TubaOrNotTuba

Trying to figure out what sets off odd behavior in the case of the rich and famous is tricky. Right now the world is watching from the sidelines as the US tries to choose their next president. One remark I have one candidate against the other set up a round of simulated play. Specifically the remark by one that in an earlier age there had been a job in a fast food restaurant. The competitor did not believe the story and decided to set up a simulation. A chance to make French fries in front of a select audience. In a restaurant. Seems simple until you learn that they had to close the restaurant remove all involved people track the automobile traffic outside and allow cinema. Specifically making fries. No cutting of potatoes was involved this was just throw some fries into the oil wait till the bell sounds and take them out. Hardly seems worth the trouble unless you are really hungry. But that’s what happened. A complete distraction. A pointless distraction. It did not prove one way or another that the claim voted job history was correct. It was just all for the cameras. Please let this election cycle end because it is devolving into silliness. Next thing we will have a putting contest at driving range. Just to prove something. And when everything is done life will go on and the employees make their daily terrible minimum salary will return to the fries. You can check the story out for yourself because the national media has covered it. Again not sure why. Unable to discover what makes this worth the time for the rest of us.

Something that I have not had to do for many years is provide references. Nor citations. Nor footnotes. No need to explain where I have read something before. I admit most people avoid that sort of situation if only because they do not realize how important it can be in the world of academics. I was watching a video earlier where they were talking about plagiarism. And the first goal of preventing such activity is to provide references for where you got the material. The kind of thing that keeps libraries alive. I was a person who read all the time and so anytime that I was required to finish that activity in writing in paper was always a head scratcher. Where have they come across that particular nugget. The gold that makes suck up academia. Not always easy. You learn to put down your references as you go because to do them after the fact is painful. And have parity you do not always realize that what you are presenting as a fact was given to you in proper form by an author. In school we are trained to do citations and then avoid the activity as much as possible until we are forced into a corner. Think about it. When was the last time you had to take a book off the shelf and write down all the information that would allow someone else to find the book for their research. We get away from that sort of thing as quickly as we can. The number of teachers who stand in front of a class and give out hours and hours of information with no requirement to tell the students where originally came from is mind blowing. We still require the discipline from those who rise up the chain but for the average educator is one of those skills that they also learned to ignore.

Most homes in this area have their own well. Actually I think all of them do. I went one step further and i have two wells. For a good reason. I will try to explain it simply. The temperature of the water in the ground is uniform. Year round. And my heating system requires a stable volume of water at the same temperature all the time. I have that. As well I need water that can be counted on from season to season and I have that too. Why are there two wells? Simple. I bring water to the surface from one well using a pump and then I shoot it back down to the same water table using another will. In between my system extracts a little bit of heat from the water. Not much. Just enough to make the whole system work. I do not know who dreamed up the system but I give them credit because after 10 years I am still satisfied. I take my hot water alone is not really hot and they warm it using a compressor and then I put it back into my floors for uniform home heating. You see all cozy and well thought out. I would love to have a better explanation but I don’t really need one because the proof is in the function. Year round I have a house that is at a comfortable temperature. No need to burn wood or oil period. A little bit of electricity and the game is played.

Time to put an end to this trip. We are home and the van has been unpacked. We have put all the food back in the fridge and we are now getting set to turn back into our usual home bodies. Arriving on our road was without climax. The only thing I noticed was at the store now, they had an access ramp that wasn’t there the last time I had looked. We are so fortunate to have all the comforts we have. Catching up on the news I realize that in many parts of the world, life is tough. Not just difficult. I cannot imagine what it must be like to wait for the next battle to begin in a war where you have no role to play. Not even as a spectator. You just hope that you will not suffer from collateral damage. Here we are able to travel openly and go to stores when we want and never face a military checkpoint. All things that are considered as a new normal for others. In fact the toughest thing in my day is deciding when to go back to bed. Pretty easy when measured against the life of others. I have been advised they should try to offer less detail on my life from 50 years ago I will try but my story is not just mine. There are other people involved and they may not want to be characters in a minor screenplay for a movie that will never be made. Just a thought. After all we are not always the masters of our own story. Despite what we learn in high school. I blame my English teachers for that part. For the stuff we take along a vacation. Place for everything if you will we now have places for everything when we return from the road trips.

With a minimum of effort supper was over. The kind of food that you eat when at a picnic. Or camping. We are on the last leg before home, stopped in a small campground on the bank of a river just upstream from provincial capital. I have been to this campground a number of times and on each occasion I have been satisfied. Completely. No hassles and no trees in the way. The highway ride was also without note. I did have a breakfast from Big Mac and I did watch the trucks go by. While listening to CBC radio. I tend to do CBC in binges. Each time I learn new things they would having to follow a storyline. I can only wonder what the life of a journalist is like. Did I learn anything in particular today? No but maybe tomorrow. On that last leg towards home. The weather has been excellent and we found gas stations when we needed them and at night we curl up and sleep lake logs. Or dogs. You take your pick. I considered taking the dog from last night along with us. The owner would probably notice the disappearance although it does seem like a new friend to me. One that comes over even when there isn’t food being offered. Almost a perfect dog one would say. I think my sneezing has stopped as my body grows accustomed so much fur. But we will put that behind us. There is winter yet. We should also go to a bookstore. Not for me but to pick up the most recent book by an author we have followed for years. Someone here will read through quickly with gusto. Is that a good word for literature?

