I snuck a look at the person in the vehicle in front of me and recognized her to be Mrs. Hatter, a tenuously-controlled schizophrenic. As usual, she was busy taking enormous drags from one of her supersized homemade cigarettes.
“Welcome to Tim Hortons! Can I take your order please?”
Mrs. Hatter looked straight up at the sky for a few seconds. She then cocked her head to the side like a pigeon and scanned the horizon in all directions. When she was satisfied all sectors were clear she resumed puffing.
“Uh, welcome to Tim Hortons… . Can I take your order please?”
She did her sky inspection once again. This time she also checked the glove compartment, her purse and the back seat. She then stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one.
My stomach grumbled loudly. I debated whether or not I should walk over to her and explain that this particular voice happened to be coming from the drive-through microphone. I ended up deciding to wait one more minute and hope she figured it out on her own. Are you there, God? It’s me, Donny. Help her figure it out, okay? And while you’re at it, would you mind encouraging her to order just a coffee? Much obliged.
“Hello? Anyone there? Would you like to place an order?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna take der chili deal an’ a big coffee. An’ maybe a couple of dem donuts. Hey, youse guys got any sandwiches? What kinda soups you sell ’ere, anyways? Anyting on special today? How much you tink dis is gonna cost?”
I burnt rubber out of the parking lot.
Status Interrupticus
Mr. Golding is a 50-year-old man with a strong family history of heart disease. His cholesterol is astronomical and dietary adjustments have failed miserably. I’ve called him in to get him started on a cholesterol-lowering medication.
“Hey doc!”
“Hi Mr. Golding.”
“I guess my cholesterol’s still pretty high, eh?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“How high was it?”
“It was – ”
“I just can’t figure out why it won’t come down, doc! For breakfast every morning I eat a small bowl of Corn Flakes with skimmed milk. After that I have an apple or an orange, or sometimes I’ll take a glass of juice instead.”
“That’s good – ”
“Real juice, mind you, not fake junk like Tang. I can’t believe astronauts used to drink that stuff!”
“Can’t say I’ve ever – ”
“If I’m still hungry, I’ll have toast with margarine. Is that Becel stuff any good?”
“What?”
“According to the ads on TV, it’s really low in fat or something.”
“Most dieticians say – ”
“For lunch the wife fixes me a tuna sandwich. I must have told her a million times to go easy on the mayo, but she still slathers it on like crazy! Hey, doc, do you think she’s trying to kill me? Har-har!”
“Let’s hope not. Anyway, your cholesterol’s still quite high, so – ”
“Oh, and supper! What we eat depends on what day of the week it is. Usually Monday’s spaghetti night, but sometimes we have… doc? Where are you going? Doc?”
The Call of the Wild (Sorry, Jack!)
Last September I went on a canoe trip with four colleagues. I’m not much of a voyageur, but I figure if you live in northern Ontario you may as well get out and enjoy the great outdoors once in a while. Sometimes the wild north gets a little too wild, though… .
It was close to 4:00 on a chilly Wednesday afternoon by the time we finished cramming our supplies into the back of the truck. The drive from our town to Missinaibi Provincial Park was upwards of 400 kilometres, the last one-fifth of which involved slaloming down an unbelievably bumpy logging road.
When we were about 30 minutes from our destination a host of ominous-looking black clouds began boiling across the sky. By the time we arrived at the main entrance to the park it was raining torrentially. We’re talking biblical here. Noah. The floating zoo. A Farewell to Unicorns. You get the picture. We scoured the grounds for a vacant campsite. At last we found a cramped spot with a multitude of rocks and tree roots protruding through the grass. Welcome to Trump Towers! We pitched our tents in the pouring rain, ate a cold supper and crawled into our sleeping bags. As I prepared to enter the Dreaming I tried not to think about the warm bed I had left behind.
The next morning was cool and overcast, but at least it wasn’t raining. We broke camp and trooped down to the dock. The lake was steel grey. The small cove the dock jutted into was calm, but the rest of the lake looked choppy. As we loaded our provisions into the two canoes, a gnarled old Grizzly Adams look-alike hobbled over.
“Goin’ out on the lake?” he queried.
“Yes, we have a four-day trip planned,” I replied. “Can’t wait to get started!”
“Dern cold out.”
“You’re right, it is a bit nippy.”
“Ah’ve been out here more’n 25 years, an’ you wouldn’t catch me goin’ out on a mornin’ like this!”
“Oh. Well, according to the Weather Network – ”
He pointed at the kayak I had borrowed for the trip.
“Which one of yehs planning on using that contraption?”
“I am. As a matter of fact, this will be my first trip in a kayak!” I declared proudly.
For a moment his rheumy eyes widened in disbelief. He then snorted derisively and stumped away. I could have sworn I heard him mutter something about “dern city fools” under his breath.
While the canoes launched I zipped up my water-resistant windbreaker, secured my life jacket and pushed the kayak into the lake. Although it was light and handled easily, I found it hard to keep up with the canoes. After several minutes of paddling we got out of the cove and into the main body of the lake. Out there the winds were much stronger and the water was rough. Our progress slowed to a crawl. I conjured up a mental image of our trip map. We had to paddle approximately half the length of the lake before we got to the origin of the Missinaibi River. At our current pace, that was going to take four or five hours. If we hugged the shoreline there would be much less wind to contend with, but we’d be adding a lot of extra mileage to the trip. I had no idea how to do that clever barrel-roll manoeuvre that allows you to remain seated and flip a capsized kayak right-side up, so if I ended up in the drink I’d have to swim for dry land. I was therefore hoping the canoeists would stick close to shore. Instead, they chose the low-mileage option and headed straight for the centre of the lake.
Kayak paddles have a nasty tendency to dribble water onto you with each stroke, so by the end of the first hour I was soaked. By the end of the second hour the canoes were two tiny dots bobbing on the horizon and I was starting to wonder what the hell I was doing out in the middle of a freezing-cold lake in a kayak. Right about then I mistimed one of my strokes and plunged the paddle deep into a trough instead of a crest. This brought my centre of gravity way outside the kayak, which caused it to tilt nearly 90 degrees sideways. I spent the next two or three eternities staring down into the churning water and wishing I owned a caul as my vessel teetered on the verge of rolling over. It then made a loud grinding noise and shuddered back to its normal axis. After that I quit daydreaming.
An hour later we stopped at an island to rest. I was completely drenched. While I wrung out my clothes and poured lake water out of my ducky boots, my friend Will passed some mugs of soup around.
“Th-th-th-thanks!” I stammered. My teeth were chattering so badly it’s a wonder I didn’t bite my tongue off. The soup was piping hot and it warmed us up quickly. Before long we were back in the water, full of enthusiasm and ready for anything.
By the time we entered the Missinaibi River the wind had died down considerably. We put ashore for a planning conference. According to our trip map, Quittagene Rapids was just around the bend. Although it was listed as only a Class II rapid (Class VI being Niagara Falls), the notes warned it became trickier and more technical when water levels were intermediate. We scouted it out, took an informal vote and decided to try running it. Will and Larry volunteered to go first. They started off promisingly, but a short while later they spun out in an eddy and ended up facing backwards. Unless you’re Super Dave Osborne, going back asswards through rapids is highly discouraged. They wisely abandoned the attempt and returned to the riverbank. From there they used the canoe’s painter ropes to manually guide it safely through the foaming whitewater.