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.

All conference participants received a packet including a tourist book and downtown map...both of which could have been useful when I was getting lost sightseeing around the city the day before! HA²M leader Donna Harris welcomed the crowd, and kicked things off with an irreverent tribute to "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." The ice was broken, and the conference began.

My acquaintance Greta Christina was the first speaker to go on, and did so with a lengthy discussion about the very topic she recently devoted a new book to: "Comfortable thoughts about death that have nothing to do with God."

Death sucks, and nonreligious philosophies about it are hard to find. But are religious philosophies any better? Religious people go through the same bouts of grief that nonbelievers do, and the notions of heaven and hell simply add torment, terror, and guilt to survivors' lives. She also cited that people who actually believe in an afterlife are the very ones more likely to stay it off for as long as possible.

The topic occasionally took a turn into the amusing: "Heaven would be so monotonous that a few minutes of hell would be a relief...and eternity spent with friends and relatives would be hell!" Greta expressed that death was a deadline: An encouragement to go out, do things, and live life to the fullest. Meanwhile, the fundamental meaning of life is to participate in life, experience comfort and joy, make the world a better place, and create a legacy to leave behind. I can't argue with that.

Greta was followed by Eric Adriaans of CFI Canada. After beginning with a recount of his organization's history and objectives, he segued into a discussion of Canada's blasphemy law.

Yes, Canada has a blasphemy law, and it prescribes up to two years' imprisonment as punishment for "blasphemous libel." Few people are aware the law exists...even the head of the "Office of Religious Freedom" in the Canadian government didn't know until CFI prodded him about it. The law has rarely been enforced, most recently in the 1930s. Nevertheless it has a chilling effect as a threat on expression and was used as a charge in more recent years; notably to thwart a showing of Life of Brian in Sault Sainte Marie.

From there, he elaborated on a variety of related points. Blasphemy laws were spawned from heresy laws forged in an era where religion was tied to national identity. Canada's example is doubly hypocritical, as the country vocally supports the repeal of blasphemy laws in other countries on the international stage. The International Coalition Against Blasphemy Laws was formed in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, and Iceland established precedent by repealing their law months later. With a federal election and the probability of a new government just weeks away, the time to lobby for change in Canada is now.

The third guest speaker of the morning was Tracie Harris of the Atheist Community of Austin, who touched on religious trends and gave a detailed recount of the harm of religious "family values." This conference was her first time in Canada.

Organizations like Focus on the Family and other fronts of the Christian Right commandeer families as a vehicle to promote Jesus worship at the expense of the family itself. Values are redefined as beginning with God (thus implying that atheists can't have them), and people are defined as being born twisted and practicing sin every moment unless they're "saved" from their sin. Religion becomes the sole means of family cohesion, and it repels people who don't conform...and people who deconvert in such situations often find themselves compelled to lie about religion rather than eliminate their place in their family by upsetting the status quo.

Harris' own work in the Atheist Community of Austin puts her into contact with uncountable people wriggling out of religion in toxic religious families, and they get more letters from children than anyone else. Her own pre-deconversion upbringing was in the fundamentalist Church of Christ, but she noted that the same perversion of "family" as a construct occurs in many virulent sects around the world...from Adventist to Islamic to non-denominational.

At this point the stage emptied, people mulled about, and everyone prepared to have a break for lunch. I did likewise, and got some fresh air and exercise by taking a walk down Ellice Avenue and back again. But there was plenty more to come.

As recently as five years ago, Winnipeg still featured two operational Safeway stores in the arch-roofed "Marina" motif of the 1960s. Due to Safeway's present-day corporate foibles, however, that's no longer the case: The last survivor on 1441 Main Street morphed into a Co-op store a year ago. Happily, little else about it has changed: The store still sells groceries, and the original ceiling beams and entrance details have been preserved.

The 1081 Ellice Avenue location was less lucky, as it closed in 2010 and the building subsequently gutted and re-fronted for a new tenant. The arched roof is still clearly visible, though.

Over on 1319 Pembina Highway, the original Safeway building was replaced by a nondescript structure long ago. But happily, the original googie sign by the roadside still stands...albeit modified and shorn of flash.

All three of these stores (or the remnants thereof) date to 1963-64.

Before I started my trip, I made a list of tourist attractions and their addresses, hoping to go down the list one by one. None of that mattered yet, though, since for now I was captivated by the siren call of shopping. The Polo Park Mall was huge, with over 200 stores (many of them unique Canadian tenants) packed into two floors of space. There, I kissed the rest of the morning goodbye...though the only misadventure I got to show for it was an incident where a store was running a buy-one get-one sale, yet had only a single T-shirt in my size.

Eventually I escaped...and I spent most of the afternoon driving around the city, doubling back, and driving some more. Winnipeg streets are like an obstacle course with pedestrians, buses, one-way traffic, and stoplights that turn red when you least expect them to. I somehow managed to circumnavigate all the obstructions...and got a healthy dose of exercise for my clutch pedal foot. I applied for a visitor's library card at a local branch (which allowed me to use public computers, though not check out books). And, I started to make my way down the list...checking out tourist attractions as I came to them, one by one.

