back from Hollidays in QUEBEC CANADA
Bonjour! (or Hello)
It's been a long time since I went east for holidays, I went
there for Xmas about 19 years ago when Gisele took me there to
meet her folks and other relatives. We drove there in Oct of
1979 and got married on the 20'th of Oct in the biggest church in
Canada. I've never been back since to visit, although Gisele did
fly home a few times to visit.
So this year I thought it was to long, her folk's are not
getting any younger. I got our dodge caravan read for the
making the trip. Gave it a wash job, and checked everything out.
The cruse control didn’t work very well as it never did from
new, but Graham VE6GRA told me of a little trick he found of.
On the 1991 Caravan the computer for the cruse would get all
mixed up, and Grayham told me the cure was to drive it down
the road, set the speed, then step on the brake to cancel the
cruse, then set the speed again, them again step on the brake,
and keep doing this 10 times. It well remove any old memories
from the computer. I did this and it worked great for the whole
trip. Another problem I was wondering about was the wife a
month earlier was on the road following a pickup truck when a
steel rim fell out of his pickup box. She was on the right lane of
a 4 lane highway with a car along her in the left and one parked
on the shoulder of the road, so she had no place to go but over
top of this rim. It made a big clang under the van as she hit it. I
could see the one crossmember was slightly bent, and was
hopeing it didn’t effect the alignment of the steering? after a
month they was no wear on the tires, and it still steered good, so
I thought it was OK.
We loaded up the suitcases, HF radio gear, kids, sunflower
seeds, and we pulled out of Beaumont on July 28/97 at 12:45
Alberta time.
We went as far as Sasktoon and we stopped for supper. It
was then I started to knotice a lot of wear on the front tires, the
outside shoulders of both tires were completely wore out. We
were going to via Yorkton Sk, but in seeing this problem I
thought I best pass through Rigina Sk as it's a bigger city, I could
see I was going to need a tire shop and soon. It was Gisele's turn
to drive and I tryed to get a bit of sleep across the center seat of
the van, but with these tires on my mind I couldn’t sleep. I finely
told Gisele to stop and told her I rather drive just incase one of
those tires didn’t make it. Then after I took over I almost hit a
deer, he came running out of the right ditch, I nailed the brakes
and scared the kid's. The deer also stopped and scared me, we
missed by about 2 feet, so Gisele was happy I was driving at the
time, of course it was dark. You know I was almost thinking of
putting some deer whistles on the van to scare the deers, but I
don't know if they work that well, besides all the antenna I had
on the roof (HF/VHF/UHF) should of did lot's of whistling
through the air anyhow?
Around 00:45 we arrived in Regina and I stopped at the
Husky truckstop. I took a look at the tires and the steel belt's
were coming out through the rubber they were so badly wore
now, so it was easy to see that was as far as I was going to go. It
was to late to take a room, or look for a campground to pitch a
tent, so we just stayed in the CARAVAN HOTEL behind the
Husky. The 2 boy's took the frount seat, I took the center seat
and Gisele and Monique took the largest back seat. I used a
jacket to cover myself, it wasn’t the most confortable, as first
my right arm fell asleep, then my leg fell asleep, but soon the
rest of me was also sleeping. They was trucks leaving, trucks
pulling into the truckstop, headlights shinning through the
minivan windows. You could hear the engines running,
airbrakes exhausting, heck I felt right at home. The 2 boys in
front were restless and threw there nice blanket over there
backrest of the seats and it landed up on me, well I pushed my
jacket off onto the floor and pulled this blanket over me. A hour
or so after I felt them trying to get there blanket back off of me,
so I reached down on the floor and handed them my jacket
instead. Well it wasn’t much longer I was waken, and when I
looked up all I could see was eyeball's looking madly at me, the
2 boy's in the front seat, and the wife and girl in the back seat. It
really ticked them off to listen to me and my heavy breathing
fast asleep, as I was the only one sleeping. I had to return the
blanket, then Gisele took over the center seat and I was left the
drivers seat. We took off for a spot to pitch a tent, but this
wasn’t easy to find at 04:30 in the morning, so I just parked by a
field of oats nearby, at least it was quite and they could now
sleep away from all the trucks.
