Please disregard audio show links – updated links below.

Some of my earliest memories involve riding in cars, and as the years go by, automotive vehicles have added many chapters to my life story. This episode is a chronological account of some of my most memorable adventures in transportation..

Extra credits - Used with the permission of Claude Méthé (Les Bessonnes, https://claudemethe.com), Dana Whittle (Guichet Voisin, John Adams, Harmonica Spring, Double Yellow Line, La Tempête). All rights reserved. Public domain sound effects from https://freesound.org, plus a few field recordings by the author.

Theme music My Radio’s Frozen ©Dana Whittle. All rights reserved. Recorded, mixed and mastered at Studio Vizou, Sainte-Béatrix, Québec.

More from the author on https://pasdaccent.com, https://vizou.com and https://medium.com/vizou.

Copyright ©2018 Dana Whittle / Vizou. All rights reserved.

This episode of Pas d'accent is sponsored in part by Howie and Bebe Whittle.

Yup, they're my parents, and I couldn't do it without them.

Hi, I'm Dana Whittle, American by birth, naturalized Canadian, Québécois at heart.

And this is Pas d'accent, born when I began documenting my experience as a musician, designer, writer, and bilingual immigrant here in Québec.

Produced by Vizou Media, Pas d'accent is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google, and your favorite podcast app.

You can support it by visiting the Vizou Media page on Patreon.com.

And by the way, I just love your accent.

(theme music)

Some of my earliest memories involve riding in cars,

and as the years go by, automotive vehicles have added many interesting chapters to my life story.

This episode is a chronological account of some of my most memorable adventures in transportation.

When my parents married in 1955, they received a little 1954 Austin A40 Somerset sedan as a gift from my maternal grandparents.

It was a thing people did in those days.

They picked up the car in Paris and drove it all over Europe during their honeymoon,

before returning home with it to the old farmhouse they were restoring in Massachusetts.

One day in 1959, when I was three years old, my mother helped me into the back seat for

a trip to the local market.

With her pocketbook on one arm and some clothing for the dry cleaner in the other, she managed

to slam her finger in the door while closing it behind me.

She left me in the car, parked in the garage, and ran into the house to deal with her bleeding

finger.

This was before the days of seatbelts and car seats, but apparently I was mature enough

not to mess with the gear shifter dashboard,

or she was just in too much pain to worry about what I might do on my own.

When she came back out, finger bandaged up,

she opened the driver's seat door to hear me repeating, mantra style,

Son of a bitch, son of a bitch.

When my sisters and I were young, our family car was a Volkswagen bus,

the iconic model that today's hipsters long for,

with that trademark saddle shoe paint job in white and hojo's turquoise,

a giant chrome VW emblem on the front.

At Christmas time, my mother made an evergreen wreath with a big bow

that my father attached with wire over the VW logo.

It had a name, too, Buski,

because we drove in it to Vermont every winter weekend

to ski our asses off at Mad River Glen.

My dad is a mechanical engineer,

and he loves to tinker with engines,

which in my personal experience is a very good thing when you own a Volkswagen bus.

The sliding side door on one side only, unlike modern minivans,

had no safety lock on it,

and once one of our little friends fell out the door

and rolled down the street for a few feet when the door accidentally opened

as we came to a stop on a slight hill.

Luckily for her, we had been going very slowly,

and she was wearing a super padded snowsuit that protected her from injury.

We hustled her back into the car,

and I'm not sure whether her parents ever even heard about the incident.

My mother was a member of a local amateur modern dance troupe.

Every production involved making costumes, some of them quite amazing,

like the front and back end of Ferdinand the Bull and the duck from Peter and the Wolf.

The members of this troupe, all of them women, and their husbands,

were fond of throwing pretty wild parties, often with costumed themes.

Our house was a centuries-old colonial with a huge attic,

so it became the default storage location for not only the dance production costumes,

but for many of the costumes that my parents and their friends fabricated for these parties.

As a child, I feared going up there because it not only held a lot of wasps

that had made their nests in the dark eaves,

but because everywhere you looked, there were frightening things looking down at you from hooks on the walls.

Clowns, wolves, robes, masks, and characters from popular culture,

like Snoopy on his doghouse on the Red Baron's biplane.

Every time there was a costume party, my parents would plan and make a new crazy costume,

or borrow one from the attic stock.

You could fit two adults, three kids, and a couple of big costumes in the VW,

as there wasn't yet any seatbelt law,

And we didn't live in fear of what could happen and how the insurance company might get out of covering anything it did.

