Date:         Fri, 29 Sep 1995 07:22:20 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>
Subject:      Big Trip Report [part 11, long]

                 Part XI: From New Brunswick to Ontario
        (or, "Excuse me, could you help us push this thing?")


This week: Tobin and Christa wake up to the coldest morning of 
their trip, and the fun begins shortly afterward.  Their camper 
ensures they get their exercise for the remainder of the trip--who 
needs a Thigh-Master?  They also create a bit of a scene at one of 
Canada's finest hotels.

Hey kids!  See a collection of fine photographs of Tobin and   
           Christa on their Big Trip at 
     -->  http://www.teleport.com/~des/vw
           And why not join us and other list members on a road 
           trip to the Beaufort Sea (on the Arctic Ocean) next 
           August?  Check it out at
     -->  http://www.chaco.com/~coyote/trek 


March 12, 1995   Grand Falls, New Brunswick, Canada

We woke up to sound of snowmobiles just outside our window.  
Sounded like twenty or so starting up in the dim light that 
precedes dawn.  I stumbled out of bed and squinted through the 
motel room window, chipping the ice off the inside of the window 
so I could see out.

Yep.  A whole mess of snowmobiles out there.  I remembered 
something about the snowmobiler's convention this place was 
hosting; I'd seen a sign for it last night as we were checking in.  
Now the down parka guys were getting boisterous, and some of them 
were jumping their turbo skidoos off the six foot snow banks piled 
up against the edge of the parking lots.  The tinny rattle of 
their engines carried annoyingly well through air cold enough to 
use in cryogenics experiments.  My eyes were still refusing to 
open any more than half way, and I staggered my way to the shower 
but not before walking into a wall first.

Somehow Christa managed to cram herself into the shower with me, 
although we didn't have enough room to actually move and clean 
ourselves or anything.  The hot water felt good, and we just stood 
there for a long time, our skin turning deep red.  Finally we 
couldn't put it off any longer: we had to get out of the shower, 
put on our clothes and actually go outside.

I was elected to go outside first.

I bundled up.  I mean I really bundled up.  Wore damn near every 
piece of clothing I had.  Then I opened the door.  And it snowed 
inside our room.

No, it wasn't snowing outside.  It was perfectly clear, as a 
matter of fact.  I'd opened the door, and the warm, moist air from 
the inside of the room hit the cold air from outside and 
immediately freaked out.  Cooled, condensed, froze, fell to the 
floor and on my shoes in the matter of a second or two.  Oooh, it 
IS a little nippy out today, isn't it?

First task: check the oil.  I opened up the engine compartment and 
grabbed the dip stick.  Needed more than the usual light tug to 
pull it out.  A big round glob of stuff was squooshed onto the end 
of the dip stick.  I touched it, and it sagged under my touch a 
bit.  So this is 20/50 oil at -40.  Damn.  I KNEW I should have 
changed to lighter weight oil before getting into this part of the 
country.  Seemed too cold outside at the time.  Well, now I'd just 
have to make due with this 20/50 putty.

I climbed up onto the rock-hard seats and turned the key in the 
ignition to check out the idiot lights.  A little dimmer than 
usual, hmmmm.  Well, what the hell, I thought, and I cranked the 
starter.

wrr.

OK, you Middle Westerners and Eastern types are probably laughing 
at me, but folks from the West Coast just don't have block 
heaters.  It's almost a point of pride.  So I tried the starter 
again.

wrr.  wrr.  wrrrr.  Wrrrr, wrr, wrr, wr, w.

I let it rest for a few seconds.  I was freezing my butt off, but 
there was no way I was going to crank up the gas heater and draw 
10 amps off that battery when I knew I'd need everything it had to 
get our cold-but-happy camper started.  I hit the starter again.

Wrrr, Wrrr, Wrrr, Wrrrr, Wrrrr, Wrrrr.

Wrrr, WRRR, WRRR, *piff*, Wrrr, Wrr.

I was just too damn cold, so I instructed Christa how to go about 
starting a cold car on a marginal battery, and went inside to 
defrost for a minute.

Christa cranked it off and on for a few minutes, and I could tell 
the battery was getting really low, then:

WrrrWrrrWrrrWrrrPutta*cough*puttaPUTTA*cough*Put*cough*cough*
....

