By Lucy

Days in England: 28

Alternative title: Travelling 7075 kilometers in two days.

Tuesday dawn bright and early… too early. I was up by 5 AM, anxiety preventing me from sleeping well. I laid in bed for an hour before throwing in the towel and making myself breakfast. I had mostly packed the night before, just one last go-around to make sure I got everything. By 9 we were out the door.

I was on the fence about Rich coming with me because things were still weird between us, but once we got to the train station I was glad. The usual train I took to Victoria wasn’t on the board, for some reason; Victoria wasn’t on the board at all.

We took a train at 9:40 to St Pancras instead. There were multiple stations we could get off at, but the main concern was getting off at an Underground station on the Victoria line. The train to St Pancras was almost an hour, and the tube to the airport was also an hour, so with all the time spent waiting on the platform I got to the airport close to 1 when I had meant to be there by noon!

It was a quick goodbye with Rich, as I was panicking about making my plane (slightly). To be frank, I was also getting a little tired of the UK. I was a little broke and I had things to do and people to see.

I didn’t breeze through security as quickly as I did at Pearson. They insisted on checking my high heeled boots, and they ran my laptop through the scanner a second time. It didn’t really add that much time to my journey, it was just a little concerning when I was already feeling the weight of the clock. Then it was a 15 minute walk to my gate, arriving shortly after 1 when the boarding pass said they would start boarding at 2! That was cutting it a little close.

After I sat down for a minute, I got myself a bite to eat and had barely settled into Instagram when it was suddenly 1:50 and they were calling for boarding already! When I had checked in online I had grabbed the last free window seat, which in hindsight was silly because I wasn’t doing an overnight and didn’t need to sleep – actually, rest was the enemy. I wanted to make sure I was exhausted and fell asleep right away at Brandon’s.

I was also zone 4, one of the last to board, and I’ll say plane boarding also makes no sense to me. They board front to back, and the rich people get on first. Except the rich people are at the front of the plane, so you’re forcing them onto the plane where they’re gonna get hit by everyone’s bags as they shuffle past in the tiny aisle. If I were rich I’d prefer to board last; spend some more time in the lounge, and then I can be seated while all the peasants are arguing for overhead space in the back.

In any case, I was seated right where the end of the line was, so when they called zone 4 I popped right up. When I got to my seat, there was basically nothing in the overhead and no one in the seats, so I threw my suitcase in the bin, shoved my bag under the seat and crawled to my window.

First thing I noticed was that I actually had 2 windows, although you can’t really see out of the forward one. The windows were also right over the plane wing, which I figured would be someone’s favourite seats.

Then the waiting began. My seatmates were an East Asian couple. The plane was packed and everyone was arguing over overhead space. The clock ticked on to 3, and then the pilot came on the PA and told us we were waiting on dangerous goods paperwork. He also told us this flight was particularly poignant for him; it was his last, as he was retiring. 39 years and 49’000 flight hours. We gave him a round of applause.

I resolved to film the take-off, both because I knew Rich would enjoy it and because I wanted to try and kill my fear of heights. I can’t be a scaffolder afraid of heights! The filming actually helped, because it was something to take my focus as I was looking out the window. I still whimpered as the plane left the ground.

There I was, past the point of no return. My weeks of relaxing in the UK were done, now I had a few mad-cap days of running around before I could be settled again.

The flight was fairly uneventful. Mealtime sucked, because I was surrounded by vegetarians, who get their food first. Then, since I’m a peasant, I get served last, taunted by the smell of food in the meantime. I got the pasta, which had been heated past the point of sanity and took several minutes and burned fingers to get open. The potato salad was good and the butter was spreadable this time. The lemon bar was very dry and crumbly. Then they had us close the windows and turned down the cabin lights, and a good half of the flight had a nap. A nap! It was the middle of the day and we were gonna land shortly after 6pm, now was no time for a nap! Although I had already closed my window – 1, once you reach a certain height and distance, all you can see from the window is clouds anyway, but 2, we were chasing the setting sun. The earth rotates at roughly 1600 kilometers an hour and the plane flies at around 900, so taking off a bit before dusk meant the sun was constantly just slightly ahead of setting, shining right in our eyes.

I listened to my music and read. As we started to get close to our destination, I put on a movie so I could charge my phone, Last Voyage of the Demeter. It’s not a good movie, but it’s also not so bad it’s entertaining. Just kinda boring. Maybe a good movie to fall asleep to, if you can sleep to horror movies. The woman immediately to my right put her tray down to sleep on, as if she had passed out into her plate on a sitcom, and slept like that for most of the flight. I have a hard time imagining it was comfortable. She also slept like the dead and was hard to wake up when I needed the bathroom.

As we crossed into Canadian airspace, we started to slow down in preparation for descent, and the sun finally lost us.

