Category: Feel Good Story

As promised, here is a post detailing some of our activities during our vacation in New Brunswick. I’d like to premise this post by pointing out that some of it may come off sounding somewhat… shall we say, negative? This trip brought out a significant amount of enlightenment and opened my eyes to a significant fact. Bon Jovi once wrote a song called “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Well, Jon, the answer to that is me. I can’t go home. Or should I say, I’m home in Regina. And as I recount my time in Dalhousie, I’m going to explain that statement. Here we go…

We arrived in Dalhousie at a little after 4 o’clock local time after several days of hard travel, which you’ve all read about. I made a courtesy call to my mother to let her know that we had arrived, which prompted her quick arrival at our hotel. That was actually kind of nice and she got to meet Alexander in person for the first time. Once we checked in and unloaded the vehicle, she joined us in our rooms for a brief visit until the boys got to be insufferable. We decided to hit up a local restaurant called Pizza Delight for supper. We would come to dine here often during our stay and would soon realize it was one of our only options. But more on that later.

Supper was exactly what one might expect when dining with two small children; noisy, chaotic and neither kid wanted to eat the food in front of them. Luckily, no dishes were broken and no children were harmed in the having of this meal. All jokes aside, we briefly discussed our plans for the week, which was meant to include an overnight in Moncton to see various sights. Little did we know that any and all of those plans would soon go out the window. That being said, we planned a visit to my father immediately the following morning as I didn’t see any reason to wait.

Since it was still a bit early when we returned to the hotel from supper, I opted to take a short trip to the cemetery to visit my brother. I think I may have posted in one of my travel updates that my folks got a headstone that has my name on it. Besides being intensely creepy, this was a somber reminder of my own mortality and where i currently exist in life. Not bad for my first day back to New Brunswick, eh? Nathan opted to spend the night at my mother’s, which made for a smoother night since the boys can never seem to be in the same room without destroying everything.

I woke up earlier than my alarm the following morning, which was odd since New Brunswick is three hours ahead from Saskatchewan. We started our day with caffeine and made our way to the nursing home were my father lives. Since Alexander is under five years old, he wasn’t permitted in the home so the only option for my father to meet his new-to-him grandson was to come outside. The photo above shows all of us posing right before both boys started whining they wanted to leave. Part of me understood that they’re kids and they had nothing to entertain them. Another part of me was pissed that they couldn’t accommodate my parents for more than half an hour.

We decided to go hang out, down at the beach. This particular stretch is called Inch Arran and I spent a significant amount of my childhood there. It’s changed quite a bit since that time, though. One change is the ice cream shop that I was standing in when I took the photo above. Alexander had some ice cream and Nathan had a small slushy. We continued on by watching the boys play on the park structures you see in the background. Nathan evidently got curious and wanted to go dip his feet in the ocean. I laughed and tried to explain that the water would be too cold for him.

He pestered me ad nauseam until I finally relented and told him to go ahead and change into his swim gear and to go ahead. I predicted that his sensitive, never-swam-in-anything-but-a-heated-pool flesh would last all of about thirty seconds… Long enough to submerge his feet and realize the error of his ways. You see, it was incredibly hot and muggy, especially with the humidity. But the ocean don’t care. it stays cold, especially to someone born and raised elsewhere.

My prediction proved accurate. He stepped into the water JUST long enough for his feet to become submerged and he commented on how the water was too cold. Then he jumped and freaked because he saw a crab. Classic Nathan… he played in the splash pad a bit but dried off and was done with water within a half hour. We made our way down to a truck stop restaurant called the Osprey for dinner that night. Unfortunately, the location has a play structure outside the main doors so there was no dining for the boys that night either. You’d think they’d get hungry at some point. Go figure…

My wife had cross stitched a beautiful design for my mother, which she presented to her when we visited my father. We agreed to have it framed in Campbellton, which is the town up the coast from Dalhousie. On the Thursday morning I brought it up to a specialized framing place that was only open to the public from 10 am to noon. They agreed to have the design stretched, framed and ready for pickup the following morning. The issue is that we were planning on driving up to Moncton the following morning and spending the night. I paid for the frame in full and made my way back to Dalhousie.

