Category Archives: Eric Hall

Thursday 3rd September 2015 – I HAVE FINALLY ABANDONED …

… my quest for a slide-in camper.

This is how I shall be spending a good deal of the remainder of my stay here in Canada – in a tent. The cost of the tent, the mat, the sleeping bag and the fees for the campsite for tonight in the hills of Vermont came in total to less than the cost of a night’s stay in that motel at Auburn the other night. Based on the average of $70 for a reasonable motel and $30 for a campsite, I’ll get my money back in two nights. It’s not quite the camp camp of 2007 and 2008, but it’s good enough.

But it’s only going to be like this for a week or so because I have found a plan C and I’ve put that into effect, based on the plan that what I want will be made and installed on my truck in just 6 days’ time (unexpected delays excepted) and cost me just $1650 installed on the truck and out of the door, taxes included.

This afternoon I found a manufacturer of truck caps in Burlington, Vermont, and they will make me a fibreglass camper back truck cap specially designed for living in, complete with anti-condensation, heat and noise insulation. There’s one window on the passenger side, a sliding window that opens as you like it, and also a sliding window at the front through which you can feed your electrical cables and the like.

What has made me take this step was that I finally found a place with a slide-in camper that would have fitted on Strider. And at $11600 it would have been a good deal. But it wasn’t a pop-up and so the centre of gravity would be all wrong. They could have supplied a pop-up camper if I could wait until Spring, or also a very mini slide-in camper even smaller than a standard slide-in, and that price was unbeatable at $6100

But then comes the rub.

On top of this there’s sales tax. Not quite the 20% VAT but sales tax all the same. And then there’s the fittings and electrics. All in all, we were talking $9500 on the road – $3400 over the list price. And that makes me feel that the deal that I was offered by Harveys RV (a 2004 model for $2750 fastened on the truck and out of the gate) was a pure red herring.

But reviewing weights, fuel consumption and all kinds of things like that, a slide-in camper is not the way to go. With a fibreglass truck cap, I can sleep in that when I’m out in the wilderness, and camp in the tent when I’m near a camp site and the weather permits.

And so there we are.

On the subject of motels, this is my room from last night.

The motel is another one which is these days run by Indians (those Indians, not “those” Indians) but it’s clear from the room that its previous owners must have had some very unusual and interesting ideas about their establishment. I did notice somewhere a reference to the “Garden Room” and so I suppose that I must have been in the “Railway Room”.

As for the reference to the “Railway Room”, there’s a good reason for this.

This area was quite an important railway centre at one time (long long ago), being a junction of two major railway lines, one of which was the famous railway line that connected Montreal to the sea coast in the days before icebreakers could keep the port of Montreal free of ice in winter.

Over there where the kiddies’ park is today was formerly the site of a huge roundhouse with tracks for about 15 or so locomotives and a repair and maintenance depot.

Apart from that, we still have a railway station, which is now a gift and novelty shop (and not connected at all to the railway), and also the remains of the platforms and some rails still in situ.

I was half-expecting to find an old steam locomotive on a plinth somewhere but we have to be content with an old disaffected caboose, which everyone knows is a baby Indian. Although that’s not quite true. If a female Indian is a squaw, then a baby Indian is a squawker.

Another thing for which this place is famous is its double-decker bridge. The railway passed over here and over the Connecticut River at something of a height, whereas the road was on a lower level, having wound its way down the banks a little way.

And so when the railway was built, they built a double-decker bridge with the railway above and the road below. I had a good wander around and came across this bridge, and it is quite a good candidate for my bridge, I reckon, although the road bed is no longer there.

I hot the road and headed further north on my way to my final New Hampshire destination but I didn’t go very far before shuddering to a halt again. I had been following a railway line for a while and coming around a bend in the road just outside East Barnet, I came across this extraordinary sight.

There was some kind of circular railway line loop and it was full of old wagons in all kinds of condition, a couple of derelict diesel shunters, but nothing quite as astonishing as the very rusty remains of this steam locomotive.

There are no driving wheels on it so that I can’t say what it is, but it has two four-wheel bogies, one front and one rear and from the distance that I took this photo, I couldn’t tell if they were the original ones.

I would ordinarily have gone to make further enquiries but there were signs all over the place “Keep Out” – “Strictly No Trespassing” and the like and knowing how trigger-happy these paranoid and frightened Americans are these days, the days when you could knock on the door of the average American and engage them in casual conversation are long-gone and the USA is turning into a very unpleasant place.

But abandoning yet another really good rant for the moment, I’ve visited half a dozen more RV dealers, met some friendly and helpful people and yet more unfriendly and unhelpful ones, and some more completely useless salespersons who were completely uninterested in their work.

And hence my decision, which is probably the wrong one and one that I shall come to regret in due course, But I’ve made it and that’s that.

And now that I’ve bought a tent, we’ve had the first rain for about a fortnight.

-2

Wednesday 2nd September 2015 – MORE OF THE JIMMY RUFFINS

You’ve all seen this bridge before. It’s the Justice Harlan Fiske Bridge and it straddles the border between New Hampshire and Vermont near the town of Brattleboro.

I passed this way before in September 2014 and here I am again. This is how far I’ve travelled this morning, and I’m a long way from finishing my journey.

I was given a hot tip about a place down here called “Truck Camper World” in West Chesterfield – the largest selection of slide-in truck campers anywhere in New England. And I’ve driven 140 miles to come here through some of the hottest temperatures that I’ve encountered, and the place is closed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … people complain about a recession, and yet they just don’t want to do business.

