Part-time prevaricator
We went away last week, on the train to Edmonton. Here’s some of the stuff we did:
Celebrated K’s birthday
Visited some friends
…and their menagerie (one dog, three cats, a great huge tortoise, a bunch of turtles, and some hermit crabs)
Continue reading “Westering, 2008”
Previous entries: Part 1, Part 2.
We got back to Edmonton and dropped the car off. Over half the deposit I’d put on it got refunded, since we didn’t keep the car the full week. That was pleasant.
My memory grows hazy of what we did–I know there was much playing with little Miss J, and Kathleen got birthday cupcakes, and we went to the swimming pool again. One thing that I distinctly remember was visiting the Muttart Conservatory, which is always an awesome experience, but it’s somehow double-awesome in the winter.
The Muttart is a set of four connected pyramids, each one featuring a variety of plants from a different ecozone. There’s a temperate pyramid, a desert one, a tropical one, and a rotating “show” pyramid. When we were there, the show was “The Birth of Spring” or something similar, and so the plants in there were things like crocuses and other early-blooming plants.
(Which makes me feel all poetical:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
–T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
But enough of that.)
Photos:
What kind of flower is this? Well, it’s pink.
Orchids. There were all kinds of orchids in the tropical pyramid.
Calgary
We arrived in Calgary about suppertime, and found S & J’s house without too much difficulty. They live in a relatively new part of town, and there are a lot (a lot) of streets in the area that start with “Valley”.
Both of them had taken Monday off, and so we would have two full days of hangin’ out all together. And that’s what we did.
S & J have quite the house. It’s a two-story job, with a mezzanine level that has vaulted ceilings and a fireplace. Four bathrooms in the place, which is one more than the number of bedrooms. When we were there, they had almost all the rooms re-painted. (I chatted with S recently; they’ve now completed the painting.)
I’d love to say that we did astonishing feats of derring-do and haberdashery while we were out in Calgary, but in truth, we had a nice, quiet time. We hung around the house, played cards, and ate more than we should have. (In some cases, much, much more.) We accompanied S & J on a tour of one of the little shopping districts, where they bought a couple of vases, and then we gorged on chocolate at a little chocolatier. We played cards–did I mention the cards? We entertained Monty, the cat.
Monday we hopped in the car and went to the mountains. Having grown up on the prairie, having spent most of my life on the flatlands, I’m always impressed when I see the Rocky Mountains up close and personal. There’s something so–sharp–about them. They always give me the impression that you could reach out, chip off a piece of stone, and very carefully shave with it. But be careful not to drop it on your foot, because it’ll slice a toe clean off. You wouldn’t even notice till someone said, “Hey, is that your toe?”
Photos:
And then on Tuesday, while our hosts were at work, we packed up our rental car, bade the house adieu, and headed north, back up to Edmonton.
I didn’t get any photos of it, but on the way back up, somewhere just before Red Deer (IIRC), there was a semi truck on fire. Seriously. Fully engulfed in flames. He was on the far side of the southbound highway, and I was in the right lane of the northbound highway. There was a wide ditch between us. I was probably no closer than sixty feet from the truck at any one time.
But I felt the heat from the fire through my closed window. It spooked me somewhat.
When we passed, there were no fire trucks or ambulances on the scene as yet. A few people had stopped and had their cell phones out, though. I kept driving. As we neared Red Deer, there were a couple police cars screamed by, headed south.
Thankfully, my adventure was far less interesting than that truck driver’s was.
Sometime before Christmas, my darling wife went online, to the VIA Rail website. She punched in some dates, a starting point and a destination, and said “Show me the monkey!”* Then she said, “Holy crap, it’s cheaper to take the train to Edmonton than it is to fly! Even on Westjet!”
So she ordered up a couple round-trip tickets, and gave them to me for Christmas.
We got on the train at around 8:15 pm on Friday night. This was only about an hour after we were supposed to be on the train–apparently Via’s gotten better at sticking to a schedule than they were back in the day when my Dad and my Grampa were supposed to pick up my aunt and uncle, and ended up going back into town** to buy some playing cards.
We were to travel overnight through Saskatchewan, missing the prairie scenery while we slept, and arrive in Edmonton at 8:05 on Saturday morning. We were traveling in Comfort Class, because “Comfort Class” sounds better than “Seats like a Bus, but with More Legroom and Little Footrests Class”. It wasn’t my most comfortable night’s sleep, and the less said about the crying baby and the snoring/murmuring woman behind us, the better.
We were late getting into the Big E, but not as late as we could’ve been. K’s sister S met us, with her hubby C and their two-year-old Miss J. We went to the pool to see Miss J’s swimming lessons, then out to lunch (dropping off S at home, since she had to work). After lunch we headed to the satellite city of Leduc, where a rental car awaited.
Too bad the rental place had closed at noon.
And wouldn’t be open on Sunday, either.
This was the cause of some consternation, and no small amount of swearing. I called the 888 number for the rental company’s head office, and was told that there were no rental outlets open near me. I was polite to the operator–it wasn’t her fault–but I kind of hope that they were recording the call for training purposes, so that my comment “I find it difficult to believe that a rental company would have no offices open past noon on a Saturday.” The best part is that this particular office is considered the “airport location”, since they’ll come pick you up at the airport. What happens if my flight comes in at 1:00 PM?
So C drove us back to the airport, where I discovered that renting a car in advance costs about a third what renting a car by walking up to the counter does. Ouch.
At any rate, we were on our way to… Calgary.
Next time: Our adventures in Calgary and the mountains!
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* This is pure speculation on my part.
** The Via train station for Brandon is, ironically, outside of Brandon. (And it’s not so much a “train station” as it is a “three-person shack, usually locked”).
Last week we were in the West. Alberta, to be precise. We boarded a train on Friday evening, and were in Edmonton Saturday morning. We rented a car, drove south to Calgary, and spent a few days visiting with my sister and her hubby. Tuesday we drove back up to Edmonton, hung out with Kathleen’s sister and her family, then got on the eastbound train on Saturday evening. By 9 AM Sunday we were home again.
That’s a capsule summary, of course. Over the next few days I’ll drill down in more detail, but for now I’m tired (I think I picked up a cold out West), and so here are some selected pictures from our trip (some of which will surely be repeated in the next few posts).
My sister and her hubby.
You can tell I’m a prairie boy; every time I’m near any mountains, I feel the need to record all of them. This is a set of six or so photos, stitched together with Autostitch.
Some of the plants in Edmonton’s Muttart Conservatory.
Kathleen’s sister and her hubby.
Not far from home, I found myself alone in the dome car with my camera and my little mini-tripod.
More to come!