Life on the wrong side of the road

Some stray thoughts on return from a few days' spin on the wrong side of the road.

A Mazda 5 from Enterprise, a little larger than our Ford C-Max back home, but a pleasure to drive. Good rear view vision, much better than that on our Ford. Good automatic gearbox, initially a worry as I am not used to them, but in the event very handy. One less thing to do with the wrong hand when the brain is getting a bit overloaded with the wrong roads.

The only downs were its tendency to take charge of things like lighting & wiping and we never really got the hang of the heating, of some account, as it was, oddly for this time of year, in the low seventies.

And after a day I decided that one of the rear tyres was a bit flat, so while at a filling station went for the air line. Which was all present and correct, but which required four quarters to work it for 5 minutes. A price which did not include a pressure gauge, so I was reduced to guessing by the shape of the tyre. Which seemed to work; we got back in one piece with four intact tyres.

On the other hand, with a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side, I found it a lot easier to drive on the wrong side than I had expected.

Lots of traffic lights, with more care taken with the needs & rights of pedestrians than is usual with us. Just two roundabouts (anti-clockwise) so far, as it happens just by the poutine place of the last post.

Lots of large trucks. Large tractor units with large engines sticking out front, rather than tucked under the cab as is the custom with us. Lots of shining red paint and shining chrome trim.

A sprinkling, that is to say two, Amish buggies somewhere near Canton. Small four wheelers, with a hood and with one horse. One with a lady driver, thoroughly hooded in black.

A very thin sprinkling of patrol cars. The police seem to be far less visible in these parts of Canada and the US than they are in our part of the UK. Even in Ottawa.

The most entertaining vehicle was a small white van with a paint job. Squeak Creek Honey of Brasher Falls.

The US roads people are quite keen on the sort of road side barriers made of several strands of steel hawser strung along steel posts and hopefully they reduce the chance of one's winding up down the bottom of some ravine out in the wilderness (something which our television told us happened quite recently, in California. Lady only saved by the phone people being able to say where the phone which she could not reach was). I think they were the cat's whiskers back home at one time (I recall them appearing on the then popular TV programme 'Tomorrow's World' or some such), but one doesn't see so many of them about. Maybe they are dearer than the pressed steel alternative.

A new-to-me road surface on the bridge at Ogdensburg. A long, narrow bridge over the St. Lawrence with just one lane each way. A surface which drummed gently and which appeared to be some sort of steel grating, the sort of thing you might get on a dock or a pier. Maybe good when it is cold.

Canadians do not seem to do on-road motorway service areas in the way we do. They go in for socking great commercial & retail areas, off-road at major junctions, like that of yesterday's poutine.

But there is a handy motorway (the 417) running south west from just south, a few hundred yards south, of the centre of Ottawa. A bit like having a larger & straighter version of Westway which started at Kings Cross rather than Paddington.