It was still raining in the morning on July 16, but it stopped as it we were packing up camp at Elk Island. We tried to do more geocaching before we left but finally gave up for all the reasons I ranted about at length in my last post.

While we were out searching uselessly for caches, we found a couple of dragonflies that had been caught out in the rain the night before and were weighed down on the trail with drops on their wings. I took them and very carefully blotted the water off their wings, then carried them around for a while while they dried out in the breeze. As their wings got lighter, they started to vibrate them quickly. Finally, they took flight again. Fun fact: the CIA once made a life size mechanical dragonfly, hoping to use it to spy discreetly, but abandoned the project when they found the tiny craft uncontrollable in wind.

We had no further adventures that day, as it rained off and on all day during our long drive north-west. We did stop to pick up a tarp and  a telescoping pole. When we camped in Carson-Pegasus Provincial Park, in the pouring rain, that evening I whipped up a large weather cover from the tarp, using the telescoping pole as the tent pole. I thought it was pretty good, but there was a guy at Elk Island that had strung 4 giant tarps together in a line, making an avenue of azure light.

The humble tarp allowed us to have a fire, our last on this trip, as I recall, under the shelter. It’s not camping if the marshmallows don’t burn. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

The next greatest thing we found at the West Edmonton Mall that day was a T&T grocery. I don’t know why I was surprised – there’s a large Asian demographic in Edmonton – but it was like finding a piece of home on the road. We stocked up on our favourite snacks. They even had the good wet tofu jerky. Yes, that’s a thing, and you would like it, honest.

On the way back to Elk Island Park, we started playing a geocache game organized by the park. Geocaching, in case you’re one of those people who still have a wire going to their phone, is the game of searching for hidden caches by GPS coordinates. Someone hides a small container of some sort, like a Tupperware dish or water bottle, with a small notepad inside, and then publishes the GPS coordinates of the thing. Geocachers try to find the cache using their GPS devices and, if they find it, sign the logbook.

Sometimes people will leave a small item as well, like a foreign coin, a cool rock, or a plastic toy. Anything really, that will fit in the cache. The next person along will leave a new item and take one that’s already there. Some items move around the world from cache to cache this way. If you leave some contact info, like “email me and let me know where you found this”, and you can follow your tchotchke on its journey.

The people at Elk Island have created 8 caches in and on the margins of the park, and invite guests to try to find them. There is some sort of code associated with the caches. If you find them all and break the code, you can email them and they will mail you a complimentary token. We had some issues with the approach though.

All you need to find a geocache are the gps coordinates, and perhaps a one-sentence clue to the cache’s specific location. Rather than just print the coordinates and clues on a flyer, or one of their other brochures,  Elk Island chose to publish them on geocaching.com. I’m not even going to link that shit up because it’s shit and you shouldn’t waste your time with shit.

First, the website requires you to make an account before you do anything. Second, the website requires you to pay for a membership upgrade to use the useful features, like searching for geocaches published by Elk Island. Third, the website design sucks buffalo. As a software developer, I’m literally offended by the whole site and its bizarre and confusing mix of web technologies. Fourth, if you don’t like the website, you can download their mobile app, which, sixth, seventh and eighth, has all the same problems as the website.

Ninth, some of Elk Island’s geocaches are visible on geocaching.com with a free account, but not all. You literally can’t complete the game unless you pay $12 for a membership.

Tenth, one of the geocaches is on an island. That in itself is not terrible; it’s kind of interesting actually. The problem is that it’s only accessible by boat, and the boat rentals are only open on weekends.

So the summary is that you can’t finish their game unless you pay for a membership with a third party service. You also have to visit the park on the weekend and  rent, bring your own boat, or swim. All those requirements are not family trip friendly. Those Johnston Kids actually worked pretty hard looking for 5 of the 8 caches, but we threw in the towel in disgust when we realized that we couldn’t actually finish.

We did get in a couple of good hikes while searching. Hikes is the euphemism we use to describe running, screaming, hand-waving through the mosquito infested woods: “I got it, I got it! Go! Go! Just go! Aagh! #$%^, they’re biting my liver!”