As morning finally came around, I got up, found a
GoodYear dealer and was at there door for 08:00, I didn’t have a
appointment, but I told them I was on holidays heading to
Quebec, so they tried to get me in as soon as they could. Well by
10:30 and $305.oo later I had 2 new skin's on the front wheels
and they did a wheel anlinement for me, it turned out the front 2
wheel's were toeing in amost 1.5 inches, no wonder it scuffed
them tires so fast. At least we were mobile again :-)
I drove till I got tired, then Gisele would drive while I'd
take a nap, and when she got tired, I'd take over again. I drove
through the night watching the falling stars, eating sunflower
seeds, and listening to the HF rig. The bands weren’t that good, I
landed up listening to the "Trucing Bozo" a truckers program at
night coming out of the states on the AM Broadcast band. When
the sun came up, it was Gisele’s turn. She thought the sunflower
seeds on the dash, and the mess I was making was very stupid,
but when I woke, there was Gisele driving, and Monique also in
the front, both chewing spit'z like krazy! In ONT. the van started
acting up a bit again, backfiring, and a bit of a miss, so I stopped
at a Dodge dealer and bought a new set of sparkplug cables and
installed them my self. That cured that problem and we keeped
on going.
By that next afternoon the kid's were getting pretty tired of
ridding in the van and need a good run. I stopped and phoned
Mark VE3IG from Iron Bridge ON. and he was happy to hear
from us. I meet Mark after my article on UHF connectors
showed up on the TCA Ham magazine on January/1997 on page
40. He found my e-mail address, and sent me a e-mail, I replied,
and you could say a friendship had evolved over internet. He
lives on the Island, a hour south of Espanola ON. so we decided
to meet for coffee and donuts at the donut shop there. Mark
brought his wife who is also a ham, and his 4 kids along.
Norman VE4CS heard us on the repeater and came as well. We
had a great coffee brake, then went to the school nearby where
all the kid's played together. Mark's kids and our kids made
friends right away and the wifes really had a good time chatting
as well. We were invited to go to there place to spend the night,
it was tempting to accept as passing over the swing bridge to the
Island, swimming in the lake, ridding horses, was sounding like
a lot of fun, but we turned down the offer only because we
wanted to arrive to Quebec as soon as we could so Gisele would
have more time to visit with relatives and her folks, but it goes
to show how hamradio and internet can create great friends so
far away.
I took off driving, the kid's were played out now and
everyone but me fell asleep. Early in the morning the sun started
coming up, and they started waking up. I told them this was
crazy, to far to drive, and we should turn back because I
couldn’t make it. they asked what city was ahead as they could
see it, I replied it was Montreal! Well then they all got excited!
We found our way to the trailer court at LaPrairrie QC where
Gisele's folk's live, then found there trailer. I took the long way
to there trailer driving 3 extra blocks, and when Gisele made me
aware of this, I told her after 3,868 Kms, 3 blocks really wasn’t
going to hurt me.
It was 04:00 AB time or 06:00 Est time when we parked
by there mobile trailer. Gisele folk's just woke up and were
saying to each other "wonder where Fern and Gisele are now?" it
was just after that they said that they heard van doors opening
and closing and English speaking people yacking. We had a few
snags on our way, but 63.25 hours later. I was beat by this time,
so Gisele's folk's feed me breakfast and tucked me into bed, a
bed much larger then what the mini van could offer :-Z
zzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZzzz! After a few hours woke up and had a
chat with Gisele's Dad, he don't speak English, and I don't know
much French, so it was rather a interesting conversation, lots of
sign language and hand shaking, it was made clear he was happy
to see us there.
We spent a few day's relaxing and visiting just with them,
theres a nice swimming pool in the trailer court that I was able
to make use of at no cost, so I really enjoyed that. Every day was
in the 30C, some days as high as 37C, only one evening was a
small thunder shower, so the weather was great. I did a small
about of HF work, and much time VHF, some of there repeaters
are English, others are French, some are for phone patches
ONLY, and some are bilingual. I found the bilingual repeaters
the most fun, and would sometimes learn a new word in French.
