Winnipeg Trip Recap 2011

Seven Eleven and Mac's Slurpee Logs

Incredibly, the weather has been fairly cold since arriving in Winnipeg on November 16th. In fact the temperature dropped to a bone chilling -22C on the very night I arrived. The new airport in Winnipeg is very nice. The interior design is interesting, blue nean circles in the ceiling, wide open spaces and new shops.

Seven Eleven's interior of its stores has not changed much since my last visit in September 2010. The only new addition I could see was the iced coffee dispenser and new assortment of shitty hot dogs and crispy deep fried hot dogs. The lottery tickets and beef jerky displays still dominate the register area. Out front the newspapers and other dailies are stacked neatly in metal frames.

On to the slurpees. The machines, typically made by Taylor manufacturing, had it's variety of flavors on display. I'll try to recall from memory what they are, and not their exact "display names" as they are completely unrelated.

Coca Cola

Pepsi

Cream Soda

Cream Soda Light (30% less calories - a new flavor here)

Sprite

Orange Crush

Grape

Lime

Doctor Pepper (my favorite)

Crystal Lite Berry (diet)

Mac's convenience stores has pretty well the same type of machines. The only difference is the serving size - the xtra large is slightly smaller than 7-11's 40 oz big cup. I would say the cup is about 36 ounces, not a huge difference or deal between them. A mac's drink costs about $2.11 taxes included with a new cup. A refill is slightly less expensive at $1.66 and in my opinion, a rip off.  The flavors from memory are:

Coca Cola

Pepsi

Barq's root beer (not bad)

Banana (this flavor is only at Mac's and has been for over 10 years now)

Sprite

Blue Raspberry (horrendous, blue, and nasty)

Orange

Cream Soda (same flavor as 7-11 btw)

Buying other stuff like chips and candy bars are insanely expensive. Although to Mac's credit they did offer two Twix bars for $1.79, this exception is not the normal cost. Expect to pay $2.25 per bag of chips and $1.75 per candy bar.

So far as of November 21 I've had about half a dozen slurpees. Not bad. Usually I have twice that amount at this time. But a few things  has changed since a year ago. Namely a good friend of mine was diagnosed with Diabetes. He has since lost 25 pounds and had to make radical changes to his diet: No bread, no potatoes, no sugar, slurpees, pop, and lots of walking. The second factor is I don't have  a car to drive anywhere since the neighbors across the road hit the old dodge that was in the parking lot and it was then written off by Autopac. Having no car seriously sucks. Last year I had borrowed my brothers old white Dodge Van, nicknamed the "Bang Bus". That old van didn't last long after I left and he got rid of it when he discovered the amount of repairs needed to get it safetied for the next year.

And a word about driving out here during the winter. You really do need winter tires out here. I was riding around with my brother in his company's Chevy HHR wagon and it did not have any winter tires. Spinning wheels, endless delays in stopping, it was all very annoying and potentially dangerous. My buddy who has a Toyota Corolla with winter tires, has none of those problems. The car takes off and stops relatively safely and without much fuss. It does spin out every now and then as the road surface gets polished into snow ice, but for the most part driving out here takes patience and common sense.

November 22

My man Manjeeb at Mac’s hooked me up with a 7-11 re-fill and only charged me a measly $1.11 taxes included. I am averaging two slurpees a day in order to not give my kidneys and blood sugars diabetes-induced coma.

Nov 27.

Refills at Macs are on average $1.66 plus tax. It costs the same as 7-11. The guy who sold me the refill for $1.11 under-charged me.

The weather has been warmer than usual in November and even broke a daytime high record of +9C. Haven’t been able to really travel much around since I have no car. Except power walking and cycling on a mountain bike, it has been relying on friends and family.

November 23, 2011

Hooked up with my good friend Cameraman and Stalker & we decided to cruise around with a police radio scanner and try to capture some footage. A few interesting calls came into the police radio. One of them involved a black BMW which had been stolen and the perp was driving the wrong way on a major 1-way street.

