Retrospect 2004
Retrospect 2004
The year 2004 has flown by. It is winter now and snowing outside as I write this. It seems just a short time ago that the heat of summer forced us to ignore local residential lawn watering restrictions. Believe it or not, Denver is in the throes of an ongoing drought and because of that each particular household in the area is allotted so many gallons per month at a fixed price. Any usage over that allotment results in extraordinarily punitive rates for each excess gallon used and municipal fines can be levied for watering lawns outside specifically set times. Last year, being new to Denver, we abided by the restrictions and watered our grass as directed: ten minutes on even-numbered days twice a week; five minutes on odd-numbered days once a lunar solstice or some such foolishness. The result of our adherence to these restrictions was a dead lawn by mid-July and a notice from the home-owners association nailed to the front door stating that we were in violation of article 706.A requiring us to maintain a full and healthy lawn between the months of April and October.
Our neighbours commiserated and gave us numerous and conflicting pieces of advice on how to stay within the statutes of article 706.A while keeping the taps turned off. None of this advice worked and so one morning I arose early to give what remained of the grass a surreptitious 3:00 a.m. drink. I found all the neighbours fast asleep, as was to be expected at 3:00 a.m., but I also found all their automatic sprinklers going full blast. So much for their advice. The real secret was short periods of illicit watering in the dead of night.
Nevertheless, the watering restrictions imposed by the authorities had an effect on the water supplies available to the residents of metro-Denver. Less water was used and fears that we would run out of the stuff slowly eased from the public consciousness. In fact, so much water was saved that the utility company's profits dropped. In order to make up for this loss of income, the utility was allowed to raise water rates to extraordinarily punitive rates. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
The seed we had laid down in an effort to renew faith in article 706.A never really took root and this spring found me hacking up the lawn and laying down sod instead. I discovered a loophole in the restrictions which provided additional watering allowances for newly laid sod - it also applied to newly laid seed, but I hadn't known of the allowance at the time - and so we set the timer on our sprinkler system to 'drown' and joined the neighbours in another season of illicit midnight watering. As a consequence we received a monstrous water bill charging us the new inflated rates as well as additional per-gallon penalties for excess water usage. Letters to the utility company pointing out the allowance for new-laid sod were returned to us with an explanation that the allowances only waived the possibility of a fine for watering outside even-numbered days twice a week and lunar solstices. We were still responsible for excess water use and were obliged to pay the new usurious rates on top of that. On the bright side, we received another letter from the home-owners association complimenting us on how nice our lawn looked.
Tearing the letter to shreds and applying for a second mortgage in case future water bills arrived with the force of a tsunami, we decided to disappear on holiday. Our first stop was Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. Here, piled up against a mountain backdrop, we found enormous dunes the like of which I had expected to see only in the Sahara. We wandered across the dunes for a while and then hiked down the middle of a shallow, softly flowing creek. Christopher and Victoria enjoyed chasing insects and splashing one another in the warm water. Maydee and I walked barefoot along the bottom of the creek and the children found a pond with tadpoles and shrieked with delight. This was much nicer than the winter holiday we had taken in late February when we froze at Mount Rushmore, braved a brief power outage while spelunking in the bowels of Jewel Cave National Park and suffered a ghastly hike carrying a sodden and frozen Victoria halfway around the circumference of the Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Victoria had slipped and fallen into a pool of slush at precisely the halfway mark of the hiking trail. There was no short way back and the poor soul was vociferous in her condemnations of the National Park Service which had failed to forsee this eventuality and provide warm and commodious transport back to the parking area. The warm water of the creek at Great Sand Dunes National Park was much more to our liking.
Our next stop was Mesa Verde National Park where we toured some ancient Indian cliff dwellings and watched Christopher chase a lizard far too close to a precipitous drop into an abyss. After my heart rate returned to normal, I chastised him in no uncertain terms whereupon he sulked in defiance for the next ten minutes until he spied another lizard and chased it into the middle of a busy parking lot. Having decided Mesa Verde was far too dangerous for small children chaperoned by inattentive adults, we set forth for Four Corners.
Four Corners is the meeting place of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and is the only place in the United States where four states meet. We had a photo taken of us holding hands while we each stood in a different state. Then we rushed off to stuff ourselves with a local delicacy being sold at numerous fast food stands - Navajo fry bread. It was disgusting.
Next we headed for the Grand Canyon and in so doing crossed the Navajo nation which sprawls through most of northern Arizona. We stopped for a brief interlude at a small roadside tourist attraction announcing the existence of dinosaur footprints in some nearby sandstone. The footprints existed alright, but once we stepped out of the car we were accosted by numerous Navajo 'tour guides' offering to show us around. The guides bickered among themselves as to who had seen us first and therefore had the right to the small fee they charged for their services. It soon became apparent that most of the guides were intoxicated and when one grabbed my shirt to claim ownership of our little troop I lost my temper and started pushing back. At that point, a sober Navajo woman arrived and verbally laid into the group, effectively chasing them off. She apologized for the behaviour of her compatriots and we accepted her offer of a tour and found her to be a personable and knowledgeable guide. She was rather despondant though when she pointed out several holes in the sandstone and told us that some of the local population - including a few of the guides we had left behind - were beginning to cut the footprints from the rock and sell them as souvenirs to tourists.