I of course discovered they also have time-out timers as well, as
I've timed out a few times :-(
On August 3 we left to Montmagny, north of Quebec City
to visit Gisele's uncle Guy. Guy is bilingual, so this was great for
me. I knew he had his morse code from the military years ago,
and thought I should try and talk him into getting a ham lic, but
as it turns out, he's a member of the ham club there, and now
he's retired, he's thinking about getting him ham lic this fall so
this well be something to look forward to. Shortly after arriving
he wanted us to go with him as they had something to see. We
went along the St Lawrence River. 6 kms away we could see
Cap-St-Ignace Island, and he told me 3 guy's were going to try
and cross the water on ski-doo's. I corrected him and said you
mean sea-doo's, but no, ski-doo's is what he ment. I guess they
had a race last winter of 500 kms long, and 3 of the racers were
the ones to attempt to cross the 6 kms from the Island to the
mainland, but said only if the water was calm. These ski-doo's
had no mod's to them eather, they were stock machines. The tide
was up, As it turned out, the wind picked up a bit, and they was
white cap's on the waves in the water, but they took off the
same. 2 of them made it out about half way and hit some waves
the wrong way and sank, but the 3'rd way made it all the way to
the main land. I got some good pictures, (if they turn out and if
you like, I could scan them and send them as a attached file, so
send me a e-mail if your interested in getting a picture of this. If
your internet service is slow, it might take a while, this is why
I'll only send pictures if you ask for one.)
The next day we went to Quebec City to visit Gisele's
Annt and uncle Fern & Rose. There also Gisele's God Parents. I
found the way on the map to chose my route, but all the signs
are in French and Gisele told me to take a different road. It
didn’t feel like the right way, but I can’t read French, so who am
I to argue, I took the road she said and we got lost. Then Gisele
was really getting worried about beening lost, but I told her we
were not lost, I told her I knew exactly where we were, "where
she asked?" I replied "we're in the van, but the van might be a
wee bit lost!" Somehow this didn’t seem to confort her, but after
checking the map out again, we found our way. We spent 2
nights there visiting and enjoyed our stay.
After we left we made our way to visit OLD QUEBEC, its
where the city first started, the streets are very narrow, but lot's
of history. For $60.oo we got a 50 minute ride in a horse drawn
buggy, the lady that gave us the tour was bilingual and told us
about the different things we rode by. They are hill's in the area
which the horse would take us up and down. I asked her what
was the
hardest for a horse, to go uphill, or downhill? No one has ever
asked her that question before she said, she could tell I was a
trucker. The ride was well worth it, and after the kid's enjoyed
feeding the horse crab apples. There was many many thing more
to see, I think one could spend 2 days there, but we were pushed
for time, so only a few hours were spent, not nearly enough.
Then we went to Isabelle & Etienne, then live near
Ste-Melarie between Quebec City and Montreal. Last time I
seen Gisele's cousin Isabelle, she was only 15 years old or so.
She's got a great sense of humor and we had a lot of fun joking
around. Well she's not a teenage girl anymore. I meet Etienne
her husband who is a lawyer. A lawyer and a trucker are
completely of 2 different walk's of life, but I found him to be
very down to earth and we had a lot in common. Isabelle has not
lost her sense of humor eather and we had a really great time.
We had supper there and then moved on, but I wish we would of
budgeted more time to spend there because we had such a good
time. They built a new house 6 years ago, but built it to look like
a old style, it was really nice. They also have 2 young boys, and
the youngest beening 2 years old really made us laugh. He asked her
for some juice, so she went to the fridge and got a 2 liter jug
of juice out of the fridge and gave it a good shaking first,
we heard " splat splat splat " and as we looked they was juice
flying all over Isabelle's kitchen. When she stopped, her son
reached in his mouth and took out the lid to the jug and handed
it back to her. She never relized he went to the fridge and took
off the lid before asking her for juice. I guess it wasn’t nice
to laugh at her expense, as she had a mess to clean up, but
it was one of those things that would of been great to have on
video. When she was 15 she tried to teach me to count in
French, I tried to count to her again in French, but made the
exact same mistakes as 18 years ago. We discovered there on
internet, so well be great as maybe she can teach me more
French via e-mail?? I think I got the counting thing right now
Isabelle? " un/e, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, sex, sept, huit, neuf,
dix! " (I bought a bilingual calacator that exchanges English to
French, so I cheated a bit)
Later that evening we returned back to La-Prairie to
Gisele's folk's. On the way back we drove past one of
PRAXAIR's plant in Montreal, Gisele said " oh look, you could
get a transfer and we could move here, you wouldn’t have to
quit your job! " I think not, but one can never say never.