Not only that, From what I could see of the collection of about 60 truck campers here, there isn’t one that would fit on Strider.

But although it’s been a totally fruitless (and expensive) day, it’s not been entirely wasted. When I was in Newfoundland last year I saw a truck cap that had “camper conversion” written all over it and I reckoned that I could make a neat little camper out of that. And as it so happens, the main agents in New England for the manufacturer were right next door to last night’s motel. Delivery time is 2 weeks apparently, and they are not as expensive as I was expecting them to be.

The problem with this though it that it ties up the pick-up. With a slide-in camper, it’ll slide out again so that you can use the pick-up for other things. With this set-up, you can’t. But how important is that likely to be?

There is another option, but that’s going to work out to be very expensive. That is to go back to somewhere that I visited yesterday who were the agents for a cheap constructor, and have one built for next spring.

Not only that, on one slide-in that I saw, there was a ticket for NATCOA – the North American Truck Camper Owners Association. They have a “classified ads” section on their website and so I’ve joined the club and placed an “wanted” advert.

But my drive out was not without excitement and interest. Once I had driven into the mountain the views were totally stunning.

While this one, not too far after the town of Peterboro, is not the best of the views, it’s the only one that would really lend itself to any kind of photographic exposure. You’ll just have to come to visit this area for yourself.

And I’m not at all sure of what this place might be.

Well, I am. It’s a banqueting and conference centre at the roadside. But never mind that for a moment – I’m far more interested in what it might have been. It looks like a Norman church tower with Tudor extensions and so it was probably the home of an eccentric American millionaire industrialist with delusions of grandeur, although I’m probably completely wrong about that.

But after my disappointments of today I headed north up Highway 195 seeing as how I was in the vicinity and there are a couple of places right at the top of New Hampshire and Vermont. And here I had a load of fun.

The speed limit on I95 is 65mph, which is about 105kph, and which is what I had Strider’s cruise control fixed to. Some Quebecois lorry driver had his speed limiter set at about 106kph so he was faster than me (by 1kph) and so he went to overtake me. That’s fine in a downhill bit, although he’ll take 10 minutes to pass me, but going uphill, I have the legs on him as his weight and gear-changing slows him down. And so for about half an hour this clown was out there blocking the outside lane, determined to pass me, much to the annoyance of everyone else on the Highway (it’s a two-lane road).

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … he finally made it past, just as we hit an uphill section. And he cut right in, nearly taking the bonnet off Strider, and then slowed dramatically. And there was nothing that I could do about that as a whole stream of cars was passing in the outside lane.

But not to be outdone. Strider can move when he has to and so in a fit of bad humour I made it back in front of the lorry, boxed him in with all of the traffic in the outside lane, and simply brought him to a standstill. And then I cleared off. He’ll be the rest of the night trying to get started again and dragging his load up that hill.

But I wasn’t standing for any of that nonsense. I could have been killed by that moron had my reactions been slower

So having calmed down (a little) I’m now in a motel in the town of Wells River on the border between New Hampshire and Vermont.

It’s a beautiful little place, even though it’s a tourist trap and everything (including the motel and the restaurant) is overpriced, but it does have several claims to fame, the most important of which is that at the last demographic survey there were 100 females for every 77.8 males.

This kind of thing is important to me because I can still chase after the women at my age, even if I can’t remember why.

-4

Tuesday 1st September 2015 – WE ALMOST HAD A WHOLE DAY …

… without any photographs. But I did manage a couple in the end.

This is the coast of Massachusetts at a town called Beverley, and the fact that I am here shows you how far I’ve travelled.

And all to no avail either. I’ve seen one Palomino Bronco 600 in a dealer’s, but it was already sold and had been sold for a week. Mind you, he does sell new stock and he has one coming in next week. But not a Bronco – another make. Brand-new and I’ve seen second-hand Broncos sold for more than a new one of this other make would cost.

Trouble is though that it’s not a folding variety. And that’s not much good to me. The wind resistance is too much on a truck with a narrow track and the weight distribution is all wrong too. A high wind or a bumpy road and that will be on its side in seconds.

I’ve seen something else that might have been of interest and made me question whether or not I had made the right decision in buying Strider. I’ve seen for sale a Chrysler Astro or something like that – a seven-seat luxury minibus rather like the VW microbus, and that was a 4×4 too. Stripping that out to make an even better camper than the Dodge Grand Caravan would have been an afternoon’s work, but at $3200 for a 1994 vehicle, even low mileage, is living in the realms of fantasy.

That was on sale at a dealer’s – the Seacoast RV at Saco in Maine, and I do have to say that if I were ever to see any customer service that was worse than that which I received here, I would be horrified. Totally disinterested in the customer, to the extent that “there’s a customer here in reception to see you but on the way in, will you go and check over this caravan that has just arrived?” And when he did turn up and I asked about slide-in campers, I received a curt “no” and that was the discussion over.

Contrast that treatment with other places where at least the staff has tried to be helpful, and I’ve had coffee and bottles of ice-cold water as well as friendly chats and assistance. But not a slide-in camper for the Ranger.

And so all of this has made me realise thatit’s time to put Plan B into action. Starting tomorrow I’ll be out looking for a truck cap – a high-capacity one, and I’m also going to pick up a tent and sleeping bag. What I had to pay for last night’s motel at Auburn, comfortable though it was, was outrageous and I could have been with my rent and sleeping bag on a campsite for half the price. This is all getting completely out of hand.

