Achievement unlocked

Come for the car chat, stay for the dad jokes at the end.

What happens when you forget to tell google to avoid toll roads.

It’s about 500km from Toronto to Hawkesbury on the border with Quebec. From London that would get you to the border with Scotland. Depending on traffic and how heavy your foot is, you can do it in between five and six hours. Five-hundred km and six hours is comfortably the longest and furthest I’ve driven alone. Being firmly of a London mindset, the idea of a two hour drive makes me fidgety.

The trip started out pleasant enough. I set off a little before 4pm on Sunday, and almost immediately stopped for coffee and timbits. My idea was that this would fuel me for the majority of the journey and then I would stop for dinner when I was well over half-way. I finished the timbits within the first hour. This meant I was reliant on the small packet of skittles I picked up at a petrol station. I made it about an hour and a half before I was hungry again. Moreover, passing through small towns I was suddenly very aware that it was Sunday night and options might become slim if I left it too long.

Back on the road after a pizza and a little after six, I checked my route and confirmed that Google (to whom I outsourced the navigation) had taken me way North, off the scenic route along the St. Lawrence River and was about to put me on the TransCanada highway.

So instead of a pleasant cruise along the broad, majestic, 401. I had 3.5 hours along a two lane highway (one lane highway? It was one lane in either direction), a highway where the road lines were largely worn away. In the dark and increasingly torrential rain. Often in the glare of on-coming articulated trucks. At one time, just driving close to a road barrier without a meter or so of space beside me, made me clench the steering wheel in fear . Initially, driving along the Trans-Canada Highway felt similar. Mysteriously, that tension drained away as the hours ticked by. Possibly, I became more and more acclimitized, and possibly because once I got past Ottawa the on-coming traffic died away.

That said, it was notable that the drive back - along the 401 - was dramatically more enjoyable. Partly because of daylight, partly because of the lack of oncoming vehicles, and partly because I borrowed the complete Blackadder The Third on audiobook and discovered to my delight (and maybe shame) that I still know it more or less word for word.

Driving a long time is a bit like running a long way. When you run a marathon your perception of scale starts to shift. At mile 18, you find yourself thinking “Only six miles to go!”, in normal life I don’t have six miles to go at the start, let alone the end of a run. Similarly, at one point I found myself checking the route and thinking “... into the last two hours now, that's flown by”. And then the last 15 minutes lasts forever.

Hawkesbury is just over 10,000 people big. It covers an area of about 10km. But like a lot of small towns, it’s built on the assumption that people will drive to get around it, which means that you have to drive to get around it. It’s spread out, there are stretches of road with no sidewalk and little to no public transport. Which meant I spent the week going back and forth in my car. This time, I started to enjoy being able to get around without needing to wait for a lift or a taxi. It was also handy because, being a vegetarian I had to pick and choose where to eat, which meant driving around a bit to find a suitable fare. This time last year, I would have been stressed by this amount of driving, but this week I felt something akin to the freedom of the private motor car. In particular because it allowed me to pullover and get a snap of this absolute gem, on Main street:

She’s half cigar, half bong, all sex.

Perhaps the biggest marker of how indoctrinated I’ve become, is the fact I’m eager to do it again.

Anyway, this weekend is our two year anniversary in Canada, which Google tells me is cotton. So I guess you could say that I’ve cotton accustomed to driving long distance…

Edited by Jasper Jackson, except the bits where I added typos later.