Sayonara, Nippon

Hi Everyone.

During the past few weeks I've been trying to find work in Japan, with no success. The Japanese economy has been in real trouble since the sub-prime crisis. The yen is skyrocketing, the JET program had to make massive cutbacks in enrollment (which probably played a factor in my being rejected last year), English language schools have been going bankrupt, and as I reported earlier, the Working Holiday Makers Association announced it was going to close it doors just the day before I picked up my visa from the Japanese consulate. This is not to say that I completely blame the economy. . . the truth is, I've been avoiding the fact that I was not ready to make this trip. My Japanese was not nearly as good as I thought it was, and my particular teaching experience was clearly not what the companies I applied to were looking for.

Any prospective jobs that might have been available from now on would not begin until October, and even then, the paychecks would not be given out until late October (in Japan, paychecks are given out monthly, rather than bi-weekly). As my rent was due no later than today, and my money was running out, I faced two options:

1) Continue my lease, with financial help from my family, in the hopes of maybe getting work.

2) Submit my one-month notice of vacation, use my remaining month of time to do the things I wanted to do in Japan (apart from the more unrealistic, like visiting Hokkaido, Kyoto, and Hiroshima), and come back to Canada to look for work.

A couple of days ago, I decided, with great reluctance, that would have to come home. By mid-October I will be back in Canada. From there, I will temporarily return to Prince George before moving to Victoria, where I will seek employment, hopefully at the University of Victoria, Camosun College, or as a private tutor. While there, I also plan to continue learning Japanese, most likely by auditing courses at the University, like I did at UNBC.

I was hard coming to this decision. Yesterday I revisited the Imperial Shrine grounds just outside downtown Tokyo. I came here again because I had taken some beautiful photos of the area which were unfortunately lost. Coming here again, I was filled not with the sense of adventure that I felt durig my first visit, but rather sadness. Call me a sappy sentimentalist if you want, but the truth is, after only two months of living here, I'm already sad to be leaving. This place, despite the short time, despite my inability to communicate effectively, already seemed like home to me. As late as last week, I was convinced that that's exactly what Tokyo would be, at least for the year that my visa was valid.

I want to stress that I'm not giving up on Japan; I will come here again. In the two months I have been here-- leaving aside the stress of job-hunting, not to mention the play "Imagine 9.11" which I'll talk about some other time-- I have had one of the greatest adventures of my life. I lived, however briefly, in one of the world's great metropolises. I engaged with a totally different culture-- two years ago I had not even left Canada or travelled further east than Edmonton. I witnessed Shinto festivals and massive fireworks spectacles. I climbed Mt. Fuji. I fucking met Sailor Moon. And I've only just begun.

As I said, I plan to continue learning Japanese until I achieve some level of fluency. When the time comes-- maybe a year, maybe a few years-- I will come back, perhaps with my family as a tourist, perhaps as a student, perhaps with work already arranged. But I will be back.

And as I said, I ain't leaving tomorrow, either. There's still plenty I wanna do: re-visit Mt. Fuji (I never got any pictures of the mountain from the ground, and my Mom keeps bugging me to put up some pictures with ME in them); visit Nikko; visit Yokohama and Yokosuka; go to Tokyo Disney Sea for a day (money permitting); go to a few more Sailor Moon locations; and hopefully try one more time to get a picture with Miyuu Sawai.

Stay Tuned.

No, I'm Asking.

Which of the following statements do you agree with the most:

A) Ferris Bueller's Day Off is, in the words of the immortal Richard Roeper, "a story about a young man trying to help his friend gain some measure of self-worth. . . to show [him] that the whole world in front of him is passing him by, and that life can be pretty sweet if you wake up and embrace it."

B) Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the story of a privileged narcissistic sociopath who will lie and manipulate just to have a good time. Its story is a complete moral inversion, with Ferris as the "good guy," and dedicated, if exasperated, civil servant principal Rooney as the de jure "bad guy." It's status as a perceived classic of 80's teen comedy only goes to show how cunning a deceiver Ferris really is.

C) Ferris Bueller is not a sociopath because, fundamentally, he is not a character at all-- he is an idea, a cipher onto which the film's teenage audience can graft their own selves. His world is not our world, but the world as we see it as adolescents, one of arbitrary rules imposed on those seeking only to enjoy life to its fullest. To hold Ferris Bueller up to the moral standards of our real world is absurd, and misses the point altogether.

D) It was all in Cameron's head.

E) Bueller?

I Used to Do Something That Was Almost Like A Real Job. . .

Image of Jeremy taken shortly after his thesis defence.

So, it finally happened. My paper, "Quantum tunneling and reflection of a molecule with a single bound state," has been published in Physical Review A. I promised in a previous post that I would write a summary of paper. So, with reading week quickly evaporating away, about eighty physics assignments yet to be marked, and a Japanese midterm on Monday, I thought I should get on that.

The approach I decided to take was a basic parsing/elaboration of the abstract, since that's the only part of the paper available to read on the internet without having to pay a fee. The abstract, by definition, pretty much lays out the content of the paper anyway, so with a bit of explanation you should be able to get the jist of what we, i.e. myself, Danielle Kerbrat, and my supervising prof Dr. Mark Shegelski, discovered and published. I'm going to assume that anyone who reads this has about high-school level science education, which means I'll have a lot of explaining to do.

Abstract:

In this article, we present the results of studies on the quantum mechanical tunneling and reflection of a diatomic, homonuclear molecule with a single bound state incident upon a potential barrier.

Hoo-boy. Where to start?

The "diatmoic, homonuclear molecule" is basically a pair of identical particles that interact with and, loosely speaking, "attach" to one another by means of an attractive force. Usually, the particles in question are atoms. However, our formulation is general enough to be applied to any pair of "attached" particles, such as Cooper pairs and excitons. These examples appear later in the abstract, so I'll explain what they mean later on.

When the atoms are attached to each other, we say that the molecule is in "bound state." When they aren't, we say they're in an "unbound state." To be in a "bound state," the atoms in the molecule must have lower total energy than two free atoms. To understand what that means, imagine a you're in a region that's entirely flat except for a small, bowl-shaped valley. If you're in the valley, you have to expend energy in order to get out of the valley. If you don't have enough energy to climb out of the valley, you're stuck-- "bound" to the valley. Another way of thinking about this is that, if you're standing in the valley, you have less energy than if you're standing in the flat plain. When two atoms are "attached" to each other in a molecule, what's really happening is that the force they exert on one-another creates a sort of potential energy "valley," whereas two free atoms are in a potential energy state more akin to standing in the flat region outside of the valley.

So what does it mean for a molecule to have a "single bound state?" In order to understand the behaviour of small objects, like atoms, molecules, electrons, etc. we had to discover a whole new set of physicals laws, which we call quantum mechanics. The problem with quantum mechanics is, well, it's weird. One of the implications of quantum mechanics is that, if two atoms are bound in a molecule, then they can only occupy certain energy levels-- we say that the energy levels are "quantized," hence "quantum mechanics." Think back to the valley for a minute. You could stand at the very bottom of the valley, or half-way up the valley, or two-thirds of the way up, or one-quarter, or any other place you like. With any given height up the valley, there is a corresponding potential energy level. In other words, the laws of physics do not restrict you to one or another given energy level in the valley. However, if the valley were like a molecule, you could only occupy certain specific energy levels. You could, say, be at the very bottom, or half way up, or two-thirds of the way up, but you could not be at any other altitude. When you're standing at one of the permitted altitudes, you could be said to be in one of the given "bound states" of the valley. Likewise, the atoms in the molecule can only exist in certain bound states. What these states are depends on the kind of molecules we're considering. For our paper, we consider a molecule whose parameters are such that there is only one bound state. If we go back to the example of the valley, that would mean that we can only stand at the very bottom of the valley-- no other altitude is permitted. One more thing that I may as well mention now is that the title of the paper mentions that we're considering a "weakly bound" molecule. This is akin to a very shallow valley. The implications of weak binding will be made more clear later on, so I'll leave it for now.

