SUMMER TRUCKING - TRIP THREE,
FLORIDA (Part Two)

Going East through Salt Lake city the freeway was under construction and I had to make a detour. Just after I swung South there was an exit ramp and along the side of the road were signs showing the highway numbers that I should be on so I turned into the exit. Once I was off the freeway I realized that this couldn't be the detour so I had to find a place to turn around.

Cutting off irate rush hour traffic I turned into a side street and then another and then again. Swinging wide to make the corner I went under a tree and broke the CB aerial where it mounted to my mirror. Finally back on a freeway I semi circled the city to the South and got back on to the East bound freeway.

On Friday I learned that I would get a load from Montreal to Vancouver, B. C. or Eastern Washington. Our company had contracted for one hundred loads to come out of GE.

Saturday and Sunday as I headed East all the bikers that had passed me when I went West were passing me again. The big rally was over and they were heading home.

I have read where a company called Ballard is making a fuel cell and all the automotive industry is designing electric cars. Even Harley Davidson will introduce an electric hog late in `98. It will create massive unemployment when all cars go electric and service stations close down but bikers won't be able to get gas for their hogs. Ahhhh, peace and quiet.

In the Chicago area the freeway passes under a Burger King that stretches over top with a parking lot on both sides.

Turning North through Flint, Mich. I ran out of hours Sunday evening only a half hour West of Canada. It had been raining before I got there, but I only encountered a small sprinkle, not enough to harm my onions. The air is very muggy so, though I don't usually use it, because I don't really like it, I had the air conditioning on. In spite of that I could still smell the onions.

What had taken so long to tarp the load was that the tarps could not enclose the load or the onions would sweat. I could only tarp the top and about a foot down the sides. This meant I had to open the tarps on top of the load and fold them back under themselves. I had to walk along the side of the trailer clinging to the bags of onions, like a fly on a wall, and put two by fours along the edge so the load straps would hold the load better.

With the sides exposed I had a very colourful load, white in the front, purple in the middle, orange on the back, with a black top. Constantly people were passing me and looking at the colours and when they realized what was in the bags they would smile.

Everywhere I stopped people would want to know if they could have some. For a few, who professed their love for the stinky things, and weren't so greedy as to ask for a full bag, I found a bag with a hole and gave them one, or two if they were good looking.

After my eight hour break and a short drive I did all the paper work at the border and then drove to the Ten Acre truck stop in Belleville where I stopped for fuel. I wasn't sure if I would make it or not. The warning light on the fuel gauge had been flashing orange for over an hour.

I hate to fuel up until after I load in case it is a heavy load and I can't spare the weight to have a full tank so I just put in enough to get me to Montreal and then had a nap.

Monday morning I was up with the sun and started for Montreal. I had no sooner put it in gear and the idiot light came on to tell me to service check my engine. What could be wrong? I had just service checked the motor during my pretrip.

Halfway across the parking lot the computer shut my motor off so I got out and did another engine check. This time instead of relying on the bubble on the side of the antifreeze reservoir I remove the cap and looked inside. It was nearly empty. The glass in the bubble had become permanently green and when you look at it you assume the reservoir is full.

From the reservoir is a return hose that goes to the front of the engine. It was weeping at the connection. I got out my tool box and loosened the hose clamp. When I pull the line off the antifreeze shot out of the engine, all over me. Quickly I cut the worn end off the hose and stuck it back on the engine.

After tightening up the clamp I bought some more antifreeze, filled the reservoir, had a shower, and headed East. I got to Montreal just at the start of rush hour.

My directions were to take highway forty to exit sixty-eight, take the frontage road to the traffic circle and follow it around to Rue Acadie. I believe Rue is French for street. Anyway there are more rues in Quebec than Roos in Australia.

Being the brain that I am I had looked at a map and instead of taking highway forty into Montreal I took highway twenty East through the suburb of Dorval then went North on 520.

Just before five twenty joins highway forty I kept to the right and followed the service road to the service road along highway forty to exit sixty eight and proceeded as per instructions.

Let me tell you about highway forty through Montreal. It is four to six lanes, rougher than hell, no shoulder, though some parts have a sidewalk that people pull up on if they need to stop, separated by a concrete barrier or a grass median.

It is followed on each side by a service or collector road that is anywhere from one to three lanes wide except that when it gets wide it doesn't have lanes marked, it is just wider though it may have a stop sign on either side for traffic to stop in the unmarked lanes to turn right or left.

Everyone drives at seventy Km/h though the posted speed is fifty Km/h. They weave back and forth and exit onto side streets and every now and then there is a very short ramp to the left which will take you back onto highway forty.

Every now and then highway forty will have a ramp that runs off into the collector. It is a fantastic system. Totally nuts but fun. You just have to remember that whatever intersection you wish to leave the collector at you must leave highway forty one exit earlier.

From the collector I got over to the right to find the traffic circle but I hit a dead end. I had my choice of going right or left. Neither of which is designed for a truck.

By driving over a few curbs I missed the beams of the bridge and got under highway forty, onto the West bound collector, back under forty, back East onto the collector to the sixty-eight exit.

