4:23 a.m.  the familiar sound of Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Mornin Rain" wakes me from a restless sleep on the living room couch.  Couldn't have come up with a better alarm, since it is backed by actual rain noise from outside.  The forecast was for freezing rain, and since I have to head out before the road crew will ever be here, I am relieved that it sounds like regular rain, which a brief outdoor reconnaissance confirms--it's still a couple of degrees above zero Fahrenheit.  

It's Tuesday morning, so I am headed to Toronto with a van-load of organic sourdough bread.  Two days a week, this is my life.  I shower, make a thermos of tea and three kaiser sandwiches--kaisers are the easiest sandwich type to eat one-handed while driving, they don't fall apart--and check my e-mail and the Toronto weather forecast.  Last night the forecast was dire enough that I parked my car down the hill beside the highway, but I needn't have bothered.  About 6:15, with a bit of tea and toast in me, I arrive at the bakery, and a few seconds later Diane the office manager pulls in.  "Was that the longest fuckin train ever?" I ask her rhetorically.  Seems there's always a big train crossing Glen Tay Sideroad when I approach the lights at Highway 7, but this one went on forever.  What can you do?   

As Diane prepares the invoices, I load the van, about 30 banana boxes full of bread and treats, some of them damn heavy.   

The Van is a 2003 Chev Express, essentially an airport-limo-style stretch van converted to cargo purposes, and to dual-fuel so it runs on natural gas when it feels like it.  This vehicle has 590,000 kilometers on it, but at the moment is running like a top due to endless rounds of expensive maintenance.  

A few minutes before 7 am, I collect the invoices, pick a treat from the retail table for my breakfast, and roll out onto Highway 7 West.  

As I turn onto the highway, I pass the Ministry of Transport weigh station.  Over thirty years ago, I had an ancient-then stepvan, a former bakery van, which bounced and screeched its last few yards under its own power into that very weigh station--after we had overheated and destroyed the dried-out differential (turns out they need fluid in them! and if it leaks out you must put more in).  This was long before I lived in this area, when I was a suburban Ottawa teenager.  After working all summer to fix it up, we got that van out of Ottawa but sure didn't make it to North Carolina.  That's another story...(that's me in the patched pants, shirtless Dave died a couple of years ago, the others I haven't seen in decades)...as a van it made quite a good object to lean on....

but it's pretty ironic that a quarter-century later I ended up driving a bakery van for a living, spittin-distance from the very same spot.   

 Highway 7 West.  I spend my life on this road.  It is still raining but not freezing.  I set the cruise control to 100 km/hr (can't afford any more tickets) and relax with a classic CD of Ian & Sylvia singing, "Four Strong Winds" and "Someday Soon".  They set the bar for a vocal duo and no one has improved on it since the 60's.  You can quote me on that.

Highway 7 gets more desolate in the first hour out, as I pass Sharbot Lake, Arden, and the Kingdom of Kaladar.  

 Kaladar is an odd little highway junction consisting of one gas-station-store-restaurant, a small Ford truck dealership, on Ontario Provincial Police Station,  and about ten other business premises, most of which are semi-deserted and have been repurposed, for residence or storage.   One of them used to be the famous "hubcap ranch", a fabulous collection of old wheel-protectors and tail-light units, but only a few remain.  Urban cleanup I guess.  Kaladar would be a total ghost town except for its still somewhat strategic location at the corner of Hwy 41--a cottage and-park-country gateway--and 7.  Highway 7 has a long tradition of failed businesses in the desolate eighty-mile stretch between Perth and Marmora--this is just the largest concentration of them.  Once I actually tried to order a coffee at the now-closed  Kaladar Hotel (you see it on the corner on the right), the lady was so startled to have customers she didn't know what to do.  "I suppose I could make some," she offered.   

 If the road didn't freeze, and the rain didn't turn to snow, on this deserted stretch, that's a good sign.   This area is a geological oddity known as the Frontenac Arch.  It's the southernmost section of the the Canadian Shield--the granite formation that covers half the country--and is the ecological land bridge between Algonquin Park and the Adirondacks. 

Rolling west, every little town has its peculiar character.  Madoc was named after Prince Madoc, simply because someone was charmed by the legend of the 11th century Welsh Prince who supposedly left his wartorn country with a small fleet of ships and landed in the Mississippi Delta--look him up, you know how.  Next is Marmora, where the Virgin Mary is said to appear now and then, then the railway town of Havelock.  I have a grudge against Havelock, ironically enough it is responsible for destroying Ian Tyson's singing voice, which he has kept in great form since the long-ago Ian and Sylvia days!  You see, they have a big ol' country music festival  in this field just outside Havelock every year.  Real country billboard too.

 About three years ago, Tyson was singing there (why not, his life on the Alberta range has left him in better shape than any 72-year-old musician in the world!), didn't like the way they had his voice EQ'd, and strained his vocal cords trying to compensate.  A few days later he caught a throat infection and the damage became permanent.  Now he sounds like his age, with a lot of gravel that wasn't there before (that's not why the ;atest album is called "Songs From the Gravel Road" but still...)  Damn you Havelock Jamboree!  

I can't really hate Havelock though, because it has all these cool old railroad artifacts; they're trying to make the sidings a railroad museum  For example,  THIS is a snowplow:

 Last town is Norwood.  It was featured on the Rick Mercer show when he did a piece about odd small-town festivals--they park a car out on the pond ice and take bets about what date it will fall through (they used a Yugo so no harm done).  I saw it parked there, but sorry, no pics.  Exciting place, Norwood.

I'm waking up now, daylight arrives, and after a natural-gas fuel stop outside of Peterborough, we are speeding up on divided 35/115 down to the 401..Past the Darlington Nuclear Station, Oshawa, and Whitby, to my first delivery stop in Ajax.

I have an uneasy but cordial relationship with this store these days.  Awhile back they banned me from using their washroom "unless you sit down"--I am not making this up.  Well, men are from Mars, so screw that.    I haven't used their washroom since, although they are my first official stop.  After I dress in the dark and drive four hours, while drinking a whole thermos of tea or coffeee, I guess I am a bit of a troubling sight in the stark 10 a.m. light of suburban Toronto, and one that sure needs to pee.  Whatever.  I'm too proud to beg, or sit down. Now that we have a detente, the lady there acts like she never said that. They empty the box, check through their order and make out a cheque--I recover the empty box (boxes are expensive) and cheque and I'm on my way through the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).

 To be continued.