I ran to the door and yelled, "Give it some gas!!"  I knew this 
was probably the only chance we'd get to start it ourselves.  But 
she couldn't hear me.  She had diligently not touched the gas 
pedal, since I'd told her thousands of miles ago that she didn't 
need to touch the gas when starting a fuel injected car.  I didn't 
think to tell her about this exception-to-the-rule situation.

Our battery had given us our chance, then packed it in.

[Some of our more sensitive readers may want to skip ahead a page 
or two at this point...]

I got out the jumper cables and hooked them up, keeping an eye out 
for potential donor cars.  Lots of snowmobiles were still goofing 
around the parking lot like skateboard punks at the mall, but 
their rides all ran a 6 volt system.  After a few minutes, the 
manager came out, unplugged the block heater on his C*r*van, and 
started it right up.  We tried jump starting the camper for a few 
minutes, but no luck.  He was looking nervously at his watch.  I 
stepped up and grabbed the tow rope from the roof of the camper.  
I knew this would come in handy.

He started pulling me out of the ice-covered parking lot, and we 
both slid to a stop when I popped the clutch.  He kept pulling, 
leading me out onto the empty ice-covered highway, our camper 
fish-tailing wildly every time I let the clutch out in second 
gear.  Eventually I just kept it in second, rode out the fish-
tailing, and let the engine get in the mood for rotating at the 
same rate as the wheels.  Finally, after being dragged down the 
highway for well over a kilometre, our camper fired on two, three, 
and eventually four cylinders.  I flashed my lights at the 
C*r*van, and we pulled over and untied the tow rope.  I thanked 
him profusely, even though I thought his car sucked.

I headed back for Christa and did a beautiful maximum oversteer 
brodie on the icy parking lot, sliding to a stop outside our motel 
room.  I kept the engine running as we loaded up the camper, and 
Christa went in the back to feed the heater hose to the front.  It 
broke to pieces in her hands because the normally soft plastic 
material was as hard and fragile as a sugar sculpture at this 
temperature.  I turned the gas heater on to warm things up.  We 
took a few minutes and made a patch-job repair to the heater hose 
with duct tape.  The air coming out of the heater was pretty warm, 
but not the scalding hot temperature we were used to from the 
thing.  

We jumped into the camper and headed toward Quebec, wearing our 
Austrian wool mittens, silk long underwear, and wool parkas.  We 
wore a lot of other stuff, too, of course.  We wound through the 
snow and ice along the Saint John River for an hour or so, then 
left the river as the road swung away for the Quebec border.  We 
crossed into Quebec and back into the Eastern time zone.  I 
couldn't roll my watch back wearing the mittens.

We cruised through the Quebec country side until we hit highway 20 
at Riviere-du-Loup, where we turned and headed up the St. Lawrence 
River toward Quebec City.  We pulled over for gas a ways past 
Riviere-du-Loup, at St.-Pascal or St.-Phillipe-de-Neri (don't 
remember exactly), pulled up to the pumps, shut off the engine, 
and filled up our happy camper.

We climbed back in the camper, and I turned the key.  Absolutely 
nothing happened.  I tried it again.  Nothing.  The idiot lights 
came on, the headlights worked, but nothing from the starter--not 
even a click.  I pulled out the Idiot Guide, and sought guidance 
from St. Muir.  I slipped under the camper to check the electrical 
connections for the starter (very easy to do when parked on a 
glaze of ice), and stared up at a solid block of ice.

Now, I'm not saying that the starter was encased in a block of 
ice.  No, I'm saying that the entire underside of the car was one 
smooth, aerodynamic block of ice probably 4 inches to a foot 
thick, and likely adding several hundred pounds to the weight of 
the car.  There was no way I was going to be able to even SEE the 
starter, much less work on it, unless I had a good chisel and 
hammer and several hours of time.  Even then, I figured the ice 
could well tear the connections clean off if the ice came off the 
wrong way, so I left it all frozen up and cozy like that.

I cajoled the nice station attendant to get his car and give us a 
push-start.  He pushed us up to a slow jogging speed, I let out 
the clutch, and our camper fired right up!  Christa and I grinned 
and hugged each other.  I didn't care if our camper didn't start 
as long as it ran.  And it ran beautifully, as usual.

