All change

It’s been ages. I know. ‘What happened to the blog?’ I’m being asked. And it is high time I told you.
It appears, you see, that I may not be quite strong enough to be a trucker after all, and that is quite a difficult thing for an intrepid trail blazer to admit. Just after the last, terrifying, sleep deprived, icy, whiteout of a drive I had some trouble getting out of the cab. I could drive ok but unaccountably couldn’t walk. Whisked off for tests to check for worrying things like MS and brain tumours, I wasn’t allowed to drive until some doc or other deemed it safe.
The good news is that I don’t have MS or a brain tumour. The bad news is that some of the symptoms continue, as do the tests; and it looks like whatever I do have will turn out to be something that doesn’t respond well to physical exhaustion.
So, here I am, an apparently ex-trucker, with half a book about the joys of trucking and a blog that was just starting to get interesting. It has been pointed out to me though that I don’t have to become an ex-writer as well. The blog can be about other things. Lots of people blog about non intrepid lives. And, as Ben works on a play about the wilder aspects of life in the B&B we used to run when we first arrived in Canada, I am reminded that emigration has its exciting side, even if it generates fewer songs and urban legends.
So, just to get the ball rolling again I am planning to revisit some of the articles I wrote back in the early days, pop a few of my favourite stories up here to get back in the swing of things. Then perhaps the Book of the B&B will emerge, tale by tale. Or maybe I will become an intrepid local reporter...the hidden delights of Mennonite country. Dunno.
I think the title will remain however. Not sure where the blog is going but to keep calling it Trucking in English appeals to my sense of the absurd. And to keep the sense of failure at bay, it will serve as a reminder that I did almost make it, a bit, for a while.
If you feel inclined to watch this space, something will appear.
And thanks for all the nagging, you know who you are...

Whiteout

And then it was Neil's turn to drive through the crappy weather. I handed over while it was snowing and blowing and settling. Visibility wasn't good, you could see the yellow line from time to time, occasionally a bit of tarmac so you knew there was some road under there somewhere. I went to bed. Sleeping while the truck is moving has become strangely comforting now, although there is still an awareness of odd things happening. I half awoke at one point in the night under the impression we were reversing, put it down to a wacky dream turned over and went back to sleep.

At about 1 in the morning the truck stopped. "the road's been closed by the police" advised Neil, apparently it had all got a teensy bit worse. The whiteout was now total. He had been directed to park in the car park of a little motel and garage just by where the police had cordoned off the road. And it wasn't a dream, we had been going backwards. Shortly before being forced to stop anyway Neil had been contemplating the same after losing traction completely going up a hill. As the truck ground to a worrying halt, he observed that the tarmac on the other side of the road was a bit better ploughed, so had reversed back down a way in order to try going up again on the wrong side of the road.

Neil went to sleep and I promised to check out the lay of the land when my shift began at four in the morning. I duly arose at four and looked out of the window. The police car was still blocking the road. Yay, can't go anywhere, more sleep. In need of a wee, I hopped out to investigate the facilities and landed in a knee-high snowdrift. The loos were closed. Having sorted out that little problem in ways that wouldn't be polite to specify in a nicely brought up blog, I was thoroughly wet and cold anyway, so decided to nose about a bit in search of practical ways out of the car park as and when. There was another truck parked close in front of us. I would need to take a bit of a sharp turn to get round him, which would bring my wheels directly into some nasty snowdrifts. Sharp turns are fatal for maintaining traction. It looked a lot like a recipe for disasters of a stuck-in-the-snow variety, so I made a mental note to wait for him to move off ahead of us when the road finally opened.

I snoozed for an hour, looked out of window, road still closed. Snoozed for hour and a half, looked out of window, road still closed. At about 8ish I spotted a trucker striding purposefully towards the motel with coffee cup in hand; and naturally I followed. A real loo trip and a coffee later I was all perked up and ready to drive. Road still closed. I wandered around the truck, checking tyres and brushing snow off lights and reflective strips, we would be ready for the off as soon as they let us through.