So off we would go, us kids in our pajamas, ready to sleep in the VW until our parents decided it was time to go home.

Before we actually fell asleep, cozy in our sleeping bags, two of us in the back luggage area, one on the back seat,

we'd peek out the windows and see people dancing and carrying on through the living room window of the host's house.

I'm not sure what state the driver was in on our return trip, as I don't remember a single drive home,

but we'd all wake up the next morning safe and sound in our own bed.

The VW's last days were not long after a drive to Vermont.

Just my mother and us three girls.

It sputtered and died in Rochester, Vermont, across the entrance to the local cemetery, effectively blocking it.

Naturally, there was a funeral the next morning, so somehow we managed to push it to a slightly better location

and then spent the night in a local inn until my father could arrive and get it going long enough to make it to an actual garage.

As a mechanical engineer, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a fixer of anything broken, my dad was and still is the champion.

He, his best friend, and my uncle, also an engineer who worked in the space program, all bought used Porsche sports cars at the same time,

and spent a lot of their free time tinkering with them, rebuilding engines, trading tips, and driving their sporty vehicles to work,

possibly hoping to look cool in the process, even though they were by default more nerdy than hip.

My uncle also had a VW bus. Our families had VWs pretty much at the same time.

And at one point, he put one of his Porsche engines into the VW, which has the engine in the rear.

He would pull up to a stoplight, and when a couple of young guys alongside him revved their motor as a challenge,

He'd look straight ahead and then hit the gas when the light changed,

leaving them in the dust with dropped jaws.

By this time, my mom had taken over the family car,

a Ford Econoline van with a V8 engine,

which had replaced the unfortunate Volkswagen bus.

Meanwhile, I was learning to drive on both of our cars.

The Ford had a three-speed manual transmission,

with the gear shift on the steering column.

The steering was horribly loose.

You'd turn the wheel to the right about halfway before the wheels followed,

which made for a lot of oversteering and a few close calls.

We used this van for our weekend trips to ski in Vermont

and to haul our three-horse trailer,

which was a good six inches wider than the van on each side.

My father had bought the Ford without seats

and built a platform bed and wood seat with two drawers under it

and a cubby for the dog so we could ride in comfort.

My mother upholstered red vinyl cushions to go with that.

He also put two old iron radiators in the back cargo area, underneath the bed, to help with winter traction, since it was a rear-wheel drive model, as were most cars at the time.

The van had the engine between the front seats, and no heat made it to the back, so he installed an old school bus heater that used the engine water, putting it behind the engine on the floor.

Every Friday night during ski season, we'd set off for Vermont as soon as my father got home from work.

With a homemade picnic, chicken rolled in apricot jam sauce and coated in crushed potato chips was my favorite,

and lots of car sing-alongs.

My sleeping spot on these trips was on the floor between the back bench seat and the motor,

snuggled up to the heater in my army surplus sleeping bag.

There never was a cozier bed.

In the Ford, with my new learner's permit in my pocket, I hauled horses to pony club meets, lessons, and horse shows.

When I got a long line of impatient drivers behind me as we creeped along winding New England roads,

my mother told me she'd give me 25 cents for every car behind me at the next stop sign.

She wouldn't allow me to take my driving test until the day I could smoothly back the Ford and horse trailer for a quarter mile down a narrow, sinewy dirt road.

I thanked her for this many years later, when I could seriously impress local farmers as I effortlessly backed my 16-foot stock trailer down a long, curving driveway to the barn where I was picking up a load of hay.

But it was in my father's Porsche that I took my driving test, since it was the only car we owned that would allow the Massachusetts state trooper who administered the test to reach his foot across and stomp on the brake if necessary.

In those days, you could take your test in a car with a manual transmission, and this car boasted six speeds.

My father had taught me to watch my RPMs on the tachometer so I knew when to ship, and soon I knew it by feel.

When the trooper saw what I was driving, he gave me a disdainful look, as if I was trying to show him that I was a cool, rich kid, which I most certainly wasn't.

He didn't know that my father was simply an engine geek and that his next car would be the cheapest rabbit money could buy.

I passed the test with flying colors, and the state trooper told me I was a great driver.

I'm proud to say that all three of my kids can drive any stick shift, and this has come in handy many times for them.

I'm a bad passenger.

I readily admit to being a control freak.

And when it comes to my safety in a motor vehicle,

I am always happier when I'm driving.

Although I've been lucky not to be involved in any serious accidents,

I have had my share of experiences where things were beyond my control.