The Grand Canyon itself presented a rather larger hole in the ground than those dug by the Navajos and was very interesting from a geological standpoint, a standpoint in which I have not the least interest. We decided against a hike down into the canyon because of the intense heat and the fact we weren't really equipped for such an arduous foray. We did go on a few short walks along the south rim and spied some squirrels, gophers and garter snakes. Evidently there are now 24 California Condors re-introduced to and living in the Grand Canyon, but we didn't see any while we were there. Despite having lived in Arizona for several years, this was the first time we had visited this natural wonder.
A few hours after leaving the Grand Canyon we crossed Hoover Dam and arrived in Las Vegas and that evening took the children to see the circus acts at Circus Circus on the Las Vegas strip. Victoria was most impressed with one of the performers who climbed some sort of silken ribbon arrangement and performed acrobatics high above our heads. She was even more impressed when the performer returned to earth and proceeded to tangle herself into the most impossible physical contortions. Victoria tugged at Maydee's sleeve and begged to be given lessons in gymnastics. Maydee, however, was pre-occupied in watching a different woman who was changing into and out of elaborate evening gowns in the blink of an eye. Stare as closely as we could, it was impossible to figure out how the change of gowns was done. I told Maydee that she should befriend the woman and learn this particular trick. That way Maydee wouldn't have to begin getting ready on Thursday morning when we had plans to go out for dinner on Friday night - and still manage to make us an hour late.
Over the next two days we explored Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks and took a rather strenuous two mile hike down amongst Bryce's hoodoos. It was a very hot day and we ran out of bottled water half way up the horrendously steep return incline. We had to suffer the privations of an awful thirst for the remaining mile to the top. It really was a good thing we hadn't tried to hike into the Grand Canyon.
The next day we travelled a narrow dirt road in Capitol Reef National Park, a road which was nothing more than an old riverbed twisting and turning between two incredibly high canyon walls. Had it not been a strip of cerulean sky overhead, we could have been travelling through an amazing stone tunnel. Best of all there was no other traffic. Except for some complete idiot from Massachusetts proceeding in the opposite direction in a Mini-Cooper. This imbecile drove down the centre of the riverbed and refused to budge an inch either to the left or to the right. There was plenty of room to allow two vehicles to pass one another easily if both were to follow common courtesy and move to their respective sides of the road. This he flatly refused to do and with hand gestures through his driver's side window made it plain he wished me to reverse to somewhere where the road was wider.
There were two problems with this. Firstly there wasn't anywhere wider for at least a mile behind us. Secondly, I didn't feel like it, especially when he himself could either simply move over or could reverse and achieve the same effect. The road was wider about a hundred yards behind him. But he wouldn't budge. I tried to get past him by hopping the right side wheels of our SUV on the sand embankment on our side of the road and create more room for both of us. Unfortunately this had no effect other than setting the Explorer at a precarious angle and spilling the children's drinks.
After a suitable chatisement from the front passenger seat I reversed off the embankment, crawled the vehicle to the right side of the road and shouted at the fool in the Mini to move over to his right. The response I elicited was silence. I shouted again. Louder this time. Still nothing. And so I leaned on the horn.
If you have never leaned on your horn while stuck between two high canyon walls, you cannot appreciate the effect this has on the immediate environment. Frightened birds cawed and flapped from hidden crevices in the rock walls high above us, lizards scuttled for cover in the sand, the sky cracked. Good God it was loud! I put the Explorer in 4 wheel drive and reversed down the road a bit. Like a bull preparing to charge a red rag, I put the transmission in Drive and applied the brakes while simultaneously revving the engine. This tactic had the effect of making the Explorer stand up on its shocks so it appeared larger than it actually was. In any case, our vehicle dwarfed the Mini by a difference in height and mass of approximately 3 to 1. After a suitable interval, I released the brakes, leaned on the horn again, and charged the Mini.