Eventually the road opened. All the trucks arriving after us had been lined up on the hard shoulder, and set off in a cloud of freezing exhaust fumes, but the truck in front of us remained stationary. I went and hammered on the door. Several times. A sleepy face appeared and grimaced at me as I pointed out that the road was open and we could move but he was in my way. "Ok, ok" and he disappeared. We sat, we waited, we watched. As I drummed my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and the truck in front of us didn't move, people began to emerge from the motel and dig themselves out of the snowdrifts they were now parked in. The first to leave was a little U-Haul van. He made a desperate attempt to run the snowdrift that now filled the entrance to the car park but failed miserably
We were still going nowhere but at least there was now something to watch. People came and went with shovels and cups of salt. A little snowplough arrived to shovel the car park and tried to push the van forwards into the road. Then he tried to push it backwards into the car park. He gave up and began ploughing the bits he could get at, bearing in mind the two dirty great tractor-trailers and the lodged van in his way. An hour or so later a tow truck arrived and finally pulled the little van into the street and on his way. The snow plough driver hastened to clear a bit more of the exit while we waited for the truck in front of us to move off. He'd gone for a cup of coffee by this time though, and while I yelled 'Noooo' at the top of my voice, at nobody in particular, another car attempted the impossible and got itself stuck between the truck and the exit.

People, shovels, cups of salt, little plough trying to get round them and clear piles of snow away. By the time this car had been shifted, the car park was a mass of ridges of packed snow. "If he's got any sense" I said to Neil, referring to the truck in front of us "he'll wait for the plough to do that bit over there before he tries to get out." As I said this, truck in front of us gave me a cheery wave and headed off out of the car park, to get his trailer wheels well and truly stuck in the snowdrift he'd not avoided by trying to avoid the bit that wasn't ploughed yet.

People, shovels, ploughs etc. The combined nuisance value of a truck stuck in the car park and lots of delayed residents alerted the local police, who sent a little patrol along. He very helpfully dug out another car or two while commandeering a couple of highway snowploughs, one to widen the exit from the car park and the other to tow the truck out of the snow bank. We sat and watched. Another hour passed. I took a few photos.

Eventually, there was nothing between me and the road except for a lot of mangled snow. "I think I'm going to tell the little plough that I'd like to sit here for another five minutes while he finishes off the middle there" I told Neil. "We're so late now, it won't make much of a difference and it'll be easier to make the turn." "I'll go, I've still got my boots on." So Neil wandered over to the poor little man who'd been trying to do his job all morning, in between digging people out, and told him we'd keep out of the way for a bit. Five minutes later we were out and on the road.
It was slick, icy and slippery. The ploughs had been by and mashed the snow down into a solid layer of scariness.

The road east from Marathon, Ontario is windy and uppy and downey. We managed about 80 kph on the straight bits, a lot less on the hills and bends. Not very fast at all on the hills with bends at the bottoms and when the whiteouts whipped up. A bit pathetic, other trucks with presumably more experienced and less wimpy drivers flew past us when and where they could. After a couple of hours we were stopped again. Another police cordon, another road closed. Popping into the handy truckstop we'd been corralled in, we heard the gossip. A truck had 'parked in the ditch' in front of us. Behind us, the road was now closed again due to a seventeen truck pile-up with fires and people killed. All of a sudden I didn't mind being the sort of wimp who drives slowly in ice and snow. Arriving in one piece any old how seemed to be sufficient achievement.

It took all day and half of the night. They winched the offending truck out of the ditch eventually and off we all trooped. The road remained slick, it snowed, the whiteouts came and went, blowing up without warning as the road wound around the lake. We emerged from the Lake Effect Winter Storm exhausted, stressed out and late. But we emerged, which is more than some did. Over-cautious? Moi? Probably.

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Military manoeuvres

A day's rest in Edmonton restored our spirits a little and we headed off to the next pickup in sprightlier mood. Cold Lake was the destination, apparently aptly named although I didn't actually try out the lake itself. It is about as far north as you can get in Alberta, before the roads give up bothering. The only thing in Cold Lake is an air force base, which is where we were due to collect something, from someone. The shipping address consisted of a mere three letters, CFB, which we only knew to be some sort of military establishment because we happened to be chinwagging over a cup of coffee with a helpful and friendly Challenger team in Edmonton when the assignment came in.
We sent a satellite message to despatch, asking for a bit of help with finding our load. We assumed that the base would be easy enough to locate, but that there might be some sort of protocol attached to getting in and that it might include such security issues as knowing where you were supposed to be collecting what. Driving a truck aimlessly about an airbase with no specific destination in mind seemed as though it might be behaviour designed to spark suspicion.