This time instead of staying to my extreme right I took the center of the collector and went up a ramp which I had thought went back onto highway forty but just goes above where I was down below, mainly railway tracks which I couldn't cross down below. Then I was in the traffic circle.

I don't care where you go, every city has traffic circles, and traffic entering the circle must yield to traffic within the circle. Not in Quebec. Traffic within the circle must yield to traffic entering the circle. What a nightmare. You have to yield to traffic that is on your blind side and try to turn to the right through the traffic entering the circle so that you can exit the circle. In rush hour? Only in Quebec.

Finally, out of the circle, one block North, turn right and there is the Central Market.

The Central Market is like the produce area in any big city, acres and acres of warehouses for the purpose of loading fruit and vegetables on and off of trucks.

Where I had to go was a new complex under construction with modern warehouses containing many companies and a guard at the gate that said I had to pay him twenty dollars to go in.

I have heard of toll bridges but a toll warehouse? He wanted me to pay for the privilege of unloading. I have never heard of such a thing. I refused to pay to enter a loading dock. Besides it was raining and I didn't really feel like taking the tarps off in the rain anyway.

The guard said I couldn't go in. There was a line up of trucks behind me, I couldn't back up. I said, "Fine, I'm stopped, just call me parked". The guard made a phone call and then let me go in. My customer had agreed to pay the twenty dollars.

The rest of the old Market area, in the middle, is mostly empty lots and one building that hasn't been torn down yet. The North end of the Market is now Future Shop, Costco, Home Depot, etc. Looks sort of like the Lougheed highway in Coquitlam.

After unloading I parked in the empty center area and after a nap went shopping in the new stores. When rush hour was over I went out to the Flying J truck stop for supper.

I behaved myself that night and didn't go to the tittie bar. I heard that some of the better looking dancers in the tittie bars get moved from bar to bar and eventually to a biker bar in Montreal, then disappear only to reappear months later on street corners in various cities throughout the U.S. Besides the weather had been rainy and miserable so I didn't feel like going anywhere anyway.

It poured so hard while I was having supper I was worried about my computer because I had left the window partially open but it was raining too hard to go and check.

When the rain let up I went to the truck. The wind had blown the rain sideways and the passenger seat was soaked. The computer and power supply lay in a puddle on the floor between the seats. Luckily the puddle was shallow and the lid had been closed, so it was only damp on the outside.

The next morning, while dispatch in Vancouver was still asleep, I was up, had breakfast, did my laundry, and sat in my rig typing on my notebook.

Every time I have a load dispatch never tells me where I will load until I unload. This was the first time they had told me where I was going to load so after I had unloaded and called in they said it wasn't confirmed yet. My dispatch are such clucks.

While walking past the drivers lounge in the truck stop I had seen the news on TV. The highway to B. C. through Ontario was closed because of forest fires. This meant I would have to detour through the U. S.

The Trans Canada Highway through central B. C. was closed for the same reason and I would have to detour through Northern or Southern B. C. I thought I would choose the Southern route as I hadn't been that way for many a year. On the other hand I had a friend I wanted to visit if I went the Northern route. But it would all depend on where I unloaded which of course all depended on where I loaded. As it turned out I would go through Southern B. C.

Shanghai was threatened by major flooding along the Yellow River. Bin was visiting her mother in Pu Dong which is a suburb of Shanghai. Now I was all upset. And people wonder why I don't normally watch the news or read newspapers. My nerves are stretched enough from fighting traffic.

Wednesday night we went to the movie, 'Snake eyes'. It was pretty good.

Thursday morning I dropped my trailer at a metal shop in North East Montreal for them to load with large ducts for the Athabasca Tar Sands. I was to have the day off and then pick up the trailer on Friday. The loads from GE weren't ready yet.

On the South side of Montreal found a place to park at the Zellers shopping center in the suburb of Dorval. In the plaza was a Mac computer store that let me use his computer but I couldn't get my ISP to go to the log in page.

I got on a bus to go uptown but was on the wrong one so the bus driver let me off at the next stop and I got the express to the subway which too me downtown. The subway in Montreal, called the Metro, is similar to those in New York and Boston, much larger and faster than the Sky Train in Vancouver.

I had lunch in China town. It is hard to find a good Chow Mien. After growing up in the Okanagan and learning to eat Chinese food in the China Town in Vernon, restaurants that serve authentic Chinese food are disappointing. Only in Vernon and Prince George have I been able to find Chow Mien served the way I like it.

I strolled through China Town, much smaller than China town in Vancouver, similar to China Town in Boston.

San Francisco, where most of the Chinese live in China Town, has a very large China Town. The China Town in Vancouver is smaller yet the Chinese population is larger as the majority of Chinese don't live in China Town. Chinese were the first permanent residents in the Province of B. C. and the first residents in the Vancouver area. Currently over fifty percent of the population of Vancouver is Oriental with the majority being Chinese.

