Prison Town Pictures! ^_^

Well, now that I’ve gotten all my pictures sorted out and uploaded in little time (thank my lucky stars for xDSL), it’s time to unveil them! *ominous drum roll*

Err… these are pretty big pictures. I’m not kidding. I wanted to keep all the details of the pictures, so they’re still in their original 900×600 resolution. So, each picture is about 200 KB+ in size. You have been warned!

Well, where should I begin? Well, I started out by getting into the van and driving out. Here’s a nice picture, although the grass is a little weak. Sorry about that. Next up, I decided to leave my street and neighborhood altogether. Err… don’t try taking pictures while driving!! You’ll notice all this sand-type residue where my street ends. This is just because I live on a peninsula street, so the dusting machines don’t come out to get rid of the sand. You see, instead of laying down salt on the icy roads in the winter, my stupid town likes to lay gravel. Many people think it’s because salt can ruin your tires, but I think that city hall does it to annoy everybody. It’s working!!

So, I drove downtown. When you’re in a moving vehicle surrounded by many other moving vehicles, your other attempts at taking pictures are meaningless. So, I decided to stop at the mall and take a picture there. It’s Wal-Mart! Yay! Look at all the wasted empty space for a parking lot that nobody uses and nobody wants to build on. I was told that our town’s McDonald’s™ has the largest PlayPlace in Manitoba. Well, it might be true, but I’ve seen bigger in Malaysia. And they have no Iced Milo, darn it!!!

One good thing about Canada – we have lots of unused area, so we’re very good at wasting space with parking lots that nobody uses. This one on Cree Road used to be an empty field many years ago, but for some strange reason, they decided to pave it with gravel and use it as a parking lot. Don’t ask me who “they” are. It is still a mystery. There aren’t even any parking lines on this thing! Oh, and you’ll notice the patchy grass at the bottom of the picture. I was parked across the street at a church, so blame them for not mowing their “lawn” correctly.

Juniper Drive! Juniper Drive! Let’s take a ride on Juniper Drive! I know it’s not a song, but I heard something similar somewhere before. They post all these useless road signs all over Juniper Drive. Nobody obeys the signs, so why should I? I’m going 0 km/h around the corner!! I’m such a speed demon!! Just kidding. I’m parked, which is disobeying the No Parking sign behind the Slow Down sign. Hehehe.

I decided to turn off Juniper Drive onto Spruce. Nice hospital, eh? It looks better from the front, actually. It would also be nice if we had more than one doctor in town.

Directly past the hospital is the highway, the only highway that runs through my town. In between is this quaint little sign. Snowmobile Path Ahead. I bet you rarely see one of these babies outside of Canada. So, I took the highway. What a useless road. It only takes two minutes to cross it. Really. With two traffic lights in between. I turned off onto a side road to get to Nelson Road quicker. That way, I could show you a picture of the college I went to for a year and a half. Keewatin Community College. There’s one more building besides these two, but that’s pretty much it. They’re not even connected together. Pathetic, isn’t it? Looks like the police are actually doing their job for once. Either that, or they wanted a place to eat their McDonald’s breakfast while looking like they’re checking people with their speed guns.

I parked at the house I stayed at on Brandon Crescent and got out on foot to show you the rural sights up close and personal. See this pothole? This is considered a small one. The big ones are usually half a foot deep, but they’re usually on Thompson Drive. I would’ve taken a picture of one, but it looks like the city already patched most of them up, which is a surprise! I decided to walk down a path to the junction of Waterloo Avenue and Cambridge Street. Garbage everywhere? Don’t worry, this is normal. People are artsy in town, which is why they like to spray paint the signs. These are fun to ride off of at top speed! This is the junction I was talking about. The duplex house on the top right is where I used to live. Well, the right side of it, anyway. Ahh, our city at work. Such a simple crossing to paint, yet they can’t even do it. Look at the fine detail of the paint job that desperately needs to be done. Isn’t that nice? You almost can’t see the yellow line in this one! This is typical throughout town.

The storm drain in front of my former house doesn’t drain anything. Look at all the sand residue here. Tsk tsk. Well, I went back downtown and I luckily came across a red light! Picture time! I especially like how the city doesn’t keep the roads maintained but wastes money on putting dumb flags on every lamp post on Thompson Drive and Cree Road.

Notice how you didn’t see many people walking? Actually, I counted about six people walking through all the areas I drove and walked through. Everybody takes a car. Heck, I took a car! Lazy and out of shape people, we are.

Home sweet home! The red van in the garage was the vehicle that provided me with transportation. It approximately took me half an hour to drive around and take pictures. That should give you a rough idea of how long it takes to circle the town (not long at all). Well, that concludes the picture tour of my prison town. If you were impressed, shame on you! Winnipeg is a lot better, but not by much. There are just more people and more space wasted there. ^_^

I’m gonna go eat some ma bo tofu. じゃね！