Some Great Road Trips Are Measured in Kilometers

In the years that I have owned my 1963 BJ7, belonged to the Austin Healey club, attended British car events and met other enthusiasts, I have realized that are many different reasons why we own and enjoy these cars. For me, I just find the car a blast to drive. I do try to keep it looking good, and I have more than just a credit card in my tool box, but flying down the road, hanging on for dear life while bugs are bouncing off my forehead, is my idea of time well spent.

It’s a good sign!

My car is a true everyday driver, as once the slush and salt have washed off the roads, and until the November skies darken with the threat of snow, I use the car to commute to my office in downtown Toronto and run errands on the weekend. But anytime I manage to escape traffic and really open her up; within the roar of the engine and tires I hear the chant: “Road Trip, Road Trip, Road Trip!”

I have had the opportunity to visit nine of the ten provinces in Canada, with Prince Edward Island being the only exception. Prince Edward Island is about 1000 miles from Toronto, and from reading the club magazine every month I know that there are a lot, well some anyway, of Healey’s out there crossing the whole continent all the time. I floated the idea by some of my friends and learned to appreciate the way Columbus must have felt, with fears of sailing off the edge of the earth and sea monsters replaced with descriptions of engines blowing up and the rest of the car parts flying off. This seemed to be a good time to consult a professional, so I spoke with my mechanic and he just said, “Does it break down a lot, if not, why not go?” Now although I do not consider myself to be a belt and suspenders kind of guy, maybe a test run before the great adventure would be in order. I have a friend who lives about three hours away, whose father used to race British sports cars and whose brother is a mechanic. Okay, so maybe I am a belt and suspenders kind of guy, but I was confident that if I made there I would be okay.

For a great time, choose your co-pilot well.

I put together my travel kit: shop manual, various sockets and open end wrenches, screw drivers, pliers, multi-meter, CAA card and credit card. I then strapped Lacey, my co-pilot and navigator, a standard poodle, into the passenger seat. As an aside, if you ever feel that people are just not noticing you enough, make a big poodle your passenger. With her nose over the top of the windshield and her ears flying, I am just going to assume the people in the other cars were laughing with me and not at me. Lacey loved riding in the car. I had more than one person yell, “nice girlfriend” as we drove by, which gave me the opportunity to yell back, “Thanks, but she’s a bitch.” I never got tired of it, but I think I found it funnier than everyone else.

The car ran great down and back, so after cleaning the saliva, the co-pilot’s not mine, out of the cockpit, I was ready to head out to the east coast. Unfortunately, I was not sure if my co-pilot/navigator was up to ten days on the road so I dropped her off at a kennel on the way out of town.

Dutch kids enjoying the ferry ride all the more in my Healey.

I decided to take the freeway for the first hour, just to get beyond Toronto’s suburbs and bedroom communities, before taking the smaller roads. It was a cool morning, which I find is when my Healey runs at its best. These cars really like to stretch their legs, and at 3200 rpm in overdrive I am sure I can feel her smile. It was a little cool for me, and as an Austin Healey at 70 mph is not a wise place to be pulling a sweater over your head, I pulled into the next rest stop. I guess we are all used to strangers coming up and talking to us about our cars, but I don’t believe there was one rest stop on this trip where someone did not come up to tell me about their own Healey experiences or ask me about my car.

I turned off the TransCanada Highway and joined the Loyalist Parkway, a beautiful two lane road that runs through Prince Edward County (no relation to the island, just a popular guy), along the shore of Lake Ontario to Kingston, which is near the head waters of the Saint Lawrence river and the Thousand Islands. I managed to hit rush hour in Kingston, but as a daily commuter to Toronto, I have always felt that if you are going to be sitting in traffic, you might as well be sitting in a convertible. As I was waiting for traffic to move, and enjoying the day, I noticed in my rear view mirror that a guy several cars behind me had leapt out of his truck, left the door open, and was running toward me. As Kingston is a university town, and it was frosh week, I started to worry that I might be dealing with a pledge, who as part of a fraternity initiation, was running up to moon me. Fortunately, it turned out be a fellow enthusiast who wanted to know if I was joining the upcoming weekends convoy to the British Car Days just west of Toronto. I explained that I was headed the other way, and asked him what type of car he had. He explained he was still looking for his first car, but felt he was closing in. He returned to his truck, but we managed to yell at each a few more times before the traffic broke up. From Kingston I took the Thousand Islands Parkway, another beautiful road that runs along the Saint Lawrence, to Cornwall, Ontario where I crossed into New York State.

Although we use the metric system in Canada, my car’s speedometer is in miles per hour. It was so nice to see speed limit and mileage signs that I didn’t have to convert. Although I suppose it is a good way to keep the mind sharp, it was nice not to have to look at the speed limit, multiply that number by the distance between the king’s nose and his forefinger, add two tablespoons and divide by a quart to figure out that I was speeding.