At least tonight’s motel is much more reasonable, even if I did have to travel about an hour to find it (I declined the offer to stay at the Hampton Inn for reasons that only those born within the sound of Bow Bells will know).

It’s another motel run by a family from the Middle East, who seem to be taking over all of the motels on the east coast as I have said before. Pretty basic, 1970s style yet again, but with kitchenette and diner and the price a very modest $64:00. No complaints from me.

But I am realising (isn’t hindsight wonderful?) that I’ve done this trip backwards. I should have gone to Montreal first, picked up some of my stuff and bought a tent and started from the top of the USA and worked down. That would have been much more sensible, although maybe not as practical.

-1

Monday 31st August 2015 – BANE OF BRITAIN DOES IT AGAIN!

With having arrived early at my motel yesterday, I knuckled down to have a big washing session of all of my undies. And having done that, I hung them out to dry.

And then I drove away from my nice friendly motel this morning, and left them all behind. Ahhh well!

And so we’ve spent all day today having a major touch of the Jimmy Ruffins. Almost everywhere that I’ve been today, I can safely say that “I’ve passed this way before”. Whether it was yesterday, whether it was in 2014 when I was driving from Albany to Clinton, or whether it was in 2013 when I was on my way from Presque Ile to the Hudson Valley.

In fact, regular readers of this rubbish will remember this place. It’s the Oxford Plains speedway and I stopped here for lunch back in 2013, witnessing a training session of racing saloon cars.

And this was also where I stopped for lunch today, unfortunately without the accompaniment. And it was a late lunch too – 16:30 in fact – today. And that’s because I was really busy too.

I’ve visited a pile of RV dealers, I’ve met some really nice and helpful people (and a few people who just couldn’t care less, which just goes to underline that fact that customer service in the USA seems to be going backwards, not forwards, in many places) and yet I’ve not found a single slide-in camper to fit the Ranger. Plan B is looking more-and-more likely as time draws closer.

But my day has not been without its interesting moments. Here lying on the grass verge at the side of a forest road is this really beautiful Packard saloon of the 1940s.

It’s surprisingly complete too. The radiator and grille are missing and one or two other small things are no longer there, but all of the rest is still there, including the beautiful interior. This would be a fairly simple restoration project and wouldn’t take up too much time to put right

And near the town of Livermore we encountered some major road works where a bridge seems to have collapsed.

It’s not the major road works that were the most interesting part of this, but the fact that the road surface is just like Upper Labrador, and that brought back a few memories.

We had some excitement too about half a mile further on down the road. There was a team of stop-go-board people at another part of the roadwork, and they succeeded in creating a log-jam of traffic as they managed at one point to back up the traffic from the traffic lights right into their roadworks, so that nothing at all could move and we were stuck there for ages while they tried to sort everyone out.

There’s also a chain of supermarkets in this area, called Hannafords. Here I went for some shopping this afternoon and not only do they have the best bread that I have encountered on my travels, they had a selection of vegan food that was second-to-none.

From this point of view, North America is looking up. You may remember that even Dysarts, the big truck stop and transport café at Bangor, now has vegan and vegetarian options. Mind you, having seen the vegan food on offer in other countries and how much more choice and variety is available these days, it’s probably the fact that it’s France that is falling farther and farther behind. France really needs to get its act together if it’s to catch up with the rest of the world in the matter of vegetarian and vegan food.

Sunday 30th August 2015 – I HAVE HAD THE WORST …

… night’s sleep that I have had for years. Unfortunately, it seems that Ford’s designers went astray when designing the Ford Ranger and he is not meant at all for sleeping in. For a start, the seat doesn’t fold back flat, and that simple little thing would have made a whole world of difference.

I can hardly say that I was tossing and turning because there wasn’t the space for that, but no matter what position I chose, I just couldn’t get comfortable and everything was in the wrong place. This is quite a disappointment, but you live and learn, I suppose.

I had breakfast at Dysarts, in keeping with my policy of being financially grateful to everyone who helps me out on my travels – hash browns, toast, jam, coffee and orange juice, and then I hit the highway.

My drive today has taken me through some really beautiful countryside, but I haven’t had the time to stop and admire it as I’ve been tracking down RV sales yards today.

I’ve managed to do four but as you might expect with it being a Sunday, everywhere is closed. Consequently when I found a really cheap motel right in the centre of my route I holed up here for the rest of the afternoon. There’s no point going much further on and wasting fuel only to find that I have to come back by here anyway tomorrow.

The motel is called “The Whispering Pines” and it’s at Skowhegan. It’s run by a very friendly old couple and is like a timewarp, stuck in the 1970s. Mind you, the prices are also stuck in the same timewarp and that suits me fine. I don’t need anything more than this when I’m on my travels. A good shower, an internet connection and a comfortable bed.

The plus side is that there is a fridge, so everything has gone into there until morning, and they also have ice-box facilities so I’ve filled a couple of bottles with water and I’m freezing them off too, to use as cool packs.

Strawberry Moose met a friend today too.

In Skowhegan there’s a huge ice-cream parlour with about 1,000 varieties of ice-cream so seeing as it was a gorgeous day, I went for a look to see what they could do for me. There wasn’t much in the way of ice-cream but they had several varieties of dairy-free smoothies.

They had a crazy golf course there too so I relaxed with my smoothie watching the antics of the performers on the course, while His Nibs went to chat to his cousin for an informal family reunion.

