Catching up

It's been awhile since I last posted, but finally I am in Nova Scotia. One delay after another, but it's finally done, I am moved in at The Harbour.

I can't post much in the way of photos because I can't transfer them from the camera to the computer yet, but soon. I wish I had taken a photo of the truck before I left because it was all nicely washed and waxed, with the kayak mounted on the roof. Oh well, you'll just have to imagine it. But don't look too closely, the truck is packed to the gunnels (oh darn, is that one 'l' or two? Spellcheck doesn't even recognize it as a word!), with only a little space for me to sit in front of the steering wheel...

Getting out of TO

My original intention was to leave Toronto and arrive here on May 8. But due to a bit of a health scare requiring various tests, I postponed my departure date to the following week. Then I got a cold. Then the cold turned into a sinus infection. Then there was the long Victoria Day weekend and not wanting to be on the road on the first long weekend of the season. I was then going to leave the Tuesday immediately following, the 19th, but The Dog Ladies wanted to get together one last time and one of them was out of town that long weekend so the earliest we could get together was, guess what, Tuesday the 19th. So I postponed leaving until the next day.

We met for potluck dinner at Catherine's, it was a nice evening so we sat in her backyard under the grape arbour and dined on barbecued chicken kebabs, potato salad, green salad, some lovely artisan bread, and a mix of Portuguese pastries including the classic custard tarts. Oh and wine and beer of course. I was a little more restrained this time than last time, since I planned to start a long drive the next day.

I spent most of Tuesday packing and cleaning up, but did not manage to finish before dinner time, so I ended up spending all Wednesday morning and early afternoon packing. Finally I was ready to go, at 2.00pm on the 20th, but there's something about leaving in the middle of the afternoon that is just really hard to do. I had to leave right then and there or face Toronto rush hour, and I just couldn't do it. So I postponed to Thursday the 21st.

I cleaned up a few loose ends on Wednesday afternoon so that I really would be ready to leave early Thursday. Isaac agreed to wake me up at 5.00am so I could get out of the house by 6.00am, ahead of the rush hour on the downtown portion of the Gardiner Expressway. That all worked fine, but what I didn't count on was that the Jameson St. access was closed for road work and I did not know where the next nearest access was. And on top of that, having driven down Jameson St along with several other cars expecting to get onto the Expressway there, everyone had to turn around and get out, and the silly fool in front of me backed into my truck and broke one of my headlights.

We pulled over and piled out to look at the damage, the other driver said it was no big deal, just a broken headlight, and I said, But I'm trying to get to Nova Scotia and now I can't until I get it fixed and I have missed my damn window of opportunity to get out of Toronto ahead of rush hour! The guy seemed to think that this was easily solved, he knew a garage open 24/7, they could replace the headlight and I could still make it out of town in half an hour. He offered to lead me to this garage. Having no other plan, I reluctantly agreed to his and so we turned around and drove to this garage he knew.

Turns out the garage he spoke of is the only garage in all of Toronto that I have had a Most Negative Experience of in the past, one Bento's on Dundas. Wouldn't you know it! I swore I would never go there again and now here I was. Well, I could only hope that replacing a broken headlight was simple enough that they couldn't screw it up. The mechanic on duty there said they did not have my headlight in stock, they wouldn't have it until 8.30am. So much for getting out of Toronto before rush hour. The other driver paid for the headlight and installation thereof and took off, hardly 20 minutes out of his day all told, while I was stuck waiting another two hours before the part would even be available. Argh!

So back home I went to wait for my headlight. Went for one last walk at the dogpark with Isaac and Dobby. Went back to Bento's at 8.30am, only to be told by Bento himself that I didn't have a hope in hell of getting the headlight before 9.30am! I freaked out. I told him I was trying to get to Nova Scotia by Friday afternoon, I had been into his garage two hours before and the mechanic had promised the headlight for 8.30, and I just couldn't wait until 9.30! Bento got on the phone and ordered the headlight from another supplier, 10 minutes later it arrived, and by 9.00am the truck was ready to go.

Three hours late, but oh well.

