Was that . . . Humor?

*** continued from previous post ***

While the rest of his family busied themselves making box lunches for the troupe, Mark leaned back in his chair sipping coffee. "So," he looked at my cane propped against the table by my chair, "I don't suppose you hike a lot."

"Naw," I said, "not too much anymore. How about you guys? What's on your agenda for the day?"
"Probably a hike up to Bowman Lake. The kids have never been up there and it's a pretty easy hike from here." He turned in his chair and looked out the window over the mist-laden meadow. "Of course, if it doesn't quit raining I'll have to listen to whining all the way up and back."
I smiled and shook my head. "I know what you mean. Our kids got to a point where they whined anytime we took them anywhere."

"Oh," Mark said, "I wasn't talking about the kids. Carl is a major wuss."

Whoa Nelly! Was this humor? I had to tread carefully here. As you know, I have a tendency to laugh first and ask questions later. Well, more like laugh first and apologize later.
Mark broke into a wide grin. It was a nice change of pace from the scowling. Carl overheard his brother, and shouted "Hey! Who was it that wanted to call it quits on day 3 of our week-long backpacking trip? Huh? Who was that eh? Wasn't me now was it?"

Carl waved his hand at his brother as if he were swatting at a gnat. He turned to your Mother and me, "I had been wet, cold, and hungry for three days. There comes a point where it's just best to pack it in. That's not being a wuss. That's using common sense eh?"

Mark went back to making his sandwich. "Gorby."

What was this word? It sounded like an insult, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how calling your brother a nickname for Michael Gorbachev was insulting. Unless Carl at some point had presided over the fall of the Eastern Bloc. It was possible I suppose. He had that Ruskie-scowl about him. Sort of a grimace tinged with Vodka.

Wait . . . I just looked up 'Gorby' on the interwebs. It is a term for a tourist in Banf. Very derogatory. I'll file that one away for future use.


*** the journey continues ***

Canada's Monopsonistic Health-care System and Meat!

*** continued from previous post ***

The staff arrived with the main part of the meal, carefully placing the plates of piping hot food in front of us and clearing the remains of the oatmeal at the same time. We listened to Leeza describe each item in excruciating detail. Here is the short version - biscuits, scrambled eggs, country potatoes (four different varieties of potatoes, green and red peppers, onions), eleventy-million types of humane and eco-friendly jams and preserves, and sausage. Beautiful sausage. Lovely sausage. ‘Take me home and love me' sausage. No bacon, which was a disappointment, but it would have probably been that fake Canadian Bacon, which, as any connoisseur of the flesh will tell you, is just frackin' ham. Sausage would do fine. I know everyone likes meat, but for me it goes a little deeper than that. I also knew that your mom was probably full from the oatmeal, so the sausages on her plate were as good as mine. Ha! This day was looking up already. My arteries would be clogged faster than you could say 'Canada's monopsonistic health-care system'.

Somewhere around my second helping of 'Dew-kissed Wild Heritage Raspberry and Hydroponically Grown Dwarf Orange Preserves' Leeza made an announcement to the room.

"Okay folks, we've put all the makings of a wonderful box-lunch on the sideboard in the library. Help yourself when you're ready and if there is anything we can do for you don't hesitate to ask."

I couldn't help but notice that the clutch of Albertans at our table were light eaters. Which is to say, they hadn't finished their sausage. I was rustling up a diversion whereby I could snag those tasty links from the plates nearest me when your mom, ever vigilant when I'm around breakfast meats, leaned over and placed her hand on top of mine.

"Don't even think about it."

Gah. Busted. I think Carl may have noticed me ogling his sausage. Now that I put that to paper that sentence sounds so very, very wrong but you know what I mean. I didn't care about the chain of ownership. Meat is meat.


>*** the journey continues ***

I'm back! And probably less cancery!

Well, it's been a few days since my seed implants.

Ouch.

I'm doing well, but I'm ready to be back.

So tomorrow you will be back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Until then buy a book or 1000. I need to pay for seed implant therapy. :)

Another Short Hiatus - Damn Cancer!

Okay kids, tomorrow I go in for my brachytherapy so we can put this prostate cancer on the run, and get it behind me. (No pun intended. Well, maybe a little pun.)

Which sounds like all kinds-a fun.

But on the plus side - radiation!

I'm stoked. I'm hoping for some bitchin' superpowers. Flight would be cool. Or, just the ability to control all matter at the quantum level.

