Maynard Lake

Maynard Lake Lodge Fishing Adventure 2018

My good buddy Patrick John Duncan arranged yet another fishing trip to the great white north! I being a sucker for anything fishing jumped at the chance to participate , knowing full well that Duncan initiated travel sometimes goes horribly off the tracks. We arranged our flights in February and by the time June 9th rolled around neither Pat nor I had the foggiest notion of who was doing what and where we were going to be confused at. Well not really I suppose, as we had fished here in 2016 together with his sons, but Pat and I are sometimes able to inject a level of chaos in very familiar situations. This ability rivals any high level executive in every large corporation in America and at times comes close to our representatives in Washington,although Pat and I are capable , we fall well short of the ass hats in DC. I suppose that is something to aim at as we age and our thought process erodes further into the abyss.

After several frantic conversations, we assured ourselves that we had developed a cost savings travel plan that,not only saved the cost of a hotel in Kenora but also the food and libation cost connected to an over night stay. I on occasion have been able to completely blow a budget by uttering a benign phase like “ wanna shoot a game of pool in this friendly neighborhood bar and grill.”? Or “ this strip joint won’t be that expensive “. So with mature resolve
we devised a plan to depart Casper and Grand Junction at 5 pm after a full day of chores , or in my case, mowing a yard roughly the size of a postage stamp and then taking a nap. When my wonderful wife woke me from my nap at 3:30, my first thought was of Joey from friends “ how you doin” once the look on my wife’s face registered in my feeble brain that I was the biggest moron this side of Joey on friends, I understood there was no time for any shenanigans. I was to be at airport at 4 not 5 and better get a move on! My loving wife deposited me and my overstuffed bag at the airport in plenty of time, and I naively believed the travel all but complete…Pat and I meet in Denver, located our gate, ate a sandwich that was prepared during the Hoover administration,at a cost of $73.50 and found me a quick drink! This thing was going like clockwork …..until we boarded and noticed the mother and newborn seated behind us, now when I say newborn, I mean this kid looked like it just arrived 12 minutes ago! Much to our delight the child never made a peep, but our dreams of a extended nap on the 2 hour flight were dashed, as they are with any patron of the airlines, dashed by seats made for preteens,not adults, flight attendants shelping carts to and fro that are basically elbow and knee seeking missiles , turbulence that try and deposit you in the aisle…..you get the picture. We landed with a thud and careened down the runway at a bit of a slant before deplaning to meet with tired underpaid “ immigration” officers. After I was interrogated about the cigars and 7.5 ounces of Baileys in my luggage along with having to explain and apologize once again for drunken offenses committed 5 Presidential administrations ago, I scampered off to find Pat trying to out maneuver the rental car up sell. Once in the Dodge Challenger rental car that Pat paid “ only slightly extra “ for,we arrived at a revelation so striking, yet so simplistic……the Challenger seats are made by the airline seat manufacturers! The one glaring difference is that the Challenger seat, in an effort to make it even more uncomfortable than a plane seat,is only 13/32” of an inch off the car floor! As we departed the parking structure at midnight we lamented that we already been awake since the Jurassic period. Pat and I are no longer what you would call ……young,but in an effort to avoid unduly causing the other to worry we refrained from speaking about missing our bedtime by approximately 4 hours. I venture to guess that passengers and crew did the same aboard the Titanic
No one said “ hey there’s a giant hole in the ship!”

We confronted our 2.5 hours drive with the silent resolve of two old guys who internally where screaming “ why did I agree to this madness! Why did I let this dumbass talk me into this? I need sleep,I’m OLD”. We were however comforted by the word that an all night Tim Hortons coffee shop awaits! The thought of bear claws and jelly donuts with copious amounts of fresh brewed steaming hot coffee, kept us focused as we hurtled down the flat highway in the darkness that is Manitoba .This again is a view of our oldness, just a few decades ago we would have injected a strip joint into this story…. but.. we are decrepit

