Canadian Rustic, and the Return Home: Canada 2024, Part VI

 We had two nights spent in Cavendish at this little motel called the Boardwalk. Its name was accurate -- there was indeed a boardwalk leading from the small parking lot up to the building and its rooms. 

The Boardwalk was a very basic motel -- but, for what it was, it was fine. It was, shall we say, Canadian Rustic. It had a heat pump mounted on the wall, two queen-size beds, a small cramped bathroom, a refrigerator, TV, and microwave, and that was it. Cedar paneling on all walls, wooden floors. Very basic, very rustic, nothing fancy. It resembled a furnished wood cabin. 

The entire first day we were in Cavendish -- the day we went to Green Gables -- it was cold, windy, and raining like hell. It wasn't the best day for us to go to Green Gables, but time was of the essence and we only had two nights on PEI before we were closing up shop to fly back out of Halifax. While the rest of the family (read: Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five kids) were sticking around on PEI for a few more days, and we'd had a "beach day" with them after we'd gone through Green Gables, we had now separated from them for the remainder of the trip and would thus focus on Charlottetown and some food before we would have to head out the next morning.

To put this into perspective, this all took place on the day of Biden's disastrous debate with our now bullet-wounded former president, if that further sets the scene.

Let me tell you again, Charlottetown is gorgeous. It's full of shops, its downtown area is very metropolitan and big-city style -- but, like, Canadian big city style. Think of the "old market" area of your closest city. Meaning, the hipster area of town, the shops with apartments above them, laundromats and convenience stores inside the same little corner bodega, etc. It is very Bohemian and populated by what appeared to be fairly normal-looking people. The parts that weren't functioning "city" with its shops and restaurants and the like was very much either touristy areas or business/coast guard-controlled areas around the harbour. We tried to avoid those areas (we'd seen enough of them already) but there was one thing about Charlottetown -- and PEI in general, I guess -- we all universally hated.

The streets.

The road system in PEI, in general, is convoluted as hell -- lots of back roads, long winding drives going up and down hills to get you from point A to point B, drives that seemed to take three times longer getting where you were supposed to go than they should have, given the relative size of the island. There are almost no stop signs or stoplights on PEI -- everything is done via traffic circles (or, as some call them, roundabouts). Sure, the larger cities and heavily trafficked areas have stoplights and signs, but everywhere else has the roundabouts. Everywhere. Like, every few miles. 

Mind you, I've seen a lot of them in Canada -- far more than here in the states -- but PEI takes the roundabout to an entirely new level. 

So, once you get that part down, if you go into any of the actual cities/towns -- I'll use Charlottetown as an example because we spent a good chunk of time navigating it -- the city roads and streets are not mapped out in any logical way. In fact, they look like they were designed by drunken sailors, which...well, as we were on an island with multiple ports and harbours, that is quite possibly the case. Omaha is at least laid out in a sensible grid; you know where you're going and as long as you know direction and street names you'll get wherever you want to go just fine. Charlottetown seems built in a way that is hostile towards visitors, tourists, and people not from the area. It also turns out that the Spaceship Van we rented wasn't great for navigating such narrow streets, parallel parking, or doing much of anything but straight-line, bumpless driving. It was great when we rented it in North Carolina -- it was not the best choice for us navigating through three different provinces in Atlantic Canada. 

We'd had several options for food that Daisy had looked up and wanted to try. Mama isn't a huge fan of vegan cuisine, but she's far more open to it and open to trying new things than Dad is -- so Daisy's particular brand of "food tourism" (her term, not mine) usually works pretty well for her when we're traveling together. One of the options was a fully-vegetarian Chinese place, which I was 100% down for. Another was some burger-bar like place that I didn't really get many details on and was dismissed almost as soon as it was mentioned, and a third was a European-Mediterranean-Asian-fusion place where you could get a ton of vegan things, including pizzas and sandwiches and burgers, falafels, fries, wraps, soups/ramens, etc. Because of the variety, we ended up choosing that one.

To be fair, the menu looked great -- the photos and the absolutely insane amount of variety to choose from was quite impressive. Our goal was to order dinner, a second dinner we could eat later (or for breakfast the next morning if we so chose), and some snacks. So, I ordered a full-size pizza with vegan sausage, a vegan chicken wrap, mozzarella sticks, fries, and I can't remember what else. Daisy ordered a second full-size veggie/vegan pizza, vegan poutine, and some desserts; Mama ordered a falafel wrap and possibly some other things, I really can't remember. It was...ahem...expensive. 

We were not there late-late; we were there during prime-time hours and the three of us, along with one to-go order and one other sit-down customer were the only patrons in the restaurant on one of the most gorgeous days I've ever spent in Canada. That should've told us something off the bat.

To be fair, I thought it was fine -- the pizza was quite good, the mozzarella stick things were fire, and while they weren't the best fries I've ever had, the fries were good too. I saved the vegan chicken wrap for later to take back to the hotel. However, Mama and Daisy were not impressed at all and were vocal about it once we left the place. Mama said it was the worst falafel she'd ever had (which surprised me because I thought it looked good at the very least), Daisy said her poutine was lacking and that she should've just gotten the pizza and nothing else, and -- when we had them later, we realized the desserts were quite good too. My vegan chicken wrap, when I reheated it the next evening, was still actually pretty decent. But, and I had to agree with them, it was overall the worst meal we had the entire time we were in Canada. Mama went as far as to say it was one of the worst restaurant meals she'd ever had.

Can't win 'em all, I guess.

I would've been fine with the vegetarian Chinese place.

Anyway. 

To save the day (and we'd found it the day before, too) we went back into the Charlottetown downtown area to find a "rolled ice cream" food truck that served -- you guessed it -- rolled ice cream. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's like thin sheets of ice cream...rolled up, like ice cream taquitos, and stuffed somewhat vertically into a small paper bowl. I don't know what advantage this gives over, say, normal ice cream by the scoop, but they had a lot of vegan options and it was phenomenal. It was also expensive. 

Almost everything on PEI is expensive.

The next morning, we checked out of the rustic motel and left PEI behind -- crossed the Confederation Bridge again -- and confirmed (though Mama had told us before) that while it is free to drive onto the island, if you want to get back off it, it costs $55 per car.

Fifty-five dollars. Per car. To leave the island.

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave...

Our plan for our last day in Canada was pretty clear -- leave PEI, make a loop back through the edge of New Brunswick, and get back into Nova Scotia. Drive to Truro (where as you may recall, we were stranded for a while on the drive up) to get fish and chips for Mama at her favorite place there she's been going to for many years, then head back down into Halifax to check into our hotel for the night, drop off the rental car, and fly out very early the next morning. This is a relatively simple plan, right? 

Well...

Look. Nova Scotia is much smaller than Nebraska. I'm aware of how long it takes to get places and do things in both places, and at this juncture the only Maritime province I haven't been to is Newfoundland and Labrador (but it's on my list). But it can take a lot of time to drive around up there given the Canadian highway system. Here in the states, there's generally ten different ways to get wherever you're going. In Nova Scotia, it's the Trans-Canada highway or bust. If you go off it, your GPS may just shrug and be like "I dunno" when you ask it to re-route you, as it did the night we arrived and we had to ask directions from the guy at the gas station. So, anywhere you go will be as efficient as the Canadian healthcare system and will take just as long (that's an inside joke for anyone who has ever dealt with the Canadian healthcare system).

We arrived in Truro in the mid-afternoon hours and first stopped at the Giant Tiger (where we parked that first night when we were stuck there). This was a much nicer, more expansive Giant Tiger than some of the other stores up there I'd been in, and in the fat guy section I found rack upon rack of metal band t-shirts in 4XL. I was stunned. 

First of all, do you know how hard it is to find metal band t-shirts in my size? And I mean high-quality, officially-licensed tees? It's hard. It's really hard. Yet this store had rack upon rack of them, all sorts of different designs from wild art to album covers to tour shirts. 

This presented me with a dilemma -- on one side, I'd spent an ungodly amount of money in Canada already, and I did not need any of these shirts. I also had my suitcase and backpack stuffed to capacity to the point where my suitcase was 47.5 pounds (the limit for checked baggage is 50) and my backpack was already dangerously close to splitting a zipper here or there. However, to my knowledge there's no weight limit on carry-on items, which the backpack was. 

We were also on a timeframe; we needed to get Mama her fish and chips and then make the rest of the drive back down to Halifax, drop off the van, check into our hotel, shower, eat, and sleep fast because that flight left very early the next morning. Daisy also wanted to stop at the local Walmart in Truro because she wanted a black Canada hoodie like I'd purchased several days before in Port Hawkesbury, and the Walmarts were the only places that carried that brand (Canadiana; it's like the Walmart store brand for Canadian clothing).

