I attended a family wedding this past weekend. It was a good trip for the most part. Though I was under-prepared for the cooler than seasonal night up there, I managed. It was good to see many of my relatives again; I just wish I was better adapted for this sort of social environment. I don't have a physical problem with my hearing; but I don't know if it is because I'm just getting older, or because I'm too accustomed to a more introverted lifestyle: I find myself having a brain that's more diminished in capability in filtering out multiple conversations; so being in a crowded, noisy community hall is sensory overload for me.
I was also invited to another family member's wedding in Banff in late August of this year. Sadly and regretfully, I won't be able to attend that one. I do like Banff; I've been there three times already, but the last time was there was around 20 years ago. Thinking back for each of those times, it was a miracle that I've made it in and out of there with the less than road-worthy vehicles I had to use at those times. This subject, plus reviewing my last entry, prompted me to think about making road trips within this country, as some more holiday time is coming my way. As like with many Canadians, I am one who has been blissfully ignorant about just how huge our country is in comparison to others, and just how skewed our notions are about what 'big' and 'small', or 'near' and 'far', are in terms of distance and scale in relation to those preconceptions from those of other nations; and what we consider is 'normal' for our needs/challenges to travel around, even just within our respective home provinces.* I was doing this after reviewing the time, distance I covered, and the amount of fuel I used, just to go the destination of this last wedding, which was within the province. I was further sobered up to this fact upon realizing through another conversation that the province of Saskatchewan alone is about 15 times the size of Denmark. I'm imagining that the whole scene of the sparseness of our population, distances between towns, and the expense of some rail and air fares for even trips within this country that are greater than some international flights, must appear so grossly inefficient to someone from someplace within, let's say, western Europe when it comes to the subject of travel.
I'm coming around to really disliking long road trips for the sake vacationing now, especially given that the price of fuel is constantly rising. If I have to do more than six or seven hours of driving just to arrive at one destination then I'd rather just fly. It's the fact that you start off (from here) with having to go a ridiculously long way just to get out of territory and scenery that you are already familiar with. The only advantage of it is that you can drive through it relatively quickly, but it still makes for a long drive. I would dread having to live any further south of here. I'm at an age and a place where I pretty much got the general concept of what prairie looks like, and driving through it more doesn't make it look any more exciting or appealing. To put it in perspective for the benefit of my international readers: from my city, you have to drive through what amounts to half the length of England just to escape prairieland, before you just start touching the closest fringe of what is the decent natural parkland and woodland north of here. It may have been OK to do back in the days of my youth, but for me now, it just sums up to more wasted time on the road. I would probably have a different attitude altogether if I were touring another continent with a sparse population on the road, like Australia, because that would be a totally different place I've never seen before. Then again, I would tire quickly of it if it were desert land I was traversing.
I've come to realize that each day I'm allotted less and less time on this Earth, so when I am lucky enough to get time off, I want to get wherever I want to go as soon as I can, and spend less of that time staring down a highway lane and driving. I have only three days to use of my five days off**, and a drive within my six hour radius/comfort zone doesn't really bring me close to anyplace I really want to explore in depth. A sore knee, neck, and back is making tenting and sleeping on the ground up in the bush country not too appealing, as I am trying to recover again for marathon training. Like with the last stint of time off, I might have to be content with creating an adventure at home.
*- And vice versa . . . I heard more than one story of various people in this province who've had guests arriving (I've heard from Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Australia, Hong Kong, and even the United States) who landed in Toronto or Vancouver, and were expecting their friends or relatives to meet them there in something like a couple hours to greet them. Rule # 1 of travel: LEARN SOME FUCKIN' GEOGRAPHY!
**-Two claimed by other appointments.
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