Wow. Just wow.

Left at night, and road construction forced us to take a route out of the city different from the way we entered. Ended up unknowingly crossing the St. Lawrence up New England way, not even knowing we were back in the US until we hit a border crossing in the middle of the woods manned by a old Canadian who knew the exact route from there to Penn State.

We then got trapped in snow blizzard in upstate New York, and over-nighted at a truck stop. One of the best nights of my life. Beat the hell out of the planned Queen's Hwy./Thousand Islands Bridge crossing/US I-81 that we'd taken on the way up.

Of the tribesman outside Kandahar who took my map, holding it upside down, then looking at me with shrugged shoulders.

I wet my finger, held it to the breeze, and struck out, well, [i]that[/i] way.

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Options dwindle when the cash gets short, especially when competing with those who are well-funded.

Are where I got my first learning about catastrophic, low-temperature failure through welded A36 steel.

There are any number of retired Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine personnel that just might be up for a little taste of adventure.

And, we're not here talking of provided 1st class accommodations for the passengers, but no more than basic transportation on a one-way voyage. I.e., passengers are just living cargo.

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I get a feeling like that.

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I said TECHNICALLY nobody's really stuck. Which is correct.

As for being right, yes, I am. You'll learn...maybe.

your arrogance quite as amusing as you do.

However, for the record, I wasn't wrong either... but I'm not going to take the gracious way out..

Quite simply Oz..

Bite me

One of my staff was on vacation in Rome.

Earlier this week, the only airports in Europe that could get her back to Canada were in Spain and Portugal. To get there she'd have to take a few trains. All of those trains had huge lineups, with no guarentees of getting on, nor was there a guarentee of a flight if she got to Spain.

There just is not enough excess capacity to take all the stranded people. Sure, some of them can get through, but not even most of them. If everyone who was stranded tried the Eurostar, then the train stations would be bedlam.

The band probably had more resources than the average traveller. Resources like money, agents etc.

But hey why let a few facts get in the way of your colourful tales...

My staff member is part of a group tour, and the group is coming home on the weekend, but they will have to be split into two smaller groups to get home.

And excuse me for saying so, but some periodic problems with BC ferries are nothing like what would be happening in Europe with no airline flights and hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers.

James

The highway from Windsor to the Quebec Border near Montreal been the 401 since the 60s. There is a road called the Queen Elizabeth Way, it goes from Niagara Falls to Toronto (the Golden Horseshoe).

You wouldn't be able to cross in rural Quebec into the US like that any more. One of my staff lives in the area. In some areas UAVs with IR sensors prowl over the woods. All the land crossings are manned, and the once harmonious relationship is pretty soured - there is a town where you could go to the library which straddles the border, no more.

The recent escalation happened in Sarnia. The US Dept of Homeland Security put up a trial of tethered balloons with cameras to scan the Canadian shoreline at Sarnia. Can you say invasion of privacy? Some Sarnia folks took to gathering at a likely spot and mooning the Homeland security folks. Its one thing to point a camera at a public area, but these balloons could also see into people's backyards and private property.

James

From my original post:- [i]"It's not like the people not getting across the pond though. THEY are screwed, unless they can find an open spot on a ship of course."[/i]

I suppose yout correction was merely agreement then.

As for resources, they got themselves across without my help, without their label etc. It took them a few hours to find transport and quick thinking and some patience to get across tha chanel.

My point was merely that flights aren't the only means of transport, however people feel that when they can't fly they can't travel. I thought my post was really clear. But as that is buried now, I suppose it went unread while people catch on the end of the conversation instead. Being stuck means you jave no way of getting somewhere, but there are alternate options and, again as I pointed out, if you are not in a mad rush and have patience you can still travel.

I merely made a comment based no firth hand knowledge that travel has not ceased, there are many ways of getting around beyond airplanes and AGAIN, unless you are looking to cross the pond and don't have a boat.

It was such a simple comment, yet people get so used to chsallenging my every word they often forget to read what I have said while tunnel vision creates a senseless argument of nothing.

As for BC ferries, you don't know the half of it. A single vessel being taken out of action will cause utter pandemonium that could last weeks. Heavy wind will cause an overnight lineup within a few hours. Thats why they have debated tunnel, bridge etc for decades now but there is just so much opposition from Islanders, which I can completely understand, it would change the face of the island. Plus it costs more than double the price of crossing from the UK to Europe now. A single car with a couple passengers is nearly $100.00 each way. There are thousands who cross daily for work (yeah some people actually live on the Island and work on the mainlland, insane!).

Really now, poor Oz...

It was your attitude that really sucked..

Just because your friends managed to sort themselves out quickly at the begining of all this, doesn't mean everyone else had the same ease.

But you don't want to admit that just maybe some of us might know soemthing that you don't know once in a while...

I simpy made an innocent post, and you responded with your typical arrogance that surely I hadn't read YOUR post..
So don't be crying about people jumping in at the end of a conversation and jumping on you...

You can dish it out, but you sure don't like to be challenged.

My point was more that while your friends managed to find an alternative, the infrastructure doesn't exist for everyone in the situation to do the same thing. There are limited numbers of trains, buses taxis and rental cars in Europe, and when the airlines are down you can't just snap your fingers and create more of it.

If it was so easy, why did the Royal Navy have to send ships to pick people up?

Sure your friends were creative and managed. That doesn't mean that the tens of thousands of people in the same position could do the same thing.

Oz, you always want this to be about winning or losing. To me this is about information.

James

One guy was returning from Alaska, and decided to make a small detour into a particular small old Canadian town whose name escapes me at the moment.

Canadians decided that, since he had a DUI in New Jersey, he was undesirable. However, during the time it took for them to render a decision, a blizzard struck, so they escorted him into town, put him up overnight, confined to quarters, and the next day escorted him out.

During the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit, two friends tried to cross over to the casino (Harrah's Caesars Windsor Casino ?) to deliver some tickets for the Super Bowl. After determining that one of them had a 1970 drug conviction, they denied him entrance and thoroughly searched the car. And, the a$$holes on the US side played games when they tried to return.

In contrast, the aforementioned old Canadian with the fantastic memory of highway routes that we met in the woods that night simply said "You don't have anything that you want to declare, do you."

BTW, I was referring to 401 when I said Queens Hwy.; was it not once known as that? If not, what is/was its name?

They ended up getting the two drivers, who took turns at the wheel, to agree to collect the $3100 balance when they arrived at their destination!

This is Bjork's revenge for the greedy brits forcing Iceland to sign the IceSave compromise in return for non-arriving economic assistance. :p
Don't mess with mother nature, hey, she used to date Tricky Kid!

Their cows are eating the salty ash and its making holes in their intestines and weakening their bones.

Their land won't be able to plant crops for years.

Ironically, in the end volcanic soil is great farmland, but the current farmers won't survive long enough to see it.

If you think the cloud went straight without any impact, did you even look at the pictures?

You're a piece of work.

James

I do think it's amazing how small an area is affected there. I know that doesn't comfort the ones affected. But compare to this:
"In 1783, 79 per cent of the Icelandic sheep stock were killed, probably as a result of fluorosis caused by the eruption of Laki."
From here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull#Farming
And compare to this eruption :"...the thick layer of ash that has fallen on some Icelandic farms and pastures at Raufarfell..."
It's, for the time being at least, surprisingly localized.

Clearly, not to all.

Bjork did it...

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