We rolled into the old city in Quebec City a couple of hours 
later.  It was definitely warming up, and we didn't need to have 
the gas heater cranking full blast all the time.  It was still 
pretty darn cold, though, but we were finally able to get the cab 
of the camper nice and toasty for the first time in a couple of 
days.  We pulled into the Chateau Frontinac, looking forward to a 
warm room and a nice soak in a hot bath.

I've got to tell you about the layout of the hotel entrance so 
you'll understand the humour of what happens next:
- The driveway to the front entrance of the hotel is a fairly 
  narrow one-way road, up hill.
- There is a wide spot directly across from the grand entrance to 
  the hotel on this driveway that is wide enough to park a half 
  dozen cars turned so they are facing the front doors to the 
  hotel.  Like a lot of ritzy places, they typically park the real 
  "prestige" cars here: the Mercedes, the Ferraris, and so forth.
- We had 11 or 12 thousand miles on the camper so far this trip, 
  and we had deliberately not washed it--sort of as an experiment 
  to see how dirty it could get.  Answer: really, really dirty.
- We had no starter.

So we pulled up to the curb in front of the doors, and Christa got 
out to go check in.  Because I'd kind of stuffed the camper into a 
gap between a limo and a Porsche (Mexican driving habits die 
hard), a valet approached me and asked if I would like him to park 
my car in the underground parking, sir?  I asked if he had 
clearance in the underground for the camper with all the dirty, 
dripping, stuff lashed on top.  He just wanted me out of the way, 
and our muddy old hippie-mobile camper out of sight, so he said 
he'd check into it right away, but in the meantime, perhaps sir 
could just park in that spot between the Mercedes and the Ferrari, 
opposite the doors here?  I asked him if he was sure he wanted me 
to park there, and he said, with a very gregarious smile, "Yes, of 
course, sir.  That is not a problem, sir."

So I carefully backed the camper into a spot directly across from 
the main doors of one of the finest hotels in the country.  The 
only way out of the spot was up the steep driveway.  Hey, I 
consider our camper to be a prestige automobile.  So I turned off 
the motor, and headed inside.

The valet stopped me just before I reached the doors to the lobby.  
"Uh, sir!," he said, "Please leave me a key to your car in case I 
have to move it."  "Sure, no problem," I replied, taking the key 
off my key chain, "but you won't be able to move it because the 
starter doesn't work."  A pained expression crossed his face as he 
realized the cream of Canadian society would be looking at our 
muddy camper for the next day or two, and that there was nothing 
he could do about it.

Personally, I thought our camper cheered up the place 
considerably.

Christa and I checked in and went up to our room to warm up and 
relax.  Our room turned out to be a small suite on the very top 
floor of the hotel, with a huge 2 (3?) person whirl-pool tub in 
the living room.  Cool!  I reached over and started drawing a bath 
before I even put our bags down.  We quickly stripped and jumped 
into the tub, mellowing out with the warm water and whirl-pool 
jets.  I read through the Idiot Guide getting a feel for our 
starter problem.  Christa got her camera and used the self-timer 
to take a picture of us in our living room whirl-pool (with me 
reading the Idiot Guide).  [This photo is not on David's web site, 
'cause I figure I gave him a big enough stack already.]

We spent the next day exploring Quebec City, looking at the ice 
flow down the St. Lawrence, trudging through knee-deep snow to 
look at the historic Quebec citadel, where the British had crushed 
the French hundreds of years before.  A very impressive fortress, 
even when closed up for the winter and covered in snow.  On the 
way down, we watched people riding toboggans down a luge track, 
screaming as they hurtled a couple hundred feet down a 45-degree 
slope before hitting a 150 yard straight-away.  We just had to go 
to the end of the luge track, pick up our own toboggan, and haul 
it up the stairs to the top of the run.  We also screamed as we 
hurtled down the track, bouncing off the sides of the track with 
ever-increasing speed.  We probably hit something like 35 mph on a 
chunk of wood!  If only there were a way of getting our camper up 
to the top of the track...

