What might someday be

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Note: I’ve transcribed something I wrote in a notebook last year on August 12th in Minneapolis during a trip I took to watch some baseball games. Re-reading it, I like it, so I’m offering it to the world here. It’s about baseball. It’s about the Montreal Expos. It’s about what my baseball trip in the summer of 2016 got me thinking about. As I head to Montreal with my Dad to take in some preseason baseball, this is also about what I hope will happen one day.

August 12, 2016 – Minneapolis, MN USA

Two games and a rainout later, I can’t shake the feeling of what might be. A smallish downtown ballpark, a small market almost contracted into oblivion like what threatened my Expos. A northern city. A second sport city. It’s striking really. In between innings here, if I squint just enough and let my mind wander, I can almost imagine the same scene in Montreal.

I came to Minneapolis, in part, because of early days visits to Montreal. The thrill of the event in the Big O left an imprint on me. Growing up, baseball was everything. Ask me Al Oliver’s stats from 1983 and I can quote them to you. Between early life fanaticism, then growling older and wiser, baseball was always floating around in my mind. It’s something my dad and I have in common, and I love it for that alone.

Then 1994 happened. I was in college and studying hard, had a girlfriend, and an Expos season for the ages stopped. Bitter, my focus left baseball for a while. The Expos were terrible for a long stretch. But still, every time in Montreal I would head to a game or two, and that feeling would return. Even as I was disengaging from baseball, every time I was back in the Big O, beer in hand, there was something magical dancing inside me.

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There’s something about France

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As my wife and I were traveling back from Paris yesterday, while waiting for our connecting flight in Toronto, we spoke about how good it was to be back in Canada. For as much as I love to travel, I have always relished the feeling when my feet are planted back on Canadian soil. That being said, if there’s one place that could entice me to pack up and move, it would be France.

Two weeks ago after landing in Paris, even through the fog of jet lag, I knew instantly we were going to be in for a great trip. We spent about half of the trip in and around Paris based out of the 14th arrondissement where we had stayed back in 2009. The other half, we stayed in Lyon, a first for us. For the Paris part of the trip, we defiantly ignored the locations we visited on our first trip there – no Louvre, no Arc de Triomphe, and no Eiffel Tower except one distant view when we were exploring the Père Lachaise cemetery off in the distant 20th arrondissement. Instead, we lingered over drinks taking advantage of the spring warmth on outdoor patios, ate at cozy neighbourhood restaurants, and explored some quieter areas of the city.

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Delicious Portland

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The eminent philosopher Homer Simpson once said “I discovered a meal between breakfast and brunch.” I think that’s the key to getting the most out of eating in Portland. It is a great food city. Amazing, really. It was a type of city that I had trouble planning out what I was going to eat each day, only on account of there not being enough meals in a day and me not having enough stomach capacity. With Homer’s mantra on my mind and hoping I could walk off all the calories I’d be consuming, I wasted no time once my flight landed in getting my first meal into me.

Lardo (a seriously awesome name for a restaurant) was my destination for dinner. As a sandwich lover, I had too many choices. I settled on their double burger from a menu where everything was “tied for first” in my mind – I mean, how do you choose among porchetta, a bahn mi, a Philly pork sub and about a half dozen other selections? The burger was great, but the star was the crispy pig ears with fennel salt and honey. I’ve eaten a lot of pig parts in my days and these may have been the best ever.

Burger and crispy pig ears at Lardo

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Oregon pinots before France

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I made a very difficult decision while visiting Portland in February. On a rainy afternoon, I gave up a precious afternoon beer tasting opportunity to visit Oregon Wines on Broadway to sample three higher end pinot noirs. Rough life eh?

If I could only drink one red wine the rest of my life, it would be pinot noir. At its best, its delicacy, earthiness and balance appeals to my senses. I’ve always thought of pinot noir as one of the truest expressions of wine and the expert craftsmanship that goes into it. Settling into an empty wine bar on a weekday around lunch, I was ready to sample the best of Oregon with a tasting consisting of three outstanding examples of the state’s signature grape.

Pinot noir tasting in Portland

I started with the J. Christopher Dundee Hills (2013). It was very cherry forward and I immediately noticed a bit of bottle age on this one and a touch more heat from the alcohol than a prototypical pinot. It may have been due to the rain pelting the window as I sampled it, but I quite enjoyed the extra bit of burn of this one going down. It was very pleasant and an easy sipper. My unrefined palate would say this is a great pinot for a fall day.