More thrilling, we saw lots of bison up relatively close. It’s hard to describe how truly majestic and almost ancient these animals appear. They are not creatures, they are the remnant of an immensely powerful spirit. The bison are of this place and you can feel it when you see them move. The government should be making it a priority to restore them in real numbers. A million bison would not be enough, but it would be a promise to the future.

I traveled with a friend once who called me ‘Storm Boy’, in Japanese, because it rained everywhere we went. I once went to the Mohave Desert in June and witnessed a snowfall. I refrain from dancing often because with great power comes great responsibility. These hips could cause natural calamity. Saskatoon was dry as a bone when we pulled in, and raining buckets as we pulled out of town. Wes, the Saskatoon Campland RV Resort owner, was tearfully thankful for his luscious lawns. The clouds followed us westwards.

Even so, with all the forest fires in western provinces, we haven’t been allowed to have a campfire anywhere west of Manitoba. I threw together curried plantains and vegetables on the propane stove while grumblers massed overhead. The life giving rains began as cleaned our dishes. As sidekick to my Storm Boy, Short Pants has adopted the alter ego Kid Lightning, and the XX’s are known as the Hurricane Girls. We are water people.

Those Johnston Kids were worn out from hours of screaming at the World Waterpark the evening before, so they slept in on Wednesday, July 15. Our closest neighbours at Elk Mountain, were just up the hill, behind some bushes. They weren’t visible, but they were surely audible at 7 AM as they packed up their camp. I could, but won’t, give you a fairly detailed account of who they were, where they were from, how long they’d been camping, where they were going next, and what they thought of the couple they had shared the campsite with. Monkeys are dumb. Wrap them in lycra, completely transparent to sound, and they think they’re in a sound-proofed room.

I made pancakes for breakfast. Papacakes are the best.

Since we had gone through the West Edmonton Mall directly to the water park, and then right back out again afterwards, we hadn’t actually seen the place. We went back to have another look at a more leisurely pace. We’re not shoppers by inclination, but continent’s biggest, you know? The halls of shopping still didn’t work for us. I bought some rechargeable batteries at the Source, which stopped being cool when they stopped being Radio Shack, but that was about it.

Things got more interesting when we found the ice rink. Yeah, an ice rink. Not in a chilled arena, mind you, but out in the mall. People in shorts walking by with frosties, plastic bags from H&M, and Kernels popcorn. Baby Girl wanted to go and I’ve never skated in the midst of a mall, so we rented some skates. The girl at the counter was not suited to public service. At all. We had a fun skate in our shorts, although Mama had to go buy socks. Baby Girl and Short Pants learned that skating in shorts is novel and liberating, and also very hard and cold when you fall. BG mostly falls on her knees, so she turned red and bruised. SP mostly falls on his butt, so he was wet and sore. They didn’t fall much, but their ankles gave out after an hour.

We continued our expedition into the heart of the mall. The next bit of weirdness we stumbled upon was the huge indoor pool, decorated with faux rocks and corals to look like an ocean lagoon. At one end there was an ornate full-size pirate ship that could be rented out for special events. At the other was an amphitheatre for ocean mammal shows. When we arrived, a sea lion show had just started. The gates were closed, but there were spots around the outside of amphitheatre that offered a view of the show. Those Johnston Kids thought it hilarious to see the seals clap and ironically clapped wildly in appreciation. I refrained from a long moralistic rant about keeping sea mammals captive for ocean shows, much less ocean shows on the prairies. I will refrain here also, but you may pause reading here and take the next 20 minutes to imagine my very dim view of the practice.

Next we found ourselves in some little used corner of the mall that appeared to be undergoing renovation. World Vision, the charity, had set up a ‘3D experience’ in the dusty and ill-lit hallway. It was a large maze-like structure. Inside, an attendant gave us iPod devices and headphones. Each device was supposed to have a recording of a different third world character’s story that would play like those turn-the-page recorded books they used to make for children. (Do they still make those?) Instead of turning a page, we were supposed to move through the maze, viewing pictures and reading background details about the character’s life.

I think that was how it was supposed to work. The guy reading the story spoke slower than a waiter at the Manitou Springs Hotel. It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying because my mind kept rushing ahead to finish his sentences. Then, as I went through the various rooms at the recorded prompts, nothing seemed to make sense. Living the third world experience was very confusing for me. By the time I got to the end, I was so frustrated that didn’t really care if my character had AIDS or not, and I certainly wasn’t about to buy her a chicken. I described my experience to the attendant and she checked my iDevice. Apparently mine had been set to shuffle play. My life often feels like that.

