Big Trip Up North: Day 8

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Day 8 - Wed 7/21

2000+ miles.

(Motel notes from last night. My commode didn't work - I fixed it at 2:00 this morning - and I had no soap. Bob had menacing bug in his room and no TV. He slept two hours. )

We went too far today - 12 hours from Shelburne to Sydney NS. The trip is assuming a mythic quality. One exotic scene after another. Coming toward Sydney the bay looks like a fiord.

We both might be getting a little dark. Watching reenactors at Halifax Citadel (a fort in middle of city overlooking harbor) we speculated that the thing might be a little more real if they staged a mock execution - perhaps grabbing some tourists to serve as victims.

******
Morning of the ninth day.

Random notes before going out to walk around Sydney before breakfast.

People and stuff...

Wiry old guy in Hawaiian shirt and cowboy hat at the service station where I stopped to get coffee who wanted to talk about local politics.

The woman who served us lunch a little restaurant, explaining "pork scraps" to Bob -he declined. Asking us if we wanted separate "slips". The old man and woman - the old man dapper in colorful clothes, face red from the weather and from drink too I guess, the old woman using a walker, patient, the old man helping her, patient too. The nicely rounded middle aged woman at an adjoining table who might have given me the eye.

At the Irish theme restaurant a couple blocks from the hotel, the windy fat man who tried to engage waitress and wife in conversation. He had better luck with waitress - his wife just sat there staring into space.

We and Z4 are becoming oddities. Getting out of Halifix pausing too long at a complicated traffic pattern we were yelled at by the young man in the following car "Just go, go - sir!". Pulling in last night to the Delta in Sydney a fat man standing beside the entrance stared at us with hostile interest. The trucker I followed for 200 k - traveling at just the right speed. When a caravan of campers pulled out for N. Sydney ferry Bob wondered if the trucker had gotten mad - maybe about to nudge a few plodding RVs off the bridge. I am becoming less tolerant of bicylists on narrow roads, big campers on narrow roads. (Sorry Larry, Chuck.)

Porsche, making a statement, blasted by us and our trucker friend. Back down the road I blasted by somebody else. Road karma. Anyway I thought the Porsche was funny.

Got an email from Bonnie - the girl looking after my cat. Bonnie had seen evidence of Brenda's ghost - who reaches out over 2000 miles (what are miles to ghost?).

Unannotated pictures...

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Epilog

General -
We didn't get to Newfoundland, but we manged to see most everything else, including Wright's Falling Water, which I had not expected. Our Newfoundland plans were thwarted by a parade of old folks in campers waiting to get on the ferry at N. Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Food -
We ate in some chains and in some establishments happened upon by chance. Everything was at least OK - even the free breakfasts provided by most motels. Some meals were really good. I especially liked the fish chowder served outside at the restaurant in Shelburne, NS overlooking an idylic little harbour. There was also the huge pulled pork bar-b-que sandwich in Vermont eaten near a table of urban bikers recounting their trips. And there was the weird German place off 220 south of Altoona. It was dark with rock walls and festooned with German artifacts. Poka music played in the background. My knockwurst sandwich wasn't bad either. And of course there was the salmon and pasta at Genie's house the night we arrived in Providence. That was special.

Lodgings -
We stayed in many Hampton Inn's, a Holiday Inn, a Hilton, a Comfort Inn, a placed called the Delta, and the memorable Cape Cod Inn and the Gorham Motor Lodge. The chains were OK. The last two were not. Bob thinks that someone had urinated in his bed at the Gorham Motor Lodge and he saw a large threatening insect at the Inn. I had no soap at the Inn and had to fix my commode at 3:00 AM.

Car -
The BMW did fine. The top worked flawlessly. The engine was sweet. The suspension seemed to handle any curve at any speed. A couple of times when the rain only threatened, we drove on letting stray drops blow past the windshield. When it got too hot we left the top down and turned on the air conditioning. When it got cool we put on windbreakers and did the same thing with the heater. In small towns people waved as we went by. We were like a one-car parade.

Highlights -
These were the highlights for me. I'll check with Bob.

(1) Geographic - How sparsely populated the mountainous spine of North America remains - the mile after endless mile of wooded slopes. People nestle along valleys, hollows and adjoining water. The ridges comprise a 2,000 mile linear wilderness.
(2) Social - A growing sense of the economic pyramid where people at base (0r is it the tip these days) extract value directlty from the land and water. This seems real; the information economy seems fragile, bubble-like.
(3) Personal - Saturday night at the waterfire festival with Genie, afterward eating ice cream at her kitchen table.

Irrational Dislikes -
I became conscious of posturing French Canadians on motorcyles. Bob said they were just trying to capture some summer before the cold comes. Bob got a little weird about old people on tour buses.

Commercial Observations -
Everybody said that the further north you go the more Subarus you find. That was true. However, in Nova Scotia there seemed to be a dearth of Subarus. Lots of Fords, lots of Hyundai's. We wondered if the need for all wheel drive cars might not be as great - if the climate is moderated by nearby ocean currents. Rite-Aid seemed to be the most common drug store from PA north. Every little town seemed to have one. Tim Horton's was a common fast food place - sort of like an upper-scale Wendy's with bagels. I saw three denture places in downtown Sydney.

Roads
In most rural areas, especially coastal Maine and inland Nova Scotia, the roads were memorably bad. Ice and snow had buckled the pavement so that it was like driving over cobblestones. The Z4 which is stiffly sprung away tended to skitter even at legal speeds of 40 to 60 KPH. The trick was to allow the car to bounce some and still stay on the road.

Units of Measure
We were not there long enough to think in kilometers - having to do rough mental calcuations for speed and distance signs. (100 KPH = approx 62 MPH) Also the money, although consisting of the same units as US currency has got a lot more coins deal with. No one or two dollar bills - just "bucks" and "twoeys". But waitresses always seemed pefectly willing to help count out the change.

Prolog