Later that night I found a pizza place and ordered a mushroom, black olive and onion pizza. They had two sizes, small and large, so I asked for a large, and no wonder I had a look of surprise with my three slices of vegan cheese. The “large” was 16 inches, so I reckon that it’s pizza for breakfast and lunch too.

Back here I watched a film but I don’t feel much like it. I had a bad night and it’s been a long hot day and I’m going to fll asleep in a min ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Saturday 29th August 2015 – I’M NOT DOING VERY WELL …

… trying to find a slide-in camper back for Strider, but I’m doing my best and having some dreadful luck.

Having had one of the best night’s sleeps for quite a long while I was up and about ready and eager to go at all of … errr … 05:30 this morning. It just goes to show you the benefit of an early night and a good bed.

Mind you, I might have been ready to go, but I doubt if anyone else would have been, and so I spent a good couple of hours catching up on stuff on the computer and on the internet and also made a list, in distance order, of places that I need to go to in order to find out about campers.

By 09:00 I was ready for the off and first stop was Oakfield for some fuel and breakfast. Strider’s fuel consumption has improved a little too, which is good news.

Breakfast, including coffee, came to $3:07 but seeing as I had no loose change, I offered $4:00. “I just love your accent!” said the woman on the checkouts, passing me back $1:00. “No need to load up your pockets with change”. It’s the first place that I’ve ever been to where the staff have tipped the customers.

The RV place at Medway told me more about this camper that they have on offer. It’s 1997, been sitting on a park site for God knows how long and they want $3,000 for it. And there are no accessories with it. We arranged an appointment for “after 16:00” to go to see it, but I shudder to think what it must be like.

I drove on down to Bangor as there were three places to visit there. One of them had nothing, and seemed quite uninterested about the situation (so much for US business techniques). The second one, Harveys RVs, still had listed in the inventory the one that I was originally offered, but which had been sold from underneath me. I reminded the salesman that it was still up there on the list, “but it’s sold” said the salesman. “But we have a couple of new ones you can look at”. Now I understand the sales technique. Quite simply, it seems to be to “get people onto the lot at any price”.

The third one, which I visited on spec, had something extremely interesting and we spent an hour or so going over it. And I would have driven away with it too but when we came to measure up, it was 3 inches too wide and about a foot too long. That was definitely a major disappointment to me. Mind you, they did have a brand-new one that would have fitted on a pick-up smaller than mine and which weighed about half of what any other would weigh, but it wasn’t a fold-down top and in any case $20,000 is much more than what I want to pay.

Still, we had a really good chat for ages, helped no doubt that I was the first person in North America to recognise the photos of his Pride And Joy and correctly identify it as a Mercedes 190 Ponton. This kind of thing helps to break the ice at parties.

Home Depot came up trumps yet again. I need a new Ryobi plus one circular saw (which would have cost me $69:00) but they had a starter kit of saw, basic drill, charger and lithium battery at just $79:00. And a pack of two lithium batteries came to just $49:00. Things are definitely looking up in North America from that point of view.

All the way back to Millinocket afterwards to find this camp site and I must have driven around every dirt track and mountain trail in the whole of Upper Maine but with no success as far as this camper went. This was something of a wasted journey and I was quite annoyed about that. The road was exciting though and didn’t ‘arf rattle my teeth, but I can see the benefit of decent all-weather tyres on a 4×4, instead of high-speed road tyres on a town car, when driving on dirt tracks.

So I headed south on Highway 11 back to Bangor, on one of the nicest roads that I have ever driven. A new, refurbished black-top with scenic views, lakes, and lovely bends and you’ve no idea how much Strider loved the trip.

I had the speed limiter set to 55mph all the way down here and it really was an enjoyable drive, but Strider has a tendency to wander a little around the road, I’ve noticed. I’ll have to have a look at the dampers – maybe one or two need changing perhaps which is hardly surprising giving the battering he’s just had.

Brownville in Maine came up trumps, and for several reasons too – not the least of which being this gorgeous steel girder bridge across the river. It could do with a coat of paint of course, as well as all of the power lines that surround it pulled down so that I can have a decent shot of it, but I still think that it’s quite good nevertheless.

And where I had stopped to take the photo was on the corner of “Railroad Street” with an old sign directing me to the “railroad station”. What more can any man desire?

There’s quite an important railway junction here, with three lines merging in a triangular junction. I did notice a building that might have been a railway station but it was festooned with US flags and “Private Property” signs – clearly the home of Republicans, and so I wasn’t going to risk a bullet in the back of my neck by photographing it, such is the paranoia and the fear gripping most Americans these days.

But from the other side of the tracks, braving the “private property” and “no trespassing signs”, I could take a photo of the busy goods yard and tell you that the station is on the other side behind the railway wagons.

Upper Maine is noted for its lumber industry and there is ample evidence of that all over the place, especially here at Pleasant River where there is the biggest pile of timber that I have ever seen. It looks much more impressive in real life than it does on film.

In the foreground is the finished product – wood for the building industry all cut and planed, and shrink-wrapped to keep out the damp and for ease of shipping. All of this of course might explain the busy railway goods yard at Brownville Junction just up the road.

There were lots more things to see too but the light had gone by now and it was going dark. I’ll have to come back here another time.

But I had noticed that I hadn’t seen a single motel all along this road and so I headed for Bangor. And by the time that I arrived at Bangor in the pitch black, I still hadn’t either.

