Wednesday, October 11, 2017

The map above was prepared last night. This morning is a slightly different story.

First thing is to open up the Traveller’s Guide 2017 and look in the index for likely place names – Heart’s Content, Heart’s Desire.

I make a list of B&B candidates, their name, price, and phone number. I check each place on the internet to make sure that they still exist and to confirm their location. Here as an example is Skipper Bens :-

Once I have found a location within easy driving range, I choose two candidates. I will phone around ten or eleven in the morning to book. Some time is sometimes needed to “set up the room”, and this time has to be fitted into the owner’s schedule.

The target location chosen (but not yet booked, for this is a task I am performing the night before), I begin expanding my route. In this case I reason that a three-hour drive is too short for me, even for a goof-off day.

Placentia/Argentia was the meeting place for Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. A place for me to visit.

Then I think that four hours is still too short a day for me. Maybe I’ll take in the peninsula too.

The last task is to take an image of my destination and load it to my smart phone for easy reference when I pull into town.

So it’s not Ho! for the open road. First stop is to Discount Autos. Derek is sitting in his truck. I greet him and thank him for his help yesterday. Next stop is the Walkham’s Gate Pub and Café because yesterday I forgot to leave a tip, so I order a coffee in a porcelain mug while I do some typing, I chat with some locals, one of whom gives me a Bonavista pin, then purchase a double-lined mug of coffee and leave what I hope is sufficient tip for both last night and this morning.

I found a shabby building, right next door to last night’s excellent B&B.

The view across highway 230.

Then indeed, Ho! for the open road. Well, the construction sights and bridge detours, at any rate.

I drive out of Bonavista by highway 235 (Yesterday I arrived by highway 230) and the ocean views are the best I have seem yet. The Atlantic Ocean has whitecaps breaking and playing and rushing towards the shores.

Breaking on the rocks.

At ten o’clock the temperature is 12c. And no one EVER says “Thank you, Chris, for bringing this warm weather with you”.

I know that I am fighting an urge to stop. To stop the car and sit by the ocean (or by the river, or by the sunset, ...) and I struggle to resist it. Two years from now I will return and savour the places, but on this trip I want to burn up the miles.

The breaking waves almost win me over. There are plenty of pull-off spots where I could park, but the trip so far has been good because I have managed to gauge the island’s size and get to see the different regions, so I plough on.

But the urge to stop is strong.

The weather IS good. Perfect. Yesterday I wore a long-sleeved skivvy and roasted. Today I am back to a short-sleeved golfing T-shirt, and even then I feel hot.

And yes, I have turned off the floor heater. When I enter one of the frequent 50kM/hr zones, I wind the window right down and enjoy the breeze and the air.

Around noon on the Trans-Canada Highway heading south, the puffy white galleons put on a show.

I think I have cracked the solution to some driving habits here. Mostly drivers obey the speed limits and keep to the right except during the passing maneuver. Some drivers though, sit behind me while several dotted-line sections arrive, with plenty of opportunity to pass, and on the third or fourth open stretch of dotted line, they pull out and overtake across the solid line, the dotted line having ended.

Why would you ignore several high-visibility stretches of dotted-line, and then risk everyone’s life and limb with a bad overtaking manoeuvre at the last few seconds?

Another thing I’ve noticed is drivers riding their brakes, slowing down along a solid line segment, and then speeding up when a dotted line appears. For heaven’s sakes, drive AT the speed limit while a solid line is in effect and slow down for the dotted line, to improve my chances of overtaking.

I suspect that many drivers in Newfoundland have been trained to tap the brake lights to let those behind know that you will slow down to assist the other driver in passing. That makes no sense to me when the line is solid.

But it might explain some drivers sitting behind me and ignoring the dotted lines. Are they waiting for me to tap my brake lights?

I maintain a constant speed and let the other driver maintain the control of THEIR vehicle. I make an exception when a truck is passing me. Once the truck has pulled out of my lane, I’ll let my speed drop away to increase the speed differential and improve the truck’s passing maneuver (during which time I am most vulnerable).

I was also taught to use body language, and move the car to the right-hand side of my lane as a visual signal to acknowledge the other driver’s intention to overtake.

I have worked out what the USB audio player is doing with my memory keys and am now listing to “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which drops into my lap the paraphrased quote “ Remove the adjectives and you are left with the facts ”. I weave this into my contention that we never receive information, we receive data. We then Process the Data to get Information. The slap-dash use of “information” in current affairs and technical podcasts is going to drive me crazy.

By one o’clock I am ready to jump off the Trans-Canada Highway and jump on to highway 100 which will take me to Placentia (think Roosevelt and Churchill and their meeting near Ship Harbour )

Just another view of the sun bouncing off the waters of a bay, or a lake.

Mystery Solved! I had wondered about the size of the letter-boxes. They are garbage bins. Every community I’ve visited or passed so far has had the bins close to the street.

Alongside the trailer you see a stack of logs. The resident has not yet cut them into one-foot chunks, but all over the island men have four logs in a cradle, and a chain-saw, and are cutting their wood supply into stove-sized pieces.

Here is a another stack. OK. They are not really logs, more like limbs that might have been trimmed from pine trees sawn down for timber for lumber and pulp mills.

The bridge to the island in Placentia looks like a Meccano set bridge that has melted at the footings. It is an awesome structure, not terribly big, but a gleaming silver-white.

Nearby I park on a plot of land that has been reclaimed from the bay by a coffer-dam of linked piles.

I re-cross the bridge to visit the café I had passed, but closer inspection shows the café to be closed for the season. Sigh.

And here I am in my night’s rest in Eastern Corner, right on the shores of a bay with the setting sun.

I eat out at the restaurant, squid rings and fish cakes (fish, potato, onion and Newfoundland herbs) and find a problem posed by the setting sun.

I know that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and that its rays are as good as parallel when they reach The Earth.

You’ve seen sunsets like this, the sun behind the clouds, and the rays spreading out at angles. I have marked the sun and three of the rays. The ray at the eleven o’clock position is particularly strong and radiating upwards. Two other rays make an angle of about ten degrees with the horizon.

I realize that I would have trouble explaining this apparent closeness of The Sun, the radiating rays suggest that The Sun is not so far away after all, just beyond the clouds, probably.

How would you explain this apparent radiation of parallel rays to a ten-year old?

Search