When I went off to university in Rochester, New York,

a seven-hour drive from home, I didn't have a car,

so I had to find rides with other students from the Boston area

if I didn't want to take the bus home for holidays and school breaks.

One of the people I came to regularly hitch a ride with

was a guy in the printing program

who later went on to run his family printing business in the Boston area.

He owned what was a pretty exotic vehicle at that time,

a four-wheel drive Isuzu Scout,

with dials on the wheel hubs that you got out in turn to activate the four-wheel drive,

and a hard top that could be removed to make it like an open safari-type vehicle.

He was a cool, rich kid.

The first time he gave me a lift, it was in February,

and the top was off.

It was a bright sunny day, but the temperature was well below freezing as we barreled along for many hours on Interstate 90.

To compensate, I wore a vintage full-length muskrat coat scavenged from a trunk in our attic.

It covered every inch of my body except my head, on which I wore a Peruvian-style wool hat.

I think I wore goggles, too, since I'd brought them with me to go skiing.

My friend was keeping warm as he drove by drinking beer from a six-pack stashed directly behind his seat.

He was speeding, not a lot, but enough to be pulled over when he passed a state police speed trap.

The policeman came up to the car and asked him for license and registration,

not appearing to notice the six-pack in plain sight with a few cans missing.

When he went back to his car to write the ticket, my friend got out,

went to the rear of our car, directly in front of the policeman,

and proceeded to pee on the grass near the shoulder of the highway.

I froze and said nothing.

I was sure we'd be taken in and he'd end up tested and arrested.

But he was a confident, cheerful guy,

and it seemed to rub off on the policeman,

who handed him the ticket and kindly suggested that we slow down.

On another trip in the Isuzu,

this time returning from Vermont to Rochester,

thankfully with the top on,

we pulled over to the shoulder just before arriving at our exit.

We had taken a ticket where we'd first gotten on I-90,

and the toll would be around $13 for the miles we'd covered.

The snow had melted, and the ground was fairly dry and still frozen.

My friends spun the four-wheel hubs to the on position,

hopped back in, and drove down the embankment on our right,

up a hill, through a cornfield, and out onto a small side road,

eventually reaching the main road that would take us back to campus.

After I graduated from university, I made the move, along with my fiancé, a fellow student,

to Atlanta, Georgia, where he had accepted a job.

During our last year at school, his father had sold us the family's old Chevy Impala for $1.

it. In addition to being full-time students, we were also musicians, playing several times a week

to help pay school expenses. We traveled to winter music gigs, the trunk full of sound gear and

instruments, and back and forth from Rochester to our respective homes in all types of weather.

In those days, people like us didn't have snow tires when we drove it to Vermont during several

blizzards. We didn't have four-wheel drive or even front-wheel drive. We just had a lot of people

sitting in the back on most trips, so we managed to get up enough traction to make it up those

Vermont hills. When we arrived in Georgia, with a canoe on top of the car and everything we owned

in the trunk and back seat, my fiancé, with his new salary, bought a new Volkswagen Rabbit,

a diesel because the fuel was so much cheaper back then, and because his job involved a lot

of long-distance driving. The Impala became mine. I loved that car. It drove like a dream,

and you could put a lot of stuff in the trunk. In fact, for a while, I managed a stable in nearby

Marietta, and every day I put hundreds of pounds of grain in 50-pound bags into that trunk and

drove out to the field to feed horses belonging to the Atlanta Polo Club and to others boarding

at the stable. Over the years, a lot of people partied in that Impala too, rolling joints and

smoking them as we drove along to go canoeing, go out to the local bar for a Friday night beer,

or to go to a drive-in movie. I saw Smokey and the Bandit twice while lying on the warm hood,

my back against the perfectly tilted windshield, the drive-in speaker hanging from the driver's

mirror. Atlanta is a very humid place, and one day, while parked, I noticed something by my feet as I

bent to tie my work boot. A baby pot plant. Marijuana genial. No doubt the result of the

aforementioned activities. But that was not all. Around the same time, I was looking for something

in the trunk, and I noticed that there was grass growing there. Really, grass the kind you mow.

All the grain I had hauled had left behind a few seeds, and some had sprouted.

And there were mushrooms, too.

Two-inch-tall mushrooms.

A few years later, we sold the Impala for $700.

It really held its value, in my opinion, to a friend who had been part of the car's history.

And in a way, that car is still with me, as the answer to one of my online security questions.

After the Impala left, I needed a new car.

My very first, very own car, bought just for me.

