On the Bus Again

On the Bus Again

Tales from riding the buses between Winnipeg and Minneapolis

© 2015 Curtis Walker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

All images used therein are copyright of their respective owners and are used with permission or believed to be in the public domain.

Cover image © Curtis Walker.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Time to Go

Make a Run for the Border

U.S. Customs

Pembina to Grand Forks

Grand Forks to Fargo

Fargo to Sauk Centre

Sauk Centre to Eden Prairie

Day of Adventure

Game Day

Heading Home

Epilogue

Bibliography

Photo Credits

About the Author

To the many friendly inhabitants of the Twin Cities

Introduction

Though this story is based on a single trip, it combines anecdotes from the many trips I have made by car and bus between Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.

Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba and its largest city, with a population of more than 700,000. Situated at the historic junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers near the geographic center of North America, it is an hour’s drive north of the U.S. border at the 49th parallel.

A day’s drive of more than 450 miles to the southeast are Minneapolis and neighboring Saint Paul. They are Minnesota’s largest cities, with Saint Paul serving as the state’s capital. Together with the many surrounding communities, the metropolitan area bisected by the mighty Mississippi River that has its headwaters in the northern reaches of the state boasts a population of more than 3,000,000.

Train service between the two urban centers has long since ceased and even passenger bus service has been discontinued. However, many Winnipeg-based tour operators including Sun Ice Tours, which I’ve traveled with most often over the past decade, regularly offer bus trips for shopping, concerts and sporting events.

The Twin Cities metro area is among the most popular travel destinations for Winnipeggers on account of its close proximity and the many attractions it offers. Not only does it feel like a second home for many Winnipeggers, but for some, it has become their first home, as sizable numbers have emigrated and settled there permanently.

Going to the Twin Cities has always been something special for me ever since my first visit there back in 1978. Since that time, the countless sights and places I’ve seen along the much-traveled route through southern Manitoba, eastern North Dakota and Minnesota have become as familiar as any in and around Winnipeg.

Having completed what was likely my last visit to the Twin Cities, it was time to put all my experiences together in a book, written from the perspective of a bus passenger, for others to enjoy as I have done so often over the years. For those who have not yet had the opportunity, I hope this work serves as an encouragement to visit the area.

Time to Go

It is Friday morning. The day I have been looking forward to ever since booking this trip months ago has finally arrived. I made sure to set my alarm clock to get up at this ungodly early hour, but I hardly needed it, as I have been up on the hour every hour. As much as I would like to turn over and go back to sleep, I know I must pry myself out of bed and get ready to go, since the bus will not wait for me. As Tony Rinella, our tour director, announces each time before leaving, If I can leave my wife behind, I can leave you behind.

This will be my seventh time traveling with Tony, who along with his wife, Yolanda, has owned and operated Sun Ice Tours for the past three decades, and I am but one of their many repeat customers whom they know by name. Tony is friendly and approachable, and having been with other tour companies before, I have come to appreciate the value of his experience. He is organized and nothing seems to faze him. When things don’t go according to plan, he always seems to have a Plan B up his sleeve. There isn’t much he hasn’t seen over the course of the more than 700 bus trips he has led.

Tony has also been a real estate agent for as long as he’s operated his tour company, and the many contacts he picks up through his tours helps his real estate business thrive.

Once out of bed, I have little appetite, but I force myself to eat, only because I know I will regret it later if I don’t. I pile my suitcase into the car, zip up my backpack and head out for the pickup point at Charleswood Center, a strip mall only a five-minute drive away. As is normally the case, I am more than a half hour early, leaving me with plenty of time to sit and wait for the bus.

Despite my familiarity with our destination and the whole routine, I am still a bundle of nerves. Seemingly before every trip, there are even times when I wish I could back out and just stay home.

I fret over such things as weather, highway conditions, border crossings and whether or not our bus will break down, but my biggest worry has always been about the people I will be traveling with. Fortunately, Tony caters to a more mature crowd, unlike one operator I went with years earlier.

On that trip, I was stuck in the middle of a rolling bar as the rowdies and drunks went through more liquor than the bus did gasoline. One of them openly admitted to having marijuana with him and I have no doubt there were others on the bus with drugs. The tour director told me, If we stop it, then we don’t have any business, yet Sun Ice Tours has thrived for a lot longer with much more respectable clientele.

The only real problem I’ve had with other people when on one of Tony’s tours came a few years earlier when a couple of rambunctious children sitting behind me kept kicking the back of my seat on our return trip, making for an uncomfortable ride home.

My hyperactive nerves get a break when I spot a couple pulling up nearby with suitcases in their back seat. It is oddly comforting to know that even in the unlikely event that I am in the wrong place, at least I am not alone. One of them gets out and approaches the car, and after I roll down the window, he asks, Are you waiting for the Vikings bus?

I answer, No, I’m waiting for the Giants bus.

He, too, seems comforted even though he will be cheering for the wrong team on Sunday afternoon.

Though there are shopping excursions planned as part of the tour, the headline attraction is the National Football League (NFL) game between the Minnesota Vikings and the visiting New York Giants. Tony and many of his customers are fans of the Vikings, the closest NFL team to Winnipeg, but for the second consecutive year, I am going to see the Giants.