As for a motel, a cheap cat-house wanted $99:00 for a room so we can forget that, and so I headed to Dysart’s truck stop for tea. And much to my astonishment, Dysarts now has vegetarian and vegan options on the menu.

They also had nice, thick artisan-type blankets at $9:99 and if I’m going to end up sleeping some nights in Strider, there’s no time like the present to make a start. It beats $99:00 in a cheap motel.

Friday 28th August 2015 – HERE’S STRIDER …

… all loaded up with a huge domestic fridge and a big cooker, and in a few minutes we are off to Sharp’s, the metal place just outside Woodstock.

I’m taking my leave of Darren, Rachel and family and heading off into the hills. I mean – I’ve been here 10 days and that’s not like me at all to put down roots like this.

At Sharps, there was nearly a lot more metal hauled into the yard as I failed to see a dark purple car against the dark vegetation background as I pulled out to go across the road. That was rather embarrassing, to say the least, especially as I had something of an audience watching me.

Anyway, having done that, I went down the road and to the border with Great Satan at Houlton. Crossing into the USA there took ages with the queue of traffic (but nothing like what it took to get into Canada the other week) and just for a change, every single one of the border guards was friendly, cheerful and helpful. If all border crossings could be like this one, travelling would be a lot less stressful.

However, just to prove that little of the underlying spirit of the USA has changed very little, while I was there, four people were chosen from the queue to receive closer attention

me – with a foreign passport
a black guy
a long-haired hippy-type
an oriental family

Still the same old stereotypes, so it seems. But as I said, even though I was selected for closer attention, it wasn’t a stressful experience by any means – just a friendly chat.

In Houlton, I struck lucky yet again at Marden’s and it made me wish that I hadn’t spent that monay at Canadian Tire the other day because they had everything that I needed there and at half the price too. But this is the thing with Marden’s – their stock is very much of the moment. It’s all bankruptcy, liquidations, fire sale stuff and it comes and goes. You can’t ever rely on them for having anything.

I fuelled up Strider as well, and I’ve come to the conclusion that his fuel consumption isn’t as bad as I was fearing. I let him run quite empty, to a rather depressing 425kms (not enough for Labrador) but to refill, it took 15.4 US gallons – about 55 litres. It’s still not very good, but at least I know what to expect.

Consequently, at the Walmart at Presque Ile, where I went next, I picked up a second 20-litre fuel container, just to be on the safe side.

And here, I struck lucky too. 2-tonne trolley jacks on sale at just $18:86. Anyone who has tried to jack up a vehicle on a dirt road with a sill jack (as we did in 2012 out in northern Quebec) will know the value of having decent tools and equipment for tyre changing. I could have done that job in 20 minutes, not three hours, with decent equipment.

Back on the road again, I didn’t go far. Just as far as Bridgewater in fact

This is a 1919 Mack fire truck, “used” here in Maine at a fire depot until 1960. Then it was converted to a tow truck but was never used and was simply laid up, until the present owner acquired it.

And I said “used” in inverted commas, because it’s done a verified 1900 miles since new.

Never mind shaft drive, this is chain-drive – in fact twin chain drive – as you can see.

It’s a 4-cylinder engine, displacing 600 cubic inches, and has a belt-drive clutch, which is bound to make for exciting motoring on the modern highway. And it does run too – in fact the owner takes it out to park it on the verge every morning and then brings it back inside at night.

You all know where this is though – it’s at the place where they have the scrap Rolls-Royce that has featured on these pages in the past. And he also has a 1925 Dodge Brothers (NOT a Dodge) convertible, a 1924 Renault, a 1910 Panhard-Levassor (and we spent ages discussing the merits and otherwise of sleeve-valve engines) and, would you believe, a Kawasaki motorbike with an Isuzu 4-cylinder 1700cc diesel engine fitted.

I couldn’t take a photo of it because they were still “work in progress”, but I’ll be back here next year to see how he’s getting on.

Not I’m in a motel just off the highway going south. I’ve had a shower, washed my clothes, and had beans and chips for tea. Now I’m ready for anything.

Thursday 27th August 2015 – WHAT A STORM!

Totally terrific. Lightning, thunder and the most astonishing rain that fell in just 10 minutes. And the worst thing about that is that I had left Strider’s drivers-side window open and so at least on the way home I washed my underwear.

I had a disturbed night, with something of a record of having to leave my bed – and I blame this half-litre of thirst-quenching drink that I had had with my tea. And I also slept through the alarm clocks too and it was 08:30 when I finally rose from my stinking pit

I’ve said … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that there was an old Canadian Pacific railway line that came up to Centreville from Woodstock and I’ve been following its path in a desultory kind of fashion.

There’s a road near here called Avondale Station Road and I’ve had a wander down there on a couple of occasions looking for the station site without success.

But having tracked down the route using aerial photographs I’m pretty convinced that this is the track bed of the railway, although the station site is well-overgrown – to such en extent that it’s not clear on which side of the road it would have been.

From here I headed off to Woodstock again and ended up having to go on a marathon detour almost to the USA border due to roadworks. And I met my bus from the other night too while I was on my travels around.

I ended up at Walmart looking for clothes and some guy in a wheelchair thought that it was fun to get in my way whenever I was trying to pick something up. Eventually I managed to reach something, and he made a remark like “Why didn’t you ask me to move?”
“Because I used to be married – I’m used to people being difficult”.

But I did have another piece of good luck in Walmart. A small lightweight 1/4 – 3/8 drive socket set at $9:00. This toolkit is building up slowly.

