Tuesday morning: I left for Québec a little after 9, stopping at Montpelier on the way to knock off some errands on the way out of town. Liking the idea of spending a couple of days investigating the country next door.
Apart from passing through Ontario as part of a cross-country moving-to-Seattle drive after college, my only previous foray north of the border took place when my mother dragged me and a friend to Expo 67 for a few days, me too young to remember much of it now. We camped outside Montreal, shuttled back and forth between the campground and the Expo, never going into the city itself -- never having to deal with the local culture, the local language. I have no memory of anything other than English spoken, no memory of interactions with any Quebecois.* The province is our next-door neighbor here, we rarely hear anything about it apart from Montreal-tourism stuff. A mystery, one I looked forward to exploring.
I-89 unspooled quickly by. Autumn scenery, gray skies. The Canadian customs agent, a woman with a strong French accent, asked the usual questions, looked at my passport and drivers license, sent me on my way with a nice smile. On crossing over, the road immediately changed from a smooth, well-cared-for interstate to a local, heavily seamed, raggedly patched four-lane, flanked by modest houses, small businesses, trees giving way to corn fields as the road shrank to three lanes a few miles up the road. Farmland, punctuated by small towns, no English-language signage anywhere (except at currency-exchange joints).
The ride north went quickly, the route becoming wider, traffic increasing, until I found myself at Montreal's outskirts, on major highways packed with traffic, weaving in and out of construction, drivers jockeying wildly between lanes with self-destructive abandon, exit signs for other high-speed roads sprouting up with unnerving abundance. At which point I realized I hadn't studied my AAA material the way a smart traveler might, found myself trying to make sense of it all with one eye, keeping the other on the road, surrounding traffic, exit signs whizzing by.
I followed Rt. 10 downtown, crossing and flanking big waterways, where the highway emptied out onto a wide north-south boulevard, me following it ahead, a bit stunned to find myself suddenly in the middle of a major city amid lunchtime traffic and pedestrian crowds. Though with a strange, inexplicable conviction that I'd find my way out of it all, blithely amused with my sitch. An hour later -- after miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic on local streets, a rest stop for water/stretching, a fruitless search for a cash machine, a pause to bother someone for directions -- I'd found a high-speed road, left the city behind.
Montreal disappeared, giving way to great expanses of flat, scrubby land, farms and little else. Québec gave way to Ontario. The sky darkened. At Ottawa's outskirts, the clouds opened up, torrential rain fell, creating white-out conditions. Rush-hour traffic clogged the roads, sheets of water flying in all directions.
I passed through the city, across the Ottawa River back into Québec. By the time I pulled up in front of my destination -- the home of an online friend in Hull -- me and my hinder were numb from hours of four-wheeled joy.
*Not exactly true, that: one night, attempting to navigate the local highways back to our campsite, my mother found herself hopelessly lost, finally stopping to pull open a roadmap, try and figure out where in hell we were.** As she stared at the tangle of lines depicting the network of local highways, another car pulled over, a man emerged from it, asked in accented English if we needed help. My mother (the saucy wench) got out of our car, stood talking with him for a while. They eventually returned to their respective vehicles, he pulled back out onto the highway, we followed. Some time later he located the campground -- we pulled in, he waved au revoir and took off into the night.
**I now get her confusion, having driven the bizarre maze of highways around Montreal. I've lived in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, have never found myself unable to get from point A to point B -- until this last trip, trying to pass through Montreal to points west (likewise for the return trip).
[continued in entry of September 13, 2004]
********************
This morning, late-season flowers and spiderwebs everywhere:
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 5:57 PM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment