Cross Canada Adventure, Day 3 (Thunder Bay to Winnipeg)
A near miss, the next Province, and some Native
culture, and some splurging are all on tap for today.
Today started like any other: I woke up. The
difference today over previous days in my trip is that the hotel I stayed at
offered a continental breakfast.
Now why is the breakfast "continental"? Which continent? They really should entitle it "the cheapest possible breakfast we could offer". A bowl of cereal and a muffin with some juice is nice and all when I'm at home sitting in front of the TV in my pyjamas, but as a friend quipped on the phone today, "Continental breakfast is synonymous with crap". And he should know -- he and I had a few craptacular breakfasts when we served together in the Canadian Forces (although overall, the breakfasts there weren't that bad -- certainly better than "continental". At least they had melon :) ).
Okay -- onto the trek. I think I've stopped at every Canadian Tire store since Sudbury -- I keep thinking of things I forgot to buy at the last Canadian Tire. So I keep stopping. And buying more stuff than I initially intend.
Today's goal was to buy myself a cheap car-mount compass. Which I do, along with some batteries for a portable CB radio I have in the trunk (which, as it turns out, is the one of the pair I own which overheats, and doesn't work for more than 10 seconds after installing the batteries...).
So I spent a whopping $4.50 or something for this compass ball with a suction cup on it, and decide to mount it on my windshield (as my dashboard is textured and a suction cup won't adhere to it). I point my car westward, only to have the compass point south east. A ninety degree turn, and it's still pointing south east.
You see, here's the problem with a car mounted compass. It's attracted to magnetic fields. And my car, apparently, is full of them. Moving the compass toward the rear view mirror has similar results, except that it now always pointed north west.
After several hours of experimentation whenever the road was clear (or when I was stopped somewhere), I finally found a location where it seems to point to magnetic north, as opposed to some magnetized part in my car. And that spot is right at the bottom centre of the windshield.
One thing I noticed today: the flora is different. There are vastly more coniferous trees, and fewer deciduous trees. Indeed, the only deciduous tree species I notices were some birch trees here and there.
I did encounter an interesting sign after an hour or so of travel -- one stating that from this point, all water flows to the Arctic Ocean. I made it into the Arctic Ocean's watershed, and the furthest north I've ever travelled. Cool :).
I also crossed over into the Central time zone, giving me an extra hour in my day. I'll have to scrabble a few times during this trip to update all my clocks each time I cross another time zone.
So far over these three days the drive has been pretty uneventful. The stops have been eventful, but so far the drive itself had been nothing but routine. No vehicle problems, and no near misses. And you just know it can't stay that way forever.
Today was my first miss. I'm a pretty conservative driver: I typically keep to close to the speed limit, setting my cruise control to maintain a fairly constant speed, and don't try to make unsafe maneuvers.
So at one point I'm stuck behind a slow moving transport truck. Actually, it's not terribly slow -- it's probably doing about 100km/h, but it's routinely slowing down and speeding up, which I find annoying. A passing lane comes up, but the truck driver decides he's going to try to pass a mobile home while travelling uphill. He takes the entire length of the passing zone to do so, and nearly forces the mobile home off the road in the process. And I'm stuck behind him.
Anyhow, there isn't another passing lane for at least a dozen kilometres, and I don't want to be stuck behind this truck for that long. So when the next straight-away which is marked with a broken yellow line shows up, I decide to make my move: I carefully check the oncoming lane and see no vehicles. I check my distance. I make my move.
I get just about even with the front of the cab when an oncoming car come around a bend about half a kilometre or so ahead. Oh crap. It sounds like a big distance, but I'm doing 120km/h at this point, and the oncoming car is coming up fast. And I swear that the truck driver actually sped up to prevent me from passing him.
Time to bail out -- there is no way I'm going to make it past this truck without getting into a head-on collision, so I shift left to the soft shoulder and take my foot off the gas. Which would have worked just fine if the oncoming driver hadn't done exactly the same thing. So now I was going to have a head-on collision with the car I tried to avoid colliding with.
I swear those hours playing Gran Turismo 3 paid off. I quickly wrenched the wheel back right (into the oncoming traffic lane) -- thankfully, the oncoming driver stayed where he was this time. My leftmost wheels got caught in a rut, so I nearly oversteered into the truck I was trying to pass. A quick twist of the wheel and hard punch on the gas and I got around the front of the truck, safe and back in my lane.
I doubt if the oncoming driver will ever read this, but I'd like to offer my apologies for probably scaring the crap out of you, and to thank-you for your quick thinking.
