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The Road to Lot 13
Disaster Strikes
M Williams, June 2005 It was an exciting moment when we turned up the road to Lot 13. We thought about all the
months of planning, the years of back-breaking work, the prolonged and intense energy that we had poured into this moment, and we were awed. We were about to see, at last, the land that we'd endured hell for. The
promised land awaited us.
Alas, like Moses, we were destined to never live there.
We had purchased lucky Lot 13 from Dignamland,
an Ontario-based company that our research told us was reutable. Dignam's catalogue stated that the land had been recently inspected and was situated on a recognized road, passable by car. We'll, they might have
recognized it as a road, but we sure didn't, and Goliath didn't either. The road to Lot 13 was a logging trail--a perilous, rubble-laden, mud hole-ridden mess. Large, off-road machinery was the only thing going
through here. We can perhaps be forgiven for our suspicion that the inspection was undertaken by a blind man in a helicopter. |
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You've seen the road; you've seen our rig; Murphy's on board. How do you figure it turned out?The road got progressively worse as we went
along, van in tow. Surely this couldn't be the road to lot 13? It also got progressively narrow, and we soon found ourselves in the uncomfortable circumstance of not being able to turn the ship around. Just when the
panic was peaking, we hit a mud hole. Goliath slid sideways, sending the van over the very steep side of a very muddy emabankment, her weight threatening to sink us all. The co-pilot freaked, diving into the muck in a
courageous--but foolhardy--attempt to hold back all 30 tons of her. The pilot freaked--thinking she and the co-pilot were both going down with the ship--mashed her foot on the gas and demanded a miracle. Petition
granted. The right wheel caught on the right rock at just the right moment, and the rear end came round with enough force to fling the transporter back up onto the road. Disaster
averted.
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Right, now to get her turned around. Having little choice, we crept onward, and a tense ten minutes later the trail widened slightly where
another narrow road joined ours. In a perfect scenario, we might just be able to get ourselves pointed in the other direction. I was skeptical. Bear in mind here that we were 53 feet long, 27 feet of which was
dangling on a hinge off the stern. This was not a perfect scenario It was then that nature called. And it was then that we discovered black flies. No sooner had we begun our ablutions than a voracious hoard of
bloodsuckers descended, thick as fog. We hustled our exposed parts back to the truck and sat slapping and scratching and peering, horrified, through the windlows. We'd never considered flies. Somehow, amid the muck
and the black plague, we got turned around in under an hour. We were high on miracles . |
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Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, and we inched our way back toward civilization to ponder our predicament. If this was indeed
our road--and our maps assured us it was--we were in a bind. We had no land to live on, thus no choice but to pay for a campsite, an extended stay in which would eat into our budget. But it was going to take time to
sort this out. In the end, Dignam refused to answer our emails or take our calls. We'd given them $11,000. We had no choice but to sit tight, eat light, and hope for a miracle. It was to be eighteen days
before one came along...and it cost us. |
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