Road Trippin'

The Lalonde Clan just returned from a real-live road trip.  This doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people I’m sure, but to us it was HUGE.  First of all, it’s summer time and as my husband keeps reminding us, we do not travel in the summer: We are Lake People.  He insists there are two kinds of summer celebrants… Lake People and People who Go to The Lake.  There is a difference, he says with great emphasis.  Lake People will turn down weddings, reunions, and other inconvenient get-togethers because --don’t you know?? --they will be ‘at the lake’.  People who Go to the Lake go if there’s nothing else going on, and if there is not a cloud in the forecast.  

Secondly, we are not car people, and when I say we, I mean me.  My mother said that from her earliest memory, I screamed when I entered a car and did not stop screaming until we arrived at our destination.  I totally believe her.  Vehicle travel is a necessary evil for me.   In the 70s, our family car was a new Chevy Impala.  I believe the Chevrolet people, in their infinite wisdom, took the new car smell Too Far.  The comforting smell of vinyl and formaldehyde never did leave that car and if I could find it today in some junk heap, it would STILL smell like that.  I am willing to bet my life.  You could take samples of that odour, bottle it and use it against your enemies to invoke a wicked combination of headache and car sickness.  The whole car-smell experience did nothing to appease my barf-inducing hatred of road trips.

So only for my dear, dear friend and former band mate, Doll, would we make an exception to leave our lake utopia and travel to Southern Manitoba.  We decided to go via Montana and North Dakota to make it a bit more interesting.  I’ve made the trip to Brandon many times and always joke that I’m ready to slit my wrists by Moosomin.  If there’s such a thing as flatter than flat, the landscape is pretty close to that.  Zzzzz. “Look kids! It’s another freakin' canola field!”  Good thing the kids are too old to play that game where you have to spot all the things on a list.  They would have checked off a crow, a fence post and a grain bin in the first 5 miles and the rest of the items would remain blank.

  “Ooooh!  Is that a fox in that field, Mom?” 

“Nope. Rock.” I would confidently say, without even looking.  

I have to say, in Doll’s area, south of Brandon the landscape does change and it becomes quite scenic, but the stark contrast between north and south Saskatchewan never ceases to amaze me.  No wonder people call us The Gap!

Our joke -- We travelled to the south to see 'The Tree'

I try to make sure we have everything we need in the car when we’re on the road.  A cooler filled with great snacks and drinks, pillows, books, a small pharmacy...you name it.  Against my will, I took many road trips as a kid and there was never anything in the car but a box of Kleenex and a dusty map of Alberta.  Summer was unbearable; no air conditioning and water wasn’t invented yet. (okay bottled water wasn’t invented yet).  I was the only kid in North America who didn’t drink pop so you could usually find me dehydrating quietly in the back seat unless I wanted to treat myself to a mason jar full of warm water that had rolled around back there the whole trip.  Sigh…good times. 

Speaking of snacks, one trip stands out in my mind.  We took a month to travel through Alaska and the Yukon.  Me & my parents.  In a ¾ ton truck with a camper on the back. I was 12.  Now Alaska is breathtaking but you see one mountain, one stand of tamarack, and one waterfall and you’re all done as a 12 year old.  On top of this, Mom & Dad had packed ‘snacks’ before we left.  Was it cookies and fruit?  No. Trail mix?  No.  Radishes and green onions from the garden? Why, yes!!  I spent the first week on the road listening to classic country, enduring nasty radish burps and begging to ride in the camper.   Why couldn’t we be a normal family, go to Disneyland and eat ice cream??  

Well, fast forward 30 years and now I know the answer to that.  I have memories and experiences that are not ‘normal’ and I am very grateful.  We had a lovely time on our little road trip with friends who are like family to me.  I hope my kids have taken some memories with them, even if they are just their Dad singing out of tune to 80s classic hits and their Mom yelling for him to turn around because we are certainly hopelessly lost.  Maybe I’ll even get to read about them someday ;)

Buffalo Jump near Cartwright, MB

The Dreaded Lunchbox

Ah, the end of June is here.  If there is one thing I am even more excited about than the approaching summer holidays it is this...  No. more. lunches.  For two whole months!  Can you believe it?  It's the most wonderful time of the year.

School lunches are the bane of my existence.  “Oh Tracy,” you say. "There are certainly worse things such as global warming, civil unrest, The Real Housewives of Anywhere..."  I have but one thing to say to you...I hate lunch.

Even back in my own school days, I hated lunch.  Face it, food in a bag which has festered in a locker for 3 hours is something only the dog can get excited about. Really great and different lunches weren't invented when I went to school.  On top of this, my mom was a bit of a health food nut, so I would be eating yet another tuna on brown, gazing longingly at my classmates' lunch, wondering why I couldn't dine on cheezies, twizzlers or cupcakes.  Frankly, the only thing I looked forward to was when my mom didn't have time to bake bread and we got to have the ultimate...bread from the store!  It was referred to by the most hilarious made up name: boughten bread.  Do you remember boughten bread??  It was such a treat!  I would even eat one of those shiny, quivering squares of ham if it was between two pieces of McGavin's white bread!

On most occasions though, I would open the fridge and stare into it, hoping the lunch ingredients would assemble themselves before my disinterested eyes.  When they did not, I would shout, "THERE'S NOTHING FOR LUNCH TOMORROW!"  It was then that I would get "The Speech."  The Speech consisted of the history of what my parents had for their school lunches.

 "What do you mean there's nothing for lunch? You don't know how lucky you are! Do you know what we had for our school lunches??" 
(I did know, but it was Too Late. I had opened Pandora's Lunchbox)
"Lard Sandwiches, that's what!  And there were none of these fancy Happy Days lunch kits...noooo. We carried our lunch to school in a Lard Pail.  If we were lucky, there was enough lard left over to make a dessert...that's right, lard with molasses on top.  We were happy with our lard and never complained!" 

(Okay, I made up the last part, but it's not really a stretch. )  Sometimes The Speech would end there, other times it would continue on to describe how hard it was to get to school, uphill both ways, carrying their horse on their backs.

I started out with much enthusiasm with my own kid’s lunches. I cut out sandwiches with heart-shaped cookie cutters, I skewered grapes and cheese onto toothpicks, I baked teeny tiny muffins. I even packed little notes that said, I love you! Have a super day!  I was so cute I annoyed myself.  It was all well and good until I packed the first banana of the school year.  “Mooooom  my whole lunch tastes like the smell of banana now!!”  And so it began.

After so many years, consistently trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat 5 days a week, 10 months a year becomes a chore.  After a while, the rabbit appears taxidermied, and is missing an ear or two…even with the ever-so-helpful magazines staring at me from the grocery store checkout: Healthy and Fun Lunches Kids Will Love!  Oh shut up, Martha. Have you met my kids?

My daughter has rejected every lunch food produced in North America.  See, she will LOVE something and eat nothing else for six weeks, then she will declare that she HATES that very thing and never look at it again.  This is usually after I have bought a truckload of it.  The boy is a bit easier, he eats anything but hotdogs and asparagus. If only I could get him to bring home his thermos before it becomes a scientific experiment.

Yes, Martha, walk a mile in my robe and slippers.  You’ll be in the closet with a half bottle of Chardonnay faster than you can say, “Lunchtime!”   Cheers to my holiday from lunch!!

Of course, it's due to the consumption of lard.  Listen to your parents, kids!