Teenage Testosterone Twins #7: The Final Installment

(They're not REALLY twins, though it sounds good! They call themselves the Dawgs. They are 18- and 20-year-old brothers (my sons) riding the Amtrak and ViaRail on 1-month North American railpasses...the legitimate way).

I believe we left the TTT's in Toronto, in the last installment of their adventures. They were able to snag a hotel room and sleep off the all-nighter they passed in the Montreal train station. One of the sights they observed in Toronto that made a big impression was seeing a moving van back up into a car with the driver in it, crunch it, then start to pull away, the truck driver oblivious of what happened until passersby waved at him to stop. They observed all the consequences for the driver and his hapless victim. Now as to any legitimate sightseeing they did, I have no idea--sometimes you can only get SO MUCH out of a teen (and what could compare with real-life drama, after all?).

On the Twins/Dawgs went to Sudbury, Ontario. Their aim was to get to Grandpa W.'s cabin on a little island in the North Channel of Lake Huron, where Uncle DeSoto and Aunt Alicia were currently staying, there from New Jersey with their pre-teen daughter, teen son, and teen son's friend. That's right, that would add up to FOUR Teens + Preteen, folks. There were conflicting feelings about this situation flying back and forth across the country. All relatives involved, as well as uninvolved, had an opinion on the subject, as can happen in extended (and over-extended) families.

We subsequently received a mildly panicked call. The Twins had made it from Sudbury to Espanola, but couldn't get a motel, and didn’t know how to get to the dock on the Bay. Their plan at that time was to WALK a mile down the road to see if another hotel had a vacancy. We prevailed on them to ask around for the name of the hotel and CALL them first, and also call the owner of the dock for advice on how to get a ride there. That’s the last we heard from them that night. The next day they did get a ride to the dock, where, fortuitously (as cell phone coverage is spotty at best), Uncle DeSoto and family were pulling in in the motorboat, in order to get supplies in town and do laundry. We didn’t hear what happened the night in Espanola until the Twins got home three days ago. Turns out they spent half the night in a Tim Horton’s (doughnut/coffee shop) where C-Dawg got intense heartburn; two hours trying to sleep in the park and fight the mosquitoes, and the rest of the night walking around waiting for their ride to the dock. Ah, resilient youth!

All went well at the cabin (or so it was reported). The boys bought plenty of food in Little Current to cover their own needs and then some. Fish were caught and eaten, swimming and diving off tall rocks took place, canoe trips were undertaken, cousinly bonds were re-established. Apparently Aunt Kiki, who was at the cabin for most of July and overlapped Aunt Alicia and Uncle DeSoto’s visit, had had to deal with the problems of beavers and muskrats taking over management of the dock below the cabin and destroying it in the process. Extra thrills included an exploding generator and a faulty composting toilet (some people get all the luck…or not). Aunt Kiki also got some flak for trying to re-decorate (and RUIN) the cabin. Imagine, moving the wall of fishing lures down to the storage shed by the dock! Now there’s how to get on the good side of the men. But she did get all the nasty jobs done in time for the other family members to be able to relax (?) during their stays at the cabin.

After three days on the island, the troop exited en masse, and the Twins were dropped off in Sudbury to catch their last train. Their passes were to expire on August 10th, and all travel had to be completed by then. They spent the next three-plus days heading west on ViaRail. A bennie for boys of this age traveling in Canada is that they get to drink alcohol. Weirdly, the drinking age is 18 in some provinces and 19 in others, so B-Dawg got to have a drink every other day as the boys wended their way across Canada. You can imagine their disdain for the lack of a universal standard for drinking laws, as C-Dawg had been an exchange student in Italy, where the drinking age is 16, and in the U.S. you get in trouble for drinking before age 21.

 We got the call from the boys as they neared Vancouver. They were to reach the city in the morning, and from there they would take a bus to Seattle (the connecting train to Seattle didn't work out), and walk to to the Bainbridge Island Ferry dock. We would pick them up on Bainbridge. They reported that, same as on our family trip in 1998, the Canadian trains were more enjoyable; the service was better, the seats more comfortable, and they were more or less on time. This is a track record which apparently Amtrak has never been able to match.

I got the honor of picking up the boys from the ferry around 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 10th, since Hubby was too tired to stay awake. It takes from an hour to an hour and a half to drive from our town to the Bainbridge ferry, depending on traffic. I’m grateful for cell phones since one can easily work around glitches. This time, it was having to wait a while in the pick-up line with the other vehicle-bound family members of ferry commuters. “WHERE ARE YOU, MOM?”  came the call. “Hang in there, I’m inching my way along……” came my reply. Finally I was able to cut in front of the taxis and pull over, and the boys descended upon me, all smiles and hugs, and stinky and greasy from three days on the train without a shower. They dumped their gear into the back of the car and jumped into the front seats. I hastily leaped into the back seat. “You don’t mind if I drive, do you?” asked C-Dawg (the elder) as he put the car into gear. B-Dawg plugged the Ipod converter into the tape player and started blasting “The Clash” at a high level of decibels. Hey wait a minute, guys, I want to hear more about your trip…….