While we were spending yet another meal at Pizza Delight, I commented to my mother that her frame would be ready for pick-up the following morning. Since we would be leaving for Moncton in the morning and the location would be closed on Sunday and Monday and we would be leaving on the Tuesday morning, I asked my mother to drive up to Campbellton and pick it up. She refused… She explained that she no longer goes up to Campbellton and she wasn’t comfortable driving up there and told me I would have to get it myself. This rather pissed me off, because it would throw a wrench into our plans.

My alternative was to have us go to Moncton on the Saturday/Sunday instead of Friday/Saturday. No one wanted to do that, so I drove up to Campbellton on Friday morning with the intention of getting back and we’d drive down. By the time I made my way back to Dalhousie, we determined that we’d get to Moncton too late for one of the key attractions we planned on seeing; Hopewell Rocks. Therefore, we now had the afternoon freed up. I should point out that not only had I messaged a certain number of individuals that we would be in Dalhousie during the first two weeks of August, i also posted and blogged about it.

Despite that fact, I found myself with a significant lack of people to see and visit with. My mother was being stand-offish, declining to join us for our activities, even when it was only a few minutes from her apartment. This was disheartening, because the entire point of the trip was so that she could visit with her grandsons. I explained to her that we had no way of knowing when the next time would be that we’d return and Alexander would no longer be a baby, so she should be soaking that shit up while she could. It didn’t really seem to faze her.

On Saturday morning we got up at the absolute ass-crack of dawn because it’s a vacation and that’s what people do, right? No? Just us? In all seriousness, the goal was to reach Moncton for the noon hour when the tide would be low at Hopewell Rocks so we could “walk on the ocean floor.” Everyone was tired and cranky and it was blisteringly hot out. We travelled for four hours to reach the site and were slapped in the face by a $50 entrance fee. I was pissed. The last time I was there, I hadn’t paid anything to go in.

The curly haired, pimple-faced teeny bopper working the kiosk claimed there had always been a charge to visit the site but what did he know? I had leftovers in my fridge that were older than this fucker and he was arguing with me. We paid all of this money to walk for fifteen minutes and make our way down to the ocean floor. I was soaked in sweat by this point and you could almost see through my shirt. Nathan managed to get himself all muddy and insisted on leaving because he was bored. Never mind the fact we paid the cost of half a tank of gas and travelled all morning just to have him ignore the sights and want to leave.

Since he was filthy and obviously uncomfortable, I took Nathan back up the stairwell to the walking path where there were foot-washing stations. My wife, mother-in-law and Alexander stayed behind to view more of the site. I walked Nathan back to the trail entrance where he played on a play structure until everyone else joined us. I was fast realizing that I had shelled out thousands to travel to New Brunswick just to have my kids play at parks. Total fucking bullshit.

We left Hopewell Rocks and made our way to Champlain Place with the expectation of doing some shopping. No one did any shopping and everyone but me got some food at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. There goes my idea of bringing everyone for a nice seafood dinner in a few hours! It was unlikely the boys would eat any of it, anyway. We looked up a few of the attractions that we planned on visiting, saw all the inflated, ridiculous prices for entry and decided finally that there was no point in staying in Moncton for the night as we wouldn’t be doing anything we had planned on and were already paying for the rooms we had in Dalhousie. We piled in the car and drove back to Dalhousie. Almost 8 hours of driving for an hour of blistering heat and sweat that the kids ignored and we paid for.

On Sunday morning we basically hung around Dalhousie and there was very little else to do. I took Nathan to the indoor swimming pool on a couple of occasions throughout our stay but we really didn’t do anything besides that. Nathan spent a final night at my mother’s house, since we would be departing on Tuesday morning. On the Monday morning, we went back to the nursing home to say goodbye to my father and spend some time with him before going to lunch, doing fuck all for the day besides pack, clean and try to figure out supper, since Pizza Delight was closed on Monday. To be honest, I’ve never heard of a restaurant closed on a Monday.

It was a serious problem as we searched Dalhousie AND Campbellton and came to realize that almost every restaurant was closed. McDonald’s was obviously open but we had eaten enough of that on the way there to last us a lifetime. We ended up ordering from an out-of-town pizzeria called Greco and having a bite to eat at my mothers until about 7 o’clock. We said our goodbyes and hugged and piled into the car, intent on getting back on the road the following morning, which y’all have read the posts about. Right? if you haven’t, get on that shit…

All in all, it was a disappointing trip. Normally when I go home, I barely have a free minute from the people I meet up with and the things I do. This time, I came to realize that no one was reaching out, no one contacted me and everything was either closed or out of business. And it’s supposed to be the “busy” time of year… As I mentioned in a previous post, I got the chance to see a few dear friends and I’m totally grateful that I had the chance to do that. But this visit just wasn’t the same. Despite having not seen them in two years, my parents’ hearts just weren’t in it despite meeting their second grandchild.

