Well, I had my phone call last night.

Seems that the Nikon is beyond the kind of repair that can be carried out at Québec. It needs to be sent away. And so I put plan B into motion and went and bought the last one of those end-of-series D3000s in Québec. I'm using just the body of it now - nothing else. Everything else like the battery and the lenses are those from my other one. The idea is that when I reach home (if I ever do) I'll send the Nikon off to the manufacturers for repair. If they can't fix it I'll trade it in for a factory-refurbished more-upmarket model. And then I'll sell the one i've bought just now and probably get back most of my money. That's why the new one is sitting in the habitual place under the front seat, but wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it.

So now I'm mobile again and what I've done is to leave Québec City and the north shore of the St Lawrence and head south to the USA border, follow Highway 277 that also follows thz border, and reach Edmunston. From there, I'll go to see what gives on Mars Hill, see how Rachel and Darren and the saucepans are doing, nip down to Fredericton where I have things to do, and slowly come back to finish the south shore of the St Lawrence between Matane and Québec, the bit that I missed in 2010.

But of course, the best-laid plans of mice and men .... I'm wondering what catastrophe awaits me next.