This time I actually had WIFI, so I messaged Brandon to let him know the plane was on time (we would have been early, but with the delay it evened out) and Andrej to let him know I was coming by to pick up the car. I breezed through customs easily and was happy to join the line for “Canadian citizens”. After Heathrow, I was glad to be at Pearson. I waited at the curb in the rain for ten minutes while Brandon figured out where he was going. There was a couple of cars with people arguing over where to park, so I ran past them, wrenched the door open on Brandon’s little Kia, and threw my bags in the backseat before throwing myself in the front.

I was starting to flag at this point; it was midnight in England, and the sun going down here was telling my circadian rhythm that it was definitely bedtime. We stopped by Andrej’s to grab my car, which started with no issues. Unfortunately it was his bedtime and I was barely awake enough to drive, so we didn’t have time for a long goodbye. My stomach was growling, but I just showered quickly before hopping into bed.

As expected, I woke up at 3AM. I packed up the few things I had unpacked, straightened up the sheets on the bed, and let myself out (Brandon’s door is one of those that you can lock it before you close it). I then had to precariously balance my bags on top of the stuff I had already stuffed into the car, and I will say – I don’t know the law everywhere. In Ontario, you can’t obstruct your mirrors or blind spots, but you don’t need to be able to see out the back window (delivery truck drivers can’t, after all). I had my stuff very carefully arranged so that nothing would shift if I turned or stopped sharply, I could see my side mirrors, I could turn my head and see both blind spots. I could also still see out the rearview mirror to a limited extent. I also knew that I was going to spend most of my trip on backroads with not a soul in sight. That’s not something to copy on a whim.

Thus I was out, driving on city roads before anyone was awake. I stopped at Tim Hortons and ordered a double double and a croissant before I hit the highway. It was about 10 degree Celsius and cloudy.

The first portion of the drive is much the same, a series 400 highway, speed limit 100. Once you get half an hour outside Barrie, the highway splits and the jagged rocks emerge from the trees. Around an hour and a half out, you run out of highway and end up on County Road 69, which has a speed limit of 90. After half an hour of that, it turns back into a highway.

I was half an hour outside of town and feeling good when I first saw the lights. Sometimes the private airports outside of town cause flashing in the clouds, so I didn’t think anything of it.

After ten minutes, it was obviously lightning, getting closer. There wasn’t any thunder, oddly, but it was bright enough to turn night into day and had the effect of being flashbanged every five minutes as my night vision was suddenly destroyed. Fat rain drops started hitting the windshield and I dropped below the speed limit because visibility was so poor. The warm rain plus the cold ground conjured up some thick fog, at some points rolling across the road as if it was water, or blocking a portion of the road only to disappear seconds later. The combination of lightning, other headlights brightening the fog, rain coming down hard enough that I had my windshield wipers on max, and the sudden absence of all of it as I broke through the fog into the darkness of night was disorienting. I had no backup if I rolled the car, but I also had no options for turning around and trying this a different day. Brandon might have been ok with me staying another night or two, but the weather was only expected to get worse for the next couple of days, I had booked the hostel, and I needed to get my transfer done ASAP.

The lightning storm turned into good ol’ fashioned rain by the time I hit Sudbury, the temperature having slipped to 4 Celsius. This is the first time I managed to get to Sudbury before the sun came up. I rolled up the usual Tim Hortons, used the facilities, grabbed a bottle of peach drink and a muffin. Usually I like to walk around outside for a bit, but with the cold and the rain that wasn’t happening. I checked the roads on 511, did some math lessons to take my brain off driving a bit, then gassed up and hit the road again.

Somewhere between half an hour and an hour outside Sudbury, I hit snow.

It was like someone flipped a switch. I watched the temperature on my dashboard slip further and further, wondering if I should be concerned about freezing rain or black ice. I went around a bend in the road and suddenly it was snowing. Did it just start snowing, or did I find the edge of the cold front where rain turned to snow? The ground was still green! No matter. I dropped back down to 80. Barely any time later, the temperature had dropped below minus 10. Like I was watching “The Day After Tomorrow”, if this were a movie we’d be yelling at the screen “That’s impossible!” but here I was, living it.

Then I passed the sign; “Highway 17 closed between Wawa and White River“.

Shoot. I panicked. I almost pulled over. Highway 17 is wild and untamed between Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay, a strip of asphalt cutting through the uncaring boreal forest, barely clinging to the edge of cliffs. The section I had been most worried about was between Sault Ste Marie and Wawa, because it’s what me and Rich nicknamed “the Coastal Road”, so close at points to the waters of Lake Superior that it seems the waves should be lapping across the road. The breeze off the lake, so big it almost never freezes, means squalls and white-outs are common there, and once you’re at the Soo the only option is to backtrack. But never did I think between Wawa and White River would shut down. That section was relatively calm and sheltered. I had no idea how to bypass that.

I held steady. Worst comes to worst, I knew there were hotels in Wawa and I was out payment for the night at the hostel.