After approximately what felt like 14 hours we arrived at our destination “oh the joy!” Tim HORTONS,! What comfort we felt as we opened the Challenger doors and rolled out onto the dewy asphalt on all fours, straightening up will all the dignity that two old guys can muster at 3 AM after being awake since Kim Kardashian was a nobody. As we triumphantly stood at the door, we were greeted by a sign proclaiming,”sorry we are closed until further notice as we can not find any help that is not on drugs or booze”. The moment froze in time as I did the calculation that Pat and I had consumed enough coffee to fill Lake Erie in an effort to make it to this oasis of flush toilets . Did I mention that we are old.? Old guys need to pee, maybe not a lot but OFTEN! Have you ever held your pee so long that it stopped hurting? Medically speaking this is the body saying,” we gave you a heads up ….with 90 minutes of searing pain, now we are going to allow your chest cavity fill with bile as you have flooded the system…….happy now?” As we stumbled back to the low rider we weighed our options, stay here and die? Or head off in search of a pisser? Off in the distance,above what passes for Kenoras skyline was a beacon of hope, an answer to our urinary woes, A Shell gas station shown brightly in the dark sky! We looked at one another as if we had jointly discovered nirvana and folded ourselves into our chariot, a chariot that would deliver us to our salvation, to shitter heaven! As we approached the Shell it became apparent that the bars had closed recently,small bunches of 20-30 something men with the occasional younger VERY drunk woman thrown in the group. One couple staggered two steps forward,two to the right,one forward with relative repeatability giving the appearance of some tribal line dance…..but they were just hammered. As we pulled into the Shell a throng of people milled at the corner of the building, I tried to exit the ride with as much dignity as one can while rocking back and forth like grandpa trying to get a run at rising from the lazy boy as we were sized up by the local group as fossil outsiders . I could see that they were at some sort of drive up window and the clerk inside as I yanked on the locked front door. The bright light shown thru windows of the building we would never enter with a sign on the door that proclaimed “ bathrooms out of service”. As I yanked repeatedly on the obviously locked door a guy shouted “ over here bro” I stiffened noticeably with a sense of fear. I figured I would be hit on for an “extra” cigarette, beer money at best or get shanked like a scene from American History X at worst. Turned out the guy was being helpful as the Shell did business out of the drive up during the late hours to avoid the drunks from stealing all the ding dongs and vomiting everywhere.
For some unknown reason I requested a coffee with two creams, after the nice clerk counted back the phony looking Canadian change….a mixture of Saran Wrap and wax paper, I realized I had a 3 minutes before I soiled my britches .
The clerk locked the door and came outside to smoke a cigarette, speaking of cigarettes…Canadians are serious about their anti smoking campaigns. They force the producers to not only put a stern warning on the pack, a far more graphic warning that the US,but also pictures ….and there are multiple photos schemes and verbiage . So your pack might say “ smoking will cause you to abort your unborn child in the twelfth week of pregnancy “ and then there will be a picture of a young mother with a fetus on the floor at her feet…..WTF!!!!
Or “ smoking causes oral cancer” and then there will be a horrible picture of some dude missing his lower jaw. The American smokers I saw made a game out of grossing each other out…..” hey check out the picture on my pack”……disgusting!
It appears the Canadians just ignore the whole unsettling attempt to curb usage and happily pay $114 a pack for cigarettes that are smaller in diameter than American cigarettes , shorter by 3 inches and look to have the same amount of smokable product as a pin joint rolled out of the last of the weed picked out of the shag carpet in the back of your 1976 Chevy van. I suppose this is all part of the governmental master plan to tax and regulate the behavior of her citizenry. Speaking of sin tax, give up drinking if you are headed north, a handle of rum only cost 225% more than at Sams……unfortunately for me their attempt at curing my drinking problem was unsuccessful and I will be investigating getting a part time Job or selling a nonessential organ when I get home.
Back to our clerk…………….

…………..” it’s them damn rich kids from Winnipeg , they come rolling up here in there fancy cars,with there fancy clothes and all their fancy talk. They don’t buy anything here……they bring all their beer food and supplies from Winnipeg”
Now I’m not a brain surgeon or even a tree surgeon but why would anyone wait to supply up until they got to a one horse seasonal tourist town???? ……let me see …..I can pay $3 for bread in Winnipeg or I can wait and get it in Kenora for $7 . I can understand the Shell clerks frustration even if his argument doesn’t hold water. No one likes people invading their town,looking down their nose at the locals, getting drunk,trying to screw their sisters and occasionally beating the crap out of their brother…..and oh yeah…projectile vomiting in the Shell station shitter so the local owner has to close it so old guys like me have to urinate in the parking lot of the towns only hotel after sleeping in a Dodge Challenger for 4 hours only to discover it was all captured on the security camera and will probably be a hot topic with me and the immigration nazis on my next trip up here .

Pat doesn’t worry too much about anything….bastard…..I tossed and turned in the 13/32 “ Challenger seat…or as much as a old fat guy can toss in s seat sized for a moon landing ……Dunk farted and snored and cooed to Jeanne for four solid hours while I worried about Dudley Doright riding up window side and banging on it with his 37” flashlight that holds 17 D batteries all the while blinding me and demanding I read a cue card to prove I’m sober even though I’m rolling my head side to side like Stevie Wonder because he BLINDED ME!
Fortunately I dreamed this same situation 14 times in the total 12 minutes I dosed off………the stench of Pats healthy diet exiting his dupa woke me at intervals that spared me the dream part where Dudley ,”Rodney Kinged “ me. This trip sucks.

The float plane ride was cool as always and our pilot careened his plane maybe 10 feet off the tree tops as he buzzes the lodge and then dive bomb the dock before leveling off and executing a perfect landing. Maybe he mistaken our punch drunk,,,,, I haven’t slept in 50 hours behavior for a hangover and was messing with us he was unaware that we…although old…are professionals …we solved all that with a red beer at breakfast!
Pat and I enjoyed a week of great fishing and friendship

I’m not sure if anything funny happened….because I’m old. We are however going again in June of 2019…so stay tuned