Thankful all THAT's over

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 10
11/27/08
1345

Thankful all that’s over…

Thanksgiving Day is the end of a kinda-crappy couple of weeks. After spending 31 years displaying an immune system that would make Superman sniffle, I’ve been sick on and off for almost a month now. Thanks, Minnesota! Or more specifically, Thanks, casino! Or even more specifically, Thanks, cornucopia of random Asians and your exotic Far East diseases! My last month has been a Bouillabaisse of snot, cough syrup, in-and-out voices and weirdly sore body parts. I am proud to say that my lifelong streak of never puking due to illness is intact. Small victories.

In addition to my constantly fluctuating health situation, we’ve had the usual Gibbs family random problems. Three weekends ago, my ‘new’ vehicle made its inaugural trip to the gas station only to spit 10 gallons of fuel on the ground faster than I could put it in the tank. This would explain why the bastard was on ‘empty’ when I drove it home. Nothing like being stranded two miles from your house on a 20-degree morning while you wonder whether or not you’re going to blow up.

So I get that squared away just in time to discover that the mysterious water tank in my basement is slowly seeping water. And then not-so-slowly seeping water. Get my landlord over to look at it before the bottom drops out and unleashes 60 gallons of unfiltered well water all over my comic books and pretty much all my other cool possessions. The plan was to simply drain the tank, then cut it out of the plumbing loop because it really seemed to serve no purpose. Of course, we find that the plumbing in this place was done by ‘some dude’ and made no sense whatsoever. Pipes come in, pipes go out, pipes do loop-the-loops. My utility room is a cross between one of those warehouses in ‘Saw’ and some kid’s ultimate wet-dream Hot Wheels track, only I don’t get the fun that comes with torturing Donnie Wahlberg or smashing little race cars. I just get pipes, rusty water and a race against time.Eventually, we decide to call in a plumber, which is a pain in the ass because I’m never home and/or awake at Normal Human Hours.

Anyway, we get that done and it doesn’t cost me anything. Then yesterday I decide to fix the downstairs bathroom faucet that’s been dripping. Easy fix. Done it a 100 times, because I’ve never had the luxury of living somewhere with decent plumbing. As I’m shutting the hot water off, I accidentally torque the pipe and start an additional leak. Awesome. Nothing like making a little problem a terrible calamity. Plumbing is not my friend.

But today is Thanksgiving. As far as I know, there’s nothing leaking anywhere and for the first time in months, I really don’t have much to do. Airika’s attempting a Thanksgiving feast, there’s good music flowing from my iPod, I have a big pile of comic books, magazines and a novel waiting for me and pretty soon I’ll get a fire going in the fireplace. The dogs are in the kitchen, at the ready in case any stray turkey bits hit the floor. The deer are outside, scarfing corn and looking around like nervous deer do. And my bodily fluids seem to have congealed like day-old gravy. It’s a good day.

By Oden's Beard

I present to you my new pal Oden, a 1992 Chevy Trailblazer. Oden will be making sure I get up and down my dirt road all Terrible Winter long. He is named after Greg Oden because they are both Blazers and both are a little rusty and both will likely have shortened careers due to some catastrophic physical breakdown.

Constant Updates

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 9
11/12/08
1500

Constant Updates….

Things are finally settling down here. After almost three months of getting settled (house stuff, job hunts, winter preparation…), we’re finally at a place where it’s just…normal. Just in time for the Big Bad Winter.

The last two weeks were all kinds of rotten. I officially started a new job (www.confluencemarketing.net – check it out!), had to put in a week of intense training at the casino (if you ever play Three Card Poker, you are a loser), bought an old 4WD truck, all while getting things in order for winter, being horribly sick and staying out of Airika’s way as she crammed for her Minnesota State license test. It was kinda hectic.

