Well… back from vacation, and what a vacation.

As usual, we drove back to Newfoundland for our vacation. What was unusual was that we decided to tow our trailer and bring our four-wheeler along. We knew it would cost a little more in gas, we knew it was going to cost more on the ferry from North Sydney to Port aux Basques, and we knew it was risky to drag a trailer for such a long distance, but we tackled it anyway.

Just as we were about to hit the road, I realized our new trailer did not have a safety inspection completed. It was licensed and insured, but the necessary safety inspection sticker was not in place. I rushed the trailer over to a local business to get inspected, and luckily they were able to inspect it without forcing me to remove all the cargo. Loading the four-wheeler and other stuff, along with tarps and bungee cords stretched all over took me about two hours. The trailer got inspected and we were off.

We arrived in North Sydney a little later than we wanted to… around 9:30 pm. When we got there, we discovered that our boat, which was scheduled to leave port at 1:00 am, was going to be slightly delayed. It didn’t leave until around 3:30 am.

Leaving North Sydney late meant arriving in Port aux Basques late. We had hoped to make up the time, but we ran in to some issues with the trailer. (Side note… we had a 4×8 stake-side trailer that we sold so we could purchase a galvanized 5×8 trailer from Costco. The stake side trailer only had 9 inch wheels and the new one had 13 inch… more suitable for distance travel.) By the time we got to Marble Mountain, about two hours into a 9 hour drive on the Newfoundland side, I noticed that one of the tires on the trailer was low. I pulled it over the an air pump to fill it up and noticed that the problem was with the air filler stem. The metal was separated from the rubber. A quick check of the other tire revealed to me that it was also running a little low. I had one spare tire, but not two. So, Deer Lake was only 60 kms away… we hoped we could make it there to find a garage to help us with our issue. A little searching and we found a place to help us. They squeezed us in right away. Once they replace both (yes BOTH) valve stems, we were off again.

Luckily, there was no more excitement. No mechanical issues, no moose, no major construction delays. We arrived in Witless Bay around 7 pm, only about 3 hours later than expected.

RDF. Rain, drizzle and fog. That summarizes the weather for practically the whole time we were in Newfoundland. But that didn’t stop us from having a good time. In two weeks, we put 600 kms on the four wheeler (pretty good considering that much of those kms were at a crawling pace over very rough terrain). I managed to get it stuck several times, once REALLY good. My son had gotten stuck and needed to be winched out. When I followed in his path, I decided it would be best not to drive in his tracks. So, I figured I’d straddle them… my right wheels between his tracks and my left wheels to the left of his tracks. The right wheels were fine. The left wheels went straight into a deep puddle of water. It turns out that moss that is growing on top of water looks exactly like moss growing on top of the ground! I immediately jumped onto the right running board and leaned hard, holding the handle bars. I had to. Otherwise the bike was going to roll right over into the water… that would be disastrous. It took three bikes, pulling with engines and winches about 20 minutes to get me out. The new bike was officially christened.

Besides that, I found time to shingle a roof, install crown moulding, build a deck, fall off a set of scaffolding and generally kick the shit out of myself. Yes… I said fall off a set of scaffolding. It was a home-made set, screwed together, and attached to the side of the house. I was up about 6 feet and the scaffolding fell apart, sending me falling into a pile on the ground. I buggered up my ankle, both heels, my right elbow and my shoulder. The funny thing, is the sciatic nerve problem that has been nagging at me since April 2007 suddenly went away! I can hardly walk, but my back doesn’t hurt.

The whole trip, driving from Moncton to St. John’s and back and all around while we were there. 4500 kilometers of highway driving and didn’t see one moose. Ok, I saw one moose, but it was a baby and about 50 feet off to the side of the road. But driving up and down the dirt road of Gully Pond in Witless Bay, we saw 5 moose. I’d rather see them there than on the highway anyway.

And now… we’re back. It’s Saturday night and we have to go back to work on Monday. Seems like forever since vacation started but it also seems to have gone by in a flash. So, back to reality and looking forward to the next time we set foot back on the rock.

I’ll end my rambling now… and leave you with this: one of the coolest license plates I’ve seen.