Montreal rush hour, and more

Unfortunately, the three hour delay in leaving Toronto meant arriving in Montreal for the start of the afternoon rush hour. Oh joy. It was very very bad. Hot hot hot, and there was some backup or delay on the approach to the Champlain Bridge, the one I had to cross. For well over an hour I crept along with everyone else at approximately one km an hour in 28C? 30C? heat (my truck is not air conditioned) on the approach to the bridge. I know there are other routes through Montreal, but I had no idea which one was most likely to be any better and thought, better the devil I know...

So around 5.30pm I finally emerged from Montreal, it took me two hours to get through! I had hoped to make it to the New Brunswick border that night but now the chances were looking dismal. At least a 5 hour drive from Montreal to NB, not counting dinner and bathroom breaks.

The air was bad. I think every damn field from Montreal to Riviere du Loup was being ploughed, and the earth was dry and dusty. The sky was yellow in every direction, with occasional plumes of brown dust rising from this field or that one.

By evening I was north of Quebec City, so I decided I would just keep going. At 10.30pm I turned south at Riviere du Loup for the final leg to New Brunswick. At that point I really should not have been on the road, I was quite tired and my reaction time was noticeably slowed. I figured that there wouldn't be too much traffic on the road and with the stereo cranked up I would stay awake until my destination. So that's what I did and I pulled off an hour later just north of the border.

I had packed the truck so full that it took me another half hour just to clear out some space in the back of the truck to sleep. It was still pretty hot so I couldn't sleep in my sleeping bag because it was too warm, so I spread a bedsheet on top of the sleeping bag and slept under that for half the night, then after a few hours woke up cold and crawled into the bag to sleep for another couple of hours.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, I arrived at Fritz and Carolyn's place on Friday afternoon around 5.00pm. The kayak on the roof weathered the trip just fine until the last few kilometers when a strong wind picked up and started blowing the kayak around. I could see it's bow sweeping back and forth above the windshield, the rope holding the stern moving in tandem in my rearview mirror. I slowed right down, figuring I was so close to my destination that I did not want to stop unless I absolutely had to. At the exit from the highway I did pull off and check the kayak tie-downs, they were a bit loose but I thought they would hold for the last 5 km or so to the house. And they did.

Arriving

Fritz and Carolyn of course were not home, but I know where their spare key is and let myself in. I called Carolyn at work to let her know I was there, then had a shower and made a cup of tea while I waited for her to come home. My reason for wanting to get to Wolfville by Friday afternoon was that Carolyn had said she was planning to go to the South Shore for the weekend, so I wanted to arrive before she left. As it turned out, she opted to stay in town for the weekend. We went out for dinner at The Ivy Deck and by the time we got back to her house Fritz was home too. We chatted for an hour or so and then all toddled off to bed.

On Saturday morning we again sat around for a couple of hours over breakfast chatting, then Carolyn and I headed off to the Saturday Market. Having packed up over several days, I had long since forgotten what I had in the way of food so I did not know what grocery shopping I needed to do. I decided I'd wait until I'd unpacked to make a grocery list. So the Market was more for the pleasure of it than any real shopping. In the afternoon I headed up to The Harbour. Ruth and Mike were home and after first taking a look at the house I would be staying in, I checked in with them. Ruth came back to my truck to help offload the kayak, we left it lying on a couple of logs by the side of the driveway. Borrowing their wheelbarrow I began unpacking the truck.

The driveway into Fritz and Carolyn's house in the woods is very muddy at this time of year, and last fall Mike got his tractor stuck in the driveway, so there are big gouges in the ground where he got stuck. Maneuvering the wheelbarrow around the mud and tractor gouges was tricky, I did not escape sinking up to my ankles in mud but did manage to avoid spilling any of my belongings into the mud. I was amazed at how much stuff I had, seeing it all spread out inside the house was impressive. Imagine, I somehow got all that stuff into my truck!

There's tools and books and food and pots and pans and clothes and yarn and a computer and a boombox and a breadmaker and a banjo. Not to mention all the kayak gear.

And the way back

Oh one last thing, when I told Mike and Ruth about my harrowing trip through Montreal, Ruth, who is originally from Montreal, told me of an alternate route that neatly bypasses the city! So I am going to take my map over to her place some time this summer and get her to mark it on the map for me. In all the years I have been travelling between Ontario and Nova Scotia (at least thirty-five now), the only alternative I knew about was going through the States, and these days crossing the border is hardly more easy than Montreal during rush hour. So I eagerly await Ruth's revelation of an alternative Canadian route!