We shopped around at local garages and in the classified.

I had always longed for a Volvo Amazon,

one of those cute little sedans or station wagons

with rounded bumpers, friendly curves, and delicate chrome.

I couldn't find one, though.

and finally we visited a small garage

where the mechanic specialized in vintage Volvos.

He was selling another model,

a 1964 P1800 Sports Coupe, on consignment,

and I fell immediately in love.

A tiny two-door car with long, sexy lines,

it was the car that Roger Moore, the future James Bond,

drove in the TV series The Saint,

and it was red.

Boy, was it red.

With a red leather interior to boot,

five-speed manual transmission and electric overdrive,

which never worked as long as I owned it.

It had dual carburetors,

the kind that auto-mechanical snobs carry stethoscopes to listen to

in order to properly tune them.

I think we paid $1,200 for it,

and that car was hot in more ways than one.

If it was a 95-degree day in Atlanta,

a common occurrence,

the engine that stretched out in front of your legs sent huge waves of heat back into the car

I remember finding a cartoon depicting a P1800 with a huge block of melting ice on the hood

now I knew why one of my Vermont friends thought it was such a great winter car

but I love my Volvo

it purred like a cougar

had incredible pickup and shifting it was practically orgasmic

I think it was the beginning of my secret affair with cars

It was also the beginning of me wishing that my father had taught me a lot more about mechanical things

We now had the Volvo and the diesel rabbit

And one day, when the Volvo was at the bottom of our steep driveway and the rabbit parked at the top

I heard a strange noise while I was inside the house preparing to leave for work

I looked out the window to see the rabbit rolling ever faster down the driveway

And straight into the rear end of my Volvo

My little red car was hurtled into the deep kudzu at the end of the driveway, the rear end dented and taillights broken.

The rabbit was scratched where it had rubbed the house, with a dent or two in front and one headlight broken.

It had been parked in first gear with a handbrake on, and the handbrake cable had snapped,

somehow popping it out of first gear to roll, scraping alongside the brick house on the way.

When I contacted the insurance company to report the strange accident,

It turned out that we couldn't be liable for ourselves,

so the entire damage was covered without a deductible.

My Volvo, which already had previous rear-end damage

that had been badly patched when I bought it,

got a complete fix-up and new paint job,

and the Rabbit's more cosmetic damage was also covered.

I think that this is the only car-related good luck I've ever had.

The end of the marriage that had brought me to Atlanta

led me to another relationship, with my Volvo as the catalyst.

I was suddenly single, had to move into a dark, creepy apartment, all that I could afford on my current low-paying job,

and to help pay the rent, got myself a roommate who turned out to be a drug dealer, albeit an endearing one.

About this time, my P1800 began having all sorts of problems, and too many of my short trips began to involve tow trucks.

After the second breakdown, I contacted the mechanic from whom I'd bought it, and he asked me to drive it over for a look-see.

Just this once, I managed to get there without incident

And when he discovered that I was no longer married, he asked me out

It was the beginning of the strangest relationship I'd ever had

We'd go out to dinner, driving my Volvo, and he'd come back to my apartment for the night

When he'd leave in the morning, he would trade cars with me, fix my Volvo, and then trade it back on the next date

While we enjoyed each other's company, I always had the feeling that he was actually having the relationship with my car

and that I was just the vehicle for his infatuation.

No pun intended.

I joked with my friends that I had to sleep with the mechanic

in order to own a Volvo,

but at a certain point there was just too much truth in this.

Neither of us was really serious about the other,

so I finally decided to sell the P1800.

I put an ad in the classifieds

and was immediately contacted by a guy

who raced classic cars at racetracks like Road Atlanta.

I nearly shit my pants on the test drive,

but he paid me cash and left with my red Volvo,

taking along a little piece of my heart

and effectively ending my mechanical romance.

With the departure of the Volvo,

I inherited my father's aging VW rabbit

when he got a new company car,

a gas model.

It had pretty high mileage, but the fact that he was a mechanic meant it had been well cared for.

I got a ride back north and drove it back to Atlanta, a 24-hour drive, all in one shot, with help from a lot of truck stop coffee.

In Atlanta, I had a few minor adventures with the rabbit, the most exciting being the time the brakes failed as I was crossing Peachtree Street on the way to work.

My current job was doing maintenance for two guys who owned apartment buildings all over the city,

mowing lawns, changing light bulbs, and showing units to prospective renters.

At one point, I couldn't ship the rabbit into reverse,

so I had to be very strategic when parking,

especially as I often had a lawnmower in the back.