At Tim Horrton’s we were once again surrounded by Miltonists. About 10 staff on duty, one of whom was at the drive-in, another of whom was at the counter, a third was making wraps and as for the rest, “they also serve who stand and wait”.

After my coffee I went round to see Zoe’s shop and for a chat to see how she was doing. She could be doing better of course, but it’s hard to tell a 21 year-old about your 40-odd years of sometimes-bitter experience. They would much rather make their own mistakes. And then round to Sharp’s to see if they would take the scrap metal that we have (they will).

I went back to Centreville along the road on the eastern side of the Saint John River.

It’s not a road that I travel very often and so I don’t know all of the good views, but here’s a stunning viewpoint from a few miles south of Hartland. We can see the Saint John River of course, and in the background we have the wind farm up on Mars Hill in Maine, USA (my plot of land is to the right of the hill).

In the centre of the photo is the bridge that took Trans-Canada Highway version 2 (or is it 3?) over the river, but in front of this you’ll be able to make out the world’s longest covered bridge at Hartland.

My way back to Rachel’s took me over the river and back via Lakeville where there’s a car body repair shop. He always has some interesting stuff there but as he’s one of the best body repairers in the region his output is far too good to be suitable for these pages.

But there are always exceptions to this, such as this absolutely wonderful Mack Thermodyne B61 of the early 1950s.

It’s been stood for ages but he’s managed to make it go, however the water pump has failed. He says that it’s up to the owner to source one, and he wishes him good luck. The plan, I imagine, is that once it’s running he’ll restore it, and I’ll love to see it when it’s finished.

Hannah was supposed to be ringing me up to give her a hand to mow the lawn but she never did, and so I popped by to see how she was doing. But she had done it all on her own without my help and now she and her friend Journee were making a beer-pong table for her party tomorrow night. I went on to the shop and waited for closing time.

And this was when the storm hit.

Later in the evening Darren and I loaded up Strider with a huge fridge and a big stove. On my way round to Great Satan I’ll be heaving them out at Sharp’s.

Wednesday 26th August 2015 – I HAVEN’T MENTIONED …

… the rain as yet. But every morning this week, at about 06:00, we’ve had a rainstorm for about half an hour, and then it’s gone off on its way. This morning though, it loitered around for most of the morning and at times it was quite wet.

After breakfast I went up to the shop for a while but then Strawberry Moose, Strider and I set off out to Woodstock, and by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong, so it was pretty crowded inside Strider.

The junk shop came up with nothing at all – no books or CDs – and I had to stop at Zoe’s shop to pick up her waste bin that was rolling around the car park, and then for a coffee at Tim Horton’s.

After lunch I went across the road to the County Planning Department to discuss my plans for Mars Hill Road. My friend Gerrit has moved on but the new guy was just as helpful and doesn’t see a problem. He gave me a great deal of useful tips and hints that should make the project go easier.

And there’s good news on this front too. 4 or 5 years ago, connection to New Brunswick Power for electricity was compulsory for a new-build, but today, it’s not. You have to submit plans and they are considered on their merits. If you have 110-volt electricity, it needs to be certified but if you have a 12-volt DC system with an inverter, you need a certificate for the inverter and an electrician’s certificate for the 110-volt system that you have installed from the inverter onwards. As for a DC circuit, he’s never encountered one, so he suggests just submit it and see what happens. But solar panels and wind turbines developing 12-volt is quite a common thing these days.

They are even encountering people who wish to live with no electricity at all. 5 years ago, that wouldn’t be tolerated (people equated lack of electricity with poor quality of life) but now, it’s not uncommon to receive applications where the details of electricity installations are described as “none”.

As for rainwater harvesting, he doesn’t see any problem at all with that, but a certified sewage disposal system is an essential and there is no way around it.

But to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’m giving serious consideration to going towards a 48-volt system with 12-volt lighting and 110 volt power.

At the organic shop across the road, the girl who runs it was very helpful. There are apparently three co-ops in the area where vegetarians and vegans combine every two months to place bulk orders for their supplies and she gave me their addresses.

And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, Sobey’s has greatly increased its supply of vegetarian and vegan food and we now have several different varieties of vegan cheese, although vegan ice-cream is only available next door at the Atlantic Superstore.

In other worlds, even in fairly-rural Canada, things are looking very much up.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, I hit the jackpot at Canadian Tire. There’s a clearance sale going on there, and a big reinforced plastic tool box, a Flexible 3/8 drive ratchet with spark plug sockets and extensions, a big set of wobble extensions, two big sets of 1/2 impact sockets (AF and metric), a converter from 3/8-drive to 1/2-drive and one or two other bits and pieces – all of that came to just over $100 – or £50:00. Add that to the tools that I have already that I need to pick up from my box at Montreal and I now have enough for almost anything. And if I can make it to Marden’s in Presque Ile and see what they have too, I might well end up with a very decent tool kit. You can’t have too much of this.

So it was hardly surprising that I didn’t do all that I had intended to do today. It was 19:00 by the time that I returned and then after supper I helped Darren repair and service the lawn-mowing tractor (which is bigger than my Kubota) and we overhauled a fridge that was in the basement.

But I have made a decision – and that is that on Friday early morning, I’m moving on. I’m becoming far too comfortable here. I’ll be trying to Enter the Dragon and go southwards through the forest to the Hudson valley then back up to Montreal for my stuff.