Unfortunately, most of my plans for a Friday afternoon were thwarted. The Manitoba Museum, Science Gallery, and Planetarium turned out to be closed through the 18th...meaning that I couldn't visit it until a day later. The Manitoba Railway Museum had free admission the coming weekend...meaning that there was little point of going there now. The Mulvey Flea Market was only open on Saturday and Sunday. I couldn't visit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights since I couldn't figure out where it was supposed to be on the map. By the time I got to the Assiniboine Park Zoo, it was after 4 p.m. and the gates had already closed for the day. I took four days off to be in Winnipeg, half of which was stitched up in conference time...and it wasn't enough.

But there were some things that I did get to see, including a wealth of additions to the Cliched Landmark Photo File:

Union Station, completed in 1911 and still in operation for VIA rail service today.

The Winnipeg Canadian Pacific Railway station, bearing a 1904-dated inscription and currently housing the Aboriginal Health & Wellness Centre.

The original flagship store of the Hudson's Bay Company, which opened in 1926 (and nowadays has an uncertain fate).

The Manitoba Legislative Building, completed in 1920.

This? Heh...this one seemed to be in a class of its own. Wild Planet was housed in what near as I could tell was a "deconsecrated" midcentury-mod church, reused and reoriented towards metal gods. I actually went inside, and the place blew my senses away...mainly through the reeking odor of incense, which permeated everything there.

Once I was at a stoplight, and I noticed a driver in the next lane over motion me to roll down my window. I did, and I promptly received an introduction by someone who said that he had been in Wisconsin the last time he lived in the United States...years and years ago. He then made wishes for good weather and good traffic...though for whom the wishes were intended, I was less clear about.

Canadian "friendliness" may be a stereotype in league with hockey and poutine, but it's based in some truth: Everywhere without fail, I was always hearing people saying "Hello." People in Winnipeg also generally seemed to be less suspicious, reserved, and paranoid than their counterparts in much of the States...an aspect that I credit to the fact that they didn't live through 35 years of Reagan and his acolytes chipping away at social safety nets, perpetuating income inequality, vilifying public institutions, and brandishing Christianity as a weapon. But will they fulfill their responsibility to prevent 10 years of Harper from turning into the same thing?

Since I talk a lot about license plates in this space, I'll wrap up with two from Manitoba: The most horrible-looking example I saw (on a city bus, no less); and the lowest number I spotted in the present series, which began in 1997.

Morning broke in Fargo, North Dakota. Leaving the city was slow going, though. First, I was enticed by the smell of Perkins...even though they weren't running their all-you-can-eat pancake special and I got food poisoning the last time I went to one of their restaurants. Then, I was enticed by the distraction of another nearby construct: The West Acres Mall. I stepped inside and promptly discovered two epic surprises: A operational, coin-filled fountain original to the mall's 1972 construction, and a roman-lettered Sears sign that was miraculously still intact.

I came dangerously close to buying a tank top at 50% off (forgetting that I'd almost never have a reason to wear one) until I discovered that it had screen printing inside the front of the garment. Somehow, that was enough to wake me from my shopping stupor...and I made tracks north on U.S. 81.

Most of North Dakota was very sparsely populated...and it felt very peaceful. Almost discordantly peaceful, given some of the sinister shit that goes on within the state's bounds.

One of the few incorporated places I encountered was Hillsboro, home of the forlorn Traill Theatre and county courthouse.

The moderately larger abode of Grand Forks (third largest city in the state) offered some roadside artifacts of its own, including a Phillips 66 gullwing canopy and a rare Matawan-style Texaco building. Both had been shorn of their pumps decades ago and turned into adaptive reuse.

U.S. 81 had dumped me quite a few kilometres west of the main highway. When I slowly wheeled the car to the border crossing at Gretna, the customs official seemed suspicious. "Why are you going this way? Were you rejected at the other crossing?" I had nothing to incriminate myself, however, and was traveling lightly. The official collected my passport, followed up with questions about my trip details, employer, starting point, and other expected minutia, asked to look in the back of the car, jostled my suitcase momentarily...and left me to go on my way. I was mildly annoyed that I had to open my car (a far cry from the 1990s era when you could cross the border with a driver's license and no searching at all)...but compared to the experience I'd have four days later, it was quick, upfront, and painless.

I was thrilled and psyched to be in Canada at last. Which way to Winnipeg, though? I didn't have a good map, and I was well off the beaten path...I even ended up on dirt without trying. Everything in the prairies is laid out on a grid, though, and I successfully worked my way to the main road that I should have taken in the first place.

50 kilometres later, I was there. The day wasn't done, though: I stopped at Tim's for dinner, where I mustered up some energy and had the added bonus of receiving an American nickel in my change. I then drove around for over an hour both to gain a crash course on Winnipeg's street grid layout and to find my conspicuous, yet strangely hard-to-find hotel. I wound up arriving in the city the same day as an AC/DC concert, so traffic was tied up to oblivion in some corridors.

Winnipeg had the aura of a decidedly multicultural city, and I often heard languages other than English being spoken. It was also a vast place where seemingly anything and everything could be. I had been in Manitoba's capital for less than a day, but I liked it already.

I'd get to explore the city on my own in another day's time...but for now, it was time to relax.