Category: Feel Good Story

Some of my best memories from childhood include storm chasing and watching with my father. People in general have this propensity to dislike thunderstorms and rain, often for good reason. But back home in the Maritimes, my father and I would enjoy that weather and use it as an opportunity for enjoyment. Having grown up on the shores of an actual bay feeding out to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, we were subjected to some doozies. During the best of times, we could clearly see storm front coming towards the shore and had plenty of time to prepare and watch the big show. Sometimes we’d jump into the car and go park at the light house and just watch the storm approach and hit.

Besides providing much-needed air moisture, refilling water beds and replenishing vegetation, rain has shown to have benefits in helping a person relax and calm themselves. Watching the falling rain through a window from the comfort of one’s home is therapeutic. My father and I would take it up a notch by intentionally chasing the rain. I’ve lost track of the number of times during my youth when we jumped in the car and drove after heavy rains to see where they’d peter out (pun fully intended, my father’s name is Peter!). To some, it seems ridiculous but to me, it was valuable time with my father and fed my interest in weather and science.

Last Friday, I got home from work and discussed plans with my son Nathan to have a “camp-out.” This is something Nathan enjoys doing where he builds up a blanket fort on a small mattress, usually in the basement, with the intention of snacking and sleeping downstairs. I spend the night on the queen bed we have for guests. I don’t get what the appeal of the activity is, but I get to spend time with my first-born and he gets to enjoy an indoor activity that doesn’t involve antagonizing his baby brother. How is that not a win-win?

When I got home from work, we started to discuss the evening and we had a family outing planned that required Nathan’s best behaviour. Although I understand that most modern households adhere to the whole concept that parents should stop treating children’s behaviour as acting out or being bad and accept that it’s because they lack the communication skills to express what they’re feeling. However, fuck that. When we’re out in public, my expectation is NOT the destruction of everything in sight and running around like the world’s biggest disaster cut loose in public.

By the time we had gotten home, some of his behaviour out in public had me questioning whether he deserved his “camp-out.” I decided to vent my frustrations in one of the only ways that I typically know how: by working out. I got a good burn, listened to some awesome music and when I was done, sat comfortably in my garage with a decent cigar (I say decent because if I bought great cigars, I’d probably be bankrupt) and blew my cares away in a puff of blue smoke and random YouTube videos. After some time, Nathan came out to see what I was doing and sat with me in the garage.

A huge, dark cloud formation rolled in over Regina and the rumblings of a storm were coming towards us. Nathan became fixated on watching for the occasional flash of lightning and giggling at the fact that thunder and lightning “never happens together.” In anticipation of the power going out and a heavy downpour of rain, I suggested that we move the party inside. Much to my surprise, Nathan wanted to stay outside and watch the storm from the garage. he turned on the interior lights and sat comfortably, watching the sky for what was coming. I was struck with a wave of nostalgia, remembering the occasions where my father and I would do this very thing. It’s true what they say; some of the best things in life are free.

In the end, the rain that fell was barely a trickle but we had the opportunity to enjoy repetitive flashes of lightning and booming thunder. It was fun to sit out there and enjoy the weather with my child, who seemed as interested in it as I was. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most fun. We made out way inside and to the basement, where we discussed deep, philosophical topics, such as Star Wars, Mario Kart racing and various “how it’s made” videos on YouTube. The rain began falling harder once we were inside but we had our fun. Sometimes you have to take time to enjoy the simpler things in life. ☯️

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. ☯️