Tag Archives: maine

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… just about everybody.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

First port of call was the Scotia Bank. One of the things that I need is a bank statement with my name and Canadian address on it. And so to the Scotia Bank on the north side of Fredericton, and as you might expect, it was closed.

After a coffee however, it was open, and the bank quite happily obliged with the information. You can’t say fairer than that.

Next stop was Service Canada. They don’t have an immigration service office there – it’s in a separate department elsewhere and callers are only accepted by appointment. But they did have a telephone number and eventually, after a considerable wait and jumping through a great number of hoops, I was put through to a human being.

I need an immigration form 1M1442 setting out my entitlement to be in Canada. This can be applied for on-line, but the waiting list is … errr … three months, by which time I shall be out of the country. I can however obtain it at the border when I cross in.

And so after a great deal of discussion, there was only one solution – and that was to go BACK to Houlton where I crossed in yesterday, and pick it up from there. Of course, that will take a good few hours, but you spend more time debating the issue than actually doing anything and I am playing for high stakes here, so off I went.

And at the border we had the most astonishing arrangement that makes European bureauocracy look like nothing at all. I could only pick up the document as I ENTERED the country, so I had to leave the country, go and annoy the American immigration people (who were not in the least amused, and who can blame them?), do a U-turn, and then go back in to Canada.

Back in Canada, after much discussion, I ended up with the manager of the Canadian Immigration office there. They do indeed issue IM1442 forms there, but only for immigration purposes, not for demographic purposes. However he did accept that laws and rules and regulations change according to events, and he would have been quite happy to issue a document to me, but he needed something in writing from the Insurance Company.

And here’s the rub – the manager of the Insurance Company REFUSED to put the details in writing and to fax them to the Immigration Office – so that was that. I was there for a good few hours in earnest discussion, but I’m a miserable pleader at moments like this. However, I am in possession of the address of the Insurance Company Head Office (it’s in Dartmouth, opposite Halifax) and so I shall go to Home Depot and sort out a suitable pickaxe handle, then go for a drive.

Despite everything that the manager of the Immigration Service did for me, Service New Brunswick wouldn’t budge either, although they did give me the phone number of the Appeals body. I shall just have to apply on-line for this form – which of course takes much longer than the time that I’ll be spending in Canada – and the Insurance Company will still honour the policy as long as my application is ongoing.

Back at Fredericton (good old Strider), the Festival proper started tonight with two tents opened – the Blues Tent and the Mojo tent.

First up on stage at the Blues Tent were the Mellotones.

First thing to say about them, as you can see from the photo here, is that there are far too many musicians up there on the stage. Four too many in fact. I’ve no idea why they needed a brass section but there you are.

I mean – they were good at what they did – there’s no denying that of course – but it’s not my kind of music at all.

It certainly wasn’t blues, and as for jazz, well, jazz can be very good if it IS very good, but working over a few Bar-Kays numbers and that kind of thing isn’t really what I was expecting to hear. In fact, I found it all rather a dismal proceeding

From here I popped into the library. I’ve been writing quite a bit on certain occasions about the railway lines in New Brunswick and I went to see if they had any old maps of the area. And sure enough, they produced a set of old maps that showed quite a few railway lines, but it was dated from the late 19th Century and there were many lines which I know existed but were not recorded. I had been hoping for a map of the 1930s, but they had nothing from that era.

I wandered on from the library to the Mojo tent, in time to catch the start of the Downtown Blues Band.

We’d had the Bar-Kays in the Blues tent and so in the Mojo tent we had the Blues Brothers. The Downtown Blues Band played a re-hash of numbers from the film of the same name.

This was another occasion of far too many musicians on the stage. I’ve absolutely no idea why many of these groups want to have brass sections, and indeed why the organisers of the Festival want to book them. It beats me.

But then, as I have said so many times before, the rest of the audience enjoyed them. I’m clearly in a minority of one here.

The female singer was clearly enjoying herself on the stage. She was having a good time too.