Another day of affirmation. When I say that you should plan before you go, I am reassured that this is a worthwhile step. Under list today we had looking for a new sleeping bag and looking for a new phone. Neither necessary but fun to do when you have the chance. The sleeping bag searched did not go as well as we had hoped. Too many options and none of them absolutely correct for what we wanted. As for a telephone or a cell phone, you put yourself in the hands of sales people. People have only one goal and that is not your satisfaction. The larger the list of products they can sell you the happier they are at the end of the day. And so after three hours we had a new phone number on a new phone. The salesperson told us that what we had received from the other company was nothing more than a placebo. And actually, I agree. But we came away from the experience with more gear and less money which is the whole point of business. As for the sleeping bag we will continue looking for the perfect equipment. I learned that parking a truck in the dark is not nearly as much fun as it seems in the movies. A lot more stress then I would have believed even when I wasn’t the driver. But it all worked out thanks to some #1 who understands the mechanics of the whole thing. We went to bed and woke up the next day to frost on the windows. I said that we were getting late in the season. Title a new phone

The best days come with a plan. Or a list. Or both. We were ready. We needed to add a new extension cord. Easy to find in a local shop. And then, it was time to dump the tax. You know, the nasty tanks. We knew where to go for that as well. After all we had lived here for awhile. On the way it was decided to check the address on the net to add it to the GPS . The app indicated that the site had changed and that the new site was better and permanent. And here was the route. And so, off we went on a chase. After about 1/2 hour the route seemed to be familiar. Very familiar. We had if you will come full circle. Chased our tail. And the new site was not where the apps said that it would be. In fact the road has not even been built yet according to a local service station. And so we did the obvious thing we went back to where we were going originally. Happily the original site is now new and improved. First class. The best of the city this size can offer. Our tanks are emptied and we are ready to face another week of travel if necessary. But do not depend on your own knowledge when you get updated knowledge to have you go in circles. It’s a life game. And so another day has passed. I spent some time sitting in the middle of a shopping mall which is really not nearly as interesting as one might think. A lot of have conversations from people going by with their phones. I think that is why I prefer books!

With the family gathered together I think we had a family photo. At least I was asked to turn in the direction of an unseen camera and I assume that’s what was going on. We were in the restaurant and I’ve learned that no matter how careful you are in placing your order or how much you depend on the feedback of the server what appears on your plate is almost random. Tonight my salad became French fries and gravy. Still good just unexpected. I am very aware that the temperature is dropping because at different times during the day I found myself shivering. Almost as if we were at the port of no return for winter. I must find my boots and my mitts and my tuque. We are now considering our travel options. Judging the wind and the rain against where we will sleep next. Odds are good that we were will return to a campground we have visited several times before since they seem to be open until the end of the month. Not easy to find campgrounds this close to the close of a season. As near as I can tell the staff goes back to school and the campground gets ready to hibernate. This was the return of the dog parents from their South American trip and it was fun to know that we will have a chance to see them perhaps one more time before we return east. Little chance of anybody wanting to travel early in the winter particularly with the attended birth of two children. Not mine but you know what I mean. I also learned that a Jeep is much higher off the ground than I expected. I did not fall in or out but I was warned. Designed for climbing rock piles not sitting beside a sidewalk in the city.

We’re sitting in the apartment of son #1. In his absence. However there are two older dogs. Mature, or other certain age, as you wish. One of them loves to eat and so receives food from a ball that is hollow. One that must be rolled around so the food will fall out through the cracks. A symbol for life. And the effort involved is real Atlas up and down back and forth shake and wait. Anything that will cause the food to magically appear because I’m sure that for a dog that is what it seems like. Not part of the hunting mechanism that has been bred into a dog for centuries. Last night the temperature dropped below freezing for the first time. We are prepared. Good sleeping bags and an electric heater and a supply of propane for the furnace. But it still is a shock when we think that before much longer there will be snow. In fact that was our warning. Snow on the roads north of here. We’re still early but it bodes for a long season. Other than that we have learned to enjoy the comfort of a small space. No extra beds or chairs here. Enough for the passengers and no more. If someone wants to visit with us we will see them in a nearby restaurant. Or at their house if it’s so gives. With more than a week behind us on this trip I am starting to look forward to all the other comforts of home. Access to the refrigerator. Access to hot showers when I wish. Wi-Fi that is always there thanks to our Starlink dish. Perhaps, by next year, we will have invested further into the world of starlink. A smaller dish and a mobile plan but for now we have to take our Wi-Fi when we find it.

The wind has been blowing now for hours and I am really noticing that it does not sound the same way as it does at home. It makes sense. We are in a different region with different landscape and different tree cover. Right now I keep imagining myself on a sailing ship with high winds but that is not what it is actually like here. I am rather sheltered from the outside world. A lot of pine trees. Last night we had some rain and I was unable to tell how heavy it was falling. Even in the RV where we hear each raindrop the sensation is different than when I am at home in my favourite chair. I’m inside a home with good Wi-Fi so that I can get my daily exercises out of the way. I think we’re going up to the city later today to try some stealth camping on a city street. Something we have done before but each time we approach it as if it was the first. Better to be aware of what is going on around us. Who knows? We might actually get a place in a driveway off the street where people will not even pay attention to us other than the fact that we are a vehicle from another province. I put each of these moments into my memory. For going forward. Not going to write a book about travel on a day-to-day basis. This blog will have to suffice. I have not been paying attention to the news for several days but I’m going to assume that all is well in the outside world. We will finish out this trip and head back to home base to get ready for winter. Time to put the deck furniture under the deck as they say. And put away anything else that we do not want to sacrifice to the snow. Given the falling temperature we will also have to winterize this vehicle. Like any other year. Our life goes on.