I managed to wrangle another date with my former Volvo mechanic who fixed that issue,

but I was pretty tired of being poor and living on the edge with my depressed, drug-dealing roommate.

I'd begun a new music duo with a friend

and she and I decided that we were both ready for a change of scenery

so we quit our jobs, packed up the rabbit and drove north to Canada

and eventually west to California

We slept in the car when it was too rainy to pitch a tent

and shortly after leaving Seattle, heading south through heavy rain

we discovered that we had to choose between having the headlights on

or using the windshield wipers

We were nearing Portland, Oregon

and pulled off at the next exit when the engine quit

I put it in neutral and coasted down the hill

spotting a Sears directly across from the exit

The light at the bottom turned green at the precise moment we arrived

and we continued to roll silently

directly into the Sears parking lot

where we parked and went inside to buy a new battery

that held things together for the rest of the trip

That rabbit was a tough bunny

We finished our tour of the West Coast, then headed back east on Interstate 10, crossing Arizona and a lot of desert.

Driving in the dark, we could feel a strange bump, bump, bump, and wondered why they didn't keep the roads in better shape, considering that they didn't have to deal with snow or salt.

In the morning when the sun came up, we realized that we had been hitting an endless stream of jackrabbits as they crossed the highway.

For much of our trip, when it was very hot, we had driven shirtless, with t-shirts nearby in case of emergency.

When we stopped for construction, the flag man was nearly always a flag woman,

who would tell us that she envied our option to cool off that way,

as she pointed toward the shirtless male road workers behind her.

Neither of us was particularly well endowed, so we didn't attract much attention.

As we headed back to Atlanta, there was a lot more traffic than there had been crossing Canada

or the western plains of the U.S.

On the road home, as we battled the crosswinds on I-10,

an 18-wheeler pulled up alongside of us

and the driver, a young laughing guy,

waved his pants out the window at us.

My suburban years were when I was still a farmer

with seven sheep in the back as we passed through Montreal traffic.

their noses poking out the window on the way to their new home,

pulling a 16-foot stock trailer,

or hauling three kids and all their friends,

driving across plains, over mountains, and crossing borders,

and only stopping now and then to fill the expensive but long-lasting gas tank.

The first of my second-hand Suburbans was the classic silver,

with blue pinstripe detailing and three bench seats.

My second, a glossy black one with AC and 12 places to put your coffee mug.

In it, I drove from Québec to Montana with a friend and our four kids.

They built Lego creations in the back seat and slept in it on nights when thunder and lightning scared them too much to sleep in the tent.

Our kids also slept in it into the wee hours on the last night of many a folk festival as we jammed the night away on guitar and fiddle.

The suburban era was also, unfortunately, the transmission era,

including the time I lent it to my sister and father,

who were taking six grandchildren to the Jersey Shore for a visit to their cousin's house.

The transmission gave up the ghost while crossing a bridge on a major freeway.

When the tow truck arrived, the operator winched the suburban,

with all eight passengers aboard, up onto the flatbed and drove them,

lights flashing to the nearest garage.

They ordered a rebuilt transmission

and then rented a car for the rest of the trip,

picking the Suburban back up on the way home.

Ever fans of anything Batman,

my kids dubbed our black Suburban the Batmobile.

And one day, as I was climbing into it,

I noticed that very word roughly keyed into the paint near the gas tank.

I confronted the two youngest kids who stood nearby.

The older one, who was coincidentally wearing a Batman costume at the time,

immediately protested,

I didn't do it!

I traded in my last Suburban when I finally switched to a Subaru

to save money as gas prices skyrocketed.

I come from a Subaru family,

and it is the unofficial state automobile of Vermont,

so for many years I continued the tradition.

It is also the shortest chapter in this tale

since we've had relatively few adventures with these great practical cars.

Our first was a used dark gray legacy,

which unfortunately, unlike the other Subarus I owned,

had endless electrical problems.

When we finally donated it to a friend in need,

they ended up calling us regularly to complain about it.

Moral of the story, never give your funky old car to a friend.

The second Subaru was a brand new Impreza, a 2005 model,

with five-speed manual transmission and lots of pizzazz that I just loved to drive.

It had been a special sport package that included a sunroof, racing skirt, and a positively silly spoiler,

possibly in hopes of converting scores of aspiring race car drivers and souped-up Honda Civics to make the switch.

It also sported a six-CD changer, which I grew to hate,

since my husband and kids regularly stocked the car with CDs that promptly lost their covers

and ended up scratched and unplayable as they slid around on the car floor and under the seats.