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Resort living for a week

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In a single word, perfect.

That’s how I would describe the Xmas holiday week my wife and I spent in Mexico at the lovely Excellence Riviera Cancun resort about twenty minutes away from the Cancun airport. We’re not all-inclusive resort travellers by any stretch of the imagination, but on a few occassions, that’s exactly the kind of vacation we crave. We had a particularly hectic 2016 so the idea of laying around in a warm climate, reading some books, taking long afternoon naps and generally shutting off our minds was very appealing. With that in mind, we picked the resort and sprung for a room with direct access to a lazy river and its own dedicated sun bed. Ours is the one with the two blue pool floaties in front of the bed. We spent a lot of our vacation either lounging in the river or on that bed.

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A true vacation

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December 30, 2016 – Puerto Morelos, Mexico

Maybe this trip has reminded me of the definition of “vacation”. For all the good in 2016, this past year hasn’t been a year of relaxation and this escape to Mexico came at the right, if a bit overdue, time. My feet are dangling in a pool, there is an ice cold Sol beer beside me and my wife is half dozing, half watching a movie on her phone on a sun bed behind me. This is a true vacation.

Excellence Riviera Cancun, Mexico

I guess I am a bit of a travel snob to have felt at least a little bit guilty in even calling this a trip. I know this isn’t authentic Mexico, but the moment I walked into the resort and someone handed me a glass of sparkling wine, I was immediately relaxed. With what has been on my shoulders this year – leaving a job, moving, starting a bigger job with more pressures, living without my wife and dog for nearly two months, Chewy’s death, making new friends in Saskatoon, selling our Halifax condo – this vacation is exactly what I needed.

Simple, uncomplicated down time. It has felt great to just shut off my mind and simply be for a week. Yes, there’s winter and work ahead back in Saskatoon, but after this vacation, I’ll be ready for whatever 2017 throws at me.

My kind of town

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I just got back from Portland last night. Wanting to break up my first winter living in Saskatoon, I booked this trip a few months back deciding on a interesting city I’ve always wanted to visit over a warmer climate trip. I’ve seen a lot of American cities, and Portland is now easily way up near the top of my list of favourites with San Francisco, Philadelphia and Austin.

I packed a lot into four days – a healthy dose of simply wandering around to soak up the vibe, a basketball game, incredible street food, ample beer tastings, public art exploring, and so, so, so much coffee. I even got two days of spectacular blue skies and double digit temperatues that allowed me to see the often hidden Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens. Even when the rain came, it couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the city, as all it did was push me toward an indoor respite in a nearby coffee shop, bookstore or craft beer bar.

Portland had me at hello and I’m already looking forward to getting back some day. Definitely my kind of town.

A few days back home

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It was a long overdue trip back to Halifax. Actually, to Lower Sackville to be exact. I had moved to Saskatoon eight months earlier and was well into making that city my new home. But it was time for a trip “back home” to see my mom and dad. After a bit of an ordeal due to a canceled flight, I made it to Nova Scotia, about 12 hours later than I planned, to my parents waiting for me at the Halifax airport like they have so many times over the years. This arrival was much different and definitely more emotional.

Lots of hugs and a few tears later, we hopped into the car for the half hour drive to my parents’ home, the very house I grew up in. There was one more hello – this one more frantic and crazed – as Tia and I reunited. After she calmed down, she took up residence on my lap, a place she spent most of the next few days.

Tia on my lap

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Writing his name in the sand

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December 26, 2016 – Puerto Morelos, Mexico

I’m not much of a traditions or habits guy. That’s kind of obvious since I’m in Mexico rather than Nova Scotia over the holidays. This morning, with my wife showing no sign of waking up any time soon, I packed up the camera and headed to the water to catch the sunrise.

One of my very few travel-related traditions was forgone for a newer one this morning. Rather than dipping my right foot into the sea, something I’ve been doing forever when I encounter a body of water away from home, I crouched down and wrote Chewy’s name in the sand. This is my relatively new “Greg meets water on a beach” tradition – to pay tribute to a furry little guy who got into my heart, and won’t leave. In many ways, my 2016 was a year of saying goodbye, and the May 27th goodbye to Chewy was, and continues to be, the most difficult.

Alone on a Mexican beach, remembering my dog. The best dog that ever lived.

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