Still My Favorite Season

     My wife and I were recently discussing stages of life. There's your childhood as you look forward to becoming a teenager and more freedom as you learn to drive. Then there comes the independence of turning 21 and planning your future. Once you're settled, you look forward to marriage and possibly raising a family. From there it's a long road as middle age awaits but eventually you look forward to seeing your children move off on their own and having the house to yourself. Then on to retirement.

     But now, as both my wife and I entered that retirement stage some years ago, I asked her what stage of life now do we have to look forward to. After some thought, I proposed that it might be a time of retrospection and looking back after our travels and our time spent watching grandchildren.

     Not that I don't do some looking back already when I have the time. Just now I was reading past blogs I've written over the last 14 years. Much has changed in those past 14 years but one thing that certainly hasn't is my fondness for all things Halloween. Almost every year an October blog has featured a Halloween picture or story of some sort.

     This year I raised five pumpkins in my backyard garden . . .

. . . purchased a skeleton from Costco, watched my favorite zombie movie, visited the Bewitching Peddlers show in Marshall, Michigan and bought a package of over 180 candy bars for the trick-or-treaters.

     And it's not even October! The stores got to love an early shopper like myself.

     I've also infected my nearly three-year-old grandson with my enthusiasm for the spooky season. He loves my pumpkins in the back yard. Before he left after his usual Tuesday with grandma and grandpa last week, I saw him go into the back yard and give the biggest pumpkin there a hug. Though he speaks excitedly about ghosts, skeletons, zombies and “witces”, pumpkins are his favorite.

     Check out this picture.

     We were at a bakery where we said he could have any pastry he wanted. His favorite donut with sprinkles was in the display case as were others rich with cream and frosting. He picked out a pumpkin cookie, which he only nibbled at. Grandpa helped him to finish it.

     To entertain him one day, I got out my bin of Halloween props. He loved going through the fake spiders, skeletons and ghosts though I grabbed from him a make-up kit.

     “Is it dangerous?” he asked.

     In a grandpa's eyes, a three-year-old with a packet of face-paints and smudge rubs? Yeah, let's say it could be trouble. But if he were disappointed, perhaps I made up for it by signing him up for a pre-school pumpkin hunt that's supposed to take place in a few weeks.

     And it's not even October.

Canadian Road Signs

I've been delinquent in posting here. I guess I can blame some of it on travels lately since we wanted to take advantage of the weather to put more miles on our mini-van before the weather turns colder in Michigan.

Something I've always wanted to do was circle Lake Huron too. Just drive up north, over the Mackinac Bridge, cross over to Ontario, Canada, at Sault Ste Marie and drive through Ontario, circling back to cross the Detroit River before heading home.

Maybe I'm getting old, but it turned out to be more of a challenge driving in Canada than last time which was over five years ago (I think). For one, our trusty Garmin wayfinder doesn't work that side of the border. Neither does our smart phone. It didn't help that our Ontario map was 18 years old. We paid for that mistake spending extra time trying to navigate a newly built highway that didn't even exist on the map we had.

Perhaps better signage would have helped. We passed a big sign stating “Large vehicles need more room”, something that I would file under common sense regardless of the country. But informing drivers of the highway number they were on wasn't considered critical since we saw no such identification signage for 20 miles. Another sign we passed read, “Can't See? Don't Pass.” Maybe I'm being snarky, but if someone can't see, should they even be driving?

We encountered another sign while pulling into one of their service areas along the expressway. In the United States they're called rest areas or service plazas or travel plazas. In Canada, they're called On-Routes. A very informative name, right? If I asked you what you would expect to find at an “On-Route”, what would it be. Makes me wonder who came up with that for a place that sells gas and sundry items a traveler might need.

Anyway, as I exited onto the On-Route a sign warned us “Slow.” No speed limit listed, just slow. Then just feet farther down the road a second sign warned us, “Dead slow.” How much slower is dead slow from just slow? Was I expected to kill the engine and push the car? I can see me trying to explain to a Canadian Mountie, “I thought I was going dead slow.” He responds, “You were going slow, but just not dead slow.”

My wife who was looking forward to seeing wildlife this trip became excited when she saw signs that warned Moose “next 24 km.” So we kept our eyes peeled for the next 15 miles or so. No moose. Then farther on down the road another Moose warning sign. Again for 24 km. In fact EVERY moose sign we encountered traveling in this part of Canada had the tag “next 24 km.”

Never mind that we never saw one moose. Why the 24 kilometer distance every time? Did they just save money by ordering multiple copies of identical signage? Was there an agreement between Canadians and moose for them to move into wildlife refuges of 24 square kilometers?

At least we didn't encounter this moose sign which I've heard also can be found in Canada. I can't imagine the panic that would have ensued if we'd seen this while traveling with our young grandchildren.

But we did see this sign.

I've seen pedestrian crossings for children, or rather signs warning that children may be playing in the area. I didn't realize that the presence of seniors required a similar warning. We saw that sign near our hotel in Huntsville, Ontario. For the record, I didn't see any seniors near the sign. But I'm not good at guessing folks' ages either.

If I felt a little defensive at me and my fellow seniors being called out on a road sign warning, I probably would have felt more defensive if I'd seen this one.

Maybe we need to stop stereotyping elderly pedestrians. I don't think I would take as much offense at a sign like the following.