2019 Trip to North America

My son Tony & I were in North America for the last three weeks of August. (My wife Jenny didn't come which was first a blessing, but then there were repercussions as soon as we returned.) If I could use only one word to describe the trip, I would say it was overwhelming; if could I could use only one word to describe how it wasn't, I would say it wasn't relaxing.

What follows is a random collection of incident reports and observations from our grand trip:

• My one stated goal of the trip was for my son Tony to get away from the screens of computers, phones and televisions, and do some outdoorsy activities. Alas, I didn't come close to accomplishing this goal. Tony was content to spend his time playing games on my brother Ron's PS4 or my Iphone, or watching YouTube on my laptop or on my Ipad. On a two day trip to a campground, Tony quickly retreated from the warmth of a campfire to the comfort of my friend's camper van where he could watch sports news on a big screen television and play games on my Iphone.

• Tony has taken a big interest in sports and so it was my pleasure to take him to some live sporting events. First we went to a Canadian Football League between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the British Columbia Lions. Tony, who is normally a quiet sort, joined in with the cheering and hollering of the crowd. We then went to Minneapolis for a National Football League exhibition game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Seattle Seahawks, and then the next night, a Major League Baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox. Tony and I were most certainly impressed by the stadiums of the Vikings and Twins. The Viking stadium was awe-inspiring, I thought. Not only was it huge, it was attractive to behold. The Twins stadium was nice too but lacked the hugeness of the Vikings facility. In the Vikings stadium, Tony told me he was scared by how high up our seats were. At the Twins game, Tony, not being familiar with baseball, expressed boredom at the pace of the game. I got bored myself, but found the game memorable for two situations: first, the White Sox perfectly executed a suicide squeeze which scored the eventual game winning run in a game that ended with a 6-4 score; second, the game ending with a Twins slugger being struck out with two men on base.

• We spent most of our time on this trip in Brandon, Manitoba so Tony & I could be with my mother. Every day we were in Brandon, I made a point of visiting my father's gravestone which is in the local cemetery there. Tony came with me on most of these occasions and was appreciative of the solemnity of what we were doing. He was also interested in looking at the other gravestones. On one evening visit, he walked far from my Dad's gravestone and endlessly inspected as many other gravestones as he could in the cemetery. The dates seemed to be what fascinated him most.

• My mother is 81 and living in a big house all by herself. When asked by others how she was doing, I said she was alive and still kicking. She took her time to answer my questions and make decisions, and she did seem to worry a lot which, I am ashamed to say, tested my patience. All of my siblings are lucky that she has a neighbor, on one side, who looks after her. Bruce is his name and he's a good Catholic. Her neighbors on the other side however have been an annoyance. The house on the other side is a rental. Two years ago, the renters were Latin Americans who did not how to maintain their yard and were excessively loud at odd times. The current renters give off the impression of being up to no good.

• Driving to Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba where we would have a camping trip, of sorts, was a bit of an adventure. I drove to my friend Eddy's camping site on a Friday night. I had originally planned to go there a Saturday morning but the weather forecast said that would be rain on Sunday. With the window of opportunity being what it was, I made a quick decision to go on Friday. Lac du Bonnet is 75 minutes northeast of Winnipeg. I was in Brandon, which is two hours west of Winnipeg, when I made the decision to go and so I had a three hour drive to do. By the time I was near Lac Du Bonnet, it was dark. Ed provided me with instructions to get there since it would have been long distance to have used the GPS on my phone. The instructions worked to a tee till I got near to the destination. I had successfully crossed a one lane bridge that was controlled by traffic signals. Eddy's instructions said to then look for a Wendigo Road. When I crossed the bridge, I saw a big sign for another road and figured it would be a cinch to find this Wendigo road. But the road signs then became small, that is the size of street signs you would see in a city. These signs aren't so easy to read in the dark of night when you passing them by at 100 km/h. (That was the speed limit on the road I was driving and there were cars behind me.) After five minutes of driving looking for the road, and re-looking at Eddy's instructions, I saw that I had overlooked a detail about the road being two km past the bridge and so it dawned on me that I had passed it. I turned around and found the road, even almost driving past it when I did spot its sign. I found Eddy's campsite and was told that I had performed a great feat in being able to get to it at night.

