This is not a rhetorical question.
Archive for the 'adventures' category
Your travel tip for the day
Canadian passenger trains do not, on any level, function like European trains.
My first experience with long-haul train travel was the Eurostar route from London to Brussels. Second experience was the TGV from Brussels to Paris. Third train trip was Paris back to London. I came away loving train travel.
Train travel in Canada is a bit of a novelty—usually more expensive and far less efficient than flight. Even knowing this, a train ride from Halifax to Ottawa seemed like a good idea. It would take longer by about 20 hours (including connection wait times), but I would get to see a part of the country I had never seen. Plus trains are just far more comfortable than planes. More leg room, more wandering away from your seat.
That was my thinking aproximately 36.5 hours ago. Since then, I have spent 28 hours either on a train or in train stations in eastern Canada. What I failed to understand before I boarded is that passenger trains in Canada must surrender any shared portion of track needed for frieght trains. Which can add 3 hours to a trip that is already scheduled for 1 day and 22 minutes. Which I suppose would have been less gruelling if we had initially doubled our ticket price to have a berth for the night. We didn’t consider that a necessary expense at the time. Still wouldn’t. There will have to be drastic changes to the rail system in that part of the country before I consider taking that route again.
My country is beautiful. Impressive, grand, and dignified. But her humans miss the mark on long-haul ground transportation. Someone send me a bullet train to speed against the sunset.
I have been
Swimming in the ocean. Twice since last Tuesday. Up to my neck. And careful of jellyfish. (I said hello for you.)
Riding in a boat beside dolphins showing off. Sprayed with salt water and bracing against the pitch and roll of a 35-foot boat. Thinking how the seals popping up in the water look very much like gophers.
Chatting with not-locals (they come from away, having bought the land only forty-odd years ago). But they know the stories. The tides. The gannets heralding the pilot whales in the gulf. These are friends we didn’t know yesterday and may never speak to again.
Walking the Skyline in the Cape Breton Highlands. Less than 8 feet from moose resting in the shade. Watching whales in the ocean below the cliffs.
Revisiting. But that’s a story for its own telling on another day.
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A turn for the (questionably) lucid
I was at the Edmonton Folk Fest on the weekend. Which was a thrill-ride of musical experiences. Aimee Mann, Cat Power, Bellowhead, Martyn Joseph, Dar Williams, John Bottomley, Jon Brooks, Colin Hay, Broken Social Scene, Luke Doucet, Catherine MacLellan, Chris Isaak, Ryan Shaw, Peatbog Faeries (to name a few of my new and old favourites). Pieces of me are still there. Spindly copper connector wires to a series of heartbeats that sound more and more like a kick drum pumping crunchy guitar licks through my veins (this is not your typical folk, folks). I’m barefoot, dawdling back.
Because I’m hoping that I won’t make it back to this pedestrian existence before I leave again. I’m going back to Nova Scotia soon. Where I’ve only lived three weeks of my life. But Halifax doesn’t let a girl go, even when her home is a bump in the middle of the prairies. The ocean takes pieces of your skin and cycles them back again, but never quite the same. So I’m going to a home that was never my home and will always be home in the ways that it is. I will search for whales and puffins, hike through the Cape Breton Highlands, swim in the ocean, wander along the waterfront with my husband, drink coffee from The Mudroom, and spend time with dear friends.
So I’m not here today. I don’t plan to do much more than touch down briefly and fly away again.