I scanned through everything quickly in Giant Tiger; I ended up getting two Metallica shirts, two Iron Maiden shirts, and a Megadeth shirt -- the latter of which I am actually wearing now as I write this.  I also got two, more classy, plain solid-color V-neck shirts in blue and gold. Daisy also picked up a few items, including some socks, and I got some Canada sticker packs (after all, Canada Day was coming up at the time). It was over $100 and I had no idea where I was going to put all these things in the luggage -- Daisy and Mama were also dangerously close to having their luggage be overweight. It had also become clear by this juncture that we'd have to leave most, if not all, of the prepackaged food behind in the hotel room or in the trash, because there was just no room for it.

As we drove to get Mama her fish and chips in the downtown area after leaving Giant Tiger, I somehow, with near-scientific levels of precision, was able to fit every new item into my already stuffed backpack and still get it to zip closed. I don't know how I did it. I don't know that I could do it again today. And I did it in the uncomfortable backseat of a moving minivan as we went around hard twists and turns (for the city of Truro seems to be designed almost as drunkenly as Charlottetown is).

After Mama's lunch, we went to the Walmart, where Daisy had a great idea -- Mama didn't have a carry-on bag. She didn't need one; she checked her suitcase and walker and she had her messenger-bag-like purse for everything else as a "personal item." You're allowed one carry-on bag and one personal item per person -- I've never used the "personal item" allowance, which is generally reserved for purses or laptop cases. I've only ever flown with a laptop once and believe me when I tell you it's generally not worth the hassle. So, technically, between the three of us we had two extra items we could take on the plane without having to check -- one would've counted as my personal item and another would've been Mama's carry-on. 

"What if we just...get another piece of luggage that's carry-on sized, or another backpack?" Daisy asked.

This was ingenious as it was pragmatic -- Daisy would not have the space for the hoodie she wanted, and we'd be able to take home dirty laundry and maybe some of the food items in this extra piece of luggage, whatever we got. 

So, that's what we did. After debating over a couple of small hard-shell suitcases, we ended up getting a nice, sturdy backpack (with Canada on it, also made by the Canadiana people) and Daisy got her hoodie; we stuffed it with everything we could and screwed a luggage tag onto it with Mama's name (in the event we were questioned). And off to Halifax we went.

We stopped at the hotel first -- which was five or six miles from the airport -- to lug in all the luggage, check in, and clean out the van. We left Mama in the room while Daisy and I went to return the van.

Returning a rental vehicle at the Halifax airport is one of the simplest experiences I've ever seen. There are large signs that direct you right to where you need to go, you pull into a special section of the parking garage where there are legit attendants waiting for drop offs, you park, they inspect the vehicle visually (and quickly) and then they scan the code on the car and the receipt is emailed to you...and you're done. I don't know if I've ever seen anything so efficient and fast. 

Remember this, it'll be important later.

The airport has a shuttle that goes between the terminal and a few hotels around the area every half hour or so. You go through the labyrinthine maze to get back outside to the pickup/drop-off area and walk all the way down to the end of it, and then the bus comes and you hop in and in ten minutes or so, you're back at your hotel. It's rather convenient. 

I'm likely not describing anything that a lot of you who travel far more than I do (or have in the past) haven't done before so many times that it feels like a chore, but we did a lot of new things on this trip and the shuttle bus is one of them. When we flew through Halifax last year, we stayed inside the airport hotel -- and when I say that, I mean that the hotel is literally inside and attached to the airport. That allowed for views like this from our hotel room window:

And no, the noise is not as bad as you'd think, especially not in the overnight hours.

As that hotel is really fucking expensive we did not opt to go that route this year, though for several reasons I really wish we had.

For one, I smashed my head into the overhead rack on the shuttle bus when we were getting into it. It hurt so bad I saw spots, and while it didn't break the skin or anything, I had a headache there for a few hours and a large, sore bump under my hairline for about a week after we returned home. 

For two, the hotel we stayed in -- it was a Best Western or Ramada or Holiday Inn or some shit like that, nothing fancy -- looked nice, but it wasn't the cleanest it could've been, and the staff were all foreign and hard to understand and were somewhat less than helpful. It had the look of a very well-used, heavily traveled hotel that wasn't bad, but the cracks were beginning to show in all of the wrong places, if you will.

We settled in and all of us showered -- honestly that was the highlight of it for me, as it was the best shower I'd had on the entire trip (and that counts the AirBNB we stayed in too, whose shower wasn't great), and laid down to sleep fast to get up by 3-something to get back to the airport.

And then the noise started.

It was the AC unit in the room, which was about eight feet from my head. It rattled incessantly.

Now mind you, I wasn't really bothered by it. I'm used to sleeping through most noise -- I work overnights, and Omaha is loud during the daytime hours -- but it drove Daisy nuts. I got up once and kicked the machine and it stopped, only to start again twenty minutes later. Daisy got up to kick it too, and it stopped again....before starting again a short time later.

We were, I believe, finally able to get it to stop -- and then the fridge in the room started rattling/buzzing. Daisy also addressed that, and then...the AC started again.

Cue this cycle for the entire six or so hours the three of us were desperately trying to get some sleep in that room. 

I will tell you this -- I sleep pretty well and pretty easily when I'm really tired, and once I'm out, I'm out. If I can get comfortable enough to sleep, it's game over; I've slept through tornado sirens, heavy thunderstorms, firetrucks, the cats wailing downstairs, alarm clocks, music playing, the television on, etc. And I generally only sleep about a maximum of six hours at a time. Daisy is used to far more than that and I'm sure Mama is too. So, when I woke up around 3 feeling fully rested (for better or for worse), Mama and Daisy looked and felt like zombies.

From there we gathered our things and made our way to the airport via the shuttle, checking out of the room as we did so...

Me, of course, in a fresh new Iron Maiden shirt.

The flight out of Halifax went smoothly. We landed in LaGuardia and went through a simple customs process and then were back on a plane to Omaha, with a gorgeous view of the Brooklyn Bridge as we were taxiing down the runway to lift off.

The flight from NYC to Omaha is long. I don't know for sure how long, but I know we were crammed into a plane that seemed so much smaller than it actually was, and the girl in front of me -- who weighed less than my left leg -- kept trying to recline her seat directly into my knees. Every time I would see her reach for the recline button, I would stiffen my legs and knees and make them as firm as possible, as I was already squeezed into the seat barely able to fit as it was. This made my knees and joints ache for days afterwards, to the point where it was hard for me to get up and down the stairs in my house until I got used to it again. 

Add to this that there were multiple very loud and annoying children on this flight -- some of them right behind us and some of them about seven or eight aisles up. And their parents weren't parenting them; they were kicking Mama's seat and screaming loudly and watching videos on their tablets without earbuds at high volumes and...this was an economy flight, there was no TV screens in the backs of the seats, no in-flight magazine for reading, nothing but the headrest of the seat in front of you to stare at and maybe, if you weren't flying through endless seas of nothing but clouds, a bit of a view every once in a while. My seat was so tight that I couldn't have gotten my cell phone out of my pocket to play a wifi-less game even if I'd wanted to. More than anything I just wanted the flight to end and to just be back on the ground in Omaha -- it was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had on an airplane, and over the years I've flown a lot. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity (and many nicotine mints later) we were back on the ground in Omaha, picked up our luggage quickly, and Dad picked us up. It was 90 degrees outside, and when we returned to our house -- after a long more-than-two-weeks of traveling -- it was 90 degrees inside the house, because no air conditioner.

But, we'd made it home safely. We had survived. The cats were all fine (though hot) and were, eventually, happy to see us after they stopped being mad about us being gone. 

And so ends the story of the trip. I made a vow with Daisy that the next time we do this, we are not doing it for this long. One full week, maybe a week and change, is more than enough before I start climbing the proverbial walls and want to be home. 

Green Gable'd: Canada 2024, Part V

 There is a part of this story I haven't mentioned yet, and it joins the long list of things that have gone wrong and that I would list under the category of "2024 Can Suck It." 

Halfway through our trip, Dad called us when he was over at the house to take care of the cats to tell us that it was 87 degrees in the house. Our AC unit had stopped working.

