… and I’m now at my other spiritual home, the campsite at the country park at Mactaquac, near Fredericton.
It wasn’t quite as cold this morning – a balmy 9°C would you believe – when I set off to the tyre depot to pay my respects to everyone there, and I ended up for an hour or so doing some photocopy-editing of a photo in an old historic book that someone has found. It shows all of the kids who went to a local primary school in 1935 – including Wallace McCain, he who had his chips just a few years ago – and someone has succeeded in identifying them all.
Consequently we were doing a “cut and paste” on the photocopier so that all of the kids would be labelled with their identity.
From there I went to the Bank at Florenceville to do some stuff down there and then set off for Woodstock. And by the time I got to Woodstock I was half a mill … "you said that last year – and the year before" – ed. I did a little food shopping and at Canadian Tires I bought a small hydraulic bottle jack. There’s a good reason for this in that the jacks in these hire cars are sill jacks, and totally useless on uneven ground. And of course, I might be going to Labrador as you know.
But then again, I might not. It’s snowing in Alberta already and there are people snowed in at their homes and so on – early September and WE complain about our weather! I want to see what the long-range forecast is before I commit myself.
On the motorway down to Fredericton, I was right about something of which I had caught a glimpse earlier. You may recall, from all of our previous visits to Canada, that they have these road trains – an articulated tractor unit towing not one but two small trailers – a lead trailer and a pup trailer (although when they have to reverse, the drivers often call the pup trailer something like “the mother of a pup.
But I was convinced that I’d seen not one but two Day and Ross lorries, each towing two full-sized trailers on the motorway around Montreal and so I had the camera poised as I flashed along the Trans-Canada Highway.
Sure enough, I was not wrong about that. The lorry here in this photo on the other carriageway is pulling two full-sized trailers. I’ve seen plenty of lead-and-pup combinations in my time, but never this.
And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take a superb photo, especially when we have a closing speed of what must be not far short of 250kph. Well done, Strawberry!
At Fredericton, they hadn’t done my press pass info so I had to hang around for a while so I went up to Home Depot for a nosy around. There was nothing interesting there but I did meet Danny, the store assistant who comes from Croatia and with whom I’ve had several good chats before. And at Value Village, I bought a few more CDs and a book on Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.
Finally, I picked up my press pass and my parking permit and now I’m here. I’ve had tea and I’m going to have an early night, I reckon.