We had rolled into Elk Island National Park the evening before, after the visitor centre and campground office were closed. So morning of the 14th, we puttered around camp until the office opened at the oddly late hour of 11 AM. I mean, it’s a campground, right? Everybody pretty much gets up with the birds. I would expect the office to open at 7 AM or something like that.

We were there at 11 AM anyway, but the office person was not. There was a sign in the window saying that she would be back in 15 minutes. 15 minutes later, she was not back. A small crowd of campers and would-be campers was gathering around the park office that aspired to open at 11 AM. By 11:30, there were more people, and they were starting to grumble. The park officer could be seen in the distance, chatting with a camper at his campsite.

I’m not an impatient sort, I just like things to be efficient. 11 AM is already late in the day to be starting office hours. It’s a little hard to believe that even that late hour can’t be met. As well, if you aren’t going to be there until 11:30, open at 11:30 so people who manage their time more efficiently aren’t waiting around for you to get your fertilizer together. It’s just poor customer service.

When the park officer finally showed up, Mama made a smiling suggestion that she just start at 11:30 to give herself time to catch up without the tourists demanding her attention. I would have screamed it at the officer. That’s why Mama is better with people than I am.

We just wanted to register for another couple of nights and get on with our day, but unfortunately the site we had picked the evening before was already reserved. That meant we had to move the trailer and all the other camp accoutrements to another campsite. There was another hour gone wrestling the trailer into a single entrance site. I didn’t realize how much I loved my pull-through site until she was gone.

With everything moved and set up again, we drove a short way down the highway from the Park to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. It’s a period authentic village recreation depicting the lifestyle of Ukrainian immigrants from the 1892 until the 1930’s. The village is populated by staff actors who dress and speak like people of the time. It’s admirable how seriously they take their roles as well. Every person has a simulated family and they all know their family tree, including the personal histories of family members. We asked many questions, but they always had a good answers. After a while, I just forgot that they were actors and accepted their characters as real people.

I was tempted to offer advice from the future to help them out, but refrained in deference to the integrity of the space-time continuum. I couldn’t be sure that some seemingly innocuous piece of information wouldn’t negate my own existence or trap us in a time paradox. You just can’t mess around with that stuff.

It was only a little after 3 in the afternoon when we finished up at the UCHV, so we went into Edmonton to see the West Edmonton Mall. We had read about a big indoor water park that we wanted to take Those Johnston Kids to, and going late in the day meant there was a natural stop not imposed by us. Never take your kids to anything fun first thing in the morning unless you’re prepared to do it all day. Take them as many hours as you want to spend, before closing. That way you’re not the bad guy when it’s time to go.

The West Edmonton Mall is a really big freaking mall. As far as the shopping goes, if that’s your thing, that’s really all there is to be said about it. Seeming kilometers of hallways lined with shops you’ve seen a thousand times before but still can’t remember the names of. We honestly didn’t wander around shopping because that’s not anybody’s thing in this family. We were just passing through on our way to the World Waterpark.

The West Edmonton Mall World Waterpark is a really big freaking waterpark, indoors. It’s the biggest indoor water park in North America, built in the 80’s, and still hella impressive. It looks like a giant greenhouse built around a swimming pool. At one end is clustered the labryinthine water slide complex, at the other a raft slide, with the wave pool in the middle. A zip line runs from end to end over the whole aquatic medley. The scale of the place is immediately striking as soon as you walk in.

Those Johnston Kids kind of hopped and squeaked in place for a minute before picking out the slides they wanted to try first. We went straight to the top. The slides are all built in and around a set of massive steel towers and platforms with connecting stairways that are positively Escheresque in design. We found the launch platforms by following the slides upwards through the metal forest, choosing stairwells based on how close we were getting to the target. Several times we wished for a map, but I don’t know how they could have made a useful map. It would have to be in 3D, like a ball of tangled string. By the end of the day, we had learned to navigate to our favourites by landmarks.