While it had been in the 60s in Nova Scotia on most days we were there (aside from the brief heat wave), in Omaha it had been in the 90s every day, and some days had approached 100. I'd set the AC unit to 75 before we left -- normally, when we're home, it's set to 66 or 67 in the summer, and 70-73 in the winter -- so that the AC would not run 24/7 while we were gone. The cats didn't need it to be ice cold in the house, just comfortable. This is done on every trip we take -- the thermostat is adjusted accordingly not just to save energy, but because we're not there and the cats are fine.

Well, it apparently did not work this time.

Add to this that a few weeks before we left for Canada, we'd had the AC unit cleaned and professionally serviced, and they told us that even though it is older than I am (by several years, actually), it was in perfect working order. And honestly, it always has been. I've never lived in a home with a better air conditioning system. 

At some point after we left, within a week or so, it blew out. Dad said it felt hot in the house when he'd been over the previous visit too, but he didn't think much of it as he knew we'd turned up the thermostat. However, after a few days of no air it was very apparent that it wasn't working once the temperature outside had skyrocketed. 

We had Dad troubleshoot it via phone, to no avail. Our furnace fan (which propels air through the house) was on and running, but the actual AC unit was, for all intents and purposes, dead. Daisy opened a ticket with our home warranty people to get a repairman out to the house, who immediately told us that because of the heat, no repair people were taking on new jobs and it could be a while before we could get someone to the house. Dad volunteered to go over once they assigned a tech and would let them in, monitor the repairs, keep the cats sequestered, etc -- but we let him know it likely wouldn't be anytime soon. In the interim he turned off the unit, turned the house fan to "on" to circulate air, and turned on all the ceiling fans to try to keep the house, and cats, as cool as possible. It was all that could be done, really. 

Fast forward to us, two days before we'd fly home and while sitting in a parking lot in the van on Prince Edward Island in pouring rain, to be told by the repair company via a very choppy phone call that the repairman's soonest availability to fix it would be the Wednesday after we returned to Omaha -- four days after we arrived home. 

It is what it is, I suppose.

We had to accept that appointment as it was the soonest availability. Mind you, we were still in Canada at the time -- in another province of Canada, but still Canada nonetheless -- and we didn't even know what was wrong with the AC unit. Without hands and eyes on it back home, I didn't know if it just needed to be reset, or if it had just overheated and needed to sit for a few days before being ran again -- or if it had really and truly blown up and needed to be replaced. 

But, we'll get to that.

The last two days of our trip would be spent on Prince Edward Island -- PEI, as it is known -- with the goals of exploring a bit of Charlottetown's vegan restaurants and going to see Green Gables in Cavendish. Charlottetown and Cavendish are on opposite sides of the island, with Charlottetown being on the south shore and Cavendish being on the northern shore. Mama was with us, of course, as she was traveling with us for this trip (as you know). 

As PEI is a full blown island, there are only two ways to get onto it -- there is a ferry outside of Truro on the north shore of Nova Scotia, and there is Confederation Bridge -- a seven-mile-long bridge from, essentially, New Brunswick to PEI. Mama was a bit wary of getting seasick from the ferry, so we chose the bridge option. Neither one would have saved any time, honestly. The rest of the family chose the ferry.

PEI is very pretty, but it reminds me a lot of backwoods West Virginia, just on a much smaller island. Outside of Charlottetown and the other little small towns scattered around the area, it's very much rolling hillsides, farmland, and winding roads that stretch on for many miles. There are no deer or moose on PEI, nor are there any other particularly exotic forms of wildlife. Yeah, there are eagles (a lot of eagles, actually, but they're also scattered all through Nova Scotia too), rabbits, raccoons, foxes, and apparently a thriving skunk population there, but not really anything else aside from eagles and seabirds. So it's like driving through West Virginia when it's rainy and foggy, with the occasional broad view of the ocean or a small lighthouse/cove and then BAM, you're in a town or larger city like Charlottetown.

Make no mistake, Charlottetown is gorgeous. It is a beautiful coastal city of about 40,000 people, and its harbour (because there's a U in it) is giant and breathtaking. When we pulled into town, a giant cruise ship -- like, a tourist cruise ship -- was pulling out of the harbor to continue its journey. I got video of it. It wasn't the largest ship I've ever seen; that honor goes to the absolutely massive cruise ship that was docked in Portland, Maine when I was there in 2015...but it was big. 

We'd gotten onto PEI in the middle of the day on a Wednesday and were in Charlottetown by 3, 4pm-ish. There was a restaurant that Daisy wanted to try called the Stir It Up Vegan Kitchen (or something like that) that was supposed to be right on the harbour. Well, apparently it was -- but it was inside a big mall-like food court building that housed many restaurants and little boutique shops/kiosks. At 4pm on a Wednesday, the place was almost completely deserted inside, so we had no trouble getting food. I don't exactly remember what the girls had, but there was a shop famous for its poutine next door, so I (of course) got a poutine. That was #3 of the trip, and would end up -- sadly -- being my last. 

It was very good.

PEI is known for, and is apparently quite famous for, its potatoes -- similar to how Idaho potatoes are the gold standard here in the states. Well, PEI doesn't fuck around with its potatoes:

Like sweet holy jesus they are serious about their potatoes. But there's a reason for that, and it's because those potatoes are great.

I am not sure I've had better fries on this planet than the ones in that poutine above. Daisy got fries from another place up there and they were also just as good. I got fries from another restaurant in Charlottetown the next night and they were really good as well -- not the best but leaps and bounds better than what I could get in Omaha. I don't know what it is, if it's the right soil, latitude, altitude, climate, whatever -- that makes these potatoes so good, but it's like Canadian cheese and Canadian flour (I'll even throw in there Canadian tea, too) -- they're just better, and leaps and bounds better at that. 

Also, don't think I didn't notice the backward N in "poutine" above in the baked potato picture. I don't know if that was a typesetting error or was somehow intentional.

Anyway, see that I <3 PEI POTATOES sign in the corner? Yeah, you can buy t-shirts and stickers and keychains with that on it. It's a thing up there. 

There is one other thing about PEI that I really didn't know anything about until I got there, though I'd heard a little here and there -- the dirt there, the soil there -- it is red. And I mean really red, like bloody maroon red. I guess it's something about the clay composition in it (similar soil exists in South Dakota, for example) but they fully embrace it, and you can buy t-shirts dyed reddish brown by the PEI mud as it, apparently, has a composition that makes it excellent for mud-based tie-dyeing -- the color does not go away or come out, it's permanent and bonds with the fabric. 

I was told there would be a place to dye your own shirts when visiting, so I packed (again, foresight is everything) three plain white t-shirts into my luggage. Well, the "place" is the island itself, anywhere you could find a mud puddle or a muddy beach, basically -- or you could just buy the pre-dyed reddish-brown shirts in a shop, most of the time with logos/text on them that stated they were dyed with PEI mud. I thought this was pretty neat, actually. The shirts sat in my luggage and we never dyed them anywhere, so it was sort of a waste to bring them, but I did think it would've been cool to find some red muddy water somewhere to do it in. I also did not purchase any of the pre-mudded shirts, mainly because the two shops I saw them in did not have them in fat guy sizes. Oh well.

Anyway. 

Our motel -- and it was, make no mistake, a motel -- was in Cavendish, about five or six miles from the Green Gables complex (I'm estimating) and about two miles or so from where Lucy Maud Montgomery herself is buried. 

If you're not familiar with Anne of Green Gables, I wouldn't be incredibly surprised. I'd known of it by name only before Daisy and I got together, and had never seen any of the television or movie adaptations of the original series of books -- nor had I read any of the books either, of course. However, in Canada it is likely the most famous of Canadian literature, and outside of Canada the 1985 TV miniseries and its much later three-season Netflix adaptation Anne with an E have also become wildly popular and have helped to make the character of Anne more universally known -- I encourage anyone interested to watch both series, as they're great. The entire series is set on Prince Edward Island, and focuses a lot on the Cavendish and Charlottetown areas (in the books/series, "Avonlea" is based very much on Cavendish in the early 1900s). 

But, Green Gables is a real place. It is a real house, purchased by the Canadian government about 60-70 years ago and refurbished/maintained to look like the house as described in the books (not as depicted in either series, but definitely the books). And ever since I watched both of the miniseries with Daisy, I have wanted to see it with my own eyes, in person, on a trip to Canada. Daisy and her sisters, with the parents, had seen it many years ago. Most of Daisy's Canadian family has been there to see it once or twice. I never had gone -- PEI is a long haul of a trip and it can't be done in one day, unless you wanted to start at 4am and not get back to the family homestead until waaaaay after midnight. 

In 2015, while we were there in Nova Scotia for a good long time, we never went.

