The Pit of Pat

Saturday morning we got up bright and early, and I took a carload to the storage locker. Dropped it off with no problems and went for an oil change - was back home around 10:00. Then we packed up the car with the rest of the stuff - she was a tight fit believe you me. In the end nearly everything was allowed in. A quick drop off at Value Village cleared the passenger seat for Mom, but still no sign of the landlord with my damage deposit or Andy and Laine with their furniture-picking-up-ability. It was a gorgeous day so we didn’t really mind.

Eastlink had told me my phone had already been disconnected, but it most definitely had not. We called Andy & Laine just as they were calling us, and shortly they were over and dismantling my computer desk and having a great deal of fun getting it all into the car. When success was achieved we said goodbye, I had a quick shower and we waited for the landlord some more. When I was getting ready to leave, around noon, he showed up and we made our exchange and then headed away from 25 Richmond one last time.

Went to the farmer’s market where we got bearclaws, and some delicious foods for the road. I dropped off Sister Bernice’s papers at the convent and then we were out on the open road. Just before 1:00 pm I’d say. Smooth travels through PEI and of course the giant landmass that is New Brunswick. As we neared Grand Falls and Edmunston before finally putting NB behind us, a funny smell wafted up from the engine. Then a small noise. And then the battery light came on, and by the grace of poutine we managed to get the car off the highway and into Motel Leo, where we had been planning to spend the night anyway.

A short inspection confirmed that a belt was missing from the engine that really shouldn’t have smoked off on the Trans-Canada, so we huddled in for the night and got a good’s night sleep. After breakfast the next morning the reality of being in Atlantic Canada on a Sunday for our chances of getting a car fixed crept in. Creature comforts - 6 days a week. Despite my trying to convert as many Acadian mechanics from Christianity to atheism in an attempt to get my car fixed, we realized we’d have to spend another day in Grand Falls before we could get anything fixed. It was a beautiful fall day, but it was definitely fall. Gone were the warm skies of PEI the day previous - I had to wear a sweater on our walk around the grounds. Watched some movies and ate some food in our rather pleasant motel room (Kyle can attest to the quality of Motel Leo) and then settled in for the night, eager to start in the morning.

Ate our breakfast and headed to Grand Falls’ Canadian Tire, if for no other reason than their likelihood of having the proper belt. Half an hour later a new belt is put on and we’re cleared to go from Auto Service Manager Junior Desrosiers, and his (male) mechanic Doris Morin. AcaDIEN!

We made our way into La Belle Province. There was no glorious fall day this time. It was a downpour as the hurricane-induced deluge swept through the province. Kyle and Adam remember the trip to Dartmouth in the highlander. Well it was easily as bad as that, I won’t say worse, but it was a) me driving, not Adam b) in the Cavalier, not the Highlander and c) surrounded by Quebec drivers, most of whom were in 18-wheelers. It wasn’t fun. It was very stressful, or at least I thought it was stressful until I smelled that smell again, heard that snap again, and saw the battery light turn red somewhere between Victoriaville and Drummondville.

There was no Motel Leo to greet us this time, just a Quebec department of Transport service stop with a washroom that smelled like an open sewer and stale cigarettes. I couldn’t remember the word for ‘towing’ in french, and so the Yellow Pages were useless. I asked a greasy man in a greasier canteen if he knew of anyone to help with ‘le towing’ and he gave me a card. I called it and asked politely ‘y-a til quelq’un qui parle anglais la bas?’ which isn’t really the best way to start a conversation in the heartland of Quebec, but the line was mostly static so I’m sure it didn’t matter. A kindly trucker checking in with his family was nice enough to pick up the phone and try to describe the situation as best he could. They were all friendly, but I was quite stressed and when the rain hadn’t let up and we were waiting for the bright yellow tow truck I could say my spirits were pretty low.

When it arrived, a friendly Rick Mercer lookalike jumped out of the truck with a cigarette in hand and took a look under the hood, talking to me about a thousand syllables a minute of which I could pick up four or five. He instructed me on how to get the car ready for the towing, and Mom and I climbed into the cab and he told us the scoop.

It was 4:45. He could tow us to Drummondville’s Canadian Tire easily enough, but their auto service department closed at 6:00 and might not be able to squeeze me in. In that scenario the motels would be quite expensive. The alternative was to tow me to a small town a few exits away - the towing fee would be considerably less as would the cost at the auberge. Since crappy tire would replace the belt for free I figured why not try our luck at Drummondville. What luck I thought I was talking about I’m not entirely sure.

Due to the rain and the sensitive nature of the 20 year old vehicle we were driving, we hadn’t exactly been speeding down the highway when our vehicle had been in operation. Our jolly friend in the tow truck however, had no such limitations, nor apparently a fear centre in his brain as we passed, well pretty much everything, in the typhoon conditions going at least 140 km/hr. That was fine, I guess, if trying to maintain bladder control was fine. Until one of his wipers stopped working. “Ah shit, tabernac!” and we pulled over to an exit where he managed to get the stuck wiper working again. He explained it was scheduled to be serviced, at a cost of $400, later that week. The car had, if my understanding him is correct, approximately half-a-million kilometres on it, and was a 2002. Most impressive.

We headed back onto the freeway, with him going just a little faster to make up for lost time. This too was fine as I had already wet myself when the wiper stopped working, but then as we were cruising around 150 km/hr both wipers stopped - this time for good. Cursing again, and quickly explaining that we’d have to change trucks at their head office - a sleepy town with an impossibly spelled name - he decided that in lieu of driving slower, in which the possibility for an accident increased with the length of time he’d be on the road with no wipers, it would in fact make sense to go FASTER since that way he’d be off the highway sooner. Well it almost made sense, because as he was going around 160 or so, the rain hitting the windshield was being pushed away rather forcefully and almost allowed you to see. Almost.

