On The Road Again

The Loudshoes family is currently on vacation; we left last Sunday for Ottawa, and then spent a few days in Montreal and now are in Ste-Sauveur, just north of Montreal in the Laurentians.
It was about a 6 hour drive to Ottawa from our house, then another 2 to Montreal and an hour more to Ste-Sauveur. Welcome to Canada: the Land Where Everything Is Far From Everywhere!

I don't mind a long drive; a good road trip can be almost as much fun as the actual vacation. I can read in a car without getting sick, which means I get plenty of uninterrupted book time, and it is an unparalleled opportunity to have a nap. I can get a lot of knitting done, too. It's pretty quiet in the car,
the Mister is usually a man of very few words, and he requires very little entertainment while he drives. What he thinks about for all those hours I do not want to know. (Once, when the Mister had a kidney stone and was all hopped up on Percoset, I drove us to Montreal with him nattering non-stop in the seat beside me...it was torture. In his drug-induced haze, he read every single road sign out to me for 500 miles. "It's 127 km to Kingston!"Every. Single. One. Throughout our marriage, I've been known to beg him for the occasional conversation, but right there and then I decided that him shutting up was the key to our success.)

Also, I'm of the firm belief that there are no calories in a moving vehicle, which means that one can consume as many potato chips, ju-jubes, peanut butter cookies and coffee as one's constituion and bladder will allow. Of course, this also has something to do with the fact that I have some control over where and when we stop, as well as how good the snack are in the cooler.

I remember many a long drive as a kid where I thought it would never end, and hell consisted of a hot car doing Mach 1 endlessly down the 401. Part of the problem, of course, when you are a kid is that you have no clue about how long this is going to take....you might have been put in the car to go pick up the dry cleaning, or you might be in there for the rest of the day, who knows?
Big Liver Girl told me a story that illustrates this nicely; when her now brother-in-law was about 7, his entire family (2 parents, 5 kids, of which he was the youngest) got into the station wagon (circa 1973....any bets on whether or not it had wood paneled siding?)to go to a hunting/fishing camp WAY far away. They drive all day the first day, stayed somewhere overnight and then piled in the car the next day and took off driving again. After about another 6 hours in the car, David asked with some exasperation "where are we even GOING???" like it had never occurred to anyone to tell him, and it really hadn't occurred to him to ask.

Two things have improved the summer family car trip immeasurably: air conditioning and IPods. Before air conditioning was commonplace in cars, there was no option but to keep the windows closed or have the windows open. If the windows were closed, you roasted. But if you had the windows open, it was only marginally cooler and considerably louder,  but you did have a hurricane force wind blowing through the car while you tried vainly to keep small children from being sucked out the window. After a few hours of that, you feel like you've spent the day Iin a wind tunnel. And your hair looks just bitching'.
Before there was any sort of personal musical device, one's choices were: A) play the radio for the whole car, or B) conversation between the passengers, or c) silence. Options B and C had their own dangers, depending on the temperment and current mood of the participants, and Option A meant that someone in the car was deeply unhappy, no matter what was playing. My friend Kelly's father thought that a perfectly reasonable compromise was to set the radio on "search" and have it play 5 second of every station along the dial, in a continuous loop. As you can imagine, that sent everyone batshit crazy in about two minutes.
Now, with the happy advent of earbuds and personal music devices, the car is blissfully quiet and no one is paying the slightest attention to each other. You would think this is exact opposite idea of an ideal family vacation, but in fact, it insures its success: the less we talk to each other, the better we get along. I never once had to threaten to stop the car and walk to Montreal by myself, as my mother once did.

When we get home, I hope my children appreciate the wonderful memories that their father and I strived to create for them, fuelled by potato chips and Ipods.

Bonne Chance, Mes Amis!

I saw this sign at a bike trail in Quebec. Apparently, there are two things you are allowed to do, and four things you are not. But you have to guess what they are.

Shark Fête

My stomach muscles hurt from laughing so much. I'm covered in bruises and black fly bites. I'm exhausted and sated. I have trouble keeping the giggles from bubbling up when I remember something that happened. I must have had a weekend with the Mother Sharks.

My friends and I spent another glorious, fabulous, hilarious weekend in Quebec at Big Liver Girl's condo in the Laurentian mountains. Big Liver Girl is such a wonderful, accomplished and generous hostess that I am even willing to abandon my habitual slothfulness and go along with whatever activities she suggests. (Truth be told, one of the reasons I like hanging out with Big Liver Girl is that she makes me do things that I would never do on my own, and thus can brag about having done them for the rest of my life.)

