Dickens of the Mounted – Brad

Roadtrip time. Leaving at 6am, the faithful crew of the HMS Gareth, ie the Green minivan departed The Big Smoke (Toronto) on a 2 month journey. It was hard to say goodbye to our loved ones, especially my fiance, but this was an adventure worth taking, and I knew she knew that. Hopefully it’ll take the travel bug out of me for a while… at least travelling without her.

We put in a good 15 hours, taking the northern US route, and enjoyed some beautiful scenery. The roads were… well, American roads. The official Roadkill count for our duration in the US:

18 small rodents (Racoons included)

7 large kill (deer, foxes, etc.)

We stopped for the night in Duluth, enjoyed a soak and pizza dinner, and started the next day again at 9 – no rush, we had made good time.

Kris’s new diet of high fiber and such has made the trip interesting – I always know when he’s passed gass because the loud erruption is followed by a “Did you say something?”  Luckily the windows roll down (they don’t in my Gremlin car). I keep telling him not to tempt me to eat more falafel… mine are silent but deadly.

We cross the border back into Canada, and even the border guard had heard of the Fringe Festival, which was a good sign of things to come. We saw a sign and quickly pulled off the highway to discover the ruins of Ft. Dufferin – one of the original NWMP forts, that also housed the Royal Boundary Commission, sent from England to determine the 49th parallel. It was a rude awakening to the reality of the mosquito problems. After checking out the Red River (someone was awefully optimistic to call it “Red”) and some of the old quarters, we escaped back to the van… our legs smeared with the blood of the fallen.

We headed into the ‘Peg, found the house of my aunt Edna & Uncle John, unloaded our stuff, and drove into town to scope our of venue.

Downtown is beautiful. We love the old buildings around the exchange district – all in such good condition. We grabbed a bite to eat at the Kings Head, just across from the square, and were surprised to see that we had chosen the unofficial Fringe artist hangout as a bunch of other troupes came in and sat down – each of us with our road trip story of getting here. Most of the other groups are veterans of the circuit, having done them for 7 or 8 years. They all speak of the Winnipeg Fringe with reverence to its hospitality and supportive marketing.

We’re a little behind in our postering – many walls have already been covered by those companies that are locals or flew in. We thought we’d be ahead of the game since we left early sunday morning – we even turned down our encore Patrons’ Pick performance Sunday evening because we wanted to get a head start in Winnipeg. Ah well.

Back home, nice to have a real bed and be able to veg a bit. Exhale.