On the 8'th we went to Laval to visit my Annt and her
husband Mairo. We were close when we were young as she is
only a month older then I am. Strange to think my mother and
grandmother on my mom's side were both expecting at the same
time, Oh well, I got a annt on my Dad's side that is a year
younger then me as well in Alberta. Mairo play's with CB radio
a bit and enjoys short wave listening, so he really enjoyed
looking over the HF rig and my other radio gear in the mini van.
I looked at his Kenwood short-wave receiver as well. It was very
hot, there 2 kid's and our 3 kids that we had along with us
enjoyed playing with the garden hose and water sprinkler, they
sprayed each other a lot, and sometimes we got sprayed too.
The next few day's we took it easy and stayed at Gisele's
folk's, some of Gisele's other relatives came by to visit with us.
Gisele's cousin and her husband who was the driver of our
wedding car came by as well. They all said I've really changed
in the last 18 years since they last seen me, My hair is turning
gray and I grew a lot bigger, but not taller they all said :-(
One of the other fellows in the trailer court had a small
garden shed sale, as they don't have any garage for garage sales.
I found a good 260 watt soldering gun for $10.oo, ideal for
soldering coax connectors to coax cable :-) We have garden
shed's here in Alberta as well, but not like the ones they have,
ours are very plain. All there shed's have windows, with flower
pot's under the window, decorative window shutters, and
sometimes a cute awning over the doorway, even curtains in the
windows. They look like they could rent them out for someone
to live in, really neet looking. Another thing different I knotted,
is we all enjoy wall to wall carpet here, but over there they have
few rugs, but hard wood floors are common. They claim it's
more healthy and easier to care for. You know, it looked good
too.
It was just a great holiday we had, really enjoyed myself,
and I'd like to go again in the future. We were more then
welcome every where. The French people sometimes had a hard
time to talk to me, but if I used the little French I knew, they
would all try what they knew in English and we would have a
fun time trying to talk, not once did I get a cold shoulder due to
my lack of French. I enjoyed a lot of swimming, and I got a good
tan except where the sun did'nt shine. The only sad thing of the
holiday was, they all come to a end. On Monday Aug 11,th we had
the van again all packed up, fueled up and pointed westbound.
We left at 08:30 Ab time (11:30 Est time). Coming home was very
uneventful, rather on the boring side. The only stop we made was
about half way between Winnipeg and the ON/MB border so the kid's
could run around a bit, swat a few musketoes, and enjoy a ice-cream
cone as they were getting pretty hyper. Other then that we only
stopped for 2 meals per day, and snacked out of the cooler, and
stop to switch as Gisele would spell me off for a few hours
when I got tired. on the 13 we pulled into Beaumont at 08:00
AB time, so Montreal and Beaumont in 47.5 hours with 3 kids
wasn’t to bad of time. Gisele phoned her Mom right away to let
her know we arrived safe and sound, her mother thought we
were krazy, to do that in less then 2 days. We did 3,773 on the
way back, a bit less then on the way there as we didn’t do much
wondering off the highway for looking around for tires, etc.
With what we drove around to Quebec City and other visiting
we put on 8,617 Kms in all. We spent $213.51 on gas going up,
$208.72 on the return trip and $93.oo on gas driving around east
visiting. Inspite of having to pay as high as $0.679/per liter in
Ont., with 5 of us, it was much cheaper then flying, and renting
a car over there. Some told us we would of been looking around
$3,000 return to fly all 5 of us.
Our 2 oldest boy's did'nt come along, 1 of them stayed at
Gisele's Brother near Spruce Grove, and the other boy stayed at
my uncle near Guy south of Peace River. On our return we had some
bad news for Denis that stayed at Guy and he is returning sooner
then planned. One of his friends came to the door shortly after
we returned, he had tears in his eyes when asking for Denis. It
turned out one of there school friends decided he wanted to know
what it was like to drive a car, so he got in his dad's car and
gave it a try. He lost control on a gravel road, then he told me
they had just removed the life support equipment. I did'nt know
this friend that passed on, but I knew the fellow at the door, he
was realy shook up over it and you can't help to feel for them.
The boy that died was a good fellow from what they tell me, so
young. Denis is returning for the funral earlyer then planned to
pay his last respect's to his school friend.
Anyhow I guess that pretty well sum's up the past 2 weeks,
I'am heading back to work this Friday night, hollidays are over
with and thing are slowy returning back to normal. Take care and
catch you again soon.
