Yearning to Wander (March 12 - 15)

What does travel do for you? As Mark Twain said: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Life is not all about living in Canada. There are many other ways of living life and travel gives us an opportunity to see some of these different ways. I hope it makes us more respectful of other people's cultures, less "prejudiced" in our outlook, and more accepting and understanding of differences. Finally, I hope it teaches us more about ourselves, our culture, and our beliefs and values.

Our trip started on Thursday, March 12, 2009. Alanna, our daughter, drove us to the airport and saw us off. Our British Airways 677 pulled slowly out of Toronto up into the night-time skies. The pilot gave us a beautiful tour of downtown Toronto, showing us the CN Tower, the city lights, and Lake Ontario. Then we settled down to enjoy a 6 hr 20 minute journey to London, England. The flight was smooth and the cabin crew professional. For the first hour, Ray and I went through the audio books on our iPod and listed the titles and authors beside the "number" that was displying in our iPod library to make it a little easier to decide which audio book to "read" along our journey. For some reason which we do not yet know, when Ray tried to update our iPod library we ended up with numbers, 105, 106, 81, etc. instead of book titles. Then we had a delicious dinner. Then I watched a film: "The Secret Life of the Bees" based on the novel by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved the film, almost as much as I loved the book. After that, time was short before the crew started waking everyone up for breakfast. By then, I was feeling like sleeping! So, the end result, the time was too short. I never did really get a sleep. Ray managed a short snooze while I watched the film!

We arrived in Heathrow on time, after having left about 30 - 45 minutes late, picked up our rental car without hassle at Customs, and set off on our journey to Godmanchester to stay with Ray's son Adrian and his wife Charlotte and their two kids Grace (11) and Eddie (7). Before leaving Toronto Ray had printed off Mapquest directions for our various journeys in England and we followed this religiously. I was the navigator, Ray the driver. Our story is that we followed the directions explicitly, but someone or other we ended up headed north west of London in stead of north east! Finally, I realized this, but we had no maps, no GPS system, to see where we were, and our knowledge of England had faded in our greying memory, so we pulled into a service centre, bought some lunch, bought a map book, and called Adrian to say we were nearly at Luton. He was horrified! How did we end up there!!! Anyway, back in the car and on the road again, we hit the centre of Luton. How different this was than anything we have experienced in Canada. The town is obviously primarily Islamic (at least the part we travelled through). The men and women were dressed in the typical Islamc fashion, that is many women in hijab and black burkhas over their face and the men in traditional jubbah and pajamas. And....so, on my first day out of Canada I realize that I cannot "describe" the dress that Islamics wear properly. I tried to look on the WWW but can't really find any illustrations to be able to properly describe what I saw. It seems to me that these are brave people. They have chosen to retain their natural dress while living in an environment in which they are a minority. They are saying that they are different from the "mainstream" and identifing themselves as belonging to a religion that not everyone has a positive view of. I wonder how they find life in England. In my book club we recently read "Unaccostomed Earth" eight short stories about immigrants to the United States. Then one of our book club members distributed an article which talks about the disallusionment of many immigrants and how they are moving out of the US back to their home territories.

Finally, around 3:30 p.m. we arrived at Adrian and Charlotte's in Godmanchester. Our time with them has been a mixture: playing with Grace and Eddie, walking through the high street of Godmanchester, going out for dinner, going for a 55 minute run.....and unfortunately, helping them "nurse" a sick son. Eddie obviously has a bug and has been "man down" today, suffering with a fever, and sickness. We are hoping he will be completely better tomorrow.

We also visited a running store. Quite unique: you walked outside the store into farmer's fields. Adrian didn't even know it existed, but Ray found it on the Internet. They had set up 2 tread mills with video cameras and anyone looking to buy running shoes ran on the treadmill, then in slow motion on the playback, the staff critiqued the biomechanics of the runner. Very impressive. The store had a variety of products that I have never seen in Toronto and I felt like a little child going around discovering everything.

To put things in perspective: While out walking we came across a sign that said "Godmanchester: Chartered in 1212". We have passed several houses "built in 1603" or in the 1600s that are fully inhabited. It truly is like walking into a movie scene. England has so much history, and character, and you lose sight of that living in Canada.....to be continued....sorry, wine and jet lag have overtaken the spirit!!!