I was writing in the lobby of our new temporary shelter (the Pointe Inn) this evening, but the vibes were not right. The only place to write was on a tabletop video game which had pixelated and pixilated ninjas beating people up, and the lighting was rather dim. I could have handled the violent virtual warriors dancing around behind my book, but my eyes were rather tired. Too much time looking at the world through glasses and too much wind blast around those facechangers.
That wind blast seeping into my helmet indirectly put me into somewhat of a pissy mood. We had been riding for many nonstop miles when my right eye started hurting big time and then became welded shut with tears rolling out. I first got irritated for no rational reason because I was trying to dodge one-eyed through traffic to catch up to Dad and tell him to pull over. The presence of traffic in this traffic-less country was an “it figures” situation.
After finally stopping Dad, my eye hurt even more when trying to re-open it. Then my mild form of a bad mood was cemented into place when an eighteen wheeler whizzed by our motorcycles on side stands, pushing a gust of wind our way that literally lifted my helmet into the air and bounced it down the highway. I sat brooding while my eye slowly recovered from the drying wind.
Canada again flaunted how big it was, but we got in our longest chunk yet. The aftermath: I was slightly lightheaded from vibrating bones, constricting helmet, and too much noise since I had not worn my ear plugs this day. The ride was still very loud even when I had the little yellow foam puff balls in place, but always a lot louder without them. At night in bed, Dad shut his eyes and – absolutely no exaggeration – he was lightly snoring in about twenty seconds. Quickest sleeper this side of Lake Superior. Instead of taking our usual 100 mile rest stops, we generally kept going this day until around 150 miles and then we would fill up the motorcycle tanks with machine food.
Since we were in eat-up-the-pavement mode, our speeds were up to about 80 miles per hour. Each day had been faster than the one before. The usual top speeds that we hovered around were 60 on Saturday, 65 on Sunday, 70 on Monday, 75 on Tuesday, and 80 this day. I sensed a pattern. We would be going over 200 mph by the end of the trip.
The morning began where we were before: Canadian farmland. The terrain was much drier than other areas from the past few days, but some recent rain livened it up. I was most impressed by the variety of birds. They were easy to spot since they were always out in the open on directly visible spots such as the ground, telephone wires, or sign posts. There was not much else for them to choose from when flying near a highway in the middle of farmed-over flatland. The birds ranged from a bright yellow chested black bodied bird to an eagle to little birds that flitted up and down like butterflies.
Farmland eventually changed to low rolling mounds (“hills” was too big a word) of healthy green pasture. Although the rises were very low, they formed a complete bowl-like horizon around myself when I rode through the troughs. I could not see beyond the rim because everything beyond was low as well. The highway was traced at a distance by who-knows-how-long barbed wire fence, telephone wires on poles, and train tracks that I saw put to use on many more occasions than I ever saw at home in the red white and blue. With the exception of several wild pronghorn antelope and motorists, the only other animals were cattle. They were in bunches or alone, all standing, walking, or lying down. I saw that all they really did was masticate, stare intently at some things as if they were important, look unfocused at other things lazily, and grow tender or manufacture milk. And they probably did not have the brains to know how boring their lives were.
I also noticed three things Canadians seemed to love:
1. Semicircular Quonset huts. They were most popular on farms, but were also used for storage, stores, and garages. Roof varieties ranged from shingles to corrugated steel.
2. Fancy intersections in the boondocks. Every so often I came upon an intersection that looked as though it was lifted out of Los Angeles, but the only thing around would be perhaps a mill (very popular also) or a smoke plume in the distance that was perhaps from some surface mining / digging equipment. The intersections were complete with bypass bridges and jug handle exit ramps, but there were never any cars bypassing or exiting, and the vacant intersecting roads just went off into the open distance. I supposed the Canadians subscribed to a “too much is better than too little” philosophy, or else there was some pork barrel government funding being spread around.
3. Waterslides. These things were all over. I even saw a billboard advertisement claiming that a motel had one. It must have been a national sport or something.
Alberta had a sign fetish, too. As soon as I crossed the line into the province, I was inundated with sign after sign after sign. All were pleasant and kept me awake (maybe their intention), but some were amazingly superfluous.
One of my favorite signs was actually before all of this in the pasture land of Manitoba. A large, official-brown sign announced the name of the area we were entering in big bold letters. Below that it stated “Entering Tourist Zone”. I looked in every direction to the horizon and could not even find a masticating cow, let alone a Tourist Zone.
Another favorite sign, which was used frequently in sign-happy Alberta, announced in yellow: “Important Intersection Ahead”. The Important Intersection usually involved a one-lane gravel road coming onto the highway, all the way from over the distant horizon, and with no vehicles anywhere to be seen. And that was it. Uh huh.
We were in Calgary this evening and saw the mountains below red backlit blue-gray clouds with yellow-orange wisps further out. I saw the mountains about fifty miles of traveling before Dad did, but I first mistook them as oddly shaped and colored clouds which fascinated me by how much they resembled mountains. Dad pointed themountains out when he noticed them, and I learned a lesson in perceived perception.