Wild Life

• By Golf Channel Digital
• Oct 30, 2012 11:00 PM ET

Do you want to know exactly who you are?  Try living three weeks with a camera video-taping 99 percent of what you say.  Martin just left the travelers to join the rest of the film crew for the final night of luxury we’re going to experience on Our Longest Drive.  And nothing’s changed. 

This is who we are and what we think.  The same things that we say on camera, we say while drinking a nightcap at the bar of The Bison watching the end of the Dallas Mavericks vs. Miami Heat game.  The Bison?  You ask?  It’s a restaurant on Bear St.  “Do you serve horse?” I ask the owner, wanting to know if indeed there are restaurants in Canada that serve it.

Jim, Dan and I have our first bare-your souls, tell-it-like-you-see-it conversation.  It’s a little surprising that it took six days of being together for it to come out.  Men are often accused of hiding their feelings, yet we often express them.  As a matter of fact, we have conversations so revealing that a person who didn’t understand the meaning of true friendship might consider them non-supportive.

“I am highly intelligent,” says one traveler about himself. “This is the happiest I’ve ever seen you,” mentions another when asked if he perceived another traveler to be positive or negative.  “I don’t care if you get back safely of not,” says the last, using the word “care” incorrectly in place of “worry.”

Even solid betrothals would benefit from straight talk like this. Women, who don’t fully comprehend how men employ insult as a form of endearment or why using words isn’t the only tool for communication that is at our disposal, tend to chide us for being simple.  But, at least, we won’t fall prey to that. Where does it take us becomes the question. 

The RV, on the other hand, will take us to Lake Louise, Jasper and McBride, British Columbia. We have chosen another less traveled road – the Bow Valley Parkway. Dawn breaks in the same gorgeous manner as yesterday.  Reveille is 7:30 am.  Breakfast at 8:15.  Departure at 9:00.  We expect to see wildlife on the highway.  The drive will be tame in comparison to The Bison.