Law and Government

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Narrowing Down the Toad Choices

I think that my choice for a new toad has been made for me, based on what’s available in the market I’m shopping in and how far my money could go.

While I really wanted an import truck, either a Nissan Frontier or a Toyota Tacoma, there are very few older ones for sale in Alberta. Pickings are slims, options are non-existent, and prices with a canopy could easily reach $4,000 for an early 1990s bare bones model. Add another $2,000 for the towing system and $1,000 for the braking system, and I’m at $7,000 for a new toad.

There is another option that is plentiful and cheap in Alberta. The ratings for the vehicle are excellent and I am familiar with the manufacturer. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but right now, the top contender for my toad is a Ford Ranger! It would be hilarious to have my Ford motorhome towing a Ford toad when I’ve bad mouthed Ford so much in the past! But if I go with the Ford Ranger, I’m suddenly looking at a late 1990s or even early 2000s model for $3,000 to $3,500 with a few nice options.

The ads I’m seeing for the Ford Ranger are a lot less depressing than those for the Nissans and few Tacomas, showing newer, cleaner city-used vehicles with less mileage. I’m actually getting excited about the idea.

I should be able to borrow my mother’s car tomorrow afternoon to talk with the RV repair shop and get the ball rolling on getting Miranda fixed up and me back in a vehicle. Hopefully the insurance cheque really is in the mail. 🙂

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Back to the Grind

It’s a holiday in Canada today, but I’m treating it like a normal Monday. I neglected a lot of projects over the winter and have tons of stuff to catch up on. I am also sending out tons of bids on contracts. I have no intention of looking for a part-time job this summer. My budget is solid into August, especially since I won’t have the car and car insurance payments, so as long as I keep plugging away at whatever transcription comes in, I’ll be fine. This is definitely a more relaxed start to the summer than was last year!

I’ve started to do some online shopping for my new toad. I’ve decided that buying it in Alberta really does make the most sense so I’m just waiting on the insurance cheque to buy a plane ticket. What I want exists, but it soooooo rare. I’d definitely have more choice if I was going with an automatic, but a manual transmission is a non-negotiable. I’m looking at 1990s models only.

My first choice is a Nissan Frontier, then a Toyota Tacoma. I’ve heard mixed reviews of the Mazda B-series, but am not ruling it out. I’m considering American models (eg. Chevy Sonoma and Dodge Dakota) on a case-by-case basis and I’d prefer a truck that already has a canopy/topper. One thing I have accepted is that I won’t be getting power windows and doors as those options just weren’t available, but AC is not negotiable. The Nissan Frontier is 3,000lbs, just under three times what my toad weighed, and that’s as heavy as I want to go.

I also hope to time the trip with the motorhome repairs and other projects (I’d like to leave a few thousand of the car settlement money to do some work on Miranda). I got a lead from my younger sister, who just bought a travel trailer, on a good place close by that could go through my entire list:

-the repairs covered by the insurance, including the bumper and the tow hitch, and I want them to confirm that my suspension is okay;

-remove the over hang window and fiberglass the overhang seams;

-replace my propane regulator (have the part, just need a pro to get it in);

-replace the house door window frame;

-square and plumb the house door;

-repair the body damage to the metal portion at the bottom of the rig and repaint that part only (I doubt I’ll be able to afford this right now, but I’ll ask for a quote).

Well, I just found out that a big and messy project is incoming so I’m off to get ready for that. Definitely a better to start to the summer than last year!

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Stuff Is Just Stuff

I’m working on tidying up the rig this morning and keep finding little shards of china and glass in the far flung corners of the rig.

Every single cup, bowl, and saucer in the cabinet over the fridge came out of the cabinet and broke when I was rear ended:

There might not seem to be much in that box, but almost everything broke into pieces so small as to be unrecognizable from what they were.

This china was collected over almost 10 years of travel. I have never broken a piece as a direct result of RV travel. Heck, it flew cross-country and arrived unscathed. I couldn’t even begin to value this collection but I know that ‘several hundred dollars” is not an exaggeration. But, truly, it was priceless and utterly irreplaceable.

You’d think I’d be pissed off right? Well, it’s just dishes. I cannot believe that I am at this point in my life, where stuff really is just stuff, and my reaction was “What a mess, I’m going to step in broken glass for weeks, and one less think to declutter down the road!”

I’m going to find out the price of a nice Corelle set and will be claiming that amount on my insurance.

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Saratoga Springs, NY, to Chambly, QC

I had a slow morning at Saratoga Springs. The cats certainly were in no rush to go anywhere:

I enjoyed my quiet little corner of the raceway parking lot:

I backed right into a corner, just because I could:

The raceway was a long ways away:

I got the rig as squared away as I could and took off around 10. I was really impressed with the signage right at the Jefferson Street exit. It was certainly more helpful than my GPS, who told me to navigate to such and such a street:

I meandered my way to I-87 north and got off two exits later to take highway 50 north to Saratoga RV Park. Their dump fee is $20 and it’s just that, a dump fee. There is no potable water for filling an RV holding tank. They also sell propane and it cost $50 to fill the on board tank. Propane is the only thing I’ve found to be much cheaper in Canada than the US; this price would be exorbitant in Whitehorse, but was cheaper than in Washington State. That sure was an easy $70 for these very nice people!

Before heading back on the road, I parked the rig to the side so I could change into a nicer skirt (I’d worn grubbies to dump!). In a moment of perfect timing, the phone rang. It was the adjuster from Aviva wanting to let me know that the cheque was in the mail. She also asked me when I’m getting the other repairs done and I asked her to please give me a few days to breathe and think about this when I get to Montreal, a place I wasn’t at yet. I told her I’ll be filing my reimbursement claims shortly.

