Tag Archives: Amber

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

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Wednesday 19th August 2015 – HERE I AM …

prevost orleans express bus montreal riviere du loup quebec canada… at 03:30 at Riviere du Loup, and this is the bus that brought me here – a Prevost.

It took that length of time for the bus to come all the way out here but to be honest I don’t remember all that much about it. I managed to have something of a doze.

But here, I had to change buses as this one that I was on is off down the Gaspe Peninsula. I’m waiting for the Coach Atlantic bus that will be here at about 04:00 ready to leave at 04:30 for Moncton, and that’s going to drop me off at Florenceville.

prevost coach atlantic bus edmundston new brunswick canadaAnd this is the Coach Atlantic bus, an older Prevost, that brought me to Florenceville. We’re at Edmundston when this photo was taken, stopping to pick up and drop off passengers and also parcels because the bus does a parcels delivery.

And that gave all of us the time to have a coffee and to visit the bathroom, which I for one needed after all of that drive.

Strangely enough, we arrived at Florenceville on time, and Rachel and Amber were there to meet me. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I will do this bus trip again. It was extremely painless, and much more comfortable than I ever imagined it to be.

I was dropped off at the garage to pick up my new toy, Strider the Ranger, and then took it round for its safety check. It passed okay, but I’ve had a new spare tyre put on it. The one that was there was quite worn and in any case it was the wrong size. I may as well have it done first as last, and it gave me an opportunity to clean and grease all of the spare wheel fittings.

Armed with a valid safety certificate, I went off to the insurance and there I had to lie down in a darkened room while I recovered from the shock. North American motor insurance is horrendous, even worse than Belgium.

I took the certificate back to the garage so that he could have a copy and so that he could register the sale and obtain the number plates. At the moment, Strider only has a temporary registration certificate.

On the way back up here, I noticed that Strider has a chronic misfire on one cylinder so I’ve booked it in on Friday to have a full service – that’s something else that I may as well have done before I go too far.

The three of us (Darren and Hannah are tractor-pulling this weekend) went out for a meal later at Woodstock and a good old chat, to catch up with what we have missed since last October. And then I came back here and crashed out.

Hardly a surprise.

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Sunday 28th July 2013 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… a tap today!

Well, not quite true, but I certainly haven’t done anything exciting, and the only time I left the apartment was to go to buy a baguette.

I had a lie-in (well it IS Sunday, a day of rest) which was just as well, as I was having an exciting dream. I was up a mountain heading for some ski slopes and I took a different route and ended up higher in the mountains than usual watching the people skiing down a different slope about 200 feet below where I was standing. I’ve been on this ski slope in another dream quite a while ago. That time I was in my red Cortina parked up on the side of the road on a sharp hairpin bend in all of the snow and I do remember in that dream that I was in the mountains, more or less in the same place, and there was no snow and I was taking a different route to somewhere that I knew well but wanted to avoid the masses. But back to this dream – I had to go out of somewhere and I had no shoes so I was busily trying to fasten some thick triangular slices of fruit bread or cake to my feet with thick lumps of butter.

Yes, I’m definitely cracking up.

Anyway, today, I’ve starting a new project.

When I transferred this blog onto my site here the other week, the images and tags didn’t come through correctly. There are piles of images that didn’t show up, and the tags have come through any old how.

One thing that I used to do was to prepare monthly pages of photographs and also monthly pages of what I was up to on the farm.

I let all of that go as a result of my visit to Labrador in 2010 when I became snowed under with work,

But now that my blog is in-house, I can use it to fulfil both of those purposes with not much effort.

Consequently I’m having a go at updating the images and linking the tags correctly. It’ll take me a bit of time but it’s much more preferable than doing it twice again for the same result.

I also spoke to my niece’s youngest daughter in Canada – little Amber (isn’t Skype wonderful?). She’s heard that I’m coming over at the end of August and so she’s given me a little shopping list. I just hope that I’ll be able to pick up the stuff for her;

And as well as going to Canada, I’m also pushing to boat out – quite literally – to Agistri.

That’s a small island off the coast of Piraeus in Greece and Trixi is holding a singing and yoga course out there in October.

I need to work on my singing if I’m ever going to be any good and as it all sounds quite intimate and relaxing, I’ve booked myself a place out there. It’ll be good to have a break like that and I’m quite looking forward to it.

Believe it or not, I have never been to Greece before.

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Sunday 31st October 2010 – I ATTENDED HALLOWEEN TODAY

First time ever that I have done something as North-American as this.

family taylor carving pumpkins centreville new brunswick canadaAfter what can only be described as a leisurely brunch (with my “never ever call me before midday on Sunday” I would fit in so well here) we all sat down at the table and started pumpkin-carving.

First job was to top and then to empty 15 or so pumpkins and that led to seeds and flesh everywhere. Darren had a pile of images and so we photocopied them and used them as templates for the carving.

