2019-01-30 Wed

Escape from Ontario

The drive last night was terrible. The driver’s side wiper blade is falling apart; a strip of silver metal waves at me from under the rubber every time I turn on the blades. The gas tank is getting low – it was only a quarter full when I started. What kind of truck rental company doesn’t fill the tank so that noviate truck drivers (most UHaul truck renters are young people flitting apartments) can get a good idea of gas mileage. I pull off at a Shell service centre and fill up with gas, buy a one-gallon jar of washer fluid and a windshield brush/ice scraper, and try to open the hood. I find the hood-release lever in the cab, the hood unlocks. I see a silver-metal catch, but cannot shift it into any one of the six approved directions (three dimensions, times two) and after three minutes give up. I pray that, unlike the gas tank, the wiper canister was not a mere quarter-full.

After about half an hour’s driving we come to a halt. After fifteen minutes in “Park” I turn off the engine. We sit there on the highway for a bum-numbing 45 minutes until we get to crawl past the wrecked car and the tractor-trailer rig sitting in the ditch. Two down, several hundred to go.

At Belleville I decide to stop. This is crazy. I had dreams, three days ago, of being out of the apartment by mid-day and stopping for the night somewhere near or past Québec City. Charles and the snow storm have put paid to that idea. I check in to my dear old Belleville motel, race out to the truck and wheel my guppies into the warm room. I am banking on a civic reception when I arrive in Bonavista, being instrumental, in part, of restoring Newfoundland’s fish stocks. Every little bit counts.

I apologize for the shoddy image. I had not had my third morning coffee when I took this shot. The fifteen-litre flask (one of thirty snaffled from the recycling stream) holds about two dozen guppies and sits on a suitcase trolley (laneway outside the condo across our lane) and is held by a bungee cord (Canadian Tyre). James asked me if I’d ever been bungee-jumping, and I said I was prepared to give it a try, even at my age, but only with a five-foot bungee cord, and only from my bed.

Last night at the Shell I couldn’t remember my credit card PIN. Not surprising, really, because for months now I’ve written the rent cheque, paid my phone bill online, and withdrawn $200 in banknotes for groceries, transit, and sundries. The only plastic in my wallet has been my Toronto Public Library card, my gateway to the universe.

I Rise at 5, and go online to request a change to my PIN. I have to phone the toll-free number. I press 2, press 4 and so on and request the new PIN be mailed to me. Like an idiot I assume that by “mail” they mean email. Nope. The recorded voice says that my PIN will be sent in a paper envelope to my Toronto address, and should arrive within a week. Whaaaat? I dial the BMO hot-line and a nice fellow (a) cancels the mailing order (b) registers my change of address and (c) suggests that I drop in to a BMO branch to resolve the PIN number.

I am on the road by 6:15, the wipers are bad, so bad, that I pray for phalanxes of trucks to wash past me spraying the windscreen with water, mixed providentially with salt.

Using the motel’s WiFi I found a UHaul dealership in Bellville, but they don’t open until 7am; there is one in Kingston. I get off the 401 at Kingston and make my way through town, right through the school district some five crowded minutes before classes start. I hang a left where I should and note a “For Lease” sign where the UHaul dealer should be. (Three cheers for UHaul!) Up ahead is Kingston Penitentiary. I grit my teeth and pull into the parking lot of “Kingston Pen” to dial the Kingston UHaul, which should have been open ninety minutes ago. A recorded voice tells me to leave my number and they will call me back. I decline, and thread my way back through Portsmouth Village against the flood of parents returning home after dropping the teens off at school and regain the highway 401 East.

At Brockville (another client location) I pull off and park in a Senior’s Residence, re-evaluating my decision to buy a house in Bonavista. Again, in bright sunlight, I try the hood and am grateful for knowing what “Nada” means in Spanish. More time wasted.

On my way east towards Cornwall I note with alarm that while there is now minimal truck-wash as they pass me, there is a spray, but the temperature has plummeted, and what was supposed to be -40c washer fluid in the tank under the inaccessible hood turns out to be water. It freezes to an opaque glaze. I cannot curse UHaul for this. The previous truck renter has cheaped out and filled the canister with tap-water. This ought to be a criminal charge. I know where Kingston Pen is.

I spot a BMO branch, drive around a roundabout, and sluggishly (the truck waddles a bit, what with all the heavy reading within) and park just across from the A&W burger joint. The nice lady in the BMO solves my problem by inserting my card in a hand-held and inviting me to key in what I think is my PIN and of course, by now, my brain has done its job and retrieved the PIN, it being in value one more than my other credit card PIN. The one I had used the night before. That is, I’d used the PIN of my other card on this card. Seniors! Sheesh!!