In 2022, Daisy's grandfather had died and that's why we went on the trip when we did -- there wasn't really any extra time to galavant off to PEI.

In 2023, we could have gone and considered doing so, but we were there on our own and for a much shorter period of time than we would've had to really enjoy it -- and cost was a factor.

2024 was the year -- we were there for two weeks, we had Mama with us, Daisy's sister wanted to take their five kids to see it, and Daisy's cousin and her two kids were coming up from mainland Nova Scotia to join us all for the adventure as they lived considerably closer to PEI than to the family homestead. We'd made plans and booked the motel in Cavendish well in advance of the trip, and as it was a week or so before the summer tourist season would really start, I think there were only three different rooms in the motel actually in use when we were there. All of it was planned out for us to spend two nights in Cavendish and then hit the road back down to Halifax to get our flights back to Omaha. 

I was told that Green Gables wasn't much to see, that it was basically the house and a little gift shop, surrounded by a huge tourist-trappy area. None of that really mattered to me. Being able to see the house, being able to touch the wood and steel and be where all of the magic happened -- well, where it was "set," so to speak -- was a very important experience for me. 

What I did not know -- and apparently none of the family really knew either -- is that five years ago, in 2019, a giant complex was built on the farm next to the house. This complex housed a very detailed museum, huge gift shop, cafe, and AV area all focused around Anne of Green Gables as well as the life of her author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. $12 got you into the museum, which you went down through to see all of the exhibits, and then it led you out the back door and up a short gravel path to the barn and to the actual Green Gables house itself. There were other paths too, hiking paths and a "haunted forest," but...of course, as it's Atlantic Canada, the day we were there it was pouring rain. 

But...

There's the house, with Mama and Daisy heading towards the entrance in the front.

The house itself is not that impressive, really; it's just a green-and-white house that looks old on the outside. But the inside, which is roped off and immaculately-kept, is a time-capsule of the early 1900s, and is very much meant to be such.

I took a pic of Anne's room too; yes, of course, I was in the house:

The museum complex itself is beautifully designed, but of course, it is geared very strongly towards tourists. Green Gables is the big tourist draw of the island itself and tourism is the biggest part of PEI's overall economy as a province. So, everywhere you go anywhere around the northern half of PEI, it's Green Gables this or Anne that. It's so much of a novelty there that it feels fake and hollow, and I'm sure the people who have lived there all their lives, for generations, are sick of hearing about Anne. The town of Cavendish, while cute, is just littered with tourist gift shops. They're not bad gift shops -- they're actually pretty nice ones -- but because thousands of tourists stream through there every year, prices are heavily inflated.

Because I wasn't leaving PEI without some sort of souvenirs, even though my luggage was near-bursting anyhow, I did end up getting two different t-shirts (one with "Cavendish" on it in beautiful script, and one with a map of the Maritimes) and a long-sleeved PEI shirt while there -- in addition to some candies and taffy and potato-based soap based on the Anne characters. To be fair, the shirts are really nice, the taffy was...questionable, and the soap left me unimpressed once we returned home. 

Anyway, that was the Green Gables Adventure™. It was fun, but all three of us (me, Mama, and Daisy) agreed that we never need to do it or see it again -- I've now checked it off my bucket list of places to visit and see and I'm happy/satisfied I did it, but it is what it is. I'll likely never return to Cavendish or the Green Gables area in this lifetime.

However, we hadn't left the island yet -- we had one last blast before we left....

There Be Whales Here: Canada 2024, Part IV

 Mama did not come with us for the whale-watching experience. She said it would make her extremely seasick, which is fair. It was also going to be a very long day -- we were not sure how long when it started, honestly. I'd caffeinated myself with Reign and Monster and I had slept well the night before, so to me it was what it was. We grabbed some coffee from -- where else -- Tim's of course, and headed up onto the island. Our destination was Pleasant Bay, where the whale-watching boats set off from.

This. Was not a short trip.

As you can see, Pleasant Bay is nearly at the northernmost point of Nova Scotia -- nearly at the northernmost point of the northernmost chunk of Cape Breton Island. It is, as of 2024, the furthest north I've ever been on this planet. It is surrounded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To the north and northeast is Newfoundland and Labrador, and to the west is continental Canada -- New Brunswick. But, to the east of Pleasant Bay, once you round the tip of the island -- it is the completely open Atlantic Ocean all the way to Europe. 

This planet is a remarkable place.

Now, mind you, I've never been that far up on the island before. My previous experiences only took me as far north as Margaree Harbour, which is a little more than the halfway point on that line. If you go further north after that juncture, you'll hit Cheticamp -- which is the entrance to...

And the actual beginning to the world-famous Cabot Trail -- which if you look at the map above and follow the road, makes a large, very long circle around the northern half of the island. 

And oh sweet holy fuck is it beautiful.

I've mentioned that I wanted to go up through the Cabot Trail since 2015 -- my first visit to Canada. We never got the chance as it is 100% an all day trip, and would take many many hours to complete the whole trail, even by car. 

But, to get to Pleasant Bay, you have to drive up through the first half of the Cabot Trail, as Pleasant Bay is within the park itself. So, at Cheticamp, you have to pay a ridiculous fee of like $30 per car to get up into the park just for the day, and you're then allowed to drive up the mountains. And they are mountains to be sure.

Words cannot describe the beauty of the Cape Breton Highlands or the Cabot Trail. I don't even know that pictures or video can truly do it justice. It is, simply, the most beautiful place I've ever been on the planet. It is miles and miles of going up and down mountains, breathtaking scenic overlooks, incredibly steep cliffs, the cleanest and most blissfully fragrant ocean air imaginable, all set against a backdrop of an endless blue sea and hundreds of thousands of trees.

There's also, apparently, a moose population in the Cape Breton Highlands. We saw zero moose. Lots of bikers, though -- both motorcycles and bicyclists. My guess is that the bicyclists were driving their bikes to the top of the mountain passes and then biking back down, because the mere thought of biking up those mountain passes gives me chest pains.

Anyway.

When we got to Pleasant Bay and got to the whale-watching jumpoff, we found that the weather had not been kind to the sailors that morning, and they wanted to push back our trip out of the bay by two hours -- so that the sea could have some time to settle and so that we could have a better chance of seeing some actual whales. The tour earlier in the day had not seen any whales whatsoever, and they had a sort of ill-defined policy where if whales aren't seen, you get a refund (according to Daisy, they issue you a gift certificate sort of thing that you can use for a free trip another time). However, when a few people who were also scheduled to be on the boat with us couldn't come back in two hours, the tour guide pulled them aside and told them they'd get full refunds for the booking, so who knows.

In the interim time we were waiting, all of us hit up a gift shop up the road, and Daisy got a few things there. I also got myself a baseball cap that matched hers, and Daisy went back inside afterwards to pick up a bottle of coffee-infused maple syrup that I really wanted but didn't want to risk traveling with -- which I still haven't cracked open yet. At the time I was very concerned that it might burst in my luggage while flying; it did not, thankfully (nothing did, but I'll get to that eventually). After killing some time there in the gift shop, we returned to the cove the boats launched from.

Aside from our clan -- which was nine people total -- there were probably 10-15 other people who would be on the boat with us. This was a few families of various backgrounds, and some older couples. I heard various languages spoken by them on the boat once we finally got on it, mostly French (because, well, Canada). This wasn't a cheap little whale watching thing where they threw people onto rafts with outboard motors or anything like that -- oh no, this was on a small fishing vessel that had been converted for tours with the most baseline conversion tools possible. But, it was a solid boat with some powerhouse diesel engines. However, it had low sides, bench seating, and no real safety equipment like seat belts or anything like that. You had to hold onto well-worn metal rails, and those rails were your lifeline -- if the boat pitched too far to one side or hit the crest of a wave just right, your ass would fly off the boat into the water. 

And so, we were off -- the boat took us all out about seven miles offshore (according to the captain and tour guide) and I believe it -- we were in pretty open water, and the coastline of Cape Breton Island was pretty far off in the distance. 

I was excited -- I've been on boats before, of course, but they've been like, consumer-grade pontoon boats or small houseboats, or rowboats. The only other boat I've been on like this was when Daisy and I took the Navy Pier tour of Lake Michigan for views of the Chicago skyline from the water, and it was a much larger version of this same sort of vessel. 

But I do look good in photos when I'm on a boat, it turns out. 

This boat was much different -- you felt every wave, every movement, every turn, every fire-up or slowdown of the engines. Much more importantly, when they suddenly stop the boat when whales are spotted, if you're not secure in your footing, you will go flying from the inertia. I know this because I did, and almost crushed my niece. 