While I intended this as a bluff, the Mini driver didn't seem to think so. I was gratified to discover he was well-versed in the art of reversing rapidly down a twisting riverbed. His eyes were as white and as wide as two dinner plates as he focused on the grill and churning tires of the Explorer chasing him backwards down the road. When he reached the wider part of the road a hundred yards back he appeared to lose control of his vehicle, but ended up veering over to the left. I now had room to pass and at high speed pass I did, billowing clouds of dust and sand through his open driver's side window. "Cool beans!" said Victoria from the back seat. "Yeah Daddy!" said Christopher beside her. Accompanied by frost, from the front passenger seat came silence. The silence and drop in temperature remained in effect for the rest of the day and continued on until well past 11:00 a.m. the next morning, when I exceeded the speed limit by a wide margin and was pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol. Then all hell boiled over and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Our holiday to Canada later in the summer was less eventful despite some earlier passport difficulties. While Maydee's Guatemalan passport and Christopher's Canadian passport were still valid, both Victoria and I had sent our Canadian passports off for renewal. We had had our photos taken, but because we hadn't lived in Denver for two years, we didn't know a doctor, lawyer or any other authorized professional person who could sign the back of the photographs affirming we were who we said we were. The passport instructions, however, indicated that in the absence of such a person a notary could sign the photographs and stamp the application instead. We found an obliging notary and duly mailed the applications off to Ottawa along with our old passports, Canadian citizenship papers and other odds and ends.
Six weeks later we received them back with a note saying that the notary hadn't known us for two years and therefore our applications were rejected! Well, yes, okay the notary hadn't known us for two years, but she was taking the place of someone who had. That was the whole point! As the instructions had indicated this was acceptable, what was the problem? And what about the old passports and citizenship papers etc? Didn't those count for anything? I mean to say, one needs to prove Canadian citizenship before one is issued a passport in the first place and we had included our old ones with the photos. The photo of me in the old one looks just like the photo of me in the new application and the citizenship documents were additional confirmation of me being me. I tried calling the telephone number on the application so I could shout loudly at the inefficient bureaucrat who picked up, but was thwarted by voice mail jail. I hung up and gave serious thought to abandoning the effort of renewing my Canadian passport and taking out American citizenship, whereupon I could apply for an American passport. This process was likely to be quicker.
Just then I noticed another form along with the rejection slip. I picked it up and read it through twice to make sure I understood what it was I held in my hand. Because our passport applications had been rejected on the grounds of not knowing for a period longer than two years a person authorized to sign our passport photos, we could complete the enclosed form attesting to that and have it signed and stamped by a notary! Laughing maniacally, I headed off for a repeat visit with the notary, had her sign and stamp the form and popped our applications back into the mail again. Incredibly the applications were accepted this time after being signed and stamped by the same person who wasn't acceptable the first time. Of course we didn't get our passports back until after we returned from our holiday to the Great White North, which gave rise to the presentation of a multiplicity of international documents at the Canadian border.
Having arrived at Coutts, Alberta, the official in the booth guarding Canada's sovereignty from the evils of America requested identification. I passed over Christopher's Canadian passport, Victoria's Alberta birth certificate along with her American green card, Maydee's Guatemalan passport and cedula and my European Union United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland passport with the lion and the unicorn athwart the honi soit qui mal y pense motto. The official stared in disbelief and after some studious perusal found that the only real commonality was our last name. This seemed to pacify him a bit, though he studied Maydee's passport and cedula rather closely in an attempt to decipher the Spanish. "Got any firearms?" he muttered at last. "Nope" I replied. "Alright, go ahead."
We headed up the road a bit and stopped at the North West Mounted Police Museum in Fort McLeod and then continued on to Calgary where we spent the evening with Ken and Terri Madden. Ken produced an excellent bottle of Scotch and we sat around chatting while our children played with theirs. Christopher and Victoria were introduced to the delights of a couple of animals called Degus, which were the Madden's household pets. The following morning, on the way to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Maydee and I were subjected to a non-stop barrage of pleas from the children to obtain a pair of these as pets of our own. Their plaintive mewling was ignored as 2004 had already seen the demise of one hamster, the permanent escape of another and the disappearance of our cat Minnie, which was probably turned into a midnight snack by one of the foxes or coyotes that dwell in the greenbelt adjacent to our home. Besides, the children needed constant reminding to feed the fish and Christopher's snake Cornswaggle, as well as cleaning the litter box of Spice, Minnie's replacement.
Eventually we arrived at my parent's place in Leduc and made ourselves at home, which largely meant that the children and I heaped our stuff everywhere and raided the fridge at every given opportunity. Maydee reacquainted herself with the shops and the malls she had so long ago abandoned when we had moved to Phoenix. It is an interesting point that Heritage Mall closed shortly after we left Edmonton. I'm not sure if there is a direct corrolation, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was.
In and amongst outings with my parents and the children, I visited some friends and one night found me at a billiard hall with Scott Rupert while Trooper played in the background. Trooper is one of those old and moldy Canadian bands which found meteoric success in the 70's and have since then eked out a living playing their old hits from those days on the county fair and pool hall circuit. Trooper, Prism, Streetheart - all fit into that category, but it gave me much pleasure in rehashing old times with Scott while recognizing old tunes from years before. Another day found me taking the children to visit Jay and Heather Willis who were camping at Miquelon Lake with their children, Iain and Connor. We all went on a long nature hike and the children made plaster of paris prints of animal tracks while Jay pointed out beaver and muskrat swimming along the banks of a pond. Ducks and geese abounded, frogs were caught and released, but the highlight for Christopher and Victoria was the burning of marshmallow sticks back at the campsite. These they placed into the fire until glowing red hot and then blew on the ends until a flame was produced.