We eventually came upon the scene where the person abandoned the BMW in a parking lot and took off on foot. We shot some video and took photos. A policeman came by and tapped on our window, asking how we found out about the call. He heard the police scanner and gave a warning…. Keep the scanner off if you’re around the police. Apparently it is against the law to have a police scanner ON in your vehicle. I have no idea why. We appreciated the low key warning. A CBC van was nearby and was also recording the scene. Cameraman’s Panasonic HDTV camcorder was excellent but heavy. It had all the bells and whistles you could ask for. One of the biggest pains I found using the thing was not the gadgets but the weight of the camera. Unless you have a strap or shoulder mount, it’s a real pain to hold the camera up with one arm and shoot video. We snaked through the city streets trying to find an MVA but could not find any calls like that. We did encounter many asshole drivers, including one minivan who decided it was perfectly legal to cut us off and drive around us to get around a city bus. This is a completely illegal move. We also had the usual complaints of drivers: No turn-signals, erratic lane-changes, and tail gating.

I tried to perform an interview from the back of the Ford Escape by shouting to the ladies on the street “Excuse me ladies how about the comment about the warm weather?” but I got cut off by Cameraman putting up my WINDOW and getting the HDTV camera caught in the damn thing! He is so touchy about that. A little bit of side history:

The last time I performed an impromptu-street interview was when I lived in Calgary and I shot video from the passenger side. But to be perfectly honest I was recording prostitutes on the street and they started throwing pennies at his truck. I kind of got them pissed off for some reason. But that was in 1997. We quickly took off before they could damage his old Honda CR-V.

The weather was also +8 C today and sunny, in stark contrast to Halifax’s 15-30 cm of snow that was being dumped at -6 degrees C. (And they were under a winter snowfall warning). Tomorrow should be also a really warm day of +8. It’s been very unseasonably warm here since I arrived in Winnipeg. The temperature here is usually hovering at around -8 to -15 degrees C.

Nov 28

I had on average two slurpees a day since I arrived in Winnipeg on November 16. Except today I had one at Mac’s, then one at 7-11, then a final “nightcap” slurpee at Mac’s. My man Darweej at Mac’s charged me full buck sixty-six for a refill. I also bought two twix bars for $1.75 each. Whenever we eventually move back west, I won’t be consuming this many Slurpee’s. I would be a diabetic if I consumed this many drinks.

Nov 29

A really bad day. The moen faucet that my friends and I repaired last week in the kitchen decided to stop working for the hot water. I suspect a rubber gasket had worked its way up and started to block the holes for the hot outlet. Those faucets are really tough to assemble because of the fine tolerances and the shitty instruction sheets that are given. The photo copied instructions lack the detail needed to really understand how it’s put together. I should have taken photos of the faucet before putting it back together. At any rate, I decided to ride to Home Depot and buy a cheap kitchen faucet for $29. On my way to Home Depot I took photos of the old apartment block I lived in on Beliveau Road. They had stripped the outer part of the buildings and interior and were re-doing the entire blocks. I had put my Fuji S700 camera in my right pocket but did not tighten the zipper. I ended up losing my camera as it bounced out of my pocket on the way home. I went back on the mountain bike and attempted to retrace my steps but could not find it. Someone had likely picked the camera up as soon as I dropped it. A shame really, I had bought that camera in Winnipeg almost 4 years ago for about $200 at Futureshop. I was lucky in that I copied most of my photos from the camera to the laptop. But I still lost about 40 photos. I left the information with the Winnipeg Police on the rare chance that someone turns it in.

Nov 30

It was a rush to the airport and no time to get one last slurpee. No problem, I have had so many slurpees this past two weeks it doesn’t matter that I had one last night. It was sad to leave family and friends. I hope to be back sooner in the summer time so I can spend some quality time with my nephew and niece. Vacations go too short.