In my first column I said a little bit about how I got to St. Paul. Allow me to say a little more. My first words in my first column were full of hope and whimsy, full of fun and adventure. That was deservedly so, but the trip in its entirety was hardly a bed of roses.
It’d been a smooth if not boring flight from Ottawa. The sun was shining, the clouds were sparse and light, allowing me glimpses of the hitherto foreign prairies below, when I flew over, and bits and pieces of fragmentary blue sky when I’d finally landed. It had been almost too easy - until I got to Edmonton.
Don’t get me wrong, the resources at the airport were as they should be. There were restaurants, information desks, crowds of disoriented people trying to find orientation. It seemed legit. It was when I’d finally stepped off the shuttle bus into the disorienting chaos that is urban Edmonton that my trouble truly began.
Where do I begin? If you want to take a cab anywhere in the city, from anywhere in the city, you’d better have a bundle of twenties in your pocket. This was unprecedented to me. I’ve taken taxis from one end of the city, in Halifax, to the other that have cost me less than a five-minute drive down St. Albert Trail. I’d allotted myself a certain amount of travelling expense money only to find myself burning through most of it in the first day.
Buses weren’t much better. I’d gone deep into the city (118th Street to be precise), and at first, while trying to get back, encountered a couple of bus drivers who didn’t know how to find the area where my motel room was. I found myself breaking the bank to travel moderate distances in the city, to look at potential used cars, and ended up taking three hours, switching buses over five times, to find my way back to the my motel. I was offered drugs three separate times waiting at a bus stop, trying to get back to my room.
The mention of automotive things brings me to my next item, car sales. Spending three days looking for a car in Edmonton was one of the most distressing scenarios in which I’ve ever found myself. Some of the salesmen I consulted tried to pressure me into buying cars immediately, brushing aside my questions about the vehicles’ histories and condition and even printing me the wrong Car Fax.
Some of the salesmen I encountered had the nerve to lie to me about how cracks form on windshields. I’m pretty sure temperature contrast on a really cold day between a heating interior and a cold exterior won’t put a five-inch crack in the windshield. I don’t know much about the laws of thermodynamics, but I know that much.
Often, I’d have to run down the road to grab myself a coffee or snack at the nearest gas station. That would require me to walk a short but treacherous length of St. Albert Trail. I’d be next to three rows of traffic in each lane with no space between the cars and the sidewalk. I could have reached out and touched the doors of the traffic it was so close, or slipped on the thick sheet of black ice that coated the entirety of the sidewalk the whole way, and been touched myself, by the same traffic.
I really want to go back to Edmonton some time, so that I can allow myself the chance to have a better time. I’m convinced the city has more to offer than what I had the time to see, frantically hopping in and out of taxis and getting shuttled between a motel and car lots.
