This was a very strange day.
After packing up the trailer and hitching it to the truck, I noticed that a front end-loader working on the water main replacement on Taylor Made’s street was making trips to the sand pile at the end of the road, and depositing rather sizeable mounds of sand at 4 foot intervals along the street. Sitting in the cab of the truck, I had a bit of a staring contest with the loader’s driver, trying to discern whether he would inform me first if he was going to drop a mound of sand directly in front of me before he did so. I got the feeling maybe he wouldn’t, so I made my escape before he had the chance, and parked around the corner, walking back across the field for breakfast at the B&B.
After another delicious meal, we set off on our 450km journey from Lion’s Head to North Bay. But after filling up in Ferndale, truck started to behave strangely — no guts when accelerating, which was unusual, and slowing down to almost 30km/hr on uphills.
Around Owen Sound things got really weird, and after playing around with a few things under the hood and test driving sans trailer, we decided to make a break for Toronto on the back roads and switch vehicles for the last few days of the trip. We lunched in the lovely little bluegrass-loving town of Shelburne — country-music capital of Ontario — on corn chowder and thick sandwiches on homemade bread at Jelly Craft Bakery & Cafe, running for cover in a thunder storm.
The rolling hills of highway 10 through Caledon really put the poor old truck to the test, slowing down to 10 or 20km uphill even in low gear. The poor old thing gave up completely as soon as we got into Brampton city limits, and we used Pete’s gift of CAA Plus RV for the second time this trip for a tow back to the Jacobs’ compound in Etobicoke. The 400-series highways were a real shock to our systems after two months of the quiet cruising roads of the North!
Once safely home, we cajoled the old beast into the driveway with the help of half a can (at least) of Quick Start and some serious pushing, then emptied both truck and trailer and repacked all our stuff into Pete and Joelle’s Subaru Outback. We used up their hot water tank several times over with a bunch of showers and a couple loads of laundry, and treated our tastebuds to something unseen in the north — Thai curries! from Lee’s Thai Spring Roll on Lakeshore.
This little moment of luxury was tempered with a sense of great loss and sadness at the strange demise of the pick-up, and we pondered what had happened every so often whenever a new idea occurred to someone. Hopefully she can be revived — but we don’t have time to stick around to watch it happen. We got parties to attend in the north!
Tomorrow — the long haul to North Bay, and Karaoke at Partners Billiards & Bowling!
Photo by Alexandra Sawicki
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