The planned route was to take country roads through New York, Vermont and New Hampshire skirting just south of the Canadian border and then cut across Maine to New Brunswick. This is truly a beautiful part of the country as the windy road passes through farmland, meadow, forest, across Lake Champlain and through the Green and White mountains. At first when I would get stuck behind another car that had the audacity to travel less than the speed limit I would get a little annoyed. And then I realized that this was an opportunity to enjoy the scenery, both sights and smells. I am sure that anyone who has driven a convertible through farm country is as much an expert at recognizing the various types of manure as I. So, at one point, as I was back into full out country road driving, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, what appeared to be an old gas station on the other side of the road. The next instant I saw a sign, on my side of the road, which said ‘Bienvenue au Canada.’ I then realized that I was about to cross back into Canada in Quebec, so I stopped. Now I was sitting in No Man’s Land between the Canada and United States borders. I also realized that the longer I sat there pondering my position the greater the chances of an international incident, or at the least, an unpleasant encounter with rubber gloves. I knew turning around was not an option and saw that the Canadian border guard was waving me forward. Fortunately, she found my story credible and allowed me to turn around and head back to the United States. The American border guard, who saw me roar by minutes earlier, was also very helpful and told me where I had missed my turn in the last town. So after showing my passport and opening the trunk for a quick inspection, I was back on my way.

License plate bump detector.

As this was a beautiful late summer day and I was travelling through a beautiful part of the country, I decide to forgive myself for a momentary lapse in navigation, and in future pay closer attention to the signs. In regard to road signs, the two that get a Healey drivers heart racing, albeit for opposite reasons, are: the wavy arrow = good, and ‘bump ahead’ = yikes. The problem I have with ‘bump’ and its international symbol, little mountain range on yellow background, is it is too vague, and when one is driving a car with four inches of clearance one needs details. I discovered a useful high speed bump measuring technique that I would like to pass along. Once the bump comes into view, look on the other side for tire marks. It seems that if the bump is large, semi-trailers will leave skid marks when the trailer bounces over it. So if I saw skid marks I would really slow down, if not, I would just take my foot off the gas, make sure my tongue was not between my teeth, grimace slightly and then, after crossing the bump, look in the rearview mirror for undercarriage components. This worked pretty well, but I have to admit my rear license plate did get a little bent while perfecting the technique.

After crossing back into Canada in New Brunswick, I spent a couple of days visiting with old friends in Fredericton before the leg to Prince Edward Island.

I decided to take the Confederation Bridge over the Northumberland Strait. The bridge is almost thirteen kilometers, for metric imperial conversion see above, so I was looking forward to the view. Unfortunately, from the seat of my Healey, I was not able to see over the guard rail.

Alongside the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

One of the unusual features of Prince Edward Island, or P.E.I., is the red soil, which makes a stunning contrast to green fields of this primarily agricultural province. About one third of Canada’s potatoes are grown here. The tragedy of this is there is a song by Canadian country/western singer, Stompin’ Tom Connors, entitled Bud the Spud, and the only lyrics I know are, “It’s bud the spud from the bright red mud, goin’ down the highway smiling.” As soon as I saw the red soil this song got stuck in my head, and without a radio, I was not able to shake it until days later when I was in Quebec.

On the way back I decided to head up to Quebec and follow the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River to Quebec City and then on to Montreal. The road passes through numerous villages and with the church spires rising above all of the other buildings they reminded me of the countryside in France. At this point my fifty weight oil supply, which is hard to find in most gas stations, was running dangerously low, and I had wished I had stocked up in one of the larger towns. But as luck would have it, while filling up in a small village, I looked over and saw a half a dozen, very dusty, liters in the display rack. I took them in to attendant who kindly wiped them all off while I said in my limited French, “English car.” Well, I think that’s what came out, but we both laughed, so whatever I said I guess it was funny.

The weather was great and I did not have the top up until the last day of the trip. On the final day the rain was coming down, and in, pretty good. I was able to put towels in most of the leaking spots, or sit in a way to generally avoid the drips. However there was water coming in from the driver’s side vent window that I was not able to avoid. This was a steady drip on my thigh that by the time the rain stopped had wicked down my pants to my sock and soaked my foot. As I was only a few hundred miles from home, I decided to press on and felt any discomfort could be cured by a hot cup of coffee, so I pulled off into a rest stop.

As I mentioned earlier, every time I would stop someone came up to me to talk about the car. This time, however, it was a little different. By the time I came out of the restaurant with my coffee, a tour bus had pulled into the parking lot and three or four guys where standing around my car taking pictures. They were on a cross Canada trip and, yes, they were Japanese. Through hand gestures they asked me if it was okay to take pictures, and I gestured back, “Of course.” Soon the group had grown to include more guys and their spouses. Then through more hand gestures one guy asked if he could sit in the car while his wife took his picture. Soon a line formed as people took turns having their picture taken pretending to drive my car. Frankly, it makes me quite proud to think that there are people in Japan showing pictures to their friends and telling them about their trip across Canada in an Austin Healey.

I am not sure if it had do to my ritual of patting the dash and saying ‘good girl’ every morning, but the car ran great, and other than tightening up a loose side mirror, I did not need any of my tools. So if your car is reliable around town, I recommend you follow the advice of my mechanic, and take it on a road trip.

I think my brother has talked me into checking out Route 66.

By Steve Huneck