Back to Life, Back to Reality

...in so many ways.

The Toronto Maple Leafs won two games and lost a third in overtime due in large part to crappy refereeing while I was in the hockey vacuum, and have stunk out the joint in consecutive games since I returned. Non-sports fans may not get this, but it casts a bit of a pall on my mood.

Bad enough that getting details of the good games, without net access, was almost impossible. We had four different ESPN channels on the TV: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and ESPNews.

Only one of them bothered to include NHL scores in the rotation of its ticker, and that only happened once every four or five revolutions, if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, that fifth revolution would coincide with a commercial, and the ticker would vanish just in time for the NHL scores. After this happened three or four times, I became convinced unluckiness had nothing to do with it.

The papers were even worse, with the half-exception of USA Today, which does publish boxscores for all games that don't happen on Saturday. The Orlando Sentinel does not recognize the NHL's existence. Why should it? It's not as if there aren't two teams in Florida, after all, or a multitude of vacationing Canadians desperate for a hockey fix.

Enough of that. Suffice it to say that having to forage for hockey scraps bothered me.

So did coming home.

Not being home: that's a colossal relief. But coming home, both in prospect and practice, was not fun. I probably don't have near as much right to bitch as does my wife, who (of course) did all the driving. But it was hard to leave the haven of Old Key West and even harder to handle the long journey back.

We pulled out at 3:30 a.m., and as usual, I was worried. Worry plagues me away from home: increasingly outlandish scenarios jostle for space in my head. What if they don't have our reservation? What if the car breaks down?...and it just gets worse from there. Before long the craziest notions have assumed the characteristics of Known Facts, and it takes considerably more brain power than it should to banish them. In this case, one of my biggest concerns was the drive time: the internet mapping tools we used both said that I-75 was a longer route than the one we'd taken down. I had fantastical visions of the Flying Dutchwoman and her husband, condemned to cruise the interstates for all eternity.

The soundtrack, of course, would be Rush Limbaugh. Just to add that final hellish touch.

I needn't have worried about anything (except Rush, as it turned out). Although the hotel we'd planned to stop at in Richmond, KY was full (the first time that had ever happened to either of us), the Super8 down the road wasn't. And although I can't recommend Super8 to anybody who's not travelling alone, for $40 it was...okay. Oh, yeah, and that I-75 trip actually ended up being a smidgen shorter than the trip down.

Unlike past vacations, I had resolved not to avoid politics but to embrace them to some degree. Unfortunately, hugging Uncle Sam was...unpleasant. He hadn't washed since Reagan was President and he'd let his nails grow, the better to gouge out the eyes of Democrats. Worse, once you made that tentative first embrace, he'd enfold you and start choking the life out of your body, crooning, I'm going to hug you and squeeze you and call you George W.

It was scary. I listened in shock to The Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated radio show in the U.S., as Mr. Dittohead Himself accused the President of the United States of treason. I listened as caller after caller phoned in, slavering at the mouth about the 'destruction of America' and 'Barack the Magic Negro'. Rush didn't have much to say, so he said it loud and proud. He endorsed Christine O'Donnell on the grounds that "she might be a kook, but she's not a Marxist." (PolitiFact debunks the assertion that Coons is a Marxist quite handily, but why let facts get in the way?)
Caller after caller phoned in slavering at the chops about Obamacare and socialism and the fiscal and moral bankruptcy of America under Democrat rule. One guy dared to question one of Rush's statements; he was quickly cut and we were treated to another tirade. I seriously felt as if I had crossed over into some Twilight Zone Tower of Error, and any second now my car seat would plummet.

Not that I hadn't expected this, not after a week flipping back and forth every morning to check on the progress in the war between Fox News on one hand and MSNBC/CNN on the other. Not after watching an endless procession of state and local political ads. Holy crap, the political ads. If you believe every political ad you see in the United States, every single person running for public office, without exception, is a bumbling, corrupted buffoon and quite possibly a serial rapist besides. Hide your kids, hide your wife, etc.

And not after seeing that car.

My shoelaces snapped one day. On the way to Wal-Mart to pick up a new pair, among other things, we saw a black sedan. Not a big one, an Accord or a Camry or something of that ilk, with windows tinted darker than is allowed back home. The Stars and Stripes fluttered from a flagpole mounted on the driver's side, constantly brushing the Israeli flag adjacent. U.S. and Israeli flag decals were in at least two places I saw, and there were five or six Christian symbols (again, just the ones I saw) plastered all over the car. I tried not to stare as we passed. Something about that car really bothered me. It wasn't the Christian symbols--believe it or not, we have people up here who feel the need to advertise their faith--but those, coupled with the two flags. One wonders if the driver knows Israel is not a Christian state. One wonders which flag means more. One wonders a whole lot of things.

But Rush is just so...so blatant. So unrepentingly, unapologetically, boorishly partisan. And people lap him up.

Once Limbaugh faded out, we went in search of someone else to share the care with, and found Dave Ramsey. I'd never heard of him before and his no-nonsense financial advice I found refreshingly candid. (Interestingly, his Wikipedia article mentions his penchant to infuse his advice with his Christianity: at least on the show I listened to, there was no inkling of religion whatsoever.)

The callers he was taking were in some pretty hard spots, and he counselled them with compassion and well-placed harshness. It occurred to us as we listened that there are countless Americans in financial trouble right now with little idea how they got there and less idea how to get out of it. That's almost scarier than Rush!

We knew we had crossed the border back into our home and native land when I turned on the talk radio to find a debate going on about how much the government should be allowed to micromanage our food intake. Seems Canada just got the KFC Double Down Sandwich. Guess what? It's pretty bad for you. The fat and calorie content are roughly on par with other fast food entrees, but the sodium content is off the charts: more than a day's recommended sodium intake in one sandwich.

I tried one a couple of days ago, just to say I did. All things in moderation...including moderation. It was delicious, but too expensive for it to be anything more than a one-off for me.

There had been speculation our provincial government, which has a tendency to ban anything it doesn't like, would step in. (It won't.) Nevertheless, the majority of callers on this Canadian radio show were in favour of at least some government oversight, both on fast food and in the grocery store. Canadians, just like Americans, are getting fatter, after all, and unlike Americans, up here we're all financially responsible for each others' ill health.

The difference between Rush and this was like night and day. I could actually feel my throat loosening as Uncle Sam removed his grubby hands. Home at last, home at last.

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All in all I had a great time. I'd like to go back to Disney, not right away but some time in the future, this time maybe with a kid or two. Our next big trip, five years hence: Vegas. It's almost time to start planning it.