By the time my heart was beating normally again I decided to turn on my iPod and tune into one of the CBC Radio 3 podcasts I have stored on it, and hook up my Belkin FM transmitter to listen to the podcast over my car stereo. I had done this for several hours yesterday with excellent results. I had just put new batteries in it yesterday, so I was all set.
Or so I thought. The FM transmitters batteries, which were new just yesterday, were dead. About $5 in batteries lasted me just a few hours. Which necessitated yet another stop at a Canadian Tire, this time in Dryden, Ontario.
The first thing to note about Dryden is the smell. I've been in other communities that have odd odours, often due to local industry, which the locals are "used to" and don't notice. Amherstburg, Ontario was this way when I was younger -- there was this nasty odour from the Seagrams distillery in the mornings.
Dryden seems to be like this, except it smelled something like rotting fish. This isn't to put down Dryden, which was otherwise a nice town -- and maybe it was some sort of unusual occurance, and I just happened to show up on the day when a truck full of rotten fish drove through town, but it was everywhere I went.
Okay -- time for another Canadian Tire stop. I decided that I don't want to spend $5 every day for the rest of my trek just so I can use my FM transmitter, so I buy an AA/AAA battery charger and a set of four AAA rechargable batteries, costing about $40. This way I'll always have a fresh set (as recall I have a DC to AC power inverter installed in my car, so I can run the charger while driving).
Okay -- I had my driving near mishap today, so I want to take a moment to rant about other drivers. Some of these people act like they own the road, and that nobody else should have the privilege of driving on it. I try to be aware of the needs of the drivers near me -- if for example they look like they want to pass, I move as far to the right as possible to let them see ahead, and will slow down a bit to let them pass safely. But there are drivers who act like the road is their own personal property.
Today's most hated driver: the guy who slows way down every time they encounter a 5 degree bend that runs the course of 500 metres, but who speeds up in the straightaways. Now I can understand when transport trucks do this: they have a higher centre of mass and carry heavy loads. But there isn't any excuse for this sort of driving behaviour for someone driving a car.
You see, the problem with this sort of driver is getting stuck behind them. The gentlest of curves comes up, and they suddenly slow down by 20km/h or more, completely unnecessarily, so you have to slow down as well. But when a straightaway comes up, they suddenly speed way up again. And it's in these straightaways where you're typically permitted to pass. And if these passing zones aren't terribly long, you're probably not going to get by them (due in part to the lag time from when they accelerate to when you can). So you can get stuck behind them for a very long time. I want to force these people off the road, and smack them up the side of the head while repeating the mantra: "Find one speed and stick to it!".
It didn't exactly help that one of the vehicles that was driving this way was throwing up a ton of spray (it rained during most of today's drive again), making it very difficult to see, even from 100m back. It was nearly ten minutes after it stopped raining that I realized that fact this vehicle was throwing up so much spray. It was in serious need of mud flaps.
Okay. Enough ranting. It was a lengthy drive, but I finally made it out of Ontario and into Manitoba. There is a big sign marking this fact, preceded by a big sign warning you that the other big sign is coming up.
So you'd think that this would give me all the warning I needed to get a picture. So I got out my camera, turned it on, and slowed way down to try to get a picture:
Sigh. Good job on that one, Brad. And it was raining again, so I wasn't about to turn back and get out to try taking it again.
Okay -- after a lengthy and uneventful drive, I made it into Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. Following the Trans-Canada (which is Highway 1 in the Provinces west of Ontario), I can across a national park called "The Forks", which is right downtown at the place where the Red River meets the Assiniboine River, a picture of which you can see below:
The park is a rather lovely spot, with quaint shops, a marketplace, some outdoor stages, and a hotel. As I needed a place to stay anyhow, and as this is a very pleasant location, I decide to check into the hotel. It's a fair sight more upscale than the places where I've been staying so far -- I'm going to be spending at least $200 for the night all said and done (which includes the money I'm spending on dinner and breakfast and charging to my room), but it feels good to splurge once in a while.
Besides which, just outside the front of the hotel is the Oodena Celebration Circle, a special celebration of native culture. And it just happens that the native dancers are out in force giving a show today. And I just couldn't miss seeing it, even though it was raining lightly. And fortunately for you, I got some video:
I also have a video of a hoop dancer, but unfortunately I ran out of space on my memory card after only a few short minutes of this amazing dance, so I just sat back and enjoyed it. I may post the video I was able to get to my website sometime later.
Okay. After dinner and enjoying some live jazz in the lounge, I've decided to watch a Star Trek movie which is on TV and bunk down for the night. Tomorrow I visit an old friend, before making my way out of Manitoba.