This niece, the one who adores her uncle Brandon:

She's such a sweet kid, and she was gripping me tightly almost the entire time we were on the boat. Daisy, of course, took the pictures. 

We had hoodies and/or other protective gear like hats and jackets on because, well, being out in the open water on a boat is wet. I made sure before the trip to order a pack of waterproof phone case lanyards for the family to use -- little pouches you slip your phones into when you're at the beach and the like -- and hang them around your neck. Once we got there I distributed them to the family so they could take their phones out and take pictures or video of the experience without having to worry about ruining their phones. A five-pack of them was $10 on Amazon, but foresight is priceless. All of the pictures, including the two above with my niece and the one below of me and Daisy, were taken through these cases.

We saw two whales -- Minke whales, apparently, per the tour guides, which are pretty common up there. They're not huge like humpbacks are (which are also seen up there quite often around the year at different times) but look very similar. The two we saw were maybe 20-30 yards from the boat, so we weren't right up against them or anything, but we did get a somewhat closer view of a harbor seal on the way back in, as it was hunting for its dinner (presumably). 

The entire trip took maybe 90 minutes or so, but it was exhilarating. I love being out on the water. I don't get seasick and after a few minutes, I can get my footing and balance pretty well. I wonder if I was a sailor in a past life or something, as there are many times I feel like I'm not meant to be on land, but on the open waters. 

When the tour ended, we went our separate ways with the rest of the family -- they had a long drive back down to Petit de Grat, and we found out the next day they took the long way and drove all the way down the other side of the Cabot Trail -- completing that giant circle I mentioned above on the map. We did not; we returned the way we came, hit a gas station in the first town that resembled civilization, and made our way "home" to the AirBNB.

Most of the days of the trip were spent like this, actually -- starting early in the morning, spending all day doing multiple things, and then ending at the homestead or AirBNB very late, spent and tired. There were, however, some nights of relatively free downtime where we had dinners at our makeshift home and watched Netflix just peacefully and quietly, just the two of us. 

However, by this point the Nova Scotia portion of the trip was coming to a close -- we had one final day with everyone at the homestead, and Daisy spent a good chunk of it taking pictures of everyone possible, including full-family pictures, posed and everything. It was very sweet and peaceful day, but it was a very long trip and I was beginning to feel thankful that it was coming to an end soon -- both Daisy and I were tired and fatigued and wanted to be home with our cats.

Beach'd Out: Canada 2024, Part III

 Unlike some other visits -- notably last year's -- the family was waiting for us this time around. As in, all of them knew we were coming and bringing Mama with us, and all of them were awaiting our arrival or were otherwise planning to be in when we were there. Daisy's cousin and his daughter had flown in from Alberta a week in advance to align their vacation time with ours. Her other cousin had come up from New Brunswick a day or two before. Yet another cousin who lives basically between the family homestead and Halifax (easiest way to describe it, really) was coming in for the weekend and would later join us, with her two kids, in PEI (we'll get there). All of these cousins are children of the same uncle who lives next door to the family homestead, so they all had a base of operations. 

Almost all of the other living aunts and uncles (so, two couples, four people, including the daughter of one of the couples -- five -- another cousin) had also planned time to come into town to see all of us while we were there, with varying arrival times throughout the first week or so we were there. And, of course, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children would arrive from Pennsylvania several days after we would. 

This...is a lot of people. When all of us were there in one place, group family photos were taken and we had close to twenty people in said photos. Actually, there may have been more; I haven't seen most of the photos yet as Daisy took them on her fancy new phone, with a tripod attachment.

It is also just a lot in general. I have mentioned here before that when I'm on vacation, especially a destination vacation like Nova Scotia, I really like having things to do every day, places to go, people to see -- this was the fourth time I've been to Canada in ten years, and the third time in as many years (2022, 2023, and now 2024). I know my way around. I know all the things we do and the daily missions we undertake. I know the people we come to see and the people who come to see us, too. However, going into Canada this time around, I was -- severely -- burnt out. 

2024 has been a miserable year, in case you haven't noticed. Almost everything that could've gone wrong in 2024 up to this point, short of the deaths of friends and family (none so far, as of this writing) has gone wrong, and I've documented a lot of it here. I have not documented all of it, and I have reasons why I haven't documented some things -- mainly for privacy's sake. So let's just run down the shortlist, shall we, of shitty things that have happened so far this year:

• Maggie took a hard turn and died very quickly
• Daisy's car died on the freeway in the middle of traffic and cost us a good chunk of money to repair
• Daisy was sick for months to the point where we didn't know if she'd need to go on disability or not
• It was -20 for like a week straight in the winter months and we didn't know if we could keep the house warm enough to keep all of the pipes from freezing
• We had several awful snowstorms almost back-to-back
• The washing machine died, necessitating its replacement
• Pete and Sadie's health have both started a steep decline -- I'm not sure Sadie will last the rest of the summer -- Sadie was diagnosed with diabetes and hyperthyroidism and Pete is in the middle stages of kidney failure and also has hyperthyroidism
• We've had the worst tornado season and severe storm season that the midwest has seen in about twenty years, with numerous tornado scares around our area

Who would've guessed more was coming after that? Well...we'll get to that.

Anyway.

I wanted as much downtime as possible on this vacation. The AirBNB we were staying in was a wonderful little place -- it had three bedrooms, a positively giant big-screen wall-mounted TV, onsite washer and dryer/dishwasher/side-by-side fridge, fast wifi, a giant deck that overlooked the ocean with a hot tub on one end of it, TVs in every room on the dressers, etc. It was everything we could've wanted in a place we'd be staying in for almost two weeks (and I did not ask Daisy the cost of it, because I did not and still do not want to know).

And...we were barely there. With everyone in town and plans to be had, I'd venture the guess that we were at the family homestead or on the road to a destination far more than we were in the AirBNB. There was but one day I got of quiet, peaceful downtime in the house -- when Daisy and her mother drove to the other end of the province to see her mother's aunt. Or great aunt, or cousin, or something -- I can't remember the relation off the top of my head, honestly. That day, I sat down in the dining room of the house with my notebook and a pen and wrote almost nonstop; I wrote twenty-five pages of the screenplay I've been wanting to write for years. When typed up, it will likely be more like fifteen pages, and I haven't even gotten into the first big plot point yet -- it's more just introducing the characters to the audience and showing how they interact at this juncture.

After that point, Daisy returned home and our hectic days continued. I got to meet Daisy's aunt (uncle's wife) for the first time -- she wasn't there for Daisy's grandfather's funeral in 2022 and I didn't get to meet her in 2015 or 2023 either, though we have talked extensively on Facebook and she is a very sweet person. One day we went on a beach adventure with Daisy's cousin and his daughter -- what really just ended up being an adventure of "let's drive up Cape Breton Island and...go where the road takes us, stop where we want to stop, see what beaches are up here, see what gift shops are in these little towns, etc" -- and that was a full, really fun day where we explored two different beaches, a cove or two, a small beachside park and hiking path (we did not hike) and the cutest little touristy gift shop where I got a baseball cap and Daisy got a flamboyant sequined shirt with a leopard (or some other big cat of some sort) on it. 

Speaking of flamboyant, we were in Canada in June -- Pride Month -- and holy shit does Canada take Pride Month super seriously. Pride flags are flying everywhere. And when I say "everywhere" I mean outside of police stations, government offices, churches, etc -- alongside the Canadian flag, the Nova Scotia provincial flag, and the First Nations flag. A giant Catholic church in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island was not only flying a pride flag but also had HAPPY PRIDE written on the church sign. Can you imagine that happening in the states? At a Catholic church? I was stunned.

Because of course I took a picture.

Also, I only assume it's Catholic because the size and ornamentation or the church and mention of St. Paul and the eucharist -- but honestly as I am not a religious person and it's been 20 years since I took a religious studies class in college...I have zero idea and don't care enough to actually check. They accept and love the gays? They're cool with me and that's good enough.

There's even a Canadian flag version of the Pride flag, where the red on each side of the maple leaf in the center is replaced by the rainbow colors of the standard Pride flag. We saw that one proudly flying in a few places as well. 

I've now been in Canada in May, June, August, and September, but not July. Maybe next year we'll shoot for July -- I would love to see what a Canada Day (July 1) celebration is like. 

