April 05, 2005

Moved to the GTA!

Here's a photo I took along the north shore of Lake Superior on our 3 day long trip down to the Greater Toronto Area. There is beautiful scenery along that drive.

We had planned for the normally 2 day trip to take 3 days, as we wanted to spend an extra day with my cousin Jiana, her husband Ed and their son Braeden in Sault Ste. Marie and we did get to! Unfortunately we didn't get to Sault Ste. Marie the first night as we had hoped, or even to Wawa as a second option as we had insane problems with the POS U-Haul we rented.

The drive was really slow because the truck would only go 80 km/hr. on a straight stretch and 40 km/hr. uphill. We got to Thunder Bay in 5 hours (instead of the usual 4) and stopped to buy a lock for the truck door. When we went to start it up again, it wouldn't start! It was just completely dead. No sound at all...

Allen called the U-haul number while I ran across the street to grab us some sammiches from Tim Hortons for lunch. Mmmmm.... U-haul said they'd send over a tow truck. Oh no! Tow truck? Were we going to have to spend our first night just 380 km from home? We ate our lunch and waited for the tow truck to arrive. It finally did, and the driver started poking around inside the engine. He tried a jump, nothing. He thought it might be the alternator, then took some stuff apart... nothing. He got underneath the truck and started banging on something or other (I wish I knew more about cars) and still nothing. Finally he diagnosed the problem- the starter had broken! We had a few options: start the truck with a screwdriver every time we needed it to start, or take it to the garage where we would have to either unpack everything from our truck and pack it into another truck or wait in Tbay (probably overnight) until they fixed the starter. Allen and I chose the screwdriver start option. We pulled one out of our toolbox and headed back out on the highway, after a 3 hour delay. I called my cousins in Sault and told them we wouldn't be there that night.

We drove until Terrace Bay then noticed that the high beams didn't work on the truck! The low beams were really dim and it had gotten dark out. We couldn't even drive as far as Wawa. We stopped in Marathon for the night instead.

We had travelled to a new time zone and the time had gone to daylight savings, so we were two hours ahead of our usual time. So, the next morning, we left at a bright and early 5:11 a.m. on the time our bodies were still used to (now 7:11 a.m.).

About 25 minutes outside of White River, we discovered a brand new problem with the truck; the gas gauge is completely wrong. According to the meter, we had a bit less than 1/4 of a tank, which would have been more than enough to travel to White River, but the truck sputtered out its last gas and died. The diesel fill-up in Marathon was out that morning and we decided by the gas gauge that we had enough to get to White River. We had NO idea the gauge was so wrong! Instead of waiting around for a transport to stop, Allen unhooked our jeep that we were towing, drove up the road to White River, bought a jerry can of gas, drove back, put it in the truck and hooked the jeep back up to the tow. As fortune would have it, there was actually a diesel fill up station less than a mile ahead of where we broke down, but of course... it was closed.

Just how wrong the reading was was evident after filling it with a 22 litre jerry can; the gauge went up to 1/2 tank! A huge cube truck can't have only a 40 litre tank, can it? No, it can't. When we got up to White River, we put another 83 litres in it.

So, after an additional hour delay, we were back on the road at a speedy 80 km/hr. We made it to Sault Ste. Marie later in the day then we had hoped.

The next morning, we left early again for Toronto. The trip here took 9 hours for a normally 7 hour trip, but we made it!

Our first night was spent just unloading our stuff from the truck, then getting that thing out of our sight! I think people in Dryden placed a curse on our U-haul truck so we couldn't leave.

Today was Allen's mom's birthday and we celebrated that. I also went to a fancy mall and bought myself my first cell phone! I have a new number and everything, so I will email that to my family and friends tomorrow as well as give my family and friends that live in the GTA calls tomorrow, so look forward to that!

Posted by Guinevere at April 5, 2005 09:17 PM

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