And it has to be said – they were quite good at what they did. But to my mind, it’s not jazz and it’s not blues either. There’s clearly something that I’m missing here.

Back to the Blues tent and we had JJ Grey and Mofro from Florida. They’ve played the Festival before, but I somehow seem to have managed to miss them.

They started off quite well and I was feeling that I might actually enjoy this concert. But my feeling of elation didn’t last long.

They played a number that was crying out for a lead guitar solo, and they built up to this over a period of a good five minutes, or so it appeared to me.

And then we got it – the solo. But, would you believe, played on a trumpet. Well, I suppose, you would believe it after having read what I have written up to date. It was so disappointing as far as I was concerned.

And so back to the Mojo tent, and this was the Halifax group Paper Beat Scissors.

They are now living in Montreal and recording CDs, and they weren’t all that bad. They were something similar to Sigur Ros, but singing in English of course, and I didn’t mind at all staying here for a while to listen to them.

The one big drawback that they had was that they had a brass section.

When they wheeled on the French horn of whatever it is during the warm-up, I feared the worst. And I was right too, because even though the player started off on the keyboards and shaking his maraccas too, it didn’t take too long for him to get on the horn.

However, the singer had a good voice for what he was doing, and they were definitely the best band that I have seen here so far this year

But then again, that doesn’t say all that much for them. They haven’t had all that much competition to date as far as I was concerned.

Back again at the Blues tent, and we had Galactic on stage.

They started off with an instrumental number, and of course we did have the brass section that has featured in every act to date and it’s thoroughly dismayed me, in case you haven’t guessed

However, we were soon joined by a singer, a young lady from Louisiana if I remember correctly.

And their second number was a scorcher too. This was much more like it, even with the brass section and I quite enjoyed that. I was quite optimistic with that and was quite looking forward to the rest of the set.

But it was not to be, unfortunately.

Despite the energy that our vocalist was putting into her show, the third number degenerated into a rap number and if there’s one thing that really grates on my nerves, it’s rap music. This kind of stuff isn’t for me at all, and I beat a rather hasty retreat.

But not before we had had a little excitement on stage.

We had a small, lightweight platform on stage and they had an organ and a heavy drum kit crammed onto it. And I mean ‘crammed” too because there was no room for anyone to move and the drummer was extremely enthusiastic to say the least.

With the platform bouncing around, I was betting with myself about how long it would be before all of this went pear-shaped and sure enough, just a couple of minutes in to the performance, part of the drum kit collapsed across the stage. We had the roadie trying to rebuilt it all the time that the drummer was playing with what was left of the kit, and in the end they weighted it down with sandbags.

Now this is very much more like it.

At the Mojo tent we had Wintersleep.

I’d missed the start of their act because the performance of Galactic had started late, and so I can’t tell you all that much about them. but what I can say is that they were a four-piece band and I enjoyed their performance very much.

There was no brass section – or mouth organ – in sight while I was there and they were playing real music from my point of view.

Nothing quite as electric or as lively as Samantha Fish or the 24th Street Wailers, but then again, what could ever be as lively as all of that, but it was good enough to hold my attention for quite a while.

And so we definitely have a winner of today’s entertainment – something that was looking very unlikely after the first couple of acts this evening.

I’ll have to go and have a look for these and see if I can’t lay my hands on a live performance for broadcasting on Radio Anglais sometime in the near future. It would be quite enjoyable, that’s for sure.

And so I went back to Mactaquac Provincial Park and my tent.

I’d had a good night’s sleep last night for once and that had certainly helped with all of the issues that I had had to deal with during the day. I don’t suppose that tomorrow is going to be any different and so I’ll need to have a good night’s sleep.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the dozens and dozens that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that this first month of my stay in North America had been one of 30 disappointments. We’ve had another issue raise its ugly head today too.

There’s only one company in Canada that insures vehicles for people with non-Canada driving licences (and they make people suffer financially for that of course) but it seems that since April this year they have ceased that particular line of business. And so the motor insurance for Strider has been rejected, leaving me without insurance cover.

