Posted on February 21, 2015 under Storytelling with no comments yet

December 26, 2014 – Day 1 of our trip

( Peter MacDonald photo )

How do you tackle a trip spanning 3 provinces, 19 states and 10,000 kilometers?  One kilometer at a time.

My son asked me to accompany him on a trip to the West coast of Canada from our home province, Nova Scotia.  He planned to spend some of the winter months in the relatively balmy climes of Victoria, B.C.  This is hardly surprising, as the winter temperature in the East can whipsaw between 0 Celsius and rainy to minus 35 with a wind chill, in a matter of 24 hours.

Flying across the country made the most sense but his work in Victoria would require a car.  I suggested that he find someone his own age to tackle the long drive across the country … in the dead of winter.   Peter dismissed that notion in favour of his old man.  After many discussions, we agreed that getting out of the snow quickly was paramount so we chose a route through the southern United States.

After completing the mandatory schedule of family functions on Boxing Day (street hockey game, singsong and a cameo appearance on stage at a local pub), we hit the road at 8:30 p.m. and soon arrived at our first stop: Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Now let me be clear: We are not the first, nor will we be the last folks to tackle a transcontinental trip by car.  However, having survived the journey, I thought a few travel tips might be in order.

Tip # 1: Never go on a long trip to places unknown without a GPS

My guess is that many marriages have ended in a car, and not in the back seat, as you might be thinking.  No.  I suspect that many arguments have occurred with a couple on a long trip with one acting as the navigator.  Actually, I know this to be true.  After a long day on the road and desperate to find a motel, finding one’s accommodations in the dark, in a strange city, is often nerve wracking for the driver and the person occupying the passenger seat, especially if they are married to each other.  As many have said before, a GPS is not only a life saver but also a wife saver.

Pete and I slipped across the border at noon the following day.  Passing through Calais, we noticed a sign with an interesting marketing ploy.  An auto glass company was offering a free lobster if you got your windshield repaired at their fine establishment.  I wondered aloud if the lobster would be live or cooked. We thought about looking around to see if we could find a gravel truck to tail, to see if the glass company would make good on their promise.

Tip# 2: Bring a cooler with some snacks

It’s odd to think that a person could actually get hungry sitting in a car for 10 hours a day.  Other than holding onto the steering wheel or checking your messages (passengers only!), driving hardly requires physical stamina.  But there’s something about traveling that causes one to think about food … often. It’s great to be able to lean back and grab an apple, a handful of grapes or some crackers and cheese.

We put the hammer down on Day One and overnighted in Danbury, Connecticut.  Before leaving on the trip, one of my brothers had loaned me an old copy of the classic book, “Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.  Each day of the trip I tried to read a chapter or two.  Easier said than done.  On day two, we encountered two major traffic accidents which impeded our progress.  The Interstate highways are a blessing when you`re trying to put on the miles but when an accident happens, it is utter chaos.  We stayed overnight in Roanoke, Virginia. (Want some great Mexican food?  Go to El Rodeo in Roanoke.  The portion sizes are gargantuan).

( Part 2 next Saturday )

Posted on February 19, 2015 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

Spring will come… promise!

 

 

Everybody,  I mean everybody,  has a weather story or ten from the last couple of weeks. People who have lived in these parts all of their lives have never witnessed the strange weather patterns. We’ve had really snowy winters before and we’ve had winters that were quite benign. We’ve had rain and we’ve had freezing rain and ice pellets. We’ve had stretches of bitterly cold weather and some winters that bordered on tropical. But rarely, if ever, have we seen the odd sequencing of weather events. Never have I felt more like an old geezer than lately,  trying to navigate the sidewalks. And, we haven’t even had the worst of it. Some of the pictures and video clips from around the Atlantic Provinces are quite amazing. I have a relative in P.E.I. who is still snowed in. Spring will look particularly good this year.

I have decided to publish the story of my transcontinental trip with my son, Peter,  in chapters , commencing this Saturday. When I look back, we were incredibly lucky to drive 9700 kilometers and not see a single flake of snow. If we had left two weeks ago, we could be stuck in a snowdrift in New Brunswick. I have also pitched the entire story, all 5300 words of it, to a couple of publications. I am hearing through the grapevine that it might get published.

