Road Trip – “BEEP-BEEP”

I got a call from my buddy, Ken, yesterday asking if I was interested in a road trip. Since all I had to look forward to was doing work around the house I immediately agreed.

“Sure, but where to?” I figured that I could still back out if I needed to.

He said that he needed to go to Acme to pick up a trailer and then drop it off in Strathmore. This sounds kind of fun. Not only didn’t I know that Acme was relatively close by, but to find out that the Coyote actually lived in Strathmore was pretty cool. Throughout most of my childhood and really up until yesterday I thought that the Coyote lived in Arizona. I was going to ask Ken what we were going to deliver to the Coyote but decided it would be best if it were a surprise.

He picked me up and we started out, only to find that the road we planned to take was getting a manicure of some kind. Thank God for GPS. Turn that baby on and Ba-Boom! You have an alternate route in minutes. We talked of hawks that were flying and all of the water that is still in the fields while we drove through a beautiful southern Alberta day. I could barely contain myself! In fact I guess in retrospect I should have gone potty before getting in the truck. Control! Control! Control!

I see the sign that says Acme and feel a little let down that it looks just like any other small Alberta town. We pull into the storage yard and wait for the Jay to come meet us with the trailer. I’m thinking blue Jay. After a phone call and a ten minute wait the gate to the storage yard opens up and a van comes out. It is Jay’s wife (not a bird) and she tells us to go through the gate. Yeah, when you want to meet someone the best way is to be hiding behind a locked gate. I’m not feeling the love!.

The trailer is just that, an old, rusty trailer. No big boxes or crates with the ACME label. WTF? Ok, so I still get to meet the Coyote when we drop off the trailer. We drove back through the same beautiful southern Alberta day, with the same hawks and ditches filled with water. This is beginning to remind me of the whole Tooth Fairy fiasco.

Here is Strathmore coming up and there is no “Welcome To The Home Of The Coyote” on the town sign. Hmmmm!

We go to this nondescript warehouse and walk in. This is it, this is where he makes all of those fantastic machines! Kind of like a back stage pass to the North Pole. Nope. Just some bald guy and his son who will let us store the trailer in his compound. Ken backs the trailer in and asks me to find a rock so that he can block the wheels. I was looking for a rock already, but it wasn’t for the wheels.

Lesson learned, you will probably never meet your heros.

Just so the day wasn’t a total waste we went to the Strathmore Tim’s for a coffee. Now, let’s put a little icing on the cake. The woman in line behind us had just filled her gas tank with diesel and couldn’t carry on back to Saskatchewan until the tank was drained. I put a concerned look on my face and discussed with her what her options were. I didn’t laugh at her once! Just goes to prove, you can make lemonade out of lemons but you can’t cure stupid.