6/27/09: Off Day; Ericsdale Manitoba; No miles.
It’s 11:30am and we just finished watching the Vince Vaughn Wild West Show on satellite TV, in our cheap Ericsdale motel room. The movie finishes with Willy Nelson’s song “On the road again.” And believe me, that’s where we’d like to be, cruising down the highway, free and easy, even if we had to fight those wonderful little bulldogs for another day. But, it’s raining very steady out right now. Has been ever since early this morning. The temp has fallen to the high 50’s/low 60’s.
I heard the rain beginning very early in the morning, and I kind of had this feeling in my gut that we were grounded for the day. Woke up at 7am, and was still raining like a mini monsoon. Made our complimentary motel coffee packet with the plastic Sunbeam coffee maker. And then we asked for a couple more. More rain. More coffee. And then a movie. And another movie. Still raining…. hard to easy….to moderate…..back to hard……..just still raining. So it get’s to be 9:30am, and we just got done watching Michael Clayton, and the gremlin start to growl down there, setting off the hungries in our bellies. Ryan rides down to the gas station/café, and I walk. He ends up buying that ugly, gross, nasty looking microwave double burger that we both poked for of last night. Me, I’m a first class garbage gut, but I draw the line with microwavable hot dogs and hamburgers, and THAT hamburger looked like……well…….doo doo patty in a bun!
So I go in to the café for a home made breakfast. And it’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, people laughing, joking, asking about the family, the job, the kids, and commenting on the wet day out there. It was interesting just listening, being the outsider that I was, to the goings on in this little slice of Manitoba, this little place that is one of countless other little towns and dots and circles on the big map of Manitoba I carry in my handlebar bag. Their world is my world for this day, in this place that Ryan and I though was really one of the most boring places to be stranded for an evening. And now we’re stranded for another day.
I mean heck, it has two town food markets, a building store, a farm coop, a post office with one good natured, elderly lady minding the place, two gas stations, a flower shop that probably won’t make it past the 4th of July, and a collection of buildings that are either condemned and/or have boarded up windows and haven’t seen a good day in years. Just not much here. Not much to love. But it’s home to all these people in the café, out here in what seems like the middle of nowhere, in a province that is largely composed of lake, marsh, bog, and untold miles of bush. Crazy, but I think this is really the truer picture of North America than what we imagine it to be. This is small town Canada, and could very well also be small town USA. Same thing, same people, same small town in the middle of nowhere. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. All across North America.
I get a great breakfast of three eggs, three pieces of toast, 8 slices of bacon and hash browns – 8 bucks. Ryan’s doo doo burger – 6 bucks. Which door do you choose? After breakfast I brave the monsoon to walk over to a store to pick up a bubble wrap mailer to send Jerry some photo CD’s I burned for the photo section of our website. No luck at either of the small markets. So I just go to the postal office and hope they have extras there. Bingo! They’re $1.79. So I talk with the postal lady for a bit, and she tells me we should stay in Ericsdale for Canada Day on July 1. “We’re having a big celebration here,” she tells me. And I’m flattered that she wants us to hang around long enough to celebrate this grand day in Ericsdale, but that’s like…..Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed……..4 days off. And we have to get “On the road again.” So I politely decline the offer, and get the package done for Jerry. I ask her if there’s a short cut back to our motel rather than me, soaked as I was, walking all the way back around via the roads. I saw trees and a field separating the center of town, on one end, from our motel on the other. And turns out there is indeed a short cut gravel path between the two, and she directs me to the right of the postal office to a little gravel path.
It takes me a fourth of the time to walk back via short cut than back on the roads. We watch the Vince Vaughn Comedy show. And now here I am, still checking out the window every 15 min looking at the rain, wanting to be back “On the road again.” It’s always fun stopping for a night somewhere, meeting new people, learning and looking at the new place that becomes your home for a night, or a day, and then moving on, making ground, taking the journey to the next destination east. But I tend to get restless when we’ve got a forced grounding like this. The rain, the dark motel room, and nothing but TV, the news, movies, and watching the rain outside, Constantly watching that rain. Not even a movie theater here, no pub, no nothing, so I’ve got to entertain myself by writing this blog. Hopefully you don’t find it as boring as a rainy day in Ericsdale! Well, I’ll get going again later in the eve. Right now I sense that we’re on our way to getting some lunch at the market.
2:15pm I walked over to the one of two markets, the smaller one with the home town feel. The butcher, whom I think is the owner, was a pretty friendly guy, and gave me a pen and calendar, after we got to talking. You see strangers in town like us are like a beacon, attracting all kinds of looks. So he immediately know that I was the “other” biker, as he’d met Ryan last evening when Ryan went in for some snacks. So I told him that we were staying the day and waiting for tomorrow when the weather system cleared out to continue our journey. He wished us luck with a big smile and continued to cut up a rack of meat.
Bought some ham from the deli, a couple of tomatoes, an onion and a loaf of bread to make some in-the-motel-room sandwiches. I also got some home made bakery, cookies, that are just delicious. Walked back to the motel, along with a guy who’s visiting relatives here. He was taking the same short cut to the motel area, where there’s another cafe. Again, he noticed that I was not a local, and was curious about my doings in Ericsdale. I went through the story, which at this point is almost a memorized paragraph or so, of where we’re headed to and how we’re doing it. At least I feel at this point that we’ve made some real progress being in Manitoba. Back when we were telling our story in BC, I felt pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, seeing that we hadn’t even covered one complete province. So anyway, he seemed pretty impressed that we’ve made it this far – so I call that progress!!
Back to the hotel for a mini eat fest of fresh lunch meat, tomato, onion sandwiches………..and another movie. I swear, Ryan’s eyes are going to fall right out of his head come a couple more movies. Dude is seriously into the movie mode. I just read this last paragraph to him and he told me he’s on movie number 5 for the day. Tomorrow could never come sooner!!
6:30pm Still raining. Still watching TERRIBLE movies, the current one of which Ryan is glued to is Delta Force with Chuck Norris, circa 1986. It reminds me of Love Boat, what with all the has-been, washed up TV personalities starring in this thing. It is corny and laughable at the same time. I’m sure Ryan has no idea what Love Boat is, but by the time he gets done with the movie day today, he’ll have a great intro to that genera of shlock.
So what to do……how about go to the gas station café and order the mushroom burger, bacon cheeseburger, the chick sandwich and some moza fries (French fries slathered in gravy with melted cheese over top). Yup, I think that will do it. Throw in some more Bugles for the nightcap and bingo bango – dinner. Oh, yea, it’s 6:55 and it’s still raining…. like hell, sometimes steady……sometimes just a deluge. And it’s got the locals talking alright. “Some kind of rain this is,” I heard a guy at the café say to the cashier. “Yea, they’re talking about 4 more millimeters tonight,” she told him. And so it goes, rain, rain, and more rain. Delta Force almost over, and I don’t know what goodie is next to watch. Stay tuned ………..OUT……..Pete
Today I crawled deep in my man cave and never came out.
I am watching my 7th movie. Vince Vaughans Wild West Comedy Tour, The Last Winter, The life of Winchell, The Bucket List, The Lookout, Delta Force, and now Rush Hour 3.
I have eatin all day. Coffee, PBJ Sandwiches. 2 Burgers, 2 Ham Sandwiches, 2 packages of Rollos, a snickers, some cookies. Several bottles of water.
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