Despatch were still mulling over the whole problem when we arrived. Quite why they couldn't just call the person who made the booking in the first place is a bit beyond me, but then I am just the grunt these days. We followed some remarkably pretty signs to the base and spotted a guardhouse and barrier in the distance. "We'll just have to ask there, presumably they can call someone if we're not allowed in." Please bear in mind that this is a team of two Brits problem-solving their way around a remarkably alien culture...the guard house was empty, the barrier up and a green light invited us in. I had a moment to wonder what might have happened if our truck had been full of fertilizer, but then I have clearly spent too much time being bombed by the IRA and this is Canada. Even the armed forces are friendly.

One thing that would appear to be the same the world over is that military bases are reminiscent of small towns. Where does one park a bloody great truck in order to ask directions? We plumped for sticking to big roads while heading for the nearest available manned barrier that actually blocked the way to somewhere. A few tight corners later and we approached just such a thing. I considered pulling right up to the guardhouse but could see that there wasn't a window at truck height and decided to stop a few yards shy of it, just in case of misunderstandings of a security nature. The girl in the hut spent several minutes piling on layers of winter clothing before ambling inquisitively down to us to see what we wanted. "I'm awfully sorry, didn't want to come right up to you in case we're not allowed through there but we have to collect a consignment from the base and don't know where to go." It sounded a bit lame.

Apparently where we had to go was back the way we had come, and up a little street to the Military Police building, for identification purposes. A small queue of jeeps and things was forming behind us. "Um, could we come in and turn around?" "There's nowhere to turn, unless you can use the intersection here..." There was a small crossroads just beyond the gatehouse. "I can stop the traffic for you if you like."

Neil and I considered the space. It was tight, but possible. Snowbanks on all corners made the feat a little extra exciting but we had no choice. Will a full audience of uniformed types, I executed a perfect U-turn and grinned my way off to be identified. Of course, now we know where it is, the MP building was the obvious destination, it had truck parking and everything. They found our shipper and engaged an escort to take us into the relevant restricted area. He arrived in the form of a very red-faced squaddie who addressed himself entirely to Neil while explaining where we would be driving to. Neil smiled politely, met my eye and said nothing. Red-faced squaddie escorted us outside and managed to not look too confused when we headed for the wrong sides of our vehicle and it became apparent that I was the driver today.

He led us through barriers and along lanes, and finally through an apparently pointless concrete chicane, to a large shed. "We need you to back up to that door there, sorry it's a bit tight." Tight isn't the word, it was a blind-side reverse with snowbanks on all sides and a helpfully parked jeep in the way. My heart sank. There was me, determined to prove that women did this stuff and the worst of all possible manoeuvres to attempt. Neil got it. He jumped out to guide me back, told the assembled chaps in no uncertain terms just how difficult this would be and muttered, "Just do as I tell you, it'll be fine." And after a fashion, it was. Yay, put that in your pipe and smoke it squaddie-who-only-talks-to-men.

It took a couple of hours serious snoozing for the assembled company to hand-load the trailer full of boxes of stuff and then we were ready to be escorted off the premises. I was a little cocky by then. I was going to show the Canadian Air Force just what women could do. It is therefore possible that I took the pointless concrete chicane just maybe half a kilometre per hour faster.than before. And it was a tad tight anyway, barely enough space to swing the tractor around to avoid the next lump of concrete as the trailer wheels swivelled around the one you'd left behind. Anyway, there's no getting away from the awful truth, we felt this 'orrible lurch as the front wheel dropped off the road, through a snowdrift into a ditch.

The first thing that went through my head was 'ah, this will be fun to write about'. The second was 'ohnoohnoohnoohno not here, please...' and I can now report the amazing scientific finding that embarrassment can overcome physics. A spot of reverse, a smidge of forward, a bit more thisaway and some jiggerypokery over there and we were out of the ditch, through the chicane and off the base. Women drivers though. Useless.