I will spare you the wet details of every slide we tried, which was all of them, but the first was special. You always remember your first. We climbed to the very top of the slide towers, looking for the launch for something called Crusher or Drowner or something like that. There were actually two slides launching from the same platform, but everybody – everybody – was lining up to the left, to get on the one the kids had picked. I didn’t want to wait, so I sidled over to the attendant on the right and asked why nobody was in his line. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” “I’ll go then,” I volunteered. His slide was called Cyclone, I think, which didn’t sound any more fearsome than the Gasper or Hyperventilator that Those Johnston Kids were lined up for. Come of think of it, all the slides had aggressive names like that for some reason. I don’t think it was marketing because we had already paid to get in. It’s not like they had to brand the slides to get your money. They could have called them anything they wanted, like The Wet One, or The Greasy Noodle. (Those names are now copyrighted, so don’t even think about stealing them.) Anyway, the attendant ushered me into what looked like a round phone booth and told me to cross my arms over my chest, vampire style. ‘I wonder why,’ I started to think and then the floor fell open.  They say it’s not actually freefall, that you’re sliding down a tube that is just very steep, not actually vertical. Try telling that to my brain. Every proprioceptor in my body was screaming at me, “You stupid *******!” Somewhere, about 5 or 6 minutes into the fall, it started to level out and I suspected that I might survive and have to explain why my shorts were wet. I started to open my eyes a crack to look for escape hatches and I was hit in the face with a blast from a water cannon and blinded again. The slide bent sharply upward and the G-force ground my body into the tube so hard I could feel my bones clicking over each seam in the plastic. They should have called it The Flenser. I could feel the tube angling upward steeper and steeper as I lost speed quickly. I thought I would actually come to a stop and slide backwards down into the tube and be trapped, like the fat kid in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I had nightmares about that when I was young. Mercifully, I had the few newtons of momentum necessary to crest the loop. For a brief moment I was weightless and calm. I opened my eyes and saw a hazy light through the tunnel wall, the life and freedom I had abandoned by getting into a phone booth at the behest of a stranger. I thought I would make it out again and be happy. And then I fell again, down the other side of the loop. This side was worse. Maybe because without the evil trap door trick they thought they needed to add something more. They added more water cannons, that pressure fired water straight up my nose until my brain mutated gills in self-defense and I drank whatever didn’t fit in my nose.

I honestly had no idea that I could go without oxygen for 15 minutes at a time, but I didn’t take a breath from the time I dropped until I shot out of the tube at relativistic speed. I hit the landing chute with enough force to wedgie myself biblically. When I literally staggered onto the deck I had to pull 2 or 3 inches of lycra out of my ass, and stood there gaping and blinking stupidly. I had survived. I felt the urge to cry and scream at the injustice and beauty of it all. I had been remade and suddenly everything, life, the meaning of things, was clear.

By the time I reached the exit though, my legs weren’t shaking so badly, and the truths that had been so apparent were fading and then gone. My altered state was over. I spent the next four hours with Mama and Those Johnston Kids looking for that clarity again, trying slide after slide, body surfing in the wave pool, and even being sealed into a plastic ball filled with water and spun like laundry. I never found the same perfection, where fear and hope and love all merged into one consuming emotion, but maybe some day I’ll go back.

We literally closed the place down. It was us and the lifeguards. I had wondered whether the kids would have the stamina for 4 hours in the pool, but I needn’t have worried. Mama was a little green, I had a wrenched back from the spinning ball, but Those Johnston Kids were burning raw adrenaline and had to be pulled from the water. They were asleep before we left the parking lot.

Nestled in the decadent comfort of the Manitou Springs Hotel, we slept in the next morning. July 13, for those keeping track. Those Johnston Kids would have liked breakfast in bed, courtesy of room service, but there was none when we were there. We trucked down to the half-empty dining room where we waited an unwarranted amount of time for a very slow waiter to walk us to an empty table. It was just a buffet, so I don’t understand why they didn’t just suggest that we seat ourselves and save all the ceremony. And slowness. The woman moved like Neo in Matrix-time.

