Sunday, August 30. 1 day before the start of school.

We woke up early in our Holiday Inn Express suite, less for the urgency of getting home in a timely fashion than for the free breakfast buffet. It was the usual uninspired mix of dry cereals, muffins, yogurt, and sterilized fruit that populates all breakfast buffets, but it was made more exciting by a do-it-yourself waffle machine. The waffles I made looked like mutant ping-pong paddles, but Those Johnston Kids ate them anyway. I don’t eat breakfast so I just waited and watched the Russians at the next table.

Their group was comprised of one really old guy in a shirt that Magnum P.I. might have worn, one young guy, and twin blonde women in their late teens. None of them look related, with the exception of the twins. They were dressed at 8 AM as if their first stop was going to be a night club. I was fascinated but that mystery remained unsolved. We took a couple of muffins and hit the road.

I would like to say that we had an uneventful trip home, but it is never that easy. In order to satisfy the narrative arc we’ve come to expect, the heroes have to face adversity before we believe in them. Otherwise it’s not a story. Challenges have to be met, the protagonists seemingly overcome, then comes the retribution and victory to close out the tale. So our asses were adversarialized.

Somewhere east of Montreal, our trailer blew another tire. The tires had less than 5000 KM on them, so I was a little nonplussed. It’s also a strange coincidence that our tire blew in the home stretch again. This time we were ready though. We had a decent spare, already inflated, a tire iron, and a jack. Of course I had to empty the car to get at the tools, but that wasn’t too bad. It looked like we were setting up a yard sale on the side of the highway.

As I was starting the tire change, another car pulled up behind us. A smiling fireplug of a man got out and asked if we needed help – in French. Language practice time! I explained that my French was poor and that we would have to speak slowly. He agreed and set in assisting with the repair, which was mostly watching me carefully to make sure that I did it right. I didn’t mind. It was nice to have company anyway. We smalltalked as best we could in our pigeon dialects. He told me that he was a mechanic.

I’m not sure why he stopped; I think he was just being a good Samaritan for a family on the road. After a while, I noticed his wife dozing in their car. I apologized for delaying her and thanked her for the assistance as well, which she accepted graciously. When we were done, I told the fellow (whose name I scandalously did not get) that I didn’t have any money on me, but I would like to give him a cake. Why did I want to give him a cake, he asked? I thought hard about the question then realized I had confused gâteau, cake, with cadeau, gift. No, no, I corrected myself, a gift.

I explained that we were autochtones, Aboriginal, and gave him a sage bundle that I had picked in the Cypress Hills. I told him that it was medicine. Medicine, he asked? Well, not true medicine, I replied, medicine for your heart. He understood and accepted it solemnly. It was really quite a moving exchange. We all got back on the road, happy with the encounter for our own reasons. I think it was good for the kids to see adults, strangers, helping each other just because it was the right thing to do.

We blew through Montreal, and completely bypassed Ottawa. Our next goal was Fitzroy Provincial Park in Ontario. That was where Baby Girl had forgotten her wallet in the camp store a couple of weeks earlier. It seemed like a long time ago. Around 4 PM we groaned up to the campground and manoeuvered into the parking lot. The wallet was recovered with nothing at all missing. The vacation souvenir fund was intact. I’ll be honest though: I bought all the souvenirs anyway. Those Johnston Kids have to save for university.

And that was about it. The 5 hour drive from Fitzroy to home was punctuated by really biblical rain on the 401, but that only slowed us down. Nothing was going to stop the homebound train. We pulled into our own driveway around 10 PM on Sunday night. With school in the morning I only took enough time to empty the car of electronics and other costly sundries before calling it a night. The dirty laundry, books, and rocks could wait until morning.

Our leg east added another 5780 kilometers to our previous mark of 14 840, bringing our summer total distance travelled to 20 620 kilometers! Holy cow.

August 29, we were actually fed, showered and on the road before well before 9 AM (AST), which was a first for us. We had few plans except to get the hell home, each of us for our own reasons. Short Pants accepted the destination with his typical sangfroid – he’s a pretty good traveler for all his disappointing lack of confidence in my navigation skills. Baby Girl was positively radiant at the prospect of going home for reals. She lives very much in the moment. She’s enjoyed each activity of the summer at it’s time, but has never stopped missing home, her pets, and Mama, not in that order.

Phantom of the Opera and lots of conversation carried us out of Cape Breton pretty quickly. While we were manifestly intent on getting home quickly, I did agree to a short diversion to the Hopewell Rocks on the Bay of Fundy. The Rocks are dramatic sea-sculpted formations carved out of the red sandstone cliffs by the year-round weathering of the Fundy tides. The rocks have been formed into arches, caves and giant mushrooms.

There was a nominal charge to enter the park. We paid about $20 for the three of us then raced our way down the path towards the water. It was fun to get some exercise. The tide was just going out as we started our walk along the shore. Tourists were wading in thigh deep water to inspect the rocks. As an experiment, we left a large rock at the waterline to mark the level. An hour later, on our way back, the watery places where the tourists had been wading was high and dry, and our marker rock was standing alone on a wide beach. We did some quick calculations to figure that the water had dropped about a meter in 45 minutes. Cool!