All too soon it was time to depart and in a mad rush we headed south again, stopping briefly at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, Little Bighorn National Monument and Yellowstone National Park, where we viewed Old Faithful and a number of other geysers, hot springs and wildlife. The children were thrilled with Yellowstone, but we had spent a week here the previous year and as we had little time left before I had to return to work we didn't linger.
The remainder of the summer passed in the blink of an eye and suddenly Hallowe'en was upon us. Up until now, the usually serious-minded and studious Christopher had not succumbed to the lure of the Harry Potter books, believing them to be nothing more than a fanciful waste of time which would interfere with his studies of animal life. One of our favourite party tricks now is to ask a guest to choose an animal and have Christopher respond with the scientific name of the animal selected. Obviously, he doesn't know them all, but as most people pick a generic animal such as a lion, tiger or elephant, the response provided is usually pretty much on the money. Sometimes Christopher will reply with another question like "As there are seven different types of zebra, to which do you refer? Burchell's? Grevy's?" He even went so far as to have Maydee contact the gentleman who some years ago photographed a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains in southern Arizona to discover whether the animal was panthera onca or a subspecies, panthera onca arizonensis, now believed to be extinct. The gentleman referred us to a National Geographic edition which profiled the full story of the jaguar sighting and also sent a couple of autographed books he had written on the subject.
For some time both Maydee and I had been concerned that Christopher would never find an interest on any topic other than animals and, to a much lesser extent, plants and outer space, the latter subject being fertile imagining grounds for what animals on developing planets might look like. However, literally overnight and without warning we were commanded to purchase any and all Harry Potter books as well as any and all Harry Potter DVD's. We were so delighted with this sudden departure into fantasy that we rushed to do his bidding and soon the house was filled with children - ours and others - charging about shooting magic spells at one another. I was personally 'expelliarmus'-ed, and Maydee was 'ridikulus'-ed. I tried an 'immobulus' charm myself to stop the mayhem and when that didn't work I performed an 'evictus' charm on the neighbourhood children. That quietened things down temporarily, for one day at least.
Where he developed this sudden interest in fantasy we never found out, but for Hallowe'en Christopher decided to discard his already purchased jaguar costume in exchange for a Harry Potter outfit and Victoria, not to be outdone, decided she would be Hermione Grainger.
Thanksgiving came and went, we shoved up a Christmas tree in the living room and decorated it and then strung up lights outside the house. Very soon the entire neighbourhood was aglow with lights and decorations and everyone started getting into a festive mood. I started on my Christmas cards and succeeded in getting some gift shopping done before the last minute and all the time I had a nagging stomach ache which wouldn't go away. The doctor I consulted poked and prodded and said I had a mild case of indigestion and if it persisted to come back again in a week or so. The pain did persist and Maydee made an appointment for me to see the doctor again shortly after Christmas. It was an appointment I didn't keep.
On the afternoon of the 23rd I was at work and had let most of my staff go early when suddenly I doubled up in pain. After a few minutes the pain subsided and I managed to drive myself home, although in some discomfort. The following morning the pain was still fairly intense and so I went to the emergency ward at the local hospital whereupon I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. As an appendix gone bad is not an elective sort of surgery, I was knocked out for what was to be a relatively simple operation and was told that I should be home on Christmas Day or the day after that at the latest.
Twelve days later I was still flat on my back in hospital. My appendix had gone haywire and had calcified, which caused all sorts of other problems, resulting in the surgeon having to fillet me like a fish from the navel nearly to the chest in order to effect a cure. While I had plenty of medication for the pain, the medication turned me into a drooling imbecile and at one point, in a rare moment of lucidity, I counted no less than 5 types of medications hanging from the IV stand, which now substituted for the Christmas tree we had at home. Maydee was tremendously supportive all during this trial and she and the children held a 24 hour bedside vigil, filling in when the nurses were otherwise occupied with other malcontents on the ward. After much pleading, the medications slowly disappeared from the Christmas tree and as each one went, I felt better by degrees. Eventually the doctor said I could go home if I felt up to it. After 12 days, I felt up to it, regardless of how I actually felt. Wild horses could not have kept me away. And so I fled the hospital with a driving ban of 10 days and an order not to go to work for two weeks. The pain is still with me as I type this staring at the snow outside the window, but I have little else to do and I refuse to watch Oprah. All in all though, 2004 wasn't too bad, except that I'd dearly like to spend Christmas and New Years 2005 at home.
