Travelogue: Life is many postcards…

Posted on July 28, 2009

So I left the ladybug in charge of my cucumbers and packed my bags for good ol’ Acadie

I sure hope I don’t come home to something like this…

On the way, we caught a few severe storms… punctuated with pretty yellow fields like this

Visited great modern museums on the way

Au Québec, il y a beaucoup de “crémeries”. No matter how small the village, you’ll always find a moderately successful ice cream stands. This one was just hanging out there in the middle of nothing. Ice cream is always good. mmm.

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And as we crossed the Matapedia Valley, there was lots of pretty fog in the mountains. It feels like I spent the whole trip dozing off into sleep, waking up, taking pictures, dozing off again. If only it was so easy to take nice pictures… no effort required whatsoever.

Pretty skies unfolded constantly along the way

Then there was a rainbow… a little man, all dressed in green velvet, three inches, tall flicked a gold coin at us and disappeared into the forest on the back of a unicorn (who knew they were that small).

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.We saw a covered bridge…

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More pretty fog…

A “warning – bikes come around here too” sign

Fallen construction cones by the riverside

Altogether, it took about 12 hours to drive to New Brunswick yesterday. After being held up by one of our passengers who took a bit longer than expected to get ready, then some hold up at the car rental place… we finally left Montreal at about 11AM. There were some major thunderstorms around Quebec City, and we had to drive between 60 and 80 km/h on the highway for about an hour and a half in order not to crash or end up floating away in a ditch. Then there were more thunderstorms around Bathurst, which made us loose about another hour at ridiculously low speeds, but left us with a fabulous light show to watch while we were at it.

Last night, me and my grandpa got dressed up in old costumes in the middle of the night and took pictures. It was fun. Today, my great uncle, the clever and infinitely sweet priest, came over for breakfast. Then, later, my old pal Chris came to pick me up in his Green Hornet-green Bricklin (you know those cars that have doors that open from the top like wings). We got lost on out way to the beach, but then finally made it there.

We chilled there, smoked, talked about our respective visual arts.

I took pictures of junk on the beach while Chris took some of his ever ringing phone calls.

Just enough time to show me how to turn on a video camera, tell me that the basic was all about the kinetics of holding it steady and fluidly…  ring…

Pretty girl walked by on the beach…

There’s nothing like sand in your toes. Chris appears to enjoy that too. It’s the small things that make up the good life… he gets that too, that’s why he actually likes it living around here. You have to be the kind of person who can turn the most mundane things into magical moments. There’s lots of that to be had where I’m from…

Natural scenery. Chris was going to set it up “better”, but I like to take pictures of things as they are. Then I was saved by the bell…

Everywhere I go hang out these days, couples seem to be engaging in some pretty shameless groping. You’ll see that lots in public parks of Montreal, but apparently, New Brunswick beaches are no exception.

We hid our gear in the tipi while we were going to scope things out. … which never happened since his Inkerwoman called him home for dinner.

We got lost again looking for my uncle’s house… stopped to ask a man for directions, but since we’re both burnouts, we couldn’t remember what to ask for… so we drove on in the Bricklin, listening to 70s tunes. How very appropriate.

Then a picture of Chris’ favorite pinup flew in from the back.

Then I finally made it to my uncle’s house, where they like to catch black kittens in their lobster traps.

Then we walked around in the woods until we hit what is the startoff point of a blueberry field.

Then walked back…

For dinner, I ate a fabulous meal of traditional salted cod. Mmmmm, my favorite. I hung out with my goddaughter and her 5031 questions, answering every single one of them. I take it as a challenge to answer everything she asks. Clearly, if I was around her 24/7, I wouldn’t be able to do that and keep up. I’d probably loose my patience… but I’m not around her much. So I figure the least I can do to make up for the cheap birthday present she’s getting from her broke-ass godmother this year is to answer every single one of her crazy questions and open my mind to her way of thinking. It’s pretty fabulous. She loves me and my answers I think. She cried a whole lot when we left.

Now, the weather’s cool. It’s nice here since it always cools off at nighttime, and just by opening the windows and turning on a few fans, you end up even better off than with AC in the city.

I don’t come around here all that often, and I always feel privileged to get to come back home to a place like this in the summer… with the beaches, the fields, the ocean, the forest, the hicks, the bright minds… It takes a special type of person to be able to stand this life year round though. I’m still in training… not ready for that just yet. What I feel even more privileged about is to actually have a pretty awesome friend to hang around with. It never used to be this much fun coming home to Tracadie. Now, even though I love my family to bits, I get to escape, work and hang out with my pal and fuel up on a bit of “this is who I am in real life” before plunging back into the comfortable nest where people’s main worry is taking care of each other.