Montana or (almost) Bust

IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA TO SET OUT ON A LONG JOURNEY THROUGH THE INCREDIBLE AMERICAN WEST WITH A SUSPECT VEHICLE.

However, I am happy to report that I and my 1996 Ford Contour, made in Kansas, did survive my 2,000-kilometre trip through western North Dakota and eastern Montana.


But not without some difficulty.


After a particularly testy encounter with a U.S. Customs weenie at the Canadian/American border at Emerson, Manitoba, I got into the Over-Excited States.


Apparently all of my anti-George Bush posts were not detected by the CIA or whatever "war on terror" government agency has taken over for it.


And if I hadn't made it clear before, it really is America The Beautiful. And its people are just that and so is the country they live in.


I always thought North Dakota was a flat wasteland that no one cared about, just a home for missile silos. But western North Dakota is an incredible sight.


And while I was preoccupied taking pictures of the hoodoos and hilly terrain that pop up right after you get past Bismarck, my car decided it wasn't all that happy with the heat.


My "check radiator" light came on. I pulled off on an exit ramp called "Enchanted Highway," complete with a structure that showed a whole bunch of Canada Geese.


Here are some pix from that particular moment of stranding, when I had no idea whether my car was going to survive or not...


This was actually one of my most memorable parts of the trip, when I gained yet more confidence and trust in the human race -- and certainly in Americans.

Two North Dakotans, one Oregonian and one Manitoban stopped to ask if I was OK. I assured them I thought I was, that I just had a radiator leak and needed to top up my engine coolant.

But I thanked them.

For the duration of my trip, I had to do this about six times, leading me to draw the conclusion I have a leak somewhere (NO JOKES ABOUT THAT)!

Nonetheless, I continued westward. And this is what I saw.

Many of you may be yawning at such pictures and wonder, why is he showing us this? Well, it's because Manitoba is flat. In fact, we are affectionately referred to as "Flatlanders," among other things.

These hills and hoodoos were amazingly beautiful to me. Their colour, their 3-D appearance, the way they sprout out of nothing...it's novel to a Manitoban. And very cool.

Part of the reason for my journey was to accept a nomination into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, from my many years of riding bronco-busting horses in the American Midwest.

(Just kidding).

The sign above DOES say Home on the Range. I imagined it as THE place the cartoons always spoke about in the song: Home, Home on the Range, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play...

I had to take the pix from my car at 75 mph. Indulge me.

And yes, this sign does say "Bad Route Road." Oh, goodie! For sure I want to take that exit! Doh!

By now I was in Montana, an absolutely gorgeous state. I was able to meet with a good friend and spend some time. But the time had also arrived for me to return to Canada.

I decided, to try to preserve my fragile car in the 100 F heat, I would turn north towards Saskatchewan to avoid the up and down hills of Montana and North Dakota on the way back.

It was beautiful country.

This is a place called Froid, in northern Montana. Or was it Saskatchewan? In any event, I wondered what if Sigmund Freud had been born here as Simon Froid, and how that might have changed the world...

Once I got back into Canada, I came down to Earth, so to speak: terrible (comparatively to the U.S.) highways. I decided not to travel all the way up to Regina to the TransCanada.

On my adventurous, but stupidly circuitous route, I encountered the sign above. And my question is, BROKEN PAVEMENT? What pavement?

But I loved taking the less-travelled route back to Winnipeg.

I could see this huge storm in front of me, and even though I was still 500 kms or so from home, I wondered if that system was directly over Winnipeg. It taught me a lesson about perception and distance.

Within a few short minutes, I was right underneath it and into it. The rain lasted about 10 minutes. Ha! Just like life! You think something you're heading into is going to last a long time.

It lasts seconds, then it's gone.

Yes, the sign above in Saskatchewan really does point to a town called Forget.

I loved the yellow crops (mustard seed?) against the purple sky here...

My favourite pic (above) of the trip, the colours...

Ever feel like the rain's falling just on YOU?

But that everything's going to turn out all right in the end?

Eight Things about Me Tag

GAUTAMI TRIPATHY, THE ILLUSTRIOUS POET/WRITER/TEACHER FROM DELHI, INDIA, HAS TAGGED ME.

I'm supposed to list eight things about myself...one of them, actually (this doesn't count!), is that I've been tagged several times before and possibly will be repeating myself.

I apologize in advance if I do. I'll try not to...

1. I've been to more than 20 countries in my life that I can recall at the moment (they're outlined in red in the map below thanks to this cool site I found):

They are:

The U.S., Brazil, Argentina, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Spain and Romania.

2. My uncle, Len Cariou, is a Winnipeg-born actor and singer who won a Tony Award in 1979 for his Broadway role in Sweeney Todd opposite Angela Lansbury, who played the lead role in the TV series Murder She Wrote.

He also earned Tony nominations for roles opposite Lauren Bacall (Applause) and Liz Taylor (A Little Night Music). He also had a relationship with Glenn Close, who got her big start with Robin Williams in The World According to Garp in 1982.

