Second Thoughts

Woodstock, New Brunswick

I've just finished reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for the umpteenth time.

At the age of 30 I thought the book was brilliant, right up there with " Grapes of Wrath", "Catch-22" and "Naked and the Dead".... provocative and insightful. Maybe I was smoking too much illicit substance back then? We did some stupid things in those days, like loading our one-year old on a motorcycle between us and taking him out on the Tallahassee highways.

The parts about putting yourself in the right frame of mind to fix mechanical problems have been very useful to me...but maybe I focused too much on that part of the book (and all the "quality" philosophical stuff) at the time and ignored the sad relationship he was describing with his son Chris. So here goes the ghost of Phedrus, running down the road lecturing about tappet noises and stripped bolts and apparently unwilling to even begin to face the problems of a failed marriage and a frightened child. Maybe that was the whole point and I just missed it on the first fifteen readings?

In real life, Chris was stabbed to death at age 22 while Pirsig was living on a sailboat in England.

After 30 years, I'm viewing the book with a more jaundiced and possibly more mature perspective. Understanding the scientific method, reconciling the classical and romantic view of reality and being able to fix machines are all OK...but having a loving, trusting relationship with your own son and watching him grow to become a good man and successfully raise his own children might be the subject of a much more useful book titled "Zen and the Art of Fatherhood".

All in all, it's just a very sad book chronicling a brutally honest personal failure with some good tips about adjusting tappets and tensioning and lubricating motorcycle chains.

Potato World

Woodstock, New Brunswick

We went to the "Potato World" museum today. It rocked me back on my heels. The massive explosion of human knowledge and technology is nowhere more evident than in striving to understand how to grow a simple potato. A lovely five-sided potato flower waves over the New Brunswick fields in Spring.


Potatoes were discovered in Peru on the west side of South America in the 16th century and exported back to Europe. There they were largely regarded as poisonous (since they were a member of the nightshade family) until French peasants began to cultivate and eat them. Irish immigrants brought the potato to New Brunswick.

The branches of knowledge necessary to successfully cultivate and market potatoes in the modern age are mind-boggling. One must know how to rotate fields, cross-plow to prevent erosion and it help to have a tractor plugged into a GPS with a digger measuring the yield of each square meter so that the proper fertilizers can be applied in a remedial manner.

The knowledge gets deeper and thicker with certified seed crops and genetically engineered species of potatoes that are resistant to dozens of blights and weevils. The technology needed to make french fries efficiently is so lovely and crisp that it's like a diamond glowing in the center of my forehead.


Both Mrs. Phred and myself are deeply moved by them museum and suddenly an epiphany strikes us that we both can trace our impossibly improbable existences (the combination of a specific egg and sperm in a place and time) to emigration caused by potato blights before we (mankind) brought the potato under a semblance of complete scientific control.

The potato produces more protein per acre than any vegetable other than the soybean. It produces more energy per acre than any crop other than the sugar beet and sugar cane. A medium size potato is 100 calories and the skin has many essential vitamins. Compare this and the taste of french fries with 300 calories for a cup of rice and you begin to understand why I regard the potato as the "king of vegetables".

My mind is reeling from the complexity of cultivating the potato. The hierarchy and depth of knowledge that goes into the french fry and the potato chip is a blinding beacon reminding us of the value of the scientific method and the hyperbolic explosion of human knowledge.

We also saw the world's longest covered bridge today in Hartland, N.B. It's 1292 feet, about a quartermile...a top fuel dragster could hit well over 300 MPH from a standing start crossing it...


We're making a run to Bangor in the morning to stock up on the pills I need to keep my blood pressure down. We have a wonderful campground here with free Wi-fi on the banks of the St. Johns river. There are four tennis courts about two miles down the road in Woodstock. Maybe I'll score a win over Mrs. Phred?

Lord Beaverbrook

Fredericton, New Brunswick

It was a lovely day. No rain. High about 70. We visited a couple of Fredericton museums, both got haircuts and had lunch in a pub. The museum in the old garrison on "Officer's Square" has a lot of information about the 400 year history of New Brunswick.

Many of the original settlers were "loyalists" or "Tories" from the American Colonies who made the mistake of backing the British in the Revolution. According to the information here the rebels were blood-thirsty terrorists who made life miserable for those remaining loyal to the Crown, stripping them of property, executing them and imprisoning them in dank mine shafts.

Probably the most famous thing in Fredericton is Kermit, a 42 pound giant frog, shown here stuffed and under glass. A 100 year old controversy still rages over whether Kermit, a corn fed pet frog, is actually a hoax.

