April 18, 2010 – Peggy’s Bounty – en route to Dallas

We just can’t wait to get on the road again. Down to Texas and Waylon and Willie and the boys.

But as if on cue the rotten weather we experienced throughout our trip last fall re-emerged. 10 cm of snow and wind gusts to 100km/hr pummeled Red Deer on the evening before our departure to Dallas. Though Hwy 2 to Calgary was littered with the storm’s vehicular carnage we sailed through to the airport without incident.

Then our American Airlines flight out of Calgary was mysteriously, inexplicably delayed six hours. We finally boarded the plane. The pilot, cockpit door ajar in what I can only describe as the most manifest post-9/11 security breach imaginable, brazenly informed us that he had “not the slightest clue for the cause of the delay.”

Peggy our stewardess hinted that it may have been due to an aileron problem but just shrugged and buckled up after “preparing the cabin doors for departure”. The captain slammed the cockpit shut and taxied off for Dallas but not without – as if to further compromise our fear of flying issues – one false take-off down the runway. “Sorry about that folks”, he reassured us “we had a little issue on that first go round but we think it’s all fixed up so we’re gonna just re-taxi and get you on your way to Dallas. Thanks for flying American.”

No problem. A few minutes into the air Peggy was up and about. Peggy was near the end of her career – and apparently her rope. In an inarticulate effort at appeasement she began freely, randomly distributing beverages to everyone on board. Near tears she apologized that there was no food aboard. But she handed out enough gratis liquor, beer, wine, champagne and Jack Daniels to satisfy the Italian army.

When I proffered a $20 tip to calm her down she collected every remaining beverage on the aircraft and dumped them onto my lap before tearfully asking me to raise my table tray and fasten my seat belt as we were beginning our descent into DFW.

During our ten-week fall transposition we encountered precisely one rousing campground get-together. This event occurred in mid-October on the Missouri River in Sioux City, Iowa where a retired Kentucky gentleman – replete with white suit, goatee, bow tie and black horn-rimmed glasses – invited us to his “southern fried” campsite to partake in a rousing rendition of the Tennessee Waltz. After one tune even the normally indefatigable Gerry went to bed.

On this, our April, 2010 go-round – on our first night – at the Vineyards Campground in Grapevine, Texas (just north of the Dallas airport) we were hospitably invited to an adjoining campsite to join “Guy and my lovely wife Tanja” to help celebrate her fiftieth birthday. Guy readily ascertained our Canadian origins and in fact was the owner/player of a shoddily manufactured Canadian guitar known as a Larivee.

I play a Martin, a vastly superior instrument. But somehow Guy could make that Larivee sing while my Martin just whined. We had a great campfire sing-a-long. I even remembered the words to Waltzing Matiltda – though God knows what that has to do with the softwood lumber debate or NAFTA.

Tanja’s guests included Stacey, a young woman whose husband was terminally ill with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Over a campfire smore’s and a Shiner’s pale bock beer Stacey enticed me – despite the distraction of a rousing rendition of Kumba-ya – to provide a DNA cheek swab and the five page application form necessary to become enrolled in the national marrow donor program.

On departure Stacey hugged me and mentioned confidentially that God had a plan. I had clearly been brought in (that night) off the sidelines, to contribute my Celtic spit. I offered my now-traditional, provocative reply about a recent conversion to Islam or Buddhism – I can’t remember which – to which she responded blissfully, ignorantly, “That’s okay, Jesus has room for everyone.”

Wow, what a night.

Gerry & Florence