Sandwich à la viande fumée

Darn it all anyhow.... I got back from Montreal last night and never made my ritual culinary rendezvous with a smoked meat sandwich at Reuben's Deli and a Greek salad from the lunch menu at Katz.

I found myself dreamily reflecting on all the little things taken for granted, that, now surfaced on my junket to Montreal. *End dream sequence and snap out of it with smoked meat dangling from mouth". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_meat )

I was, however, finally presented my retirement clock from my *tongue in cheek* employer. I retired last June and had relegated the gift as summarily confiscated in their usual pettiness, for costing the employer upwards of $30 million when I lead the bargaining unit to a strike in 2004. Voila, sitting on the boardroom table was the engraved mantle clock. It was, due to a longstanding dispute that I was summonsed to Montreal to act as a witness and attend a hearing at the employers headquarters. Nevertheless, the employer didn't disappoint. They conducted themselves in the usual cold-hearted, demeaning, obnoxious and overbearing fashion. You have probably concluded, and rightfully so, the hearings did not go well.

Notwithstanding, I did take the opportunity to punch a blow upon the ego-maniacal company officers that manage labour relations. At my first opportunity, I informed them the industry mantra flashing across the railway trade papers and blog boards was the proclamation announcing the latest untouchables to be heralded in the same breath a lepers, were, corporate LR officers from said employer. I digress, but they pissed me off.

I'm off to Vancouver next week via I-94/90 from Detroit to Seattle (with a stop in the badland's Sturgis and Idaho's Cour d'Alene). It should take me 5 days to drive and then hop the train in Vancouver and ride the rails through through the Rocky Mountains via the Kicking Horse Pass and over the Canadian Prairies with a stopover in Winnipeg. I am dubbing it my "On the Road" trip to tribute the US novelist and poet, borne to Canadian parents, Jack Kerouac. I leave you this short clip of Jack reading from On the Road to sign off. Peace Out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MjPtem6ZbE