The next morning, we phoned the concierge arrange a CAA truck to 
get us started.  We checked out, and I was happy to see it had 
really warmed up overnight.  Huge blocks of ice lay on the ground 
under our camper, and I went around the camper banging on the 
sides and undersides to knock off a whole bunch more.  Waiting for 
the CAA truck, we loaded the camper, cleaned out the interior, and 
hooked up the tow rope to the front of the vehicle.

When the CAA guy showed up, the he wanted to try jump-starting it, 
even though I told him the battery was not the problem; my starter 
was.  I was reluctant to use jumper cables unnecessarily, so I got 
him to agree he'd cover any FI damage if jumping screwed up our 
camper.  He still tried jumping (surprisingly), but of course it 
did nothing.  So I had him tow me up the driveway.

By now, a pretty good-sized crowd had formed by the main entrance 
to the hotel, a few feet away.  Quite a few of the hotel staff had 
gathered there to see us off, since they'd learned that Christa 
worked at another Canadian Pacific hotel.  Many tourists and well-
dressed high-powered types watched, too.  We waved as we glided by 
at the end of a tow rope.  After about 100 feet, the CAA truck had 
gathered enough speed to let me try to start the camper, so I let 
out the clutch, and VROOM! our camper fired right up.  We leaned 
out the windows and waved, and the gathered crowd waved back.  We 
followed the CAA guy around a corner to where we could unhook 
ourselves, did the paper work, and took off west towards Hamilton 
(just south of Toronto), where we were going to stay with some 
friends.  It was going to be a long driving day, so we settled 
into a rhythm and watched the miles tick by.

Sadly, because of the distance we knew we'd have to cover that 
day, we drove the whole way on major freeways.  We cruised right 
through Montreal without even stopping.  We looked longingly into 
the city streets as the cruised through, thinking of all the great 
restaurants and blues bars.  We left Montreal behind us, 
untouched, and crossed into Ontario a short time later.  

We stopped just short of Cornwall for gas.  I parked the car off 
to one side of the lot, took the jerry can off the roof, filled it 
up, and added 6 1/2 gallons to the camper with the engine still 
running.  We also grabbed a sub sandwich from a shop next to the 
gas station, locking up the camper with the Christa's keys, 
leaving my keys in the ignition and the engine running.  Subs in 
hand, we got back into the camper and ate as we continued west.

We finally shut the camper down in Kingston, to do a total fill 
up: over 90 litres of fuel between the jerry can and the fuel 
tank.  We recruited a couple unsuspecting souls unfortunate enough 
to be filling up their cars nearby to help us push our camper for 
a start.  No problem: engine fires up, and off we went.

We drove straight through the rest of the afternoon and into the 
night without stopping, except a two minute stop on the shoulder 
of the 401 to dump the fuel from the jerry can into the gas tank.  
We drove through downtown Toronto on the Don Valley Parkway and 
the Gardiner Expressway, back in familiar territory.  We finally 
pulled over in Oakville, nearly out of fuel, and minutes from the 
day's destination.  I filled up the jerry can while Christa 
grabbed a falafel from the take-out place next door.  I dumped the 
jerry can gas into the gas tank with the engine running.  

A few minutes later found us cruising down Main St. West in 
Hamilton towards our friends' place, savouring the familiar stink 
from the Hamilton steel mills.  We'd spent two years in Hamilton a 
few years ago, while I went to gradual school.  Sadly, the smell 
wasn't the only thing about Hamilton that hadn't changed: the 
economy had remained dead while BC. was booming, leaving Hamilton 
with all too many boarded-up storefronts, and one of our friends 
still couldn't get a 'real' job.  

After hugs all 'round after finding our friends' place, I parked 
our camper on the street, turning the engine off for only the 
second time all day.  I made sure to park on a slight downhill, 
leaving plenty of space in front of us so we could push the camper 
out of the parking space without too much trouble.  

I was going to get pretty good at push-starting and strategic 
parking before this trip was out.  


[Next week: The difficulties of trying to find reasonably-priced 
parts in Ontario.  Christa spends some quality time with our 
camper before flying off to Winnipeg for a funeral.  And we drive 
850 miles in one day, even though we couldn't start until nearly 
11:00 in the morning.]
 
Tobin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                  Only Partly            =============  
(604) 689-2660                    Occupationally       /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca      Challenged!        O|             | putta
                                                       '-()-------()-' 
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)