The Pit of Pat

[Pictures Here]

We got on the move a little after 11 am on what was a beautiful and sunny day. I was feeling a bit peckish which comes standard after a work-week of liquid meals, so I grabbed a frozen slice of pizza from the Cryolier Wagon - our outdoor freezer. We piled into the Highlander after doing a last minute sweep to make sure there was nothing offensive to American sensibilities in the car. Passports in hand, Google Maps printouts ready and atomic batteries to power, and we were off for a fun-filled trip south of ze border.

We stopped to get some American moneys - I figured 50 and change should do us, and we sped away from the Gananoque life of cultural poverty to the brave new world of opportunity and decadence. As I munched on the completely frozen pizza slice I contemplated upon a stomach-saving mantra, but to no avail. Adam was handling the trip well, enjoying his first time over the Thousand Islands Bridge and lawling at the 1000 Islands Skydeck, which admittedly does look a bit modest after spending the weekend observing the real deal.

As we approached the American border, I couldn’t help but notice that customs has changed so much since I was a kid. The amount of cameras set up at the American Customs is staggering. And that’s just the ones we can see. It looks like a CCTV farm on Freedom Acres or something. The customs agent asked Adam where he was from, where I was from, took both our passports, asked for the registration of the car. Asked where we were headed - Adam forgot Watertown and nearly said ‘over there’ as the second round of the same questions came. How did we know each other. Why were we headed to the States, and then abruptly he handed everything back and said we could go. Picturing the inevitable scenario of pant-soiling and unprompted confession that would’ve resulted from a trip to Mordor with the K-Man in the driver’s seat, we rolled out of customs and were welcomed into the Empire State.

Almost immediately Adam’s cell phone beeped, which kind of scared the shit out of me, I don’t know what kind of Homeland Security voodoo I thought was happening, but I let him answer it. He started laughing nervously and we were both kind of shocked and awed to find out it was his cell phone provider Roger’s who had phoned to say “Hey guy, enjoy your trip to US and A!” That was quite a lol.

The drive to Watertown is pretty straight forward - take the Interstate until you get there. There were some highlights along the way - three giant raven sculptures off the side of the road and a brightly painted satellite dish which was a dead ringer for the yellow smiley face emoticon. There was also snow - lots of it, and that was certainly to be expected given the pounding Jefferson county’s been taking lately.

Soon enough we arrived in Watertown and merged with civilization, taking the incredibly odd sounding road names in (Coffeen, Wealtha, Vanduzee, etc.). The city of Watertown isn’t too big, but it makes for with character whatever it lacks in size. Lots of great turn-of-the-century architecture made for some serious gawking as we tried to take it all in and find our way to the Salmon Run Mall. Everything was going as per our Google Maps until we hit the nightmare which was The Public Square.

Looking at a map now I can count seven streets, and I’m leaving off one that’s iffy, but at least seven streets which converge in this clusterfuck of urban planning gone surreal. The whole situation could’ve been saved with a roundabout (word), but instead it’s a bloody nightmare of one-ways and merging that made very little sense to us, and as Adam observed to some of the American drivers too.

This confusion ended up getting us off track, and so we traveled around quite a bit - not really that bad at the end of the day since we had no time constraints and were basically taking in all the crazy old buildings. The Masonic Temple was truly a terrifying sight. It just looked so out of place and almost brutally powerful compared to the surrounding buildings. Lots of neat churches but as much as the sight-seeing was quite fun, we were starting to get concerned we’d never find the mall, so I scrutinized our maps once more, and was pretty disappointed with what I discovered.

I had entered the zip code and the address of the Salmon Run Mall as our destination, but unfortunately google maps only calculated it to the zip code - essentially leaving us at the Public Square with no other info. Luckily, but only just so, I discovered that on the map to K-Mart I had entered my starting point as the SRM, so using that to reverse engineer our route kept us from perpetually travelling around in circles. We did get pretty far out of town before we found ourselves back on the interstate and at the exact same turnoff we originally turned into Watertown from. Only this time I noticed the small sign that said “Mall ->”

So an hour into what should’ve been a 5 minute destination we found ourselves at the legendary Salmon Run Mall - one of the institutions of my youth and home to the biggest wonder I can recall from my childhood memories of ‘The States’. Good lord there was a ton of snow, it was piled everywhere making the roads very narrow in spots and giving everything a claustrophobic feel. It was still a beautiful day though, so we made the most of it by parking amongst the we-support-our-troops ribbon-clad neighbors and heading into the mall.

