Monday January 8th

Left Great Falls and headed up to the U.S./Canadian border at Coutts. Over the border no problem then over the scale a mile up the road. Got the 'Park and bring in papers' light, so parked up and took my log book and truck papers into the man at the scale. He decided he wanted to do a D.O.T. inspection on the truck, so I pulled it around into the shed. All was fine except for one thing, which had been fine during my pretrip check at Great falls. With my lights on, the right side signal didn't work at all. With my lights off and the right side signal on, every single light on the trailer flashed. Not good. The man, who was a decent enough bloke, it has to be said, gave me a $57 violation ticket and put my truck out of service until I got it fixed or fixed it myself. After an hour or so of wire and bulb checking, I got my Christmas tree to start acting like a truck again and after a quick check from the D.O.T. man, off I go. Got around 15 miles South of Calgary and the festive spruce had returned, so I pull into Calgary terminal to see if I can get it fixed. The man in the maintenance shop took 6 hours to find the problem and had to put a new wiring harness in, amongst other things and off I go again to Edmonton, where I park at the flying 'j' for the night.