After breakfast, we went out to the town beach, a short walk down the road. I mentioned already that the lake is really just a big puddle. Water can’t drain out, so it has to evaporate. It seems that there have been some wet seasons bringing too much water, or cool summers preventing evaporation, or both, because the water level of the lake is rising, encroaching on the town of Manitou Beach. There were several remediation projects underway to dike off the water and pump out water that was threatening lakeside properties. The beachfront that once defined the town is now underwater. The small beach that remains was apparently part of a civic waterfront park. Playground equipment and a gazebo jutted out of a half-meter of water just offshore.

We went for a swim anyway. The water was chilly compared to the heated spa pools, but still extremely salty. I would guess though, that the salinity is down too, with the rising water level. Same amount of salt dissolved in more water, right? I would have thought that nothing could live in the salty water, but there were myriad tiny water beetles, as well as brine shrimp mating up a storm. So many, in fact, that I was reluctant to put my head under water.

With no particular next destination in mind, we left Manitou Beach heading for Lloydminster, Alberta or Saskatchewan, depending on the direction you’re coming from. Lloydminster straddles the border between the provinces. I wonder how that’s handled around tax time? It was a long drive and at some point we pulled over in the middle of nowhere so Short Pants could pee. While waiting, I found some sage growing by the side of the road. I gave thanks and harvested a stalk each from a handful of plants. That way, the plant continues to grow. Unless you’re want the root, you have no need to kill the plant when harvesting medicine.

The 4 primary medicines of the Anishinabek are sweet grass, cedar, sage and tobacco. We had sweet grass and cedar from Ontario. Now we had sage too. Things were looking up.

Lloydminster, we discovered, is an wasteland of industrial services and heavy machinery. I didn’t even take my foot off the gas as we passed through. We stopped in Vegreville, Alberta instead.

Vegreville has a large Ukrainian population and the world’s largest Ukrainian egg. We stopped to take pictures of the massive coloured metal ovoid, and play in the attached park.  We also bought fruit and honey from a small fruit stand in the parking lot. This was also a cultural stop as Mama is half Ukrainian on her mother’s side, and Those Johnston Kids can enjoy that part of their heritage as well.

Our final stop of the day, and campsite for the night was Elk Island National Park. We pulled into just before sunset and had time enough for a hot dog dinner and a long walk on the beach and boardwalk. This was going to be home for a few nights.

This is Sally, Baby Girl’s chosen companion for the journey. You are seeing this correctly. Sally has only one arm. Rather, she has two arms, but Baby Girl chose to leave one arm at home because it was too difficult to reattach whenever it was pulled off. BG doesn’t know I’m watching, but I often notice her and Sally having lengthy conversations. Sally also goes through several hair styles daily, commutes from sleeping bag to car and back every day, and can be seen posing tastefully for some unseen admirer. Perhaps Mr. Bison who came along with Short Pants. I like Sally. She’s my kind of girl.

The 12th was Mama Day and Those Johnston Kids were so happy with anticipation that the usual sibling squabbles and morning grumpiness evaporated. We wanted showers so that we looked our best for the big pickup at the airport. Unfortunately the showers at Campland only take $2 coins, or 2 $1 coins, for 4 minutes of reasonably hot water. In any case, I had only enough silver for two showers. That would have to do because the office wasn’t open yet to make change. I gave Baby Girl half our coinage, and Short Pants and I resolved to do our best with the rest. She made out just fine. I, on the other hand, had to spend a considerable amount of time showering a voluble and squirmy 7-year-old. Once he was acceptably polished, I all but shoved him out of the shower and speed cleaned what I could. Mostly. With the shower timer counting down single digits, I frantically tried to get the soap off – too late. I stood there in dripping silence, foam sliding off my shoulders. Short Pants broke the quiet with, “Papa, you sure get a long time to shower for $2.”

I am almost embarassed by my own credulity, but there we were, leaning on Canadian Tire’s doors at 9 AM on a Sunday morning, waiting to be let in and blown off. Which is exactly what happened. Their mechanic, Pedro, or Alonzo, or something like that, was hung over and not coming in until after lunch. Not good. We had to pick Mama up at the airport at noon, and I wanted to show up in a gleaming, air-conditioned whip, not a deep fat fryer with wheels. In laughable desperation I called the CTire on the other side of Saskatoon, who said they could take us in immediately. We roared over there, but of course they had lied. We waited for more than an hour before they looked at it, then more than another while they tinkered.

