Well, if you can say one thing about Prince Edward Island bloggers, it’s that they like to blog about their (or their partner’s) reproductive surgeries. Witness here and here. Bravo.

My new band. Using the Annekenstein method. First album is the sincerity of the pessimists. Source materials: name, title, image.

A note from my father about a night in 1974 (when I was Oliver’s age): “On February 15, 1974, we went to a father/son dinner for Cubs at the church and you got your artist’s badge.” My father keeps very detailed records.

The Mac OS X iPhoto application can be used to catalogue videos as well as photos, and I know I have a lot of videos in amongst my 20,000-odd photos. But how to find them? Create a “Smart Album” with the criteria “Photo is Movie” (which seems to violate basic rules of physics, but it’s how it works):

The Stone of Destiny is playing until Sunday at City Cinema, giving you a rare opportunity to see a film on its opening-in-Canada weekend right here in Charlottetown. I saw it tonight and quite enjoyed it: while it won’t change your life (unless, perhaps, you’re a Scottish nationalist), it’s funny, well-acted, and, dare I say, heartwarming. Recommended.

Oliver and I are off to Europe for the March school break (we’re leaving Catherine at home to let her have 2 solid weeks of studio time to herself). While we booked tickets to London a few weeks ago, that was never our final destination; after flirting with various grand plans, including taking the train to Istanbul (which is now on the list for a future trip), we’ve settled on Kosice.

Until two hours ago I’d never heard of Kosice, which makes it all the more exciting a destination.

We’re flying there from London Luton on SkyEurope Airlines, an airline I’d never heard of until two hours ago. They’re running a buy-one-get-one-free promotion that ends today, so the total airfare for both of us came to 129 EUR (about CDN $200), taxes in. More excitement.

We’ll spend two or three days in Kosice, then make our way by train to Vienna to visit a friend for a night, then onward by train to Nuremberg where we’ll make a brief stop at the Playmobil FunPark, and then train it back to London for the flight home, possibly stopping in Paris for a night depending on the timing.

I was impressed by this excellent example of Google AdSense targeting for this page about my attempted girlish umbrella purchase in Croatia:

Just in case you were concerned, General Motors reassures you that:

The OnStar system does not allow monitoring of vehicle occupant conversations without notice to the occupants. When OnStar establishes a voice connection, subscribers will see the green OnStar status light flash, their audio system will mute (if it’s on), and they will hear the phone ring as they are greeted by the OnStar advisor.

A comment by host Mark Peacock in episode #71 of the Travel Commons podcast about seeing “Don’t Pick up Hitchhikers” signs along a stretch of I-94 near a prison brought back memories of a road trip from Texas to Ontario I took in 1990.

I was returning home to Canada in my Toyota Tercel after a 3 month stint in El Paso. I had next to no money, and so I was travelling fast and low to the ground.

After spending my first night in Amarillo, I headed east on the I-40 toward Bartlesville, Oklahoma where I planned to meet up with my friend Bill who was rehearsing there. As I neared the Oklahoma border around noon I decided to pull off the highway for one last meal in Texas. Which is how I found myself in Shamrock, Texas looking for a parking space on the main street. I found one, locked up the car, and headed off to find some lunch.

And as I walked away from the car and felt to make sure I had my car keys I immediately realized that I’d made a big mistake: I’d locked the keys in the car.

As a stood there staring a the car wondering what I was going to do, I noticed that the rear “pop-out” window on the Tercel was partially “popped-out” and I figured that if I could get it open all the way I’d have a few inches of space to stick a coat hanger in and grab the keys.

That was the theory, anyway.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize that auto glass, when placed under stress, is designed to shatter into a million pieces. Which is what the read driver’s side window of my Toyota Tercel did as soon as I tried to pop it open.

With glass now all over Main Street I ran into the shoe store I was parked in, woke up the owner who was sleeping in the back, and borrowed a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.

Then I decided that fate was trying to speak to me, that I was meant to get out of Texas right away, and I headed back to the highway.

As I pulled back on to the I-40 I saw a hitchhiker with his thumb out heading my way. As I’d thumbed around a lot in my early 20s — and because I was in need of some positive karma — I pulled over and picked him up.

He turned out to be an interesting guy, in the habit of moving back and forth across the country staying in shelters, picking up work when he could, and generally living the life of a vagabond. I told him my window story and we shared a good laugh and I told him that I could take him as far as Oklahoma City.

After about 20 minutes we started to pass the same sort of “Don’t Pick up Hitchhikers” signs that Mark saw in Michigan. While I can’t say that I didn’t feel a tinge of nervousness, by this time I figured I had enough rapport with my hitchhiker that he probably wouldn’t murder me, so we forged on.

I dropped him off at the western side of Oklahoma City in the middle of the afternoon, without incident, and then found a truck stop pay phone and started calling around to the auto salvage yards of the area to track down a replacement window. After a few hours of calls, and a few dead-end trips, I finally found a perfect match, for $25, at a wrecker that only dealt with Japanese cars. Fortunately it was a simple job to screw the window into place, and I was back on my way before sunset.

As I reached the turn-off for I-44 toward Tulsa, on the north-eastern side of the city, who should I spot at the side of the road, miles away from where I’d dropped him off hours before, but my vagabond friend. As things were going my way since I’d picked him up originally, I pulled over once again and we shared another good laugh about the unlikely coincidence of a second ride

I dropped him off at the Salvation Army shelter in Tulsa and continued on to Bartlesville. The rest of the trip was uneventful.

Photo of road sign by Joe Schwartz.

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