Day Twenty Two - 366 miles
Did I mention, the weather has been very good the last few days, and it kept up today.
I got the hell out of Fredericton, after wasting two hours in the morning trying to find a Canadian SIM card for my phone. As I already lamented to a few friends by email, North America isd a joke when it comes to "guest" cellular services. In the UK or Ireland - in fact, all of Europe, and most of the rest of the developed world - you can walk into a store...for example, Vodafone in Ireland. You can buy a SIM card, stick it into your phone, and you're good to go. If you have a smart phone or PDA, like an iPhone, you'll also be online. Here's the blurb from Vodafone Ireland's site:
"Only need mobile broadband occasionally? Get online when you need to, anywhere on our network, from just €4.12 a day (ex VAT) for a 500 MB daily allowance."
You cannot get data service like this in either the U.S. or Canada, without signing a two-year contract and getting a full monthly billed service. What this means, in effect, is that the North American cellular CARTELS - and that is what they are - force you to ROAM on each other's networks. For this "privilege," T-Mobile USA - and it doesn't matter who it is, choose your poison - are charging me - get this - TEN DOLLARS PER MEGABYTE.
Anyway, I wasted the morning, wandering around the various Canadian cellular carriers in a shopping mall, finding this out. They can give you a SIM card, and a number, but no data service. Well, that's no use to me. I'll probably have a $2,000 phone bill when I get back. I think there is a name for that. It's not ripping people off. It's called STEALING.
I didn't intend this to be a rant about mobile carriers, so digress...
Back on the road, I passed through pleasant, but otherwise uninteresting countryside in New Brunswick. I took a detour to see the "World's Longest Covered Bridge" in the town of Hartland. I also wasn't too far from Presque Isle, across the border in the part of Maine that sticks up into Canada. My friend Darlene back in San Francisco, is from Presque Isle, and it is her birthday next week, so I figured I'd send her a postcard from here.
After getting honked at by some truck driver by the covered bridge, I made my way back onto the Trans-Canada, and soon enough I was crossing the border into Québec. I stopped to take the obligatory photos at the border, and then gassed up in a station right on the border. The change was dramatic and immediate: the language was French, the signs were French, and mine was pretty poor!
I did my best to order things and ask questions in French. They'd figure out pretty fast I was crap at it, and most people, if they could - and some can't - would respond in English. I felt a bit guilty, in a way. Why should they change their language, just to suit ignorant moi? I think though, people appreciate it, if you at least try. And that, I did.
Further on, I saw a sign "Mémorial-des-Irlandais" and "Grosse-Île." This stirred something of a memory in me: I remembered an account I had read, written by Robert Whyte, The Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship, 1847. It was a harrowing account of the voyage many Irish emigrants made in the years of the Irish Famine. For many of them, the first port of call was the quarantine island of Grosse Isle in modern-day Québec. It is worth reading for an account of what those terrible voyages were like.
I didn't actually go onto the island itself - it was far too late in the day. But I did drive down to the shore, on the great St. Lawrence. There was a nice Québec fellow there with his young daughter and his friend. It was a lovely evening, idyllic even, by the warm water's edge, on a beautiful summer evening. It was strange to think, here I was, an Irish person, having driven all the distance I had, with mild complaint. Yet, across the water at an island in the distance, only separated by the sands of time, fellow Irish people had suffered in such terrible circumstances, some of them their stories never told.
I pondered all of this for a while, and at the same time tried to enjoy it for the beauty that was clearly in it. Then, shaking myself from my straying thoughts, walked back towards my bike, and the final push to Québec City - about which, I was quite excited.
The road was pretty slow going in Québec. But once we got within a couple of hours of Québec City itself, the lanes increased, and the pace quickened.
I was sorely tempted to treat myself to a night in the Château Frontenac, but decided $350 + tax, was a bit steep. Plus, I wanted to stay two nights. Instead I had booked into a fairly decent Best Western, on the outskirts, and right by the Boulevard Champlain.
I got checked in. I had planned to head out later, but after having a show, and sitting in the very comfortable armchair and footrest, for 'just a few minutes," I woke up later at 1:30AM, and realized several hours had passed. I was tired and I needed the sleep, so I made a quick transition to the bed.
I would explore Québec City tomorrow during the day...
Onwards!
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