I officially, profusely and wholeheartedly thank Saint Christopher (the patron saint of travelers) and the dude in Bozeman who steered me to the best set of windshield wipers I’ve ever used. Without those two personages, along with the influence of some of the oddest weather since white people started keeping records, I doubt I could have succeeded in my cross-continent journey. Indeed, if I had known beforehand what kind of country my route was to take me through, particularly the jig through the mountains of New Brunswick which was necessary to skirt the practically roadless region of northern Maine, I would have probably not attempted it.
Despite that promise of snowy and ice, I was instead greeted exclusively with two other elements during the trip: water and mud. I was going to take a picture of my truck at one point because so spattered in mud and slush was it that the vehicle no longer appeared white; I carried a roll of paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner.
Alas, the last two days have been characterized by 100kph drives through spitting cold rain, and so the truck appears clean again.
While my friends in Atlanta and my sister in Dallas had to deal with more snow than has ever been recorded thereabouts, and I arrived in the snowiest, cloudiest, windiest city in the Dominion of Canada without having shifted in 4WD once. Now that I’m here, though, I’m sure I’ll be slipping around town tomorrow.
It has been almost a decade since I packed up my life and drove from Florida to Wyoming. Before that, it was Texas, Oregon and California. I have to admit that the whole frikkin’ process seemed a lot easier back then. But there is no denying that this day marks the widest distribution of my life to date. And that ain’t too bad for a guy who didn’t have a passport until 2007.
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