2019-02-02 Sat

A Day Without Any Driving

Also: Hah Hah!

08:59:29, but that is NL time, here it is 8:30. I call Marine Atlantic with my question about warm waiting areas; I am too savvy to come straight out with a statement about ferrying livestock to Newfoundland – let them ask me a question first – and the lady assures me that there is a warm reception awaiting me, and that in just over an hour from now it would be a colder reception. 9:45 is the latest time to arrive, not the start of arriving. Absolute latest to be at the gates is 9:45, so the message is “Dress and get going NOW!”.

I had grown smarter yesterday, and had dragged half the cab inside the hotel room. Suitcase with clothes, two bins (fruit, snacks), cardboard cartons (books which I haven’t opened so far) and two shoulder bags (well, God gave us two shoulders ...) and in the early part of the day had repacked stuff, donning dress pants and shirt to look smart in front of the hundreds of passengers and, possibly, TV cameras once the networks found out about my guppies.

The networks found nothing, but ***I*** found my original (black cable) ear-buds on the floor of the cab, passenger side. Now I can’t find my new pair (yellow cable). Sigh!

Lesson Number One: I am too full of fear. There is NOT a two-mile tailback to enter the ferry yard. One gate is open and only two trucks are there. Within ten minutes I am parked in Lane Eleven and inside the huge waiting room; there is one other fellow here, hunched over his smart phone. When I return from a cross-island foray for a coffee, a lady has joined us. Where are the crowds of overweight noisy tourists? Answer: At home by the fire with a good book, as I hope to be in two days time. Except for the warm fire.

Lesson Number Two: I’m not in Nova Scotia anymore. I’m on Cape Breton Island. After that, I can have my coffee, and welcome!

Here we are at the ferry terminal. The truck and I are, it turns out, vingt-trois in length. The man in orange overalls with no tape measure says so. I booked on as a fifteen-foot truck. UHaul says it is a fifteen-footer. Merciful Marine Atlantic makes no change to the charge. I suspect that the kiosk clerk just doesn’t want to handle the paper-work. Just let it go. I am destined for lane eleven, coming in from the left, and so must count backwards like they make you do in the dentist’s chair to make you go to sleep.

And so, 4ways flashing, I idle down to the far end of lane eleven. The only vehicle in lane eleven. What can this signify? I bungee-cord the guppies to the luggage wheels and head off for the terminal, wondering where the livestock inspection barrier could be. I realize that I must look like an emphysemiac old fart with an Oxygen Cylinder. What a great image. Everyone will feel sorry for me, will not want to probe, let alone ask questions like “Why exactly are you carting twenty-four one-inch fish to Bonavista?” One lady told me later that she thought I was bringing my own drinking water. It is, after all, a fifteen-litre water flask.

Here we are. I am inside the ferry terminal looking out through salt-sprayed windows to Little Truck and Huge Ferry beyond it. It is a lonely life being the only UHaul in the parking lot.

Here is a better view of me, with two private vehicles markedly keeping their distance.

I forgot about the house insurance which, I am told, is a legal requirement. There is a WETT test to be done, and I have been unable to reach the insurance agent. Sigh. I hope I don’t have to live in the truck for a week or two because:-

(1) There are overage fees for the rental

(2) There is absolutely no space in the back, even if I could find the army cot

(3) There is not a bench seat but three individual seats with rib-crunching separators

(4) There is no central-heating

(5) I want a real cup of home brewed tea, made with boiling water, and with milk. Now.

I walk to the Tim Horton’s for a large coffee. Piece of cake. There are no catering facilities in the terminal, so it is a simple matter of scanning my boarding pass to exit the secure area, nodding to the security guard on the way out, 240 paces down the shady and icy-cold side of the terminal building, around the curve, up the ramp, along the sidewalk into the Tim Horton’s where, for $4.29 I can buy a large and a medium double-double and acknowledge that I am ON Cape Breton Island, 240 steps back, have the security guard check my boarding pass and Ontario Driver’s license. He let me in, so I let him have the medium coffee just to hear his accent.