Now why is the breakfast "continental"? Which continent? They really should entitle it "the cheapest possible breakfast we could offer". A bowl of cereal and a muffin with some juice is nice and all when I'm at home sitting in front of the TV in my pyjamas, but as a friend quipped on the phone today, "Continental breakfast is synonymous with crap". And he should know -- he and I had a few craptacular breakfasts when we served together in the Canadian Forces (although overall, the breakfasts there weren't that bad -- certainly better than "continental". At least they had melon :) ).
Okay -- onto the trek. I think I've stopped at every Canadian Tire store since Sudbury -- I keep thinking of things I forgot to buy at the last Canadian Tire. So I keep stopping. And buying more stuff than I initially intend.
Today's goal was to buy myself a cheap car-mount compass. Which I do, along with some batteries for a portable CB radio I have in the trunk (which, as it turns out, is the one of the pair I own which overheats, and doesn't work for more than 10 seconds after installing the batteries...).
So I spent a whopping $4.50 or something for this compass ball with a suction cup on it, and decide to mount it on my windshield (as my dashboard is textured and a suction cup won't adhere to it). I point my car westward, only to have the compass point south east. A ninety degree turn, and it's still pointing south east.
You see, here's the problem with a car mounted compass. It's attracted to magnetic fields. And my car, apparently, is full of them. Moving the compass toward the rear view mirror has similar results, except that it now always pointed north west.
After several hours of experimentation whenever the road was clear (or when I was stopped somewhere), I finally found a location where it seems to point to magnetic north, as opposed to some magnetized part in my car. And that spot is right at the bottom centre of the windshield.
One thing I noticed today: the flora is different. There are vastly more coniferous trees, and fewer deciduous trees. Indeed, the only deciduous tree species I notices were some birch trees here and there.
I did encounter an interesting sign after an hour or so of travel -- one stating that from this point, all water flows to the Arctic Ocean. I made it into the Arctic Ocean's watershed, and the furthest north I've ever travelled. Cool :).
I also crossed over into the Central time zone, giving me an extra hour in my day. I'll have to scrabble a few times during this trip to update all my clocks each time I cross another time zone.
So far over these three days the drive has been pretty uneventful. The stops have been eventful, but so far the drive itself had been nothing but routine. No vehicle problems, and no near misses. And you just know it can't stay that way forever.
Today was my first miss. I'm a pretty conservative driver: I typically keep to close to the speed limit, setting my cruise control to maintain a fairly constant speed, and don't try to make unsafe maneuvers.
So at one point I'm stuck behind a slow moving transport truck. Actually, it's not terribly slow -- it's probably doing about 100km/h, but it's routinely slowing down and speeding up, which I find annoying. A passing lane comes up, but the truck driver decides he's going to try to pass a mobile home while travelling uphill. He takes the entire length of the passing zone to do so, and nearly forces the mobile home off the road in the process. And I'm stuck behind him.
Anyhow, there isn't another passing lane for at least a dozen kilometres, and I don't want to be stuck behind this truck for that long. So when the next straight-away which is marked with a broken yellow line shows up, I decide to make my move: I carefully check the oncoming lane and see no vehicles. I check my distance. I make my move.
I get just about even with the front of the cab when an oncoming car come around a bend about half a kilometre or so ahead. Oh crap. It sounds like a big distance, but I'm doing 120km/h at this point, and the oncoming car is coming up fast. And I swear that the truck driver actually sped up to prevent me from passing him.
Time to bail out -- there is no way I'm going to make it past this truck without getting into a head-on collision, so I shift left to the soft shoulder and take my foot off the gas. Which would have worked just fine if the oncoming driver hadn't done exactly the same thing. So now I was going to have a head-on collision with the car I tried to avoid colliding with.
I swear those hours playing Gran Turismo 3 paid off. I quickly wrenched the wheel back right (into the oncoming traffic lane) -- thankfully, the oncoming driver stayed where he was this time. My leftmost wheels got caught in a rut, so I nearly oversteered into the truck I was trying to pass. A quick twist of the wheel and hard punch on the gas and I got around the front of the truck, safe and back in my lane.
I doubt if the oncoming driver will ever read this, but I'd like to offer my apologies for probably scaring the crap out of you, and to thank-you for your quick thinking.
By the time my heart was beating normally again I decided to turn on my iPod and tune into one of the CBC Radio 3 podcasts I have stored on it, and hook up my Belkin FM transmitter to listen to the podcast over my car stereo. I had done this for several hours yesterday with excellent results. I had just put new batteries in it yesterday, so I was all set.