So, getting back to the story, there were a lot of activities to do when we were there. Many people to see and spend time with, people coming and going like an airport. Aunts and uncles and cousins would come and go, making their appearances and spending time with us before returning to their lives. Daisy and I would do our grocery shopping, sometimes with Mama joining as well, and we filled the fridge and some of the cupboards with our foods -- most of which we ate, some of which we left behind, and an even smaller amount we brought back home to Omaha. I have learned that bread -- just normal, store-baked bakery bread at the grocery store -- is phenomenal in Canada. Canada's flour and yeast is somehow just different. Mama clued me in to this a few years back and I'll be damned if she wasn't right -- it tastes cleaner, crustier, just plain better than bread in the states.

Cheese is something else that's wildly better in Canada as well -- but oh man will you pay outlandish sums of money for it. A pound of run-of-the-mill Swiss cheese is $15 in Canada. But, I will tell you, it is one of the best ways to spend $15 while you're in the country, because you likely won't find better sliced-and-packed Swiss anywhere on the planet.

As an aside, when we got back to Omaha, I did a Walmart delivery for groceries and got some of the Great Value Swiss cheese for comparison. There is zero comparison. The American stuff tastes so cheap and processed. But it's $3, versus $15, so....

Actually we noticed an ungodly hike in grocery prices for so many things when we were in Canada this year. Last year when we were there, prices were mostly reasonable for our necessities. There were some things that were expensive (I covered this in last year's travel narrative of our trip) but for the vast majority of everyday items, prices were similar to what they are in the states. 

Not so this year. Inflation has spun wildly out of control in the grocery store aisles of Canada. Stuff that used to be affordable and close to US prices is now insane. We're talking $8.99 for a package of Oreos insane, $12.99 for a three-pack of paper towels insane. $11 for a stick of deodorant insane. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. 

Yet there are things that are 100% comparable to the states -- lettuce and most produce was comparable if not somewhat cheaper. Vegan turkey for my sandwiches I'd subsist on for a lot of the trip (don't you judge me) is about the same price. Soda, chips, chocolate and other candy bars -- the same price. It will make you very closely watch the price stickers on the items in the aisles while you're shopping, because a $100 grocery order stateside could easily end up being $250-300 in Canada. 

And then there are the items that make you feel as if you've awakened in a Sliders-esque parallel universe, such as....

...Mind you, Spam exists in Canada. So I either walked into an aisle and momentarily slipped into a parallel universe where it's called KAM or someone's getting sued. 

But I keep getting off track.

A few days after we arrived, Daisy's sister, her husband, and their five children ages 7 to 18 arrived in Nova Scotia. They stayed at their own AirBNB on the small island of Petit-de-Grat, an hour or two south of where the main homestead and our own AirBNB was. We drove out there to see their place, spend time with them and had a beach day with the kids -- after which, I'd been to three beaches over the span of four or five days; I was beach'd out. The sun was brutal and we hit a heat wave in Nova Scotia just as they arrived -- temperatures in the high 80s and 90s, which is almost unheard of in Nova Scotia, especially in mid-June when the snow has just melted a month or so prior. Several members of the family joked, again, that we must have brought the heat with us from Omaha.

It then proceeded to rain for three days straight.

Rain and storms in Nova Scotia aren't like they are here in Omaha. The rain will start and it will be a downpour for either ten minutes or for three days -- there's rarely an in-between. If it storms, it's a bit of light thunder and lightning that quickly dissipates and is gone just as fast as it came, flowing out over the ocean. The only exception is, well, the occasional hurricane -- which they've gotten a few times in recent years when even that was relatively unheard of in the past.

When it rains, you can either sit around one of the houses and socialize or you can go do shopping and explore indoor places in the area. We did both about equally, to be honest. Yes, we did go to Walmart and Giant Tiger. Yes, we did do some more grocery shopping. Yes, we did go get poutine -- twice -- while I was there, the second time of which I was able to get some compliments on my blue jay tattoo from a kind old man traveling through the area. On these rainy days, Daisy and I finished Bridgerton on Netflix, Mama and Daisy both went to the stylist and got haircuts, we picked up some groceries for Daisy's grandmother, and Mama bought a live lobster, cooked it, and ate it -- because maritime living, I guess. 

We did have a set schedule for time, of course. We were in Nova Scotia for about twelve days, then we'd be packing up and heading to Prince Edward Island for two more days, before returning to Halifax to fly out and come back to Omaha. By the time we'd gotten through the first week, we'd already had the rest of the trip planned out since we knew when everyone's comings and goings would be. I didn't have much on the agenda aside from my near-daily trips to Tim Hortons to get Double Doubles, and I was basically along for the ride when it came to doing things with the family. We had but three things Daisy wanted to accomplish while we were still there:

1. Go whale-watching off the coast of far northern Cape Breton Island
2. Go eat at some of the vegan restaurants in Charlottetown, PEI
3. See Green Gables in PEI with her sister/family and her cousin/cousin's two kids

Anything other than that was a bonus.

So, with vapes and phone charged, we set off to do those things.....

The Long Journey: Canada 2024, Part II

 Traveling with Mom is hard; she will acknowledge this herself. She is old and it's hard for her to get around, and travel in general is hard on her body. Adding to that, it was to be twelve straight hours of travel through four different airports -- two in each country, and then getting a rental car and driving another 2-3 hours to get to the family homestead...it's hard. It's very difficult even at our age, let alone Mom's, to be up and constantly on and running from well before sunrise until dusk the following evening.

Well...

Instead of twelve hours of travel, it was a full 24.

Let me explain.

So the trip out of Omaha went without incident; Dad picked us up, we got to the airport and were dropped off, we got our baggage checked, got our boarding passes, and got to the gate without issue. We were there early, so security lines were fairly short and there were no issues getting through security, except, well, the metal detector always detects metal in my crotch, so I am always forced to go through the pat-down procedure.

Mind you, I have no metal in my crotch. I do not have an iron cock. I have nothing down there that would even show as a hint of metal, especially as at this point I have already emptied my pockets into the tray for the scanner and there's nothing left on me. I stopped taking off my watch/wedding ring/necklace because they said it was no longer necessary, but I can tell you that I have no crotch metals. So I have zero idea what it could possibly be. But, I see it in the scans where there's a big red triangle of metal on the detector screen and the ring/watch/necklace barely register.

I used to think it was the aglets on the drawstrings of my shorts, which are aluminum -- however, I wore different shorts this time around, still drawstring (so no zipper or buttons) and it still went off. I'm beginning to wonder if I have some sort of alien-abduction-implant in my crotchal region someplace, because honestly I have no other explanation. I always get the pat-down, they usually swab me in a few places, and then shrug and say I'm good, clear to go, etc. Which was the case this time as well.

The flight to Atlanta was the best flight of the entire trip. We left early on an Airbus A320 so we had the amenities of seatback TV screens, the seats had good room to them, and I was comfortable. This was not the case on all of the other flights there and back, but we'll eventually get to that.

Atlanta was uneventful. We had a short less-than-an-hour layover, but Mama gets wheelchair assistance so we were able to get the gate ladies to book it to our next gate, where we sat for maybe 10 minutes before we were allowed to board the plane.

This is a wild, wonderful perk of traveling with Mama -- we make sure she has wheelchair assistance for every flight. That means we're met at every opportunity possible by airport folks actually looking for us, who proceed to let Daisy's mother sit down into a wheelchair provided for her and then haul ass across the airport to our gate. When we get to the gate, because Mama got the wheelchair assistance and we're traveling together, ALL of us get to board the plane first before anyone else. No waiting for zones to be called, no lining up, nothin' -- directly down the jetway and into the plane first, where every overhead compartment is empty and we have time to board, stow our bags, and get comfortable before everyone else fills the plane. It is amazing. Do I feel a bit like a dick for enjoying this perk so much? No, not at all. Airplane travel is uncomfortable, cramped, and very expensive. We flew on five different planes during this trip and believe me, I was very grateful to have Mama to travel with. 

Anyway.

The flight from Atlanta to Toronto was also easy. I've mentioned before here how people give the Toronto airport a bad rap, but honestly it's one of the more pleasurable airports I've flown into and through. It's easy to get around, it doesn't feel crazy or overcrowded (like Charlotte or O'Hare do) and customs there is an absolute breeze. Within fifteen minutes of getting off the plane we were through security/customs and on our way to the gate to board our last flight into Halifax. I exchanged my American cash for Canadian cash in a little kiosk in Toronto's airport on the way to our gate, and was very excited for the exchange rate that day as it gave me -- as they say -- walkin' around money. Without going into details, it was, ahem, a good bit of walking around money. Not enough to declare to customs of course, but enough to where if I were careful and mindful, I would not have had to spend another cent on my credit cards throughout the trip.

