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.
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