I turn my attention to the nearby Tim Hortons, one of countless locations in the fanatically popular nationwide chain of coffee and donut shops, where someone pulls up right by the front door. With his face aglow over his good fortune in getting such a good parking spot, the driver pops out of his car, hops over to the door and tugs on the handle. It doesn’t open. He tugs again. It still doesn’t open. Only after the second unsuccessful tug does he look at the sign in the window saying that the store is closed on account of Boxing Day, the day after Christmas and a national holiday in Canada. Stunned and angered, he stares at the sign in utter disbelief before storming back to his car and driving off in a huff.

This comical pattern repeats itself every couple of minutes, and I can barely contain my laughter as endless numbers of unsuspecting would-be patrons nearly pull their arms out of their sockets trying to get the door open. I have no doubt there will soon be a lineup forming outside the emergency room at nearby Grace Hospital of patients complaining of severe shoulder pain.

I haven’t even set foot on the bus and I’ve already had more fun on the trip than any other in recent memory. I hope it is a sign of things to come.

Our bus soon pulls into the parking lot, and I am the first to meet it. The driver gets out to open the middle of the three lower compartments and he tosses my suitcase inside. Luggage is always separated by pickup point and sometimes Tony will even group people from the same pickup point together on the bus. Meanwhile, I renew acquaintances with Tony and Yolanda, who live close by and always board at this stop. Though the football game is still two days away, Tony is already decked out in Vikings purple.

Boarding pass.⁹

On the way down the aisle toward my assigned seat, I pass the handful of people already on board who got on in Brandon, a two-hour drive west of Winnipeg. Tony charters most of his buses out of Brandon and takes advantage of the opportunity to pick up a few extra customers from the western part of the province he would normally not get.

There are two seats on each side of the aisle on the 53-seat bus, but unless it is full, Tony gives me a pair of seats to myself, which he has done once again. I use the extra room to spread out and get comfortable in the space where I’ll be spending much of the day.

A few minutes later, with everyone scheduled to board here present and accounted for, we take off and head west to Pembina Village, another strip mall, which is our next and last pickup point before getting out on the highway. As I peer out the window, I find myself oddly fascinated by the deserted Winnipeg streets. Even though I’ve lived here for so long and know them like the back of my hand, they look strangely new, perhaps because I hardly ever see them through the window of a tour bus. In many respects, I feel like a tourist in my own city.

As we pull into the parking lot at Pembina Village, there is a fleet of cars waiting for us, and a horde of people swarm the bus even before it comes to a complete stop. While the new arrivals take their seats and settle in, a new driver comes on board. We always need more than one driver on these trips, since U.S.-bound commercial drivers cannot exceed 10 hours behind the wheel in a single day. This limit is sufficient to cover the distance from Winnipeg to the Twin Cities, but not from Brandon. One driver whom I’ve spoken with in the past referred to the routine as the Pony Express, where drivers would switch off much like the horses did when delivering mail from New York to San Francisco back in the late 1800s.

With everyone, including our new driver, ready to begin the long journey south, the scheduled departure time comes and goes, and many heads, including mine, start popping up above the high-back seats wondering about the delay. Sensing the uneasy rumblings behind him, Tony turns around from his spot right behind the driver and tells those of us close enough to be able to hear him that we’re still waiting for one couple.

This couple must be more important than Tony’s wife, because instead of leaving them behind, he gets on his phone to call them. To his and our surprise, they’re actually sitting in the restaurant right next to where the bus is idling. Seconds later, the two of them hurriedly scamper outside with their luggage, which the driver quickly tosses in the front compartment. Once they climb on board, they explain to us curious rubberneckers that they didn’t notice the bus. I can certainly understand how a bus the size of an 18-wheel big rig sitting in the middle of an empty five-acre parking lot with an engine loud enough to wake people in the apartment blocks across the street could be missed. Or not.

In any event, our driver slams the luggage compartment door shut, hops back into his seat and closes the front door. As the red-faced stragglers hastily take their seats, we start rolling south. The trip is officially under way.

Make a Run for the Border

Winnipeg, MB to Emerson, MB, 68 miles.²

As we head south along Pembina Highway, one of Winnipeg’s busiest thoroughfares, Tony starts off by passing out paper copies of the itinerary before returning to his seat for his introductory speech.

Everyone going to the Shooting Star? he asks after grabbing the microphone, jolting those like me who aren’t fully awake yet. Tony soon allays our fears and assures that we are headed for the Twin Cities, not northern Minnesota’s most-visited casino, and I again feel foolish for having fallen for one of his oldest and lamest jokes.

For the benefit of the handful of people on the trip who haven’t traveled with him, he introduces himself along with Yolanda, seated across the aisle from her husband in the front row, and Jerry, our new driver.

As we pass through St. Norbert, Winnipeg’s southernmost suburb, Tony tells us when we will be making our first stop and gives a brief rundown of the itinerary. Even though he has a version online and always sends out paper copies in advance, it