This. Did not happen. But I'll get to that.

So we get to the gate in Toronto and finally relax a bit, as our layover there was about two hours or so. About an hour into this, we find out that the flight into Halifax was delayed by another hour. Whatever, I guess -- it's our last flight and it's not like we'd miss a connection anywhere. 

Our original itinerary was to be wheels up in Omaha at 6am and to be wheels down on the ground in Halifax around 6pm, where we'd pick up the Spaceship Van at the rental kiosk in the parking garage and have a roughly two-hour drive time from Halifax to the family homestead on the eastern end of the mainland province. That would put us there around 9pm-ish -- just as it was getting dark for the night. It was a long trip to be sure, but Daisy and I have done far longer travels from Omaha to Nova Scotia by ourselves before -- notably two years ago when her grandfather died. 

We finally got on the flight to Halifax and it progressed without incident, but we were wheels down and off the plane at 8:04pm -- over two hours later than we were supposed to be arriving. 

This did not matter though, because the car rental place had but ONE van in their fleet -- it had been returned late and was going through cleaning and refueling/preparation for us to jump in it and go.

This took two more hours, while we were sitting there in the basement garage of the Halifax airport, exhausted. I was losing all patience at this point, Mama was getting sick because we hadn't eaten anything aside from some small snacks that were packed in our carry-on luggage, and we were supposed to have been at the family home an hour before we actually left Halifax for it.

When we were finally given the van after the very long wait for it, it was well after dark and going on 10pm. Mama didn't know if she could make the rest of the trip, Daisy was very tired but was pushing through it and not taking no for an answer, and we finally got on the road to the family homestead.

Halfway there, at the exit we had to take in order to get there, we found that the road was closed. At midnight. Both ways. With no explanation. Fire trucks were parked lengthwise across the exits on both sides, and there were multiple personnel in high-visibility clothing just...standing around. There was no sign of an accident. Just "road's closed, and we're all standing here."

What in the everliving fuck.

Please understand at this point just how tired we were. Daisy and I had been up since 1am and we left the house around 3. Mama had done basically the same thing. We're now into 23 hours straight of being awake and we'd been traveling for 19 -- and an hour from our destination all of the roads leading to it are closed. All of us were about to become completely unglued. 

We pulled over (it's not like there was a lot of traffic) and asked what had happened. One of the guys in high-visibility clothing said "accident up the road." We asked when the road would be open, because it was the only way to get where we were going. He told us 10-15 minutes, and to just go down into Truro (one of the towns in the area) and wait a bit, circle back again, and it should be open once we did.

Okay.

So, we exited the Trans-Canada highway and pulled into Truro -- into a Giant Tiger parking lot -- and ate some sandwiches and chips for about 25 minutes or so. Where we sat was right next to the highway, and as such in the time we sat there, we saw many tractor-trailers pass by us -- all of them weren't getting backed up at the closed exit, traffic wasn't getting backed up to down where we were a couple of miles away, so we figured...after some time and many cars/trucks...the road had to be open again, otherwise where were all of those trucks going? It was the only road up to the northern half of the province; they had to be getting through somewhere. 

We finally made the circle again, getting back on the highway, not seeing any traffic (a good sign), and...found that the road was still closed in both directions. 

We circled back into Truro again, this time bypassing the Giant Tiger and heading to the gas station up the street, to figure out what was going on and to use the bathroom/ask if anyone there knew an alternate route to get up "to the island" because, after all, that's the direction we were headed. 

I don't remember if I got anything in the gas station or not -- I know I used the (disgusting) bathroom because I had no choice. I was burnt out, I was tired, and was very relieved when suddenly, in the door walked a guy wearing one of the high-visibility jackets -- he was clearly one of the ground crew for the accident. We learned from him that a large truck had taken out part of the overpass past that exit and that it was an absolute mess. The exit had been closed for hours and would likely reopen to one-lane traffic at some point, but he could not at that juncture say when. 

We asked him if there was an alternate route up "to the island" that he knew of, a way to bypass that exit from where we were.

Well, of course there was -- we would get off at the exit shortly before the interchange, take a left, drive through a little town called Bible Hill for about 5-6km or so, and then take another left at a McDonald's that would route us right back onto the Trans-Canada highway well past the accident/affected area -- in essence, it excised that part of the highway from our journey. 

Daisy and Mama both had to write the directions down on their phones to take notes because we were all so tired, but we followed them -- and wouldn't you know it, that guy was right. That way was also where all of the trucks and other traffic were going, as it was the only alternate path. 

Because of the multiple detours and circle-backs, we finally arrived at the family homestead around 2:30am. We dropped off Mama and got her stuff inside for her, and headed down the street to our AirBNB, which the owner had texted us earlier in the day was unlocked and ready for us (it's rural Canada, it's not like there's any actual crime there). We were in and finally, finally ready to rest in our home-away-from-home for the next two weeks around 3am -- a full 24 hours of travel and 26ish hours of being awake later, we were there.

Secret Pains: Canada 2024, Part I

(written during early June and into the early part of July, so bear with me) 

There's not a lot I feel that I need to document in detail anymore -- life moves fast and things that are pain points or are feel-good stories tend to pass quickly, replaced with the next item on the agenda. However, I always make it a point to document the trips we take -- whether that's to visit my parents, have a weekend jaunt to Chicago, or as it is becoming a yearly thing now -- to the Great White North of Canada. 

I've never been a "travel" person, really. I've always considered myself a homebody. But, you do know if you've been following me here for some time, Canada feels like a second home to me. When I'm there, it feels like it's where I'm meant to be -- in little towns along the ocean with coves and fishing boats, quarries and harbors (sorry, harbours), where the internet is slow, not every TV is a flatscreen, there are still landline phones, and everything feels like it's still 1991. 

I love it. I love every bit of it. It is a real detachment for me from the stresses of my day-to-day job working as a manager-contractor for one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world. I logout, I disconnect, and...the world just stops when I'm in Canada. I'm surrounded by family, I am able to unwind and be comatose (relatively speaking) if I want to, and I can breathe the sea air -- air that is like nowhere else on the planet. 

But there's always something.

I should backtrack a bit before I go any further, really -- and the story really starts shortly after we returned home from visiting my parents in North Carolina last fall. It was shortly after that where Daisy and her mother began making plans for another trip to Canada this summer. I was fine with it; at that juncture it was almost a year away -- I wasn't worried about accruing enough PTO and didn't particularly care what was set up for it at the time. We'd originally planned to go in August, the second half of the month (roughly) that leads into Labor Day at the beginning of September, just to get the best weather and have it not be so blazing hot.

We'd been to Canada in August before -- our first trip up there, with the parents in 2015, was during that time. The family had told us at the time we "brought the heat with us from Omaha," as almost as soon as we arrived Nova Scotia got a heat wave where it was in the 80s-90s every day and would alter between wild heat and heavy thunderstorms the entire time we were there, sometimes in the span of an hour or two (very small province surrounded by ocean, so, that's sort of how it goes). 

Our second trip up there in 2022 was also in August -- when Daisy's grandfather died. It was also hot and rainy for a good chunk of that trip.

Our third trip was last year and we went in mid-May -- that ended up being a rather precarious time weather-wise because in May, Canada is just thawing out from winter. Daisy's uncle remarked when he saw us wearing shorts and sandals that "you know we just put away our snowblowers like two weeks ago, right?" And that was true. They'd gotten significant snow up there all the way through April and the province was just finishing its thaw with the last of the snow having melted a week or two before we arrived. Traveling up there in May is not something I'd want to do again unless Nova Scotia is having a significant heat wave at the time, as when we were there most of the time the temperatures struggled to hit 60 degrees, and it was at or below freezing every night and morning -- in mid to late May. The seasons had changed in Omaha a month before that, and my allergies had acclimated appropriately. Well, once we set foot on Canadian soil, into a country that was just then experiencing the real change of the seasons, those allergies came back. I don't know how many headaches and nosebleeds I had while there, sometimes (especially for the nosebleeds) completely out of the blue and particularly violent. There were beautiful beach pictures taken of Daisy and me -- but what you can't tell in those pictures is that it was 45 degrees and windy when they were taken. 

So yeah, August was fine with me.

As I recall, and my memory may fail me, the trip was set in late September for the following August. And I mean set-set -- as in tickets were ordered for me, Mom, and Daisy; Dad had chosen to remain home and take care of the garden and the cats. 

Over the course of the following months, plans would change -- a lot.