We pulled into the town, swapped trucks, admired a crumpled Porsche Targa that had gone maybe just a little too fast for its own good (it had nitrous for shits sake) and were on our way to Drummondville before too long. We even managed to arrive before 6:00 pm somehow, and alive to boot, which was more impressive than the 500,000 km on the other truck. What was the most impressive though, was that the Drummondville auto service centre was in fact open until 9:00 pm.

After paying the man we explained to this new auto service manager what was happening, and he got his guy to take a quite thorough look at things and replaced the belt for us. None of this cost us anything, which is one good reason to go to Crappy Tire I guess. It was getting late, but I figured we could still make it to Gananoque by midnight, so onward we went. Still raining, still cold as ass, and apparently still cursed. Three or so kilometres from the Canadian Tire, old smelly was back in action.

I’m not sure how to describe my frustration. Knowing that I still had to navigate Montreal, in the dark, and then onward the three hours or so to get to my final destination, well it wasn’t very pleasant. We pulled over in Drummondville and I examined the engine, and the belt was there, having fun, not wondering why I was paying it so much attention. I got in the car and rolled my window down a bit to get rid of the fog. It of course jumped the track and fell to the bottom of the door. So in the pouring rain, going as slow as we could so as not to invoke the wrath of the belt, getting passed by eighteen-wheeler after eighteen-wheeler I sat with an icy grip on the steering wheel telling myself that if I was going to die, I was going to bloody well make it to Montreal first, so I could at least go with some f’ing dignity.

When the squealing and the smell started, we’d pull over and turn off the car and it would go away, affording us another n km, where n is anything but constant. To make matters worse, there was a ton of construction between Drummondville and Montreal and most of it very poorly marked detour-wise. I figured we had three hours yet before I could relax, and three hours is only 180 minutes. And that’s really only a little over 10,000 seconds. So I started counting in my head, to try and relax. I didn’t get much past five-hundred when the smell came back and we had to pull over again, ruining my count.

My hands were quite understandably numb by now, and so I didn’t feel my finger sizzling on the engine when I touched the area beside the belt. I felt it soon enough to discover that part of my fingerprint was gone, and unable to even muster a curse I got back into the car and headed into Montreal. It takes forever to get to Montreal. I forgot about that. You wait and you wait and you wait, but you’re not there yet. You’re driving through froufy little towns forever before you get there. I kept looking for landmarks to lift my spirits, anything. As we ran out of Saint-named towns I saw the blurry lights of the Stade Olympique, and that helped a little bit, even though its a shitty landmark. Later a transport truck pulled off onto an exit and there she was - bathed in a gaussian halo of rain and life - my city, my Montreal.

I don’t think I’ve seen something so sexy in a very long time, and sexy isn’t even really the right word. It’s like sexy plus a bit of the rapture, a bit of Mother Theresa lifting you up from the darkness and into the light. If instead of the search light I had seen the cross on the hill, I think I might’ve converted right then and there. But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Instead of taking the tunnel like I did with Kyle last time we were through these parts, we took the 20 Ouest, and so it was unfamiliar if not a bit safer. Breaking down in a tunnel would not be fun. The belt seemed to realize it couldn’t fucking die in the city, and that combined with our slower driving seemed to increase our life expectancy somewhat. I never imagined I’d be in a hurry to leave Montreal, but it was good to start to feel like Ontario was ever closer, and eventually a small smattering of {401} signs appeared, enough to encourage us that we were really out of the woods and that at the very least we had /people/ in this part of the world.

After turning onto the 401 we got the smell again. And we pulled over and the smell didn’t go away when we restarted the car. Mom had made the appropriate phone calls announcing our late arrival, but she was starting to feel the stress. And by starting to feel the stress I mean having a quiet nervous breakdown. Fingers frozen/burned and feeling pretty tired after the day we’d had we just waited for a sign announcing any kind of hotel, and eventually in Lancaster the Impala was announced - around the time the smell came back. We were pulled over towards the exit, and had to drive under 20 to get to the place. I Interac’d $60 for a room, parked the car, and realized we’d need to find some way of jimmying up the window so our stuff didn’t get stolen. We managed to get something to work, which I really wish we had thought about three hours prior. We opened the door to our room, longed for Motel Leo and I had a hot shower in an icky bathroom and fell asleep to some Futurama. Mom kept having nightmares about the ride through Quebec at 160 with no windshield wipers.

The next morning we woke and found that at the very least it wasn’t raining anymore. Mom got some breakfast at McDonald’s and I got a Five Alive and a truck-stop-type strudel. It was the first thing we’d had to eat since before noon the day before. Whatever is wrong with the alternator and its belt must’ve been heavily worsened by the rain, because other than some initial squealing, we didn’t hear anything more from it the whole way to Gananoque. We took Route 2, a more scenic and safer route along the St. Lawrence, passing the gargantuan Al-Rashid Islamic Institute nestled among cottage homes and idyllic small town greasy spoons and Lion’s Halls. Around noon we were suddenly in Gananoque - I rarely take the #2 so it was a bit of a surprise to see the Casino and the familiar sites of home. We pulled into the appropriate driveway and Mom made me some lunch before I dozed off. Four days instead of two, putting me in a frazzled and sleepy state with time running out on all the work I need to get done this week, it was pretty much the trip from hell. At least we arrived alive.

Tomorrow I head to the K-Man’s for some hunker down work time, and today I hope to get a good head start. Just wanted to give an update for those monitoring my voyage west. More soon, assuming the bus doesn’t asplode on the way to Gatineau.

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