Friday

[JDHannan]

Alright, I'm going to try things quite a bit differently this time. I've created a slideshow in Flash of my trip to Great Falls, Montana.

In an effort to encourage commenting, and keep them in the same place, I'm going to post flash files one day at a time.

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There are keyboard shortcuts if you like, or you can mouse it.

Without further adieu, here you go.

Friday

The May long weekend.
Victoria Day.
Thank you, Queen Victoria, wherever you are.
Owen, Jen (Owen's girlfriend), Amanda (Owen's sister) and Brett (Owen's sister's boyfriend) and I (Owen's friend) were going to head from Calgary, Alberta to Great Falls, Montana.


Its about a 6 hour drive at the speed limit.
We stopped at the Husky Gas Station in Lethbridge before we got to the border to check my tire pressure, and I noticed something odd. This is what three of my tires looked like.


But, this is what the rear-left one looked like! Someone must've like stole my skull valve cap and replaced it with this little nub!


We also noticed something else odd. Yes, that says "Huksy Only" and a line designating where the parking at the "Huksy" extends.


And also, they have one of these...


We finally arrived at the longest unpatrolled border in the world, with the shortest sign in the world


I committed several tens of thousands of cases of insecticide, and one of Aviocide.
Note the blood on the left side of the 'W' on my logo. This bird dive bombed us on the highway and almost landed in Brett's truck bed.


In our lovely, little hotel room, there were 2 Double beds. Owen and Jen got one, and Amanda and Brett got one. If you are a parent reading this, then Owen and Brett shared one, and Jen and Amanda shared one.
Either way, I was relegated to an inflatable bed-chair. The chair required 18 million lungfulls(?) of air to inflate, and i provided atleast 2/3 of them.


I had quite a restless sleep. I think I slept in 30 minute bursts. And it was full of strange dreams. Both that I remember happened at the beach. One was this beach where the waves would come in really, really far onto the sand, and with such force that you could body surf them from there. And, there was a ramp there that you would shoot off of, almost straight up in the air. Then, you would fall down hundreds of feet back to the beach and land in a huge pile of inner tubes.


The other one, I was on a dating show, in Curacao (thank you Blind Date that we watched earlier).
I was set up with Ted's ex girlfriend, Liz, and we were walking around the beach. There was a really big, old turtle on the beach, and somewhere behind him was a lobster-man.
The lobster-man-thing came towards Liz, but she walked so the turtle was between them. The lobster thing started fighting the turtle, which was kind of sad, because a turtle really only has defensive skills. They managed to fight for quite a while, and I was kinda worried that the poor turtle was gonna lose.
But then Homer Simpson came driving by and ran them both over and it was funny.

[JDHannan]

Saturday

Saturday morning, we got up to our continental breakfast. The color is a little off in this picture, I swear the coffee was grey. But, tasty actually.


The dining room had a wonderful scenic view


I think the first thing we did was go to Target, because the girls were manic for it.


We mustve wandered around there for an hour


I bought myself a new mug and a few DVDs


I got some lovely wiper-spam after being in Target that long


We went to “The” mall in Great Falls. According to the girl at the hotel, it's the only one.
Us guys went into GameStop, Spencer's, a couple music/dvd stores and that's about it. I bought a Spiderman/Spiderman 2/free ticket to The DaVinci Code combo for $15.
We also ate at the Posh Taco


The taco left something to be desired, specifically in the extra-bland beef


We found some gum that is a miracle of modern science. Its gum with Nerds INSIDE


Spelling mistake? You decide


Most intersections here had an inhuman number of traffic lights. It was hard to even photograph them all.
This one has 17.


It began to rain, and briefly we thought we saw a tornado in the distance, but it was certainly just some dark rain clouds. The picture didn't really turn out.
Some people were certainly caught offguard though


We went to Fuddrucker's for lunch. Owen and I contemplated getting the full pound burger, but thought better of it.
I don't know what he got, but I got a 2/3lb Three-Cheese Burger. Pickles, tomatoes, banana peppers, couple onions, mustard, ketchup.
There may have been a patty in there somewhere.