Tuesday 25th August 2015 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that the address of my little kingdom out on Mars Hill Road has now been approved by Canada Post and I now have a Canadian postal code.

The bad news is that it’s a different one to the one that I’ve already given out to everyone.

And so that’s going to complicate things even more when I give one lot of information to one group of people and another lot to others. But there again, if life were so easy and uncomplicated, no-one would be in too much of a hurry to leave it. In any case, it’s hardly my fault that it took Service New Brunswick almost 4 years to allocate the property address.

As for the postal code, the details had been sitting in the Centreville Post Office and they had somehow overlooked to ‘phone me back, but with Rachel needing a pile of stamps, it seemed like a good opportunity to go down there and chivvy them up a little.

More good news is that I have a Community Mail Box for my post, but the bad news is that it’s not inside the Post Office itself (that’s payable) but in a battery of boxes at the side of the road on the main drag up near my land. I can picture a soggy mass of animal-chewed papier-maché when I go back there after 10 months away.

I’ve also been running errands today. A pile of stuff for the shop has been delivered to different addresses and needed to be picked up, and what’s the point of having a pick-up if you don’t put it to good use? It gave me a chance to go to the food store and stock up with goodies.

And I needed to as well, for my little voyage during the night had left me starving. I’d started off in Liechtenstein This all started off with me making a visit to the barracks of the Liechtenstein Army and there were all kinds of goings-on going on in there that ended up completely out of hand and which led to me making a formal complaint to the commanding officer.

From there Liz and I were travelling somewhere and we had a young girl with us. We stopped somewhere for a coffee and we were joined at our table by another couple who were intrigued to find out what was going on. Liz and I were discussing the radio programmes and planning on making a few changes – I was going to introduce some kind of discussion about French football and Liz would include a little craft section. Then Liz got up to go somewhere and this girl went with her, and I noticed that she was wearing my boots.

This left me with rather cold feet, I can tell you.

This afternoon Darren took Strider for a ride. He reckons that the little misfire that I’ve been noticing isn’t a misfire at all. He thinks that it’s either a flat spot on the tyre or a warped brake drum. And bearing in mind the high fuel consumption, my money is on the brake drum.

This evening Darren and I made major plans to have a mega-tidy-up before I get on my way elsewhere and that seems to be our project for tomorrow night. I’ll go down to the scrapyard at Woodstock and see what they will take.

But the high spot of yesterday was the very lengthy discussion that Darren and I had about economy, false economy, and all kinds of things that young people will find useful a little later in life. And Amber was sitting there by the side of us. So I turned round to her and said “have you understood all of that, Amber?”

To which Amber replied “what?”

-1

Monday 24th August 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… during the night. Although I wasn’t really.

In fact I was back home again watching this huge crocodile of children stream down the track at the back of my house, all singing and being happy. meantime there was someone who had come to visit me, someone official, and I’d sent him away with a flea in his ear. However he was loitering around on the public pathway between my barn and my house and was urinating up the wall of my well so I dashed out there and gave him a piece of my mind (not that I have much to spare). Meantime, all the kids were streaming back up the other side, on the pathway in front of my house.

From here, I was invited to take part in a very low budget horror film, about being the brother of a young girl who, at full moon, turned into a terrifying flesh-tearing zombie with huge claws. We had to build a rocket and time machine so that we could take her to the future before she transformed again, where treatment would be available Anyway we built it and set off – and there were quite a few others like us in there. We just made it away on time but we were held up at a railway level crossing in Crewe – a real cliff-hanger. The producer/director said that we would have to finish the film next week but one of the actors couldn’t make it so we needed to write him out of the play. We planned to stage a crash at the level crossing and set him on fire so as to write him out, so I had to go off and look for the petrol which had been left behind in a dump at Edleston Road near where Woottons used to be. And it amazed me – here we were in Crewe and we had little dumps of stores all over the place and no-one had given a single thought about them being looted by the inhabitants.

After breakfast we all went up to the shop and – surprise surprise – I started to tidy up the place there a little. As you know, my adventures with tidying up are legendary, mostly o account of when I do ever do any the place always seems to end up worse than it did before. This time however, you could see a difference.

And it also inspired one or two others to do some too, and that always helps. The place could do with it, I reckon. And I would love to give it a total reorganisation too, although that’s never ever likely to happen.

Later on, I went out and about. First stop was to the insurance to have the details of Strider’s new licence plate recorded. That needs to be up to date. And from there I went off to the Dollar Store to see if I could find some headphones for the Samsung phone, but with no luck there.

At Service New Brunswick I had a chat about the postal code for my property. It seems that although Service New Brunswick is responsible for the address, it’s Canada Post that is responsible for the postal codes – a typical Government-organised confusion. And so that was my next port-of-call, althugh not before finding out where I can take these two big fridges around here. Surprise as it might be, there are no Government-organised recycling centres here in this part of the world, no public rubbish dump service other than the weekly waste collection. The only answer is to hire a skip, and that costs $400:00. No wonder there’s all kinds of stuff all over the place.

From there I went off to the Post Office and chatted to them. It seems that I’m also allowed a public mail box too. However the manager of the Post Office wasn’t there so I couldn’t sort that out on the spot.they will call me back

Darren and Hannah came back from Ohio this afternoon and so we unloaded all of the stuff out of the trailer (they had been gone for 12 days) and spent the rest of the day catching up on things.

And the woman from the Post Office didn’t phone me back, but then, I wasn’t really expecting it.