And just when things started easing to a halt…this:

Luckily, I am now prepared. Bring it on, you old bastard:

I did manage to get out and take some pictures with The World’s Oldest Digital Camera. Here’s a few snaps from the main (only) road between us and town. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d have done this when there were still some leaves on the trees. It’s quite picturesque around here in the fall. Too bad I missed it…

About five miles from home, there's this farm set in possibly the best location ever. They've got the bluff in the background, a lake in the foreground, and it's all framed by the railroad tracks. Just friggin' beautiful. I wish I had a wide-angle lens to really do some justice here.
Some bluffs. First one is Barns Bluff, which sits 350 feet above the earf, but it seems much higher when you're up there. This greets us every time we head into town. Halloween night, some jackass set it on fire. It was something to see, flames reaching for the sky as I drove to work at 2 in the a.m.

Not sure if this one has an official name. Airika calls it Cecil. I'd ask why, but I'm not sure there's a reason.

Here’s possibly the last sunset I’ll be snapping till May. I mean, I have to trudge ALL THE WAY into the driveway to get shots like these. Not quite worth it when it snows.

Of course, I can’t get out of here without a critter update. I’ll run it down checklist-style:

-Tilly very nearly caught herself a turkey. She took off into the woods and all I heard was a surprised turkey guffaw before seeing the silly bird fly-crashing through the woods, snapping Weimeraner in hot pursuit. If you’ve never seen a wild turkey flee for its life, let me tell you: high comedy. Tilly, as always, is a failure as a hunter. She can’t climb trees:

-We’d been here two and a half months, and never laid eyes on a coyote. HEARD the bastards often enough, always at night as a herd of the yipping and chittering cretins mauled a rabbit or turkey or badger or something. But they remained unseen until this past Monday morning. We’re getting ready for work on the morning of the snowstorm, looking out our kitchen window when this big, ugly prick trots out of the woods in broad daylight and more or less stops in the front yard. I swear he looked right at us, saying, “Yeah. This is MY house, bitches.” Then he ambled off without a care in the world. I couldn’t produce the camera fast enough, sadly.

-Finally, my obligatory deer picture. This one was taken through a filthy window with a shitty camera, so there you have it. These three are regular visitors. They seem to dig the whole corn I throw out for ‘em. I believe these three are named Tooty, Frooty and Kat Von Deer, but I wasn’t close enough to be sure.

Sick and tired

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 8
10/30/08
0500

I’m sitting here at 5 a.m. in a Benadryl haze, looking out into the frosty Minnesota dark. For the first time –literally- in my life I’ve left work early, just too sick to go on. It’s just too hard to deal cards when they’re covered in snot. My body feels like it’s just been thrown a blanket party, my head feels filled with sand, and there’s just one thing on my mind: Winter is coming.

It was cold last night, that shocking kind of cold that takes your lungs by surprise. Autumn here crashed quickly, came and went before it ever really started. One day the trees were full and green, the next they were empty. It was like the earth simply shrugged out of its clothes. The bare trees have made the drive into town a different experience. Entire neighborhoods that I didn’t even know existed revealed themselves once the leaves were gone. A world beneath the world. I even discovered that I have a neighbor. One day I looked into the woods behind my garage, and hey, there’s a house across the ravine. Suddenly I wonder about all those times at 2 a.m. I was naked on the porch screaming at dogs.

Winter is coming. The people around here are quietly battening hatches. Plastic is going up over windows. Plows are appearing on the fronts of every third pickup. Pyramids of deicer suddenly pop up at every retail outlet. After a few easy winters, the Minnesotans are smelling a bad one. I’m getting a lot of ‘New to the area?” followed by smirks and giggles. C’mon. It’s not like we moved here from Arizona. I know about winter.

Still. There’s things I need to do. Hatches of my own to take care of. Just secured a nice 4WD beater to buzz around in for the next few months. It occurs to me that I need a chainsaw, because if a tree goes down on the road back here, we’re pretty much fooked. And I’m swallowing my pride and getting a snowblower. I’ve always scoffed at those douchepackers in their little suburban developments, blowing the snow off their 13-foot patch of concrete, vowed to never be one of those. Well, this ain’t no development. However the hell I get down my .6 mile of dirt road, a shovel will not be involved.

The sky is purpling now, sun coming soon. Any time now the deer and squirrels will be out, stuffing themselves on the buckets of whole corn I’ve thrown. They have to fatten themselves up. Winter is coming.

