They should protest for better signage.

Even the grocery store is overweight I stooped in McBride for fuel for the car and food for me. I asked the woman taking my money at the gas station where a good place to eat was. She pointed to the hotel across the street. “Best cook in town’s over there right now.” The woman was really fat, so I figured she knew what she was talking about. There are a lot of fat people in Canada. I noticed that from day one, sitting at the Kokanee Pub with a really fat group of people at the table nearest mine.

I moseyed over to the restaurant and sat myself down. The people at the table next to mine were thin – they were also Japanese Tourists. The two girls that came in right after me were quite large. Don’t get me wrong, I have a few extra pounds on me and the trend is not favorable. I ordered my fat sandwich from the fat waitress (“do you want gravy on your fries?” “Sure.”) and idled the time away reading the little news pamphlet on my table. Ah, life in a small town. The newspaper is a weekly, and is a single sheet of yellow paper, larger then legal size, covered on both sides with ads and community news. This was the first entry under Community Announcements:

On Friday, June 4th 4 guys from Burns Lake had their Air Conditioning Pump pack it in around Dome Creek. They were heading to Calgary to join the block party on 17th Ave. watching the big Hockey game. The guys were picked up by Blaine Davis from P.G. in his SUV and their vehicle was towed to McBride for repairs. Blaine is working in Valemount so he offered to let the guys take his SUV to Calgary so they wouldn’t miss the game. Anyone who would like to help with anything for the guys can contact Blaine at…

Editorial critique aside (yes, those capitalizations are all in the original), how many places are you going to break down and the guy who picks you up and drives you an hour into town (I passed Dome Creek on my way to Prince George) then loans you his car to drive to another city? Damn, I want to break down there.

Leaving town there was a sign that said “Check your fuel gauge. Next gas 211 Km.” Actually, whatever the original number on the sign was had been covered with a piece of cardboard with the new number written by hand. Later I passed a gas station that had closed. The point is, things are far apart out here. Clouds, rain, and all that for the first hours of driving. There were a couple of graceful bridges over sudden gorges with rushing rivers, but the annoying thing is they always put the dramatic gorges in the middle of narrow, winding sections of the road, so no pictures.

Prince george In P.G. I overcame a brief bout of VICBS (visitor Info Center Blindness Syndrome) and got a ferry schedule and rate sheet. I sat for a while and realized, not surprisingly, that there aren’t many runs that go all the way up the coast, and the schedule just doesn’t work. Much better is driving up there and taking the boat back. I head out. Alaska, baby!

But what if the boat is already full? Simple fact is I am tired. The thought of the boat trip has given me a little wind, but I start thinking about the hours of driving. My road trip is becoming a job. Do I even have the juice to keep writing “Drove to new place. The world is beautiful.” and keep it interesting? Is it still interesting to me? I prefer not to drive the whole day, and 5000 miles round-trip was looking like a reasonable estimate if there was not a boat in the picture.

I called. The boat was full. I stopped and got a fairly cheap room in Vanderhoof, discovering that although there was a phone in the room, and there was not charge for dialing an 800 number, the phone system was some sort of wacky thing that worked only with special phones. The sign in the room said hooking the phone line to a computer could damage their phone system. How’s that for lame?

No boat, no Alaska. The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was the right choice. I’m not equipped for an Alaska road trip – for that I need two fewer suitcases and one more tent. A sleeping bag I fit in would be good, too. (My current bag is a relic of backpacking days when I was in high school. It’s a great bag but now it’s too small.)

But if not now, then when?

Next morning…

That ate at me all night. When would I ever be driving around up here again? This morning I was sipping my tea when I figured out the answer to that question. When? Whenever I want to. It’s possible that I’ll never go. It’s possible that there will always be something more important to me than a road trip to Alaska and a boat ride back. But if I want to, I can go. That got me so excited I almost decided to drive to Alaska right now.