This year we went to a place that has skiing in the winter and a Tarzan-like activity in the summer. The place has 59 "stations" way up high in the trees, and you swing or climb or zip-line all over the forest. The zip-lining itself was a blast, I could have done that all day....the longest line is almost a thousand feet long. Seriously, it was absolutely thrilling. The other activities didn't delight me nearly as much....one of the most very basic of human instincts is a fear of falling, and when you mess with that fear, you will come very close to losing your shit altogether.

Here is my friend Shawnee on her way to meet Big Liver Girl way up on one of the "stations". Those two did the course like they were born to it, swinging and cavorting their way from one tree to the next. I think they are both part cat. My other friend, Spinner, and I struggled a bit, being two of the most sluggish people God ever made. We got through it, the course, though, albiet with incessent whining and a LOT of foul language. We are not "Survivor" kind of women, we are more like "Cancun" kind of women.

Spinner even got caught on one of the zip-lines; her glove got stuck in a pulley, and there she was, stopped dead in the middle of the line, unable to go forwards or backwards, wayyyyyy up off the ground. This concerned me greatly, partly because she is my good friend and I was concerned for her safety and well-being, but mostly because I couldn't go past her, and I couldn't get down, so I was stuck up in a tree 50 feet off the ground until she got unstuck. One of the guides was close by and didn't he just skip up the tree I was on, shimmy his way over to the damsel in distress and liberate her, AND deliver her to the next tree, all in about 12 seconds flat. He was magical, that monkey man! If he had been better looking, I think she would have fallen in love.

Here I am coming in on my final zip-line. I think I would like to do that part again, very much.

We live in a part of Canada that is lovely, but very flat; mountains hold a particular thrall for us. This shot is looking back towards the condos with the ski hills in the background, taken when we were walking to dinner. Who wouldn't fall in love with this place?

We went on a hike another day, went out and had drinks at a very swanky bar, were fed well, did some shopping and hung out by the pool. And we talked and laughed and had some sangria and thoroughly enjoyed the holiday from our every day lives. And of course, had spectacular company. Thank you, Sharks, and thank you, Quebec....you never disappoint.

Sharks In Quebec

I was away in Quebec with 6 of my favorite people on the planet for the weekend. The Mother Sharks went away for four days together, and my stomach muscles are just now recovering from the non-stop laughing.

We set off most efficiently on Thursday afternoon at around 3 and arrived in the Laurentians at midnight. You've got to love a bunch of mothers; everyone was waiting with their bags packed when the van arrived, and with kleenex and garbage bags, too.

Its usually an 8 hour trip, but with the rush-hour traffic in Toronto and 7 bladders of various capacities, we added an extra hour to the journey. I love a good road trip; one of the rules is that there are no calories in a moving car, so that means that copious amounts of potato chips and chocolate and coffee, as well as the occasional cheeseburger, are perfectly acceptable fare. (Also, in case you were wondering, there are no calories in other provinces or foreign countries. Those rules are important to know.)

We spent most of the ride and the weekend talking non-stop and making each other laugh so hard and so long that I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a cardio workout.

Big Liver Girl and I managed to get some fly fishing in, which was sort of the main goal of our trip. The rest of the ladies watched and took pictures, with very good humor. We made them walk in the woods, which was good for them...some of those princesses needed to get outside.

Here is a picture of me fishing; don't I look like I know what I'm doing? Here I am demonstrating that I have no idea what I'm doing, I've managed to hook my sleeve. It was the only thing I caught the whole time. Here is Big Liver Girl and I enjoying the day. I think we both just liked the outfits. During one harrowing rescue of a hook on a rock in the river, Big Liver Girl had to borrow my waders (hers were still in the car at the time) and we both discovered, when we got into the river, that the left foot leaked a LOT. I somehow managed to drop her right boot into the river while I was trying to put it on (long story, don't ask) and then we discovered that the entire bum seam of my waders was blown out, and we were lucky that they didn't fill up with water entirely and drown one of us. Near death experiences make for a most exciting fishing trip.

We came home last night around supper time, happy and tired and delightfully pleased with ourselves. It was a magical weekend.

Thanks Sharks.