The beef was decidedly better than the Posh Taco, but not up to Alberta quality.


I can't believe I ate the whole thing


I hardly ate any of it


The thing about America is that it was VERY pro-american. It was weird, seriously. If you're an American reading this, you probably won't get what I'm talking about.
But, everything was “Made Proudly in America” or “American Made”. And you'd find like “American Cheese” “American Transmission Inc” or like “American Takahasi Sushi Concern”.
Holy jingoistic country. Get some self-esteem.


Owen bought a mask at Smith's grocery store. And, apparently some sleeping pills which he took all of.


I had to sign up for a Smith's Fresh Values Reward Card. Their sign up sheet was clearly not designed for Canadians, so they now have someone at my street address living in Alabama with a New Jersey zip code


Well, maybe next will be the end of saturday, or maybe next will be Sunday. Hope you enjoyed Saturday

[JDHannan]

Sunday

We decided to drive down to Helena, which we were told was about a 2 hour drive. You just go north on the good old I-15 which is just off of good old 'Exit 0'. We flew there, going through some pretty interesting terrain (not pictured) and due to our excessive speed, we were unable to stop in time to see interesting things.


We went to Helena looking for a couple things. One was a small amusement thing with Go-Karts, Lazer-Tag, a Video-Arcade, grease-food, assorted other hyphenated-activities and batting cages. The other was some kind of very non-descript entertainment... fest. Pictured here is Brett driving halfway through both lanes with Amanda not visible.


We didn't know where either of those places were in Helena though, the brochures only had very small subsections of the map on them, so we needed a good point of reference. I saw a tall spire of what we could only assume was a church, so I weaved my way through residential areas in what we can only assume was the longest possible way to get there. I present, the Saint Helena Cathedral in all its glory, given my limited photography skills


Looking at this cathedral, you really wouldn't know you weren't in the middle of Italy, except it looked distinctly newer and like... smoother or something.


... Here's another couple shots of the cathedral.


Inside was some beautiful stained glass work. I wish I knew really what it was saying there, but I was kind of nervous to be taking pictures inside a cathedral, incase someone came up and told me not to do that. Who wants to offend a priest?


Another couple of pictures of the inside of the cathedral.


We were actually pretty close to one of the two things we came to see. After figuring out where we could park to go to this thing, we walked past a lovely group photo opportunity with some colored people. I had to set up my tiny tripod on the hood of someone's SUV. That's their bug deflector you see in the bottom part of the picture. It must be working because there are no bugs on it.


We were really expecting it to be an amusement park based on the brochure, but in actuality, it was just a merry-go-round inside an ice-cream shop. Geez, is everything in this town hyphenated? There was some unbelievably wonky-to-the-point-of-scary music blasting out of the place. Brett was kind enough to ... videotape the sound but... he's holding the pictures ransom or something.


Apparently some school had a mask-making 'contest' or something and they had them all over the walls inside along with a list of the names and the ranking each mask achieved. Pictured here is the 'winner'. Upon further reflection it must not have been a contest. Yes, that's Homer Simpson.


The ice cream was actually really good in there and after putting away a cup of Flathead Cherry ice cream I considered getting a second cup, but there was a really creepy guy inside that was looking at me so we left. Parts of the courtyard outside were taped off... sort of. Brett wandered in and then found himself behind the caution tape, then remarked 'Uh, what exactly is blocked off here?'


We found our way to the other amusement palace, no, make that 'place' and this was absolutely the first thing I noticed. We played a round of Lazer-Tag and it was kinda lame. I really thought I was going to run away with it, but I only got 3rd. I easily won the accuracy portion though. Most people were running around 5% shots hitting, but mine was 36% or something.


We played some games in the arcade and the girls spent a million dollars on tokens to win tickets to trade in for some absolute total junk. They ended up with like 147 tickets or something and bought stuff until they got down to 6, and a gumball was 7 and I practically had to shake the guy to death to give it to us. Brett and I hit the batting cages after that. I've never been in one before, and haven't even held a bat in almost 10 years. Nonetheless, I put on a batting clinic.