The other important thing mentioned in the above excerpt is the idea of "quantum tunneling." Purge your mind of the valley, for now I'm going to ask you to imagine you're riding a bike toward a hill. I'm also going to ask you to imagine, for the sake of argument, that once you start climbing the hill you stop pedalling you bike. If you were going fast enough before you started climbing, then you'll have enough kinetic energy to coast over the top of the hill and reach the other side. If not, you'll come to a stop before the crest of the hill and begin rolling back down. This makes sense, so of course quantum mechanics has to find some way screw it up. The way it does this is through the phenomenon of quantum tunneling (since my paper was published in an American journal, I will continue to spell it as "tunneling," and not "tunnelling").

What I'm about to tell you is strange, but since I'll have to discuss it eventually, and since it does have bearing on the explanation of quantum tunneling, I figure I may as well get it out of the way now. Do you remember in science class when you were taught that light behaves as a wave? Do you also remember hearing somewhere or reading somewhere that light is composed of particles called photons? Did you ever step back and wonder why scientists just can't seem to make up their bloody minds on the issue? Is light a wave or a series of particles? It must be one or the other, it can't be both. Well, according to quantum mechanics, light is both a wave and a series of particles. . . and so is everything else! Electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, your computer, you yourself. . . all waves. "But waves of what?," you might ask. Probability. Basically, the wave part of a given object, be it a photon, electron, atom, or molecule, determines the probability of observing that object at a given place (it also gives the probability of the object having a given momentum, but that's a whole other story). I'm oversimplifying a bit, but at any position where there's a crest in the wave, the probability of observing a particle at that position is high; wherever there's a trough, the probability is low.

This complicates the study of physics at the microscopic level quite a bit. Since the days of Newton, physics has always used particles to understand the laws of motion, with the implicit assumption that we can always take a measurement or make an observation and determine where the particle is at any given time. Additionally, if we know exactly where a particle is, what its speed and direction of motion is, and all of the forces acting on it are, it was assumed that the laws of physics could be used to predict its position and velocity at any time, past, present, or future. It was assumed, in other words, that the laws of physics act in a deterministic way. Quantum mechanics, however, says that, if we think in terms of particles, the laws of physics must probabilistic. But this means that we cannot use physical laws to make any solid predictions about the behaviour of a given object, rendering those physical laws next to useless. However, it turns out that if we think instead in terms the probability waves mentioned earlier, we have a lot more luck. Unlike particles, probability waves do behave deterministically. Understanding just how these waves behave allows physicists to make some very interesting, very counter-intuitive predictions.

In the macroscopic world that we all live in, this doesn't really amount to much. Even though there is a probability wave associated with each of us, the probability of any of us being exactly where we are is 100%. At the microscopic level, however, this becomes much more pronounced. One example of how much more pronounced it is quantum tunneling. Recall the proverbial hill I discussed earlier. The microscopic equivalent to the hill is something called a "potential barrier." Imagine some microscopic particle approaching a potential barrier with some given kinetic energy. If it behaved the same way as the bike climbing the hill, then the particle would definitely pass if it had high enough kinetic energy, and would definitely not pass if it didn't. But, you'll recall, nothing is "definite" as far as particles are concerned, and in order to make predictions we have to think in terms of the wave, or "wave function" in physicist parlance, associated with the particle. It turns out that, no matter what the energy of the incoming particle, a chunk of the wave will always manage to travel past the barrier. What this means is that, no matter what the energy of the incoming particle, there is some probability that the particle will be observed on the other side of the barrier. This is like the bicycle appearing on the other side of the hill even though it was only going fast enough to make it half way up-- the only way this could happen is if the bicycle travelled through a tunnel in the hill. Hence, "quantum tunneling." Make no mistake, though, the particle didn't "dig" its way through the potential barrier. Rather, the laws of quantum mechanics allowed the particle to travel through the barrier as though it were not there at all.

If we're only considering a single particle incident upon a given barrier, then it's relatively easy to calculate the wave function and thus find the probability of tunneling. However, when we start to consider more complex objects like, say, a diatomic homonuclear molecule, things get very ugly. Instead of one particle, we now have to consider two, which means we have to consider the object as having size and being spread out in space. Moreover, these two particle are being affected not only by the potential barrier but by the force attracting them to each other. This attractive force creates a "potential well"-- the microscopic equivalent to the metaphorical valley-- which must be taken into account as well. Recall also that the molecule can exist in any one of a number of bound or unbound states. As a result the molecule can undergo changes of state upon interacting with the potential barrier. These factors complicate things so much that the tunneling of molecules wasn't seriously investigated until 1994. Quantum tunneling of single particles, on the other hand, has been investigated since the 1920's.

From the next part of the abstract:

In the first study, we investigate the tunneling of a molecule using a time-dependent formulation. The molecular wave function is modeled as a Gaussian wave packet, and its propagation is calculated numerically using Crank-Nicholson integration.

(Our paper is actually a combination of two different studies. We had initially intended to publish two papers, but due to various circumstances we decided to publish both studies in a single paper.)

In quantum mechanics, you can look at things in either a "time-independent" way or a "time-dependent" way. For the purposes of describing the results in the paper, the difference between the two formulations is as outlined as follows.

In studies of quantum tunneling, we're usually interested in calculating the probability that a given object will be observed ahead of the barrier-- "probability of tunneling"-- or behind the barrier-- "probability of reflection". The time-independent formulation is very useful for calculating these probabilities, but it's not useful for describing what happens to the molecule as it's tunneling through the barrier. In order to study this, the so-called "tunneling dynamics," you need to use a "time-dependent" formulation. The problem is that this is quite a bit harder to do than using a time-independent formulation. For that reason, every study (that we're aware of) in molecular tunneling that came before this paper used a time-independent formulation. In other words, to my and my co-authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to use a time-dependent formulation to investigate the tunneling of molecules, making me and my co-authors the world's foremost experts in time-dependent molecular tunneling!

What's that, Alexandre Bilodeau? You're the first Canadian to win gold at the Winter Olympics on home soil? Big whoop.

Anyway. With a time-dependent formulation, we basically created a computer simulation of the molecule's wave function and calculated how the wave function behaves as it interacts with a potential barrier. That, in a nutshell, is what all that talk about "Gaussian wave packets" and "Crank-Nicholson integration" is referring to. It was a very difficult calculation. Like all previous work done at UNBC on molecular tunneling, we had to use the university's supercomputer in order to run the simulations. So what do we have to show for it?

We found that the molecule could take one of multiple paths once it begins to interact with the barrier. For one, it could reflect. Basically, the molecule hits the barrier, temporarily breaks apart (i.e. transitions to an unbound state), recombines, and bounces back from the barrier. This isn't really a surprising result. But a couple of the other paths it could take are surprising.