One of the other passengers, a lady, chatted with me for a while. She lives in Port aux Basques and works one week on and one week off doing 24-hour home care here in Sydney. What a life. The ferry trip is a day, when all is said and done, so she spends one week working here in Sydney, two days traveling, and five days at home. Talk about a long commute ...

My computer says the time is 11:41 and we are supposed to sail at 11:45, but then my phone says 11:11. Still and all, that’s only thirty minutes. I have to be “announced”, walk to the truck and wait, then drive the truck on to the ferry. Then they have to cast-off. Today there are but six cars, and so at most eleven people. The load is sixty or so tractor-trailers or trailers. Atlantic Marine runs a trailer drop-off service, and the trucking companies can station drivers at each end. Once I get on board it will be truck drivers plus a sprinkling of lower-caste folks like me.

The hotel in Corner Brook is booked, and I’ve told them that I’m driving at parking-light speed so I’ll be late. I’ll be glad when this trip is over.

So, here I am in the terminal, typing away, minding my own business, and this low-level loader comes in with a dump truck. Bastard parks right next to my UHaul, just to let everyone know that he could fit the UHaul truck IN the dumpster on top of his loader. Don’t you just hate guys who feel so insecure that they have to show off? I know that I do.

Then comes the call to load. I trundle my squat green oxygen cylinder out to the truck, fire up the engine for warmth (“Courage mes petits amis!”) and wait. And wait. The yellow-jacketed lady who has been directing Real Trucks on to the ferry is being chatted with by the orange-jacketed man. They seem to be debating whether its worth directing someone as small and insignificant as me onto the Monster Ferry. I meet that low-level type on the way to Corner Brook, I’m running him off the road. It’s all his fault ...

I have been told to “follow the little van”, another insult. He is no smaller than am I. We are treated like the Dinky Toys we are,

“ My old man said “Follow the van’ ”. A yellow tug is hauling a drop-off trailer aboard the lower ramp.

We (Me, the truck and 24 guppies) will be aboard the Blue Putees , pronounced as if it were “p’tites” in French. The Blue Putees wore blue putees because there were no khaki putees available for them just before Beaumont-Hammel.

Slimy Weasel drives around again just to let everyone see how big and tough he is. I bet he doesn’t even know what VBA is, let alone what you might do in the VBE.

He fills my rear-view mirror just to show that he can. Yes, that is parts of the Trans-Canada Highway sticking to the mirror. Acts as a filter to cut the glare of headlights as trucks go racing by me.

That’s the tail-end of the low-life loader disappearing off the left hand edge of the mirror. You can see that there are no vehicles behind me. You know what this means. It means that I will be the last one to board, and our late departure will be blamed on me. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Still waiting. I have distanced myself from “the little van” in a vain attempt at vanity, to make myself look bigger, more like one of the Big Guys. A tug is leaving the upper ramp.

Another drop-off gets to board on an upper deck.

Still waiting.

At last. I am invited to drive up the ramp and stopped in the blinding sunlight so that once I enter the depths of the deep dark dank dungeony deck I won’t be able to see a thing.

I am parked at the end of the line, so I will be last to disembark. Sigh.

I take the elevator from level three to level seven. Here I am in one of the passenger lounges, at the forward end of the ship.

A view from the front window. The lenticular structure is strange. I don’t know what it does. You can see from the reflected sunlight that we will soon be heading east.

Another view of the lounge. I have circled My Seat, seat 7251, a window seat facing forward. There are probably eight thousand seats on board this ship? Surely not. I bet the “7” identifies us as the 7th deck. I am parked on deck 3. If the ship sinks, the truck will drown before I do. A comforting thought and the UHaul deserves no better.

Note the lack of people in the lounge, and reflect that I was the last to board. There are no more passengers.

Each wall on the lounge sports multiple screens. I know that my brain would not cope well with three visual stories being pumped in simultaneously.