I blessed the advent of Bluetooth, streaming clean, package-free audio to the car speakers.

The Impreza was finally paid off after five years,

during which I had to pay for full-market replacement value insurance.

Naturally, only days after I at last owned it,

my son, a brand-new driver, skidded off the road with it on a dark, rainy night,

totaling the car but luckily escaping without any injury.

The insurance paid out the minimum value

so I had to satisfy myself with a used Subaru Outback

a pretty emerald green station wagon that my daughter said I looked good in

obviously an important consideration when buying a car.

It has nearly 300,000 kilometers on the odometer today

and just began a new life as a second car for my oldest son and his young family.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber

This couldn't be truer than for some owners of a Volkswagen Eurovan.

As traveling musicians, we thought that it was a great way to go.

Front-wheel drive, good on gas, regular or diesel models,

manual transmission, great drivability, and lots of space.

Our first Eurovan was a simple camper with a table and bed inside, in a metallic blue-green.

We drove it to Nova Scotia, varying to Newfoundland, where we drove from one end to the other.

We drove it to northern Ontario, and south across the border, to New England, to the Outer Banks, to North Carolina.

Our bandmate Denise was the designated driver when we rolled down the Pennsylvania Turnip, as she referred to it,

expertly downshifting the four-speed Fishstick as we descended Long Hills.

those were the days

when it began having issues

a friend sold us another one

a nine passenger diesel model

now we had two

and that was a good thing

because there was always something wrong with one of them

they were a year apart in age

and we learned that every time something broke on one

it was best to buy two replacement parts

as the other would soon need it too

One day, Claude and I visited his sister in Montréal

so that he could do some small renovation tasks for her.

We took the red van,

always handy for toting tools and building materials.

Around rush hour, when the work was done

and we'd had a meal together, we prepared to leave

and discovered that the brakes were kaput.

The van had a manual transmission

and there was a manual handbrake within reach of the passenger seat,

so we decided to go anyway, despite my sister-in-law's horrified protests,

so we could get it fixed at our neighborhood garage and avoid towing charges.

This was before we'd begun to spring for CAA+.

Claude and I were like a well-oiled machine,

him at the wheel as we inched along through Montréal North

on the way to Autoroute 40 in heavy traffic.

He'd downshift, and I'd prepare the handbrake with a light touch,

just enough to hold us as we came to a stop.

Once we made it to the highway, it was a piece of cake, and we cruised home sans souci.

We spent more than one unplanned night in a hotel while traveling in our Eurovans,

and missed more than one concert date as well.

Later that year, the engine conveniently died as we stopped to show our passports,

only restarting after a few anxious minutes with the irritated Homeland Security officer.

And then there was the time that we drove to Montreal to play a concert at the Yellow Door Coffee House,

and the engine died as we reached the street where the show was.

I jumped out while the car was still moving and spotted a parking space up ahead.

Wearing my concert dress with clothes steering, I pushed the Eurovan the last ten feet,

maneuvering it into the parking space, which required a permit.

We left a sign on the windshield, played the concert, and then called CAA for a tow back to St. Béthryx.

over an hour away.

We arrived home at 3 a.m.

In fact, it was while owning our VWs

that we developed our intimate relationship with CAA.

It got to the point that when I called,

I'd barely get my name out and they'd be like,

Hey, how's it going?

Where'd you break down today and is it the blue or red one?

Everyone in the band had CAA,

and we have CAA Plus,

so we can tow it further than the 5 kilometers allowed.

It is very hard to find a VW mechanic at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning.

It is even harder to find a mechanic that will agree to work on an old Eurovan any time of day.

In 2006, we purchased a 2002 Dodge Caravan for $4,000,

the perfect vehicle for traveling with our band of five musicians and all the necessary baggage.

I was unanimously recognized as the Queen of Packing.

I knew exactly where to put everything, and with five musicians and many more instruments than that,

it almost required a map to properly repack the car after each gig.

When we went from the nine-passenger VW Eurovan to the much smaller caravan,

it really put my packing skills to the test.

One of our band members in particular required a bit of special attention.

He was traveling with a guitar, banjo, mandolin, foot percussion board, instrument stands, pedal board, and pedals,

small electronics, huge suitcase for clothing, and multiple small bags,

usually with broken zippers containing a chaotic array of computers, iPods, snacks,

and other stuff you forgot to put into a suitcase or in the instrument cases.