From the abstract:

It is found that a molecule may transition between the bound state and an unbound state numerous times during the process of reflection from or transmission past the barrier.

This means that, if the molecule follows a path such that it does tunnel through the barrier, it will break apart and recombine some number of times before it passes the barrier. The reason we think this happens is summarized, in highly simplified fashion, as follows. We chose to use a very thin potential barrier called a delta barrier. In time-independent studies, this barrier provided results that captured many of the features of tunneling when more realistic barriers were used. We think that when the molecule hits the delta barrier, there's a chance that one of the molecules passes the barrier, but the other is reflected by it, and hence the molecule breaks up. However, there is still an attractive force drawing the molecules toward each other, so the atom that passed the barrier may be drawn back toward the atom that remained behind the barrier and eventually recombine with it.

This leads into another surprising result, one that is not considered in time-independent studies:

It is also found that, in addition to reflecting and transmitting, the molecule may also temporarily straddle the potential barrier in an unbound state.

In other words, the molecule, upon contacting the barrier, stays near the barrier for a relatively long time. This is what happens when the scenario described in the last paragraph occurs repeatedly, only without the molecule recombining and entering into a bound state. Straddling, as we called it, does not occur for a molecule in the bound state. In order for a molecule to break up, it needs energy. This energy comes from the initial kinetic energy of the molecule. Straddling occurs when the energy needed to break up the molecule is nearly the same as the kinetic energy of the molecule, so that when the molecule breaks up, the atoms don't have very much kinetic energy left. Again, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it captures the main physical features of what's going on.

In the second study, we consider the case of a molecule incident in the bound state upon a step potential with energy less than the step. We show that in the limit where the binding energy e0 approaches zero and the step potential V0 goes to infinity, the molecule cannot remain in a bound state if the center of mass gets closer to the step than an arbitrarily large distance x0 which increases as the magnitude of e0 decreases, as V0 increases, or both. We also show that, for e0→0- and V0→∞, if the molecule is incident in the bound state, it is reflected in the bound state with probability equal to unity, when the center of mass reaches the reflection distance x0. We verify that the unbound states exhibit the expected physical behavior. We discuss some surprising results.

The second study, unlike the first, was entirely analytical, i.e. pen and paper mathematics, with no computers needed. What we considered was the case of a molecule that was extremely weakly bound incident upon a "hard wall" potential barrier, that is a potential barrier that was very long and very high. The binding energy is the term e0 referred to above; the term V0 refers to the energy "height" of the potential barrier. We considered this case, initially, as a simple test of our calculations. It turned out that this "simple" case was actually very hard, and yielded very counter intuitive results, as I'll explain below.

Intuitively, what we expected to happen for the weakly bound molecule to come close to the barrier and break up, with the atoms reflected away from the wall. What we found instead is that there is a distance, x0, from the wall within which the molecule cannot remain in the bound state. The distance x0 grows larger the more weakly bound the molecule is. Furthermore, we found that the probability of the molecule being reflected in the bound state approaches 100% in the case of extremely weak binding and extremely large potential barrier height. Taken together, this means that a weakly bound molecule, coming towards the hard wall potential barrier from a very long ways away, comes to a within a distance x0 from the barrier, and is then reflected away from the wall in the bound state. To get a bit of an idea of how weird this is, imagine throwing a brittle champagne at a brick wall. You'd expect it to hit the wall and shatter, with shards of glass boucing back. If the glass behaved like a weakly bound molecule, what would happen instead is that the glass comes within 50 feet of the wall and bounces back, intact. A champagne glass is more than a little bit different from a diatomic, homonuclear molecule, I know, but you get the idea.

Connections between our results and investigations done in cold atoms, excitons, Cooper pairs, and Rydberg atoms are discussed.

Apart from the sheer difficulty of the calculations, another problem with the study of molecular tunneling is in connecting it to real world applications. Direct experimental applications don't yet exist. However, connections can be drawn to many real world systems. Rydberg atoms, for instance, can be modelled pair of weakly bound particles, i.e. a very high energy electon and an atomic nucleus + lower energy electons. Rydberg atoms can also combine to form very weakly bound molecules. Collisions of Rydberg atoms with the surfaces of certain materials has been investigated. This scenario is akin to a weakly bound molecule incident upon a hard wall.

The tunneling of other composite particle objects, like excitons and Cooper pairs, can also be studied and are a subject of research interest. Cooper pairs are basically bound pairs of electrons which exist inside superconductors, and are indeed what make supercondutivity possible. Excitons are weird things that form inside of semiconductors and other materials. Basically, when an electron in such a material becomes excited, i.e. gains energy (by means of a photon collision, for example), it leaves an "electron hole," or absence, in whatever state it used to be it. This "hole," weirdly enough, behaves like another particle, and what's more, it can become bound the excited electron, forming an electon-hole "molecule" known as an exciton.

So, there you have it. I've summarized my crowning acheivement as a physicist, and with that out of the way, I'll get back to work on what really matters-- Sailor Moon: The Movie!

Well. . . I guess this means I'm going to Tokyo.

I sent an application for the JET program again this year. I applied to the program once before, and was interviewed last year. I documented that experience here. I just heard back from the Japanese embassy, and the good news is that I won't have to go through it again.

I was rejected, flat out. This is strange to me, since I thought my prospects would have improved. By the time of my second application, I had successfully defended my master's thesis (with a clear pass, something which only one other grad student in physics had accomplished at UNBC) and satisfied all of my dgeree requirements-- in other words, the only thing standing between me and a MSc degree was a silly robe and a long, boring ceremony. Not only that, I had been taking courses in Japanese course, and even got a letter of recommendation from my prof (I guess a measly 99.5% grade just doesn't cut it for JET). Plus, I had been doing teaching work as a supplementary instructor for a physics course, which added to the lab teaching experience I already had.

So what the hell happened? Did the poor economy result in less teaching positions? Did they decide they weren't going to give a one time semi-reject (I made it to on to the alternate list) like me a second chance? Did I bungle the application in some way that I managed to avoid doing last time? Did they somehow manage to find my blog and discover all the nasty things I've been saying about certain Japanese politicians? Honestly, the confusion that arises from being rejected despite being a stronger candidate is actually less distressing than the rejection itself.

Why? Well, first off, being rejected means I can leave for Japan sooner. If I were accepted, I would be waiting around until August before flying off. Second, it means I can go to Tokyo-- you don't even mention the word Tokyo on the application form for JET-- and that, to say the least, will be an adventure.

But ultimately, what it comes down to is that I don't need JET. I chose JET because I thought it offered the path of least resistance to getting to Japan. We all know now how well that idea turned out. On top of that, I'm a master of fucking science. A government position teaching English in some podunk high school in Asscrack prefecture is-- and I don't say this often-- beneath me.

(Gosh, that didn't sound bitter at all!)

I'm still willing to tutor English, don't get me wrong. I may even take a TESOL course before I leave. Until then, I'll keep saving up my money, kicking ass in Japanese. . .

. . . and writing the motherfucking Sailor Moon movie. That's right! You thought that just this once I wasn't gonna mention my little pet project. Well, think again! This is my new thesis, people. Only this time, I'll actually enjoy writing it!

Pop Quiz, or Maybe More of a Survey:

Please choose one of the four answers below.

Jeremy didn't like E.T. beacuse:

A) Having long ago lost any semblance of childhood innocence and wonder, he is fundamentally incapable of understanding an allegory of childhood bonding and loss. As such he is, like many jaded cynics, utterly perplexed by the subtleties of a movie that speaks in a deep language of emotions, though any child can pick up on those same subtleties with ease.

B) E.T. is an overratted sacred cow featuring a cast of cold, detached and uninvolving actors essentially improvising their way through a long string of non-sequiters trying to pass itself off as a plot, and whose success or (in this case) failure as a film hinges on the audience's ability to empathize with a puppet that makes Yoda look look fucking Gollum, as well as on their willingness to pretend the John Williams isn't peddling a slightly re-written version of Holst's Jupiter Suite.

C) All of the above.

D) None of the above.

Oh, and if I hear any "Man, that's rich coming from the guy who wants to write the Sailor Moon movie" I will fucking end you.

The Ugly Canadian

AKA CAP Congress Part II + Colorado.

I started this blog post in August, and I've been putting off for months. When you see how long it is, you'll understand why.

For the first twenty-five years of my life, I never set foot outside of my home country of Canada. Hell, the only other province that I ever visited was Alberta, and that barely even counts when you're from central BC.

However, this past summer, I travelled to the United States of America not once, but twice. The first visit was my return journey from the CAP Congress in Moncton, NB, with my sister Naomi. The second was a camping trip in Colorado that I went on with my parents. These journeys have taken me through two great American metropolises (Chicago and Denver), numerous towns small in size but grand in character, great plains, high mountain passes, lush forests, priceless national monuments, and one really overrated national park.

And in the end, it has left me feeling like dumb tourist.

For one thing, stereotypes be damned, I found Americans to be friendlier and more polite than Canadians! Granted, I spent the majority of my time in mid-west states like Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, which might well be friendlier-than-average parts of the country. And granted, for the purposes of the above comparison, I am deliberately forgetting about just how pleasant the people of New Brunswick were. But still. . . I'll give you a couple of examples. First, during the Colorado trip, when me and my parents were stopped at rest area after crossing the Montana border, an American couple returning from a trip in Alberta came up to us, expressed what a wonderful time they had in Alberta, and wished us Canadians safe and pleasant travels! I know this should be stroking my national ego somewhat, but never in my life have I encountered Canadians that warm and open. It made me feel like a classless bum, not to mention, as I said earlier, a dumb tourist.

Another instance of American friendliness occurred on the return trip from Colorado. Me and my parents drove in separate vehicles-- I drove the tiny, spunky Pontiac Vibe, while my parents took turns driving a pick-up loaded with a camper. As you can imagine, there were times when I would take a considerable lead on the highway. At one point I got so far ahead that I had to pull over and wait for them at the side of the highway (this was near Casper, Wyoming, a nice little town that has the distinction of being the birthplace of Dick Cheney). As I waited, a pair of passer-bys (a mother and daughter) pulled to the side of the road in front of me and asked if I needed assistance! Again, never in Canada has that happened to me.

What makes this even more weird was that Naomi seemed, at some points, to have the complete opposite reaction to mine when it came to Americans. I remember stopping at Subway restaurant in a small Minnesota town just off I-90. We had to contend with the lunch rush, so it was crowded, but I enjoyed it-- the Minnesotan townsfolk seemed pleasant, in spite of limited space. However, when Naomi and I returned to the car, the first words she said were "Americans are such stupid classless assholes." This aroused my curiosity, so I probed further. "I was holding a door open for some guy and he doesn't say anything, so I say 'you're welcome!' and he says 'oh, oh, thank you.' God!" So, yeah.

I will note that there was one unpleasant encounter I had with an American, but that has to do with the overrated national park I mentioned earlier, so I'll come back to it later. For now, I will segue awkwardly into discussing the many sights, sounds and other attractions I partook upon during my American sojourn!

Chicago! Went by too fast for me to really take it in. But Sears Tower is... I'm sorry, Willis Tower is pretty impressive.

Albany! Naomi and I stayed there for a night! Then we ate at the local IHOP! There we heard real blue collar New Yorkers speak. And it was good. Though I have to say, the McDonald's service there is shitty, at least if the place I went to was at all indicative.

The Mississippi! We crossed the famous river, which essentially formed that part of the Wisconsin-Minnesota border through which we were driving. And yes, I did say "M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i" to myself to make sure that I would spell it properly.

Cleveland! Yeah, so that would be a third great American metropolis that I forgot to mention. We drove a convoluted route through the city on our way to Chicago. It wasn't as bad a Calgary, though. Driving through Calgary is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, except both the gold and the rainbow are buried at the horizon, and your only hope of finding it is with a treasure map, only the map itself was burned, so you have to rely on a recorded transcription of the map that can only be played on Thomas Edison's original prototype phonograph, and the transcription itself was translated from Japanese Haiku into Chinese Shi and then into French Rondeau. Yeah, it's a strange metaphor, but you trying connecting from Highway #1 east to Highway #2 south in Calgary sometime!

South Dakota! Near the Minnesota border, me and Naomi stopped at a small gas station. I after filling up the car, I went in to pay for the fuel, when the clerk, a man in maybe his sixties with a slow drawl that-- and I'm not trying to insult the man-- suggested a head injury, said "So what state are you from?"

"Actually, I'm from B.C.-- er, British Columbia."

"Oooh." the clerk said. "So. . . I heard you got the, uh, B.C. bud up there?"

"Er, yeah. We got that," I replied.

A fellow who was standing nearby, and who seemed to be a regular customer based on his interactions with the clerk, seemed to take interest. The clerk asked for the price of gas or something like that, and the other man remarked "you asked that three times today"-- this is the other reason I though the clerk might have had a head injury.

Turning to me, the other man asked "I heard that B.C. Bud is pretty good stuff."

"I wouldn't know myself, sir," I said. This provoked a fit of laughter from the two.

Then the clerk, committing the mortal sin of explaining the joke, said "I'll bet he thinks we were trying to pull a fast one on him!"

Asking for a receipt, I left with a smile on my face. For some stupid reason, I felt a little bit clever. Maybe it was just because I thought, at the time, that this is gonna make really a good story.

Mount Rushmore! It was cool. Not as big as I thought it would be, but still impressive. What surprised me was the amount of tourist-y build-up we encountered on the way to the place. I should have known better, but I kind of expected something like a highway pull-off, basically a parking lot with a gift-shop. In reality, the mountain is about a thirty mile drive south from Rapid City, SD. The road, as far as I can tell, was purpose built for travelling to Rushmore and the near-by Crazyhorse monument. A couple of miles before you even get to the parking lot, you encounter a propped up little tourist town consisting entirely of gift shops, restaurants, and resort lodges. After you've paid the ten dollar admission fee to get into the parking lot, you come up to a huge entrance, followed by a few historical exhibits and even more gift shops. Then you pass a fairly impressive avenue of all the state flags. Then, finally, you come to the monument itself. Naomi and I did take our own pictures, but we have yet to upload them to an online photo album. Naomi was not particularly enamoured of how crowded the place was; we arrived at around eight o'clock at night, and there were still at least three hundred people in attendance! Being surrounded by Americans at a fairly patriotic attraction, we were denied our God-given right as Canadians to be sarcastic about the United States. (Recall the title of this post.)