Sunday 23rd August 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

And that applies even in Canada. No alarm calls over here on a Sunday so I could have a decent lie in. And even when I awoke, there was no rush as nothing starts here much before 11:00

The Taylor Breakfast Brunches are legendary and this was another one of those. No-one leaves the table hungry after that.

This afternoon, I finished off emptying out the big freezer that had developed a problem. Most of the remaining stuff was stowed into the other freezer and what was left didn’t really matter too much. I then switched the thing off, shovelled out the loose ice and spent a while every half an hour doing that. Finally I filled it with newspaper to soak up the water as it defrosted, and changed that several times.

Eventually the freezer was empty and dried off, and now we have to leave it to evaporate. Once it’s totally dry, I can check the wiring and see where the fault in the circuit might be. I suspect the wall socket, but we shall see.

We went out for another meal. Rachel has done some good cooking just recently and she deserves a night off. Nowhere exciting, but going out is going out after all.

Back here, Amber had a copy of the Grumpy Cat film so we watched that. And then I went off to bed.

I can’t remember when it was that I have last had a Sunday en famille. I’ll have to watch out – I might be starting to become used to this.

-2

Saturday 22nd August 2015 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day in today.

Rachel, Amber and Amber’s friend Julianna went off to the beach at Mactaquac, even though it was a cloudy, misty day, but I had so much to do that I decided to stay in and do it, in the company of Kujo the Killer Cat.

Of course, my day was plagued with interruptions so I didn’t get done anything like as much as I was hoping but nevertheless I’ve broken the back of a lot of the outstanding stuff that has built up over the last couple of days.

One of the interruptions was the start of the new Welsh Premier League season and newly-promoted Llandudno were playing Aberystwyth. With the benefit (for once) or a very-high-speed internet connection, I was able to watch the whole match and see Llandudno win their first-ever game in the WPL.

When Rachel came back, she brought me a pizza from the place down the road in Woodstock, which was really nice of her. We had quite a chat and then I went off to bed. Clearly the strain has been far too much for me today.

I shall have to have a little rest tomorrow to recover.

Friday 21st August 2015 – DOESN’T STRIDER LOOK SMART?

He now has his number plates fitted.

And I would like to say that he is totally street legal, but I can’t quite say that until Monday.

In fact he is, but the insurance certificate is made out with his temporary number plate, and this needs to be changed to his permanent number. It’s not desperately important to do that but if I’m going over across to the Great Satan, I can imagine all kinds of complications. I can get into enough trouble over there without actually asking for it.

This morning we had this wheel to refit onto the golf cart, and seeing as how I took it off, I reckon that Amber should put it back on. A girl of 12 has to start somewhere, especially if there is someone there to supervise and give advice, and all in all she was quite good at it

The parts for Strider had come by the time we arrived at the tyre depot so we stuck him up on the lift. Changing the plugs was another task that wasn’t as easy as it might have been. The engine in Strider is a basic “Cologne” V6 of 2.5 litres bored out and enlarged to 4.0, and while those engines were really simple and easy to work on back in 1962, the addition of all kinds of emissions control mechanisms have covered everything up and makes it difficult to reach.

The nearside plugs are a nightmare to reach, but we had the brilliant idea of taking off the wheel. Doing that, the plugs were quite easily accessible. And we soon found the cause of the misfire. The most difficult plug to reach (but easy from through the wheel arch) was cracked. It looks as if someone has had a go at taking it out from up above, cracked the porcelain, and then given up.

After many interruptions, Strider was finished but the number plates STILL hadn’t come. And so I went round to where I bought him from and the boss was out but, sure enough, there were the plates and the registration document sitting on his desk. His mechanic fitted the plates for me and there we were.

The trouble is that now it’s 17:00 and the insurance offices are closed until Monday. Hence I’ll have to wait until then to change things around.

I went off up the Highway to the New Brunswick-Quebec border through a tremendous thunderstorm with the cruise control set at 120 kph all the way. ON the way back, just about to pull off at Grand Sault to pick up the supper (Rachel was Tupperware-ing at Nackawik) and Rhys rang up for a chat. As a result I was home later than intended.

But the good run seems to have cleared out Strider a little. He’s running a little freer than before and it looks (at first glance) if he’s doing better on fuel although I’m not counting my chickens before they have hatched.

Thursday 20th August 2015 – I’VE SPENT ALL DAY …

… waiting around.

Well, that’s not quite true. First job was that Amber had a flat tyre on her golf cart so while Rachel went off to work, Amber and I jacked up the golf cart and took off the wheel. We then shot off to the Tyre place, stopping en route to drop off the rubbish with the dustbin man who had passed by before we had had time to put the stuff out.

It seemed that Amber had hit a rock with the golf cart and it had knocked the tyre off the beading, so that was only a matter of minutes to fix.

All day, the parts never came for Strider, and neither did the number plates, and so it was a pretty fruitless day from that point of view, but I did have a lengthy chat with Bob about solar panels and a few lengthy chats with a few other people too. It’s nice to be friendly every now and again.

Later that evening, I took Strider to Woodstock to pick up some stuff, including a collapsible chair on special offer at Canadian Tire and then we came back on the motorway. And not only is this chronic misfire quite chronic, he’s drinking fuel at an unbelievable rate and there seems to be a speed limiter set at 3300 revs. Not that 3300 rpm is ever going to bother me, but the fuel consumption is. I need to do something about that or else his tank won’t be big enough to go around Labrador

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality