First Update!

North Sydney, Nova Scotia, 2680 miles from home.

If anyone tells you that one cannot drive from Fort Worth, TX to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada in under 48 hours, not only are they wrong, they’re so wrong that you should point at them and laugh, shaking your head as if you’re dealing with a simpleton beyond amazement.

I say this with such confidence because in fact Nick and I have just accomplished the same, despite the chain of events that I will from now on refer to as, "The Goodyear Conspiracy." Let us just say that not all tires are your benign partners in rolling safely down the road. We had our first blowout in Arlington, TX. Now, for those of you not sitting in front of a map (it’s okay, Americans are no good at this), Arlington is so close to Fort Worth as to practically be before the beginning of the trip. To add insult to injury, we were literally merging onto the highway after having checked and properly inflated all six trailer tires and four truck tires.
This particular tire let go with an audible "Poof!" and, upon stopping, we found that a baseball sized patch was missing from the sidewall. Your faithful narrator had thoughtfully gotten a spare spare, so we threw the spare on and headed for Pep Boys in Dallas to get the other spare mounted on the now available rim. With this easily dispatched, we were back on the road.
For a very little while, as it were. We made it to exit 142, County Line Rd. I don’t know which county, or where the line went, but that’s where we lost tire number two on the trailer. We changed that flat with our last spare in a rest stop under the watchful eye of the fanny pack and visor crowd and were on our way again.

Despite the fact that we were now up to a ratio of 1/3 brand new tires to old tires, we were not feeling too confident. We began the hunt for more spares. I have thus far not mentioned that this was Labor Day and we were rapidly approaching the vast emptiness of Arkansas. A quick call to our pit crew (sitting at home, eating bon bons no doubt) revealed the availability of some of the very same trailer tires at a Wal-Mart in Texarkana. The astute among you will surmise that this place is a border town of sorts and we made a run for it.

We spent an hour at the Wal-Mart while they exchanged some of Nick’s valuable legal tender for 3 new trailer tires and mounting services. Make note, this will be the longest stop, from 5pm to 6pm, of the trip until arriving at the ferry terminal in Nova Scotia.
Having exorcised our demons with time, money, and a generous offering of Wal-Mart finger foods, we then set off on our nearly trouble free portions of the trip. Nick took over the driving duties at this point and headed off into the torrential rain to be found to the east. This would be the only substantial trouble we would have from this point onward.

I do have to say that Nick looks very businesslike while driving in a yellow slicker, hat and all. Very Captain Ahab. He managed to get all of the rainy stints on the trip, and we did share the dark hours pretty evenly.

This is the boring part. For the intervening 30 odd hours from Texas to Canada, almost nothing happened. Really. I saw a car, once we stopped for diesel, plus nine more times, and we stopped for McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. We may or may not have also taken "road showers" in the bathroom there near Harrisburg, PA.

I may have mentioned that the hour at Wal-Mart was the only extended stop of the trip, and that’s true. No hotels, no long meals, no nothing. Just diesel and driving, and lots of beef jerky.
Day Two of the trip dawned in the early morning tendrils of the foggy bottoms near Bristol, TN. I had just taken the wheel once again and as Nick curled himself up in the camper section of the truck (read: back seat with pillow), he remarked that he finally agreed that we were crazy. I noted the time, 6:09am EST. We had only been driving seventeen hours straight at that point. There were thirty more to go. Don't you call me crazy yet! Leave that to everyone else.

Important Travel Tip: Spraying Febreze on one another after a full day in the car with no other smell remediation efforts is actually fairly effective. Try it. Your parents/kids/significant other (whichever applies) won't mind unless they're awake.

We made it through the east reasonably quickly due to the ever shrinking size of the states over there. They get really tiny by the time you get very far north. The problem of course is that despite their diminutiveness, these places are increasingly packed with people driving cars equipped with multiple horns and no turn signals. It must be a factory option out east. The people like to swerve and brake and honk, seemingly at random, with imaginable results.
This is usually just somewhat annoying, maybe even comical. But, as we approached New York City (everyone remembers that Pace picante commercial, right? Because that’s how I was saying it for hours as we drove across Pennsylvania and New Jersey) we crested a rise at the exit for I-95 and the Holland Tunnel and traffic was at a dead stop.

This is also predictable and not hugely surprising, except for the fact that we were doing 75 with a large trailer attached to the posterior of the truck. I hate to call it panic braking, so let’s call it mild hysteria braking, or possibly "Just this side of damp underpants braking". As we slowed and came to a stop just clear of the car stopped ahead of us, we noticed a clear smell of hot brakes.

Fine, except for smoke is usually bad. There’s a proverb about that, I’m pretty sure. The right rear wheel was billowing smoke. It doesn’t usually do that. Here’s where our crack mechanical skills came into play and we waited it out. It stopped…eventually.

We made it across NYC in an hour and then hit the moonscape of Connecticut. These roads are a new level of bad, but again, it’s a small place. New Hampshire was even smaller and Massachusetts disappeared into the night. I took over the wheel at a truck stop in Maine and we were shocked to find out that the temperature had gone from 96 to 46. Brrrr. Make that double brrrr.

Maine was something of a surprise in that it was big, and so it took while to cross, but it was also empty. Seriously, almost empty. I passed something like 4 cars in 4 hours. It was also dark and cold. The overnight low according to my flawless Ford thermometer was 38 degrees. It was September 4th. For real. Yipes. And get this, I saw at least a dozen signs warning of all the moose in the area, and I saw not one moose! We drove across Maine, and then Canada for twelve hours with no moose. Just a couple deer and some small foxes.

But, after stopping at the border and registering the race car with US Customs, we were on our way on the final 8 hours of the first part of the trip. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were relatively empty and plain, but once we passed onto Cape Breton we hit some really scenic and interesting places along Canada’s Inland Sea. I knew nothing about this place and it was quite a nice surprise. Lots of stunning views and quaint little towns led us to North Sydney, adjacent to the Newfoundland Ferry Terminal.

Total drive time including tire woes: 47 hours.

We’re off again at 6am for a 5-7 hour trip to Port-Aux-Basques and our drive across the island of Newfoundland.

All this and the real fun hasn’t even started yet.