On one memorable trip, he was the last band member to be dropped off

at his apartment in Joliet on our way back to St. Beatrix.

On this trip, we had all been teaching at a music camp in northern Ontario,

a 12-hour ride, and we were exhausted from nearly no sleep for a week and way too much fun.

In addition, I'd purchased a mini refrigerator, which is another story for another time,

and had gone to great lengths to get it into the car along with all our gear,

which was already nearly too much for the available space.

When we arrived at his apartment, I quickly unloaded everything of his

and carefully repacked items that were to continue on.

I noticed that our bandmate was looking a bit panicked.

I can't find my apartment key, he said.

I put it in the outside pocket of my computer bag like you told me to, he protested.

I frequently gave him tips on how to be less chaotic, usually to no avail.

He got out his phone and called his roommate,

who should have been asleep in the apartment as it was now nearly 2 a.m.

No answer.

To top it off, there was massive construction happening just in front of the apartment,

and we were parked in the construction zone, unable to unload any closer.

I finally had to unpack everything I had just put back into the car,

repack all of his baggage and ours,

and we drove home, bringing him with us for the night.

We then had to unpack everything once again,

and then repack his stuff into the car for another trip to the apartment the following day.

It turned out that his roommate had been there after all, but hadn't heard the phone.

At 223,000 kilometers, the caravan is showing its age, but rarely in ways that have us hitchhiking home.

In fact, it leaves tomorrow with our son at the wheel on a trip to Lac-Saint-Jean for a week of car camping.

But make no mistake, we still include our kids on the family CAA policy.

The biggest adventure in my tales of transport involves the purchase of a used Bluebird mini school bus

that we had a great time converting into a rustic camper,

meaning that it has no fancy plumbing or systems,

just a plug that lets us run the mini-fridge,

the one from the previous packing story,

and outlets that can charge our phones.

Originally a handicapped transport bus,

it was shiny and clean inside, without any seats.

Essentially a Chevy Express 3500,

it has a five-cylinder diesel engine and automatic transmission.

We removed the lift and built in a queen-size bed,

kitchen counters, propane stove, foot-pumped water tank, and overhead storage.

We dubbed our new rolling home the Tradmobile in honor of our musical lifestyle.

The bus had one major issue right at the start.

From time to time, it would suddenly turn off.

It would restart a few minutes later,

but this was very inconvenient if it happened at, let's say, a stoplight.

Some internet research led us to an analysis and a fix.

It was a gas pump regulator that needed replacement.

The Tradmobile is a cheerful vehicle, always starting on the first turn of the key.

It is still painted bright orange, and has the handle that opens the door to welcome passengers

on board, a big hit with kids and grown-ups alike.

While it is tall enough to stand upright inside, very nice on rainy travel days and while cooking,

it is still short enough to park in most parking spaces, and is eligible for the same ferry

boat rates as a regular car.

Our first real trip in it was to the Magdalene Islands, in the mouth of the St. Lawrence,

via a long drive to PEI and the five-hour ferry crossing from Souris.

We spent a week visiting musical friends, sleeping in the bus near the beach, in driveways,

and even parked across the street from our friend's restaurant, where we jammed each night.

Our dog Patsy came along to guard our stuff, and we had a great time both on the way out and back.

Upon returning home, we began to have some problems with shifting.

The second transmission era was about to begin.

In mid-August, I drove the Tradmobile to our gig at the 2017 Festival du Violon de Sutton

in Québec's eastern townships.

I was to meet Claude there as he was returning home from a week as an instructor at Maine

Fiddle Camp.

About 25 kilometers from Sutton, I realized that the bus seemed to be stuck in third gear.

Since it is an automatic, this made changing speeds and stopping and starting rather challenging.

I made it a bit further and pulled into a gas station, shutting it off and calling Claude for advice.

He was still somewhere in the boonies of Maine, not too far from the Québec border,

and of course there was nothing he could do but share my stress.

I waited 15 minutes and turned it back on, managing to get it into drive and begin rolling, fingers crossed.

I drove the last 15 kilometers in third gear, ignoring the frustrated folks gathering in my wake,

and made it to the festival grounds without ever coming to a full stop,

pulling into the parking space, and finally stopping.

Phew.

Claude arrived, the weekend's musical activities took over, and we ignored reality for two days.

On Sunday afternoon, I packed everything up.

Claude was to follow me as we made our way back home to Saint-Bérit-Rix.

We said goodbye to everyone. I hopped in, cranked it up, and couldn't put it into reverse.

Claude immediately opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, and began eating potato chips.