However, the company has said that cover can remain on a temporary basis while I apply of a driving licence in Canada and so that’s what I’ll do. Apply for a Canadian driving licence.

Of course.

How long it might take, and whether it might be granted is of course another thing completely, and then there will always be an appeal process if it’s refused. But by that time of course I’ll be back home in France and it won’t be an issue. And next year is, of course, next year.

And so tomorrow, I’ll get on the case.

But if you think logically about it, it’s all a nonsense. There is without any doubt at all at least one company that insures drivers with foreign driving licences. If there wasn’t a single one, then how would car hire work? I’ve hired dozens of cars in North America and each hire has been with my French driving licence. And I still can do so (because I’ve checked). You aren’t going to tell me that a car hire company is going to let its customers drive around in uninsured vehicles, are you?

And it’s true (or it was true – at least in the UK) that when I worked in the motor insurance business, a company or a person could insure himself against liability. But he had to deposit a bond of £50,000 (and that was in 1972 – I shudder to think what that figure would be today) per vehicle and that money is tied up. I can’t see a hire company going through all of that, having the money tied up, no tax relief, no interest payments and all of this.

No – there is a company somewhere that specialises in this business and I have to find it. I’ve always said that where there’s a will, there are relatives. It’s just one more problem to solve. Now, how do you go about setting up a car hire business in Canada?

But apart from that for the moment, I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I crashed out at 20:28 and that was that until I had to go and ride the porcelain horse. An early(-ish) start and I did a pile of work and then a copious breakfast. I really can’t believe all of this for just $59:40 (including tax).

But while I was eating my breakfast I was watching TV (something that I rarely do of course) and the disclaimers for the adverts (which are often longer than the ads themselves) are quite often funnier than any comedy programme you would care to name. This morning we had a “do not take {this product} if you are allergic to any of its ingredients”. And you can’t make that up, can you?

Back on the road Walmart came up trumps with the big tent pegs that I’m going to need if I use this tarpaulin oversheet idea for the tent, and it also produced a couple of gas canisters for my cooker (they are becoming harder and harder to find as everyone changes over to the bigger sort) and a set of stubby spanners, which cost just $4:49. Ideal for getting into tight corners. But Mardens couldn’t produce a 19mm ring spanner at any cost. Still, I have an open-ended one and a socket and I hope that that will do me if I need anything.

At the border, I was whacked for import duty on the truck cap. $90:00 or something like that, but I don’t suppose that this is excessive really. It’s worked out as 5% of the value (in Canadian dollars), including, would you believe, the sales tax that I had to pay in the USA. That’s a bit near the knuckle.

I had a race down the Trans-Canada Highway with a lorry – simply because I didn’t recognise his number plate and I wanted to see where he came from.

As it happens, he comes from Georgia (that’s Georgia USA, not the former Soviet republic) and so he was a long way away from home. It seems that the Maritime Provinces are becoming more and more popular.

Af Fredericton I picked up my parking pass for the next three days (foreign visitors can park free in the town centre for three days if they apply to the tourist office for a pass), picked up my media passes for the festival and went to have a chat with the people at Service New Brunswick who gave me a couple of useful tips.

At Value Village, it’s Pensioners Day and I profited to the maximum with a pile of books, a couple of CDs and also (at long last) the Canadian cable that I need for my laptop power pack (which saves having to hump around a pile of adapters. Walmart and Home Depot came up with nothing exciting and so I went for my traditional falafel platter in the Lebanese restaurant and then came back here – “here” being the Mactaquac Provincial Park campsite where I stay when I’m here.

But we did have a very interesting encounter this afternoon. You may remember yesterday that I was talking about big old British single-cylinder motorcycles. Anyway, wandering down the street in Fredericton I noticed a young guy sitting on, of all things, a Triumph T100. 1971 it was, and it looked it too. In original, unrestored condition looking every day as old as it was. We were chatting for hours about old British bikes and of course, AJS and Matchless motorcycles figured heavily. And it turns out that he has a friend who has a fetish about the big AJS and Matchless singles and who, at the last count, has 14 of them, plus numerous crates of bits and pieces. And so he’s taken my e-mail address and says that he’ll pass it over to this guy.

