Erin's Journals

Here it is Friday and this day (hopefully not an unlucky Friday the 13th), Rob and I are grabbing our helmets, inflating the tires and taking our bicycles out on a riding adventure with our Sidney friends. I’m told there’s lunch when we get there, so I think I can keep going! Luckily, despite a lot of hills in our neighbourhood, we’ll be on mostly flat terrain. I hope!
 
I had promised more pictures and stories today from our travels, but I just plain ran out of time this week to get some more scenic shots organized and up for you. Yesterday, Molly was getting groomed, we were visiting with family and running errands and then had a lovely dinner with Rotary members in honour of our incoming group president and board. So you see, this reWirement stuff is definitely keeping us busy! Oh, and don’t let the scowl fool you – she had just a great time and got top marks from the folks at Petsmart!
 

 
I wanted to close this week with a couple of quick shots that aren’t scenic but are, I hope, poignant.
 
On our way from Las Vegas to Arizona and Utah, we stopped in for a brief phone meeting with my publisher back in Toronto, and grabbed a quick bite while we did. The temperature was, according to our car thermometer, 44C and the asphalt of the parking lot as we walked into the Walmart/Subway was skillet hot. The desert breeze felt more like a hair dryer set on low speed, but at its highest temperature. Unbelievable.
 
But this made me hotter under the collar than the weather ever could have:
 

 
Of course, we’d seen our share of T-shirts like the one from the casino I shared with you earlier this week. But this? Absolutely disgusting. I couldn’t resist taking a shot – but only with a camera. Clearly this person is armed to the teeth, and damned proud of it. Meantime in Utah, the March for Our Lives kids from Stoneman High in Florida are being met this week by Utah gun nuts driving a tank and pointing what I’m told is a fake machine gun at them. Lovely.
 
Fortunately, the entire state of Utah hasn’t lost its collective mind. As we made our way through the orderly grid of streets that make up downtown Salt Lake City, I had Rob back the car up after I saw this on a stop sign near an elementary school.
 

 
Thankfully, saner heads at least attempt to prevail once in a while. 
 
Whatever you’re doing this weekend I hope it’s restful or memorable. Thanks for coming by and we’ll get right back at this again on Monday. Take care. Stay lucky.
 

After making our way out of Nevada, we stayed a night in Provo, Utah and got up the next morning for the hour-long drive into Salt Lake City. The largest city in the state, SLC is a study in dichotomies: founded by religious leader Brigham Young, in the past decade it has been named one of America’s 51 most gay-friendly cities. Also, based on the number of plastic surgeons in practice and cosmetics sold, it’s been given the nickname “vainest city in the USA.” (Really? Not LA or Miami or NYC?)
 
And yet, this place of some 200,000 residents, which makes up part of a larger 2 million person metropolitan area, gives one the impression of humility. Of cleanliness (despite its “worst air quality in the nation” rating in 2017). Of spaciousness. Of peace. Of a cosmopolitan feel borne not so much out of the outward signs of many cultures, but out of young men and women leaving the US to fulfill their missionary obligations and coming home learning myriad different languages.
 

 
We found parking easily (and for free) on a tree-lined street a few city blocks from the Mormon Tabernacle and the massive Temple Square, around which the city’s grid was designed and built. Granted, seeing this one place during our quick stop in SLC is akin to the blind man meeting the elephant; what we touched on was surely not the entire picture of this state capital. And we recognize that.
 
But there’s something that feels so different in this place, a sense that one has gone back to the era of Pleasantville. Shiny, happy people, as the song goes. As we approached the square on foot, we found ourselves behind a small group of well dressed, cleanly coiffed young men, carrying attaché cases. Undoubtedly students of LDS, it was our first introduction to something we noticed more and more, the closer we got to Temple Square: everyone looked dressed for a wedding. Not just to go to church, but to go to a wedding. To the nines.
 

 
We strolled the pristine, well-manicured grounds of the square, having missed any opportunity to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in their home church, had we chosen to enter it.
 

 
As you see, a sign said they were on the road, but we read online that on Thursday nights you’re welcome to come in and listen to recordings in the temple itself, which took 40 years to build and was completed in 1893. Undoubtedly the acoustics matched the exterior, which sparkled in the late morning sunshine.
 

 
We were wary of being approached by people on their mission to proselytize the LDS word, so we didn’t make eye contact with the smiling, well-dressed man who greeted people out in the square. (Sometimes retirees are encouraged to become missionaries as well.) It was for that reason, too, that we didn’t enter the Tabernacle. We simply didn’t belong.
 