I left Dalhousie feeling empty and as though for the first time, it was non longer my home. Dalhousie, and the Maritimes in general, will always hold a special place in my heart. So many firsts that I’ve experienced there… It’s where I’m from and that will never change. But I’ve come to realize that it isn’t my home anymore. The sharpest knife was the fact that this was the first visit to New Brunswick where I didn’t get to see Sensei. Not only did he know I was there and when I was leaving, he told me he’d get back to me and let me know when he was free. But he never did. I’m sure he has a reason but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s never happened before.

Ultimately, I’m not sorry we went. It gave my mother-in-law the chance to visit New Brunswick and meet my parents. My parents got to see Alexander and Nathan and spend some time with them (albeit very little) and I got to see a few people I hadn’t in years. I’ve been considering that the irony is that my wife and I are finally in a position of life where we can afford to take a vacation but we still used up my vacation time to go home to my mother and father. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate and make some different decisions. Some food for thought for myself… ☯️

Yes folks, two posts in one day! Actually, I’m only throwing this one in to let everyone know that we made it home to Regina, safe and sound. It was actually a pretty uneventful day. We left the seedy motel in Dryden shortly after I posted this morning and grabbed coffees at Tim Hortons before cracking west on the highway. I could go on about the various issues on the road, such as slow semi trucks and Nathan randomly pissing in empty bottles instead of having us stop (in addition to having us stop often, I might add), but in all reality, it was likely the smoothest of the four days back.

We crossed two time zones, ultimately putting us back in Regina at just shortly after 3 pm, local time. A quick stop at our local grocery store for a few items to get us through the night and I am now shaved, showered and have several loads of laundry on the go. Nathan isolated himself in his room as soon as he was through the door. I had to threaten the continued use of his device in order for him to come out and have supper. That boy is going to have some problems when school starts. Regardless, it’s been a semi-quiet couple of hours with the boys separated and my wife and mother-in-law doing their own thing.

it’s been a long two weeks and I’m certain that those of you who come here to read about health & fitness, Diabetes, martial arts or the Buddha Dharma have had their fill of reading about my vacation. But if y’all will indulge me for a moment, there will be one more post tomorrow, covering the week between the trip out and the trip back. I took a bunch of beautiful photos of the area, so hopefully some of you will enjoy that, at least. But I’ll draft that post tomorrow, after a solid night’s sleep in my own bed at home. ☯️

Honestly, there’s a special place in hell for whoever designed Ontario’s highway infrastructure! I mean, seriously… Why is the largest Province with the longest length to cross, the only fucking Province without twin-lane highways? How does that happen??? We took to the road yesterday morning and grabbed our Tim Horton’s coffee and ventured out onto the highway. Within minutes, I was competing with campers, RV’s and semi trucks for space on the highway and to try and make up some time for the extremely long day we had ahead.

I know I’ve been complaining about the boys a lot during this trip and there’ll likely be more of that when I write up the singular post covering the actual time IN New Brunswick, but today I’m going to focus on Ontario and how its highways are trying to kill my family and I. At one point, a semi truck was trying to pass another one and came straight at us… IN MY LANE! I only had a moment to pull off onto the shoulder in order to avoid a head-on collision. This is why we need twinned highways through this Province, people!

Although I am certainly not trying to promote breaking any speed laws, there’s something to be said about the country’s largest Province being the only one with adequate highways. Unless you happen to be in close proximity to the Ottawa/Toronto areas, you’re pretty much screwed. Not to mention that the motel we had stayed in the previous night was grungy, smelly and the towels looked like they hadn’t been laundered since the same decade as their patterned carpet came from. Despite all these difficulties in trying to get from one end of Ontario to the other, I was somewhat entertained by something I found in a bathroom stall at a truck stop…

This totally made me laugh, which in retrospect probably wasn’t;’t the best thing for a random person to be doing in a bathroom stall with people on the other side of the door. I’m sure some of them were wondering why a guy was giggling while using the washroom. But I digress… We did have a fun stop where we fuelled up, grabbed some snacks and Nathan had time to ham it up for the camera outside of a lighthouse we were visiting…

My wife and I had calculated the mileage and distance and determined that in order to successfully reach Regina today without arriving in the wee hours of the night, we had to reach Dryden yesterday. This would leave a little over 900 kilometres to cover today, give or take, which amounts to roughly ten hours of travel. This made sense on paper but we were all pretty spent and cranky when we reached Dryden and ready to end our day.