Snow started blowing across the road and I dropped my speed more. The plows hit the road and I got stuck behind one particular jerk who jumped out in front of me instead of waiting for me to pass when there was no one behind me. The slow speed didn’t bother me too much – between Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie there’s a bunch of little towns, and the speed drops often to 50. Ironically, once you reach a certain point in the countryside, traffic picks up again. Highway 17 is the only road in some towns, so if anyone is on any road it’s that one.

It was scary for a good long while. I was feeling the previous day of travel, the time zone switch, and the five hours of sleep, and this would be hard driving even if I was well rested. If you don’t drive, or you haven’t driven in snow, it’s hard to imagine the ‘Canadian game’ of ‘guess where the road is’. Underlined by the fact the car had all my earthly possessions in it. It took me at least an extra hour to get to Sault Ste Marie, and by the time I did I was thinking that being forced to stop at Wawa might be a blessing.

Half an hour outside Sault Ste Marie the skies cleared and the sun shone!

I limped into Tim Hortons again, my toes numb from being curled up in terror and also the fact that I had the fans turned to defroster lest my windows fog up. I ordered some chicken noodle soup that came far too hot, which forced me to spend around 45 minutes seated at the Tim Hortons, ‘relaxing’ as it cooled down. The temperature had dropped again to minus 15, and the wind was so strong everybody was struggling to open the door. I checked 511, which said Highway 17 was reopened after Wawa, although a Facebook group for people to talk about road conditions said it wasn’t.

Well, my path had been decided already, because I had no idea how to go around. I’d go up to Wawa and see what happened. I bundled up and wiped the snow off my car that had accumulated while I was driving, before I gassed up and headed out again.

The sun continued to shine as I headed north out of Sault Ste Marie. The snow on the roads was starting to melt in the direct sunlight and turn into slush, which meant that every passing car was a wash across the windshield. It was so cold the windshield washer fluid started freezing once it left the nozzle, so I had inadequate spray and it froze on the windshield. I figured out if I hit the spray again when the wipers were on the upswing, I got better coverage.

I passed the quiet bays where the lake was frozen and moved into more active waters. The lake was tossed with whitecaps, although fortunately it wasn’t spraying on the road. The breeze could be clearly seen – the snow was blown off the road wherever there was a break in the trees, which made it easy to brace for the sudden lurch. I crawled along below the speed limit, watching tractor trailers pass me. I passed a clear section where 4 snow plows had parked by the side of the highway and gotten out of their trucks to gossip. It was the real sign the storm was clearing up.

Finally, again an hour later than usual, I made Wawa. There was no sign of the road being blocked, so I kept going. The asphalt was basically clean at this point, although still wet from the meltwater runoff, and the trees sheltered me from the wind now that I was away from the coast.

I stopped at White River and was surprised when I got out of the car. The combination of slush and bitter cold had coated the bottom of my poor car with a layer of dirty ice, almost down to the level of the road. It had built up in the wheel wells until it was practically touching the wheels, which is a problem on many levels. One, it’s additional weight when my car is already fairly loaded up. Two, the extra friction on the tires is not good for them, obviously like sandpaper to my tread. Three, it can impair my ability to handle the car on a bend, if the ice builds up in such a way the tires can’t really turn.

I ran inside to use the bathroom, then came back out to clear as much of the ice off my car as I could before it froze solid. I was glad I did the drive with my steel toes – I booted the ice off, then grabbed the chunks with my bare hands and yanked them away from the car. The rear passenger-side tire was the problem – no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the ice free. I had limited ability to do anything about it, there was no carwash in town as far as the map could tell me. I decided to hope the sun and the friction of the road would melt it off, and went inside for a bite to eat.

I was absolutely shattered by this point, but also exhilarated. The storm had cleared up and a look at the radar confirmed it would be clear all the way to Thunder Bay. The plows and the afternoon sun would keep the roads clean. It was the final leg of my seven thousand kilometer journey. I bought a Gatorade and an ancient can of Pringles, just something I could shove in the cupholder and snack on as I went. I was too exhausted to be hungry and just wanted to get to the hostel. It was 4PM, past when I usually got to White River, and I had left 2 hours early!

My biggest problem with the approach to Thunder Bay is that the sun is always in my eyes, because it sets in that direction, and I always get there in the evening. Usually I’d be worried about moose, but with the bitter cold I figured even the critters wouldn’t be out tonight. As suspected, the road was dry and quiet, so I did the speed limit. The sun set a full two hours before I reached Thunder Bay, but the bridge outside Nipigon is easily recognizable.

And there I was, home again! My new home. The highway does a hairpin turn just outside Thunder Bay, snaking along a cliff, so as you come out of the trees you are greeted by the lights of the city laid out beneath you, the outline of Mt McKay in the distance (if there’s light to see it by). The hostel called me to confirm I was still coming and let me know they were headed to bed, but I already knew how to get into the building. I guess the system didn’t tell them I had stayed there before.

The front desk was indeed deserted when I got in at 9PM. I grabbed the letter with my name taped to the desk and gave it a glance before hustling upstairs. Quietly as I could, I changed into my pajamas and went right to bed.

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.