It was President’s Day, a fact unknown to us - but it seems I always enter or leave countries on local holidays for some reason. The mall was packed and our first stop was a genuine Radio Shack, not a wimpy The Source by Circuit City. They had some stuff neither of us had seen in the flesh before - a Product(red) cell phone Atom was ogling, not to mention a shiny cluster of Zunes. They also had some clearance items - iPod shuffle kits and gaming accessories - for obscenely cheap prices. I made notes of said prices and vowed to return if no greater deals were discovered.

We headed to a gigantic dollar store in which the A-Man and I marveled at perhaps the most bizarre combination of stars and stripes and the union jack either of us had witnessed - and all in the form of a bandanna. There were cowboy hats and discount DVDs but nothing too overwhelmingly awesome. Tons of USA emblazoned toques, but Adam wasn’t buying.

We checked out a few electronics stores looking for le hot deals electronique. Not that there weren’t any to be found, but the DVDs, CDs and video games were all pretty evenly priced. Only the super deals, Best Buy’s 4 DVDs for $10 for instance, were really exceptional. Saw no Wii’s other than a couple display models, but saw a lot of games, quite a few controllers and a couple accessories. Some PS3s though, <grin>, on the floor - where they belong! Was hoping for a buy one get one free deal on PSPs but sadly US$199 seems like a fixed price.

We wandered around a bit more, finding the icon of my youth - the famed Perpetual Motion Machine that is a mall highlight. Basically it’s a series of croquet-sized balls moving through an elaborate series of gears, switches, musical bits and what not - very Mousetrap like. It’s fun to just watch the balls travel around the thing, but I didn’t feel like making Atom sit around for an hour as I relived my youth, so it was onwards and upwards as we headed off to Arsenal street.

One of the main streets that leaks into the Public Square, Arsenal is where most of the action is. To Adam’s sheer delight there was a giant Taco Bell - he had been thwarted by the line-up of lolling cellphone users at the ancient one in the mall. I was similarly enthused to see a giant Salvation Army sign so he dropped me off and proceeded to get an Extreme Supreme Burritaco or w/e.

The Sally Ann was quite nice - very huge and well organized. A bit lacking in the electronics dept, but I’ve come to expect little else. I didn’t want to go searching through clothes I don’t need, so I went to the records section and found a holy grail - the complete Time Life recordings for the lunar missions. It’s a pretty hefty set, and put me back $5 so that was a sweet deal.

What wasn’t sweet was the look on Adam’s face when I returned from Walgreen’s with a delicious Snapple. His drink from Taco Bell was so horrid he made me try it. I can attest to the fact that it was watered down windshield wiper fluid. Our next stop along Arsenal was Blockbuster, which had a buy 2 get 1 free deal on video games, but there was little there to get excited about. We then headed to a couple random shopping adventures along the way to K-Mart. Saw some weird things, like a Jeff Foxworthy talking doll and shit.

Big, empty, K-Mart. Kind of sad, like a lost Zellers or something back home. They had pretty much nothing going on inside either - some okay deals on toys, but nothing really. It was starting to get late, so we figured we’d stop at the grocery store for some cheap butter (Mom’s orders) and then head home. As we pulled into the parking lot we were stunned to see a store called FASHION BUG. That’s what Tourette’s Guy must’ve been on about. Too funny. There were some odd groceries to be found; I’m a big fan of the cereal aisle in the states. I mean, where else can you find chocolate Cap’n Crunch? All told we spent practically nothing, and the Canadian Customs was a breeze. Three questions, no lineup of cameras and we were on our way home. All told a fun day spent in America, land of the infinite yellow ribbons.

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