And so that was that. I buried myself in my sleeping bag ready for bed.

Now who is going to come along and spoil my day tomorrow?

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

Sunday 13 September 2015 – SO THAT WAS MY NIGHT …

… in my rather overpriced motel.

It trades heavily on its superb view of Mount Jefferson just across the road, but today I couldn’t even have my money’s worth of that, because of the hanging clouds that we were having (it IS just like home, isn’t it?).

We’d had rain during the night – not much of it but enough to generate this weather phenomenon, and so there I was. But at least there was a coffee machine in my room and I could have a good shower and change my clothes. And I had had a good night’s sleep too. So much so that I’d been on my travels again.

I’d been doing something in some kind of home. Firstly we’d been off somewhere to check on an abandoned house and in there we ound amongst other things a lively ginger kitten. It took straight to me and so I brought it back with me to thins home place.
Back here I had to prepare a bath for some residents but was interrupted as my father (whatever was he doing there) needed to use the bathroom. And then he couldn’t find any toilet paper so I had to hunt around for that.
Another one of my jobs was to water the motorcycles that were growing in pots. You had to start off by using heated water and then continue using tap water when the heated water ran out.
Meantime, this ginger kitten had gone missing in the house and no-one knew where it was.

But talking of being on my travels again, I didn’t go very far before I was sidetracked.

You all know what this is because you’ve seen one of these before. It’s a Nash Metropolitan, made by Austin (and called the Austin Metropolitan in the UK) and was the first car sold by an American manufacturer to be made 100% outside the USA.

It’s either e series 3 or a 4 (you can tell by the chrome stripe) and it’s fitted with the BMC Series B engine. 20,000 genuine miles from new on the original engine, this baby.

And as I said a few days ago, what went wrong with the British motor industry with in the 1950s and 1960s they were selling cars to half the world, and 20 years later, they couldn’t even sell cars in their own country?

And that’s not all either. How about taking this home in the hand luggage?

It’s a Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria sedan, fitted with a Fordamatic gearbox and it has the most magnificent interior that I have ever seen on a car.

This has to be one of the most beautiful vehicles that I have ever seen, and I’m in love with it. It sums up the 1960s USA completely for me. I didn’t enquire as to whether it was for sale, or ask the price because it would certainly be far, far outside my pocket.

I didn’t move on far – just to the town of Gorham.

There’s a mainline railway here, which might be the famous Montreal – Portland line, built before icebreakers could keep Montreal’s harbour free of ice in winter, so that Montreal’s commerce could have a winter outlet.

The passenger service here has long-gone, but the good inhabitants of the city have recruited a collection of locomotives and rolling stock, including this Baldwin 0-6-0 which dates to 1911 and which worked previously in a factory in Massachusetts.

It had a restoration in 1990, so we are proudly told, but this restoration seemed to be the usual North American restoration of slapping everything all over with black bituminous paint to hide the rust and hoping that no-one will notice.

You can see what I mean by looking here at the framework of the tender. The wood has just totally rotted away here to leave absolutely nothing at all and this is just completely dreadful.

On good authority I am told “The steam locomotive was built as New England Gas and Coke n°4, the company later became Eastern Gas and Fuel, and ran in Everett, Mass adjacent to Boston from 1911 to the 40s. It was significantly rebuilt during its life to what you see now and for a while was part of the Steamtown USA collection. Allegedly the tender is from B&M mogul 1435. It was sold off when the collection moved to Scranton and has remained in Gorham ever since. As built, it very closely resembled Baldwin #26 at Steamtown”

And thanks to Alden Burns for the info

And just look at this diesel power car. You can see even from here that several of the metal panels have been replaced with wood and the wood has rotted away just as much as the metal has. There’s notmuch of either left.