• I also almost hit deer twice as I was driving to Eddy's. The first one was on the middle of the road and I am damned to know how it was that I didn't hit it.

• The area around Eddy's campsite, which included the towns of Pinawa and Lac Du Bonnet, was full of deer. I saw deer in fields and on a golf course. I can talk of a third close encounter I had with a deer occurring after visiting my cousin Jon in Pinawa which is basically a suburb surrounded by bush. What happened was that I found myself driving down a street beside a deer that was running on front lawns. The deer was so close that I momentarily felt like I was beside a galloping horse. The animal's bulk seem to almost be touching me. The deer then stopped to graze on someone's front lawn.

• Everyone who expressed an opinion in Canada, told me they hated Trump but at the same time they told me they hated the Chinese for what they were trying to pull with the Huawei woman. Me: So you hate Trump for his approach to China? They: Well, other than that, he is a real big idiot!

• I hate flying. My recent flights have always been full of annoyances that bring out my lizard brain. The previous trip to Canada was impacted by a typhoon in Hong Kong that left Jenny, Tony & I stranded for three days in Vancouver. How much I wanted to punch the Hong Kong Airlines service person who said that there was nothing they could do for us because we had booked through a travel agent. This trip, our flight from Shanghai to Vancouver faced the specter of delay because of a typhoon having come to Shanghai and canceling all the flights the day before. At the Shanghai Pudong Airport, Tony & I did get through our check-in and security check no problem and everything seemed to be smooth sailing. But we then went to our boarding gate. The gate where we were to board the plane was not the boarding gate we were expecting. Instead of looking like an airline boarding gate at the level of the plane's fuselage, we had to take an escalator down to what looked like a Chinese bus station at the level of the tarmac. The gate area was very crowded and the waiting passengers were confused about what was happening. Many passengers standing about were compelled to ask others if they were waiting to board a plane going to Vancouver. What in fact happened was that Pudong airport had to force many planes to board their passengers on the tarmac because of all the cancellations of the day before. At least I hope that is why this was done. (Someone told me that some airlines will try and save money by boarding their passengers on the tarmac instead of at a usual airline gate.) So we were delayed getting out of Shanghai which left me with another specter of a further delay being caused by missing the connecting flight to Winnipeg. But that flight was in fact delayed and we were lucky not to miss it.

• I hate flying. I will say that again so that I can make use another bullet point to tell you what annoyed on our flight back to China. Early on a Saturday morning, we went to the Winnipeg Airport to start our journey back to China. Right off the bat, the annoyance began as the check-in area was as crowded as the Chinese bus station boarding gate we saw at Pudong Airport. As it was at Pudong, it was confusing as to where we should line up and where the end of the line up was. Passengers were asking others what they were standing in line for. At one point, I pushed our luggage ahead because it appeared that there was a Chinese individual standing – as I have seen so many Chinese people do over the last 15 years – in the wrong place while being totally oblivious to the confusion and inconvenience they were causing others. Check-in at least went smoothly and I had a nice chat with the check-in person about where I was born, where I was currently residing, and how I lived everywhere in Canada because my father was in the military. Then we went to the security. Security at Canadian airports, if you can believe it, can be more strict than at communist China airports. This time, I was chosen to go to an extra strict security line where I was asked to take the cover off my laptop. I told the person that I hadn't taken it off in four years and I didn't know how to remove it. I was told that I could then return to the agent and tell them this. So I took the cover off the laptop while the security person was telling me how he had seen others do it. The security doing this was tantamount to telling me that the all thing was a charade but I had no choice to do it. I then commented on this to another person who was in the line just ahead of me, saying it wasn't this strict in the PRC, and he said the Americans were to blame. I shrugged my shoulders. But we boarded the plane no problem and our flight arrived in Vancouver on schedule. Because we were on a connecting flight, we didn't have to go through security. We boarded the plane to Shanghai no problem and the plane began to taxi for take-off, when the pilot told us of volcanoes (in Alaska it turned out) forcing them to delay take-off till they could change the flight plan. A twenty minute delay they told us. Then the pilot told us that the new flight plan meant they would have to put more fuel in the plane. So the plane had to return to the gate. Another twenty minute delay they told us. Then the pilot told us that because of the previous delays, the flight shift length require them to get another pilot. Another twenty minute delay till the pilot boarded!! Finally, we took off. We arrived in Pudong late after the usual uncomfortable flight. Just as the plane was approaching Pudong, the pilot mentioned that foreigners arriving at Pudong would have to have their fingerprints taken. Arriving at Pudong has become depressing for me because it is so drab. That and the bureaucracy makes one well aware that one has arrived in the People's Republic of China. Getting off the plane, going through customs, picking up one's luggage and then having to have your luggage run through an x-ray machine before you can get through the departures gate does nothing to make one feel all is right with the world.

• On the flight back to Shanghai, a young Chinese man sat next to Tony & I. He started a conversation and I learned that he was studying at the University of Washington in Seattle. He told me that Seattle was a very liberal place and how one local told him that President Trump did not represent Americans. My first response to that was to say that there were a lot of Americans who liked Trump. Reflecting on this story, I can only imagine how liberal this American was. He sounded totally Obama with a dash of NPR thrown in.

• Walking into a store in Canada or America if you have been away for a stretch of time can be overwhelming. What you see is so much of what you can't get in China and what you miss about Canada. Maybe because I was getting older and had anxiety about spending too much money, I forced myself to not look.

• Tony got a lot of sports stuff. He got a Houston Rockets cap, a Winnipeg Blue Bombers cap, a Toronto Raptors championship cap and a San Jose Sharks cap. I bought him a magazine commemorating the Raptors NBA championship. I bought him a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey in fluorescent green bearing the number 22 and the name Wiggins who is apparently a Canadian player. He also discovered the joy of sports cards. I bought him a lot of basket ball cards as well as some hockey and baseball cards.

• Tony has been to at least four countries. He has been to China, Canada, Thailand and the USA. He has also been to Hong Kong and Taiwan which are not fully part of the PRC and yet have a non-country status. So, let's say he has been to six.

• The Mall of America was not so overwhelming. It was big, but not that much bigger than the many malls I have wandered about in China. It had an amusement park but I have been to Hong Kong Disneyland so my feeling was "Meh!". It did seem to exhibit the phenomenon of the decline of the shopping mall in America that I have been reading about. There was a lot of vacant space that, like in China, was covered up by attractive and clean signage. There was also the strange thing of particular chain stores having more than one location in the store. One store called Champs had locations on all three levels. I was asking my brother if we hadn't already been to this store.

• Tony's favorite store in MOA was Brick Headquarters which sold Lego-style soldier figurines and to-be-assembled military toys. But it was very expensive. A single figurine WW2 German figurine cost 18 dollars. That was more than my indulgence of Tony on this trip could bear.

• We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Bloomington. My brother booked it online and unfortunately, we got a smoking room. The smell of cigarettes was a like a slap on the face whenever we entered the room, but quickly went away.

• We took a train to get to the Twins and Vikings games. Now, I can say I have taken trains in Chicago, Mexico City, Vancouver, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Hangzhou.

• Beer Communism in Manitoba. Only places I could buy liquor was at a beer store or the government liquor store. A good thing about China is that I can buy beer at a Mom and Pop shop, of which there are many within walking distance of Casa Kaulins.

• I heard a lot of Spanish being spoken in the USA. In Canada, I heard a lot of English spoken with East-Indian accents.

• I saw Dancing Gabe at the Bomber game. When I lived in Winnipeg, I would see him dancing at Winnipeg Jet games. That is, Winnipeg Jet 1.0 games over twenty years ago. That he was still around was a surprise.

• Mom, Tony & I went to Boston Pizza (a restaurant that I had worked at in Chilliwack). The food was not as good as I hoped. As well, they were advertising five dollar Coronas. In China, I could get them for 10 RMB: a buck and a half in in Canada!

• Something that I meant to do but didn't: get a set of rosary beads. I did see a set, strangely enough, at the Brandon Cemetery. Across a road, it was from my father's gravesite, on a gravestone of the same shape as my father's. I discovered the beads when I was with Ray Pero as he tried to locate his father's grave, which he found. I told him about the rosary beads and how I wish I could have a set. "You have to be Catholic!" said Ray. Yes. I have got two out of three down: God, Christ, but not Church.