I'm not picky.

So, I'll be back in a few days.

Until then, you'll just have to buy the book. Or the Kindle edition. Or the Nook edition.

I'm not picky about that either.

We'll Put Ya Down With A Great Long Needle!

*** continued from previous post ***


"Any who," Carl said, not 'how' but 'who', "yeah. That biker got messed up pretty good. And they had to wind up putting her down. Real shame."

Again, what the hell? They shoot the wounded up here? That seemed a tad harsh. Even for people on a motorcycle. What if I got a splinter or something?

"Yeah. Shame." Mark added, "I hope she didn't have cubs."

Oh good. They put the bear down, not the biker. I filed away several taunts and insults that sprang to my tongue for future reference. Not that the death of a bear is a good thing by any means. You know I love all wildlife. Well, as long as said wildlife isn't chewing on my head. Even then, it has to be chewing pretty hard. Remember how our big ol’ Newfoundland Barkley chewed on my head all the time? But it was a chew full of love. And slobber. And a really atrocious odor. But mostly love. Mostly.

The table, minus your mother and I, went on to discuss every motorcycle accident they had ever seen, heard, read about, dreamt, or fantasized. I shall spare you the details, but most of it ended with decapitation. Even if the biker simply fell over in the parking lot while sitting still. Evidently, and this was a good thing to know, in Canada a rider could trip on their own shoelace and their head would spontaneously eject from their body like cork from a bottle of dropped Champagne.

I blame it on the metric system and their architecture. It's just not natural. You don't dally about with the laws of time and space like that without serious, serious consequences.

*** the journey continues ***

Just Feed Me To The Bears - I'm Old Anyway

*** continued from previous post ***

All eyes of the family turned to me. I had their undivided attention. Had I known all it would take to win them to our side was the mention of wildlife it would have made the last 20 minutes much, much simpler. As a typical child of the 1970's, I'd watched many hours of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom". If I had known this simple fact I would have lied through my teeth and reveled them with stories of my wilderness adventures based on my memory of the TV shows. True, my recollection was a bit spotty, a tad fuzzy, but I'm sure I could manage. I watched that damn show every Sunday night for years. Why? Because it was something that you had to endure to get to the "Wonderful World of Disney". Which was as close as we got in those days to kiddie-crack. Wild Kingdom was like penance.

Anyway, if pressed I would have regaled them with the tale of hunting the Great White Whale on the open seas, and how I had lost my leg to the demon-beast of the depths.

On second thought, that may have not been "Wild Kingdom". I think that was one of the Brady Bunch vacations. I'm old. I get confused sometimes. Deal with it.

Mark was the first to speak, "Saw a bear in the valley as you came up, did ya?"

His tone was a bit softer, a tad less confrontational. It was obvious that he had seen well over 2 million grizzlies in his life, and had hand-fed most of them so our encounter was - for lack of a better word - 'cute'.

"Yep," I said. "It was quite a trip. Especially the bears. Well and the moose. But the bear was a heck of a lot closer than the moose."

Carl, ever the life of the party, said "You know a bike hit a grizzly last week down on Highway 40. That was a mess."

Oh joy. We were now at the 'maiming and death on a motorcycle' part of the conversation. I decided to play it cool. Besides, there was that 'Highway 40' thingee again.

"Highway 40 ,” I said, “that's quite a ride up from Carnack. I don't know if I'd call it a 'highway' though."

Carl looked at me quizzically. "Carnack? No, that's on the other side."

What the hell?

"The other side?"

"Well yeah," he said, "it comes up from the south. Still gravel though."

I'd have to take a look at that. I wondered if this mythical road was an option for our departure. If it was less than the sheer cliff back to Carnack I wouldn't hesitate - grizzlies or not. I was dreading that steep, slippery, twisty trip back to civilization already. I'd half decided that it might be better just to feed ourselves to the bears and be done with it.
Or at least feed myself to a bear if it turned out there really was a different, and probably easier way up here. Just to escape the wrath of your mother.


*** the journey continues ***

It's Big. Wicked Big.

*** continued from previous post ***


Hmmm . . . was this a positive or a negative remark? He was smiling, kind of, so I decided to take it as a positive.

"Umm . . . thanks!" I said.

"Oh yeah, no problem. Dat things a wicked honker. I can't believe you rode it up here last night in that storm."