Now I have seen some dreadful attempts at preservation here in North America, but I do have to say that here in Gorham is the worst that I have ever encountered. The kind of stuff that is on display here brings shame upon its owners. It really is appalling.

And so from here I set off once more, continuing my route eastwards, missing out on Berlin and Peru but passing by Mexico and into Maine, and occasionally having a few more attacks of the Jimmy Ruffins.

At a certain moment I was passing very close to the watershed between the Atlantic and the St Lawrence basins, and there was the most astonishing view from a peak on the ridge.

It’s a shame that the weather wasn’t better to enable all of you to enjoy the view because, like most views from the camera, it was much more magnificent than it looks on the photo. It wascompletely spellbinding.

I wasn’t alone here either. A couple of German tourists were here too and I ended up having quite a chat with them for a while.

It reached 18:00 – time for me to call it a day and so I started to look for a place to park. And at 18:02 I found te perfect place – a little hardstanding behind a hedge right by the river. And had I had my bed in Strider organised, that’s where I would be now. But you can’t stop at spots like this with a tent.

There was a camp site further along the route but he didn’t take tents. However, he did point me in the direction of a free wilderness camp site about half an hour down the road and I eventually found it.

It’s extremely primitive, to say the least, but it’s free, which is what I need after my motel last night. There’s a nice spot in the corner by the stream and that’s where I’ll be staying tonight.

-1

Saturday 12th September 2015 – STRIDER HAS CHANGED.

Here he is , with his brand-new specially-made truck cap.

It’s not as I wanted it unfortunately, as there’s a window on the driver’s side which I hadn’t wanted, there’s no sliding window at the front, and there’s no insulation in it (so the condensation inside it will be tremendous). But as a rush job, being built with parts ex-stock, it’s good enough.

The good news is that it’s over $400 cheaper than the fibreglass truck cap that I didn’t get, and the price difference would have been even greater had I not had the roof bars that are on it. But as I expected, the folding bed is too long for the back and so when I reach Fredericton I’ll have to make a bed for it. But that’s not going to be difficult, and I was really expecting something like this anyway.

Last night I had a very disturbed night. Not because I was uncomfortable – far from it in fact, but there was a lot of noise. The camp site was full to capacity and people were partying, playing music and running generators until all times. There really ought to be a law about generators on a camp site.

But at least I was up early, and a good coffee got me going.

And while I was working, a whole load of people were going down to the beach, even at 07:30 and I wondered what was going on.

It turns out that as part of this Homecoming weekend celebrations, there are some inter-school cross-country races and they went running up and down past my tent – about 5 or 6 races. And I was impressed that so many kids took part.

Although I’ve made several comments about the unhealthy attitude and lifestyle of many Americans, there’s just as much to celebrate, with all of these kids taking part in sporting activities. That’s a fact that deserves to be noted too, just to balance the equation.

After having the truck cap fitted I went to Hannafords down the road and bought some lunch. And then I hit the road. All the way across central Vermont and into New Hampshire, having another attack of the Jimmy Ruffins as I drove past one of the RV places that I had visited 100 years ago.

The scenery is beautiful around here but I didn’t have time to stop. It’s a long way to Greenville in Maine, my next port of call, and I want to be there on Monday morning without fail. I need to be in Fredericton on Wednesday morning and that’s considerably farther, so I can’t afford to hang about.

I resolved to stop at the first place that I found after 18:00 and at 18:02 a motel appeared through the gloom. I hadn’t planned on a motel but I haven’t had a shower for a good few days, I’ve had a couple of bad nights sleep, and I need to set myself in order. And so a motel it was. Rather expensive, and no microwave, but a coffee machine and a free handful of sweets.

It does go against the grain having just spent all this money on the truck cap, but it’ll do me for tonight. I reckon that I deserve it for once.

-3

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

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.

Saturday 4th October 2014 – A LONG DAY

We wawoke with the dawn all stiff and cold, with the weathe rhaving broken and it was now pouring down with rain. But, quite surprisingly, we hadn’t felt a thing through the night and slept the sleep of the dead.