A warning about the pictures that follow. This is the first time I've ever posted pictures of myself on the internet. Now, I am not an especially good looking man at the best of times, but combine my undistinguished looks with 13 straight hours of driving, like these pictures from Mount Rushmore, or with extreme heat and a shirt one size too small, like in the pictures from Denver, and. . . well, if you're a reader who has never met me before, and have built up an image of me in your mind, prepare to have that destroyed. Again, I didn't call this "The Ugly Canadian" for nothing.

The Path:



The Mountain:



Two Awestruck Tourists:




ZOMG! ROCK!



Denver! When I was young, our family used to have a TV satellite that could pick up various American stations. One of the stations I remember fairly vividly was based in Denver. It was from this station that I first learned of the concept of time zones (since Denver is in the mountain time zone, all the programming was ahead of us by one hour) and it was our family's one stop source for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The station made a point about being based in Denver, Colorado, which any station in any city would do. Still, because of that, and because of it's impact on my childhood, when I entered Denver I felt a strange sense of coming home, even though I had never been there. So what was it like?

Duh Sssthoo Wath FUUN! Only Naomi will get that joke (it involves Matthew Broderick looking like a dumbass. . . more so). But. . . me and my Mom, during a day-long expedition to Denver, did visit the apparently famous Denver Zoo, and it was indeed fun! It was hot as hell, though, and the mile-high air did not help much. At one point, my Mom got so dizzy she had to sit down. In addition, we visited the state legislative house and Denver city hall, where we met a very nice Wisconsin family who also noted the unappealing combination of heat and thin air. We also visited our first American Wal-Mart. This was a surprisingly distressing experience: the Wal-Mart, in terms of appearance and overall layout, was exactly like the Prince George Wal-Mart, but it was far bigger. This led to the strange feeling of being back in Prince George, and yet of also being a tiny child lost in an expansive mall. The fact that my mother was with me the whole time somehow did not help to alleviate this feeling. The strangest thing about Denver, for me as a Canadian, was that it was pretty much English-Spanish bilingual. Bilingualism is our gimmick, dammit! Next you'll be telling me that President Obama is trying to pass single payer government health care, too! Fine, we'll just build up a massive military-industrial complex and ravage our environment. . . oh, wait, that last one is already underway. Never mind.

DENVER!






THE ZOO!







Georgetown, CO! The entrance to Guenalla Pass lay past Georgetown, a community that virtually defines Charming Small Town America. Granted, much of the "small town charm" may well just be a cynical, carefully crafted, moneygrubbing tourist facade. I don't care. They work hard for the money!







Guenalla Pass! Guenalla Pass is a roughly twenty mile long pass through the Colorado Rockies beginning in Georgetown, located about fifty miles west of Denver. It's highest point in nearly 12000 ft in altitude. We had to drive the pass in order to reach our campsite. Despite its short length, driving the pass took quite a long time, owing to construction (which limited traffic to a single in some parts), the fact that it was a winding mountain road replete with near-180 degree turns, and the fact that my parents were driving a pick-up loaded with a camper and hence had higher center of gravity than most vehicles. Some were not pleased with this. At one point, two Suzuki-esque "off-road" vehicles driven, based on overall appearance and behaviour, by douchebags, passed me and my parents during a fairly short straight stretch. I wouldn't have minded this, had not they driven through a puddle, and had not both my parents driver's side window and mine been open at the time.

Assholes.

But we got pictures.






As for the campsite itself? My parents-- my father, specifically-- were attending a "potlatch," a gathering of "tramps". The tramps are a society of mainly Czech ex-patriates who fled communism, seeking the wide open spaces and sweet, sweet freedom of the North American wild. This particular potlatch was an especially big deal: while most potlatches would gather all the members from a single region, province, or state, this was a gathering of tramps from across the continent. That was the theory, at least. From what I could tell, the attendance at this potlatch was about the same as the more regional events that I had attended in BC. The other tramps spoke English passably enough, but preferred Czech, and enjoyed, among other things, singing old Czech folk songs around the fire. Anyone care to guess whether I stuck around?

Not that there was a shortage of campers, though. It was the Fourth of July long weekend, after all. Incidentally, me and my mom witnessed one of these campers nearly kill herself. We were driving back to our campsite down the main dirt road when out of nowhere, some stupid girl on a ATV came barrelling down the road at what must have been at least eighty kilometers an hours-- and she was headed straight for us, seemingly out of control! She managed to veer out of the way just before hitting our car.

Asshole.

Speaking of the Fourth of July. . .

The Fourth of July! I witnessed my first Fourth of July parade in Georgetown. The entire populace was gathered on the town's main street or in the park, while firetrucks and police cars blared their sirens loudly and proudly. There was also a parade of Corvettes. Not just any sports cars, but Corvettes and Corvettes only. I'd make a joke about this being some bizarre memorial to GM and the faltering American auto industry, but since the U.S. was pretty nice to me on the whole. . . I'll just refer you again to the title of this post. I was quite disappointed by the lack of Hot Dogs-- I had to get lunch at, of all places, a restaurant specializing in eastern-European cuisine owned by a Czech! Never mind the strange coincidence. . . it was the fucking Fourth of July! Who the hell wants to eat Hungarian Gulash on the Fourth of July? I mean, it was good Hungarian Gulash, but still!!

Some more pics of Georgetown:








DUBOIS, WY! On July 5th, we started for home. However, we decided we'd take a little detour through Yellowstone National Park. After hitting Casper, we broke off toward western Wyoming. On the sixth, we passed through the small town of Dubois, which is to the Wild West what Georgetown is to small town Americana:










Yellowstone + Grand Tetons! We arrive at last to the nadir of my American experience: Yellowstone National Park.

After passing through the Wyoming desert, which included the above-mentioned Dubois, we reached the turn-off for Grand Tetons. I made the turn into Grand Tetons, but my parents did not. You see, I had the funny idea that if I took the road with the sign "Entrance to Grand Fucking Tetons Down This Fucking Road", which was not coincidentally the same road that had all the fucking toll booths saying "Pay Here To Enter Grand Fucking Tetons," I would perhaps-- and I state again that this was my just my own supposition-- GET TO GRAND FUCKING TETONS! My parents did not have the same idea, however. They chose instead to go straight down the road we were on and park at a nearby pullover. This resulted in thirty minutes of me driving up and down the same stretch of road trying in vain to re-establish useful radio contact. The most I could get was "-we don't know where you-" and "-we drove down-" which, believe you me, helped out one whole shit. Ultimately, I had to call Naomi, who ended up calling Mom, who ended up calling me. We reunited and ate hot dogs.

Now, I'm gonna be badmouthing the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for a little while, but let it never be said that the Grand Teton mountain range itself is not beautiful.




Anyway, we made our way back to the toll. I already paid, so I went in the entrance for ticket-holders while my parents paid for their tickets. Unfortunately, I was so focussed on my parents, ie making sure we don't get separated again, that I missed the stop sign at the entrance. Noticing my mistake, I first slammed on the brakes, and then noticing I was holding up someone behind me who was already pulling up to the toll, I drove ahead about twenty feet and pulled to the side, completely out of the way of any motorists.

