::alio!::

Installment One

3 August 2008: 10:00 AM

Somewhere in New Brunswick . . .

Will it ever stop raining?

It is so damp that the screen on my camera keeps switching to static and I am afraid that the battery will short out.

Last night after my last post we went for a little walk between rain storms. We ended up in the parking lot, admiring my parking job (right between the lines, bitch) and then we headed to the playground for some hijinks.

Then of course it started to rain. We retreated to the trailer. It’s been raining the whole trip and so we haven’t really had an opportunity to enjoy the camping aspect of the trip. No fires, no marshmallows. It’s more like we’ve just been living in a tin box for the past three days.

Angus is lucky, though. Tonight he will spend his first night in h is new (if temporary) home. His part of the epic road trip will be over.

As I write we are actually hurtling down the New Brunswick highway, at the astonishing speed of 94 km/h, toward Fredericton.

More when we arrive.

2 August 2008: 5:55 PM (AST)

In Which Alison Drives Across Québec

We have arrived at Edmundston, NB, just missing an epic downpour that forced 200 campers at a nearby campsite to be evacuated.

I drove today, and I gotta tell you, Québec roads are the shittiest roads in the country. The very second we crossed the border it became smooth as silk. But then it started to rain and it got very hilly and that wasn’t super fun at all. You try braking, on a wet road, in a vehicle that weighs several tonnes, down a 9% grade . . . I got a little tense towards the end.

I did, however, manage a couple of amazing feats of dexterity in that monstrosity. We lost our way twice, and so had to turn around. I had to make a right-angle turn left onto a road that was on a grade and tilted and managed not to roll over OR end up in the ditch on either side, even though Andy seemed positive that I was going to kill us all. Earlier, I also managed to make a U-turn in a U-Haul. That impressed my father-in-law, the only man ever to successfully parallel park a school bus, so it must’ve been pretty good.

We arrived here around 2:30 and changed our clocks ahead an hour, then headed into Edmundston for some supplies. It’s not the bustling metropolis we were expecting. Most buildings in the downtown core are for sale or rent. It’s also deserted at 5 o’clock on a Saturday and so it took us some time to locate a grocery store.

One interesting thing to note about the bilingual province of New Brunswick is that, unlike Ontario, everyone seems comfortable with both languages. Not just that everyone speaks both languages, which they seem to do with ease. But instead of enforced bilingualism, like in Ottawa, where every sign has both languages, here it’s more of something that’s assumed. Some signs are in English, some are in French, and, seeing as most of us can understand both, it’s not really necessary to have them both in the same place at the same time. It seems very relaxed.

We’ll head out early tomorrow. John and Sue will keep on to just past Moncton (we can’t camp in Moncton due to an Eagles concert) and set up camp, and Andy and I will take Angus to Fredericton and help him settle in before joining John and Sue in the evening.

Angus’ friends should have internet, so hopefully I can upload at that time. Until then . . .

1 August 2008: 6:45 PM (EST)

Taking the Mastodon East

There is a mastodon painted on the outside of our epicmobile.

I’m sitting on a camp chair typing in the drizzle at the campground in Montmagny Québec. WiFi is actually provided at this site, believe it or not. I refuse to pay for it so you won’t get this for a while, but it seems fitting for this place. There’s an enormous RV across from us with a TV on the OUTSIDE of his vehicle. Which is on. And no one is there to watch it. How decadent.

Today was pretty mundane. After breakfast with my parents at The Diner, we met up with Andy’s parents and his grandmother and great aunt and sister for a rather tearful (on my part) goodbye. We headed east, stopping in Casselman for gas. It cost $241 to put 191L in the monstrosity.

The drive was boring and very bumpy. U-Haul vans have an Easy-Ride Suspension which means that the cab of the truck is set on a set of springs and they bounce vigorously on every bump. So do we. We made friends with a beetle named Willard and quickly learned the dimensions of the truck as we wended our way through Québec construction. That’s really about it.

It’s pretty cold and the rain is ever-threatening. I can’t really come up with more to say. More bulletins as events warrant.

Peace.

Posted by Ally at August 3, 2008 01:09 PM