The year 2004 has flown by. It is winter now and snowing outside as I write this. It seems just a short time ago that the heat of summer forced us to ignore local residential lawn watering restrictions. Believe it or not, Denver is in the throes of an ongoing drought and because of that each particular household in the area is allotted so many gallons per month at a fixed price. Any usage over that allotment results in extraordinarily punitive rates for each excess gallon used and municipal fines can be levied for watering lawns outside specifically set times. Last year, being new to Denver, we abided by the restrictions and watered our grass as directed: ten minutes on even-numbered days twice a week; five minutes on odd-numbered days once a lunar solstice or some such foolishness. The result of our adherence to these restrictions was a dead lawn by mid-July and a notice from the home-owners association nailed to the front door stating that we were in violation of article 706.A requiring us to maintain a full and healthy lawn between the months of April and October.
Our neighbours commiserated and gave us numerous and conflicting pieces of advice on how to stay within the statutes of article 706.A while keeping the taps turned off. None of this advice worked and so one morning I arose early to give what remained of the grass a surreptitious 3:00 a.m. drink. I found all the neighbours fast asleep, as was to be expected at 3:00 a.m., but I also found all their automatic sprinklers going full blast. So much for their advice. The real secret was short periods of illicit watering in the dead of night.
Nevertheless, the watering restrictions imposed by the authorities had an effect on the water supplies available to the residents of metro-Denver. Less water was used and fears that we would run out of the stuff slowly eased from the public consciousness. In fact, so much water was saved that the utility company's profits dropped. In order to make up for this loss of income, the utility was allowed to raise water rates to extraordinarily punitive rates. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
The seed we had laid down in an effort to renew faith in article 706.A never really took root and this spring found me hacking up the lawn and laying down sod instead. I discovered a loophole in the restrictions which provided additional watering allowances for newly laid sod - it also applied to newly laid seed, but I hadn't known of the allowance at the time - and so we set the timer on our sprinkler system to 'drown' and joined the neighbours in another season of illicit midnight watering. As a consequence we received a monstrous water bill charging us the new inflated rates as well as additional per-gallon penalties for excess water usage. Letters to the utility company pointing out the allowance for new-laid sod were returned to us with an explanation that the allowances only waived the possibility of a fine for watering outside even-numbered days twice a week and lunar solstices. We were still responsible for excess water use and were obliged to pay the new usurious rates on top of that. On the bright side, we received another letter from the home-owners association complimenting us on how nice our lawn looked.
Tearing the letter to shreds and applying for a second mortgage in case future water bills arrived with the force of a tsunami, we decided to disappear on holiday. Our first stop was Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. Here, piled up against a mountain backdrop, we found enormous dunes the like of which I had expected to see only in the Sahara. We wandered across the dunes for a while and then hiked down the middle of a shallow, softly flowing creek. Christopher and Victoria enjoyed chasing insects and splashing one another in the warm water. Maydee and I walked barefoot along the bottom of the creek and the children found a pond with tadpoles and shrieked with delight. This was much nicer than the winter holiday we had taken in late February when we froze at Mount Rushmore, braved a brief power outage while spelunking in the bowels of Jewel Cave National Park and suffered a ghastly hike carrying a sodden and frozen Victoria halfway around the circumference of the Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Victoria had slipped and fallen into a pool of slush at precisely the halfway mark of the hiking trail. There was no short way back and the poor soul was vociferous in her condemnations of the National Park Service which had failed to forsee this eventuality and provide warm and commodious transport back to the parking area. The warm water of the creek at Great Sand Dunes National Park was much more to our liking.
Our next stop was Mesa Verde National Park where we toured some ancient Indian cliff dwellings and watched Christopher chase a lizard far too close to a precipitous drop into an abyss. After my heart rate returned to normal, I chastised him in no uncertain terms whereupon he sulked in defiance for the next ten minutes until he spied another lizard and chased it into the middle of a busy parking lot. Having decided Mesa Verde was far too dangerous for small children chaperoned by inattentive adults, we set forth for Four Corners.
Four Corners is the meeting place of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and is the only place in the United States where four states meet. We had a photo taken of us holding hands while we each stood in a different state. Then we rushed off to stuff ourselves with a local delicacy being sold at numerous fast food stands - Navajo fry bread. It was disgusting.
Next we headed for the Grand Canyon and in so doing crossed the Navajo nation which sprawls through most of northern Arizona. We stopped for a brief interlude at a small roadside tourist attraction announcing the existence of dinosaur footprints in some nearby sandstone. The footprints existed alright, but once we stepped out of the car we were accosted by numerous Navajo 'tour guides' offering to show us around. The guides bickered among themselves as to who had seen us first and therefore had the right to the small fee they charged for their services. It soon became apparent that most of the guides were intoxicated and when one grabbed my shirt to claim ownership of our little troop I lost my temper and started pushing back. At that point, a sober Navajo woman arrived and verbally laid into the group, effectively chasing them off. She apologized for the behaviour of her compatriots and we accepted her offer of a tour and found her to be a personable and knowledgeable guide. She was rather despondant though when she pointed out several holes in the sandstone and told us that some of the local population - including a few of the guides we had left behind - were beginning to cut the footprints from the rock and sell them as souvenirs to tourists.