If you’re doing the math, yes, we missed the pick-up time. Mama is nothing if not patient though, and she had a book to finish.

By this time the crack mechanics of Canadian Tire had determined that the air conditioner was broken and I needed a $600 part that they would have to order on Monday, the following day. Hours of labour would also follow, at somewhere north of $100/hour. I told them to put the car back together and that would be all. I barely escaped with only a $150 bill on top of 3 visits over a weekend and several hours of sitting around. I know they’re abysmal and overpriced, and that every internet review of every CTire store is unanimous in proclaiming their suckage, but what can you do when you’re in a strange city? You either go with the rip-off you know, or face a bigger one at the hands of some unknown mechanic. It’s a lose-lose more situation.

Defeated, we renamed the car the Sweat Lodge and went to pick up Mama at the airport just 15 minutes away. The benefits of living in a small town. There were big ups all around when we had her safely aboard. To kick off her vacation, we took her to the University of Saskatoon, where I attended summer school last summer. I was there studying property law with a class of indigenous students preparing for law school. It’s a lovely campus and the people were more than incredible, but I found it too challenging to be away from my family for so long. I was happy for the opportunity to show them now the places where I had spent my time then. Those Johnston Kids were most impressed by the natural history museum on campus (free! if you’re ever in town) and the surfeit of gophers all over campus. Cute little buggers. The gophers.

We swung by Campland RV Resort to pick up our trailer after the uni tour, as well as partake of the gratis ice cream offer put forth by Wes. We had a nice chat with him and his wife, and he reiterated his job offer. He must be having trouble with the help. I took a card.

To ease Mama into the whole gypsy life thing, we decided to try something off the beaten track and went to Manitou Beach, a little town about an hour south-east of Saskatoon. We had reserved a room at the Manitou Springs Resort and Mineral Spa for the night. The town is situated on the shore of a salty body of water called Little Manitou Lake. It’s not really a true lake in that it has no river exit. It’s just a depression in the prairie that collects run-off from the surrounding hills and holds it until it evaporates. A big puddle, in other words. Millennia of evaporation has resulted in the puddle collecting and concentrating the dissolved salts left behind by the evaporated run-off. The town is (or was, it’s hard to tell) a resort destination built around salty lake water, billing itself as the Dead Sea of Canada.

The Manitou Springs Hotel heats up the lake water and pumps it into a serious of indoor pools that range from merely hot to cabbage soup in temperature. The place has a real old European vibe and we were among the youngest guests in the place. In theory you’re supposed to float better in salt water, but I’ve never been able to feel the difference when swimming in the ocean. This was my first time in a salt pool and it really was astounding how buoyant we all were. You can honestly just lie there and float on the surface without moving, without even taking a deep breath. It is difficult to dive down and touch the bottom. Baby Girl and I found a whirlpool created by competing water jets and just floated in the gyre, spinning and staring at the ceiling. Paddling about, I also accidentally smacked some lady that my own mother would call “ma’am” on the butt. I was mortified while she pretended to be, between giggles. We stayed in the pools until we were all glowing pink, shading into parboiled.

Upstairs in our pleasantly appointed room, Those Johnston Kids found game shows on television and we all relaxed in a bug-free environment for a change. Mama was new to the road, but the rest of needed to absorb some cushy city living, even it was just a half-empty hotel in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. No offence meant to the fine people of Manitou Beach. We enjoyed our stay!

The kids paddled in the Campland pool after we got back from the Canadian Tire debacle, while I tried to catch up on my blogging. Sorry about that, by the way. Writing requires coordinating access to the net, with electricity to power my gadgets, and time off from entertaining/caring for Those Johnston Kids. I usually post when they’re eating or sleeping; we engage each other too much most other times.

Anyway, while I was working, Wes, Campland’s owner passed by and asked if I was getting a decent WiFi connection. I replied that the connection was fine by the pool, it being pretty close to the base station. He complained that even though he had the fastest WiFi his provider could provide, the bandwidth was chewed up by people streaming video like YouTube, pr0n, NetFlix, pr0n, and AppleTV, weird pr0n. Wes wanted a way to block streaming video, but keep everything else working. I remarked that I was a technical guy in my former life and that I was sure there was a way. He asked, quite seriously, if I would take a look, and offered me a $100 if I could fix it for him. I laughed and said I’d have a look and see if there was an easy solution for his router hardware.

