Rough Travels

When travelling, sooner or later there's going to be a day when most things go wrong.  Something breaks that's vital, or it's left behind, and it can't be found in any store.  The wrong highway is taken and a hour is wasted backtracking.  Something falls out when a door is opened and scatters in a grocery parking lot.  By the time you find a place to stay, the room is awful; but you still have to live there for one night, because there's nothing else. And finally, two people, living constantly together in unfamiliar circumstances, begin to cut into each other.  It's inevitable.  You talk about it ahead of time, try to ready yourself for it ... and it happens anyway.  And in those moments, when you know you still have to sit next to this person, and rely on them, not just today but for the next week, no matter what — then you learn how strong love can be.  Because even if you're physically shaking with anger for the other person, you're still worried about them, you're still trying to make it better for them, you're still ready to hug and kiss them in an effort to make it better.

All the things above have happened in the last two days and we're both tired and miserable.  But still in love.  Still definitely in love.

I'm not telling those stories.  Yesterday, we had to do our laundry:

This is Blind River, one of many quaint little towns we've seen.  It slowed down the start of the day, which was followed by interruption after interruption before we were able to get to Sudbury.  Basically, it took us five and a half hours to travel a distance usually needing three.  Sigh.  We ended up in a little town called Laurentian Mountain, at a very backward motel.

Today went better.  We made good time into Ottawa and took a walk around the Parliament buildings.  For those who haven't been, when you climb up Parliament hill from the west, you can't really see the Parliament building at all.  Instead, you see this in the way:

Sorry, I can't say what building it is.  One of many surrounding Parliament, but I'm not up on the architecture.  Perhaps someone can tell me.  In any case, it's not until you get around the above building that the Parliament building appears, like a kid playing hide-and-go-seek.  I believe this is intentional, to fool visitors into thinking the above is the parliament (I knew it wasn't, because I'm a Canadian), until seeing the real building.

After Ottawa, the day went precisely south, both geographically and metaphorically.  That's all behind us, but we're not happy with the present motel.  I'm writing this from inside the province of Quebec, at St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu.  Southern Quebec is beautiful, absolutely.  But navigating around it, and getting snubbed by the hotels surrounding Quebecois Lake Champlain, hasn't won us over.  Still, tomorrow we're diving into Vermont.  Maybe it'll be better, maybe not.

This whole trip we've been met with an unnatural amount of surliness and disregard by the low-brow tourism industry, and by shopkeepers in general.  To put this in perspective, we got better service from urban Montreal cab-drivers last October than we're getting from people at Tim Hortons.  Seriously.

Oh, a note about Tim Horton's, the donut place.  Many people don't know this, but Tim Horton's employs an ex-shot putter when establishing any new location.  Essentially, "Lars" stands at the very edge of an existing Tim Horton's, then hurls a half-pound stone as far as he can.  Wherever the stone lands, that's where the location is built.