I smiled. "It was a challenge to say the least."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mark and Carl exchange a look and a smirk. That was it. As soon as I got my bacon - for this was Canada, how could we NOT have bacon? Plus, I was jonesin' for some meat – anyway, as soon as I got my bacon, it was a fork into the eyeballs for the lot of them. See how well you can hike all blind and weepy you snotty Albertistanies!

"Not fond of a gravel road, eh?" Carl asked with the corners of his mouth upturned so slightly that it would have made me less angry had he just made a silly face and spit at me.

Donny jumped to our defense. "Well you should see this thing. I don't know whether it's a bike or a spaceship." He shook his head and chuckled. "It's big. I mean really big. Wicked big, ya know? And to think it was almost dark," he shook his head again, "then the bear and the moose? Boy, I don't know if I'd have the guts to do that."

"Well Donny," I said, leaning back in my chair, "sometimes through sheer stupidity you get yourself in so deep, you have no choice but to push through to the other side."

"Boy, ain't that the truth." He clapped me lightly on the shoulder, and with a wave of his hand, and a "Enjoy your breakfast," walked back into the main part of the lodge presumably to continue his business.

*** the journey continues ***

Stigmata: Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

*** continued from previous post ***

I silently begged Leeza not to leave us. I felt our tenuous hold on civility could cross over to unpleasantness at any moment. Much like every family reunion we've ever attended. Except for that one in the park where your Uncle Jahn baked all those plates of brownies and we spent the day laughing and laughing and laughing and then 27 of us hid under the picnic table for an hour because we thought the people at the next shelter were FBI agents.

That reminds me, I need to write Uncle Jahn and get that brownie recipe.

Luckily, the oatmeal was so indescribably delicious that no one spoke for quite some time. I know! Oatmeal! Come to think, it might have used some of the same ingredients as the brownies. The fruit was ripe and firm and . . . umm . . . sweet. What else can you say about fruit?

With food in our stomachs the mood around the table lightened a bit. The family began to talk quietly amongst themselves, and your mom and I held hands under the table offering each other support. True, your mom held a little too tightly, and I had to pry her fingernails from the palm of my hand with a spoon, but it really wasn't so bad. Hardly any blood at all. If anyone were to notice my wounds I would swoon in a religious fervor claiming stigmata.

As we finished the last bites of our cereal, Donny came bounding out of the kitchen and made a beeline for our table. "Boy, I gotta tell ya, that is some bike you got there."


*** the journey continues ***

WTF????

*** after a sight delay I'm back to posting the serialized version of the book ***

However, I was beginning to get annoyed - I mean WTF? You would be proud to know that I pushed on, for I was still in the 'Hey I'm all friendly-like' mode.

"There certainly are quite a few of us in the Puget Sound region these days. The area has grown quite significantly over the last decade or so. Big influx from California a few years back. Shoot, even out little burg has grown so much that I hardly recognize it."

I look to your mom for some kind of confirmation, but she is staring at the napkin in her lap.
Leeza was once again our savior. I should just have started calling her 'Jesus Leeza', but you know how picky some people get about things like that. Panties all in a wad and the next thing you know you're standing on a pile of brush, tied to a post, flames licking your ankles. Let me tell you, that can ruin a Monday fast. Anyway, Leeza pushed a cart to our table brimming with steaming bowls of oatmeal and pitchers of milk. Each of the other tables had a similar cart, with a similar attendant.

"Okay folks, here's round one. We'll let you work on that for a bit before we start on the main course."

She worked her way around the table, passing out bowls. She also set out three large dishes of mixed fruit. The smell of strawberries rushed around the room, giving off a lovely delicate perfume that screamed of spring and hope and happier times.

"Can I get you anything else while I'm here?"

Everyone glanced at each other and shook their heads in the negative.

Isn't that odd the way people will do that? What are we looking for - confirmation? As if we might be forgetting something and are waiting for a member of the group to remind us? Like the whole situation could change if only one of us spoke up? "Okay, her iz zee deal. We meet zee English dogs at zee Waterloo. Everyone agree? Anybody not zink dis iz zee good idea? No? H'okay zen. . . Wait. Did someone in za back zay zomething? No? Oh, screaming from zee battle wound. My mistake. H'okay. I thought maybee you had zumzing to say. Nuting? H'okay. Zen peek up your rifles and off we go to zee victory!"

Leeza waited for someone to say something, and when they didn't she said, "Good! I'll bring some carafes of coffee next trip. Until then . . . enjoy!"

*** the journey continues ***