Those of you who have been around here for a while ...

... will know all about this aeroplane as you have seen it all before. It's KB882, a Lancaster from World War II and it is one of only three "combat veterans" still in existence. It flew to Edmundston airport under its own steam in 1964 and ever since then it's been stuck outside in all kinds of weather gradually deteriorating.

I spotted it in 2001 and ever since then I've been fighting single-handedly (I do other things with my other hand) to persuade the clowns in whose hands this historic machine has fallen to surrender it up to the Imperial War Museum or some other worthy organisation who can put a stop to this disgraceful neglect and get it back into the air before it falls apart.

In 2006 I was told that things might be happening and so being only 150 miles away from it I drove out this afternoon to see what they have done.

And the answer is -
1) they've put a better fence around it
2) they've raised it off the ground
3) ... errrr .....
4) that's it.

What is happening to this machine is nothing short of a national scandal, a total disgrace and the city of Edmundston should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. In the 9 years since I last saw it it has simply rotted away even further.

So having expected that, my blood has been boiling all day and it'll continue to boil for a while I suppose.

and that's not all I've done. I retraced my steps from 2001 and took a few pics of the falls at Grand Sault with the water actually unfrozen, as well as a few other photos of interest.

But I did get sidetracked a little. From Rachel and Darren's house I could see some wind turbines way in the distance to the north of Centreville and so I wandered off for a look. And at one stage I was so close to them that I could almost touch them, and my route then led off down a little country lane.

And here I came to a dead stop as here on this hill the road also comes to a dead stop. This is a frontier between the USA and Canade, and an unguarded one at that, although I do suspect that the barbed wire, searchlights and machine guns are in that forest somewhere and that the purpose of the wind turbines is not to power up the local villages but to power the spy machines lurking in the woods.

The actual border is that orange fence to the left and this building here, Darren seems to think, might possibly be the old Canadian customs post from when this was a personned crossing back in the distant past.

And it's for sale, even though it's totally derelict.

And I have a cunning plan.

Now just suppose I buy it and demolish the property that's on it. I could erect a huge billboard and use it to display Anti-American slogans and then set up some loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into the USA from here. If it works for the North Koreans who habitually do this to the South, no reason why I can't do it from here into the USA.