Day: August 18, 2019

August 18, 2019

Real time     Blood pressure probably 500 over 100 (I’m kidding)

It is Sunday afternoon and I am back at my Airbnb.  Don’t worry, everything’s fine, but I need to get something off my chest so I can hopefully sleep tonight….

This morning I decided to take my car and drive to a few places which were more than walking distance away.  I have walked exclusively the last two days and this is my last full day here.  So much to see!

I drove north of Québec City to Jacques-Cartier National Park, about a half hour outside of town.  My pre-trip research indicated there were some gorgeous fjords there.

My first sign of trouble was their sign, which I had plenty of time to study while waiting in a long line of traffic to get in to the Park.  Well, it was Sunday morning and, though cloudy at the moment, was showing signs of improvement.

Here is the sign I saw:

It was different than every other Parks Canada sign I have seen while in the country:

I thought “OK, Québec thinks it’s better than everybody else and wants to be rebellious”.   Fine.

When I finally get up to the entry gate I tell the young lady that I have a Discovery Pass, which gives me free admission to all national parks and historic sites in the country for one year.  She says “Oh no, this is a Provincial Park”.

Whoa.

“You mean Parc Nationale is a Provincial Park, not a National Park?” I ask.

“That’s right”, she says, “it’s kind of a long story but Québec’s special status…”

OK, let me stop you right there.  I said (calmly and politely, this isn’t her fault after all) “Oh yeah, Québec thinks it’s special all right” and indicated I would turn my car around and leave, which I did.

And after reviewing my photos the entrance sign I saw was, in fact, a Parks Québec sign, not Parks Canada.

I had also been puzzled by these highway signs as I approached Québec City on Thursday:

Hey….. Québec……  Prêter une attention particulière….. (pay close attention)

I’m only going to say this once:

You are part of frickin’ CANADA and your national capital is frickin’ OTTAWA and it’s in frickin’ ONTARIO PROVINCE, and close enough to you to rub your snooty little nose in it.

Compris?   (Got it?)

There, I feel much better.

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Hey JohnBoy, dites-nous ce que vous vraiment penser…  (Tell us what you really think….)

I’m tempted to stop using the accent when writing their name just to piss ’em off.

 

 

 

 

August 18, 2019

Please forgive me as I go off topic once again to report something I personally find quite amusing.  I hope you will too.

(Photo credit + copyright: Andrew Redington/Getty Images Sports)

Brooks Koepka, a 29 year old golf sensation who has played full time on the US PGA Tour for the past several years, was called out by a fan on Twitter during this weekend’s event which is one of the elimination rounds leading to this year’s season finale where the winner will walk away with a cool $15 million dollars.  Weather had interrupted the event and Mr. Koepka was in the clubhouse, apparently looking at some of his followers comments on his Twitter feed.

He had this snappy comeback during that rain delay:

(Photo credit: Twitter as posted by @wiley77, the author of an online golf blog)

I should point out that Mr. Koepka, at 29, has won over $30 million on the US tour alone, and won 4 of their “Majors” (a handful of marquee events throughout the year) in just the past three years.  He had played on foreign tours for years before committing to the PGA Tour, where he undoubtedly had won much more.  When he’s good he’s very good.

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Earlier this week I read where Bryson DeChambeau, another new golf sensation on the PGA tour, also had a direct comeback to his fans in general who criticized him for slow play (a chronic problem in recreational, amateur and professional golf where a player takes too much time thinking about and executing a shot) in last week’s event.  He had made a few remarks at the time they were brought to his attention and evidently before embarking on this week’s event on Thursday, and having had more time to stew over it,  effectively addressed his critics by saying “Screw y’all, screw all y’all” which is another Southernism in US lingo.

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And I didn’t want to distract from the story but for those of you who may not know, a Brinks Truck is the common term for an armored vehicle used to, generally safely, carry around large amounts of cash between banks and customers or the US Treasury.

UPDATE – Here are pictures of a Brinks truck I saw literally driving up to the National Mint (where they make loonies and toonies) in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, on Wednesday, August 21.