Here is the Coffee shop; has hotdogs and pre-wrapped sandwiches. Whether any get sold and/or bought I don’t know.

I could take a stroll on the sun deck (but see “ice floes” below).

There are ponts on this punt, I pun to myself silently - to the great and unknown relief of other passengers, but not you, Dear Reader, not you.

There are places to go, things to see ...

There is an internet café with, I am told, WiFi access.

You are not allowed to sleep ANYWHERE except in your cabin, which you have booked, right?

Four happy women. The lady on the left is a regular passenger, and chats with all the staff; knows them all by name. probably their children’s names, too.

The restaurant could serve a lot of ice-cream. Now there’s a thought!

There is a buffet area, but for crew members only? Their food looks better than ours.

The corridor monitors show highway weather conditions, once we get close enough to receive the TraffiCam signals.

These are big ships. A sister ferry lies at the other wharf. Compare the size of the two trailers in the mid-ground.

The view from the stern. The passenger terminal is directly above (beyond!) the yellow Home Hardware trailer. I was parked at the near end of lane eleven.

A view of the bar area at the stern. It turned out that in half an hour I would be settled in here for the remainder of the trip.

At another jetty lies a smaller ship. What a beautiful day for a sail!

We are so high up, the workman looks insignificant.

There is a children’s play area next to the dining-room.

There are TWO children’s play areas next to the dining-room!

The loaders have missed a gap!

We start to move out. We are on our way!

Like the kid I am, I rush to the front to take a photo. Soon we will all be all at sea. I re-seat myself and after ten minutes glance out of the window. We are going backwards. Are we returning to port? No! The vehicles were loaded at what was destined to become the bow end? So all us vehicles are effectively facing backwards?

I collect my laptop, cables, phone, coat, two shoulder bags and the guppies on their luggage trolley and waddle down to the bar at the other end where I re-establish Chez Greaves and get on with typing up Friday’s log.

Half an hour later we pass through ice chunks larger than dinner plates, larger than the turkey platter. Ominous?

I am fascinated by the ice. This is my first and last trip on a large vehicular ferry. I have no plans to drive back to the mainland. I am as excited as a ten-year old, and it is an experience I am glad to have.

At times the sea surface reminds me of the drifting snow that covers the highways.

At other times it looks like a boat on the Swan River up by Midland Junction, moving through clouds of jellyfish brought in on the tide from Fremantle.

Shackleton and Franklin could never have seen the sea like this. For one thing they could not have been so high up above the surface of the ice. I suppose that they would have loved to have masts twice as tall as they were, so that the lookout could see further.

I spot a large murky shape through the murky windows. An oil rig? An ice-breaker (I hope). One of the staff told me that it is not unusual for a ferry to be stuck in ice for a couple of days. The coffee-shop guy told me he’d been trapped for four days one time.

An hour later we are still swimming through patches of ice and patches of soon-to-be-ice water.

It turned out (or turned away, more accurately) to be a container ship.

I spot my first ice-berg.

I am still excited.

2019_02_02_15_10_55.mp3 Here is a terrible recording I made of the ship sweeping through the ice. What comes out as “tick, tick, tick-tick” on the hardly audible recording was a real “cHunk” that vibrated through the ship to my feet. Now, this isn’t a coastguard ice-breaker creating a rescue path, and I suspect that the entire trip was on autopilot, except for the bit at each end where the captian maliciously forced me to change camp. FWIW I blame the poor recording quality on the Android operating system, the free Voice Recorder Ap, the Moto-X phone, Koodo for not having (yet) switched my number to a 709-area code, Marine Atlantic services, the waitress in the café, and several other issues. I mean, my part was just to press the “Record” button, right?

Now there is no more mass in the frozen water than there is in the melted water, but the solid chunk causes the ship to transmit the vibration right through the floor, through my feet and, of course, through the air through my ear-drums.