It's a pretty little provincial town, no match for Ottawa or Montreal. I listened on the street and heard an astoundingly large number of people recognize and greet each other warmly...no urban alienation here.

Our next stop was the Lord Beaverbrook Art Museum which was surprisingly good. Lord Beaverbrook started life in Canada hawking newspapers. He moved to England and somehow amassed the worlds largest newspaper empire. He hounded King Edward the VIII over his relationship with Wallis Simpson until the poor fool abdicated...Maybe he was thinking with his what? Beaverbrook took charge of aircraft and overall war production in England during WWII. There is some speculation that King Edward was a Nazi sympathizer and that Hitler would have given him back the crown, had he invaded England...Perhaps the mysterious flight of Rudolf Hess entered into all this...Perhaps not. Anyway, there is a 1936 portrait of the King in the Museum.

The crown jewel of the Beaverbrook Art Museum is an amazing 12 foot by 10 foot Dali called, I think, Santiago Grande. It's being packed up to be loaned to Atlanta.

We had a nice lunch, bought some wine and a birthday card for our son and drove back to prepare for the expedition North in the morning....I'm keen to see a 1,700 foot covered bridge, the Potato Museum and Grand Falls and gorge on up the St. Johns river valley.

Massive Confusion

Fredericton, New Brunswick

We found a tennis court online in Fredericton, but when we arrived, they were busily resurfacing the courts. Our RV park is fairly empty until school lets out on June 23. We're on the wide St. Johns river. The owner is very nice. He provides free canoes and bicycles to his guests. The RV park name is Woolastook. It's about ten miles west of Fredericton on the river valley highway we will follow up into Quebec.

The Fredericton website has lots of things to see but they seem reluctant to provide any physical addresses which make GPS navigation difficult. We stumbled upon this race track.

We did cash in our US dollars at a Canadian bank. All of our credit cards charge a 3% foreign transaction fee (and an additional 3% for a cash advance), so paying cash is a slightly better option than charging. The ATM fees were about 1.2% on a $300 (Canadian) withdrawal...penny wise..pound foolish...Most things up here don't get started until July. The high today was 50 degrees F. We did see several beaver dams...

We found some tennis courts eventually with a rough asphalt surface that caused some crazy bounces. There was a strong wind influencing the flight of the balls. I lost 3-6 on the first set.

We failed to take maps, lunch or water or mark our RV Park on the GPS, so getting back to the RV was a little dicey...


We resolve to get our act together...tomorrow we will see:

• The potato research center (We look forward also to the Potato Museum further North).
  
• The Changing of the Guard
• Play tennis in the Queen's Square
• Talk a one hour walking tour
• The botanical gardens

I'm running short on some of my blood pressure medication. To get a refill I need to see a Canadian Doctor at an "after hours" facility and get a prescription. My other option is a 135 mile run down I-95 to Bangor, Maine....the third option is not to worry about it for a couple of months...

FDR’s Canadian Getaway

Campobello Island, New Brunswick

We picked another rainy, foggy day to check out the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. We are not even beginning to question the advice of our blind psychic advisor, Chris Macleod, but we press ahead, fearing to question the radio waves instructions of our guru which we receive though the microwave implants in our teeth. I begin to consider fashioning a new tinfoil hat, but fear the retribution that we might suffer.


FDR’s parents built a “cottage” here in the late 1800’s and Franklin grew up spending his summers on the island.

Franklin and Eleanor built their own “cottage” here in 1910 on four acres.

The cottage had over 10,000 square feet, 12 bedrooms and six bathrooms. Strangely, the beds are very Spartan. Franklin had a windmill to draw water to a tank in the attic the attic, but no electricity. FDR called this his "beloved island". He started spending summers here at age one. He had a clay tennis court and his own golf course. The rich are different. They have more money.

FDR contracted polio here and was evacuated on a stretcher. 13 years later he was sworn in as President of the United States and served an unprecedented 12 years and four months before dying on the job.

Six of the 12 cottage bedrooms were for servant girls. FDR never visited his cottage after 1939 when things were going south in Europe. In 1952, new owners installed electricity in the cottage and later donated the building to the International Park Commission.


This is said to be the only International Park in the world. The visitor center has some interesting displays about the cooperation between the U.S. and Canada.


- The 5,900 mile undefended border between the two counties is the longest in the world.
- Canada provides more energy to the U.S. than any other country.
- Canada is by far the biggest trading partner of the U.S.
- The cooperation between Canada and the U.S. during WWII and the Cold War was very close.

There is picture at the park of a Canadian Voodoo 101 intercepting a Russian “Bear” off the Coast of Newfoundland in 1985. Both the Bear and the Voodoo were seriously obsolete at the time.