Well after that, it was just a car chase as we made our way north through New Brunswick and into Quebec. We had to cover as much ground as possible if we were going to be back in Toronto for school on Monday. As dusk approached we found ourselves across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City in the ville of Levis. We found ourselves accommodations at an outpost of the ever-popular Holiday Inn Express. Those Johnston Kids settled in for some quality time with Treehouse on cable while I ordered pizza and salad from a local place that delivered.

We picked at our food and hit the hay early. Too much driving is exhausting.

It was overcast and still on Thursday. It threatened to turn ugly all day, but never really turned that corner. Nonetheless, we hunkered down, not wanting to be caught out if the heavens should open. It didn’t suck to not drive anywhere for a day anyway. We spent a quiet day around the cottage, but there was one notable event.

I received an generic email from the administration at Osgoode Hall Law School, welcoming students back to school, with a reminder that classes started on Monday. Monday. That is August 31st, 3 days later. I recovered my spleen from where I had spat it and logged into the Oz website to check the schedule. It was legit. Osgoode decided to start classes early because Labour Day was so late this year. This necessitated a dramatic rethink of our travel plans.

We had planned to stay at the cottage until Saturday, then meander home over the course of 5 or 6 days, with several stops along the way. That was all off the table now. We would leave on Saturday and put the hammer down. I expected that we wouldn’t get home until Monday evening, but that would only mean one missed class for me, so it was acceptable. The other problem we faced was childcare for Those Johnston Kids while I was at school and Mama at work, but we could deal with that later.

Friday was sunny, windy, and our last full day in Cape Breton. I had promised the kids that we would return to Point Michaud for more boogie boarding, so that was our plan for the morning. First, though, I had to have a leaky tire fixed. We’d been having trouble with one wheel that wouldn’t hold air for more than a few days. Rather than take the care to Canadian Tire and endure their inevitable and costly administrations, I went to a small local auto repair. The mechanic looked at immediately and within 15 minutes we were on our way with a newly patched tire, $15 all in. Canadian Tire could take a lesson (or several) in customer service.

The weather was fine at Point Michaud, but more importantly the surf was up and reliable. The teenage instructors were willing to take the kids out for a proper lesson. They were a cash only business, so I paid for the class with a handful of coins from the car change cup big enough to pull down their baggy shorts. Short Pants was pleased to wear a wetsuit even though the water was remarkably even warmer than it had been on Wednesday. I rented a surfboard and joined Those Johnston Kids and their instructor in the Atlantic. They can be a handful.

We did not learn how to surf but the wee ones were pretty thrilled to ride waves in to shore on their boards. The instructor was earnest, but a bit flustered. She was very young and was probably more used to teaching attentive adults than willful merchildren. While she tried to teach one surfing basics, I would shove the other down a likely wave and watch the ensuing hilarity.

That was plenty good enough for Baby Girl who shrieked and cackled all the way to shore with every ride but never managed to get to more than her hands and knees on the board. I barely improved on my previous attempts at surfing but did get up to a reliable kneel and could steer reasonably well. On the downside, repeatedly throwing my naked chest on the rubberized deck of the board to catch a wave had the effect of painfully pulling out my chest hair. That must be why surfers are always boyishly smooth-chested.

Short Pants was the most successful of us all. As they called us in to return the boards, I looked up to see him riding a small wave into the shallows, perfectly stable with his arms down at his sides. He looked almost bored at how easy it was.

Back at the cottage, we spent the evening packing and prepping for an early departure. OMG, school starts on Monday!

I learned through a third party (Mama) that Baby Girl had lost her wallet. She had been afraid to tell me that it was gone. That was unfortunate because if she had told me sooner we might have recovered it immediately. She seemed pretty certain that she had left it at the camp store at Fitzroy Provincial Park, our first stop on the road east from home. It immediately brought to mind our misadventure with our pack containing her camera in Riding Mountain National Park. I called Fitzroy as soon as it was open and described the wallet and contents. Happily, it had been recovered and was even intact with contents. They agreed to hold on to it until we passed through again. Our trip is almost thematic in its repetition of things lost and found.

I had an interesting experience last week, as we sat in the parlour of Rita’s Tea Room in Big Pond, Cape Breton. Short Pants asked about the ‘big CDs’ on the walls, leading me to try to explain what a platinum record was. Of course, I went into the Bell and the history of the phonograph, wax cylinders, plastic disks at 78 rpm, electromagnetic induction, master disks and vinyl pressing. Naturally that led to the explanation that platinum and gold records actually weren’t, with the exception of the gold record included with the Voyager spacecraft, now on its way out of the heliosphere. Then the clam chowder came and I ran out of time to finish the lesson.

Road trips have come a long way from automotive record players, and binders of CDs. On our trip I carried about 300 albums of music on a very small USB thumbdrive. Not that it was necessary. Kids like familiarity and repetition, and Those Johnston Kids are no different. If something is good to listen to, it will be good to listen to again, and again, and again. Despite the plethora of music available in our collection, in many different genres, we really only listened to 3 recordings, with the occasional diversion mandated for my sanity.

