Super Highway

I can't begin to figure out how many thousands of kilometers I've driven on New Brunswick highways over the past twenty years but it's substantial. Like many people, much of our driving happens in the summer during vacation time. We've made a trip to Ontario almost every year since we've lived here. This summer was no exception. We probably put on over 4,000 km on this trip alone. About a third of the journey happens on New Brunswick highways, so I've gotten to know the road between Grand Bay-Westfield and Edmundston quite well over the years. The drive through New Brunswick always used to be the worst part of the trip, mainly because of the poor state of the two-lane Trans Canada Highway. Not anymore. Today the drive through our province is by far the best part of the journey.

This summer we decided to go through the States on our way to Ontario. As the crow flies, it's a shorter, more direct route through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and upstate New York. Add to that the saving of almost 30 cents a litre for gas and traveling south of the border makes sense. If you've done the trip you know how pretty it is driving through New England too. But I had forgotten about the winding roads and the towns you hit every five miles. It may be scenic but it's a long, hard drive. After spending a full day motoring through the back roads of New England, we had had enough and the next day changed course and took the Interstate right to the Canadian Border in Niagara Falls. In many ways, driving through New Brunswick used to be like that, but again not anymore.

On the trip home this summer we followed our normal route through Canada and got our first taste of the fully completed, super highway through New Brunswick. The last 98 kilometres of the four-lane Trans-Canada in the province opened last fall. Now the entire 516 km stretch of highway from the Nova Scotia border to the Quebec border is a smooth, divided, four-lane highway. It's safer to drive and much faster. I bet we saved close to an hour on the drive down from Edmundston. Usually there isn't much to see along these super highways, just pavement, rocks and trees. But this road manages to retain some of the scenery of the St. John River Valley with vistas of rolling hills and glimpses of the river here and there. It's just a joy to ride on compared to the bumpy highways through much of Quebec.

This highway did not come cheap. It was built in chunks over the years with funding from both levels of government with a total cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Our premier says the new four-lane Trans-Canada is paving New Brunswick's way to a brighter, safer, self-sufficient future. But there are some concerns over the new road. The town of Hartland is complaining that the number of tourists visiting the longest covered bridge in the world is lower this summer because of a lack of proper signs on the new highway. That problem is being looked into.

The new highway also has long stretches of wildlife fencing on both sides of the road. That'll go a long way to improving safety, especially with a speed limit of 110 km per hour along the entire highway. You can't appreciate just how good this road is until you drive it.

Of course that thrill of traveling on a new highway ended abruptly when we took the Highway 7 exit to Saint John. Yes the road has been improved a lot over the last 20 years and crews are out right now putting up moose fencing, but it's no Trans-Canada. At least not yet. The Welsford bypass is going ahead and one day I'm sure the entire highway between the provinces largest city and new energy hub, and the capital city, will become a four lane super highway too. Until then enjoy the new Trans Canada and give credit to the province for making it a reality.

Beware the Spot Check

It's amazing how easy it is to break the law and not realize it. My son just returned from British Columbia where he spent the winter. Actually he was in BC for most of last year with the exception of a few months last fall. So he's back and he's driving home from a visit in Fredericton in a car that still has BC license plates on it. Two of his buddies are in the car with him and they get pulled over at an RCMP spot-check in Oromocto.

It turns out when they check the records, my sons car is no longer legally registered. He hasn't registered the car in New Brunswick yet but he and I both thought the BC registration is still valid. Apparently British Columbia has public auto insurance and it's tied to the vehicle registration. When he got home his BC insurance was about to expire so he insured the car here. So he has proper insurance but because it wasn't BC insurance his registration is no longer valid.

After being told this by the RCMP officer my son called me and I spoke to the officer. He explained the situation and said because the car wasn't legally registered he'd have to take it off the road. And that's what happened. The car was towed and the plates were taken off and thrown on the back seat of the police car. My son said there were a pile of license plates that had been taken from unregistered vehicles stopped during the spot check.

I just want to say that the RCMP officer was polite and helpful and just doing his job. He explained to both of us exactly what had to be done to register the car and get it back on the road. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.

The next day my son takes my car and drives up to Oromocto to do what he has to do to register his car. And wouldn't you know it he gets stopped by the same cop at the same spot check. A few minutes later I get a phone call from the same said officer who says to me 'You aren't going to believe this but your registration is expired too". Not just that. My insurance card was also out of date. By this time I'm sure the cop was thinking... "What is wrong with this family?"

Here's what happened. The registration had expired about five days before this. We got the card in the mail weeks ago but completely forgot about it. In the same way the new insurance card arrived but again I didn't put it in the car. The officer could have nailed me big time but he didn't. He said he didn't want to do it again so he gave me the chance to register the car by phone right away. I didn't know I could do this. I called Service New Brunswick on a toll free line, gave them my license plate number and insurance information and paid by credit card. I called up that kind RCMP officer with a confirmation number so he knew the registration went through and I was off the hook for a pretty hefty fine. I owe a big thank you to that unnamed and understanding cop.

So the moral of the story is ... don't file away or ignore all those letters you get from the Motor Vehicle Branch or your insurance company. Oh yea... and don't forget about your vehicle inspection sticker either. It was set to expire too but fortunately I had the inspection done just a day before the spot check.

