Dec. 2: Ways to get there

In my 20s, I could have benefited from GPS technology. That's because I spent much of the 90s earning a living in the delivery service - mostly as a courier - and having a GPS in my car could have earned me a lot more money. I've never been very good with chaos. Typically, at 2 p.m., the passenger seat of my car would be laden down with legal documents, bank deposits, and other sensitive information that could not be sent via the fledging technology of electronic mail. It was up to me to get everything from point A to point B ASAP.

That's no fun when there's snow on the ground, you're stuck in a traffic jam, and you have to pee really bad.

If I could plug all those point Bs into a GPS and have it chart my route, I'd be a happy courier. Instead, I had to unfold the giant map of Calgary and plan my route that way. Wasn't a lot of fun. I'm glad I didn't have a student loan to pay off.

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GPS was still a few years away when I was travelling across the country to take various journalism gigs. In 2001, I went from Ontario to Alberta. In 2003, I made the trek back east. Both times, I needed the Internet to plan my route. 

The Internet gods gave me two options. One would take me through southern Ontario; the other would take me up north. The northern route was a little shorter but I elected to go south instead. I'm glad I did. When I got to the Great Lakes region, I drove over a network of bridges that afforded me some of the nicest scenery ever. 

So I guess there's a few ways to get to Alberta and a few ways to get to Ontario.

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Heaven isn't that way, at least not according to the Gospel of John. In that book, Jesus makes it clear that there's only one way to get to heaven. That's through Him. 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"  Those are the words of Jesus from John 14:6. I remember it being written on a banner that hung above the stage at the Ralph Bell crusade in Calgary sometime in 1990.

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But if fame is your god, there's lots of ways to get that. You can be world famous this very day if you want. Just think of the most atrocious thing possible and go out and do it. You might go to jail for the rest of your life, but you'll get your 15 minutes for sure.

If you want to be a movie star, well then you'd better spend a whole lot of time and money and energy studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Graduate top of your class, bring down the house with your rendition of Hamley, and now it's time to find an agent.

Oh look, you got yourself a movie gig. You're going to be billed right underneath the professional wrestler, the hiphop artist, and that Youtube personality who is famous for being famous. They're all getting paid more than you because they'll put bums in the seats.

Lots of ways to get to Planet Fame, baby. Some of them don't even require talent.

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But I'm old enough to know that time waits for no one and all dreams have expiry dates. For most dreams, the best way to get there is hard work. As the old joke goes:

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice, man. Practice."

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Much of my childhood was spent in Haysboro, a middle-class suburban neighborhood in southwest Calgary. In theory, you could live an entire life in Haysboro and never have need to step outside of it. Haysboro had a grocery store, post office, medical centre, an August Moon Chinese restaurant. My school was there, my church was there, and I am sure that entire weeks passed when I never set foot over the Haysboro boundary.

We lived on Hooke Road. One night, when I was about 11 or so, I was thinking about how big the world was and how our little house on Hooke Road was just a tiny speck in that world. I thought about how I could, in theory, get to any part of the world just by leaving the house. If I had money, I could drive to the airport and buy a ticket to Fiji or Chad or Alexandria, Ontario.

And then I thought about Elbow Drive. 

Elbow Drive is a north-south thoroughfare that runs from Fish Creek Park in the south to downtown Calgary in the north. It divides Haysboro in half and, for the longest time, I thought that any car trip from our house would necessitate accessing Elbow Drive. I shared this theory with my dad once and he proved me wrong. We were in the car and he drove to the northern edge of Haysboro, got on 11th Street, turned left on Heritage, and we were out of Haysboro without ever needing to get on Elbow Drive.

I think I was pretty embarrassed about that.

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My brother made it back to Haysboro. When he and his wife moved back to the city, he found himself a house about three blocks away from where we used to live. His house is within shouting distance of where we used to go to school. That school is now a charter school, which means that each day probably doesn't start with the Hail Mary.

And progress marches on.

I'm going to end this note by quoting David Lee Roth. Indulge me.

They finally tore the old schoolhouse down
Forever gone my history
Yeah, what used to be
And now when I go drivin' by
And point where I used to go to school
I'm pointing at an A&P