Two hours later we start ploughing through bigger, thicker ice floes. People spot seals, but I can’t see them. I suppose it is like foreigners trying to see emus or kangaroos in the Australian bush. It isn’t until you have seen some that you know what to look for.

It is 6 p.m. Newfoundland time. We dock in about fifty minutes, so we are about an hour late. That means it will be close on ten, or even later, when I reach Corner Brook. I have treated myself to a plate of “wings” and a basket of fries. A HUGE basket of fries. The wait staff have brought me a six-inch take-out box which is crammed with the fries I couldn’t eat. I suppose that I will munch on them during my parking-lights drive up the Trans-Canada Highway.

At 18:30, Newfoundland time, we turn around and dock backwards which is, of course, now forwards, the way I thought we were going to go. I think we have crossed the wossit-Strait backwards. Can this be true? The weather forecast:-

Tonight	Flurries and snow squalls. Blowing snow over exposed areas. Local amount 5 cm. Wind southwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming northwest 20 gusting to 40 overnight. Temperature steady near minus 10. Wind chill near minus 20.
Sun, 3 Feb	Flurries. Blowing snow over exposed areas. Local amount 2 to 4 cm. Wind northwest 20 km/h gusting to 40 increasing to 40 gusting to 60 in the morning. Temperature steady near minus 10. Wind chill near minus 22.
Night	Flurries ending near midnight then partly cloudy. Wind northwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming light near midnight. Low minus 12. Wind chill near minus 21.

My mood is not improved by reading a Cape Breton news report about Adelaide, where I lived and worked between 1970 and 1977. I fantasize about one day, just give me one day, of 45+c weather to melt all this snow and ice AND cause such an updraft as to sweep all the vaporized water off to fall on the Arctic or Antarctic regions.

Hooray! The ship has made very loud stomach noises, come to a halt, and started to go forwards backwards, if you get my drift. I started the trip in seat 7251 facing what I though was forward on account of how we had driven our vehicles onto the boat, but about five streetcar stops out of North Sydney, the ship did a sort of 3point turn. Chez Greaves is worryingly re-established back in seat 7251. At 18:50 we are docked. The announcement will come “Gentlemen, start your engines”, but I have all the time in the world for I was last on and so will be last off, last in line. I will be allowed to take my time balancing my box of cold French fries with my shoulder bag over my shoulder, dragging the guppy tank behind me, and wondering where I put the key to the truck.

I took a photo over the ship’s rail at the lights of Port aux Basques. By the way, the trip takes about seven hours. I flew YYZ to CDG in seven hours. I boarded (drove on to) the ship at 11:48 (my phone time) and was pumping gas at 19:00, so just over seven hours all up.

You can’t work out what this is, can you? I can, but I’ll take a clearer shot.

Here you go. We are looking at the gaping maw of the off-ramp that will receive us as we drive off the ship.

I have sketched yellow lines around the white-painted steel maw.

Since I was last on, I will be last off, so I take my time and let the common horde clutter up the elevator. One last walk around the deck. I return to the stern-bow-stern where I had left the guppies in my eager haste to switch ends. I wander back to seat 7251, use the bathroom on the way. Over the P.A. comes an announcement for drivers to PLEASE return to their vehicles and, a minute or two later, another announcement for drivers to PLEASE RETURN to their vehicles. Some of those front-liners must be really dragging their heels. Then a third announcement for drivers to PLEASE RETURN TO THEIR VEHICLES, and one of the cabin staff squeals or screams at me “They are waiting for YOU”, and when I explain that I was last on so that ... she says No, You’ll be first OFF.

Huh? I don’t mind backing up a truck. I used to back up the farm tractor with a combine-harvester in tow, but surely they don’t expect those semi drivers to reverse the length of the ship? By the elevator a yellow jacket (of the formal kind) not only opens the door for me but enters and pushes the “3” button to make sure I go there. I waddle out of the elevator towing my oxygen bottle on its luggage wheels (Thinks: If I wedged the aquarium air-pump’s plastic tube up my nose, would people be more convinced that I have emphysema?) and make my way to the truck. Unlock and gain the driver’s door, stretch out full-length to open the passenger door (must be done from inside the cab), exit, un-strap, load the guppies in, and do up their seat-belt for them.