We had some issues with obtaining accommodation in Sault Ste. Marie on Wednesday night, which is why we ended up stuck in that light-awful motel. For last night, I was looking forward to staying in an actual large-chain hotel so that the wifi would actually work, there’d be complimentary breakfast and, oh yeah… I could actually shower and come out clean as opposed to dirtier than when I went in! Feeling safe and in a secure environment also played a big role.

After visiting four different big chain hotels and being told everywhere that they were fully booked, I was flabbergasted. One clerk actually told me that I should have booked ahead and I wouldn’t find anything anywhere, this time of year. I explained that we were cross-country travellers and couldn’t plan and reserve ahead as we didn’t always know where we would be staying, so what were hotels doing to accommodate guests such as us? She had no answer…

We once again found ourselves in a grungy, rundown motel with doors that could barely be secured, wifi that successfully kicked me off of work in the middle of an email and incompetent staff. We booked two rooms and while the family was out getting supper, someone tried to open my room door. When I opened the door to see if it was my wife, some guy was next door trying to open my mother-in-law’s door. I asked him what he was doing and he became confrontational. Even after I explained that room was booked, he argued. I spent the night on guard.

We obviously made it through the night but there’s no breakfast and this whole town feels quite dirty. I can’t wait to get on the last stretch of our journey and make our way back into the Prairies, where there are twinned highways, overnight accommodations make sense and our home is just around the corner. Today should be our last day of travel before getting home and getting prepped for my return to work on Monday. Work will ironically be the much-needed break from travelling that I need. It will be glorious! ☯️

Our second day on the road was by far the worst. Although it was only the second, I can easily predict it will be the worst when held up against the two days to come, as well. This is likely because we crossed through that bullshit part of Ontario where none of the highways are twinned, the speed limits are lowered to 90 km/h and there’s a fucking construction zone every few miles. We actually had a very decent start of day, eating a wonderful, hot continental breakfast at Best Western “Glo.” Those bastards do free breakfast right!

The entire day was a nightmare of trying to pass slow-moving vehicles and staying still for long periods at construction zones. Luckily, there was plenty of caffeine to get me through the day but there’s no denying that this leg of the trip had me testing every tool in my Zen belt. One of the things I try to remind people is that I’m not usually calm BECAUSE I study Zen… I started studying Zen to help me FIND that calm. And it works pretty well. Most of the time. But like an overwhelmed dam, eventually my temper gets the better of me and overflows, regardless of my ability to practice waking meditation.

Our goal was Sault Ste. Marie and by the light, we made it. If you recall from a previous post, this city’s hotels were all booked up because of some bullshit bicycle event. Considering yesterday was a Wednesday, so I assumed that things would be much smoother. We checked three different large-chain hotels, which turned out to be all booked up. My temper got deeper with every refusal. Although it must be great for business for them to be fully booked, it says very little about them as a business for their fellow Canadian guests.

We ended up booking into a seedy, piece of shit motel where the rooms smell like old factory closets that had wet clothing stuffed into them before the place was abandoned. My morning is starting with some leftover pizza and caffeine. Our goal is to hit Ignace or Dryden today. Hopefully, things will start looking up as we get farther west. ☯️

So the first day of our return trip to Saskatchewan started surprisingly well. Although I had assumed we were setting alarms for 6:30 in the morning, my wife’s went off at 6:00, effectively waking me up. I started sipping caffeine and leapt out of bed (yes, in that order) got dressed and started loading my things into the car. My wife, mother-in-law and kids were surprisingly swift and efficient and we were all loaded in the car at 6:50, despite our departure time being scheduled for 7:00. This is both miraculous and appreciated, as there is usually SOMETHING that delays us.

