Saturday, October 14, 2017

The trip is winding down. I know it and I can feel it.

I’d planned this as an open-ended trip with a one-way ticket because I thought it would take me three weeks to drive over the island, but the truth is I could have been finished today and out of here tomorrow – twelve days instead of twenty-one. Oh well. I’ll just have to amuse myself.

Today I followed a plan, to quit the lovely Bay Bulls and the efficiency unit, become the most easterly human in North America, and finish my tour of The Avalon Peninsula with a trip to Couch Cove. Then find a place to sleep.

I had thought of two days in an out-of-town unit followed by two days in-town without a car, then I thought of four days in-town with Free Parking. In the end I settled in for four days out-of-town in a budget (“cheap”) motel, and as I type up these notes Sunday morning I realise that I might instead have booked into a modest hotel downtown, ditched the car, and paid for the downtown hotel with what I saved on four days of car rental. (Shrugs: “I’ve done quite well in terms of my fiscal budget”).

A crude tally shows that I have spent $3,000 over a fifteen-day holiday, or two hundred per day. My most recent estimate was $5,159 for eighteen days or $286 per day.

A late start, for I have a leisurely day ahead. I pack up, clean up, make three last-checks around the unit (I know myself that well) and head out of the door. Adjacent to the small parking lot is a familiar scene, here, as in small towns all over the world. We have pulled up to have a chat. This chat has been running for twenty minutes at least, and neither guy looks at me as I drive past. Quite possibly they are still there, twenty hours later, yakking away.

I stop in what I thought was Kilbride, having missed my turning, and enquire at the local hockey arena (Saturday morning you’ll find only locals there) for directions. No, I’ve not gone too far and I am in “The Goulds”, pronounced “Gooolds”, without the definite article.

And why not? “Kalgoorlie” is pronounced “The Kal”, and “Southern Cross” is “The ‘Cross”, but there again, that’s in the Southern Hemisphere.

“No, you’re not there yet. Just a little ways down this road, keep goin’, and you’ll come to the corner store, ...” To my surprise there is a corner store called “Corner Store”, but it is not part of a chain. I stop to buy a chocolate bar, and ask about the name.

The road from Highway 10 to Petty Harbour and All Points East is familiar to me, even though this is the first time I’ve travelled it. Stunted trees to each side, mountains in the distance. There will be a glimpse of The Atlantic Ocean soon, I know. And then another glimpse.

Along this route I saw that huge pipeline again. Seventy-two inches diameter if it was a foot, so I stopped to ask a couple. Water mains, he said. To supply St John’s? No, and he pointed to his feet. Just here.

And the other pipes up by Clarenville? Might be oil ...

So here I am at Cape Spear. The most eastern chunk of mainland in North America. You just KNOW that there will be an island or rock off shore, right?

I chatted with the runner, hoping that he would go south, not east, and he did. Originally from Cumberland UK, now based in Calgary. Oil. He added a bit to the story of the red supply ship (widest in the world) in Bay Bulls.

There is an interpretive plaque, of course. Unlike Ontario, the plaques I have seen in Newfoundland are not vandalized.

Well, today I could see The Narrows and the castle on Signal Hill.

Five kilometres. A thin fog would stop that, let alone a Newfoundland fog.

And here is the view from Cape Spear to The Narrows and St John’s. That’s Signal Hill in the centre. I was there yesterday.

Here is the gravel path down to the tip.

And here I am. Waves crashing on the rocks. A couple from Bristol and Toronto told me that I’d just missed out seeing a whale where the waves were breaking, but I was already having a (drum-roll) whale of a time.

Here I am not. My friends were working out how to use the camera, and I liked this accidental shot.

And here I am. The Most easterly human on the North American mainland. I am waiting in my “impatient posture” while my two friends mutter to each other “No, press this one”. “Press here” and so on.

Don’t they know I am on vacation and don’t have a minute to waste?

And here I am yelling above the noise of the waves and the wind “Just tap the screen”, without knowing whether they are still on the camera screen or not.

They are, and they did.

Now, like many tourists, I am making sure that I get my camera back!

No wonder I am excited, and the three ladies exclaim disbelief.

I manage to convince them I am local by explaining that I trot down to the Admin/Arts/Library building each morning to lift a free copy of The Toronto Star.

Eighteen months later I learn from a book that there is no way I could consider myself to be at the easternmost point of the North American continent. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted ....

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... well, at Shoe Cove Pond, I suddenly think of my pal Rudi in South Africa. Cape Town, to be exact. Well 25Km outside of Cape Town, but what’s distance nowadays?

Another image for my “Failures in Advertising” thread

Mystery Solved! I have been steering this silver-gray Kia for three days now, and have been alarmed at the way it guzzles gasoline.

Well, when I am wearing my long-distance glasses I don’t notice that the gauge on the left is the engine temperature.

I usually fill up last thing at night. The next morning I set off and after an hour or so glance at what I think is the “fuel gauge” and note with alarm that the tank is now only half-full.

The good news has been that it has stayed at half-full for the rest of the day.

Of course.

That explains in part why I have been dashing in to pay a fill-up of less than eight dollars, in some cases.

I have settled into Conception Bay South for four days, for better or worse, and am delighted to find a Dominion Supermarket, as we all call the Metro stores in Ontario,

Quite a large one, too. The frontage shown here is the width of the store. And Saturday evening around six, a banner out the front advertised “All checkout lanes open!”, but by the time I got inside they weren’t. I supposed that management had sent four checkout staff outside to take down the banner.

I wandered across the street and wolfed down a Chinese Buffet at a reasonable price. Got chatting with a couple who had been married 54 years, and in writing that I have a feeling that I have already written it down somewhere else today. A lovely couple. As they left she walked towards me with arms open and we exchanged a hug.

Newfoundlanders are so loving and loveable.

I had earlier darted into a place called Tiny’s Bar and Grill that advertised Jiggs Dinner, but it is served at noon Sundays, and you better order now or you might not get any. What is it with Newfoundland that their National Dish (as many would have it) is generally not available unless you plan days in advance, book a plate the day before, and roll up at eleven a.m. or forget about it?

FWIW the link above will take you text that reads “salt beef is used rather than corned beef”, but “corn” refers to a corn of salt; that is, salt beef is corn beef is salt beef. No matter. You can’t buy Jiggs Dinner anywhere in Newfoundland. Fuggedabahtit.

Since my room boasts a fridge, and the hotel common dining nook boasts a microwave, I grabbed two cheeses, milk and cream, and a bag of apples from Dominion.

The day has been cold and windy, most unpleasant. I did not bring cold-weather clothing on purpose. I decided that two layers of coat should suffice in October, and if it got colder than that, then I was staying indoors.

What else?

Oh yes, driving around St John’s and its suburbs, I have found several extremely awkward intersections. Places where there are two left-turn lanes and only one straight-thorough lane. Spots in the city where intersections are remodeled with narrow vertical red-and-white pylons, as if the city is experimenting to see how well the rats who drive cars can cope with a new maze.

Several times I have waited until the lane to the right of me has flushed clear, and then made an awkward (and probably illegal) change of lanes to go where I wanted to. Although most times I do what my old driving instructor taught me, and just go where I am headed and then make a few right-turns to go back past the awkward intersection, and then make another set of right-turns to re-approach the problem intersection.

Trouble is, all too often this maneuver puts me into a new problem intersection and I feel as if I am navigating fractally.

FWIW Google Maps tells me that the distance from the Azores to Cape Spear is 1,119 miles, whereas the distance from Cape Spear to Toronto is shown as 2,113 Km.

I am closer to The Azores than I am to Toronto.

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