The Grand Canyon itself presented a rather larger hole in the ground than those dug by the Navajos and was very interesting from a geological standpoint, a standpoint in which I have not the least interest. We decided against a hike down into the canyon because of the intense heat and the fact we weren't really equipped for such an arduous foray. We did go on a few short walks along the south rim and spied some squirrels, gophers and garter snakes. Evidently there are now 24 California Condors re-introduced to and living in the Grand Canyon, but we didn't see any while we were there. Despite having lived in Arizona for several years, this was the first time we had visited this natural wonder.
A few hours after leaving the Grand Canyon we crossed Hoover Dam and arrived in Las Vegas and that evening took the children to see the circus acts at Circus Circus on the Las Vegas strip. Victoria was most impressed with one of the performers who climbed some sort of silken ribbon arrangement and performed acrobatics high above our heads. She was even more impressed when the performer returned to earth and proceeded to tangle herself into the most impossible physical contortions. Victoria tugged at Maydee's sleeve and begged to be given lessons in gymnastics. Maydee, however, was pre-occupied in watching a different woman who was changing into and out of elaborate evening gowns in the blink of an eye. Stare as closely as we could, it was impossible to figure out how the change of gowns was done. I told Maydee that she should befriend the woman and learn this particular trick. That way Maydee wouldn't have to begin getting ready on Thursday morning when we had plans to go out for dinner on Friday night - and still manage to make us an hour late.
Over the next two days we explored Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks and took a rather strenuous two mile hike down amongst Bryce's hoodoos. It was a very hot day and we ran out of bottled water half way up the horrendously steep return incline. We had to suffer the privations of an awful thirst for the remaining mile to the top. It really was a good thing we hadn't tried to hike into the Grand Canyon.
The next day we travelled a narrow dirt road in Capitol Reef National Park, a road which was nothing more than an old riverbed twisting and turning between two incredibly high canyon walls. Had it not been a strip of cerulean sky overhead, we could have been travelling through an amazing stone tunnel. Best of all there was no other traffic. Except for some complete idiot from Massachusetts proceeding in the opposite direction in a Mini-Cooper. This imbecile drove down the centre of the riverbed and refused to budge an inch either to the left or to the right. There was plenty of room to allow two vehicles to pass one another easily if both were to follow common courtesy and move to their respective sides of the road. This he flatly refused to do and with hand gestures through his driver's side window made it plain he wished me to reverse to somewhere where the road was wider.
There were two problems with this. Firstly there wasn't anywhere wider for at least a mile behind us. Secondly, I didn't feel like it, especially when he himself could either simply move over or could reverse and achieve the same effect. The road was wider about a hundred yards behind him. But he wouldn't budge. I tried to get past him by hopping the right side wheels of our SUV on the sand embankment on our side of the road and create more room for both of us. Unfortunately this had no effect other than setting the Explorer at a precarious angle and spilling the children's drinks.
After a suitable chatisement from the front passenger seat I reversed off the embankment, crawled the vehicle to the right side of the road and shouted at the fool in the Mini to move over to his right. The response I elicited was silence. I shouted again. Louder this time. Still nothing. And so I leaned on the horn.
If you have never leaned on your horn while stuck between two high canyon walls, you cannot appreciate the effect this has on the immediate environment. Frightened birds cawed and flapped from hidden crevices in the rock walls high above us, lizards scuttled for cover in the sand, the sky cracked. Good God it was loud! I put the Explorer in 4 wheel drive and reversed down the road a bit. Like a bull preparing to charge a red rag, I put the transmission in Drive and applied the brakes while simultaneously revving the engine. This tactic had the effect of making the Explorer stand up on its shocks so it appeared larger than it actually was. In any case, our vehicle dwarfed the Mini by a difference in height and mass of approximately 3 to 1. After a suitable interval, I released the brakes, leaned on the horn again, and charged the Mini.