Hell, even the local Tim Horton’s had no lineup in the drive-thru, allowing us to quickly grab some hot liquid joe without delay. We were on the road and heading west before we were fully awake. We reached Campbellton and crossed over to the Quebec side relatively smoothly and without issue. The streets were quiet and once we crossed into Quebec, we automatically gained an hour on our day. An hour as far as the clock is concerned; our time in the car would remain unchanged. But I digress…

We encountered the usual bullshit along the way; light rain, semi trucks slowing us down, etc. We reached Mont Joli and stopped in at the next Tim Horton’s and grabbed further coffees as well as apple juice and snacks. It was shaping up to be a reasonably good day, making good time and crossing the Province reasonably quickly. Then, the toddler fell asleep. Then he woke up. Then the issues started. I’m not really certain why I was surprised; this is basically what he did on the way out, as well. It’s rough for a tangy Cook male to be strapped into anything for any long period of time.

We made such good time that by about 4:30 in the afternoon, we had crossed into Ontario and reached Ottawa. Since we had no chance to do so on the way in, I chose to have us eat dinner at Zak’s Diner, which is one of my favourite diners in the country. When we reached the Byward Market, the boys made their presence known by being rambunctious, running across streets without looking and being all-around pains in the ass. Kids, am I right? We ordered food and as we waited, it dawned on me to go check the Asian shop where I usually buy my prayer beads.

My mother-in-law and toddler joined for the short, five-minute walk that ensued and I was sorely disappointed to find that the shop carried none of the beads I typically purchased from there. I returned and ate my meal, which depressed me as it was almost literally twice the price of what I had paid for it in 2007 when I would have eaten there last. My two kids were being noisy, knocking things over and generally ruining the experience. Am I bitching about my kids too much? TOO BAD, IT’S MY BLOG!!! But seriously, I love them to death but kids and road trips don’t agree. With me. They don’t agree with me.

My goal had been to have us spend our first night heading home at the Chateau Laurier, right in the heart of downtown Ottawa. When the price of an individual room caused rapid breathing and random chest pains followed by profuse sweating and my left arm going numb, I chose to drive us out of town to Kanata, where I found a subsidiary of best Western called “Glo.” A chic looking, clean-cut little hotel, it was a comfortable night’s stay, after some screwing around to get the wifi to work.

There is apparently some free continental breakfast downstairs, so we’re going to go see what’s up with that before hitting the road again. Although we’re already in Ontario, the safe bet is that we’ll be spending a second night in this Province, given how long of a transit it is. Hopefully but the end of today, we’ll be close enough that there third day will carry us back into the Prairies and closer to home. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for some caffeine… ☯️

Alright, folks! Here we are… It’s the end of the road or rather, the beginning of the road back, I guess. It’s been a rough week on the North Shore, for a variety of reasons. Despite posting and messaging several people that we would be here during the first couple of weeks of August, our time here has been reasonably dull. We basically paid a small fortune so that the boys could play in various parks, which they could have done at home without costing us so much. But I digress…

This morning, and I sincerely hope I got the time change right (my blog doesn’t change time zones), we will be packing up the car and heading back to Saskatchewan. All good things must come to an end but in all sincerity, this trip wasn’t ALL that great. There were some good points, such as seeing my parents. I also got to briefly visit with the friends who chose to make time for me (you know who you are!) despite being either ignored or having excuses made by the ones I DIDN’T get to see (if you follow my blog, you also know who you are!).

I could go into further depth about the good aspects and what parts were the most heart breaking, but I’ll be chronicling our trip back on a daily basis and plan on writing a lengthy post covering the entire time here, once I’m comfortably back in my home basement. So basically, tomorrow’s post will be about today’s travel, and so on and so forth. The reason I’m doing it this way is that I’ve been taking tons of photos with my point and click and will have to upload them to my computer and see which ones are usable or not before writing the post. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next few days as I write about how gaining an hour at every border heading west is a GOOD thing… ☯️

Well, here we are! We’ve made it to Dalhousie, New Brunswick and checked into our hotel in one piece. We will now be here for approximately one week before starting the trek back west in order to go home. Our fourth morning actually started pretty well. We awoke in a little place called St. Apollinaire, Quebec. I had done laundry the night before and I think everyone got a reasonable, albeit short night’s sleep.

