featuring Connor Mockett
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another column. This one’s a little bit different, and so will the rest of the columns. As you can probably already tell, we’ve made a name change to my columns from “The Weather with Connor” to “Life with Connor the Weatherman”. This change stems from sometimes not having anything to talk about weather wise, which then turns my columns into just talking about what I’ve been doing in my life. Speaking of life…
If you saw my last column two weeks ago, you’ll know that a big life change happened for my fiancée and I. If you missed that, let me recap really quick: we moved to Moncton/Dieppe, New Brunswick! Zoé has a school co-op at the George Dumont Hospital here in the City, which is the final thing she needs to do for her schooling until she graduates. We moved on January 3rd, so today’s column will be me telling the story of how the drive went.
So, the morning of January 3rd comes along. It had been a stressful couple of weeks, with my calendar sales trucking right along, quitting my job at Foodland, packing, family gatherings, the whole shebang. That morning, the emotions of a stress-filled couple of weeks, meshed with the emotions of leaving home, all came out. I was a crying mess before hopping in the car and leaving. I got to Zoé’s house 30 minutes later and had another cry in her arms. I do NOT do well with change, that is for sure.
We eventually got on the road after some final things at her place. It was 6:30 am-ish when we left for what was supposed to be about a 12 hour day (stops for food and gas included). Considering I said “supposed to be a 12 hour day”, you can probably tell where this is headed. It was not a simple day or drive.
After about an hour of driving on HWY 417/A30, we started to hit some freezing rain, enough to where we had seen 3 or 4 crashes in the westbound lanes of the highway before we had even gotten into Montreal. Not a good sign. Now that means we had to take our time a little bit more which, for safety reasons, makes sense. So we turned off the cruise control and hung with the flow of traffic for a while. Everything’s was all fine and dandy… until it wasn’t!
About 10-15 minutes southwest of Montreal, someone in our little 3 car convoy needs a bathroom stop. That’s fine, let’s get off the highway and go to the McDonald’s right there just off the highway in Beauharnois, Quebec. So we all went onto the off ramp to go there. Of course, there’s freezing rain, but the highway is mostly fine (on our side, anyways). The off ramp was absolutely not fine. It was a complete skating rink. So much so that while on the off ramp about halfway up, I’m sliding up to the stop sign, Zoé’s parents are sliding behind me, and Zoé is sliding *into* her parents car, rear-ending them and then smashing into the guard rail. Nothing she could have done, it was purely an ice accident.
Everyone was and is okay, albeit shaken up from what just transpired. The cops came and did a report on it so insurance can fix both vehicles. Thankfully, both vehicles were still drivable, so after about an hour and a half delay, we got back on the highway and continued the journey. After that whole ordeal, the drive was much easier. Roads were clear, dry, and ready for highway driving after we got out of Montreal completely. There were still quite a few stops after that for gas, food, and bathrooms. But no more accidents, which is always good. Don’t want those to happen too often!
A slight delay won’t stop us from completing our long haul drive with packed up vehicles. We ended up getting to Dieppe at 9:45 pm Atlantic, so 8:45 pm Eastern time. That made it a 14 hour day behind the wheel. After the accident, the drive went quicker than I had thought it would. I thought it would feel slow, but I’m a long haul type of guy, so it ended up being good.
We unpacked 2 of the 3 vehicles when we got there, made sure the tech stuff was inside the house, and then Zoé and I went to bed while her parents went to the place where they were staying. A long, weird day had finally come to an end.
Hopefully, when we come back to Ontario, the drive won’t have any accidents! *knock on wood*.