Brett put in one of two slugs into the 40mph softball machine and suddenly the sky opened up. There was a torrential downpour really, in the time it took us to realize that it was raining and run inside, our clothes were soaked. Naturally, such an intense rainstorm can't last very long and barely 5 minutes later the sun was back out, allowing Brett to have his go at the softball launcher. After that we spent 10 minutes while a father taught his son the finer points of fastball hitting and not-sharing for atleast 4 or 5 complete rounds in the 60mph fastball cage. The 60mph fastball cage taught us one thing. Batting gloves are important.


We stopped at an American institution for lunch at my request: Hardee's. The restaurant famous for their really big, bad-for-you burgers. It was late in the afternoon and we didn't want to eat too much and have to try and find another restaurant open late in Great Falls, so we toned it down a little at Hardee's.


I went for some kind of mushroom swiss burger, and I think this picture says it all


If not, this picture certainly does. No, actually the burger wasn't that bad, just it tasted like I was eating a big piece of mushroom gravy with the consistency and texture of a hamburger. Plenty of wild-cherry Pepsi got me through it though.


When I was much younger, my family went to Hardee's on a vacation in Montana. I was in love with their curly fries. They were really the first restaurant to have them that I ever saw. But, no, they do not still have the cheese dip for the fries, I asked. They did have whatever this is though! Pumping it out of the pump caused it to attack you and spray madly about.


Hardee's was situated conveniently close to a Gaspresso station. Yes, that's right, a gas station that has been converted into a place that sells espresso. In my experience, the two are interchangeable however. At least they took out the pumps so they don't pump it in front of you.


Helena closes on Sundays by the way. They are apparently the largest per capita employer of government/state employees in like the whole US or something. Combine that with all the churches, synagogues, mosques and tabernacles, and you have a recipe for a dead zone. This is actually a picture of Great Falls on a Sunday evening, so imagine something even deader than this.


I had a little bit of fun making this picture up of the church. Hopefully it looks alright in this small format. And no, I don't know why I used the salutation 'Regards'

[JDHannan]

Monday

Ahem. Sunday night we went to JB's for dinner. It looked a lot like a Denny's or a Smitty's, and the names are similar enough. This restaurant however had a salad bar. Salad bar is a subset of buffet, and buffet is one of the best things ever invented. Our server was a rather flamboyant homosexual guy, maybe 17 years old. He used words like 'disastrous' and 'fabulous' and talked about his choir trip to Calgary. Someone claimed later that he winked at Brett on his way out, which caused much hilarity, especially when Amanda forgot her takeout box.


This restaurant's salad bar, also contained, a Nacho Bar. Which is of course, the best thing ever invented. Please note the next picture may disturb some viewers.


Can you tell they're brother and sister? They're really laying in the exact same position.


Okay, now the real Sunday. We went back to JB's much to my consternation. I wanted to try another place, despite the fact that it was quite good. We got there at about 10:50, 10 minutes before the breakfast buffet turned into a lunch buffet. We decided to just each grab 3 plates of breakfast before they took it away rather than waiting for lunch. It was pretty darn good again, but of course everyone's eyes were bigger than their stomachs, save mine. This is after everyone had *finished* eating.


We were about to head out when we saw our first weird thing being carried on a long truck of the day.


We found out that the lady at the hotel blatantly lied to us and there was infact a SECOND mall in Great Falls. Well, sorta.


We went to Albertson's to see what kind of deals they had on interesting American food and such. They actually had some quite good deals on stuff. 1 lb package of Chips Ahoy cookies - $1! I had to sign up for an Albertson's Card to match my Smith's card, and once again, they have some very strange address matched with my name.