We got on the road and drove through a fair amount of rain for a while but it didn’t dampen our spirits (see what I did there?). We made a number of stops along the way, including a chocolatier and several Tim Hortons. We reached the New Brunswick border at about mid-afternoon, local time…

If any of you have been following the vacation posts through all four days, you’ll notice that on the first day when I reached the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border, I took the time to stop the car, pose for an actual photo and was damn proud of it. When we crossed into Ontario, I snapped a quick photo without getting out. Crossing into Quebec, there was no godly way to stop without causing a collision but at New Brunswick, I was in full-blown “fuck it” mode and snapped a a pic while rolling at about 100 km/h. Y’all can believe it’s my photos or not. My exhaustion and I couldn’t give a shit. But I digress…

Upon arriving in Dalhousie, my mother met us at our hotel and we unpacked the vehicle. Once that was done, we made our way down to Pizza Delight, a staple of New Brunswick eateries, and had a semi-decent supper before making our way back to the hotel. Nathan decided to spend the night with Grammy Cook, which suited us just fine. Since it was early and we had nothing planned, I opted for a quick drive where I paid a special visit…

I always make a point of visiting my brother’s grave, every time I go home. On this occasion, I chose to go on my own. It was quiet and peaceful and I could see fresh dirt from a shallow grave dug for the interment of my uncle’s ashes on my grandfather’s grave. A heavy thunderstorm kicked up while I was there, adding to the macabre tableau of a bad 80’s horror movie of the unwitting victim being caught alone in a grave yard. Since none of that actually happened, I was instead focused on this creepy little foreboding…

This is my parents’ burial plot. As you can see, neither of them is occupying the space. The dates for my brother are filled in and he’s buried right next to this plot. Despite the fact I won’t be buried here, my parents had my name engraved on the stone and it always creeps me out a bit to see my name on a grave stone. It’s just one of those things, I guess. All this being said, you can’t beat the view my brother has, from up there…

All in all, it was good to get home and great to see my mother. My children will get to see my father as well, and we have plans to visit the southern part of the Province for a day or two so that everyone can see some of the beauty and history contained within the Province. IN the coming days, I’ll be posting regular, good old Diabetic/martial arts/health posts. I figure I can take away break from all the vacation talk, especially since I would like to retain my followers, and pick up on the trip once we head back next week. Once I’m home, I’ll be able to draft a composite post on all the fun we had while we’re here. Stay tuned…☯️

Our third day of the odyssey that is crossing our country as a family started off as one would expect… With someone waking me before my alarm! We were lucky enough to find a motor inn, last night but even with my alarm set for 6 am, some wretched little bastards were running the halls at about 5 am, waking me well before my alarm went off. Here’s to day 3! But I digress…

I started by cleaning up and getting dressed. Nathan was out like a light, so I helped myself to an energy drink and loaded all of our stuff into the car. It was about 6:20 by this point, so I texted my wife, who responded that she was up and they were making coffee in their room. I tried waking Nathan by gently shaking him, but he was out! I shook him, smacked his bottom and pinched the skin behind his ear. Nothing. This kid was giving a coma patient a run for their money.

I would have been concerned, if not for the steady breathing and the low snoring. I finally yanked his blanket off and sat him up. That got his attention! He petitioned my communist treatment for a moment before stumbling off to brush his teeth and curl back up into a blanket. It took serious effort to keep him from going back to sleep. That’s what happens when one stays up half the night on one’s Nintendo Switch. Some lessons need to be learned the hard way,

We piled into the car and took note of the current thunderstorm ravaging the neighbouring town and sped off before the rain could touch us. We drove for all of about twenty minutes before hitting up a Tim Horton’s coffee and grabbing a few cups with some muffins to get us on our way. If this would have been the worst aspect of our day, it might have been the best day of our trek. But it wasn’t…

We were only a short ways down the highway in Ontario when we realized that the main highway crossing the Province towards Ottawa (Highway 17) is only a single-lane highway, loaded with semi trucks, camper trailers and general fucking douchebags who don’t know how to drive. Can anyone guess how long it took for my Zen composure to start cracking? Less time than it took me to finish the coffee I picked up. But once again, I digress…

We made it as far as Arnprior, Ontario before Alexander made it very clear by his screaming that he was done being in a car seat. I realized that morning that I packed everything Diabetes-related that I needed with one exception… I had no Guardian sensors to go with my CGM. We parked at what was the only McDonald’s restaurant in the city so the boys could play while I went across the street to see pa pharmacist.

