Just a faucet?

Our typical intercity drive often has us spending oodles of hours on the 401. Canada's busiest highway cuts through Ontario from Windsor all the way to the Quebec border just east of Cornwall. All in all, it's a shade under 500 miles or 800 km long.

We've come to know this highway well in the years since we moved to London. It's the route we take to visit family back in Montreal, and in the dozens of times we've driven it, it's not a stretch to say that we've likely memorized every exit, curve, and geographic feature.

On our way home recently, we stopped in Belleville for a much-needed break. We parked beside the Quinte Mall - which despite the fact that it looks like any other indoor mall on the planet, is nevertheless a welcome refuge on a long, boring drive - and headed for the food court.

Little people have little constitutions. So we found the family washroom and were blown away by the pristine cleanliness, comfy chairs, lovely music and overall coziness of what is usually a disgusting facility that is ignored by management and reviled by those of us who care about such things. This place was different: we could have stayed there all night.

While the kids raved about how cool this loo was, I concentrated on the faucet and tried to get photographically artsy with it. This is a longer-than-handheld, flashless exposure, using the counter as a makeshift tripod. It may look plain. But it will forever take me back to a 10-minute slice during which my kids happily unwound with each other in a surprisingly warm place far from home, and I got to watch them be themselves.

Lucky me.