HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-07-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2013. PAGE 5.
Iam the Joe Btfsplk of travel. You know Joe
B.? A cartoon character in the L’il Abner
comic strip. Joe was a jinx. He carried
around his personal black cloud of bad luck –
which you could be infected by if you stood
too close to Joe.
Ditto for me when it comes to tourism.
If you see me coming towards you in
Tilley shorts and sunglasses, lugging a
backpack and a boarding pass, drop your
bags and run far away. If we travel together
you will suffer from altitude sickness,
mislaid passports, drunken taxi drivers,
phantom hotel reservations and your
luggage will likely end up in a Somali
war zone.
Consider: I went to Hawaii; it snowed. I
went to the sunny Canary Islands; it rained
for 11 days straight. I’ve been hustled
in Havana, bamboozled in Bangkok,
marooned in Morocco and pick-pocketed in
Panama.
But I’d never ridden Via Rail’s Canadian
from Vancouver to Toronto. What could go
wrong – they’re professionals, right? Via trains
have been criss-crossing the country in
gleaming, purring, clickety-clacking stainless
steel convoys since forever. Everyone knows
about the impeccable service, the spotless
linen, the sparkling, actual, silverware (not the
crappy plastic Barbie spoons you get on
airplanes).
And there’s the scenery. My train started in
Vancouver, meandered leisurely through the
saw-toothed Rockies, glided smoothly across
the Big Sky Prairies which yielded to the rock-
trees-lake-rock-trees motif of northern
Ontario, which gradually morphed and melded
into gorgeous Group of Seven landscapes
of Muskoka cottage country and finally,
Toronto.
Eventually. But this time Joe Btfsplk was on
board. We made it to Edmonton before
the infamous Btfsplk Mojo began to assert
itself. By Wainwright we were running two
hours late. Mechanical problems. We lost
more time between Watrous and Melville,
Saskatchewan after a passenger hit her
head on a footrest, sustaining, the conductor
assured me, a clip on the forehead that
“looked like a horse kicked her.” The
next passenger to fall didn’t suffer his
(mild) heart attack until we’d left Gogama,
Ontario but it took some adroit cell
phone manoeuvring to find a meeting
point so an ambulance could pick him up
and take him to a hospital. Not that we were
in a hurry. One of the train’s engines had
gone to locomotive heaven by that time and
the remaining engine, overheating with
the strain of lugging that corpse plus the
other 10 cars, meant we had to stop
every 50 miles to check for overheating
bearings.
And eventually we had to unhitch and ditch
the dead engine. That ate up another hour.
And then there’s the little secret
the brochures don’t mention. Via rents
the track from CN Rail. CN is in the
freight business. That means boxcars first;
passengers last. On day three we stopped
13 times to cede freight trains the right
of way. It eats up a lot of minutes, slowing a
big train to a stop, coasting into a lay-by
while a freight train passes then getting up to
speed again. Soon we were running seven
hours late.
But kudos to Via Rail personnel. They
are consummate pros in the hospitality
biz. With loving kindness they transformed
a simmering miasma of passenger anger
to a near-ethereal plane of philosophical
What’s-The-Rush? They treated us like
family. Like a family of rajahs. They
cajoled, they commiserated, they all
but stroked our brows with Evian-dampened
Via serviettes.
The free champagne they kept doling out
didn’t hurt either.
Our train limped into Toronto’s Union
Station 12 hours and 20 minutes late.
We should have been a cauldron of red-
faced, cursing, pissed-off customers. I
didn’t hear or see a single one. It was
‘an adventure’. An ‘experience’. A ‘lot
of fun’. There were smiles and hugs all
around.
Plus every passenger received a 100 per cent
discount on the economy fare of their next Via
Rail trip. Even Joe Btfsplk.
Thanks Via Rail – but letting Joe on your
train again? You’re playing with fire.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Have train ticket, will travel
Trust me, I realize I write about sports a
lot, especially baseball. But when I do, I
always try to go beyond the game to find
something human and “off the field” if you
will, about what’s happening on the field.
This week it wasn’t hard to find that deeper
meaning in sports when Blue Jays catcher J.P.
Arencibia reached out to “the strongest and
most beautiful girl” he’s ever met to throw out
the first pitch at last Sunday’s game against the
Minnesota Twins.
That girl is 14-year-old Jessica Dunn, a
Torontonian and a big Blue Jays fan. Dunn
contacted Arencibia through the social
networking site Twitter one day, he visited her
at Sick Kids Hospital and they have been good
friends ever since.
Over the course of battling bone cancer,
Dunn has had her left leg amputated, but she
appears to have beaten the disease through a
long, grueling process. Now another grueling
journey awaits as she begins the road to
recovery. It was just over a month ago that she
took her first steps since having her leg
removed. She posted a picture on the internet
of this triumph, wearing her Arencibia jersey.
So in spring training, when Arencibia was
told he would be one of three players to be
immortalized with their own bobblehead this
season, he knew he wanted to do something
special that day.
He told Dunn he wanted her to throw out the
game’s first pitch and soon after taking her first
steps, throwing a baseball was integrated into
her rehabilitation routine.
Equipped with a prosthetic leg and a cane,
Dunn began practicing, telling friends she was
afraid she might fall during her big moment.
That wasn’t the case, however, as she fired a
strike into Arencibia followed by a hug
between the two that garnered a standing
ovation from the Rogers Centre crowd.
This came at the end of a week where
Arencibia had been anything but silent.
