For a ways through Wisconsin, I wound up drafting behind the creaky promotional vehicle of a California longboard purveyor. Not sure where they were heading to (it turned north at Tomah and I never saw it again), but they got my attention.

Shortly afterward, a minivan barreled by in the passing lane...and I scarcely could believe what I saw on the back. It was a Yukon Territory license plate: A rare reminder of Canada's remote and distant Arctic north, with a population of barely 33,000 and separated from the present place by thousands of km. This is the only one I have ever seen on the road in my life.

The rest of the last leg of the drive was fairly uneventful. I did manage to stop the car to shoot one final kitchy roadside sight: An upended truck and trailer mounted to a pole near Mauston, Wisconsin. In case you're skeptical, that is a real truck, and it even had a license plate on the back...a really ratty semi trailer issue from the late 1980s, if you're really curious. The sign used to look even more bizarre, with a repurposed Amoco torch-topped signframe at the very top: This was replaced by a more prosaic rectangle in the recent past.

Dusk fell and an hour later I drove into Madison, where everything was more or less the same as it was when I left it. Home sweet home; such as it is.

Was the excursion to Manitoba worth it? Yes. I met great people, heard great messages, had great experiences, and saw great scenes both there and along the way...even if not every part of the trip was great. Winnipeg in particular had the feel of a very diverse and humane city, and I hope to go back there someday.

Since I returned, Canada underwent a federal election and managed to elect the Liberal Party to a 184-seat majority government with Pierre's son as Prime Minister. While Trudeau wouldn't have been my first choice, he's helluva lot better than the "Republican north" leadership of Stephen Harper that's reduced Canada to a terror-milking, Kyoto-withdrawing, voter-suppressing laughingstock over the last ten years. One USA on this continent is more than enough.

The history of the brewery dates back to 1854, when John Gund opened a small operation at the corner of Front and Division Streets. Gund expanded into a partnership with Gottlieb Heileman four years later, who eventually took over the business outright and branded it under his name. Heileman spent the 1960s and 1970s buying up other breweries, stumbled in the 1980s fending off competition and corporate raiders, and spent the 1990s in a state of sporadic bankruptcy. By 1999 Heileman had ceased to exist as an independent company and the brewery closed, with Pabst walking off with the trademarks. The premises didn't stay quiet for long, however, for they were sold to investors who promptly reopened them under the City Brewing name.

The oldest portion of the property is the Gottlieb and Johanna Heileman family mansion, which adjoins the brewery and dates back to 1875.

Today, the brewery's primary purpose of existence is to produce beers (and non-beer beverages) under contract for other firms. City Brewing does however produce its own La Cross Lager for local distribution, which is allegedly the real Old Style recipe while the Old Style currently in stores is an imposter. (Not that it matters...most beers of a certain color and consistency taste a lot alike, and I doubt a pack of sweaty Cubs fans would tell the difference if their life depended on it.)

Old Style labelscar is still discernable in a number of places.

Decorated storage tanks (dubbed the "world's largest six pack") were added by Heileman in the 1960s. Although impressive, the graphics on the tanks are starting to look a little worse for wear and fading...and in fact, the wrap-up had separated on one tank entirely, revealing the Old Style logo.

For lack of anything better to do, I wandered to the Crossroads Center mall. It wasn't quite ten o'clock; so while the interior corridor was open, the stores weren't. Were there any interesting relics to be found of retailers past? Yes, in the singular: The south anchor was a two-story JCPenney store that was disturbingly similar to the one at Dixie Square...right down to the vertical channels in the facade. There wasn't much else, though: The mall reportedly opened in 1966, but it had been expanded and renovated so severely and so often over the years that nothing else even the slightest bit original remained. The interior did feature a loop-shaped corridor that left about a third of the stores "mall-locked" in the middle, which was a bit unusual.

More roadside artifacts in and around St. Cloud: A vaguely Bavarian-styled service garage with a pegasus indicating a past existence as a Mobil station. Surprisingly, the business has its own website with a history page, which notes the construction year as 1927.

