The Beast with the broken nose

So this is why I've been in Minneapolis so long. I had rather planned to be pretty much in Montreal by now, and here I am still thousands of kms away.
The Beast had an encounter with a deer. An argument, you might say. I wasn't driving at the time, and it was very late at night, and no one was hurt - except the deer, who definitely came of worst in this. And the Beast, who is suffering from a badly cracked radiator and a squashed-in nose. It's all covered on insurance, thankfully, although that has actually considerably slowed down the repair process, but it should be driveable and back on the road, though probably not very pretty, in a few days. I hope. The only catch is that I have to go back to Canada for the rest of the repairs - so I think I will go via the north side of the lakes after all - I did come south in the end, but I'm already pretty sick of the US, and will be happy to get back to Canadia. Also, I didn't get a new US visa thingy, as I already had one from last time, but now the old one is nearly finished, so I'm just going to get out of this silly country as soon as I can.
One good thing, however, is that the deer incident happened only a bit more than an hour outside of Minneapolis (although even closer would have been even better) and they guy who was driving, Jack, has a wonderful family here in Minneapolis who have very kindly adopted me until the van is fixed. Jack's back in Winnipeg already, but I'm still here hanging out with his parents, which is actually kinda fun. It's just sad when I remember that poor Beastie is sitting all alone and cold a hundred miles away in a auction & holding yard full of dead autos, while the people who work there keep threatening to auction her for parts (they really aren't used to repairable vehicles coming through their gates!).