New Brunswick Video On-line

(This is the River Valley Rambler column published in the River Valley News on April 19th, 2007)

Video is everywhere on the internet these days. I even have it on my blog. If you go to rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com you can view a 6-minute video of the New Years Eve Family Celebration held at the community centre on December 31st. I put the video together for the River Valley Chamber of Commerce, one of the sponsors of the event. You’ll see and hear friends and neighbours skating and enjoying the bonfires and fireworks display. It’s worth checking out just to see the impressive fireworks. The entire show is featured on the video.

It’s nice to be able to view some local video content on the web. If you haven’t checked it out you’d be amazed at how much of it there is. I put the words ‘New Brunswick’ into the Google Video site and it produced over 2,000 results. Some of those hits have nothing to do with our province but many do. You’d be surprised at the kind of video content posted there and on YouTube.

The New Brunswick Offroad Club has all kinds of video clips of four-wheeling adventures on the back roads of the province. Fires are popular. The first NB site to pop up shows a fire in Sackville from last summer and there’s even some great footage of the recent tire fire in Moncton. If you’re a train buff, there are numerous videos of trains shot at crossings all over the province. You can even catch segments of the ‘Fishing Musicians’ television show hosted and produced by Glen Ferguson of Bathurst. There’s a lot of professionally done stuff on YouTube and Google Video. You can watch all of the marketing and tourism videos produced by Enterprise Saint John and the city including the latest that compares Saint John to Calgary and tries to entice expats back to the province. I watched a nine-minute feature about a hot air balloon flight in Sussex that was especially well done. Two balloons were flying side by side and there was excellent footage of swooping low over the trees and dunking the basket on the surface of a lake. (I've added the video to the blog following this post... check it out)

There are a lot of family videos on there too. Plenty of birthdays for babies and kids jumping BMX bikes and skateboards. There’s music and dancing and just about everything you can imagine. It would take more than a day to go through all the material on there from or about New Brunswick. I’m amazed, but from the little sampling I did it’s all good stuff. Even the family videos were largely well done and certainly interesting. There’s something about watching real people living out their lives for a few minutes on video that is very appealing, almost addictive. I guess that’s why sites like YouTube are so popular.

So check out some of this local material for yourself. If you’re interested be sure to watch the Grand Bay-Westfield New Years Eve video on Google Video or on my blog. I’ll keep it on there for a while. I also want to feature more local video content on the site on a regular basis, some that I have produced and also material from you. So if you have video about the River Valley area that you’d like to share with others contact me at midwoodmedia@gmail.com. And keep watching.

River Valley Rambler - Guess I'm a Blogger

I guess with this column I officially join the ranks of internet bloggers. A blog is a web site where you post your thoughts and opinions in writing and share it with the online world. A true blog is interactive so readers can comment on your comments and you develop this kind of interactive community on the web. Blogging started back in the 90’s sometime and now there are hundreds of thousands of blogs on every conceivable topic imaginable.

My new blog is called… what else, River Valley Rambler. I figured since I’ve been writing this column in the River Valley News for longer than I can remember I may as well throw it out on the web as well. The blog will feature all the regular columns written for the paper from now on. In addition I’ll go back and look through some of the past 352 columns and post some of them from time to time, sort of a retro-rambler. I can also post photographs and other content on the site. For example I’ve included a column I wrote last summer after my wife and I became grandparents for the first time and I added a picture of our new granddaughter Ava. It’s worth checking out the blog just to view that photo of Ava, probably the most beautiful baby in the world. Well she is to us.

When you have a column your deadline is whenever the paper is published. So in the case of the River Valley News I come up with a new column every two weeks on average. But with a blog there is no publication date or deadline. You post something new whenever you want. I try to keep each column to about 500 words but blog postings can be any length you want. So for these reasons my blog at rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com is going to be more than just the biweekly columns. I call it a collection of regular columns published in the River Valley News as well as thoughts, comments, reflections and ramblings about life in the River Valley area of New Brunswick with special emphasis on outdoor recreation and activities. That sounds like a mouthful but what it really means is if something of interest is happening in the area, chances are you’ll be able to read about it in the blog. This is especially true if it has to do with the outdoors and activities like hiking, biking, canoeing, kayaking, skiing and so on. This column has always had a focus on active living and outdoor adventure and the blog will build on that. I hope at some point the web site will be the first place for people to go to find out about outdoor activities happening in the local area.

So far you’ll see postings and photos about skiing, walking and snowmobiling on some of the local trails. Conditions by the way have been fabulous. There’s also a story about an annual ice climbing festival that occurred on a frozen waterfall on Ministers Face on Long Island in the Kenebecasis River. It attracted ice climbers from all over the Maritimes. By the time you read this in the print edition of River Valley News there’ll probably be other postings on the site. You’ll never know exactly what you’ll find there. That’s part of the fun of it. Down the road there will be information about other projects that are in the works that will include video and audio and other content online.

I invite you to check out my new blog and visit as often as you like. I hope you’ll leave comments and suggestions for stories and other content you’d like to see online and in this column. Bookmark the site. It’s easy to find at rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com.

(Visit rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com for previous columns and new content about life in the River Valley)