A little technical aside: all data, whether email, websites, video, or whatever, looks the same to the software framework of the internet. It’s all just bits of information. Logically, if you send or receive more bits over the internet you should pay more. If you only use a little, your bill is low, use a lot and your bill is high. Simple, right? The companies that make money controlling the internet have a different idea. They want to know what you like to do on the internet most pr0n, and charge you more for that kind of data. To figure out what you’re doing, they do something that the basic internet protocols were specifically designed not to do: they look at the individual packets of data to see what kind of data it is. The telecoms can then slow down data they don’t like, a competitor’s video service, for example, or speed up data they do like, such as their own video service. This kind of inspection and manipulation of data is called traffic shaping, and is antithetical to the principles that underlie the architecture of the internet. It has been a back and forth battle between telecoms and regulators to keep all data on the internet equal and neutral. You are, unless you work for a telecom or believe conservative alarmism, in favour of net neutrality.

If you’re also a geek, I am aware that I’ve glossed over a lot of really scintillating details about the net neutrality struggle. Sue me, or read Michael Geist. The other interesting thing about traffic shaping, to continue, is that it’s difficult to do. It takes a lot of computing power to inspect every bit of data passing through a router, and general purpose routers aren’t really made for that kind of thing. Trying to traffic shape a small private network with incurring costs in dollars or performance is challenging. I wasn’t optimistic that there was a solution for Wes, but thought it worth a look to see if the hardware vendor had built the capability into the router.

I had a couple of hours to investigate while the kids worked off excess energy in the pool. In the end, I found a QoS script written by some clever fellow that did a sort of coarse simulated traffic shaping. It would need to be installed and set to run on the router, but with my schedule I couldn’t offer to do it for Wes. He was still appreciative though, and insisted on some sort of compensation. I declined energetically, but in the end we settled on ice cream for the family, on the house. He also offered me a job if I wanted to come live at Campland next summer. Maybe I’ll do that instead of clerking at some law firm. I love Saskatoon.

It was Saturday afternoon, the 11th of July and we were sitting in the Campland RV park, trying to make up our razoodocks about what to do with the evening, when Short Pants said “Look Papa, my tooth is loose,” and waggled the tusk in question at me. I reached in, pulled it out, and showed it to him. “This one?” And that was how Short Pants lost his first tooth.

To celebrate, we treated ourselves to a movie in Saskatoon. We went to see an early evening show of Minions, with a crowd of other little people. I am normally indifferent to kids’ movies, but I let it go and just rode the wave of goofiness. We all thought it was a riot. You should see it.

First things first on Saturday the 11th: we had to fix that cursed air conditioner. I don’t wake the kids, preferring to let them rouse on their own, so they were up by 9 AM. With the late nights they’re keeping, this is what passes for the crack of dawn for them. They rushed down a bowl of cereal and we piled into the car and headed into town. I wanted to be first in line at Canadian Tire when it opened, to give their ‘mechanics’ as long as possible to look at the vehicle. Unfortunately, even though we were the first there, we were told that there wouldn’t be a free mechanic for 3 or 4 hours. We left, disappointed, but looking forward to a swim back at Campland RV. The day was already hotting up.

It was while we were looking for our swim suits that we made a terrible discovery. We had left our pack in Wasagaming, Manitoba, the day before! When we stopped to fill our water jug as we left town, we had left behind our knapsack containing swim suits, goggles, towels, and worst of all, Holly’s camera. Lake was unperturbed as he had another pair of shorts to swim in and that was his only concern. Holly was disappointed at the loss of her little camera, which had been a birthday gift. I was most troubled by the loss of the pictures she had been taking.

I immediately called the Tempo gas station in Wasagaming, as we had stopped there shortly before leaving, and it was close to the water house. They said that they would go over to have a look when they weren’t so busy, and took my phone number to call me back. Still concerned, I was able to get through to the Riding Mountain visitor centre and explain our situation. The very helpful young lady that I spoke to, Lindsay, offered to walk over to the water house immediately to see if the bag was still there. Within 20 minutes she had called me back to say that our knapsack had been found and turned in to the visitor centre. They promised to hold it until we passed back through Manitoba in August. And all was right with the world again! Even sweeter, about 2 hours later the gas station
proprietor called back as well. She had gone to take a look and, like Lindsay, found the bag missing. She also found a note that Lindsay had missed, that read that the knapsack had been found and turned in. So you see, people really are good.