Crossroads and Epiphany

Location: Valemount, BC, Canada (map)
Miles: 4386.2

Before I describe to you the recent past, it is only fair that you understand the present. Let’s just pretend for a moment that I was somehow important to national security. Maybe president, or something like that. Let’s say then, that as president I’m sitting in a bar and I notice they have a pretty good selection of single-malt scotch. “The genie has left the bottle,” a secret service man would whisper into his cuff, and the damage control teams would swarm into action.

My drive today, through some of the most spectacular scenery yet, was dominated by a single question. Should I drive to Alaska? I have always wanted to go there, and when was I going to have a better chance? But fundamentally I am tired, and the idea of two weeks or more of nothing but strangers didn’t appeal. Not when there was a place I could go in Montana where I could feel connected. Most important of all, in Bozeman I could relax for a few days, not drive, and spend the hours instead on my other projects. Hang out there, go to Vegas, head out to the space launch, take care of my business in San Diego, then head east. Simple.

I thank the sweet lord for bartenders every day, but this day I offer an extra homily. Her name is Amy, and for today she is my honorary favorite bartender.

Out of Edmonton I went straight west. I followed 16A and then 16 back up off the plains and into the mountains. In Jasper, there was a decision to make. Continue west and by implication north, drive for several days to Fairbanks, or turn south through spectacular country and head back on something more closely resembling my original course – whatever that was.

All I knew was that I was tired. I had spectacle fatigue. I saw things that would have made my heart leap ordinarily, but I could hardly blink. The rain fell off and on while the clouds tore at the impervious peaks, and I simply drove. I didn’t think, then, about how the assault on the stone by the air seemed futile but ultimately the tireless air and water would wear down the stones, as long as the sun shone. I just drove.

I reached Jasper and knew that I was just too plain tired to make the decision about which way to go. I ate lunch there, poring over the atlas, trying to estimate the effort involved to get up there. I had been planning to see the space launch in Mojave later this month. Were the two exclusive? I decided to stop, sleep on it, and perhaps even solicit input from you, my faithful readers. The only problem was that Jasper is a really expensive place to hole up this time of year. I tried several places, but couldn’t stay there. I hit the far end of town and there is was: the choice. South or West. I chose West for the simple reason that sleep was closer in that direction. I was so very, very tired.

Down, down, down I went, while the mountains shook their fists at the sky all around me. Occasionally I realized that I was driving through some of the most breathtaking scenery on this big earth, but when I did I also understood just how tired I was, Another mountain range. Sun in the distance, rain close by. Rushing river next to me, feeding into Moose Lake. I drove through it with the vague apprehension that perhaps I should be appreciating it all more.

I was heading toward Alaska, but more important I was heading toward rest. When I got to Terre Jaune I had made up my mind. South. Driving to Fairbanks, was, I realized, work. It was a long time without the safe haven of someone to crash on, of no preregularization. It was a commitment. So it was that I turned south at Tete Jaune (the whole yellow head thing is for another episode if I ever figure it out) with a sense of relief. I was back on track. If not now, then when? echoed in my head, but I knew that I wasn’t out here to commit to anything. I had done the right thing.

So I came to Valemount. I found a cheap hotel (actually a very nice cheap one) right next to the town’s only bar. After a nap I headed over. I didn’t take any technology with me, so for quite a while I was sitting at a dead bar with nothing to do but think. I unblocked a problem I’ve been having with The Monster Within and eventually started a conversation with the two bartenders. I mentioned to Amy that I had thought about driving to Fairbanks and she said, “Do it.” I told her about how much I had been driving lately, and how tired I was, and she said, “You should take the ferry up. they call it a cruise, but really it’s a ferry.”

Perfect. Not driving for a few days, going somewhere cool, and on the way become a regular on the boat. As long as I can plug in the laptop, this is ideal.