After the docking staff have got all the other vehicles off the vehicle queue, that is, in about another five minutes time, they walk the length of the deck and have me back up fifteen feet and switch to the other lane and off the boat. What was all the hurry about?

Snow is swirling as I drive out of the compound and up the steep ramp cut through the rock face at Port aux Basques and I cross a bridge – possibly used to span the railway line when they had a railway in Newfoundland ). I find a gas station and gas up ($99.65; the first gas bill under a hundred dollars, Gee! But it’s great to be back home! ), give the truck a few swigs of glycol, and look for my ear-buds so that I can catch up on some of the Aussie, Spanish and French podcasts on the two-hour drive to Corner Brook. The snow swirls thicker. I hunt in my computer wallet for the ear-buds, and realize that the bag is a little too empty: There is my laptop, but where is the power cable? Answer is in the next-but-one paragraph.

AN APOLOGY TO UHaul

Even ‘though the headlights don’t work, I turned them on from 50 years of habit, and noticed that the road was illuminated. And it was on high beam. Had Marine Atlantic sent a bored mechanic down to deck three to fix the truck? Possibly not. Ockam’s Razor suggests that the hold was warm enough to melt ice. I now suspect that after two days of driving, that is, once I pulled into Hollis Truro, a thick layer of clear ice had formed over the headlights and thus diffused the light from the lamps. I say “Clear Ice” because Becky and I inspected the headlamps (hurriedly in the -30c wind-chill breeze) and didn’t notice that ice was there at all. Whatever, I now apologise to UHaul, the lights do work, and as you will see in later photos, they cast a great deal more than a parking-light glow. Now, where did I put my blood-pressure pills?

Back to the Log

Remember how they harried me to get down to deck three, well, see, the computer was plugged in at seat 7251 and in my haste – I left the cable up on deck seven, on the ship, half a mile away across the rock face. Slam, bang the door, rev the engine, and I set off in a blizzard to find the entrance to the ferry terminal, At the entry gates a lady directs me to the terminal. I reverse up, and park outside the terminal, breathless, relieved that the ship hasn’t sailed away. Michelle phones the purser and begins explaining that a nice customer (actually an Idiot Passenger) has left his computer power cable and could they please send someone” at which point he is clearly interrupted. His eyebrows raise and he says “You have it?”. Turns out that a member of the cabin crew was on the same walkie-talkie wave-length as the purser and happened to be walking past seat 7251 right then, and so broke into the conversation.

I was relieved. I was ecstatic. I was exhilarated. Took them under a minute to locate it it on this monster ship. Michelle despatched the shuttle driver (passengers are not allowed foot access to the docks), who returns five minutes later with an envelope, marked with my name, containing my cable. These guys are subject to the management rule that they are not allowed to take tips, no-no-no, so if you are ever walking through the terminal at Port aux Basques, feel free to pick up the banknote I left lying there.

‘Tis a favorite hobby of mine to track changes in “recycling” rules in different jurisdictions at different times. This is part of a poster in the ferry terminal. Why would one not allow used tissues in the compostable bin (“Organics”). I figure that the soil bacteria must think of snot as I think of Chapman’s Butterscotch Ripple Ice-Cream, and the carbon has to be good, right?

Back in the truck, back up the ramp, and can I find the entrance to Trans-Canada Highway-East? I can not. I ended up in downtown Port aux Basques, turned around, drove back past the ferry terminal, the snow falling in cascades by now. In desperation I begged at lady driver for help. She didn’t know how to get to the Trans-Canada Highway-east, but she knew how to get to Corner Brook, so an hour after I left the ship, I was on my way to Corner Brook. Seven o’clock by my cell phone.