We were well enough stocked to spend a week there, if necessary.

I went into autopilot, calling CAA, worried now about whether or not they'd tow our bus,

which was significantly bigger than a car.

I got the name of the nearest transmission specialist from them,

and said I'd call them back for the emergency tow

once I'd talked to the garage 30 kilometers away.

The friendly man who answered assured me that he would come get the bus.

Size and weight was not an issue,

and that we should call him when we were ready.

They would take care of anything.

N'enquêtez vous pas.

So we played a whole bunch more tunes, drank another beer,

and then made the call.

Thirty minutes later, a tow truck whipped into the parking lot,

and a dapper man in his 80s hopped out.

He had short silver hair, retro gold wire-rimmed glasses,

suspenders over a crisp white shirt, and a sharp bow tie.

He took the keys from me, jumped sprily into the bus,

got it out of its frozen gear and into reverse,

and proceeded to winch it onto the flatbed.

This took all of five minutes.

Meanwhile, Claude's previous look of total discouragement

had transformed into relief.

You could see that this man knew exactly what he was doing,

and he exuded positivity.

Once the bus was secured, he turned to Claude and said,

Hey, you're a fiddler, aren't you?

I was thinking that we were at a fiddle festival,

and he probably noticed the sign at the end of the parking lot.

Yes, Claude answered.

Well, I'm a fiddler, too, said the man.

Then he asked,

Didn't I bring a tractor from your father-in-law's farm in Warren, Vermont,

to St. Beatrix, Québec for you about 22 years ago?

We were stunned.

It was the same man we'd found in the Yellow Pages,

to move my father's 1956 tractor to our home in Québec as a gift for Claude.

And he just happened to have been answering the phone at the garage that was now owned by his son.

So he towed away the bus, we drove home to St. Beatrix and Claude's Dodge Caravan,

and we marveled at the serendipity of it all.

The transmission was toast, and it cost $4,000 to rebuild it

and fix a multitude of other small things.

But hey, it could have broken down in the La Fontaine tunnel

and cost $1,000 to tow somewhere.

where they didn't have any idea how to fix it.

When we went to pick it up a few weeks later,

we also discovered that Claude was related to the family who owned the garage.

They were distant cousins, in fact.

When I finally passed on my elderly but still functional Subaru Outback,

I shopped around and became the new owner of an ever-so-slightly-used Mazda CX-5.

A cute red all-wheel drive model with automatic transmission,

high-tech sport shifting, sunroof and leather interior.

We put it to the test right away on a nearly 20,000-kilometer tour

from Québec to Louisiana, back to Québec, over two months,

traveling with Cajun fiddler David Greeley.

So far, the only adventure with the Mazda has been leaving Québec in April

with summer tires. Risky business indeed,

as we headed south during snowstorm season.

But we made it, even though we were snowed in, in Sudbury and in Milwaukee,

and had to cancel an Illinois concert when the major highways closed.

We passed huge piles of snow on the dry interstate as we drove south,

two feet of snow that had tumbled from the tops of 18-wheelers as they whooshed along,

and it snowed on the April morning when we arrived in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Mazda is our first vehicle with hands-free phone, Bluetooth connections,

and those crazy no-key locks and a starter button.

I'm not sure I'll ever get used to starting a car with a button.

It's already difficult enough to resist putting in the non-existent clutch,

which can lead to big surprises for the passengers.

Fode still doesn't understand why he can't lock the rear door,

even though our daughter has patiently explained to him

that it is only unlocked while he's standing next to it with a key in his pocket.

Although I'm not 100% sure I agree with him,

Scottish author and world traveler Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote,

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

Podexa is a production of Vizou Media, copyright Dana Whittle, all rights reserved.

Recorded, mixed, and mastered at Studio E2 in Saint-Bétricks, Québec.

Theme music is by Avilda Moore, copyright 2018, all rights reserved.

Subscribe to Vizou Media Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google, or your favorite podcast app.

If you really like it, you can support us on patreon.com slash vizou media.

Every little bit helps.

Visit us online at vizou.media for show notes and to learn about our other podcasts.

As you can hear, je n'ai pas d'accent.

(theme music)

P.S.

The Dodge Caravan suffered from a jammed front-wheel brake caliper not 20 minutes after our son left in it yesterday.

Luckily, CAA was happy to reconnect with us, delivering it promptly to our local garage,

where it was repaired this morning and put back on the road again, en route for the next adventure.

(song - Double Yellow Line written and performed by Dana Whittle)