I spent the day with the two of them in New York City just before the release of that movie.

He's had other roles in movies like About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson, The Four Seasons with Alan Alda and A Little Night Music with Liz Taylor. His TV roles include The West Wing, Law & Order, Star Trek and Murder, She Wrote, among others.

3. I covered the game Oct. 15, 1989, in which Wayne Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's all-time National Hockey League scoring record.

I picked him as the first star of the game so my name, I believe, is on the official scoresheet, although I can't get a copy of it.

4. In my younger, dumber years, I passed out twice that I recall from consumption of alcohol or drugs: once in India in a field in Bangalore in the middle of the night and once on the middle of the highway in Leaf Rapids in northern Manitoba. Duh.

5. My thinning hair on my head is still brown, but when I grow a beard, it's grey. I've had the hair on my head my entire life and couldn't grow a beard until I was in my late teens. What sense does that make?

Me in 1992, full head of hair, no beard

Me in 2003 or so, receding brown hairline and grey beard

6. I've learned more about women in the past 6-7 years since my divorce than I did in the entire 18 or whatever years of my marriage and all during my teens and early 20s before that. Go figure.

7. I've visited every Canadian province except Prince Edward Island off our East Coast. My favourite is Newfoundland, where I hauled in cod bare-handed with an oldtimer fisherman named Paddy O'Dea and cooked and ate it on board his dory.

8. The most important role model in my life is and always will be my mom, followed in no particular order by her mom, my dad, a now ex-priest named Max and, in more of a lifelong friend/Jiminy Cricket sort of way, my buddy Homo Escapeons.

North American Road Kill

IT'S SUMMER VACATION ALL ACROSS NORTH AMERICA.

That means millions of people are hopping into their cars, trucks, monster motor homes or what have you and heading out on the highway.

And THAT means millions of animals are getting mowed over and killed on those same highways.

There's road rage, when people have been known to kill people. This is road kill of a different sort and it happens on a far more frequent basis.

Having just returned from a 2,000-km trip that took me through North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, I've never seen it so bad.

It was mostly deer -- fawns, usually -- left splattered on the road. Or racoons or skunks or rabbits.



There were a few coyotes, from what I could make of the carcasses as I sped past them at 120 kph (75 mph), and countless smaller creatures.


I know for a fact I creamed a garter snake and several of those quizzical little suicidal ground squirrels, the long thin ones.

They're very fast, those squirrels. They could easily make it across but they stop, right in the middle of the road, to see if it's still safe.

It's a fatal mistake, usually. By the time they start running again, they get smacked.

In my case, I saw one do just that. He ran under my car to his apparent death but I looked through my rear view mirror and saw that my tires missed him.

He survived and ran back to the side from which he came.

I had a lot of time and distance to see this carnage and to contemplate different aspects of it, from the obvious to the mundane.

What if the roles were reversed and animals were invading our cities and towns and killing us as we crossed their paths?

We'd call out the authorities and shoot them all.

In fact, that's exactly what happens now with "problem" alligators in Florida, cougars in the Rockies, wolves on sheep farmers' ranches.

But there's no similar protection for animals in their habitats when they try to cross our superhighways through their natural environment.

Usually signs are posted to indicate deer or mountain sheep are nearby, but that's not going to stop the animals from crossing.

So they get smucked. And they end up on the side of the road, sometimes for quite a long time, attracting crows and other scavengers.

Until the road crews come along to shovel them off the pavement.

Another common group of roadkill victims are birds. They're attracted to the pavement and to gravel shoulders, I assume, for reasons of survival.

It's on those flat, open surfaces they can more easily find the insects they feed on or to scavenge other animals killed by vehicles.

But they pay a price -- their own safety. Every time a car whizzes by, they fly away, only to turn right back again for more easy food on the road or shoulder.

Smack! They gets it.

Now to REALLY take this mind-numbing diatribe to its farthest extreme, what about all the insects we kill as we zoom down the expressway to our destination?

I'm guessing that my car alone, in about 22 hours or so, killed thousands of insects.

Multiply that by how many vehicles were travelling the roads in that time across the continent. Your windshield is a weapon, I tell ya.

Gawd Bless America

I don't mean to be disrespectful to America by using Gawd instead of God. It's just that I don't believe in God the way I used to, and I think the U.S. is far too governed by the religious Far Right.

But I DO want America to be recognized on its Independence Day for what it is, or what I perceive it to be.

I believe it is a collection of individuals who together are beautiful and intelligent and feeling, far beyond what its government indicates at any given time.

And it's those individuals -- many of whom I have met blogging -- and the great masses of its populace that I want to salute.

And I want to say you really ARE among the most advanced, feeling, strong people on the planet.

We couldn't do this without you.

Thank you for being there and, specifically, for being Canada's neighbor. We may whine and complain about you being a monumental pain in the ass sometimes, but we love you.

Just try not to step us on too much. And happy birthday.