Earlier today I arrived in North Bay, Ontario!

On Wednesday I finally got my G2 drivers license. We have a "graduated licensing system" in Ontario so you're required to hold a G1 before you can drive a 4 wheeled vehicle on government controlled paths alone.

So I booked a week off work (horrible timing, but whatevs) and just ... started.. driving. So far I've driven about 1200 kilometers in the car I've owned, and paid $230/month insanity premiums Ontario insurance on, for the past 5 months, but haven't been legally allowed to drive. Is that normal in other countries?

So now I'm in North Bay, Ontario, at a dive hotel that smells of delicious marijuana, disgusting cigarettes, and sewer runoff. Pretty sure the girl who checked into the room next to me is a hooker. Maybe not... but I'm pretty sure. Last night I slept in my car though, and paying $70 to keep my neck for another few years sounded like a bargain.

Anyone live up here? I gotta go back to work on Tuesday, probably leaving the area late tomorrow and heading back southish.

Regarding Australia - insurance there is so cheap, you have to be an idiot not to have it, but everything else is expensive.

All this talk about Canada made me nostalgic, so I tried locating the first house I lived in in Canada. It, and the rest of the farm buildings, have been demolished though, so here's a view of the street instead (that's our old driveway on the left).

I would say it's the middle of nowhere, but really it's the edge of nowhere, because all the land on the right hand side of the road is America. I probably crossed the border illegally hundreds of times as a kid, as my dog didn't really care about borders.

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edit:

This is the view in the other direction. The road on the American side of the border is the back road north from the closest American town (the main road north goes directly to a border crossing), so people would often drive the back road with contraband, which they'd often throw into the ditch next to where the road turns west (easy to find again from the Canadian side) which they'd pick up once they'd gone through the crossing.

The police knew this though, and had a lookout on a hill near our property. Watching people get busted used to be fun when we were kids.

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I used to spend most of the summer hitchhiking and living out of a tent. The most dangerous predators in NZ are cats though, so it's pretty safe.

When the weather starts warming up again, I want to take a trip to Orari Gorge. It's about a one and a half our trip by car (which I now have) from here.

We have sandflies over here. Every area of our island seems to have it's own slightly different variation of them. The ones in the East and North completely ignore me, and the ones in the West eat me alive unless I douse myself in repellent or eat lots of vitamin B. There aren't any in the south as it's too cold. The North Island has sandflies too, and they're probably different again, but I've never spent any time there.

Sandflies:

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