My beautiful floating bridge
I have been gearing up my bridge building in preparation for a wedding that happened on the 31st August. The evening of the wedding was an interesting one, during which my newly reconstructed bridge caught the brunt of a storm and broke yet again. Luckily I didn’t loose any bridge sections I had built.
I rebuilt the bridge and was just tightening everything together when something went ‘ping’. I nervously went to investigate, knowing that the bridge was under a a lot of tension from the current. The water in the river had risen sharply after two days of rain, and as a consequence the bridge was making a ‘C” shape across the river instead of a straight line.
Left: R Right: E. They won't forgive me for using this picture.
The centre section of the bridge was held by only one eyebolt at the end I could see. I vaulted the gap with cat-like panache and went to look at the other end. As I knelt down to check the eyebolts, I could see that only one bolt was in that this end too, as I watched it pinged off, breaking the bridge apart. My self preservation neuron fired repeatedly and I backed away. Turning to leave the centre bridge section, to my horror I discovered that the same thing had happened at the other end. I was now very rapidly floating down river towards the sea (the river meets the sea about 100m from the bridge). In true Indiana Jones style I saw the rope from the stationary end of the bridge trailing in the water, about to go out of reach. I made a diving tackle and caught it in the water, I was safe. Phew.
On a separate subject I must introduce the infamous E, a hot headed American girl from Amherst Massachusetts (E insists on it being pronounced ‘Aymurst’) returned to Cabot shores bringing with her an equally hot headed friend R.
The complete bridge in place.
R has now joined me on my expedition to Newfoundland! So no more talking to myself!. E has the unfortunate condition of having an alter ego by the name of Edna that hovers just under the delicate surface of her psyche. Edna is growing old ungracefully; but despite her geriatric nature she drives a white 67’ Cadillac Eldorado, wears garishly coloured flowery dresses and is eccentrically impassioned on any topic. Luckily for us she exists only in the mind.
I have escaped from Cabot shores! I booked tickets on the ferry to Newfoundland a few days ago and escaped yesterday. We headed out at mid day and went up the road to photograph the remains of Piper’s campground shop. During the previous evening it had burnt down, scary because we were in it a few hours before it went up in flames.
Andy Emerges from the bathroom
I took my camera out of its wallet and discovered that I had crushed the screen when I leapt for the rope when the bridge broke. Dang.
So in summary, I’m now writing this from Port aux Basques in Newfoundland. We took the ferry over last night, and I set the tent up in the dark at about 2:00am! Andy’s big tip for setting tents up in the dark: buy a tent with colour coded poles. As a consequence of this I am now going to start producing a range of convenience items, each colour coded for use in low light conditions, starting with my pajamas. Oh and I picked up a new camera in Sydney, so I can still take photos.
