i had planned to make it down to the city centre of kingston for the night but instead ended up in the nether regions that weren’t the 401 and were downtown. it was a minor motel row with the one i was staying in having a view of the loblaws.
i got in too late to really care, i didn’t care the the $49 rooms were taken and i had to have a $75 room. i didn’t care when the ice machine was broken. i didn’t care when the continental breakfast was a chocolate muffin and a plastic cup of coffee. i simply wrote a bit and fell asleep.
in another effort to slow down. here is strange part, if i slow too much i shan’t make it to do what i want but i don’t want to race this is becoming a weird balancing act. in another effort to slow down i thought that i would actually go down to the water and see where lake ontario becomes the st lawrence.
was surprised i liked the city, i liked the area east of the centre, the wind farm on the other shore had a nice sculptural feel to it. i remembered that i was up here for the 1000 islands but never could place where they were.
didn’t get the ritual double double instead had a proper coffee at a local café - to take away of course - had to make time (sort of).
the 401 got old pretty quickly. this was the day where i needed some goal to be reached and soon. another day deadly super highway driving would be a killer and already my mind was wandering. this happened in 2005 with the endless interstates to new brunswick but was alleviated last year as there was barely a day of interstate driving before we sneaked into the province.
got off at cornwall simply to see the river. didn’t realise it was so far off the 401 and when i head into a large town i am at a loss as to where to go obviously one would think the centre but usually they are disappointments as they are usually tarted up beyond what the rest of the place looks like.
headed down a street that paralleled - at some distance - the river and came across a motel which was now a residence. i only realised this after i had hopped out and was making snaps of the sign when people started to stare those who were in their rooms and not smoking came out to watch also.
started up a conversation with tim who talked about the way cornwall was a few years back, he showed me a postcard of the motel with the sign lit and talked of others that were in the area.
still not in photographic mode or rather not sure which mode to be in. i had photographed him and his cat - a norwegian maine coon mix - which i used as an ice breaker - with ziquinho but realising that i would want the sign for the blog and flickr i went back and photographer everybody again.
went back well i think slowly so i was heading downtown under the massive bridge that lead to the states that towered over the city, it seemed to start its climb miles inland and looked like some sort of prison walkway. i couldn’t see the other end of it.
it was only after trying to photograph the bridge - not very pleasing aesthetically - that i headed back for another session at the motel.
cornwall reminded me of beloit or what beloit would hope to be, to make sure the city centre didn’t die - they brought the wal-mart downtown.
hitting québec, i realised what was wrong with the 401 - it was souless. it was a utopian road. smooth straight it did everything to make you forget that you are one a super highway.
entering the nation - the road changed, colour and texture, there were glitches, it made noises, it was like driving again. being numb from driving it was little things as that that served as rewards for accomplishing something.
the sureté were out in force. making a wrong turn meaning that i had to go through a bit of montréal, there was a trap where the road went from 100 to 50 with five sureté cars waiting to ticket.
again what i saw of montréal - after all the last time i was there drapeau was mayor - again i prefer it to toronto well the expressway goes through montréal. again the city has a lived in look that toronto never does. although i am sure that anything is possible i think it would be harder for montréal to stand in for any north american city the way that toronto does, it is just not as generic.
i felt that i was making progress except for making the mistake of getting off 40 at berthierville along with the rest of the world for food and fuel - went without the food as the t. ho’s was packed.
nice surprise from those incompetents at bank of america. paying for the gasoline i found out that they had frozen my account due to fraud suspicion. ring them and in their automated answering system they want you to type in your social security number. wow wonder why they have a problem with fraud.
finally i get a person on the phone who states that i am not liable for any fraudulent use of my card
damn straight
she then questions me about a $90 gasoline bill in port hope - this is after i have to answer quite a few masonic like questions concerning past bills. mentioned that she would have seen that there was a bill from a motel, and now one in québec which would probably hint that i was travelling. (i was worrying because the charge was only $30 but that didn’t seem to bother her).
i mentioned that if she had bothered to look at past records that she would have seen that this is an annual event.
well no this is a new account due to a security breach at bank of america and there are no past records of my charges.
makes one wonder but this little transaction with me screaming into a public phone outside an ultramar in english certainly lightened some people’s day.
i think that i would like québec city even better than montréal but i only saw it at a distance as this is where the dreamed of outing diverged with the new reality outing. i was crossing to the south side of the river to head to the gaspé.
i was looking for remote populations on thin roads black roads on maps and instead i had the transcanada.
i was back into making time as i wanted to get to matane-sur-mer that evening and the transcanada here was good for that few options for diverting.
until i looked at the map and found that beside this broad red line of route 20 there was a skinny grey one for some reason i got down at saint jean port joli it could have been bladder and that was my undoing as i started to find stuff to photograph - as it seems when driving and not walking i find stuff not situations nor things formal, foot prints in the quai at st. jean, a hockey rink in st germaine, it can be seen on how catholicism reigned supreme here every town was towered over by a church, from then on it was to stay as close to the river as possible.
at riviere du loup the tch was far enough north to get around maine and headed back south again - a fitting end was the ali baba ice cream stand - and it was safe to head over to 132 stopping at trois pistoles, isle verte with its strange giant question mark but also a nice bakery and st fabien where not only did darkness set in but also heavy fog. it would be rimouski as the stopping point.
i don’t know what the north shore is like. i can only conjecture but the south shore was quite nice, the villages were not only nicely self contained but had a thriving social lives. st jean had quite a few restaurants an cafés and while there was a lot of tourist stuff to buy - which i image wouldn’t be on the north shore - it was mixed with what seem to be real inhabitants. when i was wandering trois pistoles people were heading to the theatre - not cinema. there were people dining, walking and biking both towns had bike lanes as did most of the towns along the river
it seems that no one here is lactose intolerant as i saw more milk bars, fromageries than real bars. then there were the frites maison kiosks.
at dusk started to photograph the kiosks and other businesses in st fabien, when henriette said that i didn’t wait for her to pose. chatted in my french which is worse than stephen harper’s and made a snap with the digital before the search for a room.
it seems that most places where filled and i was racing this biker group from motel to motel to find a room. they would win as the didn’t have to park the bike. they got the penultimate room at the comfort inn i, the last one.
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