jamesq | 2019 Road Trip, part 11

Checking out of my suite, I had a nice breakfast, bought some cheesecake Rusk at Uncle Tetsu's and used the last hour of my bus pass to take the buss to Trudeau airport.

While going through security, someone took a surreptitious photo of me and sent it to Steph.

Incidentally, I really like this picture of me. That's rare.

Incidentally, I really like this picture of me. That's rare.

Steph texted me and told me to turn around, naturally I didn't get that message until well after the following encounter:

"Hi James!"

I turn around to see someone I know, and since I'm me, I completely blank out on her name. Oh, I know who she is (how we related to each other, time we've spent in each other's company, stories told to me by, Steph), but someone could offer me a million dollars, and that name isn't coming.

"Hi... you."

Anyway, we chat briefly before they (she was with friends) head off to their gate, which is in the opposite direction from my gate. I watched them disappear around a corner. And that's when my brain unclenched.

"Yvette! ... fuck."

Aside from that, the plane ride back to Cowtown was uneventful.

So here's some things that happened on the trip that didn't fit in other entries.

We taught Miss K The Game. Sorry K. Also, I just lost The Game. Also, I'm sorry to the rest of you.

We did not play the Anal Game, because 11-year old. Since I can't just leave that hanging, the Anal Game is where you prepend "Anal" to car model names to try and get something funny, like "Anal Explorer". The trick is to find combinations your travelling companions haven't heard yet. I imagine we could come up with a family friendly version with a new noun.

I was taught the surprisingly fun game of Double Double, Blah Blah, which I'll be happy to teach anyone on a future road trip. Miss K invented it, and it's perfectly family friendly.

Being in a hurray, we missed the Ho Chunk casino, the Beef Jerky Outlet Mall, Circus World, the Cheese Chalet, and the World's Largest Fireworks Outlet. Honestly, I'm not sure we made good life choices here.

We discovered that Authentic Wisconsin Ducks aren't ducks at all, but are actually amphibious tour vehicles.

Red's Root Beer was an old fashioned car diner with decent food. Someone, somewhere, discovered that they were advertised as having "trans-friendly" washrooms. This was technically correct in that there was a single washroom, so gender didn't matter. Still, I think that's cheating.

Every time we went by a Menards store or billboard, I made this joke:

Ha! A classic.

Every. Single. Time.

We played a modified (so somewhat easier version) of the license plate game. We got to 100 while in America and 44 while I was in Canada (the others got farther after I left). We also tried to spot as many license plates from different states/provinces as we could. We got 33 states and 5 provinces by the time I left. Again, th3y managed to improve on that after I left.

Finally, here is a selection of trip swag that I brought back. It sure didn't fit in that backpack you see above. Thanks to Wendy, Ryan, and Miss K for transporting my swag, my dirty laundry, and other assorted stuff back across half of a continent.