We sellotaped them to the pumpkins, pricked out the patterns and then joined up the dots with a small knife. And considering that I’d never ever done it before, my group of bats, my witch and my “screaming skull” came out quite well, and I was so impressed. Little Amber even did a freehand carving of Strawberry Moose (you can see him modelling for his portrait) and that was pretty impressive too.

carved pumpkins illuminated centreville new brunswick canadaDarren’s friend George took a few pumpkins down to the gate and I set the rest up in the living room and put tea lights in them so that I could photograph them.

On a long exposure (which counteracted the flickering of the flame) the image came out really well and the effect is pretty good.

strawberry moose zoe taylor halloween centreville new brunswick canadaAfter Hannah and I had lined the drive with flaming pumpkins Rachel and I took Zoe, Amber and Amber’s friend (and Strawberry Moose who had donned a tutu and a bumble bee headgear for the occasion) out trick-or-treating.

It was all terribly tacky as you might expect but it was also fun and you can’t spend a Halloween amongst a family here in North America and not participate in the entertainment.

And tomorrow I’m moving on. My time here is up. I’ll be driving to Bathurst where my journey started in 2003 and heading north from there. The idea is to go around the shore of Northern New Brunswick and then round the Gaspe peninsula to Matane and then take the ferry over to Baie Comeau, where the adventure really began, and that will be the Great Circle route completed.  

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Saturday 30th October 2010 – TODAY HAS BEEN QUITE CIVILISED …

… and hasn’t it been a long time since anything like that ever happened?

In fact we had a recycling day today and with Darren’s big pick-up truck, Rachel, Hannah and I did a tour of the neighbourhood picking up glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium drinks cans.

Once we had a full load on board we went off to a recycling plant in Bath about 10 miles away from here where we weighed it all in.

The plant was quite interesting – it was a simple hand-sorting operation where you tipped out your containers onto a kind-of counter and two people hand-sorted the cans and plastic and they also weighed the glass bottles, not by scales but by eye.

And having seen the price is on offer for scrap over here, not only do I now understand why in several cities that I’ve been to and down several roads that I’ve travelled I’ve seen gangs of people picking up the litter, I’m also going to bring over the scrap aluminium off the two caravans that I dismantled and weigh it in over here.

giant inflatable pumpkin blown away by wind centreville new brunswick canadaIt was quite a windy day over here too and so the highlight was definitely this giant inflatable pumpkin that was busily making a bid for freedom down the highway in the general direction of the USA.

What you don’t see in the photo is the guy from a nearby house who was giving a rather desperate chase after it. 

Thanks in no small measure to the long piece of rope that was tethered to it the guy managed to restrain it but it was touch-and-go at one stage and my money was definitely on the pumpkin.

cadillac convertible centreville new brunswick canadaI was also taken out old-car spotting too.

Darren took me to see his brother-in-law who lives just down the road. He has an old Cadillac convertible that he has restored from a rusty heap and had taken it out for a run-around this morning. And so we headed off down the road to catch him up.

pizza hut houlton maine usaThis evening we all went out for pizza to celebrate Halloween and a good time was had by all. My pizza is the one in the foreground – the vegetarian one without cheese.

If I’m very lucky tomorrow I might get to spend some time with my great-nieces but the trouble with teenagers is that they always seem to have a much different agenda to any agenda that anyone else is ever planning. So I dunno.

Mind you, I have an important decision to make. Do I go out trick-or-treating with Amber and Zoe tomorrow night or do I stay behind with Hannah and hand out the candy?

But all three of them have decided that once Halloween is over I can take off my halloween mask. I don’t seem to be able to convince them that this is my REAL face.

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Thursday 28th October 2010 – AND HERE I AM …

… in the bosom of my family – or at least the friendly part of it.

They say that being an intellectual runs in our family and of course anyone who has ever been an intellectual really had to run, and so it is nice to report that there is a civilised bit somewhere, even if one has to cross the Atlantic to find it.

Strawberry Moose has disappeared of course. I have three great-nieces aged between 7 and 16 and they have already worked out a rota as to whose turn it is to moosenap him for which night and so I don’t imagine that I shall be seeing him again until I go back on the road.

international boundary usa canada maine new brunswick woodstock houltonThis morning though I went into Houlton, which is just across the river in Great Satan.

Its claim to fame is that it’s the town in the USA that has the largest fire brigade per head of population, and when you look at the statistics you’ll find that it’s also the town in the USA that has been burnt to the ground the most often.

Are these facts related, I wonder.

german prisoner of war camp houlton maine usaIt was also the site of a German Prisoner-of-War camp for German soldiers captured in north-west Europe following the D-Day landings and I had to hunt around for hours until I found any trace of that.

But any trace – the site has long since been built over and it’s now a civilian airport and new industrial estate. There is however a little monument to the place as it was, but that’s well-hidden in the undergrowth and I stumbled upon it in more ways that one.

I was talking to Darren and his Dad about the Templars and my theory that Columbus sailed to America to recover the treasure for Ferdinand and Isabella that the Templars had carried across to there when they escaped from La Rochelle in France in the fourteenth Century. We chatted for hours about this and when we returned home,

Darren switched on the TV and there was a programme on the Templars taking the treasure across the Atlantic and the efforts made to recover it. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction at times.

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