Moments later on U.S. 10, I stumbled upon a barn-style Dairy Queen with a 1960s mascot statue on the roof...worth a few points in rarity, if nothing else. (The picture also turned out as proof that my digital camera is brimming with dust, as splotches appear on any frame taken with the optical zoom on a sunny day.)

Sadly, I scarcely got to see any more of Minneapolis and St. Paul on the last day of the trip than I did at the beginning. After realizing that half the day was gone and I hadn't even gotten out of Minnesota's 6th congressional district yet, I drove...and drove, and drove, and drove, until all traces of traffic congestion and city life were left behind. I didn't catch a break until I was in Winona, where I got a bite to eat (promptly discovering both a price error on the menu board and a cent from 1930 in my change) and wound up with one more JCPenney picture for my collection...this time in the form of a bizarre construct split with a Fastenel industrial warehouse at the other end and a whole lot of nothing in the middle. Evidently an Econo Foods supermarket was housed here until 2005, but I really wonder what the full story behind this place was.

Eventually I came to the town of Thief River Falls, where I happened upon a strange, non-taxpaying reuse of what appeared to be an old Conoco station. The less said about their doctrine, the better: Near as I can tell, their members think they're deluged in original sin and are salivating for the rapture to arrive.

Thief River Falls was also home to my single best "roadside artifact find" of the trip: A downtown JCPenney store of 1950s or very early 1960s vintage, bearing no fewer than three generations of signage on the building...including the incredibly-rare "funky P" symbol of 50 years ago.

Another random Minnesota observation: License plates on passenger cars are replaced every 7 years, but license plates on other types of vehicles may never get replaced at all. As if to prove the point, here was a Recreational Vehicle plate in the pre-1987 graphic style with a current 2016 sticker.

I couldn't stay put for long, though. Minutes later I was back on the road, trying to cover as much ground south and east as I could...when I heard the single most satisfying news of the entire trip. Governor Voldemort was ending his presidential campaign (no, I'm not going to use his real name...hearing it is enough to make me smash my fist into the wall), and the United States had escaped a bullet from the foremost source of my life's anxiety and fear.

Dusk fell somewhere in Otter Tail County (how did they name these things?), and I started idly looking for a motel. Accommodations were a little tough to find, though, and I didn't finally stop for the night until I had driven all the way to Saint Cloud...and acquainted myself with the lumpiest mattress and the noisiest air conditioner I had ever endured.

It was luxury.

Weeks before when I was planning out my trip step by step, my relatives tried to ease my concerns about the border crossing by giving me reassurance: "It's a busy crossing, so there will be lots of cars. They can see your Wisconsin plates; they know you're an American citizen coming home; they won't ask many questions. They want to get people through as fast as possible." Bullshit. Maybe that was true in the halcyon days of the 1990s (pre "war on terror" et al), but it isn't true any more.

The border crossing near Pembina, North Dakota was about six lanes across, and there was not a single other car anywhere in sight. I rolled up in my red car, sticking out from the grey scenery as conspicuously as a sore thumb. That was probably strike number one arousing attention for myself. I rolled my window down and flubbed the next line. That was probably strike number two. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Good mor...uh, afternoon. How are you today?"
Agent: "Your identification?"
I hand over my passport. No surprises so far, though I resent how the days of getting by with a driver's license are over for good.

Agent: "Where are you coming from?"
Me: "Winnipeg."
Agent: "How long have you been out of the country?"
Me: "Four days."
Agent: "When was the last time you were previously in Canada?"
Me: "The summer of...uh, 2002." In all honesty, it had been far too long.
The invasiveness begins. Still no surprises about the questions, though.
Agent: "Where were you staying?"
I give them the name of the hotel I had checked out of earlier that day.
Agent: "Why were you in Canada?"
Me: "I was on vacation, sightseeing and attending a conference."
Agent: "What conference was it?"
Me: "It was the River City Reason Fest conference."
Agent: "What kind of conference is that?"
Me: "It was on the topic of...uh, secular issues and current events." I feel red-hot...I'm in rural North Dakota, and I feel on the verge of having to defend my godlessness to an unsympathetic ear. The conversation turns on a dime, though...and the agent starts delving into topics I hadn't rehearsed for.