While I intended this as a bluff, the Mini driver didn't seem to think so. I was gratified to discover he was well-versed in the art of reversing rapidly down a twisting riverbed. His eyes were as white and as wide as two dinner plates as he focused on the grill and churning tires of the Explorer chasing him backwards down the road. When he reached the wider part of the road a hundred yards back he appeared to lose control of his vehicle, but ended up veering over to the left. I now had room to pass and at high speed pass I did, billowing clouds of dust and sand through his open driver's side window. "Cool beans!" said Victoria from the back seat. "Yeah Daddy!" said Christopher beside her. Accompanied by frost, from the front passenger seat came silence. The silence and drop in temperature remained in effect for the rest of the day and continued on until well past 11:00 a.m. the next morning, when I exceeded the speed limit by a wide margin and was pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol. Then all hell boiled over and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Our holiday to Canada later in the summer was less eventful despite some earlier passport difficulties. While Maydee's Guatemalan passport and Christopher's Canadian passport were still valid, both Victoria and I had sent our Canadian passports off for renewal. We had had our photos taken, but because we hadn't lived in Denver for two years, we didn't know a doctor, lawyer or any other authorized professional person who could sign the back of the photographs affirming we were who we said we were. The passport instructions, however, indicated that in the absence of such a person a notary could sign the photographs and stamp the application instead. We found an obliging notary and duly mailed the applications off to Ottawa along with our old passports, Canadian citizenship papers and other odds and ends.
Six weeks later we received them back with a note saying that the notary hadn't known us for two years and therefore our applications were rejected! Well, yes, okay the notary hadn't known us for two years, but she was taking the place of someone who had. That was the whole point! As the instructions had indicated this was acceptable, what was the problem? And what about the old passports and citizenship papers etc? Didn't those count for anything? I mean to say, one needs to prove Canadian citizenship before one is issued a passport in the first place and we had included our old ones with the photos. The photo of me in the old one looks just like the photo of me in the new application and the citizenship documents were additional confirmation of me being me. I tried calling the telephone number on the application so I could shout loudly at the inefficient bureaucrat who picked up, but was thwarted by voice mail jail. I hung up and gave serious thought to abandoning the effort of renewing my Canadian passport and taking out American citizenship, whereupon I could apply for an American passport. This process was likely to be quicker.
Just then I noticed another form along with the rejection slip. I picked it up and read it through twice to make sure I understood what it was I held in my hand. Because our passport applications had been rejected on the grounds of not knowing for a period longer than two years a person authorized to sign our passport photos, we could complete the enclosed form attesting to that and have it signed and stamped by a notary! Laughing maniacally, I headed off for a repeat visit with the notary, had her sign and stamp the form and popped our applications back into the mail again. Incredibly the applications were accepted this time after being signed and stamped by the same person who wasn't acceptable the first time. Of course we didn't get our passports back until after we returned from our holiday to the Great White North, which gave rise to the presentation of a multiplicity of international documents at the Canadian border.
Having arrived at Coutts, Alberta, the official in the booth guarding Canada's sovereignty from the evils of America requested identification. I passed over Christopher's Canadian passport, Victoria's Alberta birth certificate along with her American green card, Maydee's Guatemalan passport and cedula and my European Union United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland passport with the lion and the unicorn athwart the honi soit qui mal y pense motto. The official stared in disbelief and after some studious perusal found that the only real commonality was our last name. This seemed to pacify him a bit, though he studied Maydee's passport and cedula rather closely in an attempt to decipher the Spanish. "Got any firearms?" he muttered at last. "Nope" I replied. "Alright, go ahead."
We headed up the road a bit and stopped at the North West Mounted Police Museum in Fort McLeod and then continued on to Calgary where we spent the evening with Ken and Terri Madden. Ken produced an excellent bottle of Scotch and we sat around chatting while our children played with theirs. Christopher and Victoria were introduced to the delights of a couple of animals called Degus, which were the Madden's household pets. The following morning, on the way to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Maydee and I were subjected to a non-stop barrage of pleas from the children to obtain a pair of these as pets of our own. Their plaintive mewling was ignored as 2004 had already seen the demise of one hamster, the permanent escape of another and the disappearance of our cat Minnie, which was probably turned into a midnight snack by one of the foxes or coyotes that dwell in the greenbelt adjacent to our home. Besides, the children needed constant reminding to feed the fish and Christopher's snake Cornswaggle, as well as cleaning the litter box of Spice, Minnie's replacement.
Eventually we arrived at my parent's place in Leduc and made ourselves at home, which largely meant that the children and I heaped our stuff everywhere and raided the fridge at every given opportunity. Maydee reacquainted herself with the shops and the malls she had so long ago abandoned when we had moved to Phoenix. It is an interesting point that Heritage Mall closed shortly after we left Edmonton. I'm not sure if there is a direct corrolation, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was.
In and amongst outings with my parents and the children, I visited some friends and one night found me at a billiard hall with Scott Rupert while Trooper played in the background. Trooper is one of those old and moldy Canadian bands which found meteoric success in the 70's and have since then eked out a living playing their old hits from those days on the county fair and pool hall circuit. Trooper, Prism, Streetheart - all fit into that category, but it gave me much pleasure in rehashing old times with Scott while recognizing old tunes from years before. Another day found me taking the children to visit Jay and Heather Willis who were camping at Miquelon Lake with their children, Iain and Connor. We all went on a long nature hike and the children made plaster of paris prints of animal tracks while Jay pointed out beaver and muskrat swimming along the banks of a pond. Ducks and geese abounded, frogs were caught and released, but the highlight for Christopher and Victoria was the burning of marshmallow sticks back at the campsite. These they placed into the fire until glowing red hot and then blew on the ends until a flame was produced.
