MANITOBA MEANDERINGS

OK so I am cheating, I used this same title for one of my blog entries in 2011.  But it was true then and it is true now, I meandered through Manitoba.  If you do not like this title, by all means just put on one of your own, like “homeless guy terrorizes prairie folks” or “gophers flee massacre in panic” or  “I can’t believe this guy does this stuff” or whatever.  You live your life and I’ll live mine, OK?

So several days ago (I have lost the bubble completely on what day exactly it may have been) I left the driveway at Chris and Jody’s place outside Fort Frances and headed west to visit dear friends Geoff and Andrea, who live “just south of Winnipeg.”  Never, EVER, trust a Prairie inhabitant to estimate times or distances.  I think it is because of the flat topography, where you can watch your dog running away for three days,  that folks living there are incapable of normal (ie Southern Ontario) estimations of time and distance.  I could tell somebody “It’s about a hundred kilometres or maybe an hour and a quarter” and my estimate will be pretty close to their experience, no matter how fast or slow they drive.  A flatlander will tell you something about it being just the other side of somewhere, and what they really mean it is about the other side of the freakin’ moon.  So REINFELD Manitoba is NOT just south of Winterpeg, it is about two hours south and almost to the US Border.  And as we all now know, I am NOT going to cross the US Border again any time soon.  (If you do not understand this comment, please read my last blog post.  Thank you.)

I phoned Geoff TWICE for directions and got pretty much the same vague instructions both times, for a town that is not even on the paper map that I own, compliments of CAA, whose maps of Canada could fit on a postage stamp.  And that is the deluxe large print version.  But in spite of his directions, and given that my GPS was not functional (did I already mention this?), I did in fact find myself in Reinfeld MB and stopped a fellow walking who actually knew where I might find Hazel Drive.  Soon thereafter I parked my rig at the home of Geoff and Andrea.

So I own a Magellan GPS which I bought from Canadian Tire a couple or three years ago, and one of the features that appealed to me was the LIFETIME FREE MAP UPDATES displayed in bold letters on the box, which I still own of course, since I never throw that kind of thing away as all of my friends (and my long-suffering wife) can attest.  So heck I was about to embark on a three-month cross-country odyssey and maybe, just maybe, some of the roads and such have changed since I bought the GPS. So, fool that I am, I decided to update my GPS with those free maps.

I am a man of mature years who KNOWS that Magellan exists to sell GPS units and other stuff to unsuspecting victims, and their business model surely does not include giving away stuff for free, no matter what those dough-heads in marketing put on the package.  And I KNOW that I should not be doing something with an item that actually WORKS, just before I take off for three months.  So I am not sure exactly what I may have smoked or otherwise ingested when I decided that it would be a Very Good Idea Indeed to update my GPS maps.  And when I tried to do this with my home computer and found out that the map update cannot be done on a computer with Windows 10, I should have clued in that this was A Very Bad Idea Indeed, in fact a Genuinely Bone-Headed Idea.  The capitals on those words are intentional.

So of course I just hauled out my laptop, which has Windows 7, in fact this same one on which I am whaling away wearing my typing fingers down to nubbins, and hooked up the GPS to do the alleged updates.  This did not work.  I re-started the laptop with the GPS attached.  No dice.  I re-started the GPS and waved a paper bag over my head, clucking like a chicken.  Nope.  I sat upside down, buck naked, and recited all the words to the Beatles song “Come Together” backwards, whilst keying the zero button on the laptop and holding down the search button of the GPS with another appendage, which finally worked.  I think this instruction was probably on the Chinese page of the manual, which I cannot read of course but I figured out this was the most likely course of action.  HOOOWAHHH!!!  But...............it turned out that the GPS could not possibly accept the new maps unless I downloaded the software update.  It took a while, but re-starting all of the bits and pieces while chanting Hare Krishna eventually caused the software download to complete.

So it’s time to load the new maps, right?  (You fool, you!)  Re-start the everything, hop on one foot while projectile vomiting lime koolaid into an Egyptian amphora from the time of King Tutankomenh, and make sure you hit the zero key with not less than one quarter joule of energy, and yes indeed it will work.  My koolaid was cherry and the amphora was newer, so that did not work and by golly there was now NO ROOM ON MY GPS for the new maps.  It would turn on, pretend to be a functional GPS, but in fact would provide no useful information at all.  In fact it thinks it might run for an elected office with the government of Justin Trudeau.  But I digress.............

So my GPS was non-functional, and could not assist me to find Geoff and Andrea, even as I pulled in to Reinfeld, says the author in a very fine segue even if I do say so myself.  And Andrea is an IT Guru and (God bless her!)  she was able to make my GPS unit work again, by ignoring every single direction that the Magellan people said to do to make it work.  HAH!!!!!!!  Andrea 1, Magellan no score.

So we exchanged greetings, after what turned out to be five years since we last saw each other (it did not seem that long to me), I inhaled a frosty beverage, and we set out to make mayhem on a field full of gophers some thirty minutes distant.  Enroute, Geoff and Andrea showed me where a tornado and hail storm a couple days previous had created utter devastation on the surrounding countryside, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, what a mess!  We reached the alfalfa field, owned by a work buddy of Geoff’s, which the buddy had baled off just a few days ago and who had seen zillions of gophers while he was cutting and baling the hay.  The three of us loaded our trusty .22s and set off with murder in our hearts.

There were untold numbers of gopher mounds in this field.  Virtually every one had been battered by rain and no holes were visible, in other words the gophers were safely underground in their burrows because of the nasty weather that had been happening topside.  By the time dark fell, all of us had shot at a few gophers, but there was no great slay and my blood lust was not at all sated.  I am thinking a 2017 Great Gopher Safari may be in my future......................and Andrea, where is that gory picture of your head-shot gopher, that should be posted here for all to see?

We headed back to Reinfeld for a feast and a good night’s sleep, then another feast for brunch on Monday, then it was time to head out again.  I told Geoff and Andrea a true story that brought tears to their eyes, and, with a working GPS, headed to an address in Winnipeg.  I realized fairly shortly that I had left one of my “canning” jars behind and later, speaking with Geoff, was advised that I had also left behind the top to my one cooking pot.  Reminder to self:  do a sweep of host homes before departure...........but neither item was worth turning back to retrieve them. 

It is now Friday night, I am in Calgary playing catch-up at the home of my sister-in-law Gabrielle and her husband Clarence.  Gabi and Clar are out camping in the mountains right now, but left me a key to the house, which I am pleased to report has hot showers, a fridge full of goodies, and other amenities including wireless Internet.  I did not have the presence of mind to ask them for the wifi password, however, and so will post this sometime when I can access the net again.

Doug