DOUBLE TAPS, BACK-TO-BACK

I had departed Grandview at 8:00 am, which was 7:00 in Saskatchewan, the latter province not being convinced of the use for daylight savings time.  I can see their point:  twice a year I am an hour early or an hour late for the day after the clock changes.  And the roads to Saskatoon were pretty good, with not much traffic.  Nonetheless, that six hours became about nine in the saddle, albeit with a few good stops enroute.  Ray and Judy live on an acreage that is part of the city of Saskatoon, but it is actually well out into the country, down a series of range (aka grid) roads.  As was the case in 2011, I am pulling monsoon type downpours along with me on this trip.  Kingston, my home town, could USE some rain, there being a severe drought there, but the rain is instead falling in great volume along my route.  So it had been in Saskatoon, and the grid roads were basically gumbo and washboard.  It took me three quarters of an hour to travel the last 15 km or so to Ray and Judy’s ranch, and as I told them upon my arrival, THEY WIN.  Their route 374 was the WORST road I have ever travelled in the truck with camper aboard.  I got up to 30 kph a couple times, but it was mostly 15 or so kph on the odometer, and sometimes slowed to a crawl.  And when I got to their place, I noted that there were obstacles to bar my driving onto the lower part of their stone driveway, given that my rig might thereupon disappear in the gumbo, waiting for winter so I could get it chipped out.  I was VERY happy to see them, not only because they are such good friends and for so many years, but also happy indeed was I to get out of the truck.

I had not intended to stay two nights at Saskatoon, but it did not require much arm-twisting to make this my course of action.  Or actually my course of inaction.  I enjoyed a couple blissful days filled with nothing much, with great meals, wonderful company, and RELIABLE INTERNET!!!  I caught up on my e-mail, scribbled the blog entry about my detour adventures, and generally relaxed.  On Thursday Judy was catching up with some Facebook friends, and somebody had sent a “Happy Anniversary” posting.  But it was NOT their anniversary, how very odd indeed.  Then Ray came in and said words to the effect of give me a hug, this is our anniversary.  OK........... Now I am confused, Judy says it is NOT their anniversary, and Ray says that it is.  

Well, it turns out that it was OUR (as in Ray and me) anniversary of arrival at Royal Roads 43 years ago.  How appropriate indeed that I should be there with one of my “rook” buddies!  To celebrate, we went out to lunch at a pub in downtown Saskatoon where Ray sometimes is the featured entertainment, and which was allegedly named one of the top pubs to eat at in Canada.  After announcing that factoid, Ray said he wondered how such awards are granted, and I suggested it probably depended on how much kick-back the pubs in question paid to the assessing agency.  Upon examining the menu, the one item that appealed to me greatly was the wings – I eat wings about once a year or so, and I had a powerful hankering to eat some in this apparently famous center of pub cuisine.  “Ah, sir,” says the waitress, ”you can only order wings after 2 pm.”  Nothing else on the menu was calling my name so eventually I settled on a dish of poutine, that also being something I eat once a year or less.

I suspect that my guess as to how this pub acquired its rating, ie via kick-backs, may have been relatively accurate..........

..................and since I rarely drink beer any more, Ray was wondering who took the Doug he knew and replaced him with this hairy stranger, who toasted the 43^rd anniversary with a glass of cold water..........

Back at the ranch later that evening, we had a feast of fresh BBQ burgers and corn on the cob, now THAT was an anniversary meal worth the name!  I asked Ray about the best way to get to Calgary and out came the map and directions.  Key amongst them was to stay the hell away from Drummer.  It is called DrumHELLer if you don’t stay the hell out of it, you see.  (If at this point you are not following me I apologize for shooting over your head.)

The roads had been graded and there had been enough traffic that the grid road down to the pavement was not bad at all, and then I headed the rig west again, destination Calgary.  I followed Ray’s route, which greatly perturbed Bitching Betty (PERFORM A U-TURN WHEN POSSIBLE!!!) but she came into her own once I entered the Calgary city limits.  Betty brought me right to the front door of Gabi and Clarence, my aforementioned SIL and BIL.  As I reported previously the house is a nice oasis and I decided to stay two nights instead of shoving off again this morning.  On another positive side, this second double-tap SHOULD see me greeting Gabi and Clar sometime this evening – they having said they would return home “later on the 13^th.”  And when they get here, I should be able to extract the wifi password from them and maybe post one or two (or three) of these entries which are now stored in my laptop waiting to pounce on all of the unsuspecting readers of this blog.  YES, BOTH of you!!!

Tomorrow, lots of mountain driving, I am hoping for clear weather and especially no snow, hail, sleet, etc.  Not that I expect it, I just hope it doesn’t happen.  I am not sure when or where I might pen the next edition of this epistle, so TTFN.

Doug