Now, as you can imagine, I felt pretty sheepish about this. Still, I figured, just a simple mix-up. I pulled to the side already, so it's not like I'm trying storm the gates of Grand Tetons. I figure if I apologize and smile, maybe make light of the situation, it won't be too bad.

But no. . . Ranger Fucking Smith of the Grand Teton Republican Guard had to give me a cute little lecture. All while my parents, with whom I had hoped to remain close, drove away.

Me: Oh, man, I'm sorry about that, I didn't notice the stop sign until--

Ranger Fucking Smith: Did you see that big red sign over there?

Me: Well, yeah, I--

R.F.S.: (takes my ticket) That means stop! You know what stop means? And that sign over there with the number fifteen on it? That means fifteen miles an hour!

Me: Yes, sir. I'm sorry sir.

R.F.S.: You need to pay attention. Are you going to pay attention?

Me: Yes sir. I will. Thank you sir.

R.F.S.: Pay Attention!

Me: Thank you sir.

If you're thinking that I'm trying to make myself look more polite than I really was because I'm telling the story, let me tell you that I felt like an ass having to smile and nod so that I don't get in more trouble with this guy. If I were telling this story the way I would have wanted it to happen, well. . . it would have involved many cheap shots about R.F.S. never making it past the tenth grade and remaining here on glorified mall-cop duty whilst I would be moving on with my shiny master's degree. Yes, I am smarter than the average fucking bear.

Asshole.

Okay, to be fair, I did mess up. And it was a very busy time of year so I imagine R.F.S. was not in the highest of spirits either. But considering all this still didn't make me feel any better. In fact, after I caught up with my parents, I was fuming.

The parks (Grand Tetons and Yellowstone) themselves did little to help matters. Tetons was pretty enough but didn't last very long, and Yellowstone. . . well, Yellowstone was a tragedy. See, it turns out that a huge forest fire swept through Yellowstone in 1988, devastating much of the forest in the park, particularly the part of the park through which we passed. Looking back, I realize how sad it is for the park to have been damaged this profoundly, but at the time I was driving through, the devastated scenery, combined with the heat, the ludicrous amount of post-fourth of July traffic, and road construction that seemed to bring everything to a screeching halt every five miles. . . well, let's just say if Yellowstone blew to pieces at that moment like it did in 2012, I probably wouldn't mind.

(On a related note-- I will swallow every other stupid thing in 2012, but the idea that John Cusack and his kids could drive down an empty road and enter Yellowstone without passing so much as single toll-- well, that I simply cannot abide.)

Still, there was a glimmer of hope left: Old Faithful, the world's most famous Geyser.

Now, I had learned my lesson from Mount Rushmore. I expected a national landmark like Old Faithful to be an all out altar to the Tourist gods. What I did not expect was the population of a small city to be packed in around it. "Small city" may be exaggerating, but not by much-- I'd estimate about one thousand people gathered on the wooden walkway ring surrounding the geyser a hundred feet away (there's a tragic story behind that too--apparently, it took the death of a young boy for park officials to realize that allowing people near a geothermal vent whose outer shell is of the same thickness and approximate strength as pie crust might not be the wisest move). Plus it was hot, combination of Yellowstone's climate and the geyser itself. So, I can't say it was terribly fun, which is sad since this was the highlight of out day-trip to Yellowstone. But Old Faithful promises nothing more than a periodic vertical gush of boiling water, and after thirty minutes of waiting(ten minutes after the promised eruption time-- "faithful" indeed) that's what we got. Sideways photo of the Geyser behind my Mom below:



After leaving Yellowstone, we passed by Earthquake lake (created by the 1968 earthquake which nearly destroyed Old Faithful) and through the mountains of southern Montana, and I have to say it was far more pleasant, and beautiful, than the national park we had just left. In fact, pretty much the entire western half of Montana is beautiful. If you do plan on travelling down to the States (or up to Canada), I recommend entry through the Post of Roosville. This will take you through some very nice parts of Montana.

Bye bye Mrs. American Pie. . . for now.

So. . . my ultimate impression? Well, all I can say is that, during the Bush years, I swore would never set foot in the U.S.. Now, having seen a tiny glimpse of the country, I hope to return someday, as does my Mom. Until then, for any American readers, farewell from Canada.

LOL . .

. . . that's all I can say.

Commemorative poppy quarter sparks distrust of Canada in the U.S.

The Ugly Canadian

AKA CAP Congress Part II + Colorado.

I started this blog post in August, and I've been putting off for months. When you see how long it is, you'll understand why.

For the first twenty-five years of my life, I never set foot outside of my home country of Canada. Hell, the only other province that I ever visited was Alberta, and that barely even counts when you're from central BC.

However, this past summer, I travelled to the United States of America not once, but twice. The first visit was my return journey from the CAP Congress in Moncton, NB, with my sister Naomi. The second was a camping trip in Colorado that I went on with my parents. These journeys have taken me through two great American metropolises (Chicago and Denver), numerous towns small in size but grand in character, great plains, high mountain passes, lush forests, priceless national monuments, and one really overrated national park.

And in the end, it has left me feeling like dumb tourist.

For one thing, stereotypes be damned, I found Americans to be friendlier and more polite than Canadians! Granted, I spent the majority of my time in mid-west states like Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, which might well be friendlier-than-average parts of the country. And granted, for the purposes of the above comparison, I am deliberately forgetting about just how pleasant the people of New Brunswick were. But still. . . I'll give you a couple of examples. First, during the Colorado trip, when me and my parents were stopped at rest area after crossing the Montana border, an American couple returning from a trip in Alberta came up to us, expressed what a wonderful time they had in Alberta, and wished us Canadians safe and pleasant travels! I know this should be stroking my national ego somewhat, but never in my life have I encountered Canadians that warm and open. It made me feel like a classless bum, not to mention, as I said earlier, a dumb tourist.

Another instance of American friendliness occurred on the return trip from Colorado. Me and my parents drove in separate vehicles-- I drove the tiny, spunky Pontiac Vibe, while my parents took turns driving a pick-up loaded with a camper. As you can imagine, there were times when I would take a considerable lead on the highway. At one point I got so far ahead that I had to pull over and wait for them at the side of the highway (this was near Casper, Wyoming, a nice little town that has the distinction of being the birthplace of Dick Cheney). As I waited, a pair of passer-bys (a mother and daughter) pulled to the side of the road in front of me and asked if I needed assistance! Again, never in Canada has that happened to me.

What makes this even more weird was that Naomi seemed, at some points, to have the complete opposite reaction to mine when it came to Americans. I remember stopping at Subway restaurant in a small Minnesota town just off I-90. We had to contend with the lunch rush, so it was crowded, but I enjoyed it-- the Minnesotan townsfolk seemed pleasant, in spite of limited space. However, when Naomi and I returned to the car, the first words she said were "Americans are such stupid classless assholes." This aroused my curiosity, so I probed further. "I was holding a door open for some guy and he doesn't say anything, so I say 'you're welcome!' and he says 'oh, oh, thank you.' God!" So, yeah.

I will note that there was one unpleasant encounter I had with an American, but that has to do with the overrated national park I mentioned earlier, so I'll come back to it later. For now, I will segue awkwardly into discussing the many sights, sounds and other attractions I partook upon during my American sojourn!

Chicago! Went by too fast for me to really take it in. But Sears Tower is... I'm sorry, Willis Tower is pretty impressive.

