Chapter 0, in which Lex & I visit Sarah in Ottawa

Not even the Great Blackout of 2003 was sufficient to derail the plans that Lex & I had made to visit Sarah in Ottawa. After confirming that power had been restored to the Enterprise office where he was to pick up the car, Lex called me & we agreed to proceed as originally planned. He drove down to TO and picked me up in a silver car from the future, whereupon we played some of my CDs until we got to Kingston. Since I'd never eaten at a Denny's before, I convinced Lex that we should have dinner there, which we did. I've decided I like the food at Denny's. By the time we reached Ottawa it was dark so we just sat around for a wee bit & watched a really bad TV show before turning in.

The next day I rose bright & ridiculously early (as usual) but even Sarah wasn't up yet so I wandered off to the Bytowne market to amuse myself for a couple of hours. By the time I left it, I had procured a couple of avacados, a small box of rasberries and a dozen Montreal bagels. When I got back to Sarah's digs, we loaded our stuff into the car & went to pick up Sarah's friend Laura. Having done that, we picked up a few last-minute items from a grocery store and drove into the Gatts.

The beach was not as desolate as we had hoped for and none of us had remembered to bring our frisbees. However, minor inconveniences of that nature are easy to ignore on a sunny day, especially at the beach. We swam around & played catch (with my indestructible watch) in the water until we were exhausted & cold. Then we sat around on the sand & ate snacks for a bit before leaving.

The journey back turned into a veritable odyssey as we took time to explore random hamlets in Quebec. Encouraged by the great mileage the car was getting, we initially decided to stop in a little place that I was told had fantastic ice-cream. When we finally got there, it turned out to be nothing more spectacular than standard fare Nestle ice-cream. In its defence, the store had a very picturesque statue of a bearcub carved out of a tree trunk beside it. For some inexplicable reason, I was the only one who seemed to think so...

To be contd...