Or so I thought. The FM transmitters batteries, which were new just yesterday, were dead. About $5 in batteries lasted me just a few hours. Which necessitated yet another stop at a Canadian Tire, this time in Dryden, Ontario.
The first thing to note about Dryden is the smell. I've been in other communities that have odd odours, often due to local industry, which the locals are "used to" and don't notice. Amherstburg, Ontario was this way when I was younger -- there was this nasty odour from the Seagrams distillery in the mornings.
Dryden seems to be like this, except it smelled something like rotting fish. This isn't to put down Dryden, which was otherwise a nice town -- and maybe it was some sort of unusual occurance, and I just happened to show up on the day when a truck full of rotten fish drove through town, but it was everywhere I went.
Okay -- time for another Canadian Tire stop. I decided that I don't want to spend $5 every day for the rest of my trek just so I can use my FM transmitter, so I buy an AA/AAA battery charger and a set of four AAA rechargable batteries, costing about $40. This way I'll always have a fresh set (as recall I have a DC to AC power inverter installed in my car, so I can run the charger while driving).
Okay -- I had my driving near mishap today, so I want to take a moment to rant about other drivers. Some of these people act like they own the road, and that nobody else should have the privilege of driving on it. I try to be aware of the needs of the drivers near me -- if for example they look like they want to pass, I move as far to the right as possible to let them see ahead, and will slow down a bit to let them pass safely. But there are drivers who act like the road is their own personal property.
Today's most hated driver: the guy who slows way down every time they encounter a 5 degree bend that runs the course of 500 metres, but who speeds up in the straightaways. Now I can understand when transport trucks do this: they have a higher centre of mass and carry heavy loads. But there isn't any excuse for this sort of driving behaviour for someone driving a car.
You see, the problem with this sort of driver is getting stuck behind them. The gentlest of curves comes up, and they suddenly slow down by 20km/h or more, completely unnecessarily, so you have to slow down as well. But when a straightaway comes up, they suddenly speed way up again. And it's in these straightaways where you're typically permitted to pass. And if these passing zones aren't terribly long, you're probably not going to get by them (due in part to the lag time from when they accelerate to when you can). So you can get stuck behind them for a very long time. I want to force these people off the road, and smack them up the side of the head while repeating the mantra: "Find one speed and stick to it!".
It didn't exactly help that one of the vehicles that was driving this way was throwing up a ton of spray (it rained during most of today's drive again), making it very difficult to see, even from 100m back. It was nearly ten minutes after it stopped raining that I realized that fact this vehicle was throwing up so much spray. It was in serious need of mud flaps.
Okay. Enough ranting. It was a lengthy drive, but I finally made it out of Ontario and into Manitoba. There is a big sign marking this fact, preceded by a big sign warning you that the other big sign is coming up.
So you'd think that this would give me all the warning I needed to get a picture. So I got out my camera, turned it on, and slowed way down to try to get a picture:
Sigh. Good job on that one, Brad. And it was raining again, so I wasn't about to turn back and get out to try taking it again.
Okay -- after a lengthy and uneventful drive, I made it into Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. Following the Trans-Canada (which is Highway 1 in the Provinces west of Ontario), I can across a national park called "The Forks", which is right downtown at the place where the Red River meets the Assiniboine River, a picture of which you can see below:
The park is a rather lovely spot, with quaint shops, a marketplace, some outdoor stages, and a hotel. As I needed a place to stay anyhow, and as this is a very pleasant location, I decide to check into the hotel. It's a fair sight more upscale than the places where I've been staying so far -- I'm going to be spending at least $200 for the night all said and done (which includes the money I'm spending on dinner and breakfast and charging to my room), but it feels good to splurge once in a while.
Besides which, just outside the front of the hotel is the Oodena Celebration Circle, a special celebration of native culture. And it just happens that the native dancers are out in force giving a show today. And I just couldn't miss seeing it, even though it was raining lightly. And fortunately for you, I got some video:
I also have a video of a hoop dancer, but unfortunately I ran out of space on my memory card after only a few short minutes of this amazing dance, so I just sat back and enjoyed it. I may post the video I was able to get to my website sometime later.
Okay. After dinner and enjoying some live jazz in the lounge, I've decided to watch a Star Trek movie which is on TV and bunk down for the night. Tomorrow I visit an old friend, before making my way out of Manitoba.
Posted: Saturday - August 27, 2005 at 11:18 AM
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Published On: Aug 30, 2007 08:14 PM
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Published On: Aug 30, 2007 08:14 PM