Agent: "What is your employer?"
I tell her.
Agent: "What were you doing in Canada for your employer?"
Me: "Nothing. This wasn't a trip for work, it was a trip for pleasure." Oh, but the agent keeps on digging...
Agent: "Where did you go to school?"
I fail to see what this had to do with anything...after all, I've tried to banish memories of my school experiences from my present life...but I knew what to do: ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH. I spill the beans about my West Virginia high school and college days.

Agent: "Is this the usual port of entry that you cross at?"
Me: "Since I cross the border so infrequently, I don't really have a usual port. I actually came into Canada at the next crossing west because I was sightseeing in that area." That was probably strike number three, and it was my own fault: Never volunteer information at a border crossing unless explicitly asked. Coming back a different way from which you leave is a red flag of its own, though.
Agent: "How much money are you bringing into the U.S.?"
Me: "U.S. or Canadian?"
Agent: "Both."
I rifle through my wallet and count everything up. It isn't much...probably about $60 in all.
Agent: "Do you have any medications with you?"
Me: "A little cortisone for my rash" I say, pointing to a reddish patch on my palm. Never mind, that was probably strike number four.
Agent: "Are you returning with any goods you did not have when you left?"
Me: "Just five T-shirts," I say, holding up my palm with five fingers outstretched. Strike number five was more like it. The amount I paid for the shirts was well under my personal exemption and I had receipts, so I had nothing to fear. Or did I?

Agent. "Proceed to Garage 1. Your ID will be returned to you there."

Proceed to Garage 1? What was that supposed to mean? Were they going to open the rear hatch and let me go on my way, which was the most that happened crossing into Canada and the most I experienced in the summer of 2002? Never mind, I was to do what they said; they were still holding my passport, after all.

I pulled in. Agents swarmed around, and gave me orders. "Exit the car and empty the contents of your pockets. Leave any digital devices in the car." I reluctantly leave my digital camera on the car seat and dig through my pockets...the prospect of being searched hadn't even occurred to me when I had put things in them. I pull out my keys, wallet, and every scrap of paper I was carrying around with me, and lay it on a tray. The interrogation begins.

"What were you doing in Canada?" I tell them. "What are you bringing in with you?" I tell them. "How much money are you bringing into the U.S.?" Hadn't we gone through all of this already?

Then we got to the paper items, and tension builds. "What's this?" "That's just a hotel bill." "What are these?" "Those are the receipts for the T-shirts I mentioned earlier." They weren't interested in looking at them, though.

"What's this?" the agent says, pulling out a piece of scratch paper covered by addresses for everything from gay bars to Safeway stores. I turn red. "That's a list of tourist attractions in Winnipeg I was planning on visiting." "What were the places that you visited?" "May I take a look at the list?" "You don't remember?!"

I borrow the piece of paper and start going over some of the places I visited and some I wanted to but didn't...the Museum for Human Rights, the Mulvey Flea Market, the University of Manitoba, the Assiniboine Park Zoo, the Royal Canadian Mint. Twenty seconds later the issue is diffused, but a stink is in the air.

"Wait in this room," an agent says, guiding me to a detainment chamber bounded by bulletin boards and wired glass. I looked out through the window. My car was opened. The interior was searched and scrutinized. My suitcase was removed, and its contents removed and sorted through one by one. My backpack was removed, and its contents removed and sorted through one by one. The agents picked through my bag of dirty underwear and flipped through the pages of every paperback book. They found the pad of paper on which I had been writing my streams of consciousness during the trip and seemingly stared at it for minutes on end, flipping through every page and going over every line.

I lost track of the time...the wait might have been 20 minutes, it might have been 40. Was I going to be kept there for hours on end? Were they going to photocopy every page in my travelogue diary and forward them to the FBI to put in my "un-American activities" file? Were they going to confiscate my property? Were they going to let me into the country at all? There was nothing I could do but stare, whimper, and grimace, wondering what would become of me. Until suddenly, the door opened. "You can go now. Your passport is on the dashboard of the car."