Imagine my surprise when he said he had no idea what Medtronic was! Needless to say, he had no CGM sensors, either. Turns out the McDonald’s play place was still closed due rto some remnant of the pandemic that the manager was too lazy to deal with. Nathan was very much less than understanding and sulked his way back to the car, Cranky and despondent, we made our way back to the car and carried on.

We had originally planned to make our way into Ottawa’s Byward Market and have an early supper at Zak’s Diner, one of my favourite eateries in the country. But by the time we would have made our way into Ottawa’s downtown core, found parking, ordered and ate and got back on the road again, we would have burned a solid few hours. As it was, we made our way to Levis, Quebec and booked a room at a very nice Econo Lodge for a load of laundry and a good night’s sleep.

Now, I’m off to my first free, continental breakfast of the trip. We should be making the last six to seven-hour treat to New Brunswick and into Dalhousie, where we’ll check into our hotel and enjoy an actual week without ridiculous travel to exhaust everyone. Maybe a little R&R will get us all back in a better mood. Maybe my mother will appreciate seeing her grandchildren and WON’T bring up how often we visit. Maybe I should shit in one hand and wish in the other to see which one will fill up first… ☯️

So, Sunday was our second tour of duty… umm, I mean, our second day of transit across the country to go visit my family in New Brunswick. I learned something interesting… Ontario is split in half, time zone-wise. Half the Province shares it’s time with the same zone as Manitoba and the other half shares the same time as Quebec,

The reason I bring this up and why it’s important, is because our smart phones didn’t seem to jump an hour ahead automatically when we crossed into Ontario. This struck me as odd and I adjusted the in-car clock accordingly. When we all crashed, I set my alarm for 4 am because I thought it would actually be 5 am in the area of Ontario we were in. I was wrong. So fucking wrong…

Fast forward to Sunday morning and I awoke a few moments before my alarm went off, as is my custom. My phone displayed 3:48 am, which I thought was actually 4:48 so I slipped into the washroom, brushed my teeth, got dressed and gathered my things. I was going to duck out to the convenience store to grab some energy drinks and coffees for my wife and mother-in-law.

They woke up before I left so I explained what I would be doing and although they mumbled that it was the middle of the night, they agreed they would start getting ready and preparing for the day. Once I realized everything was still closed, I made my way back. Our motel was the kind of place that locks all the doors at night and key cards get you into nothing but your room. We had to make the difficult choice of getting on the road without caffeine. It would be well over two hours before we’d manage to grab coffee. No animals were harmed…

We made a few stops along the way, mostly focused on stretching our legs, getting fuel and letting the boys run around freely. One place was particularly charming, called a “Trading post” and had authentic antiquities strewn on the property and inside the store itself. We all took the opportunity to use the washrooms, especially since the washrooms were genuine, honest-to-goodness outhouses! Pictures are worth a thousand words, so please see the following photo…

The day dragged on tediously. Such is the way on the open road. Nathan was once again pretty good, keeping to himself and playing with his devices. Alexander was a little less understanding and would screech and cry to voice his displeasure. Some of it was caused by the sun in his face. All parties in the vehicle managed to sneak some naps while I drove. I have to admit that despite my caffeine intake and crooning to the music, my eyes started to droop and I was getting sleepy.

Eventually, we came to the area that lines Lake Superior and my wife had managed to grab some photos. She sent them all to me and I chose the one that showed the view as spectacularly as possible. Check it out…

Once we managed to stop for another break and we were hammering hard towards our destination, everyone helped themselves to another nap and I over-caffeinated. Our end destination was Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Once we got there, we stopped at three different hotels and were told by all of them that they were completely booked. Apparently, there was some bullshit bike tournament in the city. I couldn’t believe that all of those hotels were completely booked. I’d never seen the likes of it.

Since we couldn’t book a room anywhere, we wound up deciding on supper instead and pushing onto Sudbury, which was about three hours away. We chose McDonald’s because it would allow the boys to burn off some steam in the play place as we ate. Unfortunately, there are several McDonald’s in Sault Ste. Marie, and not all of them have parks. We went to three of them before landing on the right one.

We enjoyed a meal and decided that we would keep our eyes open for a hotel, motel or motor inn along the way to Sudbury. We stopped at three further locations, all booked! What the fuck was this bike tournament all about, that it managed to book up every accommodation to an hour outside the city. Total bullshit. We ended up in a small area called Iron Bridge and found a motor inn that provided us with a couple of rooms. Here’s hoping for a good night’s rest before starting day three! ☯️