Albany! Naomi and I stayed there for a night! Then we ate at the local IHOP! There we heard real blue collar New Yorkers speak. And it was good. Though I have to say, the McDonald's service there is shitty, at least if the place I went to was at all indicative.

The Mississippi! We crossed the famous river, which essentially formed that part of the Wisconsin-Minnesota border through which we were driving. And yes, I did say "M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i" to myself to make sure that I would spell it properly.

Cleveland! Yeah, so that would be a third great American metropolis that I forgot to mention. We drove a convoluted route through the city on our way to Chicago. It wasn't as bad a Calgary, though. Driving through Calgary is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, except both the gold and the rainbow are buried at the horizon, and your only hope of finding it is with a treasure map, only the map itself was burned, so you have to rely on a recorded transcription of the map that can only be played on Thomas Edison's original prototype phonograph, and the transcription itself was translated from Japanese Haiku into Chinese Shi and then into French Rondeau. Yeah, it's a strange metaphor, but you trying connecting from Highway #1 east to Highway #2 south in Calgary sometime!

South Dakota! Near the Minnesota border, me and Naomi stopped at a small gas station. I after filling up the car, I went in to pay for the fuel, when the clerk, a man in maybe his sixties with a slow drawl that-- and I'm not trying to insult the man-- suggested a head injury, said "So what state are you from?"

"Actually, I'm from B.C.-- er, British Columbia."

"Oooh." the clerk said. "So. . . I heard you got the, uh, B.C. bud up there?"

"Er, yeah. We got that," I replied.

A fellow who was standing nearby, and who seemed to be a regular customer based on his interactions with the clerk, seemed to take interest. The clerk asked for the price of gas or something like that, and the other man remarked "you asked that three times today"-- this is the other reason I though the clerk might have had a head injury.

Turning to me, the other man asked "I heard that B.C. Bud is pretty good stuff."

"I wouldn't know myself, sir," I said. This provoked a fit of laughter from the two.

Then the clerk, committing the mortal sin of explaining the joke, said "I'll bet he thinks we were trying to pull a fast one on him!"

Asking for a receipt, I left with a smile on my face. For some stupid reason, I felt a little bit clever. Maybe it was just because I thought, at the time, that this is gonna make really a good story.

Mount Rushmore! It was cool. Not as big as I thought it would be, but still impressive. What surprised me was the amount of tourist-y build-up we encountered on the way to the place. I should have known better, but I kind of expected something like a highway pull-off, basically a parking lot with a gift-shop. In reality, the mountain is about a thirty mile drive south from Rapid City, SD. The road, as far as I can tell, was purpose built for travelling to Rushmore and the near-by Crazyhorse monument. A couple of miles before you even get to the parking lot, you encounter a propped up little tourist town consisting entirely of gift shops, restaurants, and resort lodges. After you've paid the ten dollar admission fee to get into the parking lot, you come up to a huge entrance, followed by a few historical exhibits and even more gift shops. Then you pass a fairly impressive avenue of all the state flags. Then, finally, you come to the monument itself. Naomi and I did take our own pictures, but we have yet to upload them to an online photo album. Naomi was not particularly enamoured of how crowded the place was; we arrived at around eight o'clock at night, and there were still at least three hundred people in attendance! Being surrounded by Americans at a fairly patriotic attraction, we were denied our God-given right as Canadians to be sarcastic about the United States. (Recall the title of this post.)

A warning about the pictures that follow. This is the first time I've ever posted pictures of myself on the internet. Now, I am not an especially good looking man at the best of times, but combine my undistinguished looks with 13 straight hours of driving, like these pictures from Mount Rushmore, or with extreme heat and a shirt one size too small, like in the pictures from Denver, and. . . well, if you're a reader who has never met me before, and have built up an image of me in your mind, prepare to have that destroyed. Again, I didn't call this "The Ugly Canadian" for nothing.

The Path:



The Mountain:



Two Awestruck Tourists:




ZOMG! ROCK!



Denver! When I was young, our family used to have a TV satellite that could pick up various American stations. One of the stations I remember fairly vividly was based in Denver. It was from this station that I first learned of the concept of time zones (since Denver is in the mountain time zone, all the programming was ahead of us by one hour) and it was our family's one stop source for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The station made a point about being based in Denver, Colorado, which any station in any city would do. Still, because of that, and because of it's impact on my childhood, when I entered Denver I felt a strange sense of coming home, even though I had never been there. So what was it like?

Duh Sssthoo Wath FUUN! Only Naomi will get that joke (it involves Matthew Broderick looking like a dumbass. . . more so). But. . . me and my Mom, during a day-long expedition to Denver, did visit the apparently famous Denver Zoo, and it was indeed fun! It was hot as hell, though, and the mile-high air did not help much. At one point, my Mom got so dizzy she had to sit down. In addition, we visited the state legislative house and Denver city hall, where we met a very nice Wisconsin family who also noted the unappealing combination of heat and thin air. We also visited our first American Wal-Mart. This was a surprisingly distressing experience: the Wal-Mart, in terms of appearance and overall layout, was exactly like the Prince George Wal-Mart, but it was far bigger. This led to the strange feeling of being back in Prince George, and yet of also being a tiny child lost in an expansive mall. The fact that my mother was with me the whole time somehow did not help to alleviate this feeling. The strangest thing about Denver, for me as a Canadian, was that it was pretty much English-Spanish bilingual. Bilingualism is our gimmick, dammit! Next you'll be telling me that President Obama is trying to pass single payer government health care, too! Fine, we'll just build up a massive military-industrial complex and ravage our environment. . . oh, wait, that last one is already underway. Never mind.

DENVER!






THE ZOO!







Georgetown, CO! The entrance to Guenalla Pass lay past Georgetown, a community that virtually defines Charming Small Town America. Granted, much of the "small town charm" may well just be a cynical, carefully crafted, moneygrubbing tourist facade. I don't care. They work hard for the money!







Guenalla Pass! Guenalla Pass is a roughly twenty mile long pass through the Colorado Rockies beginning in Georgetown, located about fifty miles west of Denver. It's highest point in nearly 12000 ft in altitude. We had to drive the pass in order to reach our campsite. Despite its short length, driving the pass took quite a long time, owing to construction (which limited traffic to a single in some parts), the fact that it was a winding mountain road replete with near-180 degree turns, and the fact that my parents were driving a pick-up loaded with a camper and hence had higher center of gravity than most vehicles. Some were not pleased with this. At one point, two Suzuki-esque "off-road" vehicles driven, based on overall appearance and behaviour, by douchebags, passed me and my parents during a fairly short straight stretch. I wouldn't have minded this, had not they driven through a puddle, and had not both my parents driver's side window and mine been open at the time.

Assholes.

But we got pictures.






As for the campsite itself? My parents-- my father, specifically-- were attending a "potlatch," a gathering of "tramps". The tramps are a society of mainly Czech ex-patriates who fled communism, seeking the wide open spaces and sweet, sweet freedom of the North American wild. This particular potlatch was an especially big deal: while most potlatches would gather all the members from a single region, province, or state, this was a gathering of tramps from across the continent. That was the theory, at least. From what I could tell, the attendance at this potlatch was about the same as the more regional events that I had attended in BC. The other tramps spoke English passably enough, but preferred Czech, and enjoyed, among other things, singing old Czech folk songs around the fire. Anyone care to guess whether I stuck around?