"Is everything repacked in my car?" "Yes." I pulled over as soon afterward as I could, and confirmed: My car had been repacked and nothing had been taken, although everything had been repacked in a different place from where I had left it and the whole exercise felt like a violation.

Entering the United States in this day and age is like entering the Iron Curtain. Is this the new normal since the people of West Virginia enabled George W. Bush to create a police state under the 49th parallel?

The scariest take-away about my experience is that it could have easily been even worse. What if I had resisted during the interrogation? What if I had brought my laptop with me, and the agents insisted on checking or confiscating that? What if I had been an ethnic minority instead of a white cis-man? The possibilities and consequences make me shudder.

I checked out of my hotel, drove around trying to find a Tim's or some such...and found myself unable to make left turns because the entire street layout around Polo Park was torn to hell for reconstruction and there were lane barriers everywhere. One-way traffic added to the mayhem, and at one point I became so confused by the concrete maze I was in that I actually ended up on the wrong side of the road! I was able to awkwardly dart back to the right side before any harm was done, but it was a thoroughly embarrassing experience.

Thankfully, that was all over by the time I drove south to reach one last tourist destination: The University of Manitoba. I toured the campus and spent the better part of an hour in the Elizabeth Dafoe Library, where I met a kindly if strange person at the microfilm reader who said "eh" a lot and assumed that Wisconsin was in New England. I also had the good fortune of seeing Andrew Osborne of the French department, who happens to be one of the people I know from my license plate hobby. It's funny how specialized interests always bring different people together!

South of Perimeter Highway, I just had to stop one last time and photograph a street sign commemorating my namesake. Turnbull Drive was named after a Thomas Turnbull who was active in Winnipeg politics and agriculture in the early 20th century, and whose father and son were both named...Andrew Turnbull. (A hat tip to the Manitoba Historical Society for documenting that bit of local trivia!)

I felt sorrow at having to leave Canada...four days simply wasn't enough to take everything in, and I hope to go back to Winnipeg again. But it was time to go home, and I had a lot of driving to do...if I could get across the border first.

When I finally emerged from the realm of Human Rights, I still had a fair bit of parking time paid for...so I took a look around. The rotunda inside Union Station looked as grand as ever. The Winnipeg Railway Museum was open with free admission that day...although I got there 20 minutes before closing time, so I had to hurry! A BNSF GP39-3 locomotive was idling in back, and I was actually invited to climb aboard as the engineer described the operating procedures, instruments, and controls.

The museum had a Griswold crossing signal on display with a rotating stop sign (identical to the one I photographed above in Wisconsin, sans sign, six years ago). I commented on the signal as I was on the way out the door...and the staff person I spoke to hadn't realized before that the sign rotated. Thanks to me, he learned something new that day!

A few quick steps soon brought me to the Forks Market, where I walked into the Travel Manitoba Visitor Information Centre wearing a "Wisconsin Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics" T-shirt. As I buried myself in brochures and looked quizzically around the room, I said "Good afternoon. Do I look like a tourist who's not from around here? Gee, I can't imagine why!"

Later that day back at the hotel, I went for one last walk in the asphalt jungle that surrounded it to see if I could find any engagement there. Target's Canadian experiment had crashed and burned, so they weren't open for business. Their competitors weren't any less deserted, however...as I discovered that all stores were closed on Sunday evenings.

Is Manitoba a last refuge of blue laws, or is shutting down at 6 p.m. some unwritten rule with lockstep adherence? Either way, I wouldn't have guessed.

The post-conference period was spent sightseeing and looking for hidden treasures. I visited two indoor flea markets that an acquaintance suggested might be good places to find old license plates. Alas, it was not to be. Some nut at one had hoisted the Gadsden Flag in his booth, and the only plates I found at the other were overpriced examples surrounded by crucifix, hunting, and neo-Confederate paraphernalia. Very doubtful.

To wash away the experience, I headed downtown. The Esplanade Riel is a cable-stayed footbridge over the Red River that opened in 2003. It's unapologetically modernist, and leaves a terrific visual impact from any angle.

