Due East....

It's a fact of geographical convenience that the Saskites in the lands to the east are an easier peoples whom to trade than those across the Great Divide to the west.
It has therefore become a part of my business to travel into those desolate lands in search of the mighty buckaroo. And many there are to be found, as those wily flatlanders find their financial feet in the global oil and gas industry.
It's a hard statistic to get the head around.... but it's said there is more oil and gas under Saskatchewan than Alberta ever had.... and the only reason it's still there is thanks to the socialist provincial governments with whom the pillars of capitalism refused to deal. But times have changed and that oil is needed and I am a part of it.
Yesterday I girdled the loins and set out in the trusty Ford for the 2 hr pilgrimage into the prairie.
The run went well, almost pleasant in fact but I never get too comfortable in Saskatchewan.
Expect the unexpected.

Many years ago, I was trucking into Regina in a cab-over Kenworth when the heavens opened. And I mean OPENED.
The rain came so hard, I had to hunch over the wheel and stare down at the lines awash on the road to know where I was. Visibility was near zero but I was able to make it into the Husky Truck Stop and sit out the worst of it. As the deluge eased, and vision returned, the scores of trucks parked in a blind, chaotic gridlock emerged.
No-one cared, they were just happy to have got off the hi-way.
I threw on my coat and legged it into Husky. It was packed. Drivers everywhere, talking , eating, smoking.
I squeezed in the door and stood beside a weathered old trucker, peering out into the pour.
"Man" I said. "That's a bad rain!!"
He said "Son, there is no bad rain in Saskatchewan".
"It's all good".

Most of my work is in winter, courtesy of the extreme cold that invariably brings all things mechanical to a standstill.
We do make a couple of summer trips, showing us the opposite extreme of heat, drought, hail, plagues of grasshoppers and of course "Gainer The Gopher". It is however, the brutality of winter I know best.
The desolate starkness, devoid of color. Only white and the drab, morbid grey of anything that is not.
If there was any color, it would be an intrusion. Unwelcome.

This trip and a couple more I must make in the week ahead has been blessed by a break in the weather.
I know it's just an illusion that will vaporize and plunge us back into the frozen hell.
The other little quirk to add to the misery is that unlike Alberta, The Saskites do not change their clocks.
Ever.
Nice one Gainer.