Not that there was a shortage of campers, though. It was the Fourth of July long weekend, after all. Incidentally, me and my mom witnessed one of these campers nearly kill herself. We were driving back to our campsite down the main dirt road when out of nowhere, some stupid girl on a ATV came barrelling down the road at what must have been at least eighty kilometers an hours-- and she was headed straight for us, seemingly out of control! She managed to veer out of the way just before hitting our car.

Asshole.

Speaking of the Fourth of July. . .

The Fourth of July! I witnessed my first Fourth of July parade in Georgetown. The entire populace was gathered on the town's main street or in the park, while firetrucks and police cars blared their sirens loudly and proudly. There was also a parade of Corvettes. Not just any sports cars, but Corvettes and Corvettes only. I'd make a joke about this being some bizarre memorial to GM and the faltering American auto industry, but since the U.S. was pretty nice to me on the whole. . . I'll just refer you again to the title of this post. I was quite disappointed by the lack of Hot Dogs-- I had to get lunch at, of all places, a restaurant specializing in eastern-European cuisine owned by a Czech! Never mind the strange coincidence. . . it was the fucking Fourth of July! Who the hell wants to eat Hungarian Gulash on the Fourth of July? I mean, it was good Hungarian Gulash, but still!!

Some more pics of Georgetown:








DUBOIS, WY! On July 5th, we started for home. However, we decided we'd take a little detour through Yellowstone National Park. After hitting Casper, we broke off toward western Wyoming. On the sixth, we passed through the small town of Dubois, which is to the Wild West what Georgetown is to small town Americana:










Yellowstone + Grand Tetons! We arrive at last to the nadir of my American experience: Yellowstone National Park.

After passing through the Wyoming desert, which included the above-mentioned Dubois, we reached the turn-off for Grand Tetons. I made the turn into Grand Tetons, but my parents did not. You see, I had the funny idea that if I took the road with the sign "Entrance to Grand Fucking Tetons Down This Fucking Road", which was not coincidentally the same road that had all the fucking toll booths saying "Pay Here To Enter Grand Fucking Tetons," I would perhaps-- and I state again that this was my just my own supposition-- GET TO GRAND FUCKING TETONS! My parents did not have the same idea, however. They chose instead to go straight down the road we were on and park at a nearby pullover. This resulted in thirty minutes of me driving up and down the same stretch of road trying in vain to re-establish useful radio contact. The most I could get was "-we don't know where you-" and "-we drove down-" which, believe you me, helped out one whole shit. Ultimately, I had to call Naomi, who ended up calling Mom, who ended up calling me. We reunited and ate hot dogs.

Now, I'm gonna be badmouthing the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for a little while, but let it never be said that the Grand Teton mountain range itself is not beautiful.




Anyway, we made our way back to the toll. I already paid, so I went in the entrance for ticket-holders while my parents paid for their tickets. Unfortunately, I was so focussed on my parents, ie making sure we don't get separated again, that I missed the stop sign at the entrance. Noticing my mistake, I first slammed on the brakes, and then noticing I was holding up someone behind me who was already pulling up to the toll, I drove ahead about twenty feet and pulled to the side, completely out of the way of any motorists.

Now, as you can imagine, I felt pretty sheepish about this. Still, I figured, just a simple mix-up. I pulled to the side already, so it's not like I'm trying storm the gates of Grand Tetons. I figure if I apologize and smile, maybe make light of the situation, it won't be too bad.

But no. . . Ranger Fucking Smith of the Grand Teton Republican Guard had to give me a cute little lecture. All while my parents, with whom I had hoped to remain close, drove away.

Me: Oh, man, I'm sorry about that, I didn't notice the stop sign until--

Ranger Fucking Smith: Did you see that big red sign over there?

Me: Well, yeah, I--

R.F.S.: (takes my ticket) That means stop! You know what stop means? And that sign over there with the number fifteen on it? That means fifteen miles an hour!

Me: Yes, sir. I'm sorry sir.

R.F.S.: You need to pay attention. Are you going to pay attention?

Me: Yes sir. I will. Thank you sir.

R.F.S.: Pay Attention!

Me: Thank you sir.

If you're thinking that I'm trying to make myself look more polite than I really was because I'm telling the story, let me tell you that I felt like an ass having to smile and nod so that I don't get in more trouble with this guy. If I were telling this story the way I would have wanted it to happen, well. . . it would have involved many cheap shots about R.F.S. never making it past the tenth grade and remaining here on glorified mall-cop duty whilst I would be moving on with my shiny master's degree. Yes, I am smarter than the average fucking bear.

Asshole.

Okay, to be fair, I did mess up. And it was a very busy time of year so I imagine R.F.S. was not in the highest of spirits either. But considering all this still didn't make me feel any better. In fact, after I caught up with my parents, I was fuming.

The parks (Grand Tetons and Yellowstone) themselves did little to help matters. Tetons was pretty enough but didn't last very long, and Yellowstone. . . well, Yellowstone was a tragedy. See, it turns out that a huge forest fire swept through Yellowstone in 1988, devastating much of the forest in the park, particularly the part of the park through which we passed. Looking back, I realize how sad it is for the park to have been damaged this profoundly, but at the time I was driving through, the devastated scenery, combined with the heat, the ludicrous amount of post-fourth of July traffic, and road construction that seemed to bring everything to a screeching halt every five miles. . . well, let's just say if Yellowstone blew to pieces at that moment like it did in 2012, I probably wouldn't mind.

(On a related note-- I will swallow every other stupid thing in 2012, but the idea that John Cusack and his kids could drive down an empty road and enter Yellowstone without passing so much as single toll-- well, that I simply cannot abide.)

Still, there was a glimmer of hope left: Old Faithful, the world's most famous Geyser.

Now, I had learned my lesson from Mount Rushmore. I expected a national landmark like Old Faithful to be an all out altar to the Tourist gods. What I did not expect was the population of a small city to be packed in around it. "Small city" may be exaggerating, but not by much-- I'd estimate about one thousand people gathered on the wooden walkway ring surrounding the geyser a hundred feet away (there's a tragic story behind that too--apparently, it took the death of a young boy for park officials to realize that allowing people near a geothermal vent whose outer shell is of the same thickness and approximate strength as pie crust might not be the wisest move). Plus it was hot, combination of Yellowstone's climate and the geyser itself. So, I can't say it was terribly fun, which is sad since this was the highlight of out day-trip to Yellowstone. But Old Faithful promises nothing more than a periodic vertical gush of boiling water, and after thirty minutes of waiting(ten minutes after the promised eruption time-- "faithful" indeed) that's what we got. Sideways photo of the Geyser behind my Mom below:



After leaving Yellowstone, we passed by Earthquake lake (created by the 1968 earthquake which nearly destroyed Old Faithful) and through the mountains of southern Montana, and I have to say it was far more pleasant, and beautiful, than the national park we had just left. In fact, pretty much the entire western half of Montana is beautiful. If you do plan on travelling down to the States (or up to Canada), I recommend entry through the Post of Roosville. This will take you through some very nice parts of Montana.

Bye bye Mrs. American Pie. . . for now.

So. . . my ultimate impression? Well, all I can say is that, during the Bush years, I swore would never set foot in the U.S.. Now, having seen a tiny glimpse of the country, I hope to return someday, as does my Mom. Until then, for any American readers, farewell from Canada.