All too soon it was time to depart and in a mad rush we headed south again, stopping briefly at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, Little Bighorn National Monument and Yellowstone National Park, where we viewed Old Faithful and a number of other geysers, hot springs and wildlife. The children were thrilled with Yellowstone, but we had spent a week here the previous year and as we had little time left before I had to return to work we didn't linger.
The remainder of the summer passed in the blink of an eye and suddenly Hallowe'en was upon us. Up until now, the usually serious-minded and studious Christopher had not succumbed to the lure of the Harry Potter books, believing them to be nothing more than a fanciful waste of time which would interfere with his studies of animal life. One of our favourite party tricks now is to ask a guest to choose an animal and have Christopher respond with the scientific name of the animal selected. Obviously, he doesn't know them all, but as most people pick a generic animal such as a lion, tiger or elephant, the response provided is usually pretty much on the money. Sometimes Christopher will reply with another question like "As there are seven different types of zebra, to which do you refer? Burchell's? Grevy's?" He even went so far as to have Maydee contact the gentleman who some years ago photographed a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains in southern Arizona to discover whether the animal was panthera onca or a subspecies, panthera onca arizonensis, now believed to be extinct. The gentleman referred us to a National Geographic edition which profiled the full story of the jaguar sighting and also sent a couple of autographed books he had written on the subject.
For some time both Maydee and I had been concerned that Christopher would never find an interest on any topic other than animals and, to a much lesser extent, plants and outer space, the latter subject being fertile imagining grounds for what animals on developing planets might look like. However, literally overnight and without warning we were commanded to purchase any and all Harry Potter books as well as any and all Harry Potter DVD's. We were so delighted with this sudden departure into fantasy that we rushed to do his bidding and soon the house was filled with children - ours and others - charging about shooting magic spells at one another. I was personally 'expelliarmus'-ed, and Maydee was 'ridikulus'-ed. I tried an 'immobulus' charm myself to stop the mayhem and when that didn't work I performed an 'evictus' charm on the neighbourhood children. That quietened things down temporarily, for one day at least.
Where he developed this sudden interest in fantasy we never found out, but for Hallowe'en Christopher decided to discard his already purchased jaguar costume in exchange for a Harry Potter outfit and Victoria, not to be outdone, decided she would be Hermione Grainger.
Thanksgiving came and went, we shoved up a Christmas tree in the living room and decorated it and then strung up lights outside the house. Very soon the entire neighbourhood was aglow with lights and decorations and everyone started getting into a festive mood. I started on my Christmas cards and succeeded in getting some gift shopping done before the last minute and all the time I had a nagging stomach ache which wouldn't go away. The doctor I consulted poked and prodded and said I had a mild case of indigestion and if it persisted to come back again in a week or so. The pain did persist and Maydee made an appointment for me to see the doctor again shortly after Christmas. It was an appointment I didn't keep.
On the afternoon of the 23rd I was at work and had let most of my staff go early when suddenly I doubled up in pain. After a few minutes the pain subsided and I managed to drive myself home, although in some discomfort. The following morning the pain was still fairly intense and so I went to the emergency ward at the local hospital whereupon I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. As an appendix gone bad is not an elective sort of surgery, I was knocked out for what was to be a relatively simple operation and was told that I should be home on Christmas Day or the day after that at the latest.
Twelve days later I was still flat on my back in hospital. My appendix had gone haywire and had calcified, which caused all sorts of other problems, resulting in the surgeon having to fillet me like a fish from the navel nearly to the chest in order to effect a cure. While I had plenty of medication for the pain, the medication turned me into a drooling imbecile and at one point, in a rare moment of lucidity, I counted no less than 5 types of medications hanging from the IV stand, which now substituted for the Christmas tree we had at home. Maydee was tremendously supportive all during this trial and she and the children held a 24 hour bedside vigil, filling in when the nurses were otherwise occupied with other malcontents on the ward. After much pleading, the medications slowly disappeared from the Christmas tree and as each one went, I felt better by degrees. Eventually the doctor said I could go home if I felt up to it. After 12 days, I felt up to it, regardless of how I actually felt. Wild horses could not have kept me away. And so I fled the hospital with a driving ban of 10 days and an order not to go to work for two weeks. The pain is still with me as I type this staring at the snow outside the window, but I have little else to do and I refuse to watch Oprah. All in all though, 2004 wasn't too bad, except that I'd dearly like to spend Christmas and New Years 2005 at home.
posted by alex malcolm at 6:19 pm
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