I left my nice St Louis room at lunchtime on Thursday after
a nice 2 day stay. I kind of wish I had done a bit more in the city, but to be honest, during
the day it was just too damn hot to do much at all. I did enjoy my short stay
there though and the whole 16 days I have been travelling on this leg of my
journey.
I will definitely be doing something similar again, next
time I go away, as getting a car and travelling on my own timetable and seeing
places I wouldn’t otherwise see, is a whole lot better than taking the
Greyhound from one city centre to another.
For now though, I am back at ‘home’, in Winnipeg, with Buffy
and doing stuff here. Before I get onto that though I have to tell you about
getting back into Canada – again!
The flight from St Louis was nearly 2 hours late leaving and
so when I arrived in Chicago, I expected to almost get straight onto my connecting
flight – But that too was a couple of hours late, so I had a 3 hour layover and
spent the time playing ‘guess the gate’, as the flight out changed from gate
B10 to gate B11b, then to F11, F9, F5 and finally settled on F4. It was like
some huge game of chess played by the airport controllers, using the passengers
as pieces and was just ridiculous. Not only that, but almost every other flight
was constantly changing gates too. If they just kept us at one gate, then the
other flights wouldn’t have had to move either and the confusion emanating
through the departure hall could have been controlled. I have never experienced
anything like it. Every passenger had at least one occasion where they had to
ask someone if the gate was correct. Even as we boarded our flight eventually,
the screens were showing the wrong destination and at least two people were in the
queue for the wrong place.
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| People at the airport were taking every available seat!! |
Anyway, I finally arrived in Winnipeg just after 11pm after
flying in looking down at an awesome lightning storm taking place below us. I
sailed through the passport check – my paperwork was stamped and I collected my
bags, thinking how nice it was that they now accepted my back into Canada – but
I was sorely mistaken as I didn’t notice the red stamp on my paperwork and when
I showed it to the exit staff I was directed towards the dreaded ‘red chairs’.
These are the chairs you sit in when the security staff have
‘further questions’, for you and so I waited and was finally called forward by
a huge officer who I explained my situation to. He asked me a lot about Buffy
before taking my passport and disappearing through a door and leaving me alone.
It turns out he then went to the arrivals hall where Buffy was waiting and
approached he asking who she was waiting for. She replied ‘Richard Davey’ and
was then sat down and made to explain, in detail, everything about how we met,
my financial situation and what was happening in our relationship. Finally
after about 20 minutes he left her and returned to me. He asked for proof of my
army pension and bank detail, so I had to go online and show him as much as I
could find before he finally said that everything was in order and I was free
to go.
But, he had lied to me as I went back to the exit officer
and this time was directed towards the ‘blue chairs’. FFS!!
The blue chairs are where you go to when they want to check
through your bags. I sat again for a while and was eventually called up to the desk
and unpacked everything from my bags, onto the stainless steel table top. I
explained why I had a tent, where I had been and after 15 minutes stuffed
everything back inside and was finally allowed to pass through security and
meet up with Buffster.
By now it was gone midnight and so we grabbed a taxi instead
of waiting for a bus and finally made it home just before 1am. It was bedtime
and the end of a very long and tiring day.
I couldnt take photos but these examples show you exactly what happened to me..probably.
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| It should have been this easy.... |
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| I couldnt take photos, but this is like what happened...bags checked... |
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| I was thrown to the floor.... |
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| ...and tortured before I could enter Canada - honestly!! haha |
Friday - Laundry and then the cinema with Buffy and Michael
in the evening where we enjoyed the new Batman movie.
Saturday. A weekend
in Winnipeg. One of Buffy’s mates, Ben – has an apartment in town and has use
of the adjacent hotel swimming pool, so being a hot day we accepted his offer
of a pool party us and a few other mates spent a lovely couple of hours sat
around a gloriously cool pool, while enjoying the sunshine and the views over
the city. A really nice relaxing afternoon followed by another night out.
We had tickets for the Cirque de Soleil show which is in
town. It’s called Quidam and much like most Cirque shows, is made up of
stupendous circus performers performing amazing feats. There was the trapeze
artists, silk climbers, gymnasts and a huge skipping set, where about 50 people
do the most amazing things with bits of rope – plus the ‘clown’, who gets
members of the audience up on stage and gets the biggest laughs of the night
with them. Most of the time you wonder just what the hell is going on as all
the time there are weird and wonderful things going on the background too,
whether its people, floating above the stage or people slowly crossing the stage
doing random things in the background. A great show though and as it was in the
MTS centre I was doubly impressed as it’s the first time I have actually been
inside to experience the atmosphere of the location of where the Jets play.
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| The Cirque de soleil stage |
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| The pool view over Winnipeg |
After Saturday night out we didn’t rest too much as this
week is ‘Fringe Festival’, in Winnipeg. There are 170 different shows happening
in about 20 venues ranging from tiny one man plays in front of a dozen people,
to 300 or 400 person venues showing well known plays. We did three different
shows on Sunday. One with a friend, Michael in it, called ‘Against the wall’,
was a good start, before we went to see ‘Fresher’, a funny musical about British
students going to University for the first time. Then after a couple of beers
with Buffy’s friend Ian, we actually met up with one of the actors from ‘Fresher’,
another friend of Buffy’s called Nelson and he joined us to go and see ‘Pretending
things are a cock’. A one man comedy show about a bloke who travelled the world
taking pictures of himself pretending things are a cock - obviously!! It was a really
funny end to another good day.
Monday came along and I had a well deserved lie in. It was a
hot day and I didn’t do much until the evening when me and Buffy were hosting
this month’s Book Club meeting. There were 6 people who turned up this month
and we spent a good 3 hours sat chatting not only about the book, but about all
sorts of stuff and it was a fun night. We arranged a meeting for the sometime
towards the end of next month and everyone finally left about 11.30pm.
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| The outdoor stage at the fringe |
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| Weird ;performance art', a pan and some writing on her leg! |
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| Ian waiting for a beer! |
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| Some good stage action! |
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| The start of 'Pretending things are a cock'. |
In the morning we were up at 7am, as we had finally arranged
to Skype with Gareth and Tracey– my brother and his wife, who we haven’t spoken
to since they moved down to Australia a month ago. It was really nice to chat
for a while and see that they are settling in well and really happy down there,
so a good start to another day.
It’s been a busy few days since I got back to Winnipeg and
we have done a lot of stuff. There hasn’t yet been an evening in doing nothing
and there won’t be for the rest of the week as we have Quiz night tonight, more
fringe shows to see and on Friday we head off to the cabin on the lake where we
will finally, hopefully, get some rest!!
I have just seen a great story of someone, who has surpassed everything I will ever do travelling. I hope you all take time to have a look at this because its a great story - It will only take you five minutes..
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