You should know if you've read my stuff here long enough that I am not a fan of change -- I set my mind to something or I make plans and I stick to them, without deviation of any sort where and when possible. Change causes me stress and massive anxiety.

Well, over the course of the next few months, our flights would be changed -- numerous times. Sometimes by the airlines making a small or large correction. The plans for the trip ballooned to include Daisy's two sisters and their families traveling up there at the same time (not with us, but all of them coming as well). The trip's timeframe was officially changed from late August to mid-June. There was even a time where Daisy wanted to change the flights to have us fly out from Kansas City -- some 4-5 hours away -- and then drive up to Nova Scotia from Boston. Both Mom and I absolutely shut down the Kansas City/Boston idea; the last thing either of us wanted to do was drive for four hours before we actually go anywhere, get on a plane and off again and then drive another sixteen hours to get where we're going -- and then, when we finally get back on the ground in the states to drive another four hours to get back to Omaha. Like fuck that, fuck every bit of that. Especially on the way back home -- when I step off the plane, I like knowing that I'm 10-15 minutes, depending on traffic, from my house and my cats -- and that my trip is over. 

Eventually -- eventually -- it was settled that we'd fly out of Omaha into Atlanta, Atlanta to Toronto, and from Toronto into Halifax...and the trip home would be Halifax to LaGuardia in NYC, and then from LaGuardia to Omaha. The trip would be in the last two weeks of June, from the 14th to the 29th. Mom would be staying in the family home and we would be in an AirBNB house owned by family friends (almost everyone in the town are "family friends" as there are only 300 people in the town) legit two minutes away -- walking distance if/as necessary. Daisy's oldest sister, her husband, and their four boys  (the Denver family) would not be making the trip due to finances and the children's activity schedules. Daisy's middle sister, her husband, and their five kids would be making the trip but would be coming in a week later than us, driving up from where they currently live outside of Pittsburgh.  Provisions were added to the trip to spend two days on Prince Edward Island at the end of our journey before coming home, to do some sightseeing and so I could actually see Green Gables in person. Daisy also made sure -- well in advance -- that our car rental this time around would be another Spaceship Van, a Chrysler Pacifica or similar, so that we could easily haul luggage and transport Mom.

All of these changes were...stressful to me. Bumping the trip up from August to June essentially meant that I could take zero extra time off work from Christmas to June, as I would need every single hour, every single minute, of accrued PTO to apply to a two-week trip. Now, I can tell you that my boss 100% does not care if I have all of that time submitted and on the books -- I am salaried and get paid the same every check no matter what anyway -- he is fed up with the company, just had a new baby, and doesn't care as long as he's made aware of when I'll be out -- but I am a man of honor and I dutifully submitted it. Well, what I had, anyway. The last two days of it I will have to put in once I return to work as I had two paychecks where more PTO rolled over while I was in Canada. I did this because I don't ever want to be accused of any sort of impropriety in that job; everything for me is always "on the books" and fully transparent to my leadership and my team. 

Bumping up the trip also meant that I had to make sure my finances were in order and bills were paid earlier than expected, and changed what kind of clothing I would pack -- heavier stuff for cooler/rainier early summer days and nights versus lighter, full-on summer clothing for August. I started packing my suitcase and backpack quite early -- like, early May -- and revised what I packed multiple times from that day all the way up to the day before we left on the trip. I would remove something, add something else, remove two things and add three others, etc. June is a wildcard for whatever weather we could experience there -- it could rain every day and be in the 50s-60s or it could be 85 and sunny every day...or both in the same day. I mentioned in previous posts that I flirted with purchasing a somewhat-inexpensive Amazon Fire tablet for entertainment purposes, or taking my laptop -- neither of which I wanted to do, really. Instead, I packed several books I've been meaning to read, two notebooks for writing, and a fresh pack of Pilot liquid ink pens. I packed five disposable vapes new and unopened, as well as a new stick vape all-in-one device that uses my actual liquid and coils, also still in the sealed/unopened box. I packed a toiletry/cosmetics stuff bag (an old camera carrying case) and loaded it for every possible scenario -- also so I had to buy as little as possible while I'm there -- including a bar of good soap, a shampoo bar, my tattoo balm, Q-tips, flossers, two new travel toothpastes, a new toothbrush, wet wipes, glasses wipes, a new stick of powder deodorant, laundry detergent sheets and dryer sheets, a small bottle of Lush "Dirty" (Daisy's favorite scent on me), sinus and pain pills, other various OTC pills and products, etc -- I'm sure you get the idea. The overall goal was to purchase as few personal items as possible while up there and to focus my money on food, gas, and experiences.

I made a checklist for myself of things to do before we left, on my computer. I got them all done. After I did that, the last night I worked before the trip I used a notepad at my desk and wrote a three page list of other things I hadn't thought of that needed to be done before we left -- both items I would take care of (mowing the grass, washing all of the cat bowls/fountain, charging batteries, dumping the trash/recycling, etc) as well as stuff that I knew needed to be done but Daisy wouldn't necessarily think of offhand. Some of those things were things that I actually knew she would think of but for my own anxiety and sanity I needed to remind her to do them, such as make sure all of the security cameras are set up and functional, change the filter in the furnace closet, make sure all the doors and windows are securely locked, etc. I even took the initiative to put the mail on hold until we return and to make sure the cats would have enough treats until we returned (they likely won't, but they can deal with it). We were originally going to have one of Daisy's work friends come over every day to take care of the cats and only have Dad stop by once every 3-4 days, but that plan fell through, so we just made sure Dad -- who is old but is happy to help as much as he can -- knew where everything was and how to distribute the foods and treats, made sure he had an ample supply of litter to change out the pans, etc. It was what we could do. 

Finally, I made sure to remove my debit card from my wallet (it would not have been used in Canada anyway), leave my keys at home in the event Dad needs to use them to get the car out of the garage or in the event something happens to his own keys, and put the cash I earned from selling off all my around-the-house stuff in my wallet so it could be exchanged. The last things I packed were my last two sticks of Trulicity, as I would use both of them during the trip, shortly before leaving the house.

I did not know what to expect for the actual trip. I originally wanted the trip to just be a true vacation for Daisy and me -- because boy have we earned it this year -- but Daisy wanted to include Mom as well. I had no problem with that. Unlike the stereotype, I adore my mother-in-law. She is a wonderful, patient person with an absolute biting sense of humor that rivals or can at times be darker than my own, and she also adores me -- it is unspoken but is very clear I am the favorite of her three sons-in-law. I'm a bit biased there of course, but I am also here in town and see her roughly once a week when the other two live in other states and are only in town 3-4 times a year at most, combined. So no, I didn't mind Mom. It was very important to her to see her own mother again -- her own mother who turns 91 in a few months -- and it's also unspoken that this may be the last time she sees her alive.

However, when they started brainstorming ways to bring in the entire rest of the family of Daisy's sisters, their husbands, and their total of nine kids all to arrive at the same time, my interest and desire to go on this trip dropped like a stone. Being surrounded by everyone at all times, including all of the children, is not a vacation for me. I love them all dearly, but it sounds, frankly, like torture. A vacation to me is peace and quiet, the ability to relax, read, write, and sleep when I want to, to explore and take day trips to different places like the beach or to one of the Nova Scotian towns I haven't seen yet, and to see and spend time with the family members who come into town from other parts of the country to see and interact with us while we're there. It's so difficult for me to disconnect and unwind -- I am naturally a high-stress, high-anxiety person and that's only gotten worse in recent years. I am big on silence and being left alone when I'm overwhelmed, and there would be no silence or being left alone were all of the family and the children along for the ride.

But I couldn't just opt out and not go -- for one, the tickets were not refundable or changeable after a certain point. If I or we did not go, we were out that money whether we were there or not, and there was no way to get it back. When I later (and by "later" I mean "mid-May") learned that Daisy's oldest sister and family weren't going and that her other sister and family would be coming up a full week after we got there, I breathed a long sigh of relief. Again, I love them all but I needed an actual vacation. It would be hard enough to disconnect and to be away from the cats for me as it was; I didn't need more stress thrown in there as well. Add to this that right around the end of the month and going into June, Daisy's sister who would be coming on the trip got Covid...along with her husband and likely the kids as well. So, there was a long stretch of time where she did not even know if they were going to be able to make the trip at all. 

Anyway.

Finally, on the overnight of the 13th into the 14th, Dad arrived at our house around 2:30 in the morning (for our 5:45 flight) with Mom in tow; we loaded our stuff into the parents' SUV, made sure the kitties had all the food and treats, water and clean litter and got extra love, and locked up/left.