The road best traveled

Traveling has always been an intensely personal journey for me…I guess since I started so young, it just became who I am…but again on this trip, I’m struck by how much more value my trips have because I travel with Carol…she adds to, and never detracts from, the trips we take together…I see things I’d otherwise miss, I have a good friend to talk to, to experience, and with whom to share the things I do see…her artists eye has been the lens through which the photos of our trips become our lasting visual. She’s always been my best friend, and again I’m reminded how she is my best travel companion…. When figuring out our route from Calgary eastward, we told several people that we wanted to head to Regina, the capital of Sask…..their reaction was similar in many cases: “Why?”…….. Well, because we want to see it…that’s why?....As you can tell, it has the rep of not being a very interesting place to visit…and that may be generally true in terms of big city interests…Calgary and Edmonton have about a million apiece, whereas Regina is sitting on about 250,000….But in fact, it is a charming city…full of graceful old buildings and lovely lakes, and it seemed a very genteel city, quite in contrast to the hubbub and quick pace of Edmonton and Calgary. The main street into town is a delight of old style houses representing many different architectural styles….One of the houses was used in the movie “Just Friends,”…. Apparently Hollywood does a lot of filming here. Reginans (?) are very proud of their city in a way we didn’t ever feel in Calgary or in Edmonton…..Mostly they seemed places where they happen to live…they’d lived in several cities, and this was either the latest one, or the last one…depending. Reginans, on the other hand really love their city….mind you, I talking from the vast experience of some very limited time in any of the cities we’ve been….but I think that we all form impressions of our travels, with truth or fiction…who knows? Everything just seemed to move at a slower pace in Regina….the Albertan cities feel “business”-like…lots of trendy shops and eateries everywhere…lots of different tongues…They were “suit” cities…get it done cities…But Regina was a sit in the park and watch the geese in the pond city. We talked to one couple who were doing just that….she told us that the geese that didn’t fly south were airlifted out…looked that up, but couldn’t find anything…she sounded very authoritative on the matter however. Although we were advised to miss Regina…it was often with the following statement: “Spend more time in Saskatoon.” It has a reputation of being a lively, active city with a spirit to it….The vast majority of that, we think, comes from the University of Saskatchewan….The beginning of the academic year had just begun and as Carol said: “The students are swarming.”…..the streets were alive with activity…there seemed to be a real counter-culture atmosphere downtown…but I didn’t get a chance to explore that aspect as much as I would have liked. We found a little house that had 5 rooms with a shared bath…but they charged extra for wireless and parking…screw that….hopped over a little concrete wall and went to the place next door….postage-stamp- sized room…still shared bath but free parking and internet….give me wi-fi in my room and I’ll put up with a lot of shit…. Turned out to be a good move…right across the street from the University, we really felt the energy of the area…the next day, we spent the morning just walking around – checked out a couple galleries, talked to several students, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves….It had been a long time since we’d felt the energy of a setting like this. In addition, discovered how small a world it is, or how big the karmic connections are in life…choose one of the above…but while Saskatoon has always been on my list of places to visit…I mean, how can you not like a place named: “Saskatoon..” it’s a pretty cool name…but the deciding factor was that the brother-in-law of my old California buddy, Duane has a gourmet Peruvian restaurant just north of town…Very upscale, very busy…no walk-ins…reservation only…and this was to be our big splurge dinner- wise…turns out he was closed the two days we were there so we missed seeing Marta’s brother..it would have been very cool…But at the place we decided to stay Carol was talking to the owner, a Venezuelan , and it turns out that he is a friend of the restauranteur, and his first job in Saskatoon was at that restaurant…Nelson was called, but he was ill, so we still missed out, but it was pretty trippy. We also visited the Ukrainian museum which was fascinating….saw the whole assimilation process…both with fits and starts and setbacks (They were interned during WWI and had their land confiscated as did the Japanese in the U.S during the next big international power grab…sadly not the last one. Anyway, Carol was enthralled by the fashion displays, clothing, rugs, and the like..the collection of Pysanka…the painted eggs…..talked at length with a Ukrainian woman who has only been here 7 years….fascinating histories all the way around. People in Canada are very friendly and engaging ….like to converse and never seem to get offended when I ask my semi-invasive questions….you learn when to pursue a topic and when to back off…but if you don’t open the door then you never find stuff out and you just look at things….I still don’t know much about Canadians…but I know a lot about a few Canadians…that’s all I’ll claim.