I use the BMO’s free WiFi (see, I’m not stupid) and locate the UHaul dealer – exit here, right, left, right, left again – and the guy there shows me how to unlatch the hood, and directs me to the mammoth truck repair installation across the street. I mean mammoth. Fourteen bays, each capable of, and many harboring, a full-length 53-foot trailer and tractor. They want the truck equipment number so that can call head office for an P.O., but I want nothing to do with UHaul’s head office, so I tell them to just put on new wipers and take my credit card (for which I have the PIN written down on a slip of paper). Drive into bay eleven, round the back, and in ten minutes I have new wiper blades and mirable dictu, a clear windscreen. These guys are serious men, so I resist the female side of me, and just shake hands. The mechanic gets enough cash for a coffee somewhere.

And yes, back I go to the A&W and treat myself to a burger and fries before heading off to fill up with gas. Always fill up with gas when you pull off the highway for whatever reason.

There were two gas stations as I came off the highway, first an Esso, then a Shell. Cynic that I am I reason that the first (Esso) will have gouging-prices compared to the second (Shell), but to get to the Shell I have to drive north, past it, and make a left-turn and turn around to head back south, which I do. The Shell bowsers are wrapped in bio-hazard yellow plastic tape. Can this be why there are no vehicles in the forecourt? The truck and I and the twenty-four guppies lumber around the place (slish-slosh) and continue southbound so I can hang another left and turn around heading north, so that I can drive past the Shell, then past the Esso, make another left and head back south to the Esso, where I pump gas and – you guessed it – continue south until I can make a left and turn around etc. etc. I am sick of Cornwall, and this stopover has cost me two full hours.

After this fill-up I have developed a new technique for pumping gas: turn your back to the bowser. It is painful enough watching the meter race past the $100 mark. I can postpone the pain by at least two minutes this way. Never before have I paid a hundred dollars for a tank of gas. Not even in Singapore.

I can still make Riveiere-du-Loup though, because my belly is full, the gas tank is full, and even though the memory card in my phone has died , I can spend the time plotting mean and evil acts against UHaul who account for much of my delay so far.

In a respectable travel forum I was advised to use the Highway 30 bypass and avoid taking #20 through the heart of Montreal. This I do, watching as I go for consistent signs that read “Québec City”. I see signs that say consistently “Sorel”, so I carry on along #30 until I come to a sign that advises me that there are stop-lights at the end of #30 in about one kilometre. Where did the Trans-Canada Highway go? The TCH is supposed to take me all the way to Clarenville in Newfoundland.

I pull off to a side road in Sorel and buy a Rollo Tube before asking for directions to Québec City in my flawless Parisian French. The cashier tells me the cost of the chocolate and I pat my pockets in vain.

No wallet!

Could I have left it on the counter, or on my table in the A&W back in Cornwall, some two hours drive back west (and then two more hours back east)? You should see me panic sometime. I’m told it’s a doozy. I head back to the truck and spot a notepad in the snow. In the truck I find my wallet and almost pee myself in delight. Back in the store I grab a second chocolate bar (celebrate!), pay up, and follow the lady’s directions (á droite, á gauche, tout droite) to Highway 132. And set off in relief.

Highway 132 East dekes south, then east, left, right, through tiny villages whose Main Streets are now single lanes on account of the ploughed snow, made worse by the dump trucks which are carting away the ploughed snow To Serve You Better. I pull off again and burn up my limited budget of Data Plan to find that I am much too far north of where I should be on the TCH. Of course, I should have gotten off the #30 where I saw the sign for TCH, but I saw no sign for TCH. I begin to think that separatist Quebec province does not want to admit that there is a Trans-Canada Highway, for that would lead to admitting that there was such a thing as Canada. I found road signs poor to non-existent in Quebec.

The Google Map above says that in good conditions it would take me two hours to drive to Drummondville on the TCH via Sorel and #132.

The map above says it would have cost me half an hour (52 kilometres) less the proper way. In truth I paid a $4.20 toll when I got on to the #30 at 13:56, and reached the TCH at Drummondville at 17:00, so my diversion was a three hour trip in poor conditions. Bad signs and the snowstorm cost me another hour. Will I be on that ferry at 11:45 Saturday morning? Read on, Dear Reader, read on.

My plan was a ten-hour leg from Toronto to Riviere-du-Loup, but around eight o’clock this night I note that my steady speed of 55 mph keeps dropping to 40 mph, a sure sign of fatigue and inattention. So mindful of those of you who told me “Drive Carefully”, I admit defeat and pull off the highway at SaintJeanPort (postal code G0R 1G0 to you, say it out loud and you’ll know how I felt) and check into the motel. Room 15 where I haul the guppies. But the room is frigid and neither I nor the manager can get the heater going so, after ten minutes d’essai, she gives me the key to room 16. I feed the guppies a reduced diet of flakes, for there will be no bacterial action to digest their waste until I get to Bonavista, which could be mid-July at this rate.

Can anything else go wrong?

I walk across to the restaurant where the nice lady understands my French, and brings me a Thai salad. I deserve it. Then I walk back to the motel (be careful in places that boast “Petro Pass”, frequented by long-distance haulers as tired as am I) and a hot bath, and so to bed.