I walked to central Montreal and finally found an internet cafe but I had no time. I had phoned dispatch and they said my trailer was loaded and I had to run so of course nothing went right.

At the Internet cafe they used a French style keyboard and I had trouble logging in and then I couldn't upload from my disk. The French keyboard has more than one back slash and because I was in a hurry I couldn't figure out which one and the clerk was too busy to help.

I rushed back to the subway and back to the bus. On the bus I met a student from the University. A young lady from a big city on a big island South of the main island in Japan. She had been in Montreal for three years learning to teach English at the Concordia University.

She had been in Vancouver and thinks it is kind of like Japan but doesn't want to live in Canada or Japan. She wants to live and teach English in some other country but doesn't know which one.

She had just got back from visiting her family in Japan and showed me some pictures. I thought she had been in Holland. The pictures were of windmills and dykes. She said that at one time that part of Japan had been occupied by the Dutch so much of the area still lives under Dutch style conditions.

I bobtailed back through Montreal fighting rush hour traffic and made it to the metal shop just before they closed. Flying down the center lane of the six forty highway I was doing one hundred nineteen Km/h, the fastest my truck would go. I had cars and trucks passing me on both sides though the speed limit was only one hundred. In the middle of the freeway was a police radar but he didn't seem to think that any of us were speeding.

After strapping down the load and puling it out of the yard so everyone could go home I had supper. I left Montreal Wednesday night at the end of rush hour, went North for several hours and found a rest area to sleep in. I eventually curved West across Quebec into Ontario.

A strange place North America, in the U. S. they speak the same language as Canada but they use weird currency. In Quebec they use the same currency as Canada but they speak a strange language. Makes it difficult to shop in either place.

Shortly after entering Ontario and turning North I saw a sign that said, `Water Shed Divide. All waters from this point North run into the Arctic ocean.'

I recall many years ago hiking up the mountain above Lake Louise in Alberta where I saw a little trickle of water that hit a small pebble. Some of the Water went West and some went East and a sign said, `Great Divide'.

Two little trickles, one that meanderers, East, down the mountains into the prairies and eventually through the Hudson's Bay, into the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. The other loops West, through B. C. then South, into Washington, then West again to form the Northern boundary of Oregon before discharging into the Pacific Ocean. Along the way it produces electricity at places such as Mica Dam, and the Grand Coulee damn.

As much as I hate trucking I feel sorry for people who live all their lives in cities and never see such wonders.

In Utah I met a trucker from Kamloops who has owned his own company for the last thirty-two years. He said, "I can't imagine why anyone would want to do anything else."

Daydreaming again I drive down a slight dip and through a slight turn to the left. To the right I see a side road with a rest area. A couple of miles later I see a sign that says, `Highway one oh one South'. I wonder what happened to the signs that said, `Highway eleven North.' I pulled over and checked my road map, turned around and went back. I should have turned at the rest area.

Going through Cochrane, Ontario, the scale was full of cops but they waved me through and I was so busy concentrating on them that I turned into town and then saw the signs that the highway was behind me so I had to go into town and find a place to turn around.

From Cochrane to Geralton I saw more cop cars in six hours than I have seen in the last six weeks.

One came out of nowhere before Geralton and latched onto my donkey. I was doing one hundred nineteen in a ninety zone and thought about slowing down but said to hell with it. By the time I knew he was behind me he had already had time to clock me.

He followed me for a long time past places where he could have passed or pulled me over but all of a sudden he was no longer in my mirror. I don't know where he went. Immediately there was another one coming towards me. They must have had something more important brewing than a speeding trucker.

Thursday night, at the end of my twelve hour day, in Canada we can drive twelve hours a day if our trip does not start or end in the US, I stopped at a little truck stop East of Jellico, Ontario.

Two hitchhikers were on the side of the road looking for a ride East. A pickup stopped but went in the ditch while backing up for them.

I dialed 911 but it didn't work. I dialed zero and it seemed to take forever to get the operator and then she didn't want to give me a free call to the police. Now where were all the police cars I had been seeing all day?

It turned out we didn't need emergency anyway. No one was hurt and the mechanic at the truck stop used his skidder to push the pickup back on the road.

As I walked out of the restaurant it was starting to sprinkle. I went to bed with rain beating on the roof, lightning blazing through my windshield, and thunder shaking the truck.

In the wee hours of Friday morning all was calm. I started the truck and it stopped, the idiot light said, `service check engine'. I had just done my pretrip and checked everything. I went back under the hood. The antifreeze level was down. Was it déjà vue or what?

Below the sensor on the end of the reservoir the return line had a slight leak. The other end of the line I had fixed the other day. I preformed the same operation as previously except minus the shower of antifreeze because this end of the line is above the water level in the motor. I Loosened and remove the hose clamp, removed and trimmed the hose end, replace the hose, replaced and tightened the hose clamp, put in my spare gallon of water, which I always carry for such purposes, and I was back on the road.

As the sun was coming up and the sky was getting light I was cruising beside a lake. It sounded like large drops of rain hitting the roof thought the sky was clear. It was large bugs hitting the windshield.