Mother buggin' bugs

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 7
10/14/08
13:50

Halfway through October, and it's 70 degrees here in Minnesota. Needless to say, I'll take it. The leaves are falling, the wind is blowing, and so far this has been as nice an autumn as I can remember. One problem. Ladybugs. Our porch is closed in with 12 5-by-4 screened windows and last weekend I woke up to find every inch of the screens covered in the little orange bastards. This is INSIDE, mind you:

It sucks. Thousands of the spotted pricks. We used to keep all the doors and windows open, but now we have to button the house up because I'm afraid I'll wake up to find every surface looking like Lindsay Lohan's ass. We had this problem one fall in Akron, but nothing like we got here. I realize one cold snap will be the little buggy holocaust, but then I'll have to deal with this on a grand scale:

Even with the nice weather, they die off in legions, covering the porch floor in tiny carcasses that snap like bubble wrap when you step on them. Which wouldn't be all bad if they didn't let loose such a stank when they get crushed. The smell is something like dirt, socks and old Doritoes. Hundreds die every night, hundreds more replace them. Geh. You walk outside, something lands on the back of your neck, you swat it and now you smell like an old man’s feet. And they keep coming. Even little Tulip’s chin is susceptible:

Sigh. Bring on the winter.

Bound to happen...

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 6
10/07/08
12:47

Good god, but I’m starting to miss Akron. It’s not that I’m homesick exactly, but six weeks into the move I’m finally recognizing things about the ‘Kron that were high on my ‘cool’ list.

When we left Ohio, we left in a cloud of dust, no regrets, no looks back. Other than the odd visit, I know we ain’t ever moving back to Ohio barring some catastrophe. It’s just too nice here, too damn beautiful. When you live in a place that others come for vacations, you know you’ve chosen well.

Still.

I woke this morning with a terrible urge for a bowl of Panera’s cream of chicken and wild rice soup, a nice hunk of their bread and a good cup of Panera coffee. But ha-ha, joke’s on me because the nearest Panera is 45 minutes away. There are decent coffee shops in town, but I wanted something specific, and I couldn’t have it without wasting half a day and 20 bucks in gas. God damn, but I miss the I-77 corridor. I miss not just being able to get anywhere in 10 minutes, but three anywheres in 10 minutes. I miss Chapel Hill, Montrose and Belden. Hell, at this point I miss Rolling Acres.

Also, I miss Starbucks. I’m pretty sure Minnesota is the only place in the world where you can drive for an hour and not find a Starbucks. The ‘Bucks saturation in Akron was beyond silly, and I realize that most of you reading this are likely haters, but there’s really nothing like a nice caramel macchiato waiting practically next door on a Saturday morning. Caribou Coffee just don’t cut it.

I miss the way-too-high ratio of comic shops to square mileage. I miss Time Traveler and the Buckeye Bookshop. I miss high-speed internet access. I miss internet access at all during rainy days. I miss hearing the voices of my people, seeing faces that I already know. I miss our garden and all our flowers. I miss our little oasis amongst all that concrete. Our yard here is nicer than anything in Akron, but out here it’s just another place. I realize that this makes no sense. In time, probably soon, this place will be home. But it ain’t there yet.

On the other hand, it’s pouring as I type this and I know that when the rain is finished the bluffs will look pretty god damned amazing peeking through the mist and even during the storm there’s about fifteen things worth photographing right out my kitchen window. Oh, and this guy spends a lot of time in our front yard....

I guess it’s more than a fair trade.

Barns Bluff

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 5
9/24/08
15:00

Since this was my last free weekend before I start the job, we wanted to actually do something. So we climbed Barns Bluff in Red Wing. This bluff is basically a rocky mini-mountain that overlooks the town, the river and the rest of the bluffs around. Barns Bluff has a 2.5 mile trail made up of crumbly steps and questionable dirt pathways that wind around the hill, finally ending at the tippy-top which is 350 feet up. Nice rock walls and formations on the way, and some goddamn pretty views once you get to the top. I wish my crappy camera could do it justice. Anyway, at one point you have to pretty much climb straight up, and a misstep could see you, um, falling to your death. Possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. Totally worth it, though.

I had to work to get up there.

From the summit.

Red Wing from above.




What you don't see is that to the left of the path is a drop of 200 feet.