And so begins the ...

Nightmare Drive from Hell.

The story so far: Our gallant hero is walking back from the kiosk (“Thank You Nice Lady!”) to his truck when he spots a neat way they have of measuring the length of a vehicle without using a tape-measure. It’s called Subtraction, a part of Arithmetic. You have to be competent with values up to ninety-nine.

There has been no snow falling for the seven-hour crossing on the ferry, but as I set foot (or at least, tread) on The Rock, the snow starts up again.

Note the snow that covers the truck-tracks. I estimate that two centimetres has fallen in the past hour.

While I have your attention:-

The Nullarbor Plain is vast. The Great Eastern Highway from Southern Cross runs across the plain. There is a stretch of dead-straight highway 90 miles long, 155 Km, between the Caiguna roadhouse and the Balladonia roadhouse.

Now when I say “dead-straight” think of Len Beadell’s Gun-Barrel Highway. The Great Eastern Highway makes nary a bend from left to right for ninety miles. Nor does it cross any culverts, let alone dips or valleys. There is no rain, so no run-off, and hence no trees. It is not really dead straight; the Great Eastern Highway follows the curvature of the earth.

Ninety miles without a twitch of the steering wheel can do things to your mind. I remember well the conversation between me and my then wife after thirty minutes. The same sort of mental whiteout is occurring as a drive. It is a steady onward motion out of nothingness in to nothingness, with no visual mental relief.

An equally scary drive (which I’ve made five times) is the two-hour drive from Dease Lake to Telegraph Creek in northern British Columbia. The road is gravel, and crosses several major rivers. On the approach to what I recall as the Tahltan River, the road was so steep that my five-gear Hyundai Excel, in first gear, needed the foot-brake to slow it down. That is the only time in my life I can recall needing to use the foot-brake while in lowest gear. That was scary too. RVs are not allowed on that road at all, at all.

The drive from Port aux Basques to Corner Brook was scarier than anything I’ve ever done.

Conditions were the worst I can remember for night driving. I was reduced to 20 mph for long stretches of the trip. In this photo I am doing 20 and so risked taking a quick shot. I was not brave enough to risk fumbling with a movie. Except for being white instead of red, this was like my four drives across the unsealed stretch of the highway across the Nullarbor Plain in 1972 and 1973. Basically a flat surface with a vast plain (tonight, a plain of snow) off each side. Note that the snow ploughs have not been here; tracks are visible, but nothing like a bare patch of road.

An hour and a half later, same scene but with large snow flakes obliterating my view. Still no ploughing. Both northbound and south bound traffic share a common track of wheel ruts. It will not be pleasant to meet oncoming traffic. The road is about to curve to the left, but I can’t use high-beam because then all I can see is a white mass of snowflakes and no road!

Such frusrtration: Now that I have headlights, I don’t dare use highbeam. I am driving most of the time at 40 mph. For two stretches of about a mile each I got up to 50, but I tend to be doing 40 without snow falling and 20 with snow falling. My shoulders ache.

The ploughs had been out in places, but after we passed South Branch we were on our own.

When I say “We”, I mean me and the four other vehicles.

What is nominally a two and a third hour trip stretched into four and a half hours, double the time. During that four and a half hours I was overtaken by just four transport trucks and no other vehicles. I overtook nobody. Everyone else stayed indoors. I would normally expect to be overtaken once every twenty minutes, at least. During daylight not ten minutes passes without someone else joining the queue behind me.

I learned from the desk clerk in Corner Brook that the ploughs had been taken off the road. There are at least two possibilities:-

(1) The ploughs wait until the snow has stopped falling (which means the roads will continue to get worse

(2) The roads are too bad for the ploughs to be out in the darkness.

I did go past one tractor-trailer, slewed at a horrible angle, with its tracks making parabolic curves off in the deep snow until it had come to a rest. The snow appeared to be untouched in the main tracks, which I took as an indication that half an hour had passed since the previous truck had gone through ahead of me.