From the RV park, I was able to continue on highway 50 north to I-87, so the RV park wasn’t really a detour. It didn’t take long to reach the scenic and isolated Adirondacks. It is a rather long stretch after Saratoga Springs before you reach civilization again in Plattsburgh and you have to go through the scenic Lake George region.

I was amused when we started to hit the bilingual signs. Quebec does have some bilingual signage near the border, but the English is in tiny print, as per the law, while the French on the US signs is the same size as the English.

I’m always amazed by how quickly the landscape changes before Plattsburgh. One minute, you are surrounded by towering trees and the next you are in open cultivated land full of neat orchards.

It was going on 2:00 when I hit Plattsburgh for lunch. It was a bit of an emotional stop in that the last time I ate at the Applebee’s there was with my dad in late 2006. He was having a rare good day in his final stages of terminal colon cancer and we were on what turned out to be our last road trip together, just a quick border run, because he got tired so easily. I remember so clearly our discussion that day, with him making me promise that I would from then on make changes that would make me happy rather than satisfy other people in my life. Little did we know that less than two years later, I would be setting off on a great adventure. But I digress.

The border was nearly upon me, but I had one more stop to make after lunch. I pulled off in Champlain to get half a tank of gas, at a whopping $4.03 a gallon, the worst I’ve seen on this trip! A fill would have been $200, which is still cheaper than anywhere in Canada right now.

The knots in my stomach tightened when I reached the point of no return:

Left: Canada. Right: last US exit

It’s amazing how returning to my own country is more stressful than entering another one.

Croft asked in a comment if I was planning to cross in French or English. This was something that I debated and I finally decided to let the guard’s accent answer the question for me. I got a woman with a very thick accent when she spoke English. So I decided to cross over in French.

I was asked how long I was in the US, the purpose for my trip, how I met my friend in Virginia, and if I owned the motorhome. Then I got asked a question I could not answer and I froze: what was my license plate number? The car and the rig are one number apart and I can never remember which is which. I was just about to offer to jump out and check when the officer asked if I had my registration on hand. Oh, yeah. Duh. I got the right papers out and told her. She ran the plate number then asked the value of the goods I’d bought, if I had booze, drugs, or personal weapons on board. And that was it. The last time I had an easy clearing like that was back in 2005! I’ve been grilled harder coming back from a Walmart run! WOOHOO!!!!

From the border, it was just 45  minutes to my mother’s. I arrived, got level, and accepted a cold beer! That and getting the bike out of the living room were the only things I planned to do tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll deal with getting some water on board, plugging me in, and getting me hard wired to the internet.

The drive today was really difficult and I am exhausted! It was windy, but I also think my suspension needs to be looked at. I started to notice that the roads felt really rough well before my accident, so I’m sure the issue is not related to it, but it seems worse now that I don’t have the toad. I just find that I’m bouncing a lot more and hearing things shift around in the rig. Tioga George just got some Bilstein shocks installed and I’m hoping that a simple cure like that is all that’s needed. It just seems that if I don’t have a perfectly smooth road I’m more bouncing than rolling down the highway and having a lot of side to side movement. I just did some quick research and it doesn’t sound like I have a major or unusual problem, but I’m astounded by how differently the rig handles solo!

Finally, I want to, again, raise both my middle fingers to the guy who honked at me for going 5 miles below the speed limit on a narrow, twisty road and to the guy at the shopping plaza in Plattsburgh who honked at me because I wasn’t turning fast enough for him. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

And I would like to end by quoting T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

I have complained bitterly about how rude and rash are Quebec drivers. But having just traveled the breadth of the United States, I have to say that Quebec drivers were a breath of fresh air. After weeks of having the cars behind me whip around me at a highway on ramp, making it impossible for me to merge, it was a breath of fresh air to have the column of cars behind me wait patiently while I got over safely. And then I got caught on autoroute 10 in construction and traffic (its usual state) and everyone gave me my space and made sure I had enough room to change lanes. Merci beaucoup!

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Cutting It Close

I got a 7GB internet package for this month and I’m at just over 6.9GB this morning! I’m pretty sure that I will be over by a few MB. I’m shutting down the computer shortly and will be calling Verizon to turn off the data plan before I cross the border.

Speaking of the border, I hate border crossing day. 🙂 The rig really isn’t in very good shape right now, not at all the way I like to have it in preparation for an inspection, but I can’t help the chaos in here. I tidied up as best as I can and am crossing my fingers that the crossing back to Canada will be as easy as was the crossing into the US. I’m going through a major border point (Lacolle/Champlain).

I was surprised by how much I have to declare; $450. That’s $200 in clothes, $200 for a new computer battery, and $50 in assorted sundries for the rig. I’m still well below the limit and only have 12 beers on board, so I should be fine provided I don’t get accused of braying.

I hoping to arrive at my mother’s between 4 and 6. The big question marks today will be propane, dumping, and the border. The drive will be fine, except maybe the bit around Candiac depending on whether they’re still working on the 30. I should have asked my mother about that.

Google Maps says 15 to 30 to 112 to get to my mother’s, which is a terrible route since 112 would take me through St. Hubert and tons of traffic lights and slow speeds. Instead, I will take the 10 and then the back roads for a much easier/smoother trip. Anyway, once I get back on the road after doing the propane and dumping, the GPS is only going to serve to give me an ETA!

I’ll check back in tonight once I’m squared away. I’m also going to share some pics of where I’m parked this morning. I’ve been getting really lucky with my overnighting spots!