Friday, August 14, 2009

Oh Canada! Oye Canada!

We left the Essex Junction /Champlain Valley Fairgrounds at 2:00 and drove north into Canada and then east on route 20 toward Quebec City. We are staying at a KOA campground in St Nicholas, Levis, Quebec, just a few miles from the City.
We arrived here at about 6:30 PM and have been experiencing a comedy of errors and frustrations since we turned off the ignition key. First the electrical outlets didn't work and after checking all the switches, knobs, dials, transistors, resistors, diodes, circuit boards, buttons, plugs, capacitors, wires, toggles, and fuses to no avail, we discovered a GFI reset button on the receptacle in the hallway. So after an hour of troubleshooting every other possible option Peter hit that button and voila! Power. He said that never happened before and now the next time it happens he will know where to start.
Next he turned on the Direct TV and got no picture. We tried calling DirectTV but you can't call 800 numbers on a cell phone from outside of America, so we went online to find a real phone number that is dial-able from Canada. No such number on the website.
I googled the question "How do I call DirectTV from Canada?" And the answer I got was..."use SKYPE".
That worked...but Peter has now spent the past 45 minutes trying to get thru the extremely annoying and frustrating automated system.
The automaton asked for his phone number, he said "631-728-6462", she said "623-651-6314, is that correct?" he said "no," she said "please say your phone number," he said "631-728-6462," she said "756-834-2365, is that correct?" He began pulling out large chunks of his hair. One more time...he said "631-728-6462," she said "631-728-6462, is that correct?" He said "Yes!"
I said, "Yippeee we are finally getting somewhere"...BUT THEN....the call dropped!
He tried this procedure 2 more times with exactly the same result but with different automatons and even a real person.
Next he tried moving the coach 2 feet forward....but we were still in Canada.
My mother's words came back to me in a flash when Peter finally accepted the reality that there would be no TV tonight. What are those words, you ask? Whenever I would complain of having nothing to do she would say... "Go read."
Thanks for the advice, Ma.
Tomorrow at 9:00 AM we will take a bus into Quebec City and spend the day exploring, and hopefully be tired enough when we get back to not care that the TV doesn't work.

And we will go read!

2 comments:

kathy said...

Listen to your Mother !!!!

LaSal said...

What did you read?