May 24, 2009

Laura is going away in a few weeks, leaving me alone with two furry monsters. She’s starting school at Nipissing in the fall, but first she’s going on a whirlwind world tour. So the long weekend was our only chance to drive up to North Bay to find her a place to live.

We may have found more than we bargained for — turns out that North Bay is crazy town.

The windchill made the temperature drop below zero as we pulled into town. At the first place we went to see, old grannies watched us suspiciously from their glass-enclosed porches. They were chain smoking vigorously. “All the neighbours here watch out for one another,” the landlord said. “Umm … no, thanks,” we said.

We took a break and headed downtown when we noticed a strange patter emerge: every single male in the city seems to have been produced on the same assembly line. They all had a mustache, rotund faces, and baseball caps. They all seemed to be heading towards the bush to catch some moose, or to the back of the unemployment line.

“Well, there’s no chance of me cheating on you while I’m away,” Laura said.

We spent the rest of the day eating cabbage rolls and hiking through Nipissing’s abandoned campus before huddling back in our motel room to hide from the oncoming winter snowstorm.

“Oh, you’ll have fun here,” I said to Laura, who hates all things cold, empty, distant, cabbagy, and with facial hair and baseball caps.

On the up side, we got some awesome photos. And the puppies were awesome.