Thursday, July 28

We started the day looking for a place that served a hearty breakfast. A lacy Victorian bed and breakfast advertised eggs and bacon and they were willing to carry it out to some lawn chairs that faced to the Bay. It was sunny and warm, even for Canadian standards, and allowed me to fuel up with Delta in tow.

We slowly moved down the island, catching the ferry over to White Head, a smaller island 20 minutes away. I intended to drive to a lighthouse. There was pavement. Then there were large rocks. Then smaller rocks. Then even smaller rocks that did nothing to separate my tires from the sand below. Stuck.

After some jacking, finding large rock to put under the tires for traction, and the concerted effort of much pushing by several Samaritans, the car was back on solid ground. This victory was short lived as a managed to back the car into a ditch. No amount of jacking was going to save me and I was suddenly facing an expensive tow from a truck that had to come from the mainland. And I think that meant the actual mainland of Canada.

I walked back to a house, where luckily someone was home. Unluckily, it was a woman with two kids who was not going to be able to pull my car out of a ditch with a Tonka truck and a tricycle. Thankfully, she was able to call a family member with an actual pick-up truck who came and help me extricate my poor Vibe. This must be the 3^rd or 4^th time that little piece of plastic has been wrenched out a predicament of my own causing. Thus far, with a little patience, someone has always come forward to assist, which is some indication of how genuinely helpful most people are. We forget that, or worse, cynically believe it isn’t true. But, if you travel, you will discover that the mistakes you are capable of making are limitless. And because you are alone, far from your usual resources, the potential consequences are more costly to bear. Nevertheless, I have found that the world is full of people who will treat you as well, if not oftentimes better, than your own family. Of course, this has only happened to me in the far north of our country or in Canada.

I escaped and caught the next ferry back to Grand Manan proper. My goal was to cook dinner--lobster, but I faced two issues. My camping pots were likely too small and I did not bring fuel for the camp stove. While the former could be overcome at the hardware store, the latter could not. Of course, one of the associates offered his camping/cooking gear if I wanted to go to his place to pick it up. Again, good people are everywhere. Instead, I opted for two pre-cooked lobster tails from the supermarket, lots of lemon, some sharp chedder and a huge bottle of white wine. While I could finish two lobster tails (one was really good, the other grainy), I could not finish the wine. Given this bounty of booze, I invited my neighbors, the couple from New Brunswick, to help me finish the bottle. They stopped over with their own bounty of beer and we chatted as the sun set. They had also been over to XXXXX that day. They also explored the lighthouse. On their walk out, they ran into some people who recalled their adventure helping an idiot Texan out of the sand.