Quebec

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Expanding the Search Radius

I’m rather kicking myself for buying a plane ticket to Calgary before looking at the options in Edmonton. I just found a 2000 Ranger with less than 200,000KM at a dealership in Edmonton. Fully inspected, with a one year warranty and listed at $3,000, which is a steal. I’d probably still have an independent inspection done, but the warranty tells me the dealership would stand by their own.

I sent an offer. Maybe it could be delivered to me closer to Calgary. Maybe I’d lose $120 on the hotel in Calgary and pay a little extra to leave the rental car in Edmonton. Maybe I’d get to meet up with Donna and Ken in Red Deer for lunch on Monday. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

If not this one, then I have decided that if I haven’t found anything in Calgary by Tuesday I’ll leave for Edmonton first thing Wednesday.  The more I search, the more I know I will not settle for anything less recent than a 1998 or with more than 200,000KM.

My insurance broker neglected to mention a little thing called an insurance inspection for vehicles older than 12 to 15 years. It’s not required by all insurance companies, but if I can eliminate some hoops, that would be good.

At any rate, I wouldn’t expect to hear back from the dealership in Edmonton until Monday anyway, so I might as well get to Calgary and hit the ground running. The right truck is out there for me!

Now, I need to go pack. Note to self: grab the GPS, too!

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Frustration

In the last week, I have sent seven replies to truck-for-sale ads, following up with phone messages when I could. No one has responded. Four of those messages were, “I want to buy your truck, get back to me so I can schedule an inspection.” I guess no one really wants to sell. That or people don’t like the idea of the inspection without meeting me first and are too rude to let me know.

I’m leaving for Calgary tomorrow (!) and my confidence is shaky that I will be able to purchase something quickly since sellers can’t be bothered to respond to to queries about their ads.

Returning from Calgary without a truck is not an option, but I have to remain smart in my decision-making process. More than 250,000KM is out. Rust is out. After comparing bed dimensions, flareside is out (painful since there is a gorgeous 2004 flareside with a topper and almost no mileage at a good price on the market). And spending more than $4,000 is definitely not a smart move. Now that I know so much about the Ford Ranger I’m leery about expanding the search radius to its rival, the GMC Sonoma, but I may not have any choice.

If I don’t find any more decent trucks online tomorrow night, Monday is going to have me starting a tour of all the used vehicle dealerships in the Calgary area. I find that painfully inefficient when an online search tells me that what I want is available except that the sellers are impossible to reach.

Moya is out there somewhere, I know, but she sure is being furtive!

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Scary Mail

Jody emailed me tonight to let me know she got some mail for me from “Government of Alberta, Driver Fitness and Monitoring, Edmonton” and that it was probably my stickers for the license plate but did I want her to open up the envelope and check?

I quickly Googled Driver Fitness and Monitoring because it didn’t sound good and the results caused me to reply with, “Yes.”

It took about an hour for her to get back to me while I fretted. Did someone report me for dangerous driving? Was I ticketed for something and never informed? The best case scenario I could envision was that I needed to get my eyes tested since they didn’t do that when I got my license here (wearing glasses or contacts is a condition on my license). I kept telling myself, “Calm down. Whatever it is, you’ll deal with it. No sense working yourself up over nothing.” But you try to get a letter from a place called Driver Fitness and Monitoring without knowing the contents and not fret over it!

Jody’s next email had the subject line “Mail is OK” with a scan of the letter. I just laughed and laughed and laughed because the letter basically said what the lady from Service Alberta told me yesterday.

Here’s the letter:

The highlights:

-Your Accent has been reported unrepairable. It cannot be registered or put on the road. It can only be sold for scrap or dismantled for pairs.

-If you still have your registration and license plate, you can transfer them to a new vehicle.

-If you don’t have the registration and license plate, advise a registry office so that they can be cancelled.

I am once again thankful that Jody reminded me to go grab my license plate off the car. I am certain I would not have thought to do so myself. I am really fond of that license plate because it is just one number off from the motorhome so I only have to remember which is the 6 and which is the 7. It’s like having a matched set, which is what my rig might look like soon if the seller would only get back to me! 🙂

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I Feel Like I’m On Another Planet

Oh, Quebec… Hated living here but I love, love, love visiting!