I would like to shamelessly make a plug for our library. This Friday,the 20^th. at 4:30, the People’s Place Library will receive its plaque in recognition as one of the “Great Places in Canada.” The public is invited to attend. I plan to be there so drop over and say hello… and bring your chequebook while you’re at it! I am a board member with FOAL ( I am not a young horse, by the way…more likely  an old war horse ). The acronym, stands for “Friends of Antigonish Library.” You may not be aware but libraries are chronically underfunded. We are a group whose mandate ( among other things ) is to raise money for the library so that they can purchase books and other supplies. We are embarking on a modest fundraising drive ( $7500 ) and you can help by making a tax deductible donation to our campaign. Thanks.

More stories in the works. Stay tuned.

Have a great weekend.

Posted on February 18, 2015 under Storytelling with no comments yet

( Republished from Feb.2014 )

Every once in a while we need to shake things up, to find something to snap us out of our lethargy.  A new beginning or a fresh start.  We may be unhappy with how we look and feel.  We may have developed some bad habits that we would like to reverse or eliminate.  Sometimes it’s an attitude adjustment that is in order.   At least that’s what the Ivany report on the Nova Scotian economy is saying.

I am a strong proponent of setting goals, writing them down and monitoring them.  The best way I have found to do this is with something called “The 30 Day Challenge”.  You determine the behaviour to be modified, like reducing your alcohol intake by half, and then chart your progress for thirty days, keeping a daily log using a blank calendar page.  I’ll drink to that.

If you are a Catholic, you can take this one step further and take the 40 day challenge known as Lent.  For those of you not familiar with this tradition, it is a call to action for the forty days leading up to Easter.  One of the hallmarks of Lent is that it is a time of denying yourself one or more of life’s pleasures.  It is a time of fasting and abstinence.

Our parents’ generation didn’t have a lot of things to give up.  In our home town, not listening to “Scottish strings” on Friendly 58 for forty days would be a real hardship.  Some of us young whipper snappers would swear off listening to fiddle music during Lent … hardly difficult when we couldn’t stand hearing it in the first place.  Now, as adults, we can’t get enough of it.

When I was a child, it was a no brainer.  Almost invariably we were expected to give up sweets during Lent.  In our house, that was like asking us to live without water or oxygen.  We were a horde of sugar craving fanatics.   And heaven forbid that you cheat on your promise, for then you had to deal with your parents first, followed by confessing your weakness to a priest, along with all of your other transgressions.

And when Easter Sunday finally arrived and you could legitimately “come off the wagon”, you ate so many chocolate Easter eggs that you never wanted to eat sweets again … until the next day.

Another Lenten abstention that we had great difficulty with was the promise of being nice to our siblings.  No name calling, no snide remarks, no comments about appearances.  You know, all those things that brothers and sisters do to each other with impunity when they’re young.  I am sad to say that this particular promise had no chance of success.  Forget about being nice for forty days and forty nights.  The period of civility often lasted less than forty minutes, especially when you had to do dishes with an annoying sibling.

When we got older we gave up booze and smokes during Lent and even tried to avoid cursing, with varying degrees of success.

Many of our young people today march to their own drummer when it comes to religion, so the notion of fasting during Lent is as foreign to them as a rotary dial phone.  This is not to suggest that they aren’t spiritual.  They are building churches of their own.

What would today’s youth do if pressed into Lenten service?

How about giving up social media for forty days in a row?  Or for four hours per day?  Or for forty minutes each hour?

Stop the presses.  Are you serious?  Do you expect a young person to put down his smart phone and iPad?  Do you have the audacity to suggest that our youth forego Facebook and Twitter?   Just like giving up candy in the sixties, there would certainly be benefits, spiritual and otherwise.  They don’t have to call it Lent.

Lent, then and now.  Would it have been harder to take a pass on Scottish Strings back in the day, or social media in modern times?

I’m not sure.

I give up.