by Doreen Wilson from Burlington, ON
A number of years ago my husband James was traveling in the Gaspe on business. It was very dark – pitch black, when he checked into to a fishing lodge for the night. Exhausted by the long drive he stripped off all his clothes and fell thankfully into bed.
In the morning, when he awoke, the sun was streaming through the closed wooden-louvred doors. Feeling great, he jumped out of bed, still in the “altogether”, and flung open the floor-to-ceiling doors. Stretching his arms wide and with eyes closed he yawned hugely.
When he opened his eyes, he saw to his horror, about 12 feet away – the stunned faces of the diners on the Old Ocean Ltd train, which was standing still on the track right outside his hotel window. “It was a heart sinking moment,” he remembers “and I can still see to this day, the horrified faces of those people in the dining car, coffee cups suspended in mid-air, while I, naked as a newborn babe – gaped at them like the village idiot.”
Ah, the joys of travel.