Unlike when we chose to explore the inside of a mosque in Turkey, we felt that here there might be attempts to engage us in conversation about our beliefs and we weren’t there for that. But I still felt just about as out of place. And don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t them, it was us. 
 
I sometimes reminisce about the Saturday mornings I spent as a youth in a Trenton convent, both for piano lessons and as a fairly frequent guest of a nun there. Occasionally, I’ll miss the ceremony and ritual of a mass and the shivering, tear-inducing joy I felt in hearing voices raised as one to express their beliefs and to sing praise.
 
I confess, while I walked those grounds in Salt Lake City, to feeling somewhat envious of those who feel so committed to their beliefs and are part of a much bigger, tight community, an extended family. I don’t understand it exactly, but it’s something tribal that makes me long for it, somehow. One day I may find it.
 
Tomorrow, we’ll take you back on the road. Idaho is so much more than what you might expect, while Montana lived up to my hopes.
 

Thanks for coming along on our US travel adventures. We began in Nevada (after Rob drove down there – in two days!) and made our way up and across to Utah. The scenery, as we moved from desert to mountains, was too much for my iPhone to take in fully, but it didn’t stop me from trying.
 

 
We spent our one and only night in Utah in Provo, a place I’d heard of in Osmond interviews as a teen. Nestled among mountains and rivers, Provo is a quiet city watched over by gleaming white temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as LDS or Mormons. 
 

 
After a long day’s drive in 40+ temperatures, and taking in a stunning sunset near Nephi, Utah because of a nearby wildfire…
 

 
…we settled in for some home(like) cooking at a Cracker Barrel, where we chatted with our LDS server about her having moved there to go to Brigham Young University. She met the man who would be her husband in second year, and there she is.
 
Her enthusiasm and kindness were remarkable; she had the kitchen improvise chicken in gravy when they’d run out of the dish for the night. And it was excellent, or so I’m told; your trusty scribe just had salad. And, thankfully, not a MAGA hat in sight (although it does seem that no one takes their hat off in a restaurant anymore).
 
In the next few paragraphs here and again tomorrow, I’m going to indulge in something I usually try hard to steer clear of, and that is generalization. But I’m honestly sharing with you the impressions I got of our time in Utah and our fleeting association with a few of its residents.
 
I’m not going so far as to say that everyone in the state follows the same religion (they do not), nor will I make the leap that they all have the same personality traits, but the warmth and friendliness of the people we encountered were remarkable. A seeming sincerity that you don’t always find when you’re a traveler; a kind of welcome, both implied and expressed.
 
Perhaps it was the chatty friendliness of our server, or maybe it was the kindness that was extended to me by the young man with gleaming teeth and sparkling blue eyes at our hotel later that same night.
 
After a satisfying dinner, we drove the few miles as directed by our GPS and pulled up to a budget hotel in a sort of industrial park nestled next to a river. As Rob began to unload the car, I proceeded to the front desk. A young dark-haired man named Mike met me and welcomed me. Then, strangely, he couldn’t find the reservation I’d made the previous day on Expedia.
 
I opened my email from Expedia and handed him the phone, inviting him to scroll away. And that’s when he found it: I’d inadvertently booked a room for the previous night and was obviously a no-show. Well, there was about $150 US I wasn’t getting back. I sighed and apologized, saying we were in the midst of a lot of travel and bookings and I’d clearly messed up. I wasn’t angry or disappointed; I just kind of went, “Well, what are you going to do?” – meaning me, not him. I expected and asked for nothing.
 
That’s when Mike said, “Well, you’ve already paid, so I’ll tell you what: just stay here tonight instead.” I was gobsmacked. As I say, I had considered that I’d made a mistake, I’d have to eat my error and just pay to book another night. I thought I might ask if he had a “walk up” rate that I could take advantage of. But no. Mike extended that offer and I gratefully accepted.
 
Is Mike LDS? I’m going to guess a solid yes, just based on my impressions and, yes, generalization. Was this part of his religious teaching – to extend to a weary stranger a bit of comfort and help? I don’t know. I have no idea what prompted him to do this, especially when I’ve read plenty of reviews of other hotels where similar hapless guests had made the same mistake and not a thing was done or offered to them.
 
But I am grateful. And that, to me, is Christianity as the teachings of Jesus would want it practised: kindness without avarice and compassion without judgment. Just almost exactly the opposite to the policies and actions we are reading about daily south of the border. 
 
I wondered who Mike voted for in 2016.
 
Our next day’s journeys took us the hour-long drive (a longer one than usual, thanks to construction) to Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon Tabernacle and its world-famous choir. The experience we had walking SLC’s streets was, in a word, surreal, and I’ll share some of it with you here tomorrow.
 