The cafe place was however open and so we went for breakfast, the whole point of sleeping on the car park. And the cafe did us proud too for which we were both grateful.

A 5-minute drive from there took us to Weare, New Hampshire, and this was where the engine needed to be. We arrived just as they were opening up at 08:00, which was what we had intended. Half an hour saw the engine off the back of the truck and another half an hour saw it stripped right down (it’s nice to watch professionals work and the key to all of this is that they have their workshop spotlessly cleean and all of their tools right to hand and isn’t that a lesson to me?)

It turns out that a big-end shell had seized onto the crankshaft and in a high-performance racing engine at 8600 rpm, a broken con rod was inevitable. The broken rod had thrown itself around the lower part of the block and the sump and damaged just about everything that there was to damage.

While Darren was paying his respects to the engine, I was taken out for a walk by the owner’s father. he has a collection of vehicles from the early 1950s and he spent a delightful hour or so showing me around his vehicles. I really was in my element there and I was having a really good time, even if Darren wasn’t.

We stopped back at the cafe for lunch on our way back and then in the driving rain headed for home. A stop for tea at Dysarts just outside Bangor and then another refuelling at Oakfield. A relatively-painless crossing of the border saw us back here at 22:00 (don’t forget there’s a time difference of an hour between Eastern Time and Maritime Time) and that’s one more project accomplished before I leave.

Friday 3rd October 2014 – WE WENT TO NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS AFTERNOON

Darren had to go down there this afternoon after work to take the engine of his pulling truck back to the makers so that they could have a look at it.

However, he had suffered a slight welding flash last night and that makes driving uncomfortable in the sunlight, especially as there’s a 200-mile stretch between Houlton and Portland in Maine where the road is full south-east and the bright setting sun is in your face for the entire distance. Consequently, a second driver was required for that leg, and I was the only one not doing anything.

I’d had a bad night too, so I ran a few errands here and there, and then crashed out in a layby for an hour or so. I may as well use the free time profitably.

We were held up at the border by the US Border Patrol, as anyone reading these notes might have prophesied. Apparently the engine is classed as “commercial goods” as “it can be used to generate income”, hence an import tax was required. What income it could generate with two con-rods sticking through the sump became a matter of quite some considerable discussion.

Apparently anglers who cross the border with fishing rods, and golfers with golf clubs, and anyone with a car or van might now be liable to a US import tax now – all these items are capable of generating income. And what about a man who crosses the border with a woman? There is an enormous number of street corners in the USA after all and so the income-generating potential is enormous.

But the USA customs officials were intransigent and that was that. But whatever is going on in the USA? It’s almost as if they don’t want people to come to their country to spend … gulp … a good deal of money … … in their country.

We fuelled up at Oakfield and then I took the wheel for the 200-mile dash down the highway. A big Chevy C5500 with a V8 6.6-litre Duramax diesel engine. It’s the biggest thing that I’ve driven since I had a tour bus, and all the way through the rush hours of Bangor, Augusta and Portland too. And I managed it without hitting anything and killing anyone too.

Once it was dark, Darren retook the wheel and we drove a little further on to a shopping mall just off the highway where he met a few of his friends for a chat, and then we continued on along the old highways, passing many of the places that I drove through on my way here, right into the depths of darkest New Hampshire. We stopped in the car park of a small cafe-restaurant place, Darren on the front seats and me in the back, and I went out like a light and that was that.

-1

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: maine

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

Sunday 13 September 2015 – SO THAT WAS MY NIGHT …

Saturday 12th September 2015 – STRIDER HAS CHANGED.

Thursday 3rd September 2015 – I HAVE FINALLY ABANDONED …

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

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

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

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

Friday 28th August 2015 – HERE’S STRIDER …

Thursday 27th August 2015 – WHAT A STORM!

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

Saturday 4th October 2014 – A LONG DAY

Friday 3rd October 2014 – WE WENT TO NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS AFTERNOON

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