I'm back home

Well, at least, I think I am. It's hard to tell with all of this plant growth that seems to be everywhere all over the place. It's like something out of the Amazon rainforest around here right now.

One or two disasters while I was away. The wind seems to have blown over a bin full of kindling and brought down the solar shower. As well as that, the new revised dump load that I installed while I was away has proved too much for the fuseholder, which burnt off one of its terminals. Fuseholder is rated at 100 amps and the fuse in there is just 50 amps. Surpisingly the fuse hasn't blown, and so I don't think that I'll be using these fuseholders again, that's for sure.

Leaving Rachel and Darren's, I drove up to the St Lawrence somewhere around the Trois-Pistoles - Riviere du Loup area. A beautiful drive through the mountains with some lovely scenery - gorgeous lakes and all kinds of things. And a historic fort where there was a bannock-baking class going on. And I found a really good place to camp - probably the best so far - behind a hedge on the south bank of the St Lawrence.

Next morning though the weather had broken and we spent most of the day in the rain. And it was wet too. 78mm of rain fell in Montreal during one two-hour period. But even so, it was a really nice drive too. I shall have to do it again though when the weather is nice. It wasn't helped by the fact that I was so carried away that I was hours behing schedule and that's no good.

At the motel I washed and cleaned everything and then next morning filed it away in my little storage unit. I also found the most amazing car wash ever, where three immigrant people washed and vacuumed the car from top to bottom to such an extent that it looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. And all for $23 as well - a bargain.

We had the usual stress issues at the airport again but this time we had free internet and a pile of electric plugs to help pass the time and that's a change from the stinking reception that I have had in Dorval in the past. And it gets better than that too. On the aeroplane one of the films was Some Like It Hot and then we had a whole pile of albums by Hendrix, Springsteen, David Bowie, Led Zep and Neil Young. I'll fly by Air France again, even if I don't ever get to sleep.

A good decision was the TGV - straight back with no problems and Bill was waiting for me at the station, so thanks very much to him. I crashed out back here, woke up again, couldn't go back to sleep, finally did and rewoke at 14:30. I tried my best to avoind jetlag by going to bed early and getting up early but it's clearly not worked. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.