Being overdue for a Walmart run and having access to the car for a few precious hours, I  headed out this morning for the first time to the Quartier Dix30 (Ten30 Neighbourhood, because it’s at the intersection of autoroutes 10 and 30).  To me, this mega complex, that would rival the West Edmonton Mall if it was enclosed, is new, but it’s of course been here a while. It took a bit of navigation to find the Walmart, so new that it doesn’t even have a Walmart sign on the exterior.

I hadn’t been in there a minute that I was grinning, listening to a husband and wife have a quiet argument. Husband was ranting in English and wife was trying to calm him down in French. During my shopping I caught associates doing the same thing, one talking to another in French and getting English responses. Even though French is my first language, I make sure I’m exposed to it everywhere I live, and I spoke tons of it in Dawson City, it still sounds so exotic after not living in a French environment for almost four years.

The actual shopping experience was horrible because Quebec has a European-style culture of ‘the customer is not my bread and butter, it is a disturbance’, but I knew that going in and kept telling myself, “Réspire par le nez” (breathe through the nose), a common expression meaning, “Relax!”

They were having an amazing deal on the Omega Paw litter box, so I picked up a new one (and I even managed to score the bronze one that I have been coveting because it will blend in better with my decor). The clasps on the one I got in Campbell River are worn, so the box leaks when I roll it. There is also the matter that even with cleaning it completely once a week, a litter box retains odours. I used to buy a litter box a year, so having done a year and a half with my litter box in no way reflects on the quality of the product. My review of the Omega Paw litter box still stands; best litter box ever!

Now that it’s almost summer, I’ll be having tomato sandwiches for breakfast for the foreseeable future and I was out of tomatoes. So I made a stop at IGA to grab some. I don’t know what it is about the produce out here, but it lasts longer. Then again, Jody agrees with me that the produce in Lethbridge is terrible. I’d slice a tomato there and the next day the leftovers would be mouldy. Here, a tomato can last me for three sandwiches/days. They also taste like tomatoes here.

Quebec grocery stores are nothing like the grocery stores out west. There’s a lot more ‘ethnic’ stuff, especially Middle Eastern, and a lot more gourmet products. It’s so lovely to have access to not just pita bread again, but a variety of it, and stocked by a store that knows that pita bread is supposed to be soft! And let’s not get into the options for hummus. I used to be a bit of a purist, but I’m starting to like the ones with add-ins. I went with roasted red pepper today. 🙂

Another difference is that some products that are really expensive out west are cheaper in Quebec. I’m thinking specifically of grey shallots. I occasionally splurged on a mesh bag of three or four of them for about $5 in Lethbridge. Here, I bought a big box with more than 10 for about $2. Cheese and yoghurt are also cheaper. My favourite kind of yoghurt is about 50 cents cheaper here at regular price and I got some $2 cheaper on sale. Finally, when my favourite brand of frozen pizza goes on sale here, the whole brand goes on sale, not just a few flavours. Yay for a freezer full of $3 Dr. Oetker Hawaiians. 🙂

I really hope that I’ll be able to get out and explore Quebec this summer. I think that once I have my new toad set up for camping, it’ll be really motivated to go out for three-day weekends. I’d especially like to get to Charlevoix and maybe even as far as Gaspé. But if I do that, I might as well keep going and visit the last province on my list, Newfoundland!

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Scheduling the Evaluation For the Final Motorhome Repairs

I knew there was something else I had to do today besides, you know, earn a living: schedule a time for me to bring Miranda in for an evaluation of the repairs to be done. I wanted Aviva to advise me how to proceed before doing that.

This was the least frustrating part of my call with my adjuster this morning. She told me that they are not sending another evaluator out. I am to take the rig to get it evaluated. If the body shop guy has the same to-do list as the evaluator did in the US, then we’re good to go. They are not going to quibble over money.

I wanted to give myself plenty of time between the end of my Calgary trip and the evaluation, so I am going in first thing on June 15th. Closer to that date, I will call again and ask if I will be able to leave Miranda there until the repairs can be done. If so, I’ll have enough time to get my cats settled in my mother’s garage, my fridge and freezer emptied, and my office set up in the guest bedroom. Frankly, this would be easier than to pack up, go there, come back, unpack, repack, and go back again. Plus, there is a good chance that the repairs will coincide with the city redoing my mother’s entrance so I would have had to park Miranda on the street for several days anyway.

Now, I need to find a place to have the baseplate installed on the truck. Whew.