According to CBC.ca, there were four separate moose vehicle collisions last evening in a span of about 45 minutes, all of them within a few minutes of our normal vacation destination of Conception Bay South, Newfoundland. The article says that three of them were in the Fowler’s Road area on the Manuels Access Road and the other near Paddy’s Pond.

That’s a pretty scary statistic. When we were there just this past Christmas, we came across one such collision within minutes of it occurring about 7:30 pm Christmas Day.

It’s quite a problem back there. With an approximated moose population of 120,000 on the island and with the hunting season and old age about all that can kill them, it’s no wonder that so many of them end up with cars wrapped around them. There’s about 700 moose-vehicle accidents per year on the island. In my own travels I’ve had several near misses, countless sightings, and I have two brother-in-laws who have had collisions with them (one was very serious and the other was so close that it took the mirror off his car!).

We are heading back that way fairly soon for vacation. The moose on the roads is always an additional stress added to the strain of driving for 15 hours across a 24-hour timeframe. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Well… now and then you come across something totally original and imaginative. I’m not exactly sure if this is one of those things, but it certainly is hilarious!

Check out these YouTube vids from The Motion Show:

There’s the legend of Donnie Dumphy, Newfoundland Dirtbike Rapper and his latest album “I Loves Doing Wheelies” with the hits “Your Mudder Had It Coming”, “Ankle Bracelet, Schmankle Bracelet”, and “Brenda’s Got A Few Things Wrong With Her But That’s Alright”.

Then there’s The Newfoundland Scam. Worth Watching too!

Super stuff! Thanks Nadine!

I don’t want her to get any ideas.

“An American woman who says she accidentally shot and killed her husband in central Newfoundland is now suing two life insurance companies.” According to the news story in my CBC news feed, she mistook him for a bear.

Stop laughing. It’s not funny. I’m sure it was unintentional, regardless of the fact that he was worth more than a half a million bucks upon his death. He should have worn his orange vest instead of the first thing he pulled out of his closet.

I’ve written several posts over the years using the word “Newfie” as it refers to Newfoundlanders. Last week, one of those posts, written back in September 2005 (originally on my Blogger site and later transferred to this one when I bought my own domain) was found by someone who enjoyed it enough to leave me a comment relaying her own story which was similar to mine. Essentially, I had run into a person who was perplexed that I had referred to myself as a “Newfie”. She apparently had not associated the term as meaning “someone from Newfoundland”. She had grown up associating the term to mean “stupid”.

Ignorance is bliss, huh?

Well, you know how the thought process works, eh? You think about one thing, see something or hear something and then the synapses in your brain fire up and across and whatever else synapses do. Soon, you find yourself thinking about things you hadn’t thought of in years. Perhaps your conversations lean toward your newly discovered thoughts. My conversations did. I talked to those around me about someone finding such an old post and about the use of the word that, while so many use it to refer to themselves, could be used in hurtful and demeaning ways. My re-introduction to this word stirred memories of a “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” skit that made drew parallels to another “N” word as it poked fun of Michael Richards’ tirade on a comedy stage and his subsequent apology. In many ways, while usually not as harshly intended nor deeply wounding, the two words bring forth similar feelings and social consequences.

In true 22 Minutes style, they made the point very well, possibly seeing through Mr. Richards’ apology, and was hilarious in doing so. Here it is:

I try to avoid using the word now.

The question, Alex, is “What is St. John’s”.

That, of course, would be the answer if you were a contestant on Jeopardy. However, if you were giving the punchline to a joke, the answer would be Fort McMurray. With the outward migration to the boomtown oil fields of Alberta, this is an emotional reality to many Newfoundland families. I was reminded of this fact as I read my CBC.ca news feeds today. I get several feeds from CBC: a national feed, a New Brunswick feed, and a Newfoundland feed. I found it very interesting to see the following headline on my Newfoundland feed.

This headline wasn’t on my New Brunswick feed nor was it on my Canadian national feed. It turns out that this is becoming a problem as Newfoundlanders are coaxing their elderly parents to come join them in their new homes out west. “Why are you here all alone, Mom, with all of those expenses? Why don’t you come to Fort McMurray and live with us?”

Let’s hope that the soon-to-be-booming Newfoundland economy will support an eastward migrating repatriation. I wouldn’t be heartbroken if my family and I went along for the ride.