And so it ends

The project is finished at last. Kids will be able to learn the alphabet now, thanks to me and dozens of other dedicated people, even in Canada where they say ‘zed’ instead of ‘zee’. I’m no longer tied to high-speed Internet and expensive hotels. I can go where I want and do what I want. I can devote myself to Jer’s Software Hut and to writing novels.

I had been looking forward to seeing the message all day. There were a couple of last-second crises and some fine-tuning of the product that forced me to extend my stay here another day. That was not unexpected; that’s been the way this project has gone.

I read the message. I sighed in relief. It was over at last. We had made something. I read the message again. I wanted to write everyone on the project and tell them how much I had enjoyed working with them, but I didn’t know what to say. I read the message again. It was very short. I did not feel the rush of joy I had expected. In fact, I felt much like I had driving away from my house for the last time, when I first took to the road.

The project had been an anchor for me both figuratively and literally. It had limited my movement when my life is supposed to be all about movement. It also provided stability, and regular contact with other people. It was my last anchor. Now, if I don’t keep my sail up I will drift. I still have stars to guide me, and ports to pull into, but I blow where the wind takes me and I could easily get lost.

Maybe the rush of joy will be all the stronger later, when the freedom sinks in. I don’t know. When I read that message today the world got bigger. Scary bigger.

Why the Stanley Cup is the Best Trophy in Sports

Simple rules for trophies:

There can be only one.
The trophy itself must have a history.

There are three big sports in America, and Hockey trying to become the fourth but shooting itself in the foot every time it gets close. Each superbowl you hear that “the blahblahblahs have won the Vince Lombardi Trophy!” Wrong. As anyone from the Czech Republic who has after some struggle mastered the difference between “the” and “a” can tell you, when you say “the” you imply uniqueness. “The Vince Lombardi Trophy” says that there is only one. Pish. They make a new one every year. When a team wins the Superbowl, they get a trinket to display forever. When a team wins the Stanley Cup, they have the trophy only as long as they remain champions.

There are many such trophies. Many of these totems are passed between only two teams, symbols of rivalry and substance of respect. I have a friend with a lump of coal. The challenge every Christmas is to give it to someone else within the circle. If they open the gift, they inherit the coal for the next year. It’s an antitrophy, but the principle applies. There is only one lump of coal, and all in the family know its every fissure. All in the family can recite the entire history of the lump, who got fooled which year and how. It is a great trophy.

The Stanley Cup has history. There was a time no one knew where it was until it turned up in a bar, where it was being used as a spittoon. Better, it has the name of every player on every team that has won the trophy engraved into it. That’s why there’s a little cup and a huge base now. To make room for the history. When a team wins the cup – the cup – they take turns circling the rink with the cup. They hold it over their heads and shout senselessly for their victory lap. But they are holding in their hands the name of every player who has ever done the same thing, and their name will be added soon. Later they will read every name on the cup, and they will get a shiver as they imagine another player, 100 years from now, reading theirs. Once your name is etched into that surface, you are a champion forever.

1

Hockey night in Edmonton

Location: Cedar Park Inn, Edmonton (map)
Miles: 4070.2

There were three things I promised to write about: Robert the quintessential Canadian, ten beers, and Canadian turncoats. Unfortunately, the ‘ten beers’ part has sort of dulled my memories of the other two.

I was at a bar called Mo’s. Mo was my bartender. I saw a barstool and grabbed it. I needn’t have worried. The first of my Rickard’s Reds was quickly on its way. I settled in.

I won’t go into detail; the experience just wasn’t the same. They didn’t cheer when the Flames came out onto the ice. They didn’t sing O Canada with one voice. There was not the same electric anticipation. The passion wasn’t there.

The game began. The first time Florida scored there was significant cheering in the bar. The second time Florida scored there was even more. There was a significant percentage of that bar that preferred seeing the cup melt in Florida than rest in the city down the highway. I thought of them as Canadian turncoats.

