I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something

I am in Kingston, Ontario in a hotel on the Lake Ontario shore. So now I have been on the shores, in this order, of the Great Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Ontario. Not sure how one finds themselves at Lake Huron or Surperior, but give me time. I am here to work at the Collins Bay Corrections Facility and once again, that's all I'm going to say about that. This is it in the picture to the right. A pretty imposing feature on the local landscape.

As I was driving here (I landed in Montreal, about 2 1/2 hours NW of here) through a whole bunch of nothing except speed traps (I passed 4 of them....that I saw), I saw what I believe was the northern end of I-81. I mean, I assume US interstates end at the border. Or else they would become interprovince highways. And that's just silly.

My internet cable is fed to me through, and I am not making this up, an official game puck of the Kingston Frontenacs. Not sure what a Frontenac is, but this guy resembles either a minuteman or a pirate. And the puck is not as heavy as I would have expected although still, it could put a tooth out.

I woke up to a storm rolling in off the lake. It was pretty, as all storms are. I was reminded of Gordon Lightfoot singing about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, "Lake Superior they said, never gives up her dead, when the storms of November come early." I wrote my own, omnious verse for Lake Ontario: Lake Ontario you'll dread, drops cold rain on your head, soaks your hair, as it dries, it goes squirrely." OK, so I'm no Canadian troubador with a cool name.

Apparently Kingston used to be the capital of Canada. It is quaint, and after you get past the plethora of nice restaurants, pretty boring. Picturesque as all get out, but boring. I drove down the Loyalist Byway (or whatever...it was Loyalist something) which wound it's way along the lakeshore. I went as far as Bath, had a pizza, and came back to the hotel to watch TV.

Canada has made life fairly simple. For starters, and I'm not calling them sissies or nothing, but they have learned to go out, drink, and have a good time without, you know, all the fighting and robbing and redneck stuff that goes on when Americans get together in cities. But mostly I would say that they have simplified store naming down to an art. There is "The Beer Store" (sells beer only), "The Water Store" (sells water), Mr. Transmission (a man who fixes transmissions, like Mr. Plow was a man [Homer Simpson] who plowed).

I was saving this up to regale you with adventures, but there is a lack of adventure right now. I did learn that our next job up here would be in a diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. Sounds both remote and interesting. I am told it is kind of wild and freewheeling up there, like Alaska. I hope I think to take a jacket.

God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy, out

Ramblin' Ed