Or my damp Speedo banana hammock didn’t fit the finder. You know, either or.

With the camera crisis happily solved, it was time to return to Canadian Tire. Naturally our AC didn’t last the 20 minutes it took to drive to the garage. Also naturally, they couldn’t see our vehicle yet. They unhelpful lady at the counter suggested that we come back first thing in the morning, although she wouldn’t make an actual appointment for us on a Sunday. I ground my teeth. I can make or fix just about anything – accept cars. If I was at home, with my full complement of tools, I would have at least given it a shot, but on the road, there’s not much I can do.

We logically turned our minds back to swimming. A swim can cheer the most grim mood. We found Baby Girl a nice new swimsuit in a SportChek near to Canadian Tire and went back to Campland for some liquid therapy. This prompts another observation of RV life. Almost everybody is white and, to my eye, kinda unhealthy looking. I bear a parent’s bias, but in the pool I couldn’t ignore the contrast between Those Johnston Kids, who are wiry looking and browning nicely, and the pale, well-fed children around them. I don’t want to make unscientific conclusions based on my limited observations, but RV life seems to bolster the correlation between race and affluence in Canada.

Our original destination for the 10th was some provincial park midway between Riding Mountain and Saskatoon. The kids decided, however, that they wanted to proceed directly to Saskatoon, despite the longer drive of about 6 hours. I am seeing a pattern. When we’re approaching a metropolis, they get excited at the prospect of electricity, fewer hungry insects, and professionally prepared meals, and are anxious to speed up the schedule. In horse terms, we call this smelling the barn. Psh, I say. What has civilisation ever brought us except comfort, health, and longer life spans?

Another factor in their eagerness to see Saskatoon – and likely the prime reason – was the prospect of seeing Mama. Our plan was to pick her up from the airport in Saskatoon on the 12th, so she could join the expedition for two weeks. There have been a couple of tearful episodes so far. When they pause to think about it, or when they’re feeling down, Those Johnston Kids miss their mother, pets, and home, in that order. I was also looking forward to some adult company. The 12th was a big day!

The drive to Saskatoon was a trial without air conditioning. The temperature went up to 30 degrees, unbearable in a dark car. The wind offered some cooling respite, but Short Pants doesn’t generally like the wind on his face and insisted that the windows be rolled up. I humoured him to make a point. You can guess how long that lasted. With sweat beading on his forehead, Short Pants conceded that perhaps leaving the windows down was a better strategy. Not long after that, the two of them were hanging out the open windows (doors locked, seatbelts on, of course), wagging their tongues like rez dogs.

We were still half-roasted by the time we reached Saskatoon. I pledged to take the car into Canadian Tire first thing in the morning. Spending the rest of the summer in the Johnston family mobile broiler was simply not tenable.

Our next campsite was reserved at Campland RV Resort. You’ve read my puzzlement over the whole RV lifestyle, but Campland was a whole new level of RV experience. It is about 10 km west of Saskatoon, built 5 years ago on what must have been a farm at some point. There are few trees, and none is taller than me in any case. There is a grid of gravel roads connected by large pull-through parking/camping sites. It resembles nothing so much as a very large parking lot, albeit very well maintained. In between each spacious gravel driveway is the most lush, green, perfect  lawn I have ever seen outside of a golf course. Seriously, Those Johnston Kids burst out of the car as soon as we stopped and starting jumping on it like it was a bouncy castle. My hat is off to Campland’s ground crew. Awesome stuff.

I guess I just don’t understand RVing as an end in itself. Heck, I don’t even like camping. Why pretend to live somewhere that’s just like home only less comfortable or convenient? I only rarely go out into the wild and just stop. That seems pointless to me. I will happily rough it on the way to somewhere, though. This summer, I feel like we have a destination ahead of us. I’m not sure where it is, and I’m not sure that we’ll even know for years, but this trip will take us someplace we’ll never forget.