As we drove west, the Imagine Dragons were in heavy rotation (funny choice of words, isn’t it?). There’s that one lyric from Radioactive, that goes “don’t make my system blow”, that the kids always sing as “don’t break my sisters toes”. That’s only funny the first 30 or so times you hear it though.

After we picked up Mama and were moving through BC, they discovered Stompin’ Tom. That album got played pretty much non-stop from Vancouver, when we picked up Alison, back to Ontario. Alison was not a Stompin’ Tom fan especially before the trip, and still isn’t, but at least now she knows all the words. It was neat to visit or pass through many of the places that Stompin’ Tom sang about.

As we headed east from Toronto, Those Johnston Kids discovered The Phantom of the Opera. They are now ready to perform any of the singing roles in the British production. Baby Girl would like to play the Phantom herself. She didn’t much take to the role of Christine, but belts out the Phantom’s verses with verve.

The weather on Wednesday was happily a bit better. It was a mix of clouds and sun with the blend favouring the daystar. Baby Girl had been agitating for a chance to try surfing at the world famous (?) Point Michaud beach, so it seemed like a good day to try it out. I took an utterly ineffectual surfing lesson there a few years back. After about 6 hours in the water the best I had managed was about 3 seconds on my feet, although I wouldn’t call it standing so much as falling terribly slowly. It is astonishing even to me that I can ride a unicycle, and keep a boat upright in anything short of a tsunami, but can’t stand on a surfboard. All my talent is obviously in my ass.

Nevertheless, the surf beckoned, so off we went. As we drove, I became aware of a curious odour in the car. At first it was just a whiff, a scented tendril that tickled at the back of the nose, but it grew in strength as the car warmed up in the sun until it was a full bore olfactory insult. It was the smell of a ripe cheese, or the socks of a teenage boy. It was body odour freshened up with a hint of old seaweed. It was the contents of a sealed race bag that you discover rotting forgotten in the back of your car. Naturally I blamed Those Johnston Kids and castigated their lack of foot hygiene and general affinity for dirt. They protested ineffectually.

We discovered the actual culprit when we arrived at the beach and piled out of the reeking car. As I pulling our swimwear out of the back, I realized that the rank stank was emanating from our trunks. We had hung them to dry after our kayak on Monday, but they still smelled terrible. Something dark and monstrous lives in the cold water of the Bras D’Or, and it smells like parmigiano. It couldn’t be helped though, so we put on the rotten suits anyway. Short Pants complained bitterly, but isn’t into skinny-dipping. Yet.

In the parking lot at the Point Michaud beach, there is a small hut that houses the lifeguards and surfing instructors. You can arrange a lesson, or just rent equipment, at exceedingly reasonable rates. On this day, they didn’t recommend a surfing lesson because the wind was blowing up choppy, unpredictable surf. They did rent us boogie boards, a metre-long oval of painted foam, for a mere $5 per hour. The staff were very friendly, but they may have just wanted to get the strange cheese-smelling people out of the close little shack.

Those Johnston Kids are legendary for their seal-like ability to swim in anything short of solid water, but Short Pants isn’t much of an eater and is skinny like a rez dog. I don’t know where he gets it. While Baby Girl was immersed before we boys even hit the water, Short Pants found the water entirely too cold for his liking. I think maybe he was having an off day because he was showing symptoms of a head cold as well. After a few forays into the Atlantic up to his waist, he finally gave it up as unreasonable and went to sunbathe instead. That meant lying fully dressed on a towel in the sun. Practical if not traditional.

Baby Girl and I in the waves, some of which were respectably large. Things got a lot more fun when she finally caught a wave with her board and surfed it into shore on her belly. We spent two hours in the water with nary a break until even I started to get chilly. She would never admit such a weakness.

On our way back to the cottage we stopped at the dock in the tiny village of L’Ardoise, which is apparently not pronounced in French as you would expect. It’s pronounced in English, with a heavy east coast accent. That’s not very specific, I realise, but whatever pronunciation you come up with based on my description will be closer than the French. We went there to buy live lobsters for Granfa. He loves him some ocean-dwelling arthropods. Lobsters were out of season in the area, but there is a fishing company there that has some in tanks all summer. I don’t know if fishers save them from their catch during open season, or if they ship them from areas where the season is open. Probably the latter. Live lobsters are pretty easy to transport on ice because they just go dormant. Anyway, we picked up 3, one each for Granfa, Bobby, and Baby Girl. I don’t mind lobster, but I wasn’t in the mood for all the live-killing and tearing apart required. I think Short Pants was on the same page as me, but Baby Girl was already whispering “kill, kill, kill, kill” under her breath like Jason.

Back at the cottage, Granfa fussed about in a pleased fashion, getting ready for a lobster dinner, the kids GameBoyed themselves silly, and I took a nap. You know those dreams when you’re being chased by zombie raptors? I hate those.

Come dinnertime, Granfa covered the table with plastic and newspaper and taught Baby Girl how to disassemble a lobster. It was like watching a biology class dissection. I participated long enough to secure Short Pants a set of empty claws. We put them on the deck to dry out and ate our leftover spaghetti with relish.