While I was waiting for everyone else to check out, I went over and had a look at this coin counting machine they had there. You take your bucket of change, dump it in the machine, it counts it, lies to you about what you put in there (I bet) and then keeps 10.1% of it. I bought $60 US when I came down and only had 35 cents American in my wallet left, so that wasn't gonna help me.
However, sitting on the change dumping thing there was one American dime. Well, I'm sure you know what I did with that.
I immediately inserted the dime into the coin counting machine. It counted it as 10 cents and then I asked for my money. It had a coin drop slot, so I thought it might actually work, but instead it printed me a voucher for 9 cents and said to take it to a till.
I was wary about going to a cashier and asking her for 9 cents, but then I noticed the self-checkouts. I took it there and scanned it and it says 'requires cashier intervention' There was a guy right there, and I was committed now to getting my 9 cents. However, he was helping some lady to some degree and she was clearly getting impatient with him. He went over and checked something and she was like 'Where are you going?' and he said 'I think I'm on my break now...' so I took my voucher for 9 cents and left.


We headed back to the splendor of Canada, and had to wait forever at the border. We drove up to the dutyfree shop, and then had to drive back to the road and back up down it about 20 cars. No one would ever let us into the line, and if we didn't back up that way, people coming from the states directly would keep filling up the line way faster than the line ever emptied. Based on some rough calculations, and forgetting I had an odometer, we estimated that we were 1200 feet from the border when we stopped. It took us 58 minutes to go 1200 feet. That's a brisk 0.378mph.


My cell phone will not send text messages while I'm in the US. I decided to check how accurate its GPS was when we were a couple hundred meters from the border. It actually did work. I stuck my hand out my window as far as I could to help it though.


We saw this truck carrying atleast one giant windmill blade on the way to the border. We past it going up and were going to fast to get a picture of it. Then there were cars behind us so we couldn't really slow down. While we were waiting at the border it went zooming past us to the semi-checkthrough lane, and we figured we'd never see it again. However, we both actually made it through the border at about the same time. It took two pictures to get in the whole blade, and I did my best to stitch them together.


We went back past Lethbridge and such, driving past the information centre where Jason threw my Frisbee, in one of my many Frisbee Adventures (check them out!)


Amanda (Rubber Ducky as she demanded we call her) radioed back to us that there was 'the world's cutest dog' in the driver's seat of this car we were coming up to, so I boldly took a picture of it as we drove by. I'll let you be the judge on this one. Looks pretty normal to me


Owen decided to make a paper airplane out of one of his maps or something he printed out before he left. He named it the Delta Flyer for probably a really good reason. Okay, I just looked it up and sure enough, it's from Star Trek.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee158/JDHannan/greatFalls/
Here is a lovely video I made (while driving!) of Owen's launch/litter of said Delta Flyer. You can tell how thoroughly impressed Jen is.


Then, he wanted to drive up beside Brett's truck and try to throw a ball of paper into his truck-bed. I humored him and caught up to him, driving beside him. Owen leaned out the window for a moment and then cried out loudly 'Oh Shit!' He came back inside holding his face and I looked over in shock. 'My sunglasses!!!' he yelled. I started to step on the brakes, but he said to never mind. His glasses have magnetic clipons (magnetons?) and the 140kmh wind sucked them off his glasses.
He said that if it was his actual glasses, we would've had to go back for them. 'Why?' I asked. 'To find two arms and a nose piece? Your glasses don't even have any rims!'


There was a historical marker of some type on the side of the road, and I didn't know what it was, so I took a picture of it at 140kmh. I totally nailed it, and its almost even readable.


Yeah, so this is Highway 2, the main artery that leads from 2 of Canada's biggest cities to the United States. And it seems they are going to put up traffic lights on it. People are going to stop after going 110kmh plus? Yeah right.


We arrived back at Owen's parents' house and unloaded everyone's crap. We bought just a ludicrous amount of pop (soda for you Americans). Both new kinds of Dr. Pepper, two different kinds of 7-Up, two kinds of Squirt (one with Ester of Wood Rosin!) and some other assorted things you can't find in Canada.


It was a wonderful trip, Owen and Jen did a fabulous job of keeping the fighting to a bare minimum, but it's a lesson that Amanda and Brett will have to learn a little more. I'm anxious to do it again, and I only had to fill up my tank once! So, for 3 nights in a hotel, and driving there and back, it cost me about $50. No, this is not a picture of anything.