On Thursday, tired of being ripped apart by
Blue Jays analysts Dirk Hayhurst and Gregg
Zaun for a season in which he is hitting just
under .220, but with 15 home runs at the All-
Star break, Arencibia took the radio airwaves
to defend himself sparking a huge debate in the
baseball world.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, baseball is
being taken over by people who are obsessed
with statistics. These are people who are better
at math than you and I combined (not hard to
do likely, because I’m sure I couldn’t pull my
weight in that arena) who focus all of their
attention on baseball and they are obsessed
with proving that undervalued players are
being missed out on and that overvalued
players are being paid too much.
Seeing Arencibia and Dunn embrace to a
standing ovation before a game where the Blue
Jays won by a score of 11-5 reminds us that
sports goes beyond what happens on the field.
When players like Arencibia reach out to the
community and use their status to help make
someone in a bad situation smile, it transcends
whatever game is being played.
It’s why players like Roberto Clemente, who
could dedicate rooms to the awards he won,
will be remembered for their humanitarian
work, rather than their play. Annually the
Roberto Clemente Award is given to the player
“who best exemplifies the game of baseball,
sportsmanship, community involvement and
the individual’s contribution to his team.”
So while Arencibia went 1-3 on Sunday and
left three runners on base, he no doubt earned
thousands of new fans thanks to his class and
the size of his heart.
Beyond the game
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
For me, a vacation that requires hours and
hours of driving isn’t really all that
appealing anymore.
Sure, I’ve loved taking a long weekend to
visit Montreal, or the countless number
of times I’ve gone south of the border to
Florida and even the time I went to Ottawa. It
was all great and that probably has a lot to
do with the fact that I didn’t have to drive
there or even worry about financing the whole
thing.
It wasn’t until I got my driver’s licence and
started driving long distances that I really
grasped the idea of someone being
‘driven’ crazy. I think the statement is
misunderstood. You’re not driven to
becoming crazy. You’re not forced to it. No,
when someone is driving you crazy, you are
literally going from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ and
you are driving the distance from sane to
crazy.
Now, normally I like road trips. You know,
going to Kitchener, Waterloo, Toronto or even
up north to the so-called “cottage country”
(cottage country to me is somewhere between
Goderich and Grand Bend, but that’s a story
for another day). Even on trips like my last to
my friend’s cottage, where I ended up stuck in
the same spot on Highway 400 for more than
an hour, it was still more or less an enjoyable
experience.
That’s why this summer I plan on having the
best staycation of my life and avoiding all the
stress of driving.
If you wonder what kind of stresses
there are, I’ll share a story about this past
weekend, when I hit my driving breaking
point.
I don’t mind driving to Brampton and
I don’t mind driving back, but I avoid
Highway 401 like it’s a bio-hazard area.
I do this because the back roads are
more colourful, more exciting and have a
heck of a lot fewer people who seem to drive
with their hands on autopilot and their
attention focused on their phone.
This week, however, I had to make a stop-
over on my way home and it required me to
take some roads more travelled.
I had to visit the Grand Bend area and, as
much fun as I had when I was there, I was
driven to the breaking point (get it?) by the
people hauling their trailers at half the speed
limit on the highway.
I’m not one of those folks who think they
own the road but, on the rare occasion I’m
hauling something, I tend to keep an eye out
behind me. If someone in some coupe or sedan
is closing in pretty fast, I’ll usually pull over
and let them go past me because it’s the right
thing to do. I’m not going as fast as the normal
flow of traffic, so I should be mindful of such
things.
It seems, however, I’m alone in this thought
process.
On my way to and from Grand Bend, I
found dozens of people hauling their trailers,
some of which had trailers so wide and
vehicles so thin they couldn’t possibly see
behind them, so not allowing others to pass
may have been as much their ignorance of
other drivers as their arrogance in believing
they have more of a right to the road than
others. It seems courtesy is a long-gone notion
these days.
It was enough to convince me that
any doubts about my staycation were
unfounded.
To that end, I’ve decided that, come The
Citizen’s annual August vacation, where we
close down for a week and enjoy the
summer weather, I’m likely going to enjoy a
staycation.
Typically, these breaks are filled with plans
of driving to every point on the compass to
visit friends and acquaintances but I think this
time I’m just going to invite them to come to
me.
I’m going to commandeer a small family
getaway and drop off the radar for a few days
and if anyone’s going to find me they’re going
to need to walk barefoot across a dirt road and
some hot sand to find me.
Sure, it’s a bit of a hike south on Highway 21
to get where I’m going, and, right now,
that highway looks like the dog’s breakfast
that the dog ate again and then...
well processed a second time but I figure
once I get there with nothing but the blue
waters of Lake Huron to make noise to bother
me, I’ll be content enough to start my
staycation.
I’m going to stock up on the essentials:
beverages, red meat, pork, chicken, bread and
beverages and hit the road.
I’ll haul a dozen books, a television and
hours of movies and games in case it rains,
swim trunks and t-shirts in hopes that it
doesn’t and a comfortable chair for all
occasions.
I plan on working on my suntan (burn),
devouring some new books and not touching
the road unless it’s before 7 a.m. or after
7 p.m.
I encourage you to do the same. When it
comes time to take a day or seven away
from work, be aware of what’s going on
around you.
Visit the Celtic Fest, take in a show at
the Blyth Festival or just visit that store
you’ve driven past dozens of times. The
less you travel, the happier your vacation
will be.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Preparing for an epic staycation