First off, a very Happy 25th Birthday to a dear young woman who has, through the most tragic of circumstances, become a beloved member of our family. She’s a mother to Colin and a partner to Phil and our love for her grows daily. Life is full of surprises and some of them are truly delightful. Happy Birthday, Brooke! 
 
As I mentioned here yesterday, we have arrived home from the first of two trips south of the border this summer. The next comes late this month when we embark on a long-dreamed-of convertible ride along the California coast. Leaving Canada in summer is hard, but we had some great experiences along the way.
 
Despite too many “Hillary for Prison: 2016” bumper stickers (okay, two, but that’s still two too many) we managed to avoid any political nastiness. Only one place did we pass by Fox “news” on a TV, so we were able to escape the discord that has so gripped our neighbo(u)rs.
 
Rob arrived down in Nevada after two long driving days and I opted to fly in to Las Vegas to meet him there. Luckily, we were able to find something to do for the days we spent there, including an incredible hand dealt on a machine that was playing so nicely I had just bumped up to dimes from my usual nickels.
 
The first hand paid 3055 dimes.
 

 
Watching carefully in case the machine chilled after that generous a deal, I played on. Then, a few hands later, I was awarded another 9000 dimes! Those two plays were the best pay of the trip and more than compensated us for gas and lodgings. What a lovely surprise!
 

 
We got out of Nevada before the video poker machines could take our money back and headed towards Utah, a state I’ve always wanted to see. Ever since first hearing about it as a young Osmonds fan, the landscape and its people captured my imagination. Mountainous like my native Alberta, it is also dotted with some of the most astoundingly beautiful red rocks in the country. We were able to capture some of the stunning landscape as we sped along the highway towards and into the state and I’ll share it with you tomorrow.
 
First, one more from the casino where we “struck it rich.” Luckily, this guy’s faith-family-firearms-freedom T-shirt didn’t get in my way of winning. Sometimes you’re truly better to keep calm and carry on.
 

 
I’ll be back with you here tomorrow. Get set for scenery!
 

 
Home. Four lettters that carry so much weight. For some, it’s a place to return to that conjures up memories of conflict, of sadness, of a hierarchy that one never truly outgrows. 
 
For others it is, as Robert Frost said, the place where “when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” A safe spot to fall back on when the world and its demands get to be too much. A cocoon of comfort where you can peel off the mask you wear for the world and be yourself: flawed and human, vulnerable and sometimes weary of feeling unloved any other place on earth.
 
For me, home is where, after a long time apart, Molly greets us with unfettered ecstasy: a cacophany of barks, licks and uncontrolled tail wags. A place where the dog hair dust bunnies grow and tumble down hallways to remind us of the last time we cleaned and how long we’ve been gone.
 
It’s a place where the coffee is always exceptional, the WiFi is strong and the familiar, worn furniture bears imprints of long hours of sitting writing, watching the world go by outside the windows over the ocean and breathing deep, contented sighs. It’s where, no matter how much turmoil spins within, there is a soft blanket that whispers, “It’s going to be all right.” 
 
Home. We’re here. After a few thousand fresh kilometres on the odometer and nights of earplugs and unfamiliar beds, we unpacked the car and climbed into our soft, cozy sheets, ready to spend a blissfully quiet night in the cool breeze of an open sliding door. We’re home. And as we count down to our next adventure, one that is sure to make us appreciate our happy place even more, we couldn’t be more content. We even had a little visitor to welcome us back!
 

 

 
I’ll share trip pictures and stories tomorrow, but a few notes: we’re very happy to say that we can no longer call Molly “Eileen,” as her head tilt is completely gone. We have our pup back! Thanks to Susan and Steve (Susan was my boss at Ocean 98.5) and their two dogs, who played with and pampered our girl for the week.
 
And if you’re wondering what has happened to the audio journal, first of all, thank you for missing it! Here’s the thing: after a long and wonderful relationship with the lovely couple behind Caru pet foods, our sponsorship has come to an amicable ending and, of course, we wish them all the best.
 
But the other part of our decision is this: of the 2000-3000 readers who come daily to this journal, only about 80 were choosing to listen to it. I do believe that every listener matters, but it came down to the best use of Rob’s time (and trust me, he worked harder on it than I did). I loved doing the audio journal and it may return someday; I do miss talking to you. But for now, as travels and embracing this new life take more of our time and attention, I hope you’ll be as happy reading this daily blog as I am writing it, and Rob is posting it for you. Thank you for understanding.