That wasn’t really fair, however. Rather it was fair, but I have to recognize that if the Dodgers were playing for the world championship against the Kyoto Carp (I know there’s a Kyoto team, and I know there’s a team named the carp, but it would be an amazing coincidence if there actually were a Kyoto Carp. But I digress.), I would not root for the Dodgers, the team up the road, simply because they were American. But if the world series had been won by Japan for several years in a row, or perhaps more appropriately if baseball was slowly being sucked from its roots and transplanted to China, where there are plenty of potential fans but for the most part they simply don’t understand the sport, and you watch your teams over the years moving far away into strange lands, then perhaps there would be a place for national pride to transcend local rivalries.

For the latter part of the game and some time after, I sat next to Robert. He was middle-aged, a little overweight, and congenial. He had had his head in his hands for much of the third period, so his greying combover was standing up. Not only did he append his questions with “eh?”, he appended his statements of fact. “I have two kids, eh.” “Oh, eh, I couldn’t believe that, eh.” He was a thinking man, though, aware of the world but cautious about expressing his opinion.

I’m pretty sure there was more I wanted to say about him, but then there were the ten beers.

The Road to Edmonton

Morning came in Calgary and I worked hard right up until checkout time, when I sent an email to Deena (oddly, I think that’s the first time I’ve mentioned her name. She’s the producer on the project I’ve been working on) saying that I would be unreachable for a few hours and I gathered my stuff and quit the room.

Outside is was blowing hard and steady out of the north. I was tempted to drive with the top up again, but while the sky was filled with puffy clouds it didn’t looke like they were going to manage to combine up and amount to anything. I watched them for a few minutes, because they seemed to be forming up in long north-south ranks. I wondered if it was a trick of perspective or of perhaps there was some gigantically long-wavelength resonance in the atmosphere that was pushing the clouds into their slots. That’s the way I was thinking that day, in my interlude between fixing software bugs.

It’s always windy in a convertible, so the top went down and off I went, north. I’m not sure why I chose Edmonton except that I knew I could get the Internet, it was reasonably close, and it was a hockey town. OK, when I put it that way, it’s pretty compelling, but still it would have been wiser to head south, more in the direction of my next destination. Toward where I won’t be racking up hefty roaming charges when the client calls. Wiser, schmiser. I went north.

The highway between Calgary and Edmonton is what you would expect between two large cities, wide, easy, and under construction. When I turned north into the wind I turned off the tunes. The roar of the wind was so fierce that even with the stereo up pretty high I couldn’t tell it was on at all. I wondered what the roar was doing to my ears. Many of my peers have rock ‘n’ roll deafness, I think twenty years of convertibles may have had a similar effect on me (along with the rock ‘n’ roll, of course).

That’s what I did on that drive. I wondered things. On a small highway I’ll turn my headlights on, but on a road like that in the bright sun I won’t. Why? To save electricity. The logic goes like this: You turn off your lights at home to save energy, and your headlights take just as much energy as the lights in your house. That energy has to come from somewhere. Turning off headlights should improve your mileage. And I’m sure it does. Just not measurably. That got me to thinking about how people, when energy is very dear, will diligently turn off lights before driving half a mile to the convenience store for milk. So I’m thinking about the amount of energy a car cruising along the highway consumes relative to a lightbulb. If our engines were rated in watts instead of horsepower, the relationship would be easier to see. But then I thought some more. You can’t compare them outright because the efficiency of producing the energy and transporting it are different. then I thought some more. And some more.

I passed a gas station sitting right next to a refinery with the same brand name. I thought they should put out a sign bragging about how fresh their gas was. “Straight from the refinery to you!”

I thought about thinking about stuff. I thought about thinking about the American Road Myth. I shouted my thoughts into my dictation thingie. “The farther north I go,” I hollered, “The easier it is for me to imagine that I am on a ball, scrambling up the curve of it’s surface.”

“It’s all in my head,” I added.