{"id":741,"date":"2017-09-10T21:40:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T03:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/?p=741"},"modified":"2018-08-27T22:40:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T04:40:59","slug":"of-mosquitoes-t-rexes-turtles-and-traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/2017\/09\/10\/of-mosquitoes-t-rexes-turtles-and-traps\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Mosquitoes, T Rexes, Turtles and Traps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mrs. H. and I recently returned from our longest vacation in thirty-plus years. It was a road trip to the Ottawa area and back, with a ten-day houseboat trip on the Rideau Waterway system in the middle. (Let\u2019s face it, it\u2019d be pointless driving there and back and then doing the houseboat trip, wouldn\u2019t it!)<\/p>\n

Eight thousand kilometres of driving gives a person time to smell the roses (and skunk roadkill), and I thought it\u2019d be enlightening to provide some insight to the way my mind processes things I see.<\/p>\n

So here, dear reader, are some of the more printable random thoughts that went through my head during our road trip. Unluckily for the bug splats on my windshield, the last thing that went through their heads was their backsides.<\/p>\n

Eaten Alive<\/h1>\n

After being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Falcon Lake (and Kakabeka Falls and Agawa Bay), I got to wondering what mosquitoes feed on when there are no humans around. After all, there\u2019s a lot of sparsely-populated wilderness in that part of Canada, and from what I read, it\u2019s teeming with mosquitoes. So what do they do for sustenance?<\/p>\n

Do they feed on animals? (It must be hard work burrowing through coarse fur to get to the goods.) Do they have periods of feast and famine? Do they feed on each other? Do they eat their young? Do they ambush no-see-ums and bleed them dry?<\/p>\n

Or do they spend their entire lives looking for humans? I think this must be it, judging from the number of bites Mrs. H. and I suffered. It\u2019s almost like there\u2019s a mozzie grapevine or alerts network that keeps mosquitoes in touch with each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet your proboscises out girls\u2014there\u2019s a couple of humans in a blue and yellow tent at Kakabeka Falls! And from the taste of it, they\u2019re foreigners: Albertans, if I\u2019m not mistaken! <\/em>
\n \u201cNo\u2026 wait: there\u2019s a hint of fish and chips in the flavour. Hey! I think they used to be Brits! Come on girls, if you like ethnic food, it\u2019s party time!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure the real answer\u2019s out there on the internet somewhere, but it\u2019s much more fun guessing.<\/p>\n

Like the People of the Beltane<\/h1>\n

About 135 kilometres south west of Swift Current, there\u2019s a \u201cT. Rex Discovery Centre\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat,\u201d I thought. \u201cFor those of us who grew up listening to songs such as \u201cRide a White Swan\u201d, \u201cJeepster\u201d and \u201cGet It On\u201d (\u201cBang a Gong\u201d in the US and Canada), we can finally get to discover the meaning of Marc Bolan\u2019s lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

But wouldn\u2019t you know it; it\u2019s just a place where you can learn about T. Rex the dinosaur: not that we Marc Bolan listeners aren\u2019t dinosaurs ourselves, you understand.<\/p>\n

Polly Want a Cuttlefish?<\/h1>\n

In Lion\u2019s Head (on the Bruce Peninsula, in Ontario), I saw a lady walking along a beach with a parrot on her shoulder. I\u2019m pretty sure she wasn\u2019t a pirate\u2014she didn\u2019t have a patch over one eye, and both her legs were her own\u2014and I\u2019m pretty sure it wasn\u2019t a Norwegian Blue parrot, because it wasn\u2019t \u201ckipping on its back\u201d. Either way, the parrot and its lady generated a fair bit of interest among the people on that beach.<\/p>\n

A couple of kids had previously been (unsuccessfully) dropping rocks on ducks\u2014I\u2019m glad they didn\u2019t turn their attention to the parrot.<\/p>\n

Highway to… Ottawa? (With apologies to AC\/DC fans)<\/h1>\n

Driving in Ontario is\u2026 an experience.<\/p>\n

\"SpeedingWhen you cross the border from Manitoba, the first(?) sign you see (after the \u201cWelcome!\u201d sign, that is) is the menu of speeding fines. $95.00 if you\u2019re caught going 20km\/hr over the limit, $220.00 if it\u2019s thirty over the limit, and so on.<\/p>\n


\n At fifty over the limit, it\u2019s a $10,000 fine, three demerits on your licence, your vehicle impounded, your first-born sent into slavery in Alabama or Georgia or some such place, and all your future income confiscated and used to finance roadside inuksuk building. (Okay\u2014I exaggerate. A little.)<\/p>\n

So what do Ontario drivers do? They drive everywhere at eighteen over the limit. We law-abiding drivers become obstacles that collect convoys and interesting nicknames as the convoy passes us.<\/p>\n

The Alberta plates should have told them I\u2019d be driving to the limit. (Because Albertans don\u2019t speed, do they!) But I may have ended up driving at eighteen over the limit occasionally.<\/p>\n

The thing is, the highways through rural Ontario are challenging. Only one lane in each direction; lots of curves; lots of hidden intersections; other vehicles; very few passing places: it\u2019s a nightmare, I tell ya!<\/p>\n

And if all that doesn\u2019t make the roads hazardous enough, there are signs warning drivers of people driving pony-and-traps on the roads and turtles (or is it tortoises?) crossing them (the roads, that is, not the ponies).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

These signs seem to be effective though; amongst all the roadkill I saw, I didn\u2019t notice a single turtle or pony-and-trap.<\/p>\n

Now\u2026 if they could just put up signs warning drivers about skunks crossing the road\u2026\"\"<\/p>\n

Feeling Fuel-filled<\/h1>\n

One very odd thing about the road trip was the need to get fuel every day. I drive a VW Golf TDI, and most of the year, a forty-five buck fill lasts me a month. What a contrast to have to fill every day!<\/p>\n

But those eight thousand kilometres only cost about five hundred bucks. We got 57.1mpg on that trip. (That\u2019s 4.95L\/100Km for you metric types.) I\u2019m guessing that many of the vehicles that passed us\u2014pickup trucks hauling trailers\u2014were getting something nearer 4.95mpg, which by coincidence, is 57.07L\/100Km.<\/p>\n

Mind you\u2014I bet they didn\u2019t get eaten alive at night in their nice, air-conditioned trailers\u2026<\/p>\n

Seriously Though, Folks…<\/h1>\n

Everyone needs to do a road trip across Canada at least once in their lives. It allows you to appreciate just what a BBC (Bloody Big Country) we live in, and it exposes you to different landscapes, styles of living, economies, and weather patterns.<\/p>\n

And drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrs. H. and I recently returned from our longest vacation in thirty-plus years. It was a road trip to the Ottawa area and back, with a ten-day houseboat trip on the Rideau Waterway system in the middle. (Let\u2019s face it, it\u2019d be pointless driving there and back and then doing the houseboat trip, wouldn\u2019t it!) Eight thousand kilometres of driving… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488,181],"tags":[421,423,417,419,422,420],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbs","category-fake","tag-mosquitoes","tag-parrot-on-shoulder","tag-road-trip","tag-roadkill","tag-speeding","tag-turtles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}