Near the west abutment of the bridge lies the Citizen Garden, covered in thousands of tiny
blue flags decorated with peoples' faces. My initial reaction was pensive: Was this the memorial to some tragedy, like so many installations in the States? No: It was a celebration of life and optimism in the present day. Each flag represented a real person in Winnipeg...2015 of them in all...and their thoughts on what was "cool;" simple as that.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights completed the dramatic aura of the vicinity. It had opened almost exactly one year to the day before, in September of 2014.

Underneath the complex, irregular exterior lies an interior of spiraling corridors and labyrinths that slowly wind their way to a glass observation tower at the very top. Many of the interior spaces are open above, with courtyards visible across many levels. There are artifacts, information, and multimedia exhibits on subjects ranging from individual achievements to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The staff simultaneously say "hello" and "bonjour," in a nod to Canada's multilingualism.

The museum's scope and limitations have been debated, and almost inevitably been mired in controversy...and I wouldn't doubt that there are human rights atrocities going on that didn't warrant a mention in its walls.

Nevertheless, the museum packs an emotional wallop. It reminded me how the human right of universal healthcare is taken for granted in most countries of the world...yet denied in mine. It continually reminded me that I'm livid that my own neighbors and family have rolled back and eliminated labor rights, gay rights, and women's rights south of the border in Wisconsin and Michigan, and I'm livid that a white-supremacist, Christian-nationalist ideological cult is revered as a major political party by almost half the voters in the USA.

The Holocaust exhibit was prominent, and especially poignant. Of the photographs on display, two were particularly eerie as they represented scenes of concurrent, "ordinary" German life: One was of a commercial building partially covered in national flags (i.e., Nazi banners) and posters promoting the national leader (i.e., Hitler). Another was a picture of a young girl on a street corner, making a Nazi salute in tandem with the adults that surrounded her. Had my own family been displaced into Germany, I have little doubt that my own grandmother or grandfather would have been the girl in that position...going with the flow, obligingly supporting the ruling party without giving critical thought as to why...as her neighbors disappear.

What else was poignant? Take some policy points, for one: Disenfranchisement and the withdrawal of political power...union busting...school textbooks being rewritten to reflect a racist, Christianist point of view? That's the Deutsches Reich in the 1930s...and it's also the United States of America in the year 2015.

Sunday morning began without a breakfast buffet at the hotel, but otherwise everything in Winnipeg was right on track. Dr. Arthur Schafer of the University of Manitoba gave a slow and nuanced talk about the recent Carter ruling that struck down bans on assisted suicide in Canada. Suicide itself ceased to be criminalized in 1972, but prohibitions on aiding or abetting it remained in the Criminal Code afterward...ostensibly in the guise of protecting vulnerable people. These "protections" were in fact discrimination, however...which is why they were challenged by several British Columbia plaintiffs who suffered from debilitating illnesses and disabilities and weren't capable of taking their own lives without an assistant.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the Carter ruling was that it was unanimous. Seven out of nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada were appointed under Stephen Harper...but even though he's enthusiastically emulated the worst aspects of American reactionary politics in other fronts of his government, the judicial system still has a kilogram of integrity. Schafer cautioned, however, that the court's ruling would not take effect until 2016 and effective implementation of "death with dignity" was not assured until the Conservatives were defeated.

The next part of the day continued with a familiar face: P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula and the University of Minnesota-Morris, who I had last seen at Freethought Festival in Madison two years earlier. P.Z. talked sarcastically about the topic of biology he knew best, with a new twist: "Evolution is more complicated than you think!"

How so? Well, it's more than natural selection, for one: Evolution can occur by other processes as well, such as genetic drift. It also has little to do with "evolutionary psychology;" an uncredible, racist, and sexist ploy to link natural selection to human behavior and say "people are adaptive; therefore they should be kept down."

The dialogue built and gained momentum in unpredictable ways. Eventually we were treated to a picture of a barnacle penis (which was adapted to its conditions) and an observation of how worms millions of years ago changed their environment by burrowing into the ground. Do climate denialists think they're less powerful than worms?

Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson followed, and gave a few lessons on marriage demographic trends, humanist marriages, and northern Saskatchewan history. He discussed the horrible legacy of Canada's Residential Schools...an attempt by churches to "re-engineer" aboriginal children by removing them from their families and instilling assimilationism and Christianity in them by force. The government had a recommendation to close the schools as early as 1912. Churches lobbied to keep them open as an avenue for them to "save souls" by, however, and the last one in Saskatchewan didn't close until 1998. Chilling.

And after a few closing remarks, the conference was over.

Hector Avalos was a former fundie preacher and faith healer who eventually became both an atheist and a Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University...quite a massive change! Religious violence was the focus of a book Avalos had authored, and it was the focus of his dialogue at the conference.

What exactly constitutes religious violence is the subject of debate: Seemingly everyone from Sam Harris to Barack Obama has made statements claiming that this or that atrocity isn't "truly" religious. Hector's take was somewhat different: Monotheism was inherently violent since it created "insiders" and "outsiders" intrinsically, and it created scarce resources. Water and food are scarce resources; so are political power, information, and gender equality; and so is access to divine communication. As disputes break out over that and the "insiders" and "outsiders" war, religious violence is the result.

Next to appear was Scott Carnegie, who provided an insightful and entertaining presentation on Mormonism and his conversion both to and away from that particular sect.

Nothing is all good or all bad, and Scott gave a fair overview of some of the characteristics that drew him from a Catholic upbringing to the LDS in a positive way: The church felt inclusive and supportive. There was no hell; just three heavens and "outer darkness." Baptism was at age 8 instead of birth, which seemed fairer and more consensual. Through proxy baptism, people could be moved from spiritual prison to paradise. And it was a modern-day revelation...something that seemed "real" and exciting!

Of course, this was followed by the flip side of the coin. Alcohol was banned in the Word of Wisdom. Non-members were banned from temple weddings. Black people were denied the priesthood until 1978. Joseph Smith was reprehensible at coercing people, and he sent men away so that he could marry their wives. The Pearl of Great Price contained the "Book of Abraham;" an Egyptian papyrus that Smith was able to divinely "translate" by himself in an era when hieroglyphs were an unknown language. The papyrus was lost in 1871; then found again in 1966...and if the translations matched, it would have been proof that the LDS Church was prophetic and correct! But needless to say, they didn't and it wasn't.

As a liberal Mormon, Scott didn't care for short hair, white shirts, and ties; he didn't believe the prophet was infallible, and his relationship with the church became increasingly strained. If Joseph Smith made up the Book of Abraham (and made up the "connection" between American Indians and Jerusalem that he espoused; easily disproved by DNA), it logically followed that he made up the Book of Mormon too...and he made up everything. Proposition 8...the Mormon-backed ploy that caused 52% of California voters to revoke their gay and lesbian neighbors of equal civil rights...was the straw that prompted him to burn bridges and officially resign from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Scott Carnegie is an atheist activist today.

The last highlight was Stephanie Zvan, a Minnesotan who blogs at Almost Diamonds. Her spiel was a rich and layered lesson on community-building.

Stephanie began by pointing out parallels between atheist communities and fandom communities: Different people get together because of shared interests in a common topic; whether it's dressing up as comic and movie characters or changing the world through changing minds. But, there are challenges. It's a tough balancing act to tear down barriers of language or tradition and welcome new members without also alienating old ones. Specialization is what gives groups reasons for existence, but over-specialization will kill a group.

What will help a group grow and thrive? Family matters, for one: Have split conferences and things for kids to do beyond being babysat. Give people more roles. Design events around marginalized groups: The more folks you have from an underrepresented group, the more you will get. Lower the cost of participating, through affiliations or subsidization. Have a vision for the community. And, keep others from tearing the community down through abuse and intimidation: Have a harassment policy. Keep records. When assholes undermine how communities function together by their repeated bad behavior, remove the assholes.

Altogether, it was a productive lesson with food for thought. Many of the tips would have been applicable to any group looking for improvements...including a certain license plate collecting club that I'm a part of.