Because I spent the best part of an hour dekeing around Port aux Basques I was probably the last vehicle to leave town. The six-car crowd was an hour ahead of me. For the first two hours of the drive (so to the halfway point between Port aux Basques and Corner Brook) not one vehicle had appeared behind me. I felt very lonely, as if I were at the end of the world. I am glad that I gassed up before leaving Port aux Basques.

I drove through the two intersections, from St George’s and St Bonavista. I am now on part of the highway I’ve driven before . It is starting to feel more and more like home.

I drive past a sign that reads “Corner Brook 77 Km” and I am grateful for the mental exercise that has me multiplying by 5 and dividing by 8 and then dividing that result by 40 and then multiplying that result by 60 to determine how many more minutes of hell I have. Another hour to go. I’ve been driving for three hours (there is nowhere to stop: if I pull out of the tracks I’ll never get going again in this truck) and am amazed at the way the hour digits roll over on the clock. How come it is already after ten o’clock. Have I really been gripping the steering wheel for three hours?

Every road-side sign is covered in snow. The smaller rectangles (“100 Km/Hr”, “Passing Lane Ahead”) look as if a burlap sack has been draped over them, the slushy snow being the colour of a burlap sack. The larger signs (bright green, luminous silver lettering “Clarenville 219 Km”) mercifully have Rorschach images over the largest part. Butterflies, mainly, although later on they look like Belgian Waffles with Bacon Strips, Real Whipped Cream, Maple Syrup and a large bottomless coffee. I reason that the snow that hits is warmer than the cold metal signs, and so a snow-flake (or a few gallons of sprayed slurry) sticks to the sign and thus accumulates more as time goes by. I’m not sure whether the thrown/blown snow melts onto the sign, or whether it freezes. Or both. My mind wanders away from Mysteries Of The Universe back to the track in the snow.

I counted three areas of heavy snow fall, and one stretched from the Burgeo turnoff to Gallants, shown on my edited map as a wiggly line. I figure that distance to be about 30 Km, say 18 miles, and with my speed close to 20 mph, probably 45 minutes of “blind” driving. Multiply that by three and that’s probably the time I spent driving in a snow storm. Poor me. But how was I to know?

The snow was so thick that the underside of the wipers accumulated ice. The wiper blades on the up-swing tossed the snow into the airflow as it blew off the truck. On the wiper’s return towards the hood/bonnet, the snow was compacted and clung to the underside of the blade. I prayed that I would not have to stop in the track, exit the truck, and free the blades of ice. “38 Km to Corner Brook”. I’m doing 30 mph. You do the math. Will this nominally two-hour drive never end?

I take the exit marked “Greenwood Inn” and find myself in a shopping mall; phone the Inn and get street directions with names “O’Connell” and “Ellswick”, all of which will be meaningless to me on account of snow covering the signs and my vision blurred. I finally figure and confirm that it will be “down the hill” and “in the downtown core”, and pop us into second gear for the apprehensive slither into the valley on a road mercifully clear of side-swipeable cars. I abandon Phase 1 at the 24hour Ultramar where a young fellow stops shoveling snow to listen to my question. The Greenwood Inn is literally across the one-way main street. All I have to do is hang a left, hang another left, hang another left, and I’ll be there.

While I am left standing outside the truck, I note that the air is balmy. It’s still below zero, but that -20c, -30c chilling is gone. We are perhaps at a mere -5c, and I feel like unbuttoning my jacket.

Which I do. Stagger in, greeted by the lady desk clerk and a security guard, “Betty”. Much glee at my fish stocks, and off to room 407 where I do a bit of typing for exercise. I’m no masseur, you understand, but I figured that twenty minutes of two-fingered typing would loosen up my shoulder muscles. Maybe